> It's impossible to have a good-faith discussion with these people.
To clarify: obviously bigotry, racism, sexism, etc are all real and occur. I am specifically addressing the baseless, knee-jerk accusations towards dissenting opinion. As are you, from what I gather.
I think there is something to be said for the idea that secular ideologies (be they libertarian, MRA, "classical liberal", environmentalist, feminist, woke, intersectionalist, etc) have replaced the religions of yore for large parts of the population. With those secular religions come all the incidentals of religious community: social control, virtue signalling, one-upmanship, splinter factions, standard texts...
You are not so much having a discussion as questioning articles of faith, which people don't generally budge on, can take very personally and which can be somewhat impervious to reality. That's also why it devolves into ad hominems: where you might have been called a bigot before for disagreeing with, say Christian orthodoxy, you are now called a racist/misogynist/transphobe/etc for disagreeing.
In short, I think the "culture war" is a real thing. It's just not nearly as new, widespread or tangible as Fox News (for instance) would have us believe. For some reason, academia and tech seem to be disproportionately affected. For tech specifically: maybe because we sectorally skew young and tend to live on the Internet more, increasing exposure to fringe bubbles?
To clarify: obviously bigotry, racism, sexism, etc are all real and occur. I am specifically addressing the baseless, knee-jerk accusations towards dissenting opinion. As are you, from what I gather.
I think there is something to be said for the idea that secular ideologies (be they libertarian, MRA, "classical liberal", environmentalist, feminist, woke, intersectionalist, etc) have replaced the religions of yore for large parts of the population. With those secular religions come all the incidentals of religious community: social control, virtue signalling, one-upmanship, splinter factions, standard texts...
You are not so much having a discussion as questioning articles of faith, which people don't generally budge on, can take very personally and which can be somewhat impervious to reality. That's also why it devolves into ad hominems: where you might have been called a bigot before for disagreeing with, say Christian orthodoxy, you are now called a racist/misogynist/transphobe/etc for disagreeing.
In short, I think the "culture war" is a real thing. It's just not nearly as new, widespread or tangible as Fox News (for instance) would have us believe. For some reason, academia and tech seem to be disproportionately affected. For tech specifically: maybe because we sectorally skew young and tend to live on the Internet more, increasing exposure to fringe bubbles?