FlyOnTheWall
20d ago
To quote the video (in the video Trump says this in a joking way, breaking into a chuckle as he mentions the women's team):
President Trump: We'll do it at the White House... we'll just have some fun, we have medals for you guys. And we have to, I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team, you do know that?
United States men's hockey team: [Laughter and cheers]
Trump: I do believe I probably would be impeached, okay?
Team: [More laughter]
To steelman:
- The joke implicitly undermines the idea that women's sports is equal to men's sports - and they're instead a kind of annoying dysfunctional burden parasiting on the men's team's success ("sorry Timmy, but you have to bring your little brother along!")
- They were engaging positively with Trump and Kash, who are both Republicans, and who likely (certainly in Trump's case) hold anti-feminist views. So the team was normalising them, and Republicans in general, in the hockey fandom ("if there's one Nazi at a table of 10 people, it's table of 10 Nazis", "neutrality in the face of oppression", etc)
- The whole video shows the locker room dynamic for this team is very "bro"ish, so this kind of attitude will discourage some marginal women from going into hockey.
I get that you see nothing wrong with it (and I think it is fine too), but that is why some people (like Clarke) find it offensive - and there is an actual conflict between worldviews here, the feminists aren't just mistaken.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Okay, so rewinding all the way to the start when I made the original post. OP said:
I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show ...
And I pattern matched this to a general theme where people attack [progressive cause] by saying it is inherently "confusing" or "logically inconsistent": not just in practice, but that the entire idea of colourblindness, DEI, gay/trans rights, etc somehow doesn't make "logical" sense.
resolve your feelings of personal inconsistency
I don't have a coherent view on the moral side of gender ideology, and I didn't want to try and sort through my feelings on the issue (then or now) and commit to a stance on that question under my pseudonym.
So I deliberately avoided taking any such stance, and just stated this theoretical framework that explains the various demands of the movement as part of a unifying theory, without saying if it is good or bad.
what changed in you or your life that made you look at things a different way.
Very roughly, my "story" is that:
- I was a progressive (and yes, I "dealt with gender identity issues")
- I decided HBD was true, so abandoned my old ideology wholesale ("Every "non-binary" I know of is either a woman or a male homosexual", amongst other things), adopting what I guess was an "alt right" view of things.
- I later decided that I'm not comfortable with that morality. I still believe in HBD (so I can't just be a progressive again, as much as I often want to be), but I think all the important moral questions are very gray for the most part, and have no strong stance on them.
- In particular, I am no longer stridently anti-trans (or "sexual degeneracy") - as I said above, I don't have a coherent stance on it.
Also I realise I was ambiguous when I said I adopted the theory. I meant I adopted the language definition parts of the theory on the Motte, I don't advocate (again, it's a gray area) for trying to make society adopt the theory.
This is a low stakes personal stylistic choice, on the level of capitalising Black/White (and with no neutral answer) - hence my willingness to just change it when someone gave examples where it makes my writing less clear to others and myself.
If you try to craft a persuasive argument independent from your own reasons, you're simply going to construct a worse argument for your position... if it were a better argument than your own reasoning, it would become the reason you believe it!
I fully agree with this when the position in question is about objective reality. But when it comes to stuff about subjective morality, like, say, whether or not the government should change the definition of "mother" to include a transgender person of the male sex - then it's all a matter of taste and personal experiences.
And for moral questions - yes that probably is the best way to persuade. But this mode of discourse feels sort of "pointless": both sides just take turns sharing really emotive stories, and nothing is really learned except about the person sharing their stories.
You can share with us how you came to your own change of heart - and it might unironically be really emotional to read (e.g. someone killed themselves over a lack of affirmation), but then I'm sure an anti-trans person can share a similarly emotional story (e.g. I remember there was a post on the Wellness thread once about a guy struggling to convince his friend not to transition their son)
And where does this go? Nowhere it seems - there's just a bunch of different perspectives. What is the best ice cream flavour? Favourite color? Best way to cook a steak?
I think I can read my comment on a formulation of gender theory in many years time and still stand by it, because I just put forward a possible set of rules, without saying that they are good/bad for [reasons].
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
At the cost of not having any substance beyond semantics.
It's not really possible to make a definition based on biology, since one of the core tenets of modern transgenderism is inclusivity of anyone with dysphoria. Trying to base it on things like eostrogen levels, "female brains", etc will end up excluding people who still have dysphoria.
