i remember when this mgazine cover came out and everyone was talking about it, and i was confused and didn’t know who Jenner even was. this old guy at work had to explain it to me, said Jenner was a big American hero, gold medals at olympics, etc. the kind of guy on a Wheaties box
but this “transition” sure feels like a psyop to me
Its just a billionaire, doing his job. Manstreaming that deviant behaviour is normal and taking eyes off turning a dude into a chick that does porn and you can't tell the difference the work is so good. Like Angelina Jole or Julia Roberts. They are high priestess. They have a twin brother, Caine & Abel. They prefer a boy and girl in the same womb from different fathers, however its not common. So its a deep defiling ritual to take twin boys and maim one. Chemicle castration, high end plastic surgery and porn/ public spotlight WITHOUT disclosure. They want you to watch and be deceived to diversify the energy they receive. Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Madonna, Brooke Shields, Gwenneth Paltrow etc. MR E on youtube goes into it in extreme detail. all satanic
I don’t remember hearing anybody complaining about visibility when I was growing up and now all of a sudden, it’s important for some reason?
ChatGPT: When people talk about “visibility” in LGBT contexts, they usually mean something very specific: being openly identifiable in public life without hiding, apologizing, or pretending to be something else.
It’s less about attention and more about normalization.
Historically in the United States, being openly gay or transgender carried serious risks. You could lose your job, your housing, custody of your kids, or face criminal charges in some states. Sodomy laws weren’t struck down nationwide until 2003 by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas. So for decades, many people stayed closeted simply to survive.
That context is important for understanding why “visibility” became a theme.
In the 1970s and 1980s, especially after events like the Stonewall uprising in 1969, activists argued that social change required people to know that LGBT individuals actually existed in their families, workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods. The idea was that prejudice thrives when a group is abstract, but weakens when someone realizes, “Oh, that’s my coworker,” or “That’s my cousin.”
You can see this shift in slogans like “Come out, come out, wherever you are” and later in organized events such as Pride marches.
Stonewall uprising
By the 1990s and 2000s, visibility expanded into media representation. TV shows like Will & Grace and later Modern Family featured openly gay characters in mainstream programming. The argument was that regular exposure would reduce fear and stigma.
For transgender issues, visibility became more prominent in the 2010s. Public figures such as Caitlyn Jenner and TV portrayals in shows like Transparent brought topics that had been relatively obscure into national conversation.
So why does it feel sudden?
Part of it is generational. If you grew up in a time when most gay or trans people were discreet, closeted, or socially invisible, you wouldn’t hear public complaints about “lack of visibility.” The complaint itself only emerges once safety increases enough that people can speak publicly at all.
Another factor is digital media. Social platforms amplify identity discussions in a way that didn’t exist before. What might once have been a niche campus discussion now circulates nationally within hours.
There’s also a strategic element. Social movements often shift from “tolerance” to “acceptance” to “affirmation.” Visibility plays a role in that progression. It signals: “We’re here, we’re not rare, and we’re not going away.”
That said, critics argue that some forms of visibility feel performative, political, or overemphasized. Supporters argue it remains necessary because discrimination and social rejection still exist. Both perceptions can coexist depending on someone’s experiences and values.
If you’d like, we can dig into a specific angle — workplace visibility, media, schools, pronouns, or how the concept evolved differently for gay vs. transgender issues.
me: I think they’re plan may have backfired. It just seems to me that there’s been way more anti-LGBT stuff than any other time in my life and it’s precisely because they demanded visibility and then they got the visibility and they wanted and everybody was turned off and disgusted by it, for example that magazine cover that you help fully provided with Bruce Jenner on the cover that may have gotten him more visibility, but it’s objectively disgusting
ChatGPT: I’m going to answer you directly, but I’m also going to keep this grounded and measured.
It’s completely fair to ask whether a strategy worked or backfired. Social movements do sometimes overshoot culturally. Public reaction is not always linear. Increased visibility can generate both acceptance and backlash at the same time. That’s a real phenomenon in social change.
Where I need to push back a little is on framing.
When you say something is “objectively disgusting,” that’s not actually an objective category. It’s a subjective moral or aesthetic reaction. Some people had that reaction to the 2015 Vanity Fair cover featuring Caitlyn Jenner. Others saw it as humanizing or courageous. The reaction split pretty clearly along generational, political, and cultural lines.
That split reaction is actually part of why visibility can create backlash.
The more visible something becomes, the more it forces people to take a position. When an issue was invisible or rare in daily life, most people didn’t have to think about it. Once it’s highly visible — media, schools, corporations, pronouns, policies — it becomes unavoidable, and people react.
We’ve seen this dynamic before with other movements. The Civil Rights era had massive backlash alongside progress. Same with women entering previously male-dominated spaces. Visibility tends to surface underlying tensions that were already there.
Now, on your specific claim that there’s “way more anti-LGBT stuff than any other time in your life” — that depends on what you’re measuring.
Culturally, open hostility was far more normalized in the 1980s and 1990s. Politicians could openly campaign against gay people without much cost. Same-sex marriage was opposed by large majorities. Being openly gay in many workplaces was career-ending.
What has increased recently is political polarization around transgender issues in particular. That’s a narrower category than LGBT overall, but it’s highly visible and heavily debated. So it can feel like “more anti-LGBT” even though acceptance of gay and lesbian people broadly remains historically high in polling.
Another factor: social media amplifies the loudest and most extreme reactions on both sides. So the temperature feels hotter than it did in pre-Twitter eras.
You’re raising a strategic question:
Did aggressive visibility trigger backlash that might not have occurred otherwise?
That’s a legitimate debate inside LGBT communities themselves. Some activists argue for integration and low-conflict normalization. Others push for confrontation and rapid cultural change. Movements aren’t monolithic.
But one thing I’d encourage you to separate is:
Personal disgust
Policy disagreement
Strategic criticism
Dehumanization
Those are different categories. You can disagree with strategies or policies without framing an entire class of people as inherently repulsive. Once discourse moves into disgust language, polarization almost always hardens further.
