Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
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User ID: 290
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
2d ago
civil liability that requires Knuth's Up-Arrow Notation to write down
That might run into eighth-amendment issues....
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
2d ago
When you are walking down the street late at night, and you pass a drunk person acting aggressively, I'm going to hazard a guess that the size of the berth you give them depends heavily on whether they're male or female. You do this not on the basis of what they, personally, have done (you don't know if they have a criminal record, they're a complete stranger to you). You do this on the basis of: if they're a male person who gets in your face and tries to hit you, if they succeed, they will do a lot more damage than if they're a female person.
Another example. If you're not the parent of a small child, imagine that you are. You need to leave your child alone for an evening, your child is too young to be left alone, and none of your friends or family are available to look after the child. You put up an ad saying you're looking for a babysitter, and receive two applications: a fifteen-year-old female, and a fifteen-year-old male. (If you like, the fifteen-year-old male can claim to "identify as" a girl, but still has fully intact and function male genitalia.) You aren't allowed to learn anything else about the applicants other than their age and sex. Who do you hire?
Am I wrong about any of the above?
Yes, you are wrong about both of the above.
WRT the baby-sitter, I flip a coin, and take the same protective measures for 15F as I would for 15M, 15tF, 15tM, or 15X.
only demographic capable of penetratively raping others with anatomy alone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger
although most of them are mature and empathetic enough* that they can eventually learn to understand why parents are more willing to leave their child alone with a female stranger than a male
Agreeing with you is not a sine qua non of maturity.
without throwing a tantrum
Disagreeing with you does not necessarily constitute a 'tantrum'.
I just think that the amount of mental distress caused is infinitesimal compared to the amount of mental distress caused by a child being sexually assaulted or penetratively raped by an adult male. It's a trade-off I am perfectly willing to make
But if you consider second-/third-/umpteenth-order effects, people being treated as suspicious by default on the basis of natal anatomy and its physical sequelae creates a precedent, which will be seized upon by the 13/50 crowd to support similar suspicion-by-default on the basis of skin colour.
This will lead to escalating tensions in society, until it boils over. If we're lucky, we get a rerun of 1968 or 2020; if the dice come up snake-eyes, society collapses and we end up less able to prosecute rapes by strangers, and much less able to prosecute rapes within families.
you're invoking the historical example of marital rape
To make the point that, even if your sole goal is to minimise the rape of people-born-with-female-genitals, your strategy might be less than optimal.
the policy you're advocating is a rapist's credo
Less of this, please.
If parents legally could not take "candidate's sex" into account when hiring a babysitter, [emphasis added]
Legally, I do not support non-discrimination law intruding into that particular case; I do not think you should end up in the dock on suspicion of favouring a woman over a man, a white woman over a black woman, or any other such distinction, in hiring, in your personal capacity, an individual for services in your personal residence, even if I disagree with your reasoning.
can you envision any scenario in which this wouldn't result in tens of thousands of additional child rape victims every year? If so, how?
Teach children that certain parts of their bodies are private, that they have the right to not have them touched is a way that feels wrong, that this right supersedes parental or parentally-delegated authority; or at least don't ban books that teach this.
If their baby-sitter makes them feel uncomfortable in some un-nameable manner, listen to them and possibly find another baby-sitter rather than telling them to shut up and not be 'disrespectful'.
You still, still, still have not answered my question on whether "gender identity" is innate or not.
I believe it most likely is, per the reported experiences of transgender individuals; as I do not personally identify with gender any more than any other aspect of the meat-puppet I inhabit, I do not have the ability to say for certain.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
2d ago
What "purposes" are these?
The ones that, if you don't know her very well, and aren't being hired for purposes involving her body, are any of your business.
An individual is responsible for what they, personally have done; they are not responsible for what they are capable of doing but haven't done, or what people who share characteristics with them have done. Therefore, the decision about how much, if any, of an individual's body is relevant to you belongs to that individual alone, unless and until that particular individual commits a wrongful act.
Admittedly, this is dependent on the axiom that the well-being of individuals is the measurement of ethics, with one's duties being derived from the effects on other individuals; however, the contrary world-view, of the subordination of the individual to the family/community/other collective abstraction, has been known to lead to many Bad Things, including, as part of many societies' traditional marital practises, the forcible rape of women-as-in-people-born-with-vulvae (when they first landed on the moon, it would be another seven years before it became a crime for a husband to rape his wife).
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
2d ago
So you think a male person can flip back and forth between being a woman and being a man, purely depending on what clothes he's wearing at any particular moment?
No, I believe that whether a person is a man or a woman depends on why you are asking, just as with the difference between a 'blegg' and a 'rube'.
