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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44936 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I've written an article in which I discuss a somewhat common idea regarding the idea of trans people "existing" [1]. Some trans rights activists (TRAs) refer to denying the statement "transwomen are women" as denying the existence of trans people. Another manifestation of this is when people argue that denying that transwomen are women is threatening to transwomen's existence. The same applies to transmen of course. I argue that these arguments rely on ambiguity in language about "existence." Denying the existence of transwomen seems very silly because that is an unusual way to describe rejecting that a transwoman actually is a woman. Phrasing this as a threat to existence evokes thoughts of genocide. I think this is another case of language being used in an unusual way that is misleading, although perhaps not intentionally. This description of "anti-trans" attitudes should be avoided as it is not accurate and morally charged in a misleading way.

[1] https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/do-transgender-people-exist

I think this started as a way to defend against the argument that saying anyone can just identify into womanhood makes the term meaningless. You have changed the definition to the point where women as a sex class can be denied to even exist.

So the response was kind of a muddy-the-waters approach, to accuse back in response, but it really doesn't make sense.

I continue to be surprised that people take Aella seriously, maybe it makes more sense If I were to use twitter as I hear she makes a lot of fun polls but I've never heard a take from her that sounded like much thought was put into it. I find value in your handling of "genocide", that ending rape would technically be a genocide in the same way that it's often used in 'trans genocide' debate is a very nifty point.

Unironically just read every LessWrong article about Definitions. In a sane world, we'd just create new words to distinguish between transwomen and women and call it a day.

LW has sensible prescriptions for the use of language as a tool for reasoning, with the ultimate goal of enabling yourself to make better predictions about the future and choose utility-maximising actions to perform. However, this is not the only capacity in which humans use language, and arguably not the one that progressive activists or transitioners care about here - in fact, for the vast majority of people, it is probably not even the main one. Language is also used to communicate information, induce emotional states in the recipient, as a surprisingly difficult to falsify signal of certain aspects of the mental state and disposition of the speaker - and, as a weird consequence of the last two, to induce emotional states in the speaker. (Why make kids and soldiers speak pledges of allegiance? The language-for-reasoning view has no explanation of this.)

From the last few aspects, a fairly relevant "newcombian" aspect of language use also follows - by consistently referring to X as Y, you really do degrade (in a publicly attested way) your ability to treat X as not-Y.

The reason we don't do this is that transactivists would not be satisfied if we shifted language. They do not want us all to use terms like "female" or "biological female." They want full integration. If we replaced "woman" with "female" everywhere, they would insist that transwomen are female and should be treated accordingly. It is not actually a semantic debate, it is an ethical debate.

That’s not what trans activists want, though. They want acknowledging any distinction at all between trans women and cis women to be taboo.

Correct. My suggestion just makes that motivation obvious.

Conservatives would not be happy with calling transwomen 'ladyboys' but treating them the exact way, socially, as women. (Notably, ... if you are treating something the exact same way as a woman, then calling it "woman" isn't that much of a stretch). It'd be nice if they'd argue that, though

Conservatives would not be happy with calling transwomen 'ladyboys' but treating them the exact way, socially, as women.

And why should they?

Because - this is why they should not - they can't reproduce, and because the 'social role' and 'biological / innate traits' and looking like a women exist for the purpose of reproduction, and are traits solely evolved for it. When breasts serve either to provide milk to children, or female genitalia exists for reproduction, faking that entirely misses the purpose, which is a good one, of making more and better people. That isn't conservative though, conservatives say stuff like 'marriage is for real men and real women' (what is a real woman why should we care) and 'god told us to' (god = "goodness, spirit, the world", etc, so ... god actually loves trans people! you can just interpret that)

But if you don't address that, you ... don't have any basis for your argument, and they end up being incoherent. "woman: adult human female" is a 'terf' slogan, but it's totally meaningless - any claims a trans has about 'woman' apply to 'female', and 'woman' and 'female' mean the same thing!

When breasts serve either to provide milk to children, or female genitalia exists for reproduction, faking that entirely misses the purpose

Except conservatives like Matt Walsh do say this.

That isn't conservative though, conservatives say stuff like 'marriage is for real men and real women'

Presumably there's implicit conditions on what makes a "real" man or woman that...preclude anyone adopting it via cosmetic surgery.

But if you don't address that, you ... don't have any basis for your argument, and they end up being incoherent. "woman: adult human female" is a 'terf' slogan, but it's totally meaningless - any claims a trans has about 'woman' apply to 'female', and 'woman' and 'female' mean the same thing!

