Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on What reward can genderists offer?

Spot on Sastra. I would just add that it works because that’s what moralists have always done – take the natural human desire to protect the weakest members of the tribe (without which we probably wouldn’t be here, being the weak defenceless apes we are) and by a series of metaphysical shenanigans identify protecting the interests of a power elite as the only “proper” realisation of that desire. It’s like an erotic target location error (i.e. a fetish) but culturally imposed on the entire community (except of course the most elite of those power elites – the pope can have as many “nephews” as he wants, not to mention prostitutes).

The difference here is that the power elite here has explicitly constituted itself to exploit that mechanism. There have, no doubt, been many attempts to do this in the past (Christian persecution syndrome comes to mind) but the combination of an ideology that holds all categories are infinitely malleable with its pop-cultural counterpart of “you can be anything you want” has finally made it an attainable goal. (You also need a large under-employed/leisure class with the time and financial resources to devote to the process of transformation – cue Sofie Molly moaning that it’s so unfair he doesn’t have those resources – since if only the pope were trans it wouldn’t work because we all know he’s supposed to be an exception.)

Yes, men, imagining themselves warriors, go for the social justice angle while women are seduced by the nurturing role, but it’s the same sleight of hand underneath – all made possible by the conceit of imagining ourselves as become gods freed from the constraints of mundane reality.