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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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i thinkI'd say a couple things to that. Gender roles may be real, but they can be somewhat arbitrary, and tend to be based on sex anyhow. But I think the very arbitraryness of gender roles in different places and times makes me utterly confused about why one's gender identity should matter to me at all, more than, going with the genre comparison, whether you like country music or rock or blues. it's something to know about you, I guess, but there's no need to give it any more attention than that.

On the other hand, sex matters a lot. It matters biologically, medically, it has for most of history mattered legally as well. Rights have historically been granted or denied on the basis of sex. Similarly, from the concept of sex derives the concept of sexual orientation. Most people's orientation is towards the opposite sex, but there are some people whose sexual orientation is towards those of the same sex or towards both sexes. Genderists will thus say that a lesbian is someone who is attracted to people who "identify as female." Meanwhile, lesbians say no, they are attracted to people of the female sex only, and are not attracted to men no matter how men self-identify. And then they get accused of being transphobic by people who want to erase the concept of sex and replace it with this concept of gender.

But I think the very arbitraryness of gender roles in different places and times makes me utterly confused about why one's gender identity should matter to me at all, more than, going with the genre comparison, whether you like country music or rock or blues. it's something to know about you, I guess, but there's no need to give it any more attention than that.

I can't remember who, but someone raised an imo very effective argument against this elevation of gender identity by pointing out that some of the absurd claims made (i.e. you need some medical doctor or unassailable subjective insight to determine who a woman is) lead to a situation where you theoretically can't define women in such a way that it captures American, Saudi and Japanese women at the same time.

Except that nobody - even the most "woke" - acts like this is the case.