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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32851 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm thinking about the trans rights debate.

How is asking women to give up their spaces for trans women different to how we asked white people to give up their segregated spaces to people of color back in the day?

  • -17

If there's anything at all to this question, it'd be much better when elaborated in a few paragraphs at least, rather than just one provocative sentence. Good sounding thing [x] is superficially similar to bad sounding thing [y]. Did you know democrats want to SEGREGATE black people with affirmative action? Hitler also segregated. 10k comments, 5k quote tweets, 30k retweets, 50k likes.

Did you mean "white people and black people more likely"?

I accidentally posted the comment before finishing typing it, meant to delete it and start over, but apparently deleting it didn't take. Silly me

Be careful - framing it like this is a good way to convince people Jim Crow laws were right.

The resistance of MtF to invading women spaces seems to be more widespread than against integration. And women actually deserve their own spaces where they can be themselves and away from the battle of the sexes. Bathrooms, locker room, man caves(for the gents) and ladies nights etc are important part of the social life.

There is no right of belonging to a group or acceptance in one.

And to give even more pragmatic answer - I value real women more, so if something makes them uncomfortable and is zero cost to me - I find it totally ok to support alleviation of said discomfort.

Because an extremely small minority of mentally ill people is not the same thing as black people under Jim Crow, and trans women are demanding access to the women's changing room is not black men under Jim Crow wanting to eat in the same restaurants as white men.

Yeah I totally agree but it's a counterpoint that came into my head. So I had to ask.

Being trans is not necessarily a mental illness, though gender dysphoria is listed as such. There are plenty of well-adjusted trans people living happy lives, at which point it's a difference, not a disease. It's worth mentioning homosexuality also used to be listed as a mental illness, but that was only because of social prejudice, and is no longer considered such.

It's not a disease but hormones, puberty blockers, surgeries are labeled "trans health care". The answer is of course that saying "trans health care" allows for asking for public financing of puberty blockers etc, but saying it's not a disease supposedly averts "stigma". Even though the woke seem to also advocate that mental illness and disability are not bad and shouldn't be stigmatized in the first place.

Last I checked, refusal to accept one’s own body was considered a mental illness in every other case(anorexia, those people who seek amputation because they believe they don’t have certain body parts, etc). The main difference as far as transgenderism is the political valency.

There are plenty of people with other mental illnesses that are happy and well adjusted. Alcoholics come to mind. Pedophiles and bestiality-practitioners would be in this category if their conduct was not stigmatized and illegal. That doesn't mean they aren't mental illnesses in general which we need to treat with a deterrence treatment, rather than an encouragement treatment.

That doesn't mean they aren't mental illnesses in general which we need to treat with a deterrence treatment

Sure, but why, in the case of trans? Alcoholism sucks, liver disease, it makes you dumb and act stupidly, etc. "There are plenty of well-adjusted trans people living happy lives" is intended to be an argument that most trans people could be 'well adjusted andhappy' (what does that mean, exactly) and there's no point in 'deterrence'.

Liver disease from alcoholism isn't all that much different in life reduction from hormone therapy + full transition surgeries. The resulting creations are a constant infection risk somewhat akin to an open wound, for the rest of the person's life. Plus, there is little evidence of affirmation actually reducing suicide rate, whereas the suicide rate does plummet for kids who give up on the notion before hormones and surgery.

So there is a massive gain to the individual if they are deterred. There is also a massive gain to society because the deterred is a healthy adult who can procreate.

A lot of trans people, maybe even a majority idk, just don't get SRS at all. That doesn't create an open wound!

It's "somewhat akin to an open wound". Well, how akin? What percent of people with SRS, ten years later - (there were a lot of people who got SRS years ago) - have severe complications today? I'd predict less than 20%.

And the person I know who had SRS doesn't seem to have any long-term medical problems from it.

Do you not think there is a fairly big gap between the quality of life of a transitioned trans person and a birth member of their desired gender(not just because of social factors)?

There aren't any good reasons for 'trans people' to transition in any case.

But I was asking OP to make a good argument for that, rather than just invoke 'mental illness', and non-illuminating claims about suicide or surgery.

