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 -
Haven't seen a thread yet on the gay bar shooting last weekend so I figured I would start it.
Sticking to facts in this post, opinion will go in reply.
The shooter killed 5 and injured 25
The shooter is a 22 year old, Anderson Lee Aldrich
The shooter previously was charged after he threatened his mother with homemade explosives and kidnapped her, but the charges were dropped
The shooter is the grandson of a prominent local Republican
The shooter was stopped by a drag queen combat veteran, who used his high heels to stomp him
Now for the opinion:
I believe that speech is powerful. Words are a means we use to convince other minds of beliefs about the world. Minds act upon those beliefs.
At present, there is a powerful right wing-meme that many people, some LGBT and some not, mostly democrats, are attempting to sexually confuse children for nefarious purposes. This is often described as "grooming" in order to equivocate with sexual abuse children.
Insofar as the reasonable man's reaction to a co-ordinated effort to sexually abuse children is not "I should vote about this and if I get outvoted, I should allow my children to be sexually abused", the actions of the shooter are completely predictable.
You should take care to think about the consequences of the speech you use. If someone were to be persuaded by your argument, what would that cause them to do?
You aren't reponsible for every nutcase or moron on your team. But you are responsible for the logical consequence of your ideas. I know of no society that believes they should be having free and open debates and votes about whether teachers should be permitted to sexually abuse children. If you really believe this, you should act the same as if they proposed legalizing Cannabalism. There is no debate with barbarians, only the sword.
If the left is grooming children I'm not "on the hook" for pointing it out and calling it bad just because someone else decides its bad enough to kill someone. If the left is grooming children they don't get a pass on that just because not giving them a pass might cause someone else to act out violently against them.
Edit: Maybe the people accusing the left of grooming children aren't doing it as a rhetorical tool, maybe they really believe the left is grooming children.
Can you define what you consider the defining characteristics of modern leftist grooming?
How malleable do you think sexual orientation and feelings of social and bodily dysphoria around sex roles are in children? If we lived in a society where the concepts of gay people were generally unknown, and the idea of being trans wasn't common knowledge - about what percent of grown adults do you think would naturally and spontaneously be gay or trans?
Do you think the Left doesn't honestly believe their "closeted" model of the situation? (That is, that some percentage of the population will irreparably be gay or trans no matter what shape society takes, and any rise in numbers results from closeted members feeling more comfortable coming out, and not an increase in number due to malleable youth mistakenly identifying as one of these things?) Or do you just believe that it doesn't matter if they honestly belief in the "closeted" model, because they are wrong as a matter of fact, and their belief is just a useful myth that keeps them recruiting for their in-group?
Forming an individual, emotional relationship with children, while in a position of authority over them, that is kept secret from their parents.
More options
Context Copy link
You're asking questions of the wrong person. I don't know if I believe the left is grooming. I do believe that the right believes it.
More options
Context Copy link
Enough to cause about a 3600% increase in referrals to gender clinics, and completely flip age and gender ratios.
About what we saw until the 2010's?
That's fascinating to me.
On one hand, I definitely think that things like prison sexuality, bacha bazi and ancient Greece prove the idea that sexual behavior is partially a product of societal conditioning and material conditions. But I don't know how much that implies actual differences in people's underlying dispositions towards sex. If the story society tells is one where homosexuality is a moral failing, does this make a bunch of closeted gay guys, does it cause would-be bisexuals to bury their feeling so deep that they never act on them? Or can it actually affect a person's sexuality at the margins?
If there's been an increase of self-identified LGB people over the last 40 years, I think it's probably best explained by increasing societal acceptance, and perhaps some malingering from people claiming to be "bi" for social credit. However, I admit I don't know what to think of the T side of things. I suspect that the existence of HRT and other medical interventions does make the options look more attractive, but it's hard to say what that means in practice. More people in the modern world also get boob jobs, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people wouldn't have been getting boob jobs through out all of human history if they had been available. They just happened to not be medically possible, so people used different methods like corsets and weird dresses to artificially create more feminine figures.
The T side of things is what I have issues with. Who you sleep with is none of my business. Even if you come to regret it, you can move on with your life mostly without consequences. On the other hand medical transitioning, including puberty blockers, wrecks your body even if you don't regret it. The justification for it is that it's better than living with dysphoria, but if people are transitioning mostly because it's being promoted, we're doing them great harm by waving them through the pipeline, and not questioning them.
My understanding is that HRT was available for decades before the massive post 2010 spike, so I don't think we can use that to explain what we're seeing.
One thing to keep in mind is that we're not living in times where medical transition is merely possible, it's also heavily promoted, and skepticism of it is demonized.
You can't compare this to what's going on with trans issues nowadays. If a dude wants to wear a corset, or a woman wants to wear shoulder pads, more power to them. If you're going to sell them a medical procedure that will make them a patient for the rest of their lives, in the hopes of solving their psychological issues, that's a completely different thing. Not to mention all the slogans like "trans women are women" that everyone else is also supposed get on board of.
HRT was available, but not readily available: the standards of care were a little... stupid.
I think the pendulum's swung too far the other direction, but until 2011, the WPATH SoC required three months "life experience" before physicians were supposed to allow HRT. There was probably an underlying steelman that was making sure people were able and remained interested after doing anything outside of a closed room, but Common Knowledge -- and the legal name change requirement especially -- held to the mid-00s that this meant either cocooning yourself in a very LGBT-specific community or doing a very bad drag impersonation while at your work and normal social life for three to six months, minimum.
I think we'd still have seen a pretty significant boost just by getting rid of that, though I'd expect still less than today. In run, I'd caution a lot of what we're seeing in reporting is probably a conflation of many different categories that you may not be expecting. There are still some medical concerns for butch lesbian / femme nonbinary trans * (low and irregular T doses are probably less likely to lead to ovarian cancer, and still be reason enough for concern), but they're not that far from the corset ones (eg, high heel and chest-binding can actually be dangerous... in rare cases).
I might be missing something, but this doesn't strike me as particularly restrictive? HRT doesn't magically make you pass, so one way or the other you might end up in this situation. Isn't it better to find out if you're cut out for it before you start messing around with your body?
If we can revert that 3600% increase by telling kids to try on a dress for 6 months, maybe we should do that?
No, this is based on referrals to the Tavistock GIDS, not a survey of zoomer tumblrinas.
EDIT: Which, now that I think about it also addresses your previous point. The loosening of the guidelines for HRT has no impact here, since this is just the first step of your family doctor sending you to the gender clinic. You only get HRT after that,
My impression is that medical concerns abound. Increased risk of cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, inability to orgasm if you block puberty too early... Even adult detransitioners say they feel they were mislead about the medical consequences of it all, and we're talking about pushing kids through the pipeline...
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link