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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

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.

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.

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