The only factor that can be considered is desire.
Your difficulties offering a steelman that is both consistent and meaningful might be indicative of the validity of the philosophy.
It depends what you mean by "valid"? I think this philosophy clearly captures a desire, and way to manifest this desire into reality (whilst still constrained by reality)
If your redefinition succeeds - as the transparent redefinition it's advertised at - all that happens is that "father" now means "parent who wishes to be a man"
At the very least, this will make it impossible to refer to someone's sex (which is helpful if someone dislikes their sex) - and in cases of low information, people might just be forced to assume a man is actually a male - it is true that most people whose gender identity is "man" are actually XY-having males.
And also some people might just have trouble adjusting to the new defintiions, and start confusing map for territory and thinking of "men" as males. Or at least retain associations of the word "man" to the old concept of "man".
Meanwhile, forcibly changing the language will make other people unhappy.
Yes, it's a tradeoff.
Did you? If so, I missed it. I'm reading your comment again, and the best I can find is this:
I gave the following definition: "Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be (EDIT: mostly) male/female" (this is a definition of gender identity, because man/woman refers to gender identity under gender theory)
It amazes me that so many proponents of gender ideology have yet to grasp this basic fact: when defining a word, if you use that word in the definition, it renders the definition circular and hence useless.
I am aware of that problem, which is why I made sure my definition references sex ("male/female"), which is already defined.
Its proponents claim that they just want to redefine words to be more inclusive of trans people. But they don't. They want to muddy the waters such that the old words (like "woman", "mother" and "girl") no longer denote female people only, but still retain the positive connotations people have for those words.
But they are trying to make the definitions more inclusive of trans people. You are literally just described the mechanism by which they make things more inclusive - by trying to blur people's mental categories. In practice, this often does include lies / inconsistencies, but the blurring can be done without having to lie (e.g. via my construction of gender identity)
But if he uses both definitions, jumping back and forth depending on the needs of the moment, the rhetorical point he's making and the audience to whom he is speaking: then I can no longer trust any sentence that comes out of his mouth that contains the word "year"
Sure, and in practice many activists do switch the meanings. But I'm saying that we can still have gender theory (and the various policy implications) without having to be inconsistent.
So I ask you this: are you really advocating redefining the word "woman" such that it only refers to "a person of either sex with a female gender identity"?
From the start, I made it clear that I was just providing a consistent framework for gender that could be used in theory. An easy way to use preferred pronouns without lying.
But since you've asked my personal stance, and have brought up specific things I've said, it has made me second-guess whether I'm personally consistent and not the young-earth guy with this stuff, and whether I actually know what I mean when I say things all the time (regarding gender)
My personal policy is to be okay with both systems. And to use the gender system myself (but when speaking to an unsympathetic audience, make it clear what I mean, e.g. by stressing "cis") - but be willing to listen to and understand others when they are clearly using the old system (and I can use the old system when defining gender theory)
- "Every "non-binary" I know of is either a woman or a male homosexual" - This one was written prior to me committing to my policy on pronouns/gender.
- "... I would view it the same to a heterosexual male gynaecologist treating an attractive young woman." - ditto
- "...what if a normal woman literally decided, against common sense, to walk around in a bad part of town at night in a miniskirt alone?" - so, my point is valid irregardless of whether we refer to woman-gendered people or XX-havers. But my internal mental state was partially "blurred" here, which is not good (technically "normal woman" is fine, because being cis is normal, but that wasn't what I was actually thinking at the time)
- "Eleanor is a (White) woman. Her flaws are being lecherous, loud, rude, and gluttonous. Generally she just acts as the oppposite of a woman... Janet is a (White) woman..." - yes, this is a violation of the policy I have. Since I was making a non-gender point, I forgot about my policy. Which is exactly the problem you have pointed out with the young-earth guy using the normal meaning of year sometimes.
- "Also the person who said it was a woman (in the normal sense of the word: an AFAB, uterus-haver, etc)" - this is not a violation? The person was a (female) woman, and I was just stressing that the woman was a woman in the old system as well (because the cis/trans distinction is important here)
So, actually, I have failed to follow my (until now unwritten) policy, and I don't think it is workable in practice (I will eventually forgot to do the substitutions, in a few months when this conversation fades from memory) - I'll go back to the old system (on the Motte) as default, and mark clearly where I am using the gender system (i.e. what most people do)
But moving away from my own personal failing/refusal to adhere to the theory, the theory is still consistent!
