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Posted by Talix on 2023-December-4 17:10:59, Monday
In reply to Pharmakon's got GAME posted by Pharmakon on 2023-December-4 16:19:38, Monday

I hear some of what you are saying. I do see the pattern you are talking about where movements tend to start at the grass roots (with little ideological purity controls) and develop into more organised top down organisations (with tighter discourse control). I also do see what you mean with the idea that the grass roots stage tends to be dominated by people with little to lose and the later stage tends to draw in a more "respectable" crowd. The case of the gay rights movement moving from sexual liberation into gay marriage is to me indicative of the slide toward assimilation.

I don't think we have to get conspiratorial about elements in the group protecting "privileged positions" to explain this all though. I think a lot of this can also just be explained by the transition from radicals voicing what are at the time radical ideas to more moderates voicing now plausible ideas. Gay marriage was a marketable idea. It required minimal changes to the social system and was something the general public could be talked into. Age of consent reform (and the perceived threat to parental control) was a much harder sell to the average straight person (and many gay people for that matter too).

To put it another way, I think it was less that gay people in relative positions of privilege wanted to protect that privilege with minimal social disruption, and more that non-minorities wanted minimal social disruption in accommodating minorities. It's the people of relative privilege who are not in the minority group who needed to be placated by offering minimal change.

I'm also skeptical of the marketisation idea. I agree that there has been far more progress on accepting childless woman or those with stay at home husbands into the work force than in accommodating working parents. But again I think that can also be explained by societies desire to minimise change. Just treating women as men was not as hard. You just afford working women the same rights and expectations as working men. Accommodating working parents (and I would note that the work force is no more accommodating of single fathers then single mothers) is a lot harder. Changing social expectations of the appropriate division of labor in the household is even harder since it's very hard to do by government fiat.

It's easy to blame anything and everything on the "people of privilege", whoever that may be. But I think the reality is that misogyny, racism, homophobia, and pedophobia are all hardly exclusive to rich connected white men (or whatever other relatively privileged group you want to point to). Plenty of working class black gay women think that pedophiles should all be burned at the stake.

I think humans are just inherently resistant to change, particularly change that doesn't clearly favor them. Change is scary. And if they are going to be convinced of change, they strongly prefer change that is slow and gradual.

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