This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Hello Motte world! Some of you may remember me as /u/M_T_Saotome-Westlake on the Reddit incarnation. (I've since dropped the pseudonym which I was using for my political writing.)
I recently published the first two parts of my memoir telling the Whole Dumb Story of my conflict with the so-called "rationalist" community about (at first) the etiology of gender dysphoria in males and (later, much less excusably) the philosophy of language regarding categorization, which I would like to share with you today:
It really does strike me that Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Aella et al are putting on the kid gloves tight when it comes to the proposals of transgenderism.
Take Scott, for example, responding to the 4chan post about trans-Napoleonism. He basically says "just let him wear the silly bicorne hat" and points to "Emperor" Norton of San Francisco as a happy-go-lucky story of just going along with what a trans-emperor says because it's easier. But he doesn't ever adequately address the hardball arguments - a Napoleon-gender that demands absolute power over the French Empire and its satellites in Europe (as the 4chan post said), and a Norton that demands the head of President Rutherford B. Hayes (as you, Zack M. Davis, point out). As far as I can tell, Scott's response to people pointing out the demands for a French Empire and Hayes's head - although he doesn't explicitly state this - is "lol, that just doesn't happen".
This is a very troubling dismissal, because there are a lot of Rutherfords in transgenderism. The reason why people point out President Rutherford Hayes and demands for a French Empire is because transgenderism affects others - it has externalities - and attempting to cure someone's distress by agreeing to their false map of reality is not a cost-free action and is not something with no meaningful consequences to other people (hence, the story about putting the hair dryer in the passenger seat is simply irrelevant). In other words, "just be nice" is a really bad argument.
For example, the inclusion of trans athletes in women's sports, or the inclusion of trans people in women's bathrooms, or the inclusion of trans people in women's prisons. Everyone seems to agree that it would be a very bad thing if a trans-Napoleon today gained control over the countries that used to make up the former French Empire, or if Norton was given the head of Rutherford B. Hayes, so they just... dismiss those and say it could never happen. They say they would never demand Rutherford's head and that it's absurd to even consider the possibility that Rutherford might be decapitated to fulfill the desires of an Emperor Norton.
And then when those externalities do happen, and a male-born trans person wins against a female athlete (inherently, unfairly), or a trans person assaults a woman in the bathroom, or a trans prisoner impregnates a woman, those objections are at best handwaved away and dismissed as outliers or discredited, or at worst labeled "transphobic" and censored.
In my opinion, the refusal to honestly engage with these arguments reflects poorly on the leaders - or otherwise influential figures - of the rationalist community. To put it lightly, it's unbelievable how they make a simple mistake - that their own foundational writings (the Sequences) warned about - and how they have failed to correct their own mistake (at least, they haven't corrected it yet, although I'm not optimistic about their chances of doing so).
By far the largest externality of the trans movement, in my opinion, is not in any individual case, but the production of additional trans people. Dependency on external hormones, drastic surgeries, elevated suicide risks, worse mental health–even beyond my own negative aesthetic judgment and opinions of what human flourishing looks like, this looks like a horrendous thing to be causing any substantial increase in.
Regardless of what we do involving any single person, we should try to prevent this from increasing as a societal phenomenon—this is of course hard to do in the current state of affairs, where this is controversial.
Not least because it's verboten to consider whether trans people can "spread" being trans to others like a social contagion.
There's a couple reasons to believe this is the case. The proportion of trans people historically has been almost zero. There's two ways they try to explain this:
Cite various examples of historical trans people. But the problem is that these examples are not trans people in the sense of a person who thinks he's a woman in a man's body. These are always an effeminate man who couldn't perform the male gender role, so he was assigned a third gender role (this is almost always what the "third gender" or "two spirit" stuff means), or someone who pretended to be the opposite gender for strategic reasons (e.g. a woman pretending to be a man to join the army).
Say they were just not noticed, or, uncharitably, suppressed by cisheteronormativity. But this doesn't explain why there wasn't a lot of suicides from these transgender identities being suppressed or not affirmed.
Suicide wasn't really as accepted historically either, with Christianity threatening you with hell for it and all. And anyway, even if the entire 0,5% of trans people really have been committing suicide, would it really be traceable on the historical level? We didn't have big data back then.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What kind of media do you consume, and is any of it the kind that would tell you?
Here's a few examples. If you wanted to know about them, you could have found them at any time. And I'll have to apologize, the stuff in locker rooms is only peeping, the assault happened in a woman's shelter.