... and a "female gender identity" is the state of "wanting to be a woman in most regards"
It is the state of wanting to be a female in most regards (which in gender theory is still the normal thing - an XX-haver), you misquoted me.
Just using normal language - surely it makes sense for a man to say "I want to be a woman", right? And the definitions of gender theory flow from trying to accomodate this desire ("dysphoria") - we change the meaning of woman to mean "wanting to be a woman", where the second "woman" is the old kind of woman (and leave the synonym, now semantically distinct, "female" as the original concept)
It never bottoms out at anything.
It bottoms out at sex, after just one step: "[gender] = wanting to be (mostly) [sex]"
Suffice to say that your attempted "steelman" of gender ideology has left me no less confused than I was before reading it, and no less convinced that it's just a fundamentally incoherent belief system from top to bottom.
I don't see what is confusing about inventing a concept to refer to the state of "wanting to be (mostly) [opposite sex]", in order to help make people with that desire feel happier.
It causes concept blurring and just generally makes it harder to reason about things you care about (this is by design, because most people care about the difference between male/female) - in fact, as your callout on my old comments show, it very difficult to talk this way over a long time without slipping up.
But it is possible to adhere to this ideology without being inconsistent or lying. It doesn't require you to think false things, just to avoid thinking/saying certain true things. If you want to use a boo-word, I think "censorship" is more appropriate.
Honestly, I get the impression that even you don't fully understand this belief system or what it entails (just like Freddie deBoer).
It's not a single belief system, because there is no central authority. Lots of people can make theories (like the one I gave), that roughly overlap in spirit and conclusions (e.g. "trans X are X" must somehow arise from the theory), but will contradict eachother (and in some cases, contradict themselves) - it's like how Catholics and Protestants are both Christian, but contract eachother on some stuff.
I tried to provide a consistent theory, to prove most of the demands of the movement can be made in a logically consistent way. To challenge the general anti-woke liberal attack on the grounds of pure logic without making value judgements about lifestyles being "wrong".
This was quite rambly. So I will repeat my main points:
- There is a non-circular definition of gender identity: "[gender] = wants to be mostly [sex]", and the wider theory is self-consistent.
- I thought I personally worked with this system without having self-deceive or mislead others when writing on the Motte. But you gave some examples where I did not
- I am not personally going to use this system any more, because I'm not willing to put in that level of effort
- But the theory does remain logically consistent, despite its practical inconvenience.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Yes, good point. It seems these gender idealogues are trying to hijack the language. Why can't I have a convenient way to refer to, and distinguish, men and women as those terms have been traditionally used?
Because when wider society thinks this way, it makes the lives of those with genders incongruent to their sex more difficult.
...Theoretically, there is no contradiction there: We are just using words in different ways. So why is it that I must respect his definitions but he is not required to respect mine?
There is no contradiction - that is why there is this cultural conflict. Who tells whom how the words are used? Neither way of thinking is inconsistent or based on an incorrect map of objective reality - there is just a question of whose feelings and desires are priotised over the other.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
The most straightforward conclusion I can draw is that the rhetorical separation between sex and gender only exists because they worked backwards from the conclusion that they wanted to be treated like the desired sex in every way possible, and invented an argument that they convinced themselves of in order to square the circle.
Gender theory itself isn't an argument, but just a way to view the world. And it definitely arose from wanting to be the opposite sex, as you described. But "I want to be a man/woman" is a totally coherent concept.
The "sex is not gender" argument doesn't fly here because the real source of the conflict is that the state is specifying sex and the plaintiff wants gender to be the standard ... The actual motivation for the lawsuit is over whether the law is allowed to use mother/father to refer to sex or whether Gender has stolen the word "mother" for all purposes.
I am not denying this. Trans activism is trying to make wider society adopt the gender theory lens of viewing things, make it the "standard" as you say.
I'm just pointing out that this is not something that can be objectively proven false, and is just a moral preference.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
I have seen people arguing that because now they are taking HRT they are in fact biologically women and thus indeed the sex, not just the gender, they identify as
To be clear, I don't believe this, and any similar claims about biological reality.
...they are pushing an agenda towards "I want a legally enforceable piece of paper that says I am too a real woman and if you deny that then I can sue the arse off you for hurting my fee-fees".
