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Agreed that "conservatism is not monolithic" (and neither are progressives). As for whether "homophobia is a conservative value," that depends on which branch of conservativism. Social conservativism certainly does tend to be heteronormative.


There are conservatives here in my neighborhood, whom I have spoken to.

Also my parents and other relatives were conservative, for the most part.

Also I used to know quite a few LGBTQ and other refugees from "conservative communities" in the Bible Belt.

Also there have been people here on WP who live in the Bible Belt and have reported on what attitudes are like there.


My impressions are certainly not based just on the mass media.

It seems to me that you must be overgeneralizing from your experiences in Washington state, which, like Oregon, is a very unusual place. Either that, or .....


And what does "force it on them" mean, in this context? No one is forcing anyone to be trans.

My opinion on conservatives are based on what I have seen online and I have read their stuff and most of it is just conspiracies'. Even look on Reddit. I even got banned from a conservative sub for saying Portland is not in rubbles and everything is still standing and we have had this homeless problem since around 2013 when rents skyrocketed. And graffiti, you will see that along I 84 but I have not see it anywhere else. And I live in Portland so how hilarious they think they know more than me.

Plus I am on Facebook and I have old school mates that are conservative and they all support Trump, are anti Covid, anti mask, and are even ignorant about racism and deny it so there you go, them proving my point again.

Damn it, why do they keep proving me right when I am trying to keep an open mind here and think "not all of them."

I guess the ones who do not believe in these things would not be calling themselves a conservative and speaking up against these things so they remain hidden. These days, calling yourself a conservative is basically social suicide. Even if you do speak up against it, everyone will just assume you are blue.

Yes democrats believed in the same stuff the right wing does still but what people don't seem to realize is beliefs have evolved. Back in the 1990s, the don't ask don't tell thing was on the left wing side and liberal. Now today this would lean on the right and the left side have evolved into they should be who they are and not hide it.

In general, American conservatives/republicans/trumpists/magas are the anti-blm racists and homophobes/transphobes, while the left is supportive of both human rights movements. Simple fact supported by the evidence of what politicians say and campaign on as well as what grassroots activists on both sides do on the ground.

What are conservatives even conserving anymore anyways? It's not the environment. It's not even money - the last guy in office, a republican and self proclaimed man of conservative values, just cranked out an additional $7.8 TRILLION in national debt over 4 years.. upping America's national debt by 41% in just 4 years.

Ironic that conservatives are anti-trans because they don't take kindly to being told what to do or how to think.. while telling people what to do and how to think.

Amazing how many non conservatives around here apparently are experts on what is and is not conservatism, even non US residents seem to think they know more about it than someone who lives here and has a lot of exposure to conservatives from around the country and spends a lot of time in conservative spaces. It really is a special form of arrogance to tell someone not to believe their lying eyes and believe them instead, but that arrogance really does seem to be endemic to the left, who I'm also extremely exposed to based on where I live.

The really fun part is that it's been scientifically studied, and liberals are in fact far worse at understanding other ideologies that conservatives and moderates are:

https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-pa ... ervatives/

Feel free to blame the so-called "conservative media," speaking on behalf of conservatives for conveying what it is modern day American conservatism is about.

There's even an online "news," broadcast group called "conservative voices," that's just non-stop conspiracy theory nonsense. Like wtf?

Hmm, I do like the idea of enforcing trans, let's say, mandatory gender switch every month. Would be amusing to watch, and I'm sure it would speed up solving gender/trans discrimination issues :3

What kinds of "conservative spaces" do you spend lots of time in, and in what capacity? Also, are you talking primarily about conservative activists or primarily about garden-variety conservative-leaning voters?

EDIT: Also, do you consider most of the right-wingers here on WrongPlanet to be unrepresentative of conservatives and, if so, how do their views differ from those of most conservatives?

Also, you didn't answer my question about what conservatives mean by "trans stuff" allegedly being "forced" on them.

And blame the ones that like to "own the libs." I mean how is pretending to be a conspiracy nutter helping them with negative stereotypes? All they are doing is reinforcing the stereotypes and our beliefs about them. I mean are all of them trolling? Even on their own forums?

Well, these days I'm getting most of my exposure online through various forums, mostly of the gun related variety. I actually find gun boards to be an excellent window into the American right wing because they are a common denominator issue among a variety of different flavors of the right, it's one of the few things that unite religious conservatives, secular conservatives, libertarians, Trumpsters, anti-Trumpsters, right leaning anarchists, cops and military, really everyone except a few old school landed gentry types who are really a dying breed. You'll find that these groups often have very little in common except liking guns and hating liberals, almost everything else is up for grabs politically speaking, even super hot button stuff like immigration and abortion is negotiable among all but a few diehards. This is actually one of the great ironies of the political right, they are much more tolerant than the left when it comes to real disagreement within the group, it's much harder to get excommunicated over some heretical belief or another vs the constant in group witch hunting and circular firing squads that are the norm in left wing circles.

