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 -
I am once again asking you to have a little empathy for people you find disgusting
Let's start with an easier case.
I find male homosexuality disgusting. The idea of two men having sex makes my stomach turn. Even something like two men kissing makes me a bit queasy. And, separately, because I'm a Christian and take Christian sexual ethics seriously, I think it is (along with many other things) morally wrong.
It would be very easy for me to decide that, therefore, all gay men are sick perverts. There's more than ample evidence for that if I were inclined to take that position: bathhouse hookups, near-nudity at Pride parades, piss orgies. Case closed, right?
But I think we're all aware that that's not the whole story. When two men want to get gay-married, they are not, apparently, doing so merely to indulge in (and force society to be complicit in) some perverted sex act. Apparently, gay men actually fall in love, and actually form romantic attachments to each other. I know this because they say so, and because homosexually attracted men who think it's immoral talk about how hard it is, and because who on earth thinks getting married and tying yourself to another person is the easiest way to indulge in some perverted sex act; come on.
So I can have empathy for gay men. I know what it's like to be infatuated with a woman, to fall in love, to want to get married (I'm married myself) -- and, yes, to be sexually attracted and want to have sex, too. And I can imagine how insanely hard that would be, to have something wrong with your brain so that instead of having sexual and romantic attraction to the opposite sex, you have it to the same sex. And how hard it would be to have all those feelings of eros, of being-in-love, that scream to you from the rooftops that this is right and good and beautiful and what I'm meant to do, except unnaturally directed towards another man.
So yeah, I think that being homosexual means there's something mentally wrong with you, and that men having sex with men is sinful, and that it's not a good thing that we've normalized these things in our society. But I can also have empathy and understanding for their situation, and not insist at every turn that they're all perverted sickos who want to inflict their perversion on the rest of us.
But this post isn't about gays.
I keep seeing in these threads people talking about transsexuals as though they are all sick perverts who want to inflict their fetish on the rest of us. They can marshal evidence, of course, because, yes, there are trans people who are in fact doing something a lot like that. It's not as much evidence as in the case of gay men, but sure, it's there.
And it's not wrong that there's some sexual elements to transition. If you've not heard of Blanchard's typology of male-to-female transsexuals, here's the short version: There are, broadly speaking, two types of males who want to become female so badly that they will try to do it as best they can.
The first type are very effeminate males; they are attracted solely to men, they act like girls from a very early age, and they feel, often very intensely, that they are in the wrong body, to the point that it causes them enormous distress; in fact, their actual bodies are often somewhat androgynous. They have a good case that they have some prenatal hormone or endocrine issues that caused this cross-sex psychology. This type is very rare, probably less than one in ten thousand in the general population.
The second type are different. They are almost always attracted to women. They rarely displayed overtly feminine behavior as young children, and their personalities run the entire gamut of the male distribution. They often don't develop the level of distress (or obsession) that drives them to transition until later in life (though with the threshold for how motivated one has to be to transition coming down, more and more of them are transitioning earlier). This type is much more common, forming the majority -- and an increasing one, as barriers come down -- of males seeking to transition.
But the unique and startling attribute of this second type is that they find the idea of being or becoming female sexually arousing. This attribute Blanchard named autogynephilia, and to it he attributed the ultimate cause of their desire to transition.
Most "trans women" are autogynephiles.
But just as it's wrong to attribute the desire of gay men to get gay-married to their getting horny in perverted ways, it's wrong to attribute autogynephiles' desire to transition to the same. Insisting on doing so betrays the same lack of empathy that results in street preachers who think yelling at the gays about how they're sick freaks is the way to fix anything.
I don't want autogynephiles to transition. I think the messaging they are getting about how "wanting to be a girl is the number one sign of being a girl" (yes, an actual statement I've seen) is destructive and leads to foolish delusions about what they really are. I think most of them would be much happier -- and make those around them much happier -- if they would not indulge, not try to transition, not let this stuff blow up their lives and relationships. And I think that making your best disgusted face and yelling "it's a fetish" is the second-worst thing you can do, second only to the active encouragement they're getting from the trans movement.
