vorpa-glavo
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User ID: 674
vorpa-glavo
1d ago
Does anyone who is pro-trans want to steelman gender ideology for me and try to field questions?
I am broadly pro-trans, but don't really come at it from a progressive/woke angle.
The basic foundation I'm coming from is a combination of libertarianism (people with different belief systems should be allowed to do what they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else), trans-humanism (people should be allowed to do what they want to their bodies), and a little bit of pronoun hospitality (when you are speaking with someone, it is nice to meet them halfway and use their preferred terminology, even if you don't agree with their metaphysics or ontology.)
I also think there's a strange way in which a lot of the trans debate is primarily a linguistic debate. I've said this before, but I think well-informed pro- and anti-trans people are generally in agreement on empirical questions like, "Can trans women get pregnant?", or "What chromosomes do an overwhelming majority of trans men have?"
I think in a lot of ways, it is less mystifying to model trans people as people with "strange" desires. The same way some people want tattoos and piercings or breast enlargement surgeries, they want to change their bodies to look more like the opposite sex. And the same way some people ask for nicknames and hate their birth names, they want nicknames and "nickpronouns."
My feeling is if they have the money, and that is what they want to do with their life, why shouldn't they be allowed to do that?
I'm okay with private sports organizations making whatever choice they want about which sex trans people compete with, let the free market sort such things out. For government-controlled domains, we'll have to work out what we want to do through a combination of voting, and application of constitutional principles. I'm personally okay if trans women get housed with male prisoners as a stop gap solution, though my preference is for all prisoners to be treated humanely and to be safe from other prisoners, and I am open to other possible solutions that still accomplish those goals.
vorpa-glavo
1d ago
I don't think this is remotely universal. On the contrary being flex is pretty rare, as any gay man will tell you.
I actually suspect it is more common than you think. Look at prison sexuality, Afghanistan's bacha bazi, and ancient Greek homosexuality.
What I think they all have in common, is that if you sex segregate a population, some men who aren't really "bi", and who would self identify as straight in most circumstances in a modern context, will have sex with smaller weaker men (often of the more effeminate variety, where they can be had.)
But I think this would be less common in less sex segregated places like the United States as a whole.
vorpa-glavo
2d ago
I use to be an Origionalists when my side was not in power. I now believe in Common Good Constitutionalism now that my side is in power.
Hm... I always liked originalism as a libertarian-leaning person with socially liberal views.
While I'm personally pro-LGBT, I feel like Obergefell was badly decided. And I was personally happy with the Dobbs decision, despite being pro-choice, because I feel like it was the correct choice as a matter of straightforward legal interpretation.
The new MAGA right has only made me dig in more, and think I was right to reject Living Constitutionalism from the left, and equally justified now rejecting Common Good Constitutionalism from the right. I think principles matter, and if the laws are bad, we should change the laws, not ignore them or pretend they mean whatever we think they should mean.
But I suppose you could say that as a libertarian, I'm always on the losing side, so maybe I am just an adherent of a loser philosophy that retreats to originalism no matter who is in power.
vorpa-glavo
4d ago
Funniest part to me, though, has been the entirely predictable reaction by the "wokes" to memory-hole their reaction to Eve (only 2 years ago!), which had itself involved an attempt to memory-hole their reaction to 2B, which had itself involved an attempt to memory-hole their predecessors' reaction to Bayonetta.
Some of this could be because it isn't always the same people complaining each time. So instead of "memory holing", it's more like one group of people complains at time X, and another group of people who always liked the thing happening at time X complain at time Y.
I'm not saying there has never been an individual who made themselves of their close associates into hypocrites on this count, but I would imagine if you could have the god's eye view of social media, there would be a lot less hypocricy here than you'd think.
("disgusting to me" is easily turned into a seemingly less-egotistical "I believe it damaging to the consumer's psyche/society" at no cost).
While this is true, little-l liberalism has long believed that a certain amount of "harmless disgust" or "low-impact psychological damage" should be present in society.
There are some pretty gruesome horror movies out there, that would shock and dismay a lot of unprepared people. But instead of banning them, we trust that individual consumers will avoid things they think will make them unhappy.
vorpa-glavo
4d ago
Production is bad is probably the most clear and obvious bad outcome but the vast majority of people would be against drawn or AI versions.
I've actually wondered about how people would feel about a government making an "authorized list" of confirmed AI-generated CSAM with no CSAM in the training data, that would be the only legal form of such content to own. Assuming that the mere consumption of CSAM doesn't encourage victimization of real children, this seems like the best all around compromise, if you can figure out how to distribute it in a way the government can't easily track.
If the government can easily track it, it just becomes a blackmailer's wet dream. Although, we're in an era where "they fabricated all of the evidence connecting me to this" is an increasingly plausible claim, considering where generative AI is.
I just don't think the linguistic debate can do what people want it to do.
The statement "trans women are women" can be true in some sense, and you can still have policies to prevent transition in minors, and make trans women use men's bathrooms, play on men's sports teams, and be imprisoned in men's prisons.
The words cannot compel the desired action, regardless of anything else.
Like, even if you accepted a "maximalist" supernatural trans position, and said that souls are real, and trans people are acts of the Abrahamic God putting souls in bodies of the opposite sex, nothing about that would imply anything about how we should treat such individuals as a matter of law or custom.
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