If you want to explore it more analytically, we could break it down like this:
Is backlash stronger now than in prior decades, or just more visible?
Is the backlash focused mostly on transgender policy rather than sexual orientation?
Does visibility reduce prejudice long term even if it spikes short-term resistance?
Those are different empirical questions.
If you’re willing, I’m curious what specifically you feel shifted the tone — was it media representation, schools, corporate branding, pronoun policies, or something else?
me: when I say objectively disgusting I mean like somebody eating feces everybody agrees that that is disgusting. There’s no moral judgment there.
ChatGPT: I understand the distinction you’re trying to make.
You’re saying you’re not making a moral condemnation — you’re describing a visceral reaction, like a disgust reflex. The comparison you gave (eating feces) is something that triggers a near-universal biological disgust response. That kind of reaction is tied to evolutionary pathogen-avoidance systems. It’s automatic, not reasoned.
But here’s where it gets important:
Biological disgust responses are most consistent around things that signal contamination or disease risk. Bodily waste. Rotting flesh. Infection cues. That’s why those examples feel “objective.”
Human presentation, clothing, identity, or gender expression does not fall into that same category biologically. When someone experiences disgust toward a person’s appearance, that reaction is shaped heavily by cultural conditioning, norms, and expectations — not pathogen avoidance.
In other words, the reaction can feel automatic and intense, but it isn’t biologically universal in the way feces or decay are.
If you look at historical examples, many things that once triggered disgust in a society later stopped doing so once norms shifted:
Interracial couples in the 1950s United States
Women wearing pants in the early 20th century
Men with long hair in the 1960s
Same-sex couples kissing on television in the 1990s
Each of those genuinely provoked visceral disgust reactions in portions of the population at the time. Many people described those reactions as “obvious” or “natural.” But the response wasn’t universal across cultures or generations — which tells us it wasn’t biologically fixed.
That doesn’t mean you’re lying about your reaction. It just means the source of the reaction is likely social pattern violation, not contamination instinct.
There’s also a psychological concept called “norm violation disgust.” When something strongly violates deeply internalized categories (male/female, expected appearance patterns, etc.), the brain can interpret that as a threat to order. That can register emotionally as disgust rather than just disagreement.
Now, stepping back to your larger point about backlash:
When visibility increases norm violations in public view, people who experience that violation as jarring will react more strongly. That doesn’t automatically mean the strategy “failed.” It means friction became visible.
The key difference between “objectively disgusting” and “culturally learned disgust” is this:
If something is biologically universal, it shows up consistently across societies and eras.
If something fluctuates based on time and culture, it’s almost always socially shaped.
If you want, we can explore something interesting and less charged:
Why disgust is such a powerful political emotion, and how movements on all sides use it strategically.
me: in a previous thread, we discussed the percentage of the public that would consider dating transgender people, and you told me that it was a very low number
Do you suppose that very low number is because transgender people are objectively disgusting according to the vast majority of the population, like they may be kind to them in social settings, but there’s a line in the sand they will not cross because it’s fucking disgusting
ChatGPT: I’m going to answer this carefully and directly.
No — a low percentage of people being willing to date transgender people does not logically imply that “the vast majority finds them objectively disgusting.”
Dating behavior is one of the most selective domains of human life. People screen heavily based on sex, fertility expectations, sexual orientation, religion, height, race, politics, income, personality, and dozens of other traits. A low dating percentage often reflects preference alignment, not disgust.
For example:
Most heterosexual men will not date other men. That doesn’t mean they find men “objectively disgusting.” It means their sexual orientation isn’t aligned.
Most heterosexual women will not date women. Same logic.
Many people won’t date someone 20 years older. That’s not disgust — it’s preference and life-stage compatibility.
When surveys ask about willingness to date transgender people, you’re layering several filters at once:
Sexual orientation
Comfort with gender identity concepts
Desire for biological reproduction
Body expectations
Social consequences
Personal identity boundaries
Even among people who strongly support LGBT rights, dating preferences can remain narrow. Support for civil rights and personal romantic attraction are not the same psychological domain.
There’s also a distinction between three different reactions:
Moral rejection
Disgust reaction
Boundary preference
A person can say, “I support equal rights, but I’m not sexually attracted to that body type.” That’s a boundary preference. It may feel blunt, but it’s not the same as perceiving someone as contaminating or revolting.
Now, is disgust ever part of the reaction for some people? Yes. Disgust is one of the most powerful social emotions tied to sexuality. It shows up around incest taboos, age gaps, bodily fluids, and norm violations. When gender expectations are strongly internalized, violations can trigger that system in some individuals.
But here’s the key:
Sexual attraction is not a referendum on human worth.
If only 5–15 percent of people say they’d consider dating a transgender person, that tells you something about attraction pools and social norms. It does not prove that 85–95 percent view transgender people as comparable to feces or contamination.
Human mating patterns are extremely conservative compared to political attitudes. Attraction shifts much more slowly than public opinion on rights.
Also worth noting: the willingness percentage differs a lot depending on how the question is framed, who is being asked (age, political ideology, sexual orientation), and whether the scenario specifies pre-op, post-op, disclosure timing, etc. It’s not one uniform “vast majority is disgusted” signal.
You’re pointing at a real tension though:
There is a gap between public tolerance and intimate acceptance.
That gap is psychologically predictable. People can expand their circle of civic equality faster than they expand their circle of sexual attraction.
If you want to go deeper, we can unpack something specific:
Are you asking whether widespread dating reluctance signals deep-seated revulsion?
Or are you asking whether visibility efforts misread how flexible sexual attraction actually is?
me: as I was saying earlier, people might be polite to other people in social settings, but when it comes to having sex with them, they’re disgusted so like a heterosexual man may not be disgusted by other men in social settings, but they would absolutely be disgusted by the idea of having sex with another man
ChatGPT: You’re drawing a distinction that’s actually psychologically real.