I mean... yeah? That's not even being denied here, she is just arguing this is a good thing (and I was explaining the logically consistent framework behind this demand)
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
There aren't any substantial actual claims in there, just a demand for changing language
Precisely - I'm trying to give a formulation that doesn't require lies or logical inconsistency.
so what benefit does this redefinition offer?
It makes people with gender dysphoria less sad. And also some might just prefer a language / culture like this for aesthetic reasons.
I'm not saying this is an obviously worthwhile price to pay, in fact there isn't an objectively correct answer for this sort of subjective moral question. There are just people's differing preferences
They aren't, though
I was referring to the fact that the categories of "male/female" are so basic and obvious, they are hard to define. And that people just think of them as primitive concepts in practice - you gave a definition (and it is a good one!), but I doubt you ever thought of man/woman needing a definition prior to gender ideology.
In case you are pattern matching me to those who try and deny sex exists, I want to make clear I am not saying the "old system" is in any way inconsistent or incoherent. I agree male/female are real, meaningful concepts.
Okay, but I'll ask this question for the millionth time – what is gender identity?
I explained my definition of gender identity immediately after asserting it's existence and the corresponding language changes.
What, then, to do with the male people who purport to "identify as" women and yet make no effort to make themselves more like women than they could be e.g. the ~95% of trans-identified males who don't undergo bottom surgery?
Ok, this is a good point. I will then amend my definition (I have edited my original comment) of [gender] to mean "wanting to be like [sex] in most regards".
So we can still have a trans woman with a penis, as long as she wants to be a female in most other ways, like wearing dresses, being perceived as a female, etc
What gives you the impression that the complainant in this case had a "sincere desire" to be female? I can think of few things less typically female than impregnating someone with your fully intact and functional penis.
See my above ammendment. Obviously the perception of sincerity depends on your own personal judgement, but I was more referring to cases where the person is likely trying to be a woman just to get a temporary benefit (like the situation where a male is sentenced to prison and then afterwards claims to want to be a woman)
Is your claim then that this child, wholly unique in the annals of human history, has no male biological parent?
No, that would be insane. This is just a mundane change of definitions - under gender theory, "father" refers to gender identity instead of sex. The child has a male and female parent, like every other human child - but the male parent has a woman gender identity.
Because that's what the word "father" means in a legal context
Part of the goals of the theory is to change all of these definitions to refer to gender instead of sex, including in the law.
And you wonder why people assert that gender ideology is anti-scientific claptrap?
As I conceded at the very start:
I am aware that the stance in practice varies between activists, and they often contradict one another
I am providing a formulation of gender ideology that would allow for most of the stuff that happens in practice, without having to need to resort to lies or logical inconsistency.
You seem to conflate changing definitions with changing the underlying meaning of statements and lying. Addressing an analogy you made elsewhere that isn't gender specific:
Well, I don't care if an official proclamation from a state body that "the earth is 6,000 thousand years old" is followed by a footnote clarifying that the word "year" is here defined as a unit of time equal to 756,667 rotations around the sun. That might make creationists feel more "included", but it's still a lie.
Again that is not a lie! It is just a redefinition. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and under this change it would still be that old, but we just wouldn't be able to talk about the old unit of a year, and instead have to talk about the new invented unit.
I agree this, and gender theory, is an inconvenience and makes reasoning about things more difficult. But that is not lying.
I already expressed my thoughts on why this case in particular is not actually about transgenderism downthread, and the decision doesn't contradict her being a woman.
EDIT: I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.
I don't see anything twisted in this logic at all.
I'll start with my steelman for transgender ideology, so you know where I'm coming from. I am aware that the stance in practice varies between activists, and they often contradict one another, but I suspect the framing I give below would still make most anti-trans people unhappy, so it is not about "twisted logic", but rather a values difference.
Without any kind of gender theory:
- Humans can be separated into the categories "male/men" and "female/women" (male/men, woman/female and sex/gender are synonyms)
- These categories are hard to verbalise. There are a bunch of single criteria (XX vs XY, penis vs vagina, ovaries vs not ovaries, etc) that almost totally overlap, and deal with most cases. And they all make up the definition: a woman is still a woman after a hysterectomy (because she satisfies all the other things)
- But the existence of these categories, and the way we assign people into them, is common-sense to everyone (outside of extremely rare medical cases)
Let's call this the "old" system ("cis(hetero)normativity", I suppose)
Now let's make binary transgender ideology (just 2 genders for now):
- I define a new sort of identity marker (next to stuff like race, sex, age, etc) called "gender identity" (or "gender" for short)
- This is a redefinition of the old concept of gender. We will still keep the word "sex" to refer to the old-fashioned thing above.
