Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
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Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
7d ago
I'm not advocating rape or anything but one must remember that men's facial bones are a lot sturdier than women's bones, and the same punch in the face has very different effects between the two.
Which is why I advise her to aim lower, and use the moments in which he is doubled over in pain to execute the Thirty-Sixth Stratagem.
Of course if you never told Alice that perhaps she should not be inebriated in the company of hulking gang members with face tattoos and multiple convictions for violent crimes, and you hold dear that whatever choices Alice make are reasonable ones that should never be looked at if she ever gets victimized, perhaps Bob is, shocker, prone to raping.
I would advise her not to be inebriated at all; however, if she chooses to disregard my advice, and is sexually assaulted, her decisions are not relevant to the questions of "How much effort ought we expend to prosecute the perpetrator?" and "What sentence ought the perpetrator, if convicted, receive?"
Indeed why aren't women just killing rapists left and right?
Because have the alternative of involving the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders, both of whom consider sexually-based offences especially heinous.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
7d ago
I wish we could just say "sex" rather than "natal sex": the sex you're born with is the sex you're stuck with.
If, as is my understanding, a distinction between 'sex' and 'gender' uses 'sex' to refer to biological factors and 'gender' to refer to mental and social factors, then biological sex is a combination of things, some of which we currently have the ability to change and some of which we do not.
If one defines 'sex' as "If I look between this person's legs (and don't get a face full of pepper spray), will I see a tallywhacker or a hoo-ha?", at least 5% and possibly as many as 13% of trans individuals (per statistics linked in a previous post by above) have changed sex from that with which they were born, and an unknown fraction more retain the sex with which they were born only due to lack of opportunity.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
7d ago
@Celestial-body-NOS, while sensible enough to recognise that putting male inmates in the women's estate is a bad idea
That is not an accurate representation of my views. A separate facility for trans-women was an offer of a compromise, and I do not appreciate the repeated assertions that agreement with the 'gender-critical' position, or whatever you call your side of the argument, is a prerequisite for being considered 'mature' or 'sensible'.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
7d ago
Do communist governments and institutions have a unique tendency to suppress dissent?
Russia and China had below-average tolerance for dissent before the Communists took power; thus 'persecute anyone who Notices that the sun doesn't shine out of our you-know-where' was seen as a more legitimate tool than it would be in the birthplaces of the Enlightenment.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
7d ago
a gang was sneaking drugs into a prison, and exchanging those drugs with addicts in return for votes for the governor
One benefit of an anonymous ballot is that the gang can never be sure that the voters are holding up their end of the bargain.
Admittedly, mail-in ballots do complicate this; perhaps it would be wise to consider alternate methods of accommodation for those citizens unable to attend polling places in their area of residence.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
8d ago
I tend to think kicking a controversial issue to the state level to let the voters decide is probably the better choice.
I've never understood how, if Alice in Austin is pregnant and does not want to be, Bob in Big Spring compelling her to remain pregnant is less of an imposition than Carol in Cambridge telling Bob to mind his own.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
8d ago
It’s in the nature of humans to form hierarchy and enforce their ideas of morality on society. It’s been that way for most of human history.
Which is why we must never rest on our laurels and assume that liberalism has decisively won. We must always be on the lookout for those who seek to turn this world into a penitentiary and themselves into warders. We must maintain CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
9d ago
Yes, he who dislikes mass immigration from foreign cultures into a continent that fails at assimilation mus surely be a hateful bigot who just wants others to suffer. Something something ideological Turing test.
Disliking immigration as a terminal value is a character flaw. Opposing it as an instrumental value, in pursuit of some other goal, leaves open the possibility of some other route to the same objective.
We Germans do not control the Rest Of The World.
I was more referring to the wealthier countries put together; the dismantlement of USAID was a bad move even from the perspective of forestalling long-term demographic change.
There is no lack of washing machines, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners in Germany. I do assure you that household appliance shortages are not the cause for our deplorable xenophobia.
That was just one example; there are many other dimensions of material circumstances that can shift attitudes.
"Education", said the soviet. "New Man", he said.
Something being tried and failing does not mean that it is impossible; otherwise, per Thomas Edison, I would be typing this by candlelight.