So let me help you have some empathy. As it turns out, I have autogynephilia. (And no, before you ask -- I have never cross-dressed, not even in private. Not everyone is the same.) Let me tell you why -- in spite of the fact that I think it's wrong, and in spite of the fact that I know damn well that it doesn't actually work to change sex, I've been tempted by the siren song of transition. Here's a hint: it's not because it would help me to have orgasms.
I'm going to come back to the analogy of being in love. Not because it's exactly the same -- it isn't, not really -- but because it's the closest thing that most people have experienced to the emotions I'm trying to get at, and has many of the same complicating sexual factors. I'm going to assume you are a straight guy, because I am, and so are most of the people here. If you're not, feel free to fill in the sexes appropriately.
Let's say you develop an infatuation with a girl. You enjoy thinking about her. You want to spend time with her. Being near her is pleasant, and comforting, and a little exciting. You want her, just her, not instrumentally, not to do anything in particular, just her, for no reason and every reason. Holding her hand is electric. You just want be with her forever, to sweep her into your embrace, and damn it, why the f&!k are you getting a boner right now, you were having this pure and chaste and beautiful reverie and now you're thinking about sex.
So yeah, it's kinda like that. Sometimes there's a pure lust thing, too, just like a guy will imagine some girl and masturbate while thinking about her. But the primary thing, the reason transition has any appeal at all, is not that, any more than simple horniness is the reason a man in love wants to marry his beloved.
Sometimes -- during some periods in the past, at any time the thought would occur to me, which was quite often -- I want to be female. (And to be clear: although the intense desire to be female is not uniform, and it's less common now because I don't indulge it as deeply -- I've almost never wanted to be what I actually am, male, except instrumentally.) It's almost a primitive, axiomatic thing; a simple fact, not to be questioned despite its strangeness. My "ideal self" would have long hair and breasts and a round, sweet face, would wear dresses (but not makeup and heels, those suck), would not have a penis and testicles but a vagina and a womb and ovaries. Why? I don't know why, that's just what is. Sucks to be me that I'm actually male, unlike half the human population.
(Downthread someone mentioned the social attitude of "man bad, woman good"; unironically this is my own deeply felt and instinctive emotional response.)
For about a decade and a half of my lifetime, roughly between adolescence (maybe before; I don't remember) and when I got engaged, if you'd given me a magic button that would have instantly and permanently made me fully female, with all the right parts and functions and everything -- I would have pressed that button so damned hard you have no idea. I wouldn't do it now -- because I'm married, and I love my wife even more, and also because I have some concept for why my feelings on the matter are wrong -- but I'd still be sorely tempted.
Interestingly, I never really hated my actual body, as such. I don't like it; I don't like seeing myself in the mirror, I don't like my "equipment". But I don't have the kind of revulsion that some people report. Maybe I'm lucky after all; I mostly disliked my male body only because it wasn't a female one. But if I'd spent another decade single and investing in the fantasy of becoming a woman, instead of focusing on loving my wife and resisting those thoughts? Yeah, I'd probably be so miserable with my actual body, and so fixated on the fantasy, that I'd be willing to accept transition (hormones and surgeries and all) as the best I could do.
So anyway, next time you see some dude in a dress, with long hair and breasts but a face and voice obviously male despite his best efforts, think about what kind of emotions must have driven him to that place, and have a little empathy.
Awe man. I just got off my last ban for venting a bit too hard about my fervent hatred of trans activist. You gotta get me going again?
To reign it in as best I can, no part of my problems has to do with trans people per se. Although their disfigured bodies and alien voices squick me out as badly as the worst (or best?) body horror film. But for the most part, if they can leave me alone, I can leave them alone.
