ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8d ago
They genuinely believe that if someone say they're trans there is a special sense that definitely have in their head that is providing them total proof and that it can't possibly be imagined.
Believe it or not, that's already a toned-down version of that worldview. The more hardcore version of Queer Theory would assert that there's nothing to prove. It's like asking for proof of you liking chocolate ice cream. Like I mentioned - not all trans people have dysphoria, not everyone wants to be binary, not everyone even wants to medically transition. The idea is it to enable self-expression, even if that involves hacking off body parts.
The WPATH To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
Things are starting to move fast in Genderland, or at least faster than I can cover them with while giving any sort of justice to the topic. I haven't even gone through the entire WPATH Files, when the Daily Caller (...News Foundation - an important distinction if you're searching for the source materials) released the WPATH Tapes. By spamming FOIAs they were able to get a hold of over 30 hours of video from the 2022 WPATH summit in Montreal. A lot of it is the same old same old that I brought while covering the Files (you can see the short clip playlist here) - there's a public face of gender specialists where the science is settled, you can either have a happy daughter or a dead son, puberty blockers are reversible, etc., etc... and a private face, where they discuss amongst each other the very same concerns they dismissed, when they were brought up by skeptics of Gender Affirming Care. What's new is that the raw amount of footage allowed me to confidently reach a conclusion about a question that's been bugging for a while - what is these people's deal? Are doctors trying to do what's best for their patients, or are they a bunch of ideologically captured fanatics, blind to the harm they are doing? The answer seems to simply be: yes.
I already remarked how a lot of these clinicians come off as quite sympathetic back when I covered the Files. When you listen to their talks you hear them openly expressing uncertainty about many aspects of Gender Affirming care, discussing the limits of their patients' (and their parents') understanding of some of the interventions, and the importance of bringing them up to speed, or you hear them bringing up known and potential side effects, and ways of mitigating them. With things like this, they almost come off as urging caution... the problem is that if you keep listening you get the distinct impression you're on a train with no breaks.
The Introduction to Trans Health talk is a good example of the good and the bad of that WPATH conference. It opens with a pull-at-your-heart-strings story, of Dr. Ren Massey's FTM transition and the struggle to find acceptance in society and from his parents. I ended up being quite moved by the story myself, and yet, in the fastest "Oh god, oh no, baby, what is you doing?" I have experienced to date, he drops this slide, where he proclaims everything from non-binaries to eunuchs is hecking valid.
I try to be honest about these things - I am biased, I pretty much already reached my conclusion on the subject, and it's going to be a hell of process to change my mind again, but no matter how certain I am of something there's always the possibility of being wrong. The thing is, "being wrong" to me means it turning out that people like Jack Turban were right, that gender dysphoria is a valid diagnosis, that doctors can reliably tell people who have it from people who don't, and they have treatments that are proven to alleviate their suffering.
Well, fuck me then, I guess. It turns out that the "medicalized narrative" may have been used in the past, but it's outdated now. Not all trans people have dysphoria, and not everyone wants to transition from one side of the binary to the other. The doctor's empashis needs to be on removing barriers, and on patient autonomy. Between several name drops of "intersectionality", "power and privilege", or "minority stress", as best as I can gather these folks are certified Queer Theorists, tirelessly working to deconstruct the idea that (cis)heterosexuality is normal. Sure, they'll take into account the consequences of gender treatments, and they'll try to make sure that patient's "transition goals" are within the realm of physical possibility, but there should be no other limits placed otherwise. It feels like they flipped the table. What I thought was a conversation about the state of medical science turns out to be a fight over who's worldview should prevail.
This seems to be the only explanation that can make sense out of the whole thing, and tie up the loose ends of the WPATH clinicians genuine concern for their patients, with wild off-the-wall stuff like the Eunuch Archive, or why they pull the knives out for Lisa Littman and the ROGD hypothesis or Blanchard's categorization of trans people, while remaining unbothered by Dianne Ehrensaft's gender angels and gender Tootsie Roll Pops.
Back when I covered the Eunuch Archive it was declared that I am a bad, bad boy, because in a forum with explicit rules about not booing the outgroup, I limited myself to providing evidence that child castration fetishists have an influential role in setting standards for transgender care, and are using it to promote their fetish, but refused to speculate on their motivation, and wouldn't declare them evil or insane. Other than it not mattering, and me not knowing, there was something unsatisfying about the two explanations that were offered. They were a too lucid to plead insanity, and haven't expressed a callous disregard for the well being of others, or a singular obsession with their own self-gratification, that people straight-forwardly associate with evil. What they do appear to be is completely ideologically captured. They view everything through the lens of Queer Theory and intersectionality, and are simply doing what is considered good in the light of that ideology, that this might involve affirming eunuchs, or transitioning schizophrenics doesn't phase them in the slightest.