No, it doesn't. To the conservative it does - which is why he's reaffirming it. But the trans activist often specifically makes the claim that sex and gender are so distinct that one can be a woman without being female. This was, in fact, the thin end of the wedge until recently where, buoyed by success and annoyed by the existence of "biological women" as a distinguisher, people have insisted that "sex is also not binary".

But them now needing to say "sex is also not binary" makes it clear that that wasn't the original sell

I'm sorry, I don't really see how you show the conservative position to be hollow. I notice there's a lot of discomfort about conservatives somehow being allowed to park themselves on "Common Sense Hill" but that doesn't mean they're not sitting on said hill.

Except conservatives like Matt Walsh do say this.

I searched trans on his twitter and didn't find much like that. The Trans Militants Must Be Stopped! Trans activists have doxxed me, threatened to kill me, defamed me, and tried to silence me. Because of this reaction I've taken time to reflect and reconsider and I've now decided to triple down and be even more radical in my opposition to their agenda. Thanks for the motivation! Arrested For Making Trans People Feel Sad. There isn't much ... actual criticism of trans directly. Are you referring to something specific? If it's his documentary ... i'm not spending 2.5 hours watching a movie, and my friend who did says he never really directly addressed those points. any quotes you want?

Also, taking that idea seriously would draw importance away from the disney-therapy concept of a relationship as a "beautiful special inscrutable thing that two people (male and female) love each other so much in" and towards .. having (maybe even more than two!) children.

Presumably there's implicit conditions on what makes a "real" man or woman that...preclude anyone adopting it via cosmetic surgery.

... yeah, an implicit condition. What is the implicit condition? Why isn't it explicit? If it's unsaid, no argument is being made.

But the trans activist often specifically makes the claim that sex and gender are so distinct that one can be a woman without being female

The term 'trans activist' is like nails on a chalkboard. It does not matter what, precisely, the randomly-generated, changing-every-year post-hoc justifications for trans stuff is. Yeah, it's incoherent and tangential! But the conservative arguments are also incoherent and tangential. (this doesn't mean either side is wrong, you can support a somewhat-correct position with stupid arguments.) The motte (what trans people actually do) / the bailey (here is a particularly ridiculous thing someone said in the gender studies department).

I notice there's a lot of discomfort about conservatives somehow being allowed to park themselves on "Common Sense Hill" but that doesn't make them wrong.

It doesn't make them right, either. Saying the word 'common sense' and appeal to circular definitions doesn't mean anything, convey anything, etc.

I searched trans on his twitter and didn't find much like that.

I've watched some of his videos and he explicitly says you can't change sex. If you want an example: I believe in his Dr Phil episode he basically states that sex is so essential that we recognize it in skeletons (which obviously implies you can't change it).

Here he denies that self-perception can accurately represent someone's gender (so, essentially, trans people are deluded).

Here he makes the skeleton point.

TBH he doesn't even need to say it explicitly. What else is implied by treating transitioned people as the sex they were born as and literally calling them deluded?

... yeah, an implicit condition. What is the implicit condition? Why isn't it explicit? If it's unsaid, no argument is being made.

Implicit conditions can be so obvious as to not need to be outright stated (for example: "a baby has the same right to life as the rest of us" - has a pretty obvious implicit condition).

But I have given one example above. I think the issue here is less that Matt Walsh doesn't imply or say it with every single move he makes in his anti-trans ideology crusade (it is the basis for all he says) - it's more that you haven't seen it. which is fair but not a grand mystery.

The term 'trans activist' is like nails on a chalkboard. It does not matter what, precisely, the randomly-generated, changing-every-year post-hoc justifications for trans stuff is. Yeah, it's incoherent and tangential! But the conservative arguments are also incoherent and tangential

I don't feel you've shown this yet. All you've shown is that you aren't aware of Matt Walsh's implicit and explicit arguments. Which, again, is totally fine (he's not Plato, his opinions aren't particularly novel either) but it hardly rises to the level of "the conservative arguments" as such being able to be easily written off as incoherent.

Also: it seems inconsistent to be so opposed to generalizing the trans activist position when you show no compunction throwing over the conservative position - with Matt Walsh being the avatar- as well.

The motte (what trans people actually do) / the bailey (here is a particularly ridiculous thing someone said in the gender studies department).

Well, the gender ideology stuff is what's being used to push trans acceptance , so we're trapped with it.

