... By expressing and sharing these things, we
build understanding of the "other" and realize we are all a lot closer than the world would have us think.
[ WARNING: Explicit politics ahead ]
This, Strad, is *precisely* the thing which terrifies the American Political Right (sorry Dave, but it's on the table; the only thing to do is eat it...) The American Political Right *doesn't want that to happen*; they
call it "normalizing" just like we do, but it's a cussword when they say it.
There's a running joke in American politics:
D to go Forward
R to go Backward
And, to quote Sheldon, it's funny because it's true. I got no particular problems with conservative *people* -- got a number of friends who are, and I've even managed to locate a few comedians who are conservative and still funny (to me, though that's all that matters, also to me).
But the one thing they all have in common is that none of them are remotely interested in the US Republican *Party* any more, cause they believe that it's gone mad. Conservative people are, well, *conservative* about things around them in the world, and it takes them a lot longer to come to grips with those things (like, in this particular instance, the widespread incidence of people dressing in gendered clothing *they* don't believe is appropriate, or confuses them), and liberal/progressive people actively seek out such things -- or at the very least, if something like that strikes them as unusual, they think the problem lies within, not without.
There's some interesting, and pretty believable science about the size of the amygdala, and its
effect on people's political-ish worldviews, that I won't go into here, so as to avoid dragging this thread even further down the rabbit hole, but that's enough hint for the interested to Google it.
But the American Political Right -- a phrase I use to describe the Party, and the pundits that
cluster around it and egg it on -- has been doing a slow-motion Thelma and Louise for at least 10 years now, and I sure hope it ends soon.