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Notes -
The rules are ambiguous as to which thread should be used for culture war related/adjacent small questions, but I'll take a guess that the mods would prefer questioners err on the side of the culture war roundup, so I'll ask this here:
How much of the "Michelle Obama is transgender" conspiracy theory is genuine vs trolling? And, among those who genuinely believe it, what are the proposed explanations/is there a consensus for the Obama daughters' parentage? Adoption would be too difficult to cover up, but so would Michelle being transgender, to begin with, so I suppose that's not a great threat to the theory. If the full amendment history of the relevant section of Illinois legal code is available online, finding it would require more effort than I care to make, but "the exception that implies the rule" indicates that it was the Illinois Gestational Surrogacy Act enacted in 2005 that allowed pre-birth orders for putting intended mothers on Illinois birth certificates:
"Birthers" didn't hesitate to demand the release of Barrack Obama's own birth certificate - what about his daughters' birth certificates? (Or is the conspiracy theory all trolling or are those who genuinely believe it the kinds of people who wouldn't consider even its immediate implications or ...?)
There are those odd particular clips of Michelle. I think her masculinity, Joan Rivers' "timely" death, and the combination of categorical disbelief ("even faker and gayer . . . ") in the establishment and the easy dunk makes it work equally well for the genuine skeptic and the troll. But leave it to Steve Sailer of all people to make what I've found as the most interesting observation:
(The siblings.)
And worth including, though you can just see it in the link, is this thoughtful response:
Here I'd follow this up with "I still wouldn't put it past them," but that's epistemically always betting on black. Sailer's observation is useful, I cite it now in the two or three times I've seen this come up since.
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