Yeah, I'm sure we'll social engineer our way out of this by telling so-called educators to push feminism even harder.
A pure redoubling of force on 'intersectional privilege patriarchy male-gaze blah blah blah buzzword buzzword buzzword' feminism is unlikely to be successful. An adjustment of methods, focusing on the sort of feminism that asserts that Women Are People In Their Own Right, Not The Property Of Their Husbands Or Fathers....
Great. The state of assimilation in Germany is such that urban youths without any immigrant background are converting to the more charismatic ways of our new countrymen. We are not making them advance out of their zero-sum mindset; they're convincing ours it's the better way.
And that is the problem we need to solve; less economic precarity would, I believe, at least contribute to the solution, if it weren't being blocked by manglement worried that a lack of desperation in the workforce might possibly create limits to the social dominance they can wield in the workplace.
Again, ideological turing Test. You won't believe it, but there are actual differences between having to live with different kinds of Germans and having to live with muslim arabs, subsaharan Africans and Afghans.
There was a time when the indigenous people of Europe were no better.
Look at any muslim country. Look at africa. Look, at the most optimistic, at Brazil. That is your future.
I hardly think that Brazil represents an absolute limit on the quality of life in a multi-ethnic society; and it is still much better than the last time ethnic supremacists were in charge.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
9d ago
This sounds like an argument for putting men at a high risk of being assaulted in a separate facility, not an argument for putting men who "discovered" they were trans yesterday in a separate facility.
The latter is a subset of the former.
Would men who "discovered" a trans identity even face an elevated risk of assault?
Given how many men object to the slightest hint of femininity in a natal-anatomy!man, I suspect that they would.
You are promoting the idea that violent criminals be afforded special privileges on the basis of unfalsifiable psychological states
No, I am promoting the idea that, when we choose to incarcerate certain persons, thus denying them the ability to either defend themselves or avoid attackers, we have assumed a corresponding duty to protect every single one of them from violent assault to the best of our abilities, and do not have the right to condemn a certain fraction of them to constant victimisation because protecting them is inconvenient.
You [...] seem utterly oblivious to how such a policy is ripe for abuse.
No, I understand that it is possible that a cis-man might falsely claim to be trans in order to be moved to the trans-women's section; I merely consider this a less bad outcome than abandoning actual trans-women to the ghastly fate to which your proposed policy would lead.
A policy of providing medical care to prisoners having medical emergencies has the potential to be abused, but an occasional criminal getting away with wasting the system's resources is a less bad outcome than leaving them to die on the floor when they actually need medical intervention.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
9d ago
· Edited 6d ago
It's a bit weird then to define "man" or "woman" by it. For all you know no such thing exists.
Other people's reported experiences point to it existing.
Yes, there is a possibility that they are all lying; there is also a possibility that everyone is lying about the existence of Finland.
I assign an extremely low probability (P < 0.001) to both.
None of the drama is related to trans women being allowed to do what cis women aren't
Other than using the toilet without being given the third degree regarding what ought to be no one else's business. EDIT: misread above
Mr Burly Lumberjack entering a women's boxing tournament
You stated that Mr B-L had not received, nor did they desire, hormone treatments. If (amount of testosterone in Mr B-L's bloodstream) ÷ (amount of estrogen in Mr B-L's bloodstream) yields a number greater than that observed in any cis woman, then Mr B-L may be categorised with men for the purposes of women's sports.
demanding a Brazilian wax
You stated that Mr B-L did not have surgery. If Ms Below-the-Waist Cosmetologist removes hair from vulvae, but not from scrota, she is justified in categorising Mr B-L with men for the purpose of genital waxing.
demanding to be put into a women's prison
Put him/her with other trans-women. He/she won't be able to get to cis-women, cis-men won't be able to get to him/her.
Even the toilet thing obviously causes discomfort, or else the issue wouldn't be so controversial.
That proves too much; letting Black people use the same water fountains as everyone else caused discomfort too.
Somehow we managed to achieve sex segregation all these years without resorting to that, so I don't see why we would need to start now.
We don't need to. If someone isn't harassing or assaulting other restroom-users, the rest of us can mind our own business.
I also haven't seen Karens demanding it.
