
Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization (2015) [pdf] - thedevil
https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2015/iyengar-ajps-group-polarization.pdf
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brightball
In my experience this tends to be based on the loudest members of each party
clinging to core concepts of which they have a great degree of certainty while
branding opposing partisans with straw men. The problem materializes when a
loud member of the opposing view actually defends the straw man.

Just as an example, look at a recent controversy with this whole HB2 thing in
North Carolina.

On the one hand you have proponents of the bill raising concerns about it
enabling men an opening to enter women's restrooms by simply claiming they are
something they are not. Those same proponents are willing to ignore all of the
other problems with the bill while holding to this one very defensible view.
Very few actually have any concerns about true transgendered people and
statistics would support that view as well.

On the other side you have people outraged about discrimination of
transgendered individuals who are willing to totally ignore the problem of
allowing men to enter those same rooms. These people are also rightly citing
the other discriminatory areas in the bill.

The news focuses only on the bathroom piece.

The result is one group rightly shouting about concerns over allowing men an
excuse to enter ladies rooms and another group rightly shouting about concerns
over discrimination of the transgendered.

If either side was actually listening to the other we'd be able to have a
pretty simply solution to everyone's concerns.

Make men's rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms as
ladies rooms. That would pretty much solve the problem although it hits on the
other political hot button...

Pretending men and women are not different. So the cycle begins again.

And while that's going on things like the TPP happen.

EDIT: The amount of up and down voting I'm seeing on this post seems to
validate the paper's findings.

~~~
gaur
> Make men's rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms
> as ladies rooms.

This is an idiotic non-solution, as should be obvious to anyone who has even a
little capacity to think from the perspective of a trans person.

If you look, dress, and sound like a woman, the natural restroom for you to
use is the women's restroom. So if you're a trans woman who's transitioned,
you use the women's restroom, not the "men's plus" restroom.

The only way you can stop trans women from using women's restrooms is by
enforcing some HB2-like checking of birth certificates, which is exactly the
situation that NC is in right now.

So either trans people use whatever bathroom they want, with nobody trying to
check any birth certificates (i.e, the pre-HB2 situation), or trans people are
prohibited from using certain bathrooms because of what it says on their birth
certificate (i.e., the post-HB2 situation).

What exactly is your shitty "solution" accomplishing here?

~~~
brightball
Not saying a "men's plus". Saying have an everyone and a ladies only.

Ladies rooms tend to have longer lines and also tend to be stocked with
additional products.

The concern raised by supporters of the bill his largely been unwanted men
entering ladies rooms. This solution would totally address that concern in a
cost effective manner.

~~~
gaur
> The concern raised by supporters of the bill his largely been unwanted men
> entering ladies rooms.

The fact that the criterion revolves around birth certificates (as opposed to,
say, state ID) shows quite clearly that the point of the bill is to punish
trans people.

