My Revelation

[Angrboda]

This is one of the common hazards of both religion and conservativism. Both lean strongly into answers being given by authority figures. Religion because of authoritative dogma. Conservatism because conservatives are much more aligned with concerns about loyalty, group cohesion and purity. It leads to being easily influenced by small cadres that serve as elites who act as gatekeepers as to what to think and believe. As a result, neither religion nor conservatism encourages the individual to think for themselves. They teach the individual a reliance on prepackaged solutions, prepackaged metaphysics, and prepackaged understanding. So a religious conservative is less likely to exercise their imaginations and think creatively. So the skill atrophies and they become rigid in their attachment to concepts and ideas.

I see the gender issue as an epitome of this weakness. If you never explore the concepts of gender on your own, you fail to imagine the contours that might describe it better than the dogma you've been taught or the talking points you absorbed from Fox News.