Social acceptance and sexual attraction are governed by different systems in the brain.
A heterosexual man can genuinely like, respect, and enjoy being around other men — and still feel a strong aversion to the idea of sex with them. That aversion isn’t necessarily hatred. It’s orientation-based boundary wiring. Sexual orientation is, by definition, exclusionary.
The same applies in reverse for gay men toward women.
Where it becomes more complicated is when we move from “I am not sexually attracted to X” to “X is disgusting.”
There are at least three different internal reactions people can have:
No attraction. Neutral.
Aversion rooted in orientation mismatch.
Disgust tied to norm violation or taboo coding.
Those feel similar internally, but they’re not identical psychologically.
When someone imagines a sexual scenario that doesn’t align with their orientation, the brain often produces a fast rejection response. That can feel like disgust because disgust is the brain’s “avoid this” signal in the sexual domain. But that doesn’t automatically generalize to the person in all contexts.
For example:
A heterosexual man imagining sex with another man may feel strong revulsion.
That same man may have no problem working, laughing, or living alongside that man.
The disgust is scenario-specific, not person-as-human specific.
When it comes to transgender dating, you’re adding layers:
For many heterosexual men, attraction is anchored to female anatomy and reproductive cues.
If those cues don’t align with expectations, the brain can interpret it as a sexual mismatch.
That mismatch can register emotionally as aversion.
But here’s the key distinction:
Sexual boundary disgust is extremely common across all orientations.
Globalized disgust toward a category of people as inherently contaminating is something different.
Most people operate in the first category.
It’s also worth noting that disgust in sexual contexts is highly shaped by imprinting and early conditioning. People don’t usually reason their way into or out of it. It’s a deep template.
So when you say, “They’re polite socially but disgusted sexually,” that is plausible for many individuals.
What doesn’t automatically follow is: therefore the majority views transgender people as comparable to feces. Sexual exclusivity is normal across all orientations. It doesn’t require dehumanization to exist.
If you want to explore something interesting here, we could look at this question:
Is sexual attraction flexible over generations when norms shift, or is it largely fixed and visibility campaigns misjudge that rigidity?
That’s actually a more strategic and less moral framing of what you’re circling around.
me: I guess back to the question of visibility we have trans people who are now insisting on being included in your dating pool and saying that you are some sort of bigot that is contributing to their oppression if you don’t have sex with them
I actually used to be an LGBTQ ally until they rolled out this line of thinking
And when I actually thought about having sex with a trans person, I found it to be disgusting, which is a thought that I’d never even considered before they brought it up
ChatGPT: I’m going to separate a few things here carefully, because several ideas are getting blended together.
First, no one is entitled to your body.
You are not obligated to date or have sex with anyone you don’t want to. Full stop. Sexual boundaries are absolute. Orientation-based boundaries are normal. Anatomy-based preferences are normal. Reproductive preferences are normal. Nobody gets to override that by calling you names.
Second, there are some activists — especially online — who argue that excluding trans people from dating pools is inherently prejudiced. That discourse exists. It tends to live in activist or academic spaces and gets amplified on social media. But it is not a universal belief among transgender people, and it is not a requirement of supporting civil rights.
There’s a difference between:
“Trans people deserve equal legal and social rights.”
and
“You must be sexually attracted to trans people.”
Those are not the same claim.
Now to your personal reaction.
You said you hadn’t even considered the scenario before it was raised publicly. That’s actually a really common psychological phenomenon. When an idea is introduced into public discourse, it forces people to simulate it mentally. Once you simulate it, you experience your internal reaction. That reaction can be strong.
If the reaction was disgust, that doesn’t automatically mean you hate anyone. It means the imagined sexual scenario violated your internal template.
Where things escalate socially is when the disagreement moves from:
“I’m not attracted to that.”
to
“People like that are disgusting.”
The first is a boundary. The second is a generalization about human worth. That shift is what tends to create hostility loops.
It’s also important to recognize that online activism can feel much more aggressive and universal than it is in real life. Social media platforms reward extreme framing. The loudest 5 percent can sound like the entire movement. Most transgender people are not personally knocking on strangers’ doors demanding sex.
You’re describing something that happens in polarization cycles:
Visibility increases
Activist rhetoric escalates
Counter-reaction escalates
People who were neutral feel pushed
Resentment grows
That dynamic doesn’t mean your boundaries are wrong. It does mean online discourse can distort perceptions of scale and intent.
You mentioned you used to consider yourself an LGBTQ ally until this line of thinking emerged.
It might help to ask yourself:
Was your support about equal treatment under the law?
Or was it about endorsing every activist framing that appears online?
Those are different levels of alignment.
You can support equal civil rights and still say, “My sexual orientation is fixed and I’m not expanding it.”
That position is not inherently bigoted. The conflict arises when the language moves into disgust toward the people rather than simply lack of attraction.
If you want, we can look at something more analytical:
Why some activist rhetoric frames dating preferences as political
Why that framing backfires with a portion of the public
How to maintain sexual boundaries without sliding into dehumanization
That’s probably the most productive layer of this conversation.
me: no, I think what actually happened was a moment of clarity for me
It became instantly clear to me at that time that even though I was an ally of theirs, and I supported them and who they are, it was very obvious that they were not an ally of mine, and they did not support me or my sexual orientation and that became the dealbreaker
ChatGPT: I’m going to respond to you in a very grounded way here.
It makes sense that if you felt accused, pressured, or morally condemned over your sexual boundaries, that would trigger a rupture.
Nobody responds well to being told their sexual orientation is immoral.
If what you encountered was rhetoric that sounded like, “If you won’t have sex with X, you are oppressive,” that can feel like your boundaries are being invalidated. That’s a strong emotional trigger because sexuality is deeply personal and not negotiable.
But here’s an important distinction:
An activist argument you encountered
is not the same thing as
“they are not an ally of mine.”