I actually used to have a much more negative view of conservatives when I was younger, where I grew up in Seattle and especially at the hippy alternative school I attended, there really weren't any actual conservatives around, so all I knew about them was what I was told, which was essentially that they were all like the Westboro Baptist Church, crazy religious fanatics shouting "God hates fags!" at everyone and trying to censor all the good music and movies. It wasn't until I moved to Denver to attend gunsmithing school in 2004 that I met any real day to day conservatives, and they weren't anything like what I'd been lead to believe, just normal people who might be more religious and might have different ideas about how to run the government, but were otherwise perfectly decent and upstanding folk with their own ideas and reasons for having them. Further, as I mentioned above, they were far more tolerant of differences of opinion than the liberals I'd grown up around, they even had a sense of humor about it, I could go 10 rounds with a Christian about abortion and then laughingly call them a bible beater while they called me a baby killer when we went to the bar to buy each other beers afterwards, it was much different than what I was used to when arguing with liberals. I find this pattern largely holds true with the conservatives I do know IRL, they tend to keep their heads down in my neck of the woods as they're heavily outnumbered and liberals won't hesitate to go after their jobs if they venture the wrong opinion in public, but they're around and generally decent people.

As far as activists, the only kind I regularly interact with are of the gun right and civil liberties variety, free speech having at some point become a right wing value, so I can't speak too much to any other types. As a libertarian leaning person I'm also around generalized anti government types quite frequently, but that's a super broad category.



I'm not sure I can answer that as there don't appear to be many conservatives on WP, most of what I see are moderates or even heterodox liberals questioning the left-liberal consensus and being denounced as conservatives whether they actually are or not, as tends to happen with me. As I've said, I think a large chunk of WP doesn't even know what a real conservative is, they just have this caricature based on what the media feeds them.



Hmm, being forced to adopt a constantly changing set of "inclusive language" such as "birthing person" instead of mother or "chest feeding" instead of breast feeding is more annoying than anything, or being branded a bigot because you don't want to date a trans person, but I find the attempted thought control of "trans women are women" to be more concerning. That's not telling me to be polite and address someone how they would prefer, which is something I have no problem with out of simple respect, that's telling me that I have to accept that there are no differences between a natal woman and a trans woman, which is simply not true, and is definitely something being forced on people by trans activists.

That being said, quite a bit of this has played out online where most politically unengaged normies haven't seen it, so where I think the rubber is really going to hit the road here is women's and girl's sports, where you have natal males competing as "women" and destroying the natal female competition. That's getting harder and harder to ignore, and I suspect a backlash is going to hit hard, and it's not just going to come from conservatives, but also more traditional liberals.

I don't even watch the media. My opinion about conservatives come from what I see online on social media by what they post online about their views and how they feel.

I couldn't careless what others say about other conservatives, I make up my own mind by what I see, not what others say. I have also watched YouTube videos by conservatives and I hear what they say and it's been conspiracy s**t I hear. I even stopped watching Kaitlin Bennet because when the shut down happened, she was sounding like a crazy lunatic by talking about conspiracy s**t she believed in and she sounded so delusional it was scary and concerning. My husband thinks it was all fake and she was just being an attention seeker and had doubts she actually believed what she was saying. But that was his opinion and I can agree and disagree with him.

I would say the only conservative I like so far is Blair White. She has made her mistakes and false assumptions and would apologize for it and try and make it right.

I'm thinking there should be another term for conservatives that are not conspiracy theorists and racist and white supremists. My husband expressed to me one time that my in laws are embarrassed because of Trump and how other conservatives are and they are so embarrassed about it because they are not like that at all. They had always been republicans and always voted red and for the very first time they voted blue. My husband is independent and has always voted either. So he has mixed views like he is okay with homosexuality but thinks their marriage should be called something else because marriage is between a man and a woman but he is not against both sexes marrying. He just thinks it should be called something else so they can get the same privileges that marriages get. Another one he said that shcked me was you are not a real woman until you get the surgery so they should use the restroom that matches their sex so I told him "you would be okay then if a woman walked into the men's restroom while you are using the urinal because she still had a penis or would you be okay then if me or our daughter were in the lady's restroom and a guy walked in because they didn't have a penis yet and they still had their vulva."

I don't think my husband realized that trans people can look like their gender they identify as because of hormones they take but haven't had the sex surgery yet. You would have no way of knowing they are trans.

It's actually very simple, just call racists racists and conspiracy theorists conspiracy theorists, but don't try to implicate all conservatives as these things, as they're not.

Oh trust me, I have done what you suggested and conservatives here still took offense even though I never mentioned anything about conservatives, same as other posters. It makes you wonder if they are one of these people we are talking about which would why they would take offense and say we were bad talking conservatives even though no such label was mentioned.

You can even talk about Nazis here and someone here may take offense to it saying they are being called a Nazi.