It doesn't make them right, either. Saying the word 'common sense' and appeal to circular definitions doesn't mean anything, convey anything, etc.

I mean, to be fair: we haven't actually started to debunk/un-debunk anything yet, let alone the conservative position as such. All we've talked about is what Walsh may not have said, not even debunking his own position (standing in for the conservative position as such apparently).

I've watched some of his videos and he explicitly says you can't change sex. If you want an example: I believe in his Dr Phil episode he basically states that sex is so essential that we recognize it in skeletons (which obviously implies you can't change it).

... no, this isn't an argument on his part. I agree that Walsh opposes transgender stuff in general. I disagree that he attempts to articulate any basis for doing so. He's just saying ... "you are wrong. you cant make me agree with you. you are clearly a man and not a woman". Nothing more is happening there! If you tell a trans person that, or someone who is trans-accepting that ... that won't convince anyone! And he makes the conservative/libertarian argument of "you are trying to make me agree with you which isn't ok i have rights", - again, not articulating any actual objections to the specific things trans people are doing or asking. Which isn't useful!

The skeleton thing is really dumb! Aside from i'm sure there are a few outlier women with weird skeletons, it still isn't a reason to oppose people who are bio-men acting like women if they want to, or opposing letting them do that. It's just referencing some 'common sense' things you can't articulate, and don't understand well, and this means they lose! Even though in direction, they're right, trans bad, not woman, etc - they have no idea what that means, so they can't do anything with it.

Implicit conditions can be so obvious as to not need to be outright stated (for example: "a baby has the same right to life as the rest of us" - has a pretty obvious implicit condition).

... why? Plenty of ancient cultures would consider a baby in some far off land to not have the same 'right to life' (not that they even thought of a right to life!) as a fellow tribesperson. Seriously, how is that 'obvious'? It might be true, but that truth was understood after thousands of years of western philosophy. ("right" to life? what is a "right"?) That isn't obvious. Analogously with the trans stuff - this is all quite complicated, and just saying 'it's obvious i dont have to discuss it' means you ... lose to people who do try to discuss it!

Also: it seems inconsistent to be so opposed to generalizing the trans activist position when you show no compunction throwing over the conservative position - with Matt Walsh being the avatar- as well.

right, because I am opposed to trans in general. Criticizing bad allies is as valuable, if not more, than criticizing enemies!

Well, the gender ideology stuff is what's being used to push trans acceptance , so we're trapped with it.

... what does this mean? What does 'gender ideology' mean that 'trans acceptance' doesn't? They're actually pretty different, tbh. "Trans acceptance" - "this person was a man but really wants to dress as a girl and it will make him feel really bad if he doesn't he's just being his authentic happy self :((". Gender ideology is the "there is no difference between the sexes it is all socialized social constructs patriarchy oppression". They really are not the same! Obviously they are related many different large-scale senses but there are very important local differences.

Do you have any suggestions for words for transwomen?

Non-consensus Women?

Trans woman?

"Trans man" would be my choice.

Seconded. I think that the words transwoman and transman are the wrong way round.

Whenever I read the word transwoman, the image that pops into my mind is Dianne Keaton playing Annie Hall. Then I have to mentally stop and engage reverse gear; the text I'm reading is almost certainly using the word transwoman to refer to a man who has gender dysphoria and picked wearing a dress as their best coping strategy.

But reading on is a struggle. I feel that I've been had. Conned into assenting to "transwomen are women" because I reflexively imagine a woman with gender dysphoria and a prescription for testosterone. And feeling that this wasn't an accident. The words were deliberately made the wrong way round to trick me into accepting that "transwomen are women" only to later reveal that I've signed up to a man in a dress being a woman.

I've seen Gender Critical folk use TIM: Trans-Identified Man instead of transwoman.

Japan comes to the rescue: just call them futanari and be done with it. :P

My understanding is that a futanari has both sets of genitals.

I think there have been many acrimonious debates on hentai forums regarding this topic.

Is Japan as helpful with trans men?

The term 'newhalf' is workable. Although it refers to pre-op or non-transitioning ftms, it's suitably gender-neutral to be flipped about to 'reverse newhalf' to gain the same meaning.

Honestly, Japan's fetish porn community comes up with perfectly functional technical terms that aren't dripping with ideology, so perhaps we should outsource this to them in general.

Is there anything wrong with the term "transwomen?" Some people would say the term is offensive, and you should simply write "trans woman."

