site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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.

24
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Seconded. I believe that gender dysphoria is a real medical condition, but also that some people may misidentify as transgender either out of honest confusion about their gender identity, or maliciously in bad faith.

A society in which self-ID is the legal standard has collapsed that distinction,

Maybe they collapse the distinction because they have to.

First of all : the point that surgery being the barrier excludes most transpeople is true.

Second: if we go with the "'gender dysphoria" theory of transness as opposed to the "gendered soul" theory of transness this creates real awkwardness. Trans will forever be tied to a medical condition which means it will always be subject to the charge of being a medical disorder.

After all: what is a "gender identity"? Why is this being projected on everyone as opposed to the mentally ill (what else would you call wanting to mutilate your body as your greatest hope of relief)? After all: we do not project a "skinny identity" on everyone and say that anorexics are the ones whose body doesn't their skinny identity or a "cripple identity" and say that people with alien limb syndrome simply have a mismatched identity with their healthy body so let's cut off their hand.

If dysphoria is our marker then we're talking about people with a legitimate psychological condition combined with a propensity for comorbidities like autism and narcissism. Much harder to use the same "it's the social stigma" argument gay rights used.

That is the irony about this entire movement: it depends heavily on the alleged huge suicide rate of transpeople to leverage sympathy yet this line of argument is very susceptible to trans people simply being mentally ill. I'm honestly surprised how successful tap-dancing around the contradictions are, but that might be because nobody dares to actually challenge constructs like "trans kids"

it will always be subject to the charge of being a medical disorder.

This is true, but I don't see why this a 'charge' rather than merely a fact that is not at odds with viewing medical transition as something often legitimate and necessary. After all, it may be, and in my view is, the case that transition is simply a/the treatment for, yes, the disorder of gender dysphoria.

You're not thinking like an activist. It poses a few problems:

  1. Trans identity would then be behind the gates of doctors which prevents self-definition (a central value on the left) and - more cynically - limits the numbers of "transpeople" and thus the demands one can make in their name. It's a founding tactic of the "LGBT movement" to seek strength in numbers.

  2. IMO this argument can easily slide into trouble, not least because it implies the metaphysical claim that TWAW is nothing more than a tool to manage/mollify mentally ill people and not fact. This immediately raises concerns about how far we should go in accommodation or how much you can judge a person for not playing along. They much prefer the deontological view implied by TWAW.

  3. What if we continue to study this condition and discover something...embarrassing that doesn't fit with the narrative (e.g. autogynephilia as a motive which doesn't really fit the narrative).

If activists are going to be allowed to take the maximal stance that allegedly avoids all of the problems (even if it places it on others) then why wouldn't they take it and avoid awkward issues?

After all, it may be

It may indeed be. But would this be the phrase used for allowing anorexics to starve themselves? We would need absolutely overwhelming evidence before we allowed this, especially with children. Do we have this for transpeople, especially the younger cohort that are unlike the previous generations?

See: this is what I'm talking about. I think there's been a rash of less-critical behavior around this precisely because it isn't just seen as treating a medical disorder but the next fight for human rights/dignity. This is why activists talk about "trans kids" and not "kids suffering from dysphoria, most of whom will likely desist after puberty unless on puberty blockers". The latter has far less force.

At this point Finland, Sweden, the UK have all rolled back and criticized some elements of childhood medical transition. America and Canada are not on the same boat and apparently are going full steam ahead. Would everyone have gone this far for a minority that was purely recognized as mentally ill?

As a society, we treat psychological problems (faulty software) with psychology (reconfiguration of internal reality) and psychiatric problems (faulty wetware) with medications.

Gender problems are treated by a combination of heavy body-altering hormones and vivisectionist plastic surgeries ala The Island of Dr. Moreau. Psychological treatment (“conversion therapy”) is illegal in many jurisdictions. This is considered the most humane treatment because of the high, high statistical likelihood of suicide at every stage including after transition.

Meanwhile, I personally know someone whose lifelong body dysmorphia was resolved with a single moment’s realization he’s described to me in detail. He was a species dysphoric furry, an amputee fetishist/wannabe, and an autogynophile-type trans-null-gender whose Erotic Target Location Error was seeing the essence of womanhood as penislessness, not vagina-having. He said that, up until that moment, he wished thousands of times he could just have “nullo” surgery to remove the hateful appendage, without a constructed vulva in its place. But because nullo is “unnatural,” he figured no ethical surgeon would have done it and never investigated it. Now he’s perfectly fine with being a four-limbed human man with functional male genitals.

It scares me to think that if nullo surgery (with hormone-replacement for the missing balls) was the societally approved genital transition for his issue, which turned out to be psychological, he’d be regretting it now after that realization, possibly suicidally.

Not actually included, good eyes!

He told me he used to always change in the toilet stalls in locker rooms at school and at pools because he was shy and didn’t want anyone to watch. His father confronted him once about not being a real man if he was afraid of being seen nude, and he remembers thinking, “Well, then I don’t want to be a man” with the finality of a decision.

It was that moment he remembered when he was pondering why he wanted to see a film about trans people. He said a hundred things clicked together at once and then fell away like a curtain. He told me that after that, he kept trying to feel the old dysmorphic ache for a different body for a year, like probing an empty tooth socket reflexively with your tongue, but it was just gone.