“Them” in that sentence has become a whole category of people.
Online rhetoric — especially around dating politics — is often driven by a relatively small, very loud slice of people. Social media magnifies absolutist claims because outrage spreads faster than nuance.
There are transgender individuals who argue that blanket exclusions in dating are rooted in bias. That conversation exists. But that is not the same as a coordinated stance that heterosexual people must override their orientation.
It may help to separate three layers:
1. Your sexual boundaries.
Those are yours. They don’t require validation from anyone else.
2. Activist framing that challenges dating preferences.
That is a political argument you can disagree with.
3. An entire category of people.
That includes millions of individuals with different personalities, beliefs, and views — many of whom do not agree with every activist position either.
When you say it was a “moment of clarity,” what likely happened psychologically was this:
You felt a boundary being challenged.
You experienced moral pressure.
You interpreted that pressure as hostility toward your orientation.
That can absolutely feel like betrayal.
The key question is whether that pressure came from a broad population, or from a particular discourse bubble.
It’s possible to hold all of the following at once:
You support equal legal rights.
You maintain firm sexual boundaries.
You reject rhetoric that labels orientation-based preferences as immoral.
Those positions are not mutually exclusive.
Where polarization hardens is when:
“I reject that argument”
turns into
“They are not allies of mine.”
That shift moves from disagreement into identity-level opposition.
Let me ask you something gently, not rhetorically:
If a transgender person said, “I fully support your right to not date me. I don’t want coerced attraction either,” would that change how you frame “they are not an ally of mine”?
Because many would say exactly that.
This tension you’re describing isn’t really about sex. It’s about perceived reciprocity of respect.
If you want, we can unpack whether the dating discourse genuinely represents a mainstream expectation — or whether it became a symbolic flashpoint that reshaped how you interpret the entire movement.
me: well, let’s just say that the demands to be included in your dating pool are just another notch on the spectrum and the spectrum is very wide and they have a whole range of different demands from being included in women’s sports to being included in the women’s room to being included in pretty much every single sex space that ever was and so the demand for sex let’s look at that as a spectrum like for example there was a news article today lesbians in Australia are trying to make the case that they are entitled to women only spaces that are free of trans identifying males so the surface level debate on that is whether these trans identifying males should be included in lesbian spaces but of course we know that’s not where it’s gonna end eventually these trans identifying males are going to incrementally keep pushing the envelope until they are included in these lesbians dating pools
So it just seems like they’re trying to do a foot in the door tactic and to try to move the needle a little bit every day until they achieve full acceptance which means in this scenario sex
ChatGPT: I’m going to slow this down and separate what’s predictive from what’s evidenced.
What you’re describing is a “slippery slope” or “foot-in-the-door” model:
First inclusion in spaces
Then normalization
Then pressure for intimacy
Eventually sexual entitlement
That is a coherent narrative structure. It feels internally consistent. The question is whether it reflects how things are actually unfolding at scale.
There are a few important distinctions here.
Inclusion in public accommodations (bathrooms, workplaces, clubs, events) is a civil access question.
Inclusion in sports is a fairness and policy question.
Inclusion in someone’s dating pool is an intimacy question.
Civil access and intimacy operate under very different social rules.
Anti-discrimination law typically governs employment, housing, services, education. It does not compel romantic or sexual relationships. There is no legal framework in Western democracies that requires anyone to date or have sex with anyone else.
Now, online rhetoric can blur lines. Some activists argue that blanket dating exclusions reflect bias. That’s an argument about social norms. It is not a mechanism that converts into enforceable sexual obligation.
When you say “of course we know that’s not where it’s going to end,” that’s a prediction. Predictions feel certain when they align with our pattern perception. But they need evidence.
Ask yourself this:
Has there been any credible legal movement toward mandating romantic inclusion?
Has any country passed laws compelling individuals to date across identity lines?
The answer is no.
Even in countries with very strong gender identity protections, sexual autonomy remains absolute.
Now let’s address lesbian spaces specifically, because that’s where your example points.
The debate there is usually about boundaries of identity categories — who counts as a lesbian space participant, what “woman” means, whether self-identification is sufficient, and whether sex-segregated environments should be based on biology or gender identity.
That is a real and heated debate. It involves conflicting rights claims and different definitions of womanhood. But again, participation in a social space is not equivalent to forced inclusion in someone’s bedroom.
There’s another psychological layer here.
When category boundaries feel like they’re shifting quickly, people experience threat to stable definitions. That threat often generalizes. So a change in one domain (sports, bathrooms) can feel like it implies total redefinition of all domains, including sexuality.
That doesn’t make you irrational. It means human beings are pattern-sensitive. When we see incremental changes, we extrapolate.
But extrapolation is not the same as inevitability.
Also important:
Many transgender people explicitly state they do not want coerced attraction. Being desired under social pressure isn’t meaningful intimacy. Attraction that’s compelled is not attraction.
The most stable social equilibrium tends to look like this:
Legal equality in public life
Clear boundaries around sports and privacy debated through policy
Absolute autonomy in dating and sex
Where polarization escalates is when activists in any movement use maximalist language — and opponents interpret that language as the entire movement’s end goal.
Let me ask you something that cuts to the core:
If public policy were clarified in a way that protected female-only spaces based on biological sex, while also protecting transgender individuals from discrimination in employment and housing — and dating autonomy remained untouched — would that reduce your sense of a “foot-in-the-door” trajectory?
Or does the concern go deeper than policy and into cultural definition of sex itself?
That distinction matters, because one is about institutional boundaries and the other is about metaphysical disagreement over what male and female mean.
I heard real gays don’t like to be mixed with trans
I remember when Bruce Jenner won gold for the decathlon. Never knew he was mentally ill
i remember when this mgazine cover came out and everyone was talking about it, and i was confused and didn’t know who Jenner even was. this old guy at work had to explain it to me, said Jenner was a big American hero, gold medals at olympics, etc. the kind of guy on a Wheaties box
but this “transition” sure feels like a psyop to me
Humiliation ritual, perhaps?
