[lmm]

> Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the place within human society.

They try to be. A given social movement will be judged on how well it deals with them - whether it embraces/encourages them (or, worse, makes them its leaders), or discourages them. Bullies, grifters, and sexual predators are everywhere, but "this organisation protects/doesn't do enough against its bullies/grifters/sexual predators" is a legitimate criticism (in cases where it's accurate); it's the same with prigs.

> The core issue for me is whether transgender people can show up in their preferred gender.

Break down what that means. Are you talking about whether these people act in a particular way? Or whether they demand that other people treat them in a particular way? Those are very different asks.

[mindslight]

Are megachurches not still a thing? Traditional religion has had quite the assortment of bullies, grifters, and sexual predators.

[lmm]

Perfect example of what I'm talking about. People criticise traditional religions for that kind of thing (and criticise specific sects as handling it particularly badly, rather than just throwing up their hands and saying every community has bad actors) and they are right to do so.

[mindslight]

Except many of the most vocal criticizers of progressive prigs come from reactionary prigs and their enablers, and many of the most vocal criticizers of the reactionary prigs come from progressive prigs and their enablers. There isn't really a lot of reflective self criticism - the whole dynamic looks more like a prig battle, with criticizing the current popular fashion myopically just used to attract otherwise disinterested people to the cause of enabling the next trend.

Maybe I've just gotten older and less worried about social consequences, but as priggishness goes the currently-passing fashion felt pretty tame. In the mainstream culture - thirty years ago it was "godlessness". Twenty years ago it was "support our troops". Ten years ago it was "gender". And today it's "woke". Within specific subcultures, "gender" will continue to be one, as "woke" has been for quite some time. When someone starts talking (or even preaching!) with any of these unquestionable assumptions, you just keep your mouth shut, and hold your real thoughts for your real friends with whom you can imperfectly express nuanced views in an environment of good faith rather than getting jumped on for social points.

[lmm]

> Except many of the most vocal criticizers of progressive prigs come from reactionary prigs and their enablers, and many of the most vocal criticizers of the reactionary prigs come from progressive prigs and their enablers.

I don't think that's true. I'm old enough to remember when priggishness was mostly right-coded, but at that point it looked like church ladies and curtain-twitchers complaining about boobs on the TV, which is not the group that's criticising leftist priggishness by any means. In political compass terms, it's something bottom-left attacks top-right and bottom-right attacks top-left for, because it's more of a top-bottom issue than a left-right one, and it's not really hypocrisy from one side or the other, it just looks like it when viewed through the left-right axis (of course there are some legitimate hypocrites who just cheer for their own left-or-right side and have e.g. flipped from being pro-free-speech when it was left-coded to being anti-free-speech now that it's right-coded).

> Maybe I've just gotten older and less worried about social consequences, but as priggishness goes the currently-passing fashion felt pretty tame. In the mainstream culture - thirty years ago it was "godlessness". Twenty years ago it was "support our troops". Ten years ago it was "gender". And today it's "woke".

The part that worries me is that this time we don't have the separation of personal and political (partly because feminism deliberately, explicitly tore it down) that ensures people don't have to fear for their livelihoods because of their views. It was illegal to fire people for godlessness (or its opposite) or gender, and that was an important protection that unions fought hard for. Wokeism is akin to religion in most of the ways that matter, but since it isn't recognised as such, people can be (and are!) fired (not to mention socially excluded etc.) because they were too woke or not woke enough, and we seemingly just accept that.