- I also redefine "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" to now refer to gender identity, instead of sex
- Same for any other gendered (pro)nouns (fireman, mother, lesbian, etc) - we can only refer to sex by male/female (and references to sex should be avoided where possible)
- Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be (EDIT: mostly) male/female (this, but unironically)
To address the typical complaints/questions about gender ideology:
- This is not tethered to claims about objective reality: nothing about trans women having "female brains", the effect eostrogen has on sports performance, etc - this is a purely moral framework
- There are no weird logical contortions about how sex is a spectrum. Sex is real, but it just shouldn't talked about for moral reasons.
- In this framework, it does not count as a "lie" to use trans people's pronouns. It is merely an acceptance of a redefinition of language, and agreement to look at things a different way (people might still be uncomfortable with this, but it wouldn't be an objective lie, like saying "the sky is red")
- The definition of man/womanhood is not-circular (it goes back to referencing the already established notion of sex)
- There is the issue of practically judging "sincerity" of desire. But I think most anti-trans people are unhappy even in cases where there is clearly a sincere desire (e.g. this one!)
- And as for the general "Is a [bunch of masculine features] person really a woman? Seriously?" type "questions": yes. That is what this framework includes under the category of "woman" - you can of course morally oppose the framework on this basis. But it doesn't prove the framework itself is illogical.
With this framework, let's address your complaint.
"You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!"
Correct, she is not a father. She is a woman, and fathers are men. Calling her a father is in direct violation of transgender ideology ("transphobic", if we wish to pathologise it)
Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women
Individuals with "functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant" are males, and are typically men. But they do not have to be men, and in this case, the individual is not a man, she is a woman.
Now of course, this framing I gave above doesn't get respected by TRAs in real life. Indeed, the woman in this very case makes a mistake:
“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.
She is supposed to say same-gender marriage! (Or gay/lesbian, which sounds less awkward than "same-gender")
Remind me again about how, silly normies, gender is not the same as sex and we're not making any claims that biological sex is the same thing as preferred gender, so just shut up and give in on our totally reasonable requests?
You are right to call this out. My most charitable explanation is that she just misspoke when she said "same-sex" (other than that, she didn't say anything contradictory) - though it does seem that as of late, TRAs has started conflating the 2 concepts (more egregiously are the terms MtF and FtM, which refer to sex!)
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Why? What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father? At least in the women's sports and prison rape questions I can see the negative externalities, here I don't see how it affects your life at all...
If we grant the premise that it can affect someone's life via sports/prison, then the question of the extent to which trans women should be recognised as women in any facet of life becomes relevant. If she is treated as a woman in something unrelated to sports/prison, then it makes it easiser to argue to treat her as a women in sports/prison too.
You seem to agree that the child should legally have a right to Irish citizenship so presumably the outcome will be the same either way.
Again, I fail to see the effect on your life besides you getting angry about a news story and complaining on the internet.
The kid is going to get citizenship either way if I'm understanding correctly, it's just a question of what gender/sex the state recognizes this individual as?
See above.
Having said that... I don't think this particular case is an example of anti-trans legislation. Quoting the article:
The woman submitted that the Department of Foreign Affairs informed her that “under Irish law, as applied to date, the mother of the child is the woman who gives birth to the child and therefore the child would derive their citizenship through that mother”.
This law discriminates against this woman on the basis of her infertility, not her AMAB status. And since there is no widespread movement to try and declare infertile cis women as not-real-women, I don't think this, to quote the defendant, "invalidates her legal status as a woman"
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
As I said, there will be some kind of backlash when lots of innocents are victimised, and their stories are told. I think somehow this would lead to the problem being solved (e.g. by increased police patrols in the area) - and I'm advocating we shouldn't blame the victims for this, because that makes society more accepting of the crime.
And I'm coming at this from the angle of how the whole of society should operate, as opposed to one-(wo)man operations where someone walks around as bait and executes street criminals.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Your example requires 4th order effects? I think anything past 2nd order starts to get into low probability land
This seems totally orthogonal to whether positive/negative rights are meaningful. You are arguing that on net, the activist's behaviour is bad for their cause, which may be true.