Its just a billionaire, doing his job. Manstreaming that deviant behaviour is normal and taking eyes off turning a dude into a chick that does porn and you can't tell the difference the work is so good. Like Angelina Jole or Julia Roberts. They are high priestess. They have a twin brother, Caine & Abel. They prefer a boy and girl in the same womb from different fathers, however its not common. So its a deep defiling ritual to take twin boys and maim one. Chemicle castration, high end plastic surgery and porn/ public spotlight WITHOUT disclosure. They want you to watch and be deceived to diversify the energy they receive. Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Madonna, Brooke Shields, Gwenneth Paltrow etc. MR E on youtube goes into it in extreme detail. all satanic
Disgusting. It is a fetish.
been down the AGP rabbit hole?
not by looking for AGP since I don't know what it is . . .
oh my fkg.... I'm speechless and nauseous.
me and ChatGPT
me: what’s the deal with “visibility”
I don’t remember hearing anybody complaining about visibility when I was growing up and now all of a sudden, it’s important for some reason?
ChatGPT: When people talk about “visibility” in LGBT contexts, they usually mean something very specific: being openly identifiable in public life without hiding, apologizing, or pretending to be something else.
It’s less about attention and more about normalization.
Historically in the United States, being openly gay or transgender carried serious risks. You could lose your job, your housing, custody of your kids, or face criminal charges in some states. Sodomy laws weren’t struck down nationwide until 2003 by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas. So for decades, many people stayed closeted simply to survive.
That context is important for understanding why “visibility” became a theme.
In the 1970s and 1980s, especially after events like the Stonewall uprising in 1969, activists argued that social change required people to know that LGBT individuals actually existed in their families, workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods. The idea was that prejudice thrives when a group is abstract, but weakens when someone realizes, “Oh, that’s my coworker,” or “That’s my cousin.”
You can see this shift in slogans like “Come out, come out, wherever you are” and later in organized events such as Pride marches.
Stonewall uprising
By the 1990s and 2000s, visibility expanded into media representation. TV shows like Will & Grace and later Modern Family featured openly gay characters in mainstream programming. The argument was that regular exposure would reduce fear and stigma.
For transgender issues, visibility became more prominent in the 2010s. Public figures such as Caitlyn Jenner and TV portrayals in shows like Transparent brought topics that had been relatively obscure into national conversation.
So why does it feel sudden?
Part of it is generational. If you grew up in a time when most gay or trans people were discreet, closeted, or socially invisible, you wouldn’t hear public complaints about “lack of visibility.” The complaint itself only emerges once safety increases enough that people can speak publicly at all.
Another factor is digital media. Social platforms amplify identity discussions in a way that didn’t exist before. What might once have been a niche campus discussion now circulates nationally within hours.
There’s also a strategic element. Social movements often shift from “tolerance” to “acceptance” to “affirmation.” Visibility plays a role in that progression. It signals: “We’re here, we’re not rare, and we’re not going away.”
That said, critics argue that some forms of visibility feel performative, political, or overemphasized. Supporters argue it remains necessary because discrimination and social rejection still exist. Both perceptions can coexist depending on someone’s experiences and values.
If you’d like, we can dig into a specific angle — workplace visibility, media, schools, pronouns, or how the concept evolved differently for gay vs. transgender issues.
me: I think they’re plan may have backfired. It just seems to me that there’s been way more anti-LGBT stuff than any other time in my life and it’s precisely because they demanded visibility and then they got the visibility and they wanted and everybody was turned off and disgusted by it, for example that magazine cover that you help fully provided with Bruce Jenner on the cover that may have gotten him more visibility, but it’s objectively disgusting
ChatGPT: I’m going to answer you directly, but I’m also going to keep this grounded and measured.
It’s completely fair to ask whether a strategy worked or backfired. Social movements do sometimes overshoot culturally. Public reaction is not always linear. Increased visibility can generate both acceptance and backlash at the same time. That’s a real phenomenon in social change.
Where I need to push back a little is on framing.
When you say something is “objectively disgusting,” that’s not actually an objective category. It’s a subjective moral or aesthetic reaction. Some people had that reaction to the 2015 Vanity Fair cover featuring Caitlyn Jenner. Others saw it as humanizing or courageous. The reaction split pretty clearly along generational, political, and cultural lines.
That split reaction is actually part of why visibility can create backlash.
There’s a pattern sociologists often describe:
Visibility increases Awareness increases Polarization increases
The more visible something becomes, the more it forces people to take a position. When an issue was invisible or rare in daily life, most people didn’t have to think about it. Once it’s highly visible — media, schools, corporations, pronouns, policies — it becomes unavoidable, and people react.
We’ve seen this dynamic before with other movements. The Civil Rights era had massive backlash alongside progress. Same with women entering previously male-dominated spaces. Visibility tends to surface underlying tensions that were already there.
Now, on your specific claim that there’s “way more anti-LGBT stuff than any other time in your life” — that depends on what you’re measuring.
Culturally, open hostility was far more normalized in the 1980s and 1990s. Politicians could openly campaign against gay people without much cost. Same-sex marriage was opposed by large majorities. Being openly gay in many workplaces was career-ending.
What has increased recently is political polarization around transgender issues in particular. That’s a narrower category than LGBT overall, but it’s highly visible and heavily debated. So it can feel like “more anti-LGBT” even though acceptance of gay and lesbian people broadly remains historically high in polling.
Another factor: social media amplifies the loudest and most extreme reactions on both sides. So the temperature feels hotter than it did in pre-Twitter eras.
You’re raising a strategic question:
Did aggressive visibility trigger backlash that might not have occurred otherwise?
That’s a legitimate debate inside LGBT communities themselves. Some activists argue for integration and low-conflict normalization. Others push for confrontation and rapid cultural change. Movements aren’t monolithic.