More options
Context Copy link
I found three since 2017,
Here
Here
And another one I had formatted but hit the back button and inadvertently lost my mobile post.
Having posted this I have to admit I sadly don't trust the media to report on this topic in good faith.
This incident "happened in a private bathroom at a residence". Bathroom bills don't cover private homes and could not have prevented this.
Addressed here.
Certainly not the NYT or WaPo, but there are plenty of media organizations with an anti-trans editorial stance. They would surely publicize any such cases.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
https://www.foxnews.com/media/oklahoma-transgender-student-charged-assaulting-female-high-school-classmates-bathroom
This technically qualifies as "a trans woman assaulting a woman in a women's bathroom", but it is nothing like the hypothetical situation anti-trans activists warned about. For one, it was not a sexual assault. My comment said "assaulting" rather than "sexually assaulting", but the claim has always been that women would be sexually assaulted, by a pervert who is or claims to be trans.
More importantly, the fact that it happened in a bathroom isn't relevant because it had none of the characteristics of the stereotypical bathroom assault. The debate is focused on bathrooms because they're enclosed spaces where a victim may be alone, which makes them uniquely dangerous. The typical hypothetical bathroom assault scenario involves a woman, usually understood to be a random woman unknown to the assailant, who is alone in the bathroom with the assailant, who has followed her in or was waiting for her. This is dangerous because she can be cornered with no way to escape and no way to call for help.
But this case is nothing like that. The victim was with a group of friends who saw the entire thing. The fight was presumably stopped as soon as possible (apparently the friends tried to intervene but were unable to stop the fight; presumably they called someone who could). The perpetrator and the victim already knew each other, and the incident started as a verbal altercation when the perpetrator approached the victim and escalated into a fight. This exact scenario could have played out anywhere. It had nothing to do with the reasons why bathrooms are claimed to be uniquely dangerous and why bathroom bills are claimed to be necessary.
So trans women can assault women in the bathroom, away from the protection of men, but that's okay and totally not an issue unless
That sounds like an odd place to move the goalpost to, and I think there may have been a reason you didn't list all these criteria up front when saying I "I've never seen an example which meets all these criteria"
Regardless, it's not like I keep a file tracking these things, or even follow it intentionally at all; this is just the first example that met your criteria. If you can't think of any examples of things that most people would see as "the kind of thing anti-trans activists warn about", then it seems like you're not looking, and not noticing when it happens..
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is it really? It's people having consistent principles. Which, I can agree is strange, but on TheMotte I don't think is that strange.
It's a standard mistake to say "this never happens", because it's happened quite a lot. For example, this case.
Any sources that it was consensual?
My point is that it is entirely possible to have consistent principles that result in treating trans people as their preferred gender in most cases, but not when it comes to women's sports. An example of such principles would be the basic liberal/libertarian maxim "let people do what they want as long as they're not harming anyone".
The article notes that the perpetrator had not yet transitioned at the time of the crime, so he would not have been allowed in the bathroom anyway. So no, this doesn't count.
I was referring to this case:
I think this falls under "arguments as soldiers".
Arguing that trans women should not be allowed to compete in women's sports is admitting complexity beyond "trans women are women". It will be torn down by fellow believers as not being fully committed to the cause of trans equality, and will thus be eroded away or at the very least not said out loud.
And only that one seems consistent: arguing that trans women are not women but should be allowed to compete in women's sports anyway would be a weird position to hold. Although people that want women's sports to be removed entirely might fall in that category. I also feel like I've seen a view that was something like "make two different categories that anyone can enter, label one with a cool sounding name and one with a lame 'I'm a weakling' sounding name, and let things work themselves out".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They try, but the pro-trans side just "no-true-transwoman"s it -- see the Virginia high school thing.
More options
Context Copy link
Off the top of my head there was the Loudoun County affair. Of course the trans activists went on to declare that the rapist wasn't really trans, it was just a guy in a dress... which I guess they didn't really think through.
That already sets you against the current batch of trans activists, which demand self-ID. That said, there hasn't been a valid argument provided for putting trans people in the opposite-sex facilities.
Apparently the rapist didn't identify as trans. I think it's fair to say that someone who identifies with their gender at birth is not trans. I don't think this is a no-true-Scotsman, as @jkf claims (I assume you are both referring to the same case).
More importantly, however, he didn't enter the bathroom to find a random person to assault – he already knew the victim and had had consensual sex with her in that bathroom previously, and the meeting that resulted in the assault was also pre-arranged:
So this is nothing like what anti-trans activists claimed would happen.