But I am just pointing out that the decision to not go along with their demands counts as a violation of a negative right. Because that specific 4th order effect I gave is a negative right that is being violated.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Sorry, I mixed up positive/negative rights there (I have edited my comment to correct this)
But you can just reframe positive rights as negative rights, e.g.
- Positive: Trans women have the right to use the women's locker room
- Negative: People have the right not to be excluded from locker rooms on the basis of their sex
And just generally, "I have a right to X" --> "I have a right to not be deprived of X"
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Both are virtuous in the sense that the problems would go away if most of society adopted the habit of exercising their right to walk around public spaces. There would initially be lots of rapes/muggings, but then there would be a backlash and something would be done to get rid of the evil predators.
When people instead opt to just avoid those areas, they cede those areas to the predators.
And on an individual level, the predators would now actually have committed a crime they could be charged for (instead of just being menacing but legal)
Perhaps we mean different things by virtuous. I use virtuous to mean pro-social behaviour - there is no requirement for some sort heroism or struggle (but it includes stuff like that too)
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
They can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think @quiet_NaN is being literal with the hypothetical here.
As in, what if a normal woman literally decided, against common sense, to walk around in a bad part of town at night in a miniskirt alone? (Sometimes it is nice to go on a night walk, and she likes her miniskirt as an outfit)
So there is no crime or even unwholesomeness involved at all on her part (I don't think this is a good analogy for Pretti though)
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Well actually negative rights is a pretty defined concept.
I disagree - all "positive rights" can be reframed as negative by considering nth order effects.
The argument the activist gave was a bad one - as you said, he could just not go to the party.
But what about: Corvos was encouraging society to view David Bowie as not a bad person, undermining feminism / "rape culture", and making it more likely for people to vote for right wing things, making it more likely for laws to be passed that oppress the activist. Therefore Corvos was infringing on his friend's negative rights.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
This is perfectly normal politics. These are simply table stakes. Government is about making people do things with the threat of violence. Which people, and why, are left to be determined by the people.
I agree. It's just that when activists bring up this true fact (at least, the part about how their side is being oppressed), I think the honest (but very uncomfortable) counter-argument is: "yes, I do want to oppress you and restrict your rights, not because I hate you, but because each of our respective rights infringe on the other's"
But WC's characterisation of "if your speech in an abstract sense might harm others in some abstract way" seems to imply the opposite - that political speech doesn't cause harm to others. I am arguing that it in fact does.
Democracy is supposed to be an alternative to murder and war, so when someone participating in Democracy as intended gets murdered for it, it's far beyond the pale.
Agreed, and I think that description definitely describes Kirk. To me, Pretti doesn't count under this, because he committed a crime, was resisting arrest, and just generally not speaking peacefully (excluding nth order effects) like Kirk was.
But to leftists / liberals, these sorts of "0000001mm away from their faces" struggles with LEOs is seen as an integral part of Democracy ("ACAB" - so it is important to constantly antagonise them to make sure they know it's not okay to ever overreach), in the same way conservatives would view people like Kirk making speeches even when parts of the speeches might come across as offensive.
And YoungAchamian is pointing out that both of these are technically legal, and to their own side, it is the right and proper way to do things, and to the other side it violates the spirit of Democracy, if not the letter.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
My understanding is that the legal system draws a distinction between "move, I want that seat" and "hey nigger move your bitch ass or I'll rape your ugly retarded mother,"
You've changed the hypothetical completely - originally it was someone being verbally offensive, and was talking about their own rape. Now your hypothetical person is trying to forcefully displace someone from their seat. Neither of these (not even the more banal "move, I want that seat") are okay to say - and I would be open to a self-defense argument there.
but it certainly is a sign of poor judgement.
Sure. But I disagree that poor judgement in this case amounts to any level of guilt. Even though we live in an imperfect world where crime occurs, we should avoid blaming people for being victimised to avoid legitimising crime.
Breaking into a private biker bar and shouting "rape me pussies." Yeah... that one is your fault.
If you break into a private establishment, then yes, things become grayer. I am okay with actual lethal violence in that case, and might even overlook rape - just on the principle that once you trespass you essentially forfeit all your rights.
But again, this doesn't map to the original hypothetical, because "the bad part of town" is not private property (not even at night), and the public has a (pro-social) right to be there.
...but at some point people need to understand that their actions have consequences and they become part of the blame equation.
Only if those actions are inherently bad (like breaking and entering, obstructing the duties of law enforcement, etc), if they are good/neutral, then the only people to blame are the criminals who enforce these wholly illegitimate consequences.