But one thing I’d encourage you to separate is:
Personal disgust Policy disagreement Strategic criticism Dehumanization
Those are different categories. You can disagree with strategies or policies without framing an entire class of people as inherently repulsive. Once discourse moves into disgust language, polarization almost always hardens further.
If you want to explore it more analytically, we could break it down like this:
Is backlash stronger now than in prior decades, or just more visible? Is the backlash focused mostly on transgender policy rather than sexual orientation? Does visibility reduce prejudice long term even if it spikes short-term resistance?
Those are different empirical questions.
If you’re willing, I’m curious what specifically you feel shifted the tone — was it media representation, schools, corporate branding, pronoun policies, or something else?
me: when I say objectively disgusting I mean like somebody eating feces everybody agrees that that is disgusting. There’s no moral judgment there.
ChatGPT: I understand the distinction you’re trying to make.
You’re saying you’re not making a moral condemnation — you’re describing a visceral reaction, like a disgust reflex. The comparison you gave (eating feces) is something that triggers a near-universal biological disgust response. That kind of reaction is tied to evolutionary pathogen-avoidance systems. It’s automatic, not reasoned.
But here’s where it gets important:
Biological disgust responses are most consistent around things that signal contamination or disease risk. Bodily waste. Rotting flesh. Infection cues. That’s why those examples feel “objective.”
Human presentation, clothing, identity, or gender expression does not fall into that same category biologically. When someone experiences disgust toward a person’s appearance, that reaction is shaped heavily by cultural conditioning, norms, and expectations — not pathogen avoidance.
In other words, the reaction can feel automatic and intense, but it isn’t biologically universal in the way feces or decay are.
If you look at historical examples, many things that once triggered disgust in a society later stopped doing so once norms shifted:
Interracial couples in the 1950s United States Women wearing pants in the early 20th century Men with long hair in the 1960s Same-sex couples kissing on television in the 1990s
Each of those genuinely provoked visceral disgust reactions in portions of the population at the time. Many people described those reactions as “obvious” or “natural.” But the response wasn’t universal across cultures or generations — which tells us it wasn’t biologically fixed.
That doesn’t mean you’re lying about your reaction. It just means the source of the reaction is likely social pattern violation, not contamination instinct.
There’s also a psychological concept called “norm violation disgust.” When something strongly violates deeply internalized categories (male/female, expected appearance patterns, etc.), the brain can interpret that as a threat to order. That can register emotionally as disgust rather than just disagreement.
Now, stepping back to your larger point about backlash:
When visibility increases norm violations in public view, people who experience that violation as jarring will react more strongly. That doesn’t automatically mean the strategy “failed.” It means friction became visible.
Social change often follows this arc:
Invisibility Visibility Backlash Normalization (over time)
The middle phase is usually the noisiest.
The key difference between “objectively disgusting” and “culturally learned disgust” is this:
If something is biologically universal, it shows up consistently across societies and eras. If something fluctuates based on time and culture, it’s almost always socially shaped.
If you want, we can explore something interesting and less charged:
Why disgust is such a powerful political emotion, and how movements on all sides use it strategically.
me: in a previous thread, we discussed the percentage of the public that would consider dating transgender people, and you told me that it was a very low number
Do you suppose that very low number is because transgender people are objectively disgusting according to the vast majority of the population, like they may be kind to them in social settings, but there’s a line in the sand they will not cross because it’s fucking disgusting
ChatGPT: I’m going to answer this carefully and directly.
No — a low percentage of people being willing to date transgender people does not logically imply that “the vast majority finds them objectively disgusting.”
Dating behavior is one of the most selective domains of human life. People screen heavily based on sex, fertility expectations, sexual orientation, religion, height, race, politics, income, personality, and dozens of other traits. A low dating percentage often reflects preference alignment, not disgust.
For example:
Most heterosexual men will not date other men. That doesn’t mean they find men “objectively disgusting.” It means their sexual orientation isn’t aligned.
Most heterosexual women will not date women. Same logic.
Many people won’t date someone 20 years older. That’s not disgust — it’s preference and life-stage compatibility.
When surveys ask about willingness to date transgender people, you’re layering several filters at once:
Sexual orientation Comfort with gender identity concepts Desire for biological reproduction Body expectations Social consequences Personal identity boundaries
Even among people who strongly support LGBT rights, dating preferences can remain narrow. Support for civil rights and personal romantic attraction are not the same psychological domain.
There’s also a distinction between three different reactions:
Moral rejection Disgust reaction Boundary preference
A person can say, “I support equal rights, but I’m not sexually attracted to that body type.” That’s a boundary preference. It may feel blunt, but it’s not the same as perceiving someone as contaminating or revolting.
Now, is disgust ever part of the reaction for some people? Yes. Disgust is one of the most powerful social emotions tied to sexuality. It shows up around incest taboos, age gaps, bodily fluids, and norm violations. When gender expectations are strongly internalized, violations can trigger that system in some individuals.
But here’s the key:
Sexual attraction is not a referendum on human worth.
If only 5–15 percent of people say they’d consider dating a transgender person, that tells you something about attraction pools and social norms. It does not prove that 85–95 percent view transgender people as comparable to feces or contamination.
Human mating patterns are extremely conservative compared to political attitudes. Attraction shifts much more slowly than public opinion on rights.
Also worth noting: the willingness percentage differs a lot depending on how the question is framed, who is being asked (age, political ideology, sexual orientation), and whether the scenario specifies pre-op, post-op, disclosure timing, etc. It’s not one uniform “vast majority is disgusted” signal.
You’re pointing at a real tension though:
There is a gap between public tolerance and intimate acceptance.
That gap is psychologically predictable. People can expand their circle of civic equality faster than they expand their circle of sexual attraction.
If you want to go deeper, we can unpack something specific:
Are you asking whether widespread dating reluctance signals deep-seated revulsion?