But they can't leave me alone. Maybe it's less them and more the activist. I don't know. I've seen a smattering of trans people who agree all the shit going on in schools with other people's kids is pure insanity. But, they tend to not get treated well by their own "community", however much validity appeals to that fictional construct even matter.
Back to not being left alone, they're pushing the trans experience on children in public schools at incredibly young ages. Compulsory exercises at young ages forcing them to question or ponder their gender identity. Graphic pornographic material in school libraries, including elementary and middle school. Secretly socially transitioning children. Forcing penises into young girls private spaces.
The horrors they wish to subject my young daughter to fill me with a wrath and a loathing that is beyond words. At least words I'm allowed to speak here. Get them the fuck out of public schools, leave my kids alone, and they may earn back my disregard. They've forever lost my respect.
I see arguments like yours a lot, of the form "they can't leave me alone". But this seems like weird reasoning that is employed to target only policies that are already disliked. I could grant the premise of your statement, but if I did that I would also be arguing that American history fans can't leave me alone, that grammar nazis can't leave me alone, that Big Science can't leave me alone.
Simply put, public schools are institutions whose goal is to educate children. Put another way, a public school's goal is to indoctrinate children with the beliefs that are commonly accepted in the society they're a part of. You (and most other people) are not complaining that all the English majors and all the physicists can't leave your kids alone, because (presumably) you agree with the majority of them. You are targeting an ideology you already dislike and claiming it is for the reason that they are indoctrinating children; but that is what public school is all about.
Of course, there is a difference between the above and the stuff that crosses the line. To go through your examples:
Many components of gender ideology are not commonly accepted in the broader society, but educators indoctrinate children with them anyway. Because they are not commonly accepted, educators have to do this by subterfuge. Sure, they'll claim that they're only doing this because of a minority of far-right fundamentalist Christians who might kick up a stink about teachers informing children that "trans people have a right to exist", but the reality of the situation is that, while almost everyone in the West thinks that trans people should be left alone to do their own thing, the percentage of people who believe that "sex is a spectrum" or in the "genderbread person" is low, perhaps single digits.
There's also the plainly obvious fact that there's a world of difference between factual education (gravity is what pulls you down when you jump in the air; every sentence must contain a subject, a verb and an object) and normative education (it's wrong to hit your classmates). Gender ideology is objectionable at least from the former perspective, as many of its assertions are pseudoscientific woo or simply unsupported by the best available evidence ("puberty blockers are completely reversible"), and probably from the latter as well.
The percentage of people who believe that ax2 + bx + c = 0 or that Shakespeare is mandatory reading off the top of their heads is also likely in a small minority, not to mention any more obscure things which are taught in school, but we don't change the curriculum to accomodate these beliefs if Shakespeare is stil genuinely the best way to teach English or we believe the quadratic equation is important math practica.
I really don't believe the distinction between factual and normative education is as bright a line as you think it is. 'every sentence must contain a subject, a verb and an object' is a normative statement, not a factual one. If you wanted to qualify with something like 'if you want to speak correct English as recognized by such and such body' then it would become factual, but as is there is clearly a normative element to this education where we are trying to get the kids to do things the way we want them to in the same way we dont want them hitting each other.
If you are claiming that educators are teaching kids en masse that "puberty blockers are completely reversible" then sure, we could agree that's likely not factual and a bad thing to teach. I don't think this is in the curriculum broadly. Just like sexual education which teaches kids about the existence of gay/lesbian people and how they differ from straight people is not the same as encouraging kids to be gay, I think there's a way to educate kids about transgender topics which you still might classify as 'gender ideology' that is relatively neutral.
On the contrary: more than half of Americans still believe Shakespeare was "one of" the greatest playwrights of all time. That's not exactly the same question as "do you think Shakespeare should be taught in schools?" but I find it hard to imagine that only a small minority of Americans would answer "yes". Open to correction though, if you have a source.
More options
Context Copy link
What would a "relatively neutral" presentation look like to you? How positive would things be posed as?
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