Yes, but it also sets me against the current batch of anti-trans activists, who claim all trans people are just perverts and none of their claims should be taken seriously. I think there should be some standards to prevent people identifying as trans in bad faith, but no one on the anti-trans side is arguing this. They're all saying that all claims of being trans are illegitimate.
If I understand correctly, you're asking why trans women should be put in women's prisons and trans men in men's prisons. Beyond the arguments that it makes them feel better when their gender is affirmed, there's a case to be made that a trans woman who passes well is in real danger in a men's prison. A passing trans man in a women's prison is not as endangered, but the women there would probably be uncomfortable with his presence.
"Any dude will be able to claim they're trans and walk into female toilets" is pretty much exactly what anti-trans activists said would happen. All the other details you mentioned are not relevant. Toilets are sex-separated, among other things, to help school staff to prevent horny teenagers from hooking up in them.
You're playing language games. No one says that they're not trans, just that being trans doesn't change your sex, and that some facilities need to be sex seperated.
No, I'm asking why trans women should be put in female prisons, and trans men in male prisons.
It would make men feel better if they were put in female prisons too, why is happiness from affirmation more important here?
There's also a case to be made that a trans woman will be a danger in a female prison.
Has anyone asked them? I'd bet most women would be more comfortable around a trans man than a trans woman, provided they knew for a fact it's a trans man and not a cis man.
I tried to phrase that so as to avoid language games. That some facilities need to be sex-segregated, and that people identifying as trans should not be allowed to use such facilities under any circumstances, is what I meant by "all claims of being trans are illegitimate" and "none of their claims should be taken seriously".
I tried to phrase that so as to imply that it is the typical argument, which means you have most likely already seen it and it is unlikely to change your mind, and I am therefore not putting much weight into it. Anyway, the specific claim is that it would make them feel better without making anyone else worse off.
A trans woman who has spent several years on HRT, or has had surgery, and is therefore unable to even get an erection? Again, I support having certain standards for trans people. All the cases of assault by trans women in women's prisons seem to be from prisoners who only realized they were trans after they went into prison and were promptly placed in the facilities meant for their claimed gender. This is a system that is very easy to abuse.
Well, I would bet that most women would be more comfortable around a passing trans woman than a passing trans man. But I admit I have no polling data on this.
Again, not relevant, the whole point is any dude can put on a dress and go into female toilets.
To be fair, the thing being pre-arrenged means it's not an example of what people were worried about, but I don't understand your fixation of the victim being random. If someone targets a friend or a co-worker and abuses the trans-policy to get access, then suddenly everything is fine?
The other issue is that other people gave you examples that fit better, and your response was only to nitpick further. Another attacker who did identify as trans also doesn't count according to you, because they didn't take hormones or get surgeries, even though the entire point of critics was that anyone can say they identify as anything. And you didn't even respond to the Oklahoma one.
Admittedly I have no access to a parallel universe where different policies are in place, but the fact that the school was trying to cover the story up, indicates they are feeling guilty about it somehow.
I suppose it's possible he was showing up in a skirt for a completely unrelated reason, but come on, at the very least it screams "dude trying to take advantage of a loophole", no?
I don't think the latter is a fair way to describe the former. "All claims of being trans are illegitimate" sounds more like "there's no such thing as gender dysphoria", or what you said earlier "all trans people are just perverts". Someone who believes trans people should not be allowed into opposite-sex facilities can (and often does) believe dysphoria is a thing, and that being trans for the most part has nothing to do with being a pervert.
I guess that's exactly the thing under dispute. Aren't all these women protesting precisely because they feel they're being made worse off?
Yeah, even though sexual assault is discussed most commonly, there's more to prison violence than sexual assault.
Yeah, I agree. Look, if we went from self-ID to medical-gatekeeping, that would definitely be better, but I don't like how all my concerns with self-ID were dismissed with "it will never happen", and after it did happen people like you are still trying to dismiss my concerns, after taking a step back to a minimally defensible position.
Again, I would agree with you when it comes to first impressions and initial reactions, but I'm pretty sure things would flip once you knew for a fact the person is trans. A lot of times people go for examples like "do you think Buck Angel should go to the women's toilet?", and my point is that I agree he might cause more distress in a public toilet, where you don't know people who you're going to run into, and will only see them for a few minutes, but if you hear these trans guys talk for a few minutes... they don't really come of all that masculine. So in a setting like a prison, where a) you'd know they're only there because of their biological sex, and b) you get to know someone a bit better, I'm pretty sure an average woman would rather share a cell with a Buck Angel, than a Blaire White.