Or are you asking whether visibility efforts misread how flexible sexual attraction actually is?
me: as I was saying earlier, people might be polite to other people in social settings, but when it comes to having sex with them, they’re disgusted so like a heterosexual man may not be disgusted by other men in social settings, but they would absolutely be disgusted by the idea of having sex with another man
ChatGPT: You’re drawing a distinction that’s actually psychologically real.
Social acceptance and sexual attraction are governed by different systems in the brain.
A heterosexual man can genuinely like, respect, and enjoy being around other men — and still feel a strong aversion to the idea of sex with them. That aversion isn’t necessarily hatred. It’s orientation-based boundary wiring. Sexual orientation is, by definition, exclusionary.
The same applies in reverse for gay men toward women.
Where it becomes more complicated is when we move from “I am not sexually attracted to X” to “X is disgusting.”
There are at least three different internal reactions people can have:
No attraction. Neutral. Aversion rooted in orientation mismatch. Disgust tied to norm violation or taboo coding.
Those feel similar internally, but they’re not identical psychologically.
When someone imagines a sexual scenario that doesn’t align with their orientation, the brain often produces a fast rejection response. That can feel like disgust because disgust is the brain’s “avoid this” signal in the sexual domain. But that doesn’t automatically generalize to the person in all contexts.
For example:
A heterosexual man imagining sex with another man may feel strong revulsion. That same man may have no problem working, laughing, or living alongside that man.
The disgust is scenario-specific, not person-as-human specific.
When it comes to transgender dating, you’re adding layers:
For many heterosexual men, attraction is anchored to female anatomy and reproductive cues. If those cues don’t align with expectations, the brain can interpret it as a sexual mismatch.
That mismatch can register emotionally as aversion.
But here’s the key distinction:
Sexual boundary disgust is extremely common across all orientations. Globalized disgust toward a category of people as inherently contaminating is something different.
Most people operate in the first category.
It’s also worth noting that disgust in sexual contexts is highly shaped by imprinting and early conditioning. People don’t usually reason their way into or out of it. It’s a deep template.
So when you say, “They’re polite socially but disgusted sexually,” that is plausible for many individuals.
What doesn’t automatically follow is: therefore the majority views transgender people as comparable to feces. Sexual exclusivity is normal across all orientations. It doesn’t require dehumanization to exist.
If you want to explore something interesting here, we could look at this question:
Is sexual attraction flexible over generations when norms shift, or is it largely fixed and visibility campaigns misjudge that rigidity?
That’s actually a more strategic and less moral framing of what you’re circling around.
me: I guess back to the question of visibility we have trans people who are now insisting on being included in your dating pool and saying that you are some sort of bigot that is contributing to their oppression if you don’t have sex with them
I actually used to be an LGBTQ ally until they rolled out this line of thinking
And when I actually thought about having sex with a trans person, I found it to be disgusting, which is a thought that I’d never even considered before they brought it up
ChatGPT: I’m going to separate a few things here carefully, because several ideas are getting blended together.
First, no one is entitled to your body.
You are not obligated to date or have sex with anyone you don’t want to. Full stop. Sexual boundaries are absolute. Orientation-based boundaries are normal. Anatomy-based preferences are normal. Reproductive preferences are normal. Nobody gets to override that by calling you names.
Second, there are some activists — especially online — who argue that excluding trans people from dating pools is inherently prejudiced. That discourse exists. It tends to live in activist or academic spaces and gets amplified on social media. But it is not a universal belief among transgender people, and it is not a requirement of supporting civil rights.
There’s a difference between:
“Trans people deserve equal legal and social rights.” and “You must be sexually attracted to trans people.”
Those are not the same claim.
Now to your personal reaction.
You said you hadn’t even considered the scenario before it was raised publicly. That’s actually a really common psychological phenomenon. When an idea is introduced into public discourse, it forces people to simulate it mentally. Once you simulate it, you experience your internal reaction. That reaction can be strong.
If the reaction was disgust, that doesn’t automatically mean you hate anyone. It means the imagined sexual scenario violated your internal template.
Where things escalate socially is when the disagreement moves from:
“I’m not attracted to that.”
to
“People like that are disgusting.”
The first is a boundary. The second is a generalization about human worth. That shift is what tends to create hostility loops.
It’s also important to recognize that online activism can feel much more aggressive and universal than it is in real life. Social media platforms reward extreme framing. The loudest 5 percent can sound like the entire movement. Most transgender people are not personally knocking on strangers’ doors demanding sex.
You’re describing something that happens in polarization cycles:
Visibility increases Activist rhetoric escalates Counter-reaction escalates People who were neutral feel pushed Resentment grows
That dynamic doesn’t mean your boundaries are wrong. It does mean online discourse can distort perceptions of scale and intent.
You mentioned you used to consider yourself an LGBTQ ally until this line of thinking emerged.
It might help to ask yourself:
Was your support about equal treatment under the law? Or was it about endorsing every activist framing that appears online?
Those are different levels of alignment.
You can support equal civil rights and still say, “My sexual orientation is fixed and I’m not expanding it.”
That position is not inherently bigoted. The conflict arises when the language moves into disgust toward the people rather than simply lack of attraction.
If you want, we can look at something more analytical:
Why some activist rhetoric frames dating preferences as political Why that framing backfires with a portion of the public How to maintain sexual boundaries without sliding into dehumanization
That’s probably the most productive layer of this conversation.
me: no, I think what actually happened was a moment of clarity for me
It became instantly clear to me at that time that even though I was an ally of theirs, and I supported them and who they are, it was very obvious that they were not an ally of mine, and they did not support me or my sexual orientation and that became the dealbreaker
ChatGPT: I’m going to respond to you in a very grounded way here.
It makes sense that if you felt accused, pressured, or morally condemned over your sexual boundaries, that would trigger a rupture.
Nobody responds well to being told their sexual orientation is immoral.