Do you not think there is a fairly big gap between the quality of life of a transitioned trans person and a birth member of their desired gender

Not really? If you don't get SRS, which a lot of trans people don't, hormones just make you look ugly and it and voice training and such are a minor cost. I know many trans people who just seem normal and being trans is something they seem to 'benefit' from much more than it 'costs' them, if benefit and cost mean 'happiness' and 'quality of life'. But 'happiness' is just a person's judgement of what they're doing, is it really the same when soyface.jpg is happy about the new marvel movie as when wiles proved fermat's last theorem? Or even just when you have kids? (Arguably: yes, and all that proves is that happiness, itself, isn't worth anything, it's the actual thing that took place or was willed that matters, and that's the confusion). So - given that trans people just pursue images of useful things like signs of being able to have children, but don't do so in a useful or coherent way, being trans is bad. But ... it's honestly pretty similar to modern fashion, makeup, casual sex, and 'consumerism' in that sense. Which, leading nowhere and having no purpose - is just as bad.

"it makes you want to kill yourself at higher rates than Jews during the Holocaust" seems like a good reason to me.

I'm friends with a number of trans people and they basically never bring up suicide or how awful their lives are. They don't read, at all, as a jew during the holocaust. So this isn't plausible. If your goal is to 'ensure universal happiness, and allow all oppressed people to free themselves' - that isn't going to work for right wing ends, like saying 'trans people aren't happy and are oppressed by the schools and medicine'.

The statistics don't agree with your anecdote. Likely because of quite literal survivor bias.

Not enough trans people kill themselves for survivorship bias to matter? It'd need to be at least 20%, and the highest claim I ever saw was 5%.

A hundred times this. If you live in a city I bet you walk past at least one person with schizophrenia every day - not a homeless person (although plenty of the homeless are schizophrenic), a well dressed person going to work or shopping or whatever. You would have no idea, because they are managing their illness and are happy and well adjusted. But they are still schizophrenic, they are still mentally ill.

Everybody talks a good game about inclusion and destigmatising mental illness, but I have yet to see anything that doesn't convince me it is purely because of that stigma that trans people deny being mentally ill despite having an ailment that affects their minds.

A lot of people are picking at your analogy in ways in which the two situations you described are different. And their answers are correct for there are some differences depending on along which axis you want to find the differences in.

However here's a different point of view. They are not different at all. And them being the same or different doesn't really matter. In other words, conflict theory is a much better predictor of the CW than mistake theory. (I don't assert one ought to be better than the other, merely that one is)

Its a conflict between the people that want a separation and those who don't. They will fight with words and memes and legislation. Both sides will tell you why it ought to be their way, but they are fighting for what is.

Yeah, that's where I couldn't square it in my head.

If course the two groups are different.

But the ask is similar: one group has to give something up so the other group can have something.

That's what I couldn't square off in my head.

And them being the same or different doesn't really matter.

That's another asymmetrical measure.

Whether the differences matter affects whether the attack is justified, and this is actually important.

I'm not a moral relativist so you are not going to get an argument out of me on that. I agree broadly that there are principally consistent ways around which to structure culture/institutions. And some of those ways are better than others, especially if they are self consistent. But in the vibes based world we live in right now,

Day by day I am more attracted to the the really dumb heuristic of "side A finds side B's ideas icky and wants side B to fuck off and die because the TV said as much" really attractive. You will still be left with a really good model that predicts much of the CW.

I mean, I'll answer your question in a strictly political sense. Women are a protected class in a way that white people are not.

I think that's the long and the short of it. That's the core of the conflict, I think, and why this sort of thing is so nasty. We've set an expectation that asking women to give up their spaces is an anti-social thing to do. And people are fighting for that expectation to be met. But at the same time, we've also set an expectation that marginalized groups should be able to gain access to those sorts of things.

Essentially, what you're seeing is the Progressive Stack being actualized, and how it creates conflicts.

Now, I think it's more complicated than that, and there's a lot of moving parts (I strongly believe "The Movement" as they're calling it, or at least is my understanding I.E. the Gender Criticals, played a huge role over the last few decades in normalizing the Progressive Stack to the benefit of women. This alone makes things REALLY complicated I think)

I could go on a long discussion about what I personally believe...but I think it's irrelevant (something something eliminating protected classes and replacing them with a liberal focus on maximizing individual liberty and happiness). But understanding the underlying politics...that this is essentially people who model the world, on both sides, in strict oppressor/oppressed frames, and believe that the latter should gain absolute privilege over the former.