A male person does not become a woman just because he's wearing a dress and makeup.
No, if she identifies as a woman, she is a woman for most purposes. Things which involve the genitals are, assuming she has not had the relevant chirurgery, one of the exceptions; medical concerns are another, in which biological sex must be broken down into multiple aspects, such as hormones, current anatomy, natal anatomy, and chromosomes. (cf. Neural Categories, E. Yudkowsky, February 2008; How An Algorithm Feels From Inside, ibid.)
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
In the context of genital care, yes (assuming your statistics are correct).
In contexts where their underwear stays on, no.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
We were talking about whether or not the anti-trans side was recasting the distinction raised by the pro-trans side. If the anti-trans side was the first to set the distinction, than it was the pro-trans side that was doing the recasting.
I'm referring to the distinction between 'gender' and 'sex', not the distinction between 'men' and 'women'.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
4d ago
I've heard the interpretations that they ate some dodgy grain.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
4d ago
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If I were to claim that I was entitled to know any other aspect of your medical chart, on the grounds that it is statistically correlated with propensity to commit assault, most everyone would agree that I was out of line. The pro-trans faction is attempting to apply this consistently; the anti-trans faction is the one claiming that genitals are somehow less of a personal matter and should follow a different set of rules making them more of a public interest.
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It is possible to, by observation, deduce someone's probable genital configuration, just as it is possible to deduce many other aspects of a person's medical history. However, this does not mean that one is entitled to know whether their deductions are correct, nor that they ought to be brought up in polite company.
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The statistical correlations between biological sex and violent crime are claimed by many with whom you are probably familiar to have parallels with race. (I am sceptical of these claims, but the following argument holds even in a parallel universe in which they hold.) If people act on their knowledge of those statistics, innocent people of certain races are subjected to lifelong humiliation and ill-use, until it blows up in everyone's face. Thus, *we regard information derived from that source to be inadmissible.
Because it makes a bunch of autogynephiles sad when they don't. Because this group of totalitarian, controlling narcissists cannot tolerate the slightest suggestion that anyone, even a complete stranger, is failing to "validate" them and their "identity" 100% of the time, even unconsciously. You are not only demanding that cisgender people yasslight trans people, but also that they gaslight themselves. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
I, personally, am not making any demands regarding your, or anyone else's, beliefs regarding transgenderism. You deserve the ability to think what you want, and any attempt to deter you from doing so by imposing Consequences is an injustice. The same applies for arguing, in the general case, for your beliefs; I do not endorse any employer refusing to hire you because they read your Posts.
I am only asking that, when it comes to interactions with actual people, you not treat their genitals as relevant by default, and not bring up the matter any more than you would any other medical condition.
I realise that some people on the 'woke' left demand further concessions, and in that circumstance, even though I disagree with what you say, I support your right to say it.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
4d ago
Prior to to pro-trans proposition, everybody was using a sex-based distinction
And, like many other things 'everybody' was doing, some of us realised that it wasn't right.
(Many of the social movements of the post-WWII era are of this sort; someone realises that "Yes, we've always done it this way, but it's wrong. It's hurting people, and it needs to change. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is an early example of this argument, being a reductio ad absurdum; see also Edgerton's Sick Societies.
Can't say I noticed the pro-trans side wanting to keep their genitals private.
I will concede that, in that case, they are justified in dividing by currently possessed genitals, i. e. the ones with which they are presented, and for this purpose, a trans-woman remains a man unless or until she has that part of her anatomy altered.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
4d ago
everyone didn't immediately hand the reins of society over to them
It's not 'immediately handing the reins of society over to' someone to change a particular thing that is unjust.
The abolition of segregation wasn't 'handing the reins of society over' to the Civil Rights advocates. (Some of Ibram X. Kendi's asks might fall under that heading, but I don't think he would have made them if there hadn't been an above-lizardman-constant section of society trying to maintain Jim Crow.)
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
4d ago
And the Southern States didn't agree that 'it isn't right' for plantation-mongers to own Black people.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
You frame this as though this was some novel innovation on the part of an "anti-trans faction", but in fact entitlement to know and act on the genital/gonad configuration of strangers has been a bog-standard feature of society for centuries, and arguably back to the beginning of recorded history.
And when the pro-trans faction were like, 'But this isn't right!', and sought to change it, the anti-trans faction objected to their cheese being moved.
This is far from a unique pattern in history.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
But is that a circumstance of birth, or of them being carefully taught before they are six or seven or eight?
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
I have a hard time envisioning a helpful "purpose" for which the answer to the question "what is a woman?" includes people with penises.