Does that mean that it isn't happening? Because I haven't seen anyone pretending to be trans in order to prey on people in public restrooms.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
9d ago
That would just mean that if we have limited resources, we can't give people what they deserve.
That would be an absurd conclusion if one accepts the premise that What Is Natural Is Necessarily Just.
I do not accept that premise.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
9d ago
Well, if we can't put them in the women's facility without endangering cis women, and we can't put them in the men's facility without their being victimised by cis men, I don't know what alternatives we have.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
9d ago
playing at historical materialism again?
I do not claim that material conditions are the sole driver of history, but they do play a major role. It can hardly be a coincidence that the same island that birthed James Watt also gave rise to William Wilberforce; nor that women's liberation saw wide success in the decades following the invention of the washing machine.
The problems natives have with the tens of millions of foreigners is the tens of millions of foreigners.
Some people may oppose the presence of foreigners as a terminal value, and would throw away a life of luxury with their neighbour of foreign extraction having equal comfort to live in poverty and toil as long as the other guy has it even worse, but I doubt that we would have made it as far as we have if that particular character flaw were universal.
it's entirely possible that if material circumstances were cushier, more people would distract themselves with the opiates of the masses du jour.
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If material circumstances were better in the Rest Of The World, I don't think there would be as many foreigners trying to move to the OECD countries.
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I hardly think that the machines that allow so many of us to have the benefit of servants without any of us having to be the servants constitute 'the opiates of the masses du jour'.
the massive everyday ethnic friction isn't some psychological projection or poor man's cope or some other intangible phenomenon
No, some of it is a need for education; contra the wokists, the education needs to be on both sides. If a man immigrates from a country where the community considers decisions about who is allowed near a woman's nether regions to rest with her husband, father, or other male relative, with her preferences in either direction being considered irrelevant, he needs to be informed that, here, even if there is no father/brother/husband forbidding him to touch a particular woman, if she tells him to back off, he can either respect that on her sole authority over her own unmentionables, or he will have the same number of years to reflect upon his life choices as an indigenous European or European-American who did the same thing.
However, a lot of the ethnic tensions come from lingering memories of the nearly-always zero-sum pre-industrial world, in which we did not yet know how to raise ourselves except by pushing others down, and ties of colour or creed formed a convenient Schelling point for ganging up on the neighbours to take their stuff and make them do the donkey-work.
accumulating a little more public debt to throw at the dissatisfied public
No, I am advocating the production of more physical assets. More energy, more housing, more trains, &c. Things that would be potentially useful even on a deserted island.
foreigners are not their brothers in humanism
If that is the case, it is because they come from societies that have more recently emerged from, and have not advanced as far out of, the aforementioned pre-industrial zero-sum state. (The Green Party, as I have have stated passim and frequenter, are Not Helping.)
that politicians and media will absolutely do their best to shaft them for ideological gains, and that the establishment parties may claim to take their concerns seriously while actually despising them and acting against their interests.
That would happen just as much in an ethnically homogeneous society. (Not that it would stay ethnically homogeneous; if everyone of extra-German extraction left Germany, it wouldn't be long before everyone in Bavaria who previously objected to the presence of Poles and Turks and Syrians started objecting to the presence of Saxons and Westphalians and Hannoverians [lumped together as Damp Russians].)
Europe is now a multi-ethnic continent, and has neither the will nor the means to revert it. The AfD and similar parties will die out eventually as the natives are successfully replaced. Congratulations. You already won.
I don't consider that a 'win' so much as a 'good first step'; there are several more continents to get to.
To everyone's detriment.
You mis-spelled 'benefit'.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
12d ago
I specifically asked what would they be identifying with. You said they'd be identifying with their "gender identity".
I don't know specifically what gender identity means more specifically, because I do not personally experience it. If I woke up tomorrow in a body with the opposite plumbing, I would consider myself to be a different gender from what I had previously been; other individuals would experience acute dysphoria and be strongly motivated to reverse the change.
You didn't say they're identifying with female physical attributes
That was something I forgot to mention; not only are most people with a certain mental aspect born with 🌮, but a sizable number of the remainder have a strong sense that they should have been, and mutatis mutandis for the other common type of that aspect and 🍆.