But to be fair, I don't have polling data either.
I would expect the dude to at least have to declare that he is trans before being allowed.
No, of course that changes nothing. The point is that the perpetrator didn't specifically select the bathroom. The debate is focused on bathrooms because they're enclosed spaces where a victim may be alone, which makes them uniquely dangerous.
I assume you are referring to the 2014 California case. In another comment, I said that:
The point was not that he hadn't taken hormones or had surgeries, but that he didn't even identify as trans when he committed the crime. He only started identifying as trans afterwards. Therefore the case is completely irrelevant.
I hadn't responded because it hadn't been posted yet when I was responding to the others. I have now addressed it here.
They obviously have a strong incentive to cover up or downplay the occurrence of such a serious crime at their school regardless of the specific circumstances and regardless of whether it pertains to a current national political controversy.
Maybe he just liked wearing a skirt? It's a thing.
What protests are you referring to specifically?
You say it would be better, but presumably it still wouldn't be ideal? If so, why not? Using this as an argument in favour of the position that "trans people should not be allowed into opposite-sex facilities" (under any circumstances) proves too much.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I suppose it depends on the individual, but regardless of 'passing' a trans male is likely to be much bigger and stronger than a female -- outliers exist, but afaik none of the transing interventions change one's height very much. Also the females have a zero percent chance of having a functioning penis, so rape seems off the table -- what would a women have to fear from a transman?
Re: dudes with dresses in women's bathrooms -- this didn't used to be allowed. Accomodations for trans-dudes changed that, so whether the dude in question identified as trans or not is irrelevant to the goodness of letting him in the bathroom.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Scott's not engaged that in a long time, honestly or otherwise. Categories are Made for Man was 2014; Be Nice was 2016. The dynamics have certainly changed somewhat between 2014 and now.
Scott and Zvi do definitely have a policy of avoiding some of the more radioactive topics out of not wanting the backlash but not wanting to lie. I think in Scott's case it's mostly a mistake, although on this issue there's the problem that he doesn't want Lorien to get incinerated by claims of conversion therapy.
More options
Context Copy link
Yud dropped a hydrogen bomb on transgenderism back in the day, he made this big long post about all the things you'd need to do to wire up the male brain to become authentically female, to the polite disdain of the M2Fs in the comments: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions
Whatever (huge) disagreements I have with Yud, it's not that he's chained down to conventional opinions about political correctness!
I would only share this view if I believed that Yudkowsky would face serious consequences for dissenting from the mainstream narrative about transgenderism. Which I seriously doubt. (Serious as in losing his job and/or some of his close family; losing clout on Twitter (or I guess X now) doesn't count.)
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think that's nearly as subversive as you suggest, since Yudkowsky ends up endorsing the orthodox libfem belief that the central example of a transgender person is a male body with a female brain in the skull (a view that is, as far as I'm aware, completely unscientific):
That seems like him trying to be nice to trans people right after he said that it's basically impossible for men to become women.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As others have said, trans people (and other gender non-conformists) are a significant part of the rationalist community. The points you mentioned simply do not come up when it comes to the daily interactions that people in it would have.
Take the prototypical Bay Area trans woman someone like Scott Alexander would know: autistic, nerdy, moderate-to-high income, involved in tech, polyamorous (but mostly dating other trans women), and largely similar to other rationalists in terms of mentality. This type of individual is not particular athletic (unless it’s rock climbing), unlikely to be involved in criminal activity or engage in violent behaviour (much like the average male nerd).
This is a stereotype perhaps, but familiar to anyone that hangs around those circles; there’s very little downside to being accepting of them, and the factors you brought up have no direct impact and are in fact very low-probability events when it comes to that demographics.
Sure. Obviously, a lot of the externalities with transgenderism go away if you have a social norm to actually be nice, including not using transgenderism for bad results.
But I understood Scott (and others) to be talking about trans people in wider society. I would have less of an issue with them if they clarified that they were only talking about trans people in the context of the rationalist community.
Or if they drew a line in the sand and said, no, actually, it's not acceptable to give Norton the head of Rutherford B. Hayes, and we need policies on emperor-identified people to ensure that doesn't happen.
One point is that trans people are far more likely to be the victims rather than the perpetrators of sexual assault and violence, and you won’t have much luck convincing groups like rationalists to focus on the statistically smaller externalities of bad actors that they don’t know, versus the statistically more common occurrence of their friends being threatened, abused, raped or victimised.
