Trent and Caitlin talk to…each other??? Caitlin presents the reasoning behind her recent Liberal Currents essay on the rhetorical strategies used by pundits and politicians when they don’t want to appear unsympathetic to trans people but won’t commit to supporting the full range of human and civil rights for this group. They discuss other current political issues and whether they have any of these rhetorical strategies in common.

Resources:

Caitlin’s essay: https://liberalcurrents.com/showing-their-buts-the-false-compassion-of-the-concerned/

The Rhetoric of Reaction: https://hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674768680

Creating Scientific Controversies: https://cambridge.org/core/books/creating-scientific-controversies/6A9153090CC4274FEF0D7DF7C7F10B9D

Manufactured scientific controversies: https://jstor.org/stable/41940538

Chait’s article: https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/transgender-rights-election-public-opinon/680813/

Young’s article: https://persuasion.community/p/how-to-navigate-transgender-issues

Yglesias’s post: https://slowboring.com/p/men-and-women-are-different

Newsom/Kirk interview: https://youtu.be/9XJ6rQDRKGA?si=TOonDH1H5XqvvbnL

Newsom/Savage interview: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GACk33zWQtQ

Welfare use by immigrants: https://cis.org/Report/Welfare-Use-Immigrants-and-USBorn

Economics of immigration: https://udallcenter.arizona.edu/immigration/publications/impactofimmigrants08.pdf