Note: This isn't all feminists or all trans people. I think this is the view of a relatively narrow slice of activists and influencers, for whom complexity over power dynamics in our society reveals some undesirable light onto the way we/they live.

Interesting.

So you're sort of saying (that people who believe this are saying), women are oppressed so to make up for that or fight it, they have been afforded certain things, like women only spaces or quotas, which sort of gives them help at a cost to their oppressors (men).

But this thinking also means that trans women are more oppressed than woman, so they deserve to get help, even at the expense of women, because while women are oppressed, they're not as oppressed as trans women?

So there's a hierarchy of oppression and it's OK to encroach on the rights of those above you in the hericachy, even if that group is being oppressed by the groups above them?

I'm not saying this is what you believe but what you said in your reply, dumbed down so I can understand it!

To make it more confusing, trans women also have all the rights of men, so not only are they higher up the heirachy than women, but they also want some of the spaces / benefit woman have?

Has anyone plotted out this heirachy?

The transwomen vs. women kerfuffle is the first time the opression spoils system resulted in tangible costs for women and the degradation of female privilege.

The first time women as a class have been but individual women have regularly be out oppressed by group sin other categories.

Your analogy does not really work at all. Racial segregation was not about providing white people with their own space; it was about excluding black people from otherwise public spaces, often because they were seen as polluting or unworthy in some way. Note also that early Jim Crow laws "classified Asian Americans, Native Americans, and all other people who were not Black—either explicitly or by default—as members of the 'white race.'"

In contrast, the purpose of women only "spaces" -- be they bathrooms or sports teams -- is to provide women with their own spaces. it is not about excluding a group deemed unworthy.

That makes more sense. Thanks.

YW

is to provide women with their own spaces. it is not about excluding a group deemed unworthy.

What is the difference between "Whites Only", and "Non-whites not welcome"? Or is there another distiction you are making here?

I didn't actually say that there is a difference between "Whites Only", and "Non-whites not welcome". But since you asked, historically they meant the same thing, obviously: They meant "non-whites not welcome." But, logically they don't have to be the same [edit: i.e, ethnically the same. I take OP as having made an ethical claim], if the purpose of the two rules are different. Because I thought it was pretty clear that the distinction was in regard to the intent behind the laws/rules/whatevers in the OP's analogy. That's why I said that Jim Crow "was about excluding black people from otherwise public spaces, often because they were seen as polluting or unworthy in some way" and that in contrast, giving women their own spaces "is not about excluding a group deemed unworthy."

So, a current rule that said, "whites only allowed in this room" because for some reason only whites need the services provided in that room is not the same as a rule that said "non-whites not welcome" because nonwhites are deemed and inferior.

I think the idea meant to be is that women are inherently weaker and/or in some way less safe around men in a way that whites aren't comparatively to blacks. That the segregation is done for protection rather than... aesthetic? reasoning.

Liken it to boxing weight tiers, if you like. Segregate the heavyweights so they don't accidentally kill the featherweights.

How is asking women to give up their spaces for trans women different to how we asked white people to give up their segregated spaces to people of color back in the day?

Because black women can have children and transwomen can't.

Race expression is mostly immaterial compared to sex expression, which is more than self-identification at the end of the day. If you want to extend a test to transwomen beyond self-identification, you've a pretty minority opinion among Trans-Rights-Activists.

Why do sex-segregated spaces exist in the first place?

Because some places are private and thus by design everything going on there is a he-said-she-said. We don't like rape and non-consensual groping, so we go about in ways to reduce them. Gender segregated private areas is the least bad solution to this problem.

On top of that, women, in the feminist age, wanted to have access to some traditionally male activities for things like developing leadership skills, fitness, etc. They would have no hope to not be crushed in the competition (and severely injured in most) without gender segregation.