Yeah man, sometimes if your speech in an abstract sense might harm others in some abstract way
I did not follow the guy, but looking at his Wikipedia page, he advocated the following:
- Banning trans women from using women's locker rooms
- A ban on trans gender-affirming care ("We must ban trans-affirming care — the entire country...")
- The right for people to burn Pride and BLM flags.
- Not wearing masks during COVID
- Criminalising abortion
I have worded the above very carefully, to reflect stuff he literally said (as opposed to things that could be reasonably inferred, like "I believe marriage is one man, one woman" -> ban gay marriage)
The mechanism is not "abstract". He directly advocated for society to do things that would deprive certain people of (EDIT: positive) rights. Nor is the harm "abstract" - it is a form of harm to not let trans women use the women's locker rooms, prevent them from getting hormones, not letting LGBT people live in a society where no one burns pride flags, etc
This logic cuts both ways, e.g. the trans activist's words attempt to deprive him of the right to live in a cisheteronormative society. But this logic is sound (both ways)
I'm not really going anywhere with this, because this sort of thinking basically ends with endless conflict. I can't think of a better practical option than just tabooing this sort of inference. But I do want to point out, for the sake of epistemic clarity, that it is not as simple as you claim.
FlyOnTheWall
1mo ago
Echoing my comment to @ThomasdelVasto:
As a more immediate note - if you wear a gun in front of cops you have certainly behavioral responsibilities that he did not meet on multiple occasions.
Agreed. The cops are doing an necessary job, so there is a tradeoff between exercising your rights and obstructing them from their duties.
...he did it while wearing a miniskirt and making racial slurs and daring people to assault him. This certainly doesn't ethically clear any rapists in full
It doesn't ethically clear the rapists at all. Unlike LEOs, Criminals are not a necessary part of society, and no one is ever has "behavioural responsibilities" to avoid provoking them to commit crimes. Actually it would be especially important to make sure the rapists were prosectued to the full extent of the law, to make it clear to everyone that it is never okay to commit crimes, even if someone verbally offends you.
He would also be a guilty party for being hostile and antisocial (but his guilt would be dwarfed by the rapists')
These people are explicitly trying to provoke violence. That would be like if a super hot woman walks around a crime riddled area in a bikini repeatedly telling all the men how horny she is and that she bets they'd like to get some of this.
If a woman walked around anywhere and told men "how horny she is and that she bets they'd like to get some of this", then I think she should get in (mild) trouble for some kind of public indecency (and maybe she should also get in trouble for wearing a bikini )
If she got raped/assaulted/etc, then the blame would fall solely on the attacker(s). In fact, assuming she did get victimised (and not just a bunch of disgusted looks for being obscene), she would actually be acting virtuously.
When law-abiding citizens make the selfish (but completely understandable, given modern progressive attitudes to crime) decision to just avoid "crime-riddled areas", "no-go zones", etc, it helps hide how bad those places are: whilst an actual crime incident is objective and legible in statistics, it's much harder to quantify this sort of "latent" crime which would have hypothetically taken place if someone had walked down the street at night alone, but didn't happen because they predicted that and stayed away instead.
People should walk down the streets anywhere, at anytime, no matter how vulnerable and/or sexually alluring. And the police should come down hard when a criminal preys on said person. And if a criminal keeps doing the same thing, they should be permanently removed from society - they aren't Minecraft mobs who naturally spawn whenever there is a low population density.
I think the actual distinction between Pretti and the miniskirt hypothetical is that ICE fulfills a necessary role in society, so there is a tradeoff to be made in letting them do their jobs vs preventing overreach. There is no such trade-off for a criminal.
... especially from liberals. "So... basically you want an underclass of underpaid, easily exploited labor with no real rights so your grocery bills will stay low?"
I disagree this is in conflict with the liberal (i.e. pro-illegal-immigrant wellbeing) position.
Allowing the illegal immigrant to stay in the country is clearly in their interest. No matter how bad the conditions are, we know this is a good deal for them, because their revealed preference is to stay in the country as an illegal.
They are only "underpaid" relative to a legal citizen. But the liberal isn't able to give them citizenship - so trying to get society to look the other way and let them stay is the next best thing. And ditto for exploitation.