That is why we call those types 'man' and 'woman' instead of 'veeblefetzer' and 'wakalix'.
That's what pedophile rights advocates say as well.
So now we have the question of "Are the transgender activists more like the former, or the latter?". I believe that the relevant distinction is "Does this thing hurt anyone?"; to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, "Does it pick my pocket or break my leg?". A legalisation of the sexual abuse of children would be harmful; the abolition of slavery was not harmful; a more nuanced understanding of gender is not harmful.
I'm frankly surprised even with that you set your confidence at only 95%
A minimum of 95%.
It seems like in any realistic scenario, where they don't loudly declare their intentions, the bad faith actor will be given free rein.
I do not support allowing either a genuine trans-woman or a cis-man pretending to be a trans-woman to do anything from which we forbid a cis-woman. On the other hand, if Mr Burly Lumberjack claims to be a trans-woman in order to go into the women's room, do his business, wash his hands, and leave without bothering anyone, I would prefer him to the Karen insisting on inspecting between the legs of any woman she thinks is insufficiently feminine (many of whom are cis-women).
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
12d ago
Why is it important that the definition makes an allowance for the aspects that can be changed?
Why is it important that it not?
And why [...] not other far more easily changeable aspects (eg is holding a baby-shaped object, or has painted nails, or etc)?
Because those aspects are not biological in nature, and thus irrelevant to my point that not all biological factors are immutable. They could be relevant in other contexts; e. g. if G. is exclusively attracted to (male, female)-presenting individuals, including those who are both biologically (female, male) and identify as (women, men), then for the question "Could G. be potentially attracted to this person?", clothing and hairstyle might be relevant.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
12d ago
Note that (1.) that is the last definition listed, and (2.) killing someone is a subset of getting rid of them.
Kennedy was deep-sixed and thus 86ed; Nixon was 86ed but not deep-sixed.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
12d ago
So rapists trying to avoid serving their sentences in male prisons are not acting in bad faith when they suddenly "discover" a female gender identity immediately before going into trial, not even if they make zero effort to medically transition and only the most token effort to socially transition.
Some of them may be acting in bad faith. I would advise putting criminals who began claiming to be trans-women after being charged in a separate facility from both cis-man and cis-women; if someone transitioned before charges were filed against her, I strongly doubt that she is lying about her gender identity.
The only people you see as acting in bad faith when they "identify" as something [conservatives and radfems think] they aren't are the people doing so ironically in order to expose how nonsensical [conservatives and radfems think] your worldview is.
That was the first such case I thought of, but I do not insist that it is the only possible such.
You are more comfortable admitting rapists, murderers and pederasts than you are admitting infidels and gadflies.
On the contrary, while I disagree with your position, I do not desire that you face legal repercussions for expressing it, nor that you be denied employment, nor that your arguments be suppressed in reaching anyone who is interested in reading them. When they come for the transphobes, I will not remain silent, lest they come for me.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
12d ago
some CRISPR-like technology to basically uplift the entire population at once. [...] Somehow I doubt that this will be to your liking.
Actually, I would consider that a good outcome. If they found a substance that increases a white person's IQ by 30 points and a black person's IQ by 45 points (or whatever the difference is), whoever discovered it would deserve two Nobel prizes, and monumental statues in his/her/their honour.
It is the sacred duty of humanity to remove all inequalities of opportunity that are in our power to ameliorate, including inequality caused by biological factors. When Nature decreed that city dwellers would be cut down by water-borne diseases, did we accept her will as not our place to question, or did we invent the sanitary sewer?
The same applies if Nature has in fact decreed that certain ethnic groups be less capable.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
13d ago
The Gettysburg address may have been the tipping point, but the writing was on the wall with the railroad and telegraph.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
13d ago
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I am not endorsing the examples as the true definition of 'man' and 'woman', merely stating them as examples to support my statement that not all biological divisions are unchangeable.
(Man, woman) can mean 'has (XY, XX) chromosomes', 'was born with (dangly bit, hole)', 'currently has (dangly bit, hole)', 'has (high, low) T/E ratio', or 'identifies as (man, woman)', and there may be still more possibilities. The first four are all biological in nature, and all of them are potentially useful in different biomedical contexts; two of them we have the ability to change, and two of them we do not as yet.
