JP points out that people go through phases of dealing with identity: first playing around with it, then “negotiating” it with the world, then becoming adults who are secure in their identity but also capable of doing their own thing (not quite the words he uses but something like that). They speak of the psychological effect of online culture as disrupting this by making people skip the second phase… and later JP implies more or less this means the destruction of the family and therefore of civilization, because in order to be sane one must have a family, and the traditional way to do that is to get married and have children, and if one is transgender (he seems to imply) one can’t do that. The gender identity talk is mostly coming from Bret though, who says he uses it as an example of online culture because it’s the “clearest” example or something like that.
And yet… people still “negotiate” identity with the world whether online or off, as they have since basically forever. And when negotiating, the more options you have, the easier it is (usually) to get what you want. Don’t like the counter-offers you get when you try to sell your product at this market? One stall is just like the next? Then go to the market across the street.
It’s certainly logical that the internet facilitates an easier negotiation for minority groups because they can, on average, more easily find people who share or at least respect the identity they want to express, so this can very logically explain why transgenderism is more visible now, as well as various other identities.
This is not really new though – it’s like the rise of big cities, but on another scale, as now if you’re in a minority you don’t need to leave your village to go and congregate with your fellows in some neighborhood of a metropolis, because you can stay physically where you are and have access, in a way that you as a member of the the-internet-has-always-existed generation find meaningful, to hypothetically every single member of your identity group on the planet. Thus the minority identity communities are more visible and more powerful, but online culture did not create them.
So how is this a bad thing?
JP and Bret tie it in with their concern about (1) the destruction of the family and (2) the general echo chamber effect.
The first one is easy to critique because the reasons why the family as an institution (on a grand scale) isn’t what it used to be have much to do with economics and little to do with gender identity or any other facilitated-by-the-internet identity.
The second one is a concern that’s easy for me to share. As they say, you can intentionally bring dissenting views into your life and benefit from them, but it’s not straightforward. (I don’t think they specifically mention Overton here, but it’s the same idea – it applies to the individual mind, not just society.)
Whether one agrees with the concept of gender-as-distinct-from-sex or not, it’s a historical fact that the concept* predates the internet by far. He (Bret) seems to think if it weren’t for that pesky online culture stuff, the concept would have no relevance because people would just look at each other’s genitals and say “well that settles it”.
So for me his point that the new normal is for people to take the online world as the one that really matters is concerning, yes, but not the reason he uses as the epitome.
*(not necessarily with the words “sex” and “gender” as we understand them in modern English, but the same basic idea in one form or another, i.e. biological sex is not the be-all-and-end-all)