All this seems to show the limits of analyzing motivations, and has implications on what it means to "boo the outgroup". That the road to hell is paved with good intentions is not a new lesson, but it seems that it's rarely understood as something more than "sometimes people get carried away trying to do good, and go too far", when some cases are probably better understood as "sometimes ideologies can make you commit obviously grievous harm, with a smile on your face". Perhaps the evil/insane dichotomy was the real Boo Outgroup all along?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8d ago
The information in that case is that the value system of the subreddit has heavily diverged from your value system and you should leave.
I thought people with heavily diverged value systems leaving, is exactly what we want to avoid?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8d ago
If we are talking about the execrable Star Wars sequel trilogy, capitalism isn't telling Disney to knock it off. All three movies made money hand over fist, and The Farce Awakens set US box office records.
No one knew what was coming during the Force Awakens, and they were cashing in on nostalgia, not on putting a chick in it, and making her gay and lame. If capitalism wasn't telling Disney to knock it off, they wouldn't be whinging about their precious franchises falling off a cliff.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10d ago
Of course, the problem is that they were hardly neutral arbiters but heavy ideologues themselves
Right, that would be the issue with their analysis, rather than their immigrant status, or aspects of the American culture that they supposedly missed. If you're going to compare someone to the Frankfurt School, I'd guess most people are going to assume that this is what you're trying to say about the group you're comparing them to, which is why these sort of quippy "you know who this reminds me of? winkwinknudgenudge" comments aren't helpful.
And am I missing something or did your extended reply confirm you're only comparing them on superficial things like their region of origin, and complaining about authoritarianism? I don't see you making claims about their analysis, or mistakes they're making being similar.
Come on, give us some substance so we can actually discuss it, if you find the comparison interesting.
Do they remind you of them in any substantial way or just in being from Eastern Europe, and claiming to be fearful about totalitarianism?
Mental Outlaw - Based and FOSS-pilled IT news (may contain farming).
Whose Body Is It - A hippie, new-age, conspiracy-theorist feminist podcast. It might be the very anti-thesis of our forum, now that I think about it, so perhaps some of you will run away screaming. Still, lot's of interesting interviews, and I feel it's the kind of anti-thesis that, unlike the more mainstream / elite forms of feminism, could lead to a synthesis.
Transparency Podcast - Trans dudes discussing the trans-mania. I especially recommend the National Transgender Health Summit series.
EveryBodyShook - A documentary series about the totally schizo, not at all actually happening as we speak, depopulation conspiracy theory.
I'm sure anybody who's gone against that consensus has experienced this - you yourself describe an experience that I've had as well, where low-effort posts that agree with a majority view are heavily rewarded, whereas high-effort posts that I'm quite proud of are probably found under 'sort by controversial' or even 'most downvoted.
Some time ago someone asked me if I think votes should be public, and the more I think about it the more I like the idea.
I always have to roll my eyes at Downdoot Complainers. My first question to them always is: why do you care? Personally I remove the sign of each votr before adding them up into a single metric called "engagement".
But fine, no one likes a dogpile I guess. So second question is: what do you want me to do about it? I can vote the other way, and that might add up to an entire fart in a hurricane, so then what?
OTOH if people see high-profile users vote against the grain, maybe that will take the sting out of the flood of downdoots? Maybe it will even make people reconsider their boo-outgroup / yay-ingroup votes?
Then again, it might backfire. The voting record from the BLM era could probably be mined for salt for generations to come.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
Policy wonks? I hate policy wonks. I meant stuff like Dr. Manhattan's Battle of Midway posts, Dase's AI posts, or whoever-it-was's post about heatpumps.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
So... Anyone wants to sue Google for their search results, ads they serve, videos they recommend, etc?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
You think it's a coincidence that this is when that "man vs. bear" meme popped up?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
Personally, I think the focus on moderation is a cargo cult. It's how I felt when some people were saying that good moderation was "the secret sauce" that made the subreddit a success, and how I feel now when people are attributing stagnation to it as well.
I think a better approach is to focus on content generation. Stop commenting on happenings, and start geeking out. It's a thankless task, but I think if enough people did it, it would do more for the sustainability of this place than anything you could do with moderation.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14d ago
It's a part of it, but it's not the whole story. You need commonality of opinion/values in order to "coordinate meanness".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14d ago
Half Jewish half Italian, from what I remember.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
I don't follow... there has to be commonality for domination to work. Some have pulled it off, but it tends to be hard to oppress minorities, when you're not the majority.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
Compare it to individual houses in a neighborhood. A family's rules reign supreme in their own home, no one can demand they do something. But outside that house, they don't hold that power and have to negotiate if they want anything done.
