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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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For the purpose of this post I will use the following terms in the following ways:

Woman = Biological woman. Man = Biological man

Well it seems like we are on episode >9000 "transgender bathrooms".

There is currently a man named Sarah McBride who has been elected to congress. This person (a man), who wishes to be seen as female, has caused another member of congress named Nancy Mace (a woman) to start whining and complaining on various social media videos and news interviews about her (Nancy's) concern that Sarah will try to use the female bathrooms, lockerrooms, etc. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms/lockerrooms are for women, and men's restrooms lockerrooms are for men. There are a number of non-gender specific bathrooms around the house grounds that are open to anybody who doesn't want to abide by this.

Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.

Everybody seems intent on being dishonest towards each other when talking about this, so here is what I think is a reasonable answer to "why does anybody care? Just let everybody pee in peace!".

Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.

To put some additonal context here: I think that the tide is turning pretty sharply on gender ideology within the democratic party (at least for anybody mildly near the center). I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss. You also have the UK making it illegal to trans your kids, as well as a recent, prominent NYT article that was critical of transing your children (unfortunately the google index seems very intent on not showing me links to the article, but has plenty of links to people talking about it.

Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?"

This is about as reasonable as asking why we tolerate bondage fetishists in the police force. We don’t; the handcuffs have a practical, unobjectionable, non-sexual purpose. Anyone abusing such privileges for sexual gratification can and should be punished.

Has McBride done or said anything to convince you her presentation is sexualized? Because if you’re going off base rates, I think you might have the wrong idea.

Has McBride done or said anything to convince you her presentation is sexualized?

Why does he wear fake breasts? Is he planning on nursing a baby with these fake breasts? Signaling his (non-existent) fertility with these fake breasts? Or is it perhaps that male sexual fixation on female breasts informs the things that he does as a part of what appears to be a crossdressing fetish?

This is about as reasonable as asking why we tolerate bondage fetishists in the police force.

Police handcuffs serve a practical function that assists the public generally. Do Sarah's fake breasts serve a similar practical function? (No).

They’re about as practical as replacements after a mastectomy, augments on a post-menopause trophy wife, or whatever the hell Rudy Giuliani was doing. Which is to say, not very.

Not everything impractical is a fetish.

Are you arguing that he had a mastectomy or is post-menopausal?

And in those cases, yes I agree with you that there is a sexual attraction component to it. This seems like an example that supports my point, not detracts from it.

Let's take your example to a similar place: suppose a woman got large fake breasts implanted, and then insisted on wearing revealing clothing to a children's birthday party, or insisted on brushing them up against married men at her workplace. Would you agree that this was inappropriate?

If somebody wants to wear...whatever they want, in their own private home, then by all means they should and nobody should interfere with them. Even if they want to wear just about whatever they want out in public, that's fine too (to an extent).

The problem here is that there are women who are clearly requesting not to be involved in the bathroom part of the fantasy, and there are people want to force them to. That's not okay.

Yeah, flashing the fake titties would be inappropriate. Has McBride done that? Or posted provocative pictures, or stolen women’s luggage, or whatever?

Last I checked, most women have their breasts even when they aren’t nursing a baby. This doesn’t lead you to assume they are sexual deviants. Unless, I suppose, you take the fundamentalist view. Would you feel better if McBride wore a burqa?

There is a whole world of impractical signals out there. I think you’re picking one to back up a mistaken intuition.

Has McBride done that?

No, but what he has done (until recently) was insisted on coming into the women's restroom, which is really strange behavior.

Any guy who is making a big deal about wanting to go into the women's restroom, or the women's locker-room, to the point where the speaker of the house has to address it, and women have to come out and fight to stop it is acting inappropriately.

Surely it's less strange than all the other stuff he's done to get to this point, right? Like, a random guy in drag insisting on using the women's room, that's separately a strong signal of weirdness/sketchiness. But if he's convinced himself that he's a woman at this point, and (quite possibly, though I couldn't say for sure) been on hormones and had surgeries to get there, then surely that's the strange part, not the part where he subsequently wants to use the women's restroom.

It's all strange. Trans activists themselves acknowledge that it is strange when they continue to insist that without transition they'd die. That's how strange it is, that's what it takes to make this palatable even when it's not affecting others.

These are both strange behaviors.

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