I think part of the ''why'' is that people think conservatism is a character flaw. People think ''people become conservative because they are bad and cruel and I'M not like that! I would never be like that!"
Why are trans people turning so TERFy when we seemingly agreed that this was all bad? Well, everything is getting more conservative, on account of the climate/environmental crisis and the related decay of capitalism and the rise of fascism as a response. People are scared animals and it is so easy to adjust to this environment by internalizing it, in hopes of surviving it.
With trans people getting turned into a scapegoat and neo-radfems getting massive political platforms, it was inevitable that people would react by internalizing radical feminism and trying to cut out the parts of themselves and their community that are least able to adjust to that. I think its a semi-conscious process of trying to blend in, trying to survive, trying to make sense of what is happening to you and why. Each person has a lot of different preexisting beliefs they are working with to make sense of the world, and we aren't consciously self-aware of most of them. What seems obvious to one person (you cannot rehabilitate radical feminism for trans people, because it is fundamentally structured through cissexism) will not be obvious to another if they are navigating the same issue with a different "map" so to speak.
Survival instincts are not necessarily moral instincts. Resisting conservative, fascism, etc. are not things that always feel conducive to surviving this present moment, especially for people whose worldviews did not have a developed and strong understanding of what resistance and revolution would mean in practice, how the circumstances would feel, and the kinds of material and ideological forces at play.
I think a lot of people are getting more conservative because they are falling back on survival instincts and trying to adapt to an increasingly conservative environment. But, at the same time, they don't think of themselves as conservative, nor do they want to be, and they want their survival instincts to be moral instincts (as I think we would all like!) and that the things they are doing to keep themself safe are also things that are morally correct and effective responses to injustice.
And again, people want conservatism to simply be the product of a character flaw they are better than, not something that anyone can fall into ideologically as a result of both personal choices and belief-environment. We want it to be that becoming a conservative is a conscious process we would certainly be fully aware of if it happened to us. If we could become conservative, either conservatism must be objectively right, or it means that "conservative" is not a unique class of people entirely different than oneself and the left as a whole.
And people are very bad at doing worldview work under stress when feeling unsafe and also trying not to become homeless or starve to death. So we end up in these kinds of
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