But that's why it's a bad analogy. There can be subcultures, or countries that contain different cultures by region, but these days there usually is a common culture uniting the entire country, so it's not something confined like a household vs/ a neighborhood. It's also not something based solely on negotiation, and can be quite oppressive. Progressives are usually the first to point this out with things like homophobia, strict gender roles, etc.
For me, I'd much rather hear "I don't want to be a part of your country / culture! Leave me alone, I'll make my own with like-minded people", than to hear demands of being in the same polity from someone with completely incompatible values. Same energy as having a stalker that deluded themselves they're in a relationship with you.
Assuming you're being sincere (probably you are), I will just tell you: the two terms are not equivalent.
Fair enough, I had no idea. I've never even heard the word used before Trace did in the comment directly above mine, and it sounded completely innocuous to me, so I thought I'd borrow it.
You casually call him a "prog," which you and he both understand to mean that he is in the enemy camp
Just to be clear: no I didn't. I meant progressive in terms of worldview. That's something I consider beyond political camps. I believe Hlynkaesque alt-right progressives do actually exist.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
I think you overestimate the degree to which most of us "care" that The Motte becomes A Thing in the zeitgeist, and underestimating the level of effort it takes just to get volunteers to keep things running.
Sorry, this did end up sounding like I'm criticizing you guys for not working enough. I know it's hard to get volunteers (source: me, promising myself every week I'll start contributeing to the ccodebase). I also don't want the Motte to become "a thing" at all. I kind of dread the idea of reddit-tier newcomers swarming in here. But I would like it to keep chugging along.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
That you would struggle to understand it is a bit baffling.
Well again, I'm not struggling to understand, I just disagree.
Like, c'mon: "I don't even want to live in a group of hundreds of millions of people that includes both me and you. Your ideals disgust me on a fundamental level. But hey, now that you've broken out, where's the promotion for us hometown lads?" Surely you can see why I'd find that a bit rich.
No? I don't know what to tell you... You can find me as disgusting as you want, but If I find some interesting bit of info at your Substack, I'll drop a link to it when sharing it with others. If I forget to do so, and rake in a million views from it, I'll probably feel pretty shitty about it.
You cannot at once reject someone as unworthy to share a polis with you and expect them to treat your companionship as meaningful.
I don't really expect anything from how your treatment of my companionship. I'm just trying to figure out what your grievances are, and figure out what I can learn from them, and if I can improve. But this particular one... like I said I'm not sure on what grounds you're expecting anything more than "sorry to hear that, bro". Like I said I consider it 100% normal to want to live in a country that respects your fundamental values, so if you're going to get sufficiently values-diverse group together, you will inevitably end up with people not wanting to share a country with each other. It is again quite strange for me to see you insist on this, since like I said you expressed the same sentiment yourself, or at least I don't know how else to understand "I want to live in a culture where my family and I can live according to our values and build alongside people who share those values". Maybe there's supposed to be a difference between "country" and "culture", but no matter how I slice it, it sounds at most like the same thing with extra steps.
The friend-enemy distinction matters.
It matters when you're doing political activism. This place is very explicitly not a place for that, so I don't see the issue.
Put bluntly, I see you personally as wanting to put me on the enemy side of the friend-enemy distinction, repeatedly defend that choice, and then post in resentment about a lack of friendship resulting from that. Choose one.
Quite frankly it's not even about friendship. I saw what you did as akin to meme accounts on Twitter reposting some webcomic or another, but diligently removing the artist's signature. The analogy doesn't quite fit since the post in question wasn't written here, but I can't help but parse the situation this way. It's not even that much of a big deal as far as I'm concerned, so I don't get why you insist on portraying me as making unreasonable demands.
It's obnoxious for people to treat me as a representative of a coalition that rejects me and that I reject, and it is a specific coalition, not simply a relative term.
If you want to tell me how it came off to you that's fair enough, but you can't tell me how I meant it.
Using it suggests neither understanding nor a wish to understand
That's a bit ironic, given the above.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
Re: the FC thing—that was mostly relevant as a reminder that if that sentiment was broadly shared here, then I should not put my energy into building this space. If the zeitgeist of a space is “we don’t even want to live in a country with you,” it sure isn’t the sort of space I want to put my creative energy into.
Well, it all feels a bit out of left field to me. I never asked for putting your creative energy into here, and where you decide to put it doesn't even require justification.
I thought we were talking about the general sense of betrayal you feel with this community, and I thought this was supposed to be an example of what makes you feel this way. If it isn't - my bad. If it is - I have trouble seeing anything hurtful about that statement. It's normal for people to live in a country where there fundamental values are respected. I'm pretty sure you expressed such a sentiment yourself.
The map is that after years of watching you and yours form overtly and obviously incorrect models of who I am and what I do, then cling to them after you should very well know better, I prefer to spend my time engaging with people who don’t do that.
