The phrase “valid minority issues” implies that their are “invalid minority issues”, which are issues that it has been decided are not real issues and should never be discussed. So how would anything ever (even in principle) move from the invalid category to the valid category? If it cannot be talked about their is no way to even have the discussion.
In your “agonizing shade of green” hypothetical, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head—the mechanism for resolving the issue is for medical providers to notice a pattern of complaints among patients about the suffering they experience from this agonizing shade of green, gather enough evidence that we can update from “this seems really unlikely to be a real issue” to “this is probably actually a serious issue for a minority of people and worth doing something about” and then creating a new social norm in which complaining about that particular shade of green is valid by default.
At some point, you’re trading off between the right of minority populations to have their rare but genuine concerns addressed, vs. the cost and side effects of fielding recreational whining and made-up complaints that service a deeper agenda. This is a fuzzy grey zone and there will be limits and tradeoffs to how sensitive and responsive we are in either direction.
I’ll refer you to another comment of mine for my opinion on this issue.
In your “agonizing shade of green” hypothetical, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head—the mechanism for resolving the issue is for medical providers to notice a pattern of complaints among patients about the suffering they experience from this agonizing shade of green, gather enough evidence that we can update from “this seems really unlikely to be a real issue” to “this is probably actually a serious issue for a minority of people and worth doing something about” and then creating a new social norm in which complaining about that particular shade of green is valid by default.
At some point, you’re trading off between the right of minority populations to have their rare but genuine concerns addressed, vs. the cost and side effects of fielding recreational whining and made-up complaints that service a deeper agenda. This is a fuzzy grey zone and there will be limits and tradeoffs to how sensitive and responsive we are in either direction.