> Concrete example: most of the left believes in a "gender identity," which is an immaterial, non-objective, unobservable, unscientific, metaphysical phenomenon that is somehow "more you" than the material reality of the physical body.

It's about feeling. Someone with a different gender feels uncomfortable in their body (and that's putting it mildly). If you declare that unscientific you can throw out the entire psychological/psychiatric sciences.

> You may have called it something else - a gender identity - but despite the difference in nomenclature you are still describing and referring to the same thing the religious devotees referred to when they talked about "the soul."

Of course, religion was invented to help people make sense of the world (and of course as a means of control). Gender identity has always existed. It makes sense that religion invented some terms to explain it away. Because as a means of control and no IVF options etc this was contrary to religions' survival. After all, religion gets passed on through upbringing. If you approach a person as an adult with this kind of stuff most of them will reject it, but as kids they are impressionable and can be indoctrinated. If people have no kids, there's no new religious minions being produced and thus the religion's survival probability is a bit affected. This is why conservative people are so obsessed about birthrates.

> Again more progressive fanfiction and creative wordsmithing with no relationship to reality. The Supreme Court struck down DEI policies (rebranded affirmative action) on the basis that they were, quoting Justice Clarence Thomas, "rudderless, race-based preferences" [0] [1]. This is literally the opposite of being "colorblind."

But DEI is not affirmative action. I work in this field myself for a big multinational. We don't do that. There are no quotas. We do measure our effectiveness with it (If you're in a country with 90% latino people and hire 80% caucasians obviously something is wrong) but we don't have hiring quotas. Instead what we do is management/HR training to recognise and avoid bias. And materials to improve understanding of minority needs, like LGBTIQ+ (which is the area I do some work in).

A lot of managers wouldn't even have known what nonbinary is for example, they would just see someone appear for an interview and dismiss them as 'weird'. They also wouldn't understand the specific issues they could encounter in the workplace. This is what we're working against.

Affirmative action is something that companies do that don't actually care about DEI but just want their "numbers" to look good. Quotas is the easiest way to solve "the numbers" but not actually do the hard work of removing bias. Meaning minority people will get hired but for the wrong reasons, and they will still have issues in the workplace resulting from lack of understanding. This is not the way to approach it, only when you're a lazy company.

> It's about feeling.

This is equally unscientific.

> If you declare that unscientific you can throw out the entire psychological/psychiatric sciences.

May as well, given the catastrophe that is the replication crisis [2]. Besides, psychology has grown divorced from its roots, which are found in religion as a proto-psychology of mind (which is the modern term for what would have classically been known as "the soul"). You can further investigate the correspondences between religion, mysticism, and psychology in Jung's "Psychology and Alchemy."

> Gender identity has always existed.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so far there is no evidentiary basis for the "gender identity" in the body; some would even say that there cannot be a biological basis of gender, for this "holds the societal acceptance of transgenderism hostage to a biological account of sex-gender." [0]

Absent any biological or physical evidence I can only surmise that "gender identities" either do not exist, or are metaphysical; and to the scientifically-minded, these two statements are functionally equivalent.

In fact, I could even just as easily say "souls have always existed."

The paper [0] even continues on to state, essentially, that gender is an "intersubjectival" reality, which, ironically, is defined in an Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion:

    Rejecting the notion that knowledge is purely
    empirical and cumulative, Gergen has argued
    that “truth” is always value laden and, therefore
    (drawing from critical theory), “reality” is not
    immutable, but always is understood via interpre-
    tation [3].

> as kids they are impressionable and can be indoctrinated. If people have no kids, there's no new religious minions being produced and thus the religion's survival probability is a bit affected.

Much of the LGBTQ+, almost by definition, cannot reproduce biologically and thus cannot have kids. Would you also claim that LGBTQ+'s survival probability, as a neo-religion complete with rebranded souls, is also affected? How does such an ideology reproduce, if not through indoctrination of children?

> But DEI is not affirmative action

At a layman's first glance this would appear to be the case from the SCOTUS syllabus:

    More broadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that
    discrimination on the basis of race—often packaged as “af-
    firmative action” or “equity” programs—are based on the
    benighted notion “that it is possible to tell when discrimi-
    nation helps, rather than hurts, racial minorities.” Fisher
    I, 570 U. S., at 328 (THOMAS, J., concurring). [1]

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

[3] https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/referenceworken...