I think the OP's blog post lays it out simplest: this is a policy question disguised as a definition question. No amount of definitions will cause anyone to be OK with me saying things like "male trans woman." Socially/mentally bucketing Lia Thomas and Joe Biden together is an example of one such contentious policy.

No amount of gerrymandered definitions will change which concepts people think are worth using.

Socially/mentally bucketing Lia Thomas and Joe Biden together is an example of one such contentious policy.

And socially bucketing Lia Thomas with biological females has clearly been contentious. TBH just looking at pictures of him on the podium with smaller women gives off a sense of wrongness to me.

It's contention all the way down. The question is whose position should win.

I would not be opposed to some compromise position *where we accepted that our use of terms like "transwomen" was clearly just acknowledging a polite fiction and not to be used to imply something deeper and to seize more and more absurd concessions (like Thomas on a podium with women). But it's clear now that the trans activist side is utterly opposed to this and feel they shouldn't have to compromise and should enforce their ideology on everyone.

So why should I care if there's a backlash that attempts to destroy even the compromise position and roll us back to "contentious" outcomes like "males shower with males"? As far as I can tell it's a solution that solves problems for vast segments of society, as opposed to creating problems for all of us in the name of a tiny minority.

The Mistake Theorist in me says that we need a -cide word for culture, then. If genocide is essentially attempting to keep a population or demographic from being able to replicate itself into the future, then we need a word for when it happens to a culture that could include anyone of different backgrounds. Now, I don't imagine people would actually use "culturocide" (or whatever word would roll off the tongue better) instead of going to the genocide argument, but still.

I think the woke theorists call it erasure.

It'd be useful, and it's definitely part of the debate (and not one specific to trans- or LGBT-stuff!).

But I think there's also a few other concepts included and that are in many ways more primary parts of the discussion:

  • "Exist" as in being possible to recognize or know about, even under assumptions that they don't need to replicate themselves into the future. This is more overt for transmen, which were probably vastly undercounted in every statistical analysis for a decade, but the flip side of 'LGBT culture is trying to glom onto every crossdresser' is that Eddie Izzard has come out as genderfluid -- a lot of people who were part of the 'not-labeled' set demonstrably do want to go with these deeper categorizations when they become aware of them, some of which were not previously things that even had names.

  • "Exist" as in be able to go through society in a viable manner. The classical example here is the older WPATH SoC that required six months of lived experience before hormone therapy or hair removal: this wasn't physically impossible, but at best involved a bunch of really bad decisions and never being able to use a public restroom.

  • "Exist" as in being visible to other people. This is the other side to the 'you can be trans as long as you pass and I never have to hear about it anywhere'; not only are some people just never going to pass well enough to meet every critic's standards, but there's going to be at least some people who don't want to pass in every metric, either because their desired presentation isn't going to 'fit' (eg, transwoman who wants pants with pockets), or because they've grown to like things like Pride parades or obnoxious amounts of lipstick.

  • "Exist" as in be discussed in specific places where (they believe) other matters of similar level of complexity are discussed. This is the other side of the conversation about whether gender nonconformity is appropriate for middle-school age groups.

  • "Exist" as in live. This is somewhat based around overestimates of not-transitioned suicide rates and of transitioning and post-transition reductions in suicide rates (and sometimes overestimates of bias crimes), but you can still end up getting a giant pile of bodies with even more skeptical estimates.

deleted

Memocide?

...That could work, yeah.

Gender dysphoric individuals exist, but it's fairly arbitrary how the rest of society chooses to class them. 'There are people who feel that they are a different gender to their birth gender' is factual, everything beyond that is open to interpretation.

Gender dysphoric individuals exist, but it's fairly arbitrary how the rest of society chooses to class them.

AKA unlike all other body dysphoric people.

Really not sure why this particular group deserves such specific, overbearing exceptions

Consider that the limited inaccuracy and moral freightedness - particularly the idea of trans people as being under imminent external threat from evil - is in fact the point and the objective.

Yes, I believe that is the point of this rhetoric either consciously or subconsciously. Some might intentionally do this while others find this argument persuasive because it conforms to their desire to be inclusive toward transwomen.

Phrasing this as a threat to existence evokes thoughts of genocide.

I always do a double take at the idea of a population that is (largely) voluntarily sterile could be subject to "genocide," since that term literally invokes the idea of a genetic lineage. Can we blame New Atheism for the "genocide" of the last remnants of the Shaker community, who practice celibacy and rely on conversions from outside the community? There are, last I checked, exactly two living Shakers, down from thousands at their cultural peak.

