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 -
This assumption probably won’t count as anything new, but it seems to me that the overall leftist strategy in the current culture war over (in essence) MtF transsexual boxers in the Olympic games hinges entirely on the following unstated assumptions: a) TV viewers generally aren’t that interested in women’s sports in the first place b) the sort of sports where these particular MtF athletes seem to predominantly want to excel at are generally seen as low-status in the eyes of suburban middle-class Blue Tribe normies c) the relative number of cissexual women genuinely interested in such sports is insignificantly low.
Imane Khalid is not trans. There’s a reasonable- but not ironclad- argument that she has an intersex condition which should preclude her from competing in the women’s division, but she just objectively isn’t trans.
Something just finally clicked for me.
For years, and years and years and years, the bailey of trans was defended with the motte of intersex. Arguments about how it occurs in nature played loose and fast with definitions of trans or intersex. Arguments about how it's genetic or something you were born with involved similar free association between trans or intersex. For 10 years the steelman for trans acceptance and "the science" involved quoting studies about intersex people.
And now, suddenly, when the wrong people are conflating the two in a bad way "Woah woah woah, she's not trans, she's intersex! There is a huge fucking difference, can't you tell? idiot."
And I almost fell for it. It's so easy to get caught up in current year and that tepid thread of logic from all of only a few years ago that brought us to this point get's washed away.
This is silly, it's important to actually get the facts straight and one shouldn't respond as if attacked when corrected on the facts. The question of how to categorize people with rare genetic defects and whether to rule them in or out of sports competitions are entirely different to the same questions applied to natal males or natal females who identify with the opposite sex and undergo treatment to approximate as much as possible the body and experience of the opposite sex. One can come to the same conclusion on both, and I broadly do, but we must actually keep our thinking straight here.
The suspicion is that those facts are being weaponized, and that the same people doing the "correcting" would be soft-pedalling them or even being actively misleading if they didn't fit the narrative they wanted to push (and, in fact, have a history of doing just that). You can't (well, okay, shouldn't) make arguments for years on end that rely on conflating "trans" and "intersex" and then get all huffy and indignant when people confuse the two in a way that you don't find politically convenient.
(Generic "you", not necessarily you personally.)
That's exactly the problem though. Recognizing the motte and Bailey doesn't lead naturally to therefore attack the motte harder. Instead you recognize and you keep the fight in the bailey, you endeavor to cut off the motte so they can't support the bailey.
Here, I fear that those concerned about trans participation in women's sport are setting themselves up for a fall. Everyone from JK to DJT have publicly attacked Khelif, who is going to leave Paris with a medal around her neck. Perfectly timed for a TV special on CBS Sunday morning, where the crew takes a look at her life growing up, her training, how she never knew about her DSD diagnosis, talking head from the IOC comes in to say it's fair, the "attacks" she suffered, and then gets some talking head with an MD to come on and say "Intersex disorders are very common and gender is really complicated!"
Conflating rare invisible intersex disorders, or just having (eurocentric) masculine features, with being trans is what the TRAs want. They want terfs to make themselves look bad attacking sympathetic targets.
It bears noting two things-
One, Imane Khelif is an extremely sympathetic target. She collected scrap metal to fund bus fair to her boxing gym she attended over the objections of her strict Islamic father in rural Algeria. She isn't trans, she probably has a rare intersex disorder that nobody in Algeria has ever heard of, and being non-gender conforming in Islamic Arab societies is not fun, especially when it isn't your fault and nobody can figure out why you aren't like the other girls.
Two, a lot of the core population of the west has their well of sympathy completely exhausted. I don't care about the oppressed Arab woman rising above the odds anymore. Trans genocide? Bring it on, and if some unfortunate intersex get caught in the crossfire that's the cost of doing business.
I'll go a bit further. At a certain point, it feels emasculating to have to give all of the caveats about how obviously it's a complicated issue and everyone deserves dignity and so on while your enemies just call you a bigot when they're strong and then putter around pettifogging about hormone classes and doing it by weight when they're weak.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link