Sorry for dropping the ball on this--I've been extremely busy and various things have fallen through the cracks. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what we would try to make sense of as a group. Do we have enough diversity of outlook or expertise for it to be of value, whatever it is?

For instance, the complexity of the culture war around trans identity seems to require a broader diversity of initial perspective than Amethysta may be able to provide. Amethysta wrote an article about gender dysphoria which I pretty much agree with. But I think she totally misses why the right disbelieves gender dysphoria is a thing--my read (i.e. I listen to people and take the at their word when they say thing) is that it's because there is plenty of trans advocacy that denies that it's key to trans identity! Amethysta has pretty close to a transmedicalist outlook, as far as I can tell. But it's the, um, let's use the most polite term I can, the gender-affirming view denies that.

The right accepts the gender-affirming view as the "true" trans perspective (not for any principled reason that I can discern--it seems like expediency in ease of being able to argue against it), notes the inconsistency of gender-affirming advocates' use of or abandonment of gender dysphoria, and concludes that they're employing a rhetorical trick (true AFAICT) and that therefore gender dysphoria does not exist (false).

If there are any pretty good ideas to be had, missing the key ideas from the extremes could make it very difficult to discern them.