But moreso I fail to see why trans people need any special policies. Assault or sexual harassment in bathrooms is illegal regardless of the perpetrator’s gender or biological sex; trans people should go where they pass/are safest. Segregating by biological sex is a losing battle; if trans men are forced to use the bathroom of their biological sex, they can get assaulted for being “men in women’s bathrooms”.
Rape in prisons should not be tolerated, people who sexually assault their cell mate should be isolated and dealt with appropriately.
Women’s sports is more thorny, but I don’t see anything wrong with banning anyone who went through male puberty or more generally went above a certain threshold of exogenous or endogenous androgens in the past (a former trans man who took T from ages 13-17 would have an advantage against cis women, a trans woman who took puberty blockers since the age of 12 would not).
Do you have a source?
More options
Context Copy link
The actual answer here is, on a fundamental level ‘then they should not be trans women, and this is a consequence they took upon themselves when they decided to become one’.
The practical level answer is, of course, that no one cares about technically-very-confused-woman using the men’s room/locker room/whatever, even if it’s de jure illegal. Just don’t extend special protections and ignore the problem because it isn’t one you have to worry about.
More options
Context Copy link
Source? I was under the impression that they're actually less likely to be the victims of any crime, although it is a pretty small sample size to draw any significant conclusions either way.
Okay. But they should at least edit in a little disclaimer that says their writings on trans people are meant to be read in the context of the rationalist community, right? (Actually, they should do that for basically everything, but that's a different story...)
Well, why do we have an age of consent? That could be considered a special policy for children, since violating someone's sexual consent is already against the law.
The reason is that there's enough gray area in the law that it's far more prudent to draw a line in the sand and add a special policy that forbids any sex with anyone below the age of 18. This way, we can cut the Gordian knot and end the otherwise interminable debates about whether a minor really consented to sex in this instance or not.
The meta-reason is that children are different enough than adults and thus need a special policy for them. So it goes for trans people too.
The trans person in the news story you linked to, Noah Ruiz, pleaded guilty to aggravated disorderly conduct. I'm guessing that this is referring to "defense mode":
So I doubt the story that Ruiz claims. The TikToks that Ruiz has posted don't really amount to anything significant, nor do they support the claims. It sounds like Ruiz started the altercation (and not for looking like a man in a woman's bathroom).
Again, I don't believe this narrative of trans people just being flat-out attacked if someone thinks they are doing the wrong thing.
Yes of course, that is already the policy. But my focus was on women being impregnated, because the easiest and simplest way to 100% prevent prison pregnancy is to separate by sex and disregard prisoners' trans identity.
It's a misconception that you can simply "stop" puberty. I mean, you can, but the rest of the body still develops. I would also object to this being possible in the first place because I don't believe taking puberty blockers is good for the physical health of any minor. They'll have many health problems for the rest of their life.
Here's a different idea - why not just let trans people compete with men, or create a separate sports category for trans people?
My understanding (sorry no source) is that this is largely due to a greatly disproportionate number of MtF transgender people working in the sex industry.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't get it. Why are we supposed to be concerned about the outlier of trans men being assaulted in women's bathrooms, but shrug off the outlier of women being assaulted or perved on by trans women?
If that was even slightly realistic, we wouldn't need sex segregation in prison to start with.
Do we know this for sure?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think some of the named are operating off the old paradigm of "use the person's new name, what harm? use their preferred pronouns, it's only polite". They're not caught up to the "do it or else, bigot" part of the current movement which is a lot more forceful, demanding, and extending into ordinary life of ordinary people, mostly because they're in the little bubble of "if Sally Sue Sparkles wants to turn up to work in a tutu with their beard in plaits, Sally Sue is perfectly entitled to do so and nobody will blink an eye".
Right, the way I usually describe it is we've gone beyond "live and let live" into "I live and you validate me, or else". Forcing people to repeat things they believe to be false can be incredibly damaging to them.
And I suspect they're not caught up because they do it willingly and so never incur the trans wrath, the same way no vegan has ever met an annoying pushy vegan, mysteriously.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s motivated reasoning. Gender weirdos are their in group and heavy criticism will not be permitted.
Yep you hit the nail on the head. These 'rationalist' circles are driven by extremely strong conformity bias and group think, since they all hang out with each other, live together, date each other, and go to their own special in-group events that are funded by billionaires.
It really does have a lot of aspects of a cult.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link