In general I find this line of thinking - in which it constitutes "exploitation" to give someone in a really bad situation a kinda bad option - very odd. See also:
- It is morally neutral to just not help some random homeless woman (we're both doing it right now)
- It is (extremely) virtuous to give her money, no-strings-attached, so she can get off the streets and back on her feet.
- It is villainous (worse than just not helping at all) to do the above via hiring a prostitute. Even though she prefers to make the trade, this constitutes "exploitation".
The end result of this logic seems to incentivise avoiding interacting with suffering people at all.
“IQ scores by ethnic group in a nationally-representative sample of 10-year old American children” by John G.R. Fuerst, writing as “Chuck” on HumanVarieties.org, May 2023
In a 2023 paper, Mr. Fuerst tried to rank the intelligence of children across ethnic groups. But the sample size for the vast majority of groups was far too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
The sample sizes are indeed pretty small for most of the races: only 7 / 30 have sample mean std error < 1.0 (I am referring to the raw M column):
- Many adjacent ranks are close to random guessing (IQ(Chinese) > IQ(Japanese) w.p. 64%)
- And multiple testing makes this even worse (I didn't choose to compare e.g. Chinese vs Japanese before looking at the data)
But... there is an obvious and natural comparison to make, that pretty much everyone on either side would have in mind before looking at any specific data: Black vs White! The sample sizes here are 1.5k and 5.9k, so the sample mean error is less than 0.5. And the M difference is ~40, so actually the data does "support" HBD (given the sd gap here, it feels like understatement to say "supports" as if we just found p = 0.03 or something)
And in fact, as a bonus: there are 30 groups, and 2*norm_cdf(-4) * nCr(30, 2) = 0.02, so if we only take 8sd gaps as significant, we can make all the admissible comparisons simultaeneously with 98% certainty. The data supports, e.g.
- IQ(Chinese) > IQ(Dominicans) (Despite samples sizes of just 81 and 38)
- IQ(White) > IQ(Central / South American)
and many other comparative IQ statements (but not all, this is a pretty conservative analysis: IQ(White Cuban) ?? IQ(Black Carribean)) that would be completely obvious to some random redneck guy.
But the sample size for the vast majority of groups was far too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
If he'd just made a more nebulous claim like "[the] NIH Toolbox battery is fluid-intelligence loaded." (like the original paper itself conceded!), this would have been much more debatable. But instead he told a straight up untruth.
I just cannot think of a charitable take here, it seems to be a mixture between:
- McIntire is pretending to have expertise / understanding he does not have. It sure seems like he skimmed the paper, saw Chuck's disclaimer "Bear in mind that the sample sizes are often small and so the corresponding estimates are imprecise", and then changed "[some] estimates" to "[any] ranking" in his head, because they are related concepts.
- McIntire understands what the data implies, but he is running cover for the "good guys", saying random stuff like this to trick normies for the greater good (I can get behind this kind of thinking to an extent, but this brazen level of deceit feels too far)
As stated, this is a fine and consistent view (professional sports is ultimately about entertaining the fans, so it is up to the fans to decide what is entertaining), and the standard one I hear in defence of women's sports.
But do you actually believe this as stated? If we look at Olympic medalists in the men's 100m sprint, all 33 of the Gold/Silver/Bronzes since 1984 have been Black (the closest exception being Marcell Jacobs, who is Black x White) And looking even further, the remainder have been White.
If the committee were to split the 100m into a Black, White, and Other Race category (with the Black category in practice being the open category, and the White category open to any non-Black), would you consider a winner worthy of celebration? It is still true that an exceptional (amongst non-(Black/White)s) runner is exceptional.
And even more generally - many people's physical peaks will vary based on genetics (but in ways that don't count as an actual disability, e.g. a healthy man who cannot put on muscle very well) - would you also consider them reaching their respective peaks as not only worthy of celebration (I'm happy with celebrating it) but of deserving a special segregated category (that is treated as equal to the open category) with its own parallel medals?
I'm guessing that you don't (certainly, this is an unpopular view amongst women's sports defenders as a whole) - so I'm not sure how to defend women's sports (and disabled sports) without somehow privileging the genetic shortcoming (vis-a-vis physical sports) of XX chromosomes (and the various genetic defects that count as medical disabilities) over any other kind of shortcoming.
And I don't think it is a bad thing to privilege XX-having (women really are special in the big picture of society) - but I don't think it makes sense in the generalised abstract "everyone should be celebrated for reaching their full potential" way you seem to be gesturing towards.
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