I'm sure you can see the flaw in the argument that 'the first two criteria given are the true definition of biological sex because biological sex is unchangeable, and biological sex is unchangeable because it is defined by those criteria.'.
(I'm not asserting that that is your reason for choosing those criteria, if indeed you do so. If you have some other reason for defining it that way, to which you would adhere in a hypothetical world in which they were changeable, or if you define 'man' and 'woman' by some other factor, I am willing to consider your arguments.)
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
13d ago
Two wolves and a sheep....
I suspect that ethnic animus is inversely proportional to living standards, which are downstream of energy supply. If so, then the Greens are one of the most anti-immigrant parties, and AfD, in supporting nuclear energy, might very well contain the seeds of their own destruction.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
13d ago
Why have you stopped at that point in particular?
Those are definitions of 'man' and 'woman' which are both biological and alterable with the tech package of our current civilisation.
Why not say that anyone who can hold a baby is a woman, and anyone who can throw a punch is a man?
Because, under that definition, almost everyone would be simultaneously both a man and a woman.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
13d ago
That movement is still alive and well. Criticism of it can be voiced more openly now, but it still holds key institutions and its supporters are as entrenched as always.
I hope that that doesn't change in either direction. I do not agree with what the 'gender critical' say, but I also do not trust anyone with the power to make them shut up.
Celestial-body-NOS
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
13d ago
· Edited 9d ago
So not only is a woman "anyone that identifies as a woman", not really answering the question of what a woman is, what they're identifying with is an identity, thus also not telling us anything about what the act of identifying is supposed to be, and also the type of identity they're identifying with is a gender identity, "gender" being the category that encompasses men and women.
In other words: a woman is anyone who identifies with identifying as a woman.
It's not turtles all the way down; the first step, the foundation, comes from the peaks of the bimodal distribution: there are a large number of people who have XY chromosomes, a 🍆 between their legs, a higher T/E ratio, and a certain mental aspect that (if they have it at all) is of a certain type; there are a similar number of people who have XX chromosomes, a 🌮 between their legs, a lower T/E ratio, and a different type of that mental aspect (if they have it at all).
To a first approximation, we call the first group 'men¹' and the second group 'women'. Then, we sort out the edge cases, including those in which the various characteristics do not align with each other, and those in which they impart a visceral feeling of wrongness to their possessor.
I appreciate the efforts to come up with a coherent answer in the aftermath of Matt Walsh's documentary, but I think you guys still have a long way ahead of you.
There was a time when the Abolitionists had a long way ahead of them.
What would be an indicator of bad faith?
The following account is an attempt to construct the strongest possible such indicator:
Henry has a long history of opposing gender transition, same-gender relationships, and gender-nonconforming behavior, especially among men. He has multiple criminal charges for harassing and assaulting men, and women he thinks are men, for not living up to his standard of masculinity, including three assault charges for attacking gay couples, one assault charge for trying to hit a coworker's hand with a hammer when the coworker came in wearing pink nail polish applied by his daughter, one assault charge for shoving a visiting Scotsman into a wall for wearing a kilt (Henry wound up in hospital), one charge for leaving a wood-chipper (with an "Insert groomers here" sign) on the front lawn of a local bar owner who hosted a (21+) drag show, and two charges for beating up women who were attempting to use the men's lavatory (one trans, one when there was a long line for the ladies' room).
A public referendum is held on the question of whether trans individuals ought to be allowed to use the WC of their identified gender; Henry campaigns vehemently against it; despite this, or perhaps because of it, the referendum passes with a clear majority,
The next day, Henry announces: "I now identify as a woman; therefore, you either have to let me use the women's room, or make the [redacted]s use the men's room! Either way, they'll get what's coming to them if they don't man up, ha ha ha!"
I would state with a minimum of 95% confidence that Henry is acting in bad faith.
¹Originally we called them 'were-men' and the other group 'wif-men'; 'man' without prefix was gender neutral.
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din
List the ominous stern whisper, from the Delphic cave within
They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.
"It's not a compromise with sin; we're just reducing expenses at the cost of throwing a rather small percentage of the population under the bus."
"Exactly what do you think a compromise with sin is?"
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