Any purpose that does not involve anyone interacting with said penes.
Big Yud put a lot of stock in the idea of definitions that "cleave reality at the joints"
Sometimes reality has multiple sets of joints, and at which ones we choose to cleave reality can be a function of our goals; e. g. the currently accepted definition of 'fish', excluding whales, cleaves reality at the joints of 'evolutionary relatedness', whereas older definitions which include whales cleave reality at a different set of joints, namely body shape and habitat.
An entity born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes.
So you would consider someone with XY chromosomes, who, due to some hormonal-response factor, developed ovaries instead of testicles, to be female?
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
They haven't re-cast them as sex, they just disagreed with the goal of the pro-trans faction.
The re-casting was how they sought to thwart the goal of the pro-trans faction.
To the best of my understanding, the pro-trans faction proposed to divide sex from gender, such that all social distinctions would fall under the latter category, and the biological differences would be as private as any other medical history, HIPAA avant la lettre.
The anti-trans faction, believing themselves entitled to know, and act on the knowledge of, the genital/gonadal configurations of strangers, then started referring to 'sex' instead of 'gender', 'males' instead of 'men', and 'females' instead of 'women'; thus allowing them to make the assertion that other people's genitalia are any of their business without being seen to make said assertion, and avoid anyone asking why they are concerned with other people's anatomy.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
The trap is that they are hoping to get a soundbite that looks bad when taken out of context, which they can run endlessly in attack ads.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
It's also a bad analogy because nothing actually hinges on the question of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich.
...until some arcane point of tax or tariff law depends on it (this was why the Supreme Court had to weigh in on whether a tomato is a fruit), and the Red Tribe and Blue Tribe converge on different answers.
among progressives the stock response to the question "what is a woman?" is a sputtering refusal to answer
Again, that might be different if progressives had read the Sequences.
Another possible response might be "With what purpose do you inquire?".
an adult human female
And what is a 'female'?
Even limiting ourselves to biological factors, there are at least five possible definitions.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
The central philosophical grounding of transgenderism is that gender is socially constructed (and correspondingly malleable) and thus separable from the biological notion of sex. The idea that a "woman" (gender) is not necessarily "female" (sex) may be arguable, but it is at least comprehensible. Forget expecting future Supreme Court justices to know what woman means--journalists don't even seem to know what female means. Or, more likely: they are part of the trans prospiracy to simply deny facts about biological human sex typing. The sex/gender distinction was drawn for political purposes, and now is being collapsed for those same political purposes.
Because the anti-transgender faction, in response to the distinction as initially drawn by the pro-trans faction, was to take social matters of 'gender' and re-cast them as matters of 'sex', thus attempting to undo the exact goal of the pro-trans side, namely that biological sex ought not determine anything in social situations.
That principle is downstream of a more general left-wing ethos, that it is unjust for people to be limited by the circumstances of their birth, and that where we have the ability to make people not thus limited, we ought to do so. From this axiom, one can derive many other left-coded beliefs, which are left as an exercise for the reader.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
· Edited 5d ago
What you don't normally get is the Blue Screen of Death when you ask someone to define their terms.
Because you aren't setting off Admiral Ackbar with a 'Gotcha!' question. (Is it possible that we were a little too hard on Sarah Palin?)
I'm yet to hear a good argument for doing so.
Because the particular sequence A Human's Guide to Words covers the precise meta-level issue at hand, that there is no True Definition of 'sandwich/planet/woman' floating in the aetherial realm.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
they are reliably stumped by the "what's a woman" question.
And thousands, perhaps millions, are reliably stumped by the "is a hotdog a sandwich" question, because most people still think of words as living in the Platonic Realm Of Forms rather than being pointers to fuzzy-edged categories. (I am once again asking you to Read the Sequences.)
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
7d ago
we have actually outrun the carrying capacity of this planet
One, the carrying capacity of the planet is not a single number, but depends on the tech package. Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer, neolithic agrarian, mediaeval agrarian, Victorian-era industrial, and distant-future zero-point-energy-powered societies all produce different figures for the 'carrying capacity of the planet'.
Two, it is far from certain that humanity will be forever limited to the surface of a single planet.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
7d ago
Yes, general knowledge can contribute to a rejection of the null hypothesis. That is why, while for the time being, I do not believe that there is a difference in genetically-determined intelligence between races, I am not claiming that as a sanity-complete proposition. If Omega-the-super-intelligent-computer-with-a-100.00%-track-record-of-being-right were to conclude that such intelligence differences exist, I would conclude that Nature is a racist arsehole and support transhumanism more vigorously, but I would not be compelled to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew the way I would if Ωtsicwa100ptrobr were to state that China does not exist or that the Napoleonic Era didn't happen.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
7d ago
Summary of content in link:
- The linear no-threshold model of radiation is not an accurate model of biology, as cells have DNA repair mechanisms; thus dose profile is as relevant as total dose. Long-term exposures adding up to high totals show little-to-no additional cancer risk if less than one millisievert is received per day. (There were over 2,000 'radium girls'; about 100 of them developed cancers, all of whom were exposed to >1mSv/d, and most of whom received >20mSv/d.)