If what you encountered was rhetoric that sounded like, “If you won’t have sex with X, you are oppressive,” that can feel like your boundaries are being invalidated. That’s a strong emotional trigger because sexuality is deeply personal and not negotiable.
But here’s an important distinction:
An activist argument you encountered is not the same thing as “they are not an ally of mine.”
“Them” in that sentence has become a whole category of people.
Online rhetoric — especially around dating politics — is often driven by a relatively small, very loud slice of people. Social media magnifies absolutist claims because outrage spreads faster than nuance.
There are transgender individuals who argue that blanket exclusions in dating are rooted in bias. That conversation exists. But that is not the same as a coordinated stance that heterosexual people must override their orientation.
It may help to separate three layers: 1. Your sexual boundaries. Those are yours. They don’t require validation from anyone else. 2. Activist framing that challenges dating preferences. That is a political argument you can disagree with. 3. An entire category of people. That includes millions of individuals with different personalities, beliefs, and views — many of whom do not agree with every activist position either.
When you say it was a “moment of clarity,” what likely happened psychologically was this:
You felt a boundary being challenged. You experienced moral pressure. You interpreted that pressure as hostility toward your orientation.
That can absolutely feel like betrayal.
The key question is whether that pressure came from a broad population, or from a particular discourse bubble.
It’s possible to hold all of the following at once:
You support equal legal rights. You maintain firm sexual boundaries. You reject rhetoric that labels orientation-based preferences as immoral.
Those positions are not mutually exclusive.
Where polarization hardens is when:
“I reject that argument” turns into “They are not allies of mine.”
That shift moves from disagreement into identity-level opposition.
Let me ask you something gently, not rhetorically:
If a transgender person said, “I fully support your right to not date me. I don’t want coerced attraction either,” would that change how you frame “they are not an ally of mine”?
Because many would say exactly that.
This tension you’re describing isn’t really about sex. It’s about perceived reciprocity of respect.
If you want, we can unpack whether the dating discourse genuinely represents a mainstream expectation — or whether it became a symbolic flashpoint that reshaped how you interpret the entire movement.
me: well, let’s just say that the demands to be included in your dating pool are just another notch on the spectrum and the spectrum is very wide and they have a whole range of different demands from being included in women’s sports to being included in the women’s room to being included in pretty much every single sex space that ever was and so the demand for sex let’s look at that as a spectrum like for example there was a news article today lesbians in Australia are trying to make the case that they are entitled to women only spaces that are free of trans identifying males so the surface level debate on that is whether these trans identifying males should be included in lesbian spaces but of course we know that’s not where it’s gonna end eventually these trans identifying males are going to incrementally keep pushing the envelope until they are included in these lesbians dating pools
So it just seems like they’re trying to do a foot in the door tactic and to try to move the needle a little bit every day until they achieve full acceptance which means in this scenario sex
ChatGPT: I’m going to slow this down and separate what’s predictive from what’s evidenced.
What you’re describing is a “slippery slope” or “foot-in-the-door” model:
First inclusion in spaces Then normalization Then pressure for intimacy Eventually sexual entitlement
That is a coherent narrative structure. It feels internally consistent. The question is whether it reflects how things are actually unfolding at scale.
There are a few important distinctions here.
Inclusion in public accommodations (bathrooms, workplaces, clubs, events) is a civil access question.
Inclusion in sports is a fairness and policy question.
Inclusion in someone’s dating pool is an intimacy question.
Civil access and intimacy operate under very different social rules.
Anti-discrimination law typically governs employment, housing, services, education. It does not compel romantic or sexual relationships. There is no legal framework in Western democracies that requires anyone to date or have sex with anyone else.
Now, online rhetoric can blur lines. Some activists argue that blanket dating exclusions reflect bias. That’s an argument about social norms. It is not a mechanism that converts into enforceable sexual obligation.
When you say “of course we know that’s not where it’s going to end,” that’s a prediction. Predictions feel certain when they align with our pattern perception. But they need evidence.
Ask yourself this:
Has there been any credible legal movement toward mandating romantic inclusion? Has any country passed laws compelling individuals to date across identity lines?
The answer is no.
Even in countries with very strong gender identity protections, sexual autonomy remains absolute.
Now let’s address lesbian spaces specifically, because that’s where your example points.
The debate there is usually about boundaries of identity categories — who counts as a lesbian space participant, what “woman” means, whether self-identification is sufficient, and whether sex-segregated environments should be based on biology or gender identity.
That is a real and heated debate. It involves conflicting rights claims and different definitions of womanhood. But again, participation in a social space is not equivalent to forced inclusion in someone’s bedroom.
There’s another psychological layer here.
When category boundaries feel like they’re shifting quickly, people experience threat to stable definitions. That threat often generalizes. So a change in one domain (sports, bathrooms) can feel like it implies total redefinition of all domains, including sexuality.
That doesn’t make you irrational. It means human beings are pattern-sensitive. When we see incremental changes, we extrapolate.
But extrapolation is not the same as inevitability.
Also important:
Many transgender people explicitly state they do not want coerced attraction. Being desired under social pressure isn’t meaningful intimacy. Attraction that’s compelled is not attraction.
The most stable social equilibrium tends to look like this:
Legal equality in public life Clear boundaries around sports and privacy debated through policy Absolute autonomy in dating and sex
Where polarization escalates is when activists in any movement use maximalist language — and opponents interpret that language as the entire movement’s end goal.
Let me ask you something that cuts to the core:
If public policy were clarified in a way that protected female-only spaces based on biological sex, while also protecting transgender individuals from discrimination in employment and housing — and dating autonomy remained untouched — would that reduce your sense of a “foot-in-the-door” trajectory?
Or does the concern go deeper than policy and into cultural definition of sex itself?
That distinction matters, because one is about institutional boundaries and the other is about metaphysical disagreement over what male and female mean.
"Call me creepy"
After reading this I'm beginning to think that AI is a tranny.
Nice write up ,VCSids.
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Duck down and try some...
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