a very cynical theory that the obsession with “lived experience” is mainly the purview of writers who lack imagination and hope to narrow the field by getting the more talented competition preemptively disqualified on identity-driven technicality https://t.co/D8y7E2dcnN

— Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield) April 24, 2022

I didn’t realize it until well into adulthood, but a lot of “moral” stances people hold is about elimination of competition!

This applies to everything from requiring college degrees, to the belief that age gap relationships are bad, to the moral panics that grip Twitter about who has the right to tell a story or to espouse some view. In other words, a lot of what people do is about using pseudo-morality to knock their rivals on their asses while preserving some justification for doing so.

It’s done because it works.