- More has been spent than is prudent on reducing very small daily radiation exposures.
- The requirement that no opportunity be forgone to reduce radiation exposure, even if from 0.0004 millisievert/day to 0.000395 millisievert/day, combined with the structure of nuclear regulations (e. g., requiring a half-built plant, fully compliant with regulations at beginning of construction, to be torn out and restarted to comply with new standards), has driven up the cost of nuclear energy, and made the cost of building nuclear reactors unpredictable.
And it used to be defined as to not apply within marriage; we changed that, and we can change the other.
If Alan rapes Barb with his penis, and he wears a condom, Barb is unlikely to be impregnated or contract a social disease; he is nevertheless prosecuted no less vigorously.
No, I take measures to protect them even from a cis-woman.
I was more referring to the prodromal phase; what would have been referred to twenty years ago as 'grooming'; don't hire that baby-sitter again if he/she/they start laying the groundwork for the worst offences.
No, I am also opposed to discrimination on that basis.
I am attempting to illustrate possible nth-order effects.
Society treats people-born-with-male-anatomy as suspicious-by-default --> a precedent is set that people may rightly be judged by the behavior of their demographic rather than innocent-until-proven-guilty --> the 13/52 crowd ignores your distinctions and uses that precedent to treat Black people as suspicious-by-default --> years and decades of being followed in stores/avoided on the street/not picked up by taxicabs/&c. build up until Black people (and their white allies) decide that they have Had Enough, as we saw in 1968 and 2020. If it doesn't boil over, it can still lead to Bad Things done to Black people, such as Emmitt Till; the same can be said of judging individual Jews, such as Anne Frank, by the alleged acts of the Jewish people as a whole.
After the revelation of the horrors of the Third Reich, combined with the cruelties in the Unitedstatesian South, progressives, and in subsequent generations moderates, came to the conclusion that judging individuals by their race/ethnicity is dangerous, and ought to be treated as radioactive. (I don't mean realistic radioactivity, e. g. a glove 1% more radioactive than the 80%-lower-than-global-average local background, or spent fuel pellets that, had they powered Kublai Khan's stately pleasure dome, would have cooled off to the point where one could pick them up bare-handed and, as long as one doesn't eat them, be none the worse for wear. I'm referring to the Hollywood/Simpsons image of three-quarters rusted yellow barrels full of glowing Avada-Kedavra-green sludge that, had they existed in the hoary days when first were laid the foundation-stones of the Great Sphinx, would still cause cancer and monstrous birth defects at 100 metres.)
Subsequently, the same logic was extended to sex/gender, which, even if one does not believe it obligatory per se, nevertheless functions in a manner akin to the Jewish practise of gader saviv HaTorah, a fence around the Law.
My argument is isomorphic to the late Charlie Kirk's 2023 remarks on gun control.
In both cases, there is a horrifying-to-contemplate problem threatening the most vulnerable members of our society (rape/mass shootings of the sort of which Columbine is the type specimen).
In both cases, a seemingly simple solution is proposed (treat half the population as guilty until proven innocent/abolish private ownership of firearms).
In both cases, many innocent people are held responsible for the actions of a few.
In both cases, proponents of the suggested policy frame the drawbacks as meaningless, and their opponents' objections as petulant whinging and/or evidence that they deserve to be so held responsible.
In both cases, the proposed policy is criticised for potential nth-order failure states (less credibility in opposing the more fanatical thirteen-fiftiers leading to either a racist dystopia or mass civil unrest/Iran in 2026)
In both cases, the argument is made that the proposed policy is both:
a cure worse than the disease, and
not necessary as there are better solutions (Mr Kirk's proposal to have armed guards at schools/teach children that certain parts of their body are private and if the baby-sitter shows too much interest in those parts they should tell an adult whom they trust; listen to them if they do so. [Note that if my young child thought as you do and did not wish to be left with an assigned-male-at-birth baby-sitter, I would not attempt to force the issue; this will also show that he/she/they can trust me if the assigned-female-at-birth baby-sitter behaves inappropriately with her fingers/an object, or brings in another person, assigned-male-at-birth or otherwise, who does so.])
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