You don't think you might be reading just a little bit too much into a single word? I never attributed the excesses of progressivism to you, or dismissed your work against them. It was a shorthand, and it's a relative term, and I distinctly remember you playing it for a joke, that a gay furry is the most conservative person at your law school. Is it really so wild you still look progressive to someone from a different background?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
“In your digital hometown” is the key phrase you excluded.
I can edit it in, it doesn't change much for me.
But “cancellation” and online mob dynamics mostly have any impact when it’s people you care about and have longstanding positive relationships with.
Sure, which is why I understand why the LoTT affair bothered you so much, and why I explicitly mentioned it. But you said FC's post bothered you just as much, this is the part I quoted, and was responding to. There was no cancellation there, and no yelling. Now you're responding like this was about only the LoTT thing all along?
But yeah, that even here you label me as a “prog” is the sort of thing that makes me inclined to say goodbye and good riddance to all of this.
Oh for the love of... If I took offence at everyone calling me a "trad" we wouldn't get very far. If you don't like being called that, I'm sorry, I take it back. But I'd also like a map of this minefield I'm supposed to be navigating.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
That was one of the moments that holds the most salience for me, yeah, alongside this from @FCfromSSC. This forum was very much the place I came into my own as a writer, which made it much more painful for me to hear how people saw me when I strayed from the anti-prog line. It's no small thing to watch a large crowd in your digital hometown, so to speak, cheer someone on as he emphasizes he wants nothing to do with you or yours
You know, sometimes I think this place was doomed from the start, and it's very existence is a fluke stemming from the zeitgeist of a particular time and space (which itself was a fluke). The idea of getting people with fundamentally different values to sit down and talk is nice and theory, and interesting things can come out of it, but it seems sooner or later it runs into an obvious issue of the values being, in fact, fundamentally different. We naively believed that this is just a bump in the road. Some differences make us angry and it's just a question getting past the anger, other things are just a misunderstanding, and it's a question of explaining yourself better. But with fundamental differences we understand each other perfectly, and still think the other side is wrong. Any anger is a result of understanding, rather than misunderstanding, but quite often it doesn't even enter the picture. In fact, to the extent it did, I think it's the fault of the rationalist ethos.
Such is the case here. I think I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're just wrong. It is a small thing to watch a large crowd cheer someone on as he emphasizes he wants nothing to do with me and mine. I get that it's more Impactful for you, but I can't muster up more than "sorry to hear that, bro".
it stings quite a bit when people I think should know better treat me as something I'm not,
Yes. I think that sort of behavior is out of line. It can stem from a mistake, so it's possible it happened in good faith, but it should be promptly corrected when it comes out.
or reject me for who I am.
But this I don't get. It feels like a very luxurious belief to me, and I think it contradicts the very mission of this forum.
Or more than that it might even be literally impossible to avoid. My impression is that you, Chris Pratt, and whole bunch of other progs routinely practice rejecting people for who they are, except you do it in a roundabout way that comes off as insincere to people like me.
You mentioned previously a concern about an attitude of "I'm going to cash in on a post from my niche hangout, and not give credit, because I'm afraid I'll get cancelled." I do think my behavior demonstrates pretty clearly that I'm not afraid of controversial associations, not even of attaching my name and career to them.
I can explain what happened here. I wasn't trying to ascribe any motivation to you, I was just putting myself in your shoes. I am afraid of cancellation, so that's why I would try to hide my associations with this place. I'd probably have no chance to guess your actual motivations, even if I knew / remembered how you feel about this place, because that isn't how I'd react, and I don't know you well enough to guess how you parse the world.
And yes, of course if the users or mods explicitly want me to promote it in some form, I'm happy to take a look. But yeah, my memories of the Motte have been bittersweet for years now.
That's great to hear! Though I don't know if I'll ever be appointed the Director of Marketing for this place.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16d ago
You want to send Palestinians to Argentina?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16d ago
No shade to you personally—I have no idea if you were one of the ones who piled on in the least pleasant moments
If you're referring to the Libs Of TikTok affair, I didn't pile on, but if I'm honest this is mostly due to having nuked my Reddit account by that point. I was also quite salty at that (and I believe I disclosed that). Otherwise I believe our interactions were always respectful, including on subjects we disagree vehemently about, like surrogacy (or at least I hope you recall them in a similar positive way).
In any case if part the reason you don't feel particularly inclined to promote this place is because you feel bitter after things got a bit hot, and hit too close to home one time too many, that's perfectly understandable.
On the other hand, maybe we could alleviate that with some sweet, sweet cash! Eh... eh? ;)
I did notice they're making progress between launches a while ago, so the checkbook has long been ready. I doubt I'm wrong about my broader point about SpaceX collapsing, and the revolutionary impact of reusability being a house of cards.
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