Toilets: because women don't want to disrobe/defecate in places where men will (at best) hit on them

Sports: because women would be excluded from competition in all but a handful of sports like target shooting and long-distance swimming

In short, because there are real physical and mental differences between male and female that necessitate segregation at times if "equality of opportunity" is a goal. Mixed-sex sports means almost no women get to be professional athletes. Mixed-sex toilets (unless single stall) mean women in practice will never leave the house without a chaperone. "Whites only" is not about giving whites equal opportunities but excluding blacks from opportunities/public life, and giving them inferior alternatives. "Use the (inferior) black fountain" is not the same as "use the (perfectly fine) male toilet".

If you mean in general, all societies have deemed various places the proper/improper place of one sex or another, whether it be kitchens, the outdoors, the sporting field, the birthing room, the tabernacle, etc. We have decided that the public world at large must be open to women, so we have created female-only toilets so they may go about in public.

The sport example is terrible. Olympic swimming excludes pretty much all black people due to genetic factors, but we don't have an equivalent Olympic category for just "black people" with the same level of prestige as the open competition, but for some reason women get their own league...

If true, I would imagine there certainly could be genetic factors. Similar to how pretty much every single 100 meter gold medalist in the past 30 years has been of recent African ancestry.

Lung volume for instance, Phelps was exceptional partly because of his exceptional lung volume and upper body shape.

There are bone density differences between the races, so yeah bouancy may well differ because of genetics.

Black people tend to have longer limbs and shorter torsos compared to white people, and having a long torso is beneficial for swimmers because you have less drag in the water. Michael Phelps is a good example of a swimmer with an extremely long torso.

https://www.usaswimming.org/meet-the-team/u.s.-olympic-team

There are still a number of black swimmers on the US team, so it's obviously not insurmountable.

Perhaps Burdensome is channeling Al Campanis

Someone should probably alert Cullen Jones to this development. I nominate you.

I did not know this. Apparently black successful olympic swimmers do exist, but equally there's this really tall Chinese basketball dude while I'd say that on average the Chinese are not the best suited for Basketball due to their smaller heights.

Anyways: we don't have a special Olympic category for short (under 5'6") male rowers (lightweight rowing exists but those people are still 6'+) while we do for women. Shortness is almost as genetically determined as being female.

Nowhere did I say Olympic. I'm sure there are national and below swimming competitions where black people could be reasonably competitive (assuming your claim is actually true, I have no idea, I assumed black people not being able to swim was just a meme). There is almost nowhere at the high school level and above where women can compete against boys, let alone men. There are also plenty of other sports where black men do fine/great (running, weightlifting, many team sports), whereas, again, there are maybe two or three things nobody really gives a shit about where women are even vaguely competitive with men. Black people are doing fine overall in the realm of sports even if they're disadvantaged in some, but without segregation the number of female athletes past elementary school would be very close to 0.

assuming your claim is actually true, I have no idea, I assumed black people not being able to swim was just a meme

The claim is false, and i suspect that the meme is driven (at least in part) by number of inner-city kids who join the Navy or Marine Corps and end up spending their first couple weeks of boot camp in remedial swim instruction because they've never been in water deeper than their waist. Go to an actual swim meet and you'll see a fair number of black and mixed guys competing just as you do in pretty much every athletic event.

We asked white people to give up their segregated spaces to EVERYONE back in the day. Asking women to give up their spaces for trans women isn't asking them to give them up to EVERYONE, just an additional subset of people. A closer analogy would be if we asked categorically that no women-segregated - cis or trans - space ever exist.

Exactly, and specifically this means that there will be an incentive to misrepresent oneself as a woman (as identification grants access privileges). When blacks were allowed into formerly white spaces, there was no possibility or motivation for someone to misrepresent themselves.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm thinking about the trans rights debate.

This is an almost perfect example of the sort of trollish "Hi I'm new here, Just Asking Questions" first-time-ever post that @HlynkaCG would say we should summarily drop a banhammer on. But you know what, we're not on reddit anymore, so sure, @TheGuy, I'll approve this post and, as yassine recently described, see if TheMotte takes your question seriously enough to produce quality responses.

FWIW, if you're really just some random newbie who's genuinely not sure if this is "the right place to ask" and just wants to share his shower thoughts (probability 2%), in the future please go to the effort of fleshing them out a bit, rather than just dropping a hot take that looks like someone "farming drama" (probability 98%).

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