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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   30457 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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If MtFs transitioned but didn't call themselves female or otherwise associate themselves with femininity, then why did they transition?

Well, for a start, they might think it feels good, and/or makes them attractive. You may be interested in parts of this Ozy post, though it's not making this argument:

I inject testosterone once a week. I have the changes everyone admits: my voice deepens, my chest hair thickens, my face grows a beard. But I also become stronger and more athletic (…) I stop crying at movies. My sexuality becomes more insistent and ever-present. (…) These observations are commonplace among trans people. Everyone knows that testosterone makes you more athletic and that hormones change your sexuality and your emotions. (…) I feel more like myself when my system runs on testosterone rather than estrogen — a phenomenon that is harder to explain if you don’t know how pervasive its effects are.

Indeed, even today there are people who seek hormone therapy without shooting for a binary transition - starting with various non-binary/genderfluid types. I know many vaguely nonbinary transmasculines who are happy going by "he" or "they" but don't break off in hives at being "she"-ed. (As a matter of fact, Ozy is one.) Those people would still seek breast reduction and testosterone injections even in a world where there was no concept of social transition and they remained classified as women, which they'd be basically fine with so long as they got to be very butch women.

As such:

This scenario would mean that they're physically altering their bodies to crudely resemble women while vehemently denying that they're doing so for any reason having to do with women--their chosen method of surgical self-expression just happens to be sorta based on physical attributes of women

This feels like a strawman. My proposed gnarglebargles don't pretend that it's a coincidence that transition makes them outwardly resemble the other sex in some ways. They would just give up on the semantic debate, and admit that their lifestyle still leaves them closer to very committed crossdressers than to the sex they emulate. Compare furries, who don't need to pretend that their aesthetic is completely unrelated to dogs to acknowledge that they have little in common with real dogs, and generally don't want to be exactly like real dogs anyway.

Indeed, even today there are people who seek hormone therapy without shooting for a binary transition - starting with various non-binary/genderfluid types. I know many vaguely nonbinary transmasculines who are happy going by "he" or "they" but don't break off in hives at being "she"-ed. (As a matter of fact, Ozy is one.) Those people would still seek breast reduction and testosterone injections even in a world where there was no concept of social transition and they remained classified as women, which they'd be basically fine with so long as they got to be very butch women.

I'll note because others haven't that I don't know if I'm a conservative even if I often side with them on the trans question but I basically can get behind the "I just like it and it" justification for adult transition. It's the reality claims that I can't square with my other observations like the existence of some kind of gendered soul that make me get off the train. I do believe what follows from this formulation is no child transition, gendered sports and a fat maybe on trans people in women's restrooms depending on a lot of negotiated factors.

My proposed gnarglebargles don't pretend that it's a coincidence that transition makes them outwardly resemble the other sex in some ways.

If they are doing it for reasons related to wanting attributes of the other sex, and admit it, then they are trying to be a woman after all, they are just trying to be one partially, and they aren't labelling it as "I want to be a woman". But the original objection applies: conservatives will know they are saying "I want to have these traits, and these traits are associated with being female, and that's not a coincidence", correctly read that as "I am partially trying to be a woman", and object on those grounds.

They would just give up on the semantic debate, and admit that their lifestyle still leaves them closer to very committed crossdressers than to the sex they emulate.

The same people who object to people trying to change sex also object to crossdressing, for similar reasons, so this doesn't materially change the scenario.

If they are doing it for reasons related to wanting attributes of the other sex, and admit it, then they are trying to be a woman after all, they are just trying to be one partially (…) The same people who object to people trying to change sex also object to crossdressing, for similar reasons, so this doesn't materially change the scenario.

I reject the validity of that framing. Sure, conservatives object to crossdressing as well - for separate reasons. At least if they have any sense. By way of analogy: no doubt telos-brained conservatives object to eccentric transhumanists who want to become actual flesh-and-blood anthros. And that can certainly be grounded in teleological thinking. But they will also typically object to women putting on Playboy bunny-girl costumes as a form of sexual foreplay. And they might have coherent, respectable reasons for doing so (ie "it encourages sinful lust and fornication")! But "it goes against a human's telos to try and become a rabbit" would be an outrageously stupid reason to be against sexy bunny costumes. That's just not what those are about. Good old-fashioned drag queens aren't trying to become women, falling short, and lying about what they want. They're just men who think it's fun to cosplay as women. And again you might have moral objections to sexually-motivated roleplay, but I don't see how you can object on teleological grounds unless you think all forms of disguise and pretend are immoral even if it's children playing dress-up at the playground, or indeed, in a school play.

I would suggest that conservatives object to crossdressing for reasons that are similar to why they object to trans and different from why they object to Playboy bunnies. (Although there may be an additional objection that's similar.)

They're just men who think it's fun to cosplay as women.

But that raises the question "why women". There's a reason that drag shows are a thing and dressing up as doctors or firefighters are just minor elements in other performances. There's clearly an element there that isn't present for cosplay in general, and it can at least be reasonably interpreted as desire to be women, regardless of whether they deny it.

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