To be clear, I'm not attempting to lessen any of the usual definitions of genocide, but I think trying to wield the weaker definitions as a rhetorical weapon cheapens actual violence against actually-vulnerable groups.

I've always got a fear in the back of my mind about what form that "cheapening" might take. A bubble bursting may be the worst-case scenario, where all at once how overvalued some overstretched concept is gets noticed and reacted against, resulting in the central examples of the concept being undervalued in turn. If this happens to concepts like "being oppressed," or "being marginalized" or "being downtrodden," the result would be really nasty.

I'd prefer if we stay on target as much as possible, but I have no idea how to control that.

Far more scary is to consider the burst already happened.

Who today would actually contest their ennemies being marginalized in a real and not ideological sense? Who would contest a genocide of the people they have otherized?

I was optimistic on this question. Post COVID I am no longer so. Rwanda could happen here, we don't have limiting principles anymore in the West.

I believe the Shakers themselves stopped accepting converts. The incentive for bad actors to convert is too great with the numbers this low and the age of current members. For example, a cynic might license the "Shaker seal of approval" to furniture companies or the like. I believe they've got some decent real estate as well. I toyed with the idea of joining but it seems like too much hassle for the novelty of maybe being head of a 300 year old religious group someday, which was my interest in it.

I think trying to wield the weaker definitions as a rhetorical weapon cheapens actual violence against actually-vulnerable groups.

I too have noticed how counter-to-normal-language-use it is to describe as 'genocide' any effort that stands to reduce people's chances of sterilizing themselves. Though I am also reminded of the deaf community culture was over whether to give deaf children cochlear implants, which will allow them to participate in the wider society but will almost certainly result in them not being able to participate as full members in the community of sign-language-using deaf people. To the extent that deaf people are like, say, a Native American tribe that only has a few hundred people left who speak their language and practice their culture, who want to prevent it from going extinct, this does seem like a concern that has some validity.

[Edit: I should have scrolled down; this digression has already been discussed]

I always do a double take at the idea of a population that is (largely) voluntarily sterile could be subject to "genocide," since that term literally invokes the idea of a genetic lineage

That's kind of the point: for a synthetic group that depends on everyone else allowing and/or funding their transitions it's in their interests to frame simple non-endorsement as genocide

It's essentially a form of moral arm-twisting to ensure they get what they want.

Genocide, as defined by international law, does not have to involve killing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Forcible conversion of religious group or assimilation of national group is genocide, even when no one dies in the process.

(the question is what counts as "national, ethnical, racial or religious group", case law is scarce)

One amusing consequence of (d) is that, if you are aware of the fertility-reducing effects, and if we take the ethical stance that reasonably-foreseeable consequences of your actions can be presumed to be intentional, then promoting womens' education among a population counts as genocide.

So under international law the most plausible (although non-central)example of genocide in western countries is differential CPS targeting of the devoutly religious.

Doesn't this prove too much? Attempting to destroy gay or lesbian communities seems bad in the same way; aren't they also "(largely) voluntarily sterile"?

If anything, that's what I'm trying to point out with the example of the Shakers: they are voluntarily sterile (celibate), and they really are almost certainly going to disappear completely within my lifetime, but I don't know that this fact makes a good argument against anti-Shaker (or more broadly, anti-Chrisitian or anti-Theist) communities as "committing genocide." I don't really agree with New Atheism, but I think (excluding acts of actual violence) it can't fairly be called "genocide" either.

It's linguistic gerrymandering

My first exposure to this type of argument was actually with tumblr's fat acceptance crowd, way way back in the mists of TiA. I witnessed one of them claiming that the existence of diets, and the fact that doctors, among other people, encourage fat people to go on them, and therefore become no longer fat, meant that a genocide was being perpetrated against fat people by society itself. All of society. I can't recall the date, but this has to have been more than 5 years ago at this point.

This torture of language does become very tiresome. Any good ideas on how to call out and shut down this particular dis-ingenuity, perhaps?

What I find weird is that you would think wordsmiths would be the most sympathetic to this constant abuse of language and it's cheapening, but wordsmiths are precisely the people leading us into this brave New World.

I liking it too intellectuals obviously being the most sympathetic to the idea that free expression is vital. Turns out that was way off base.

In either case, it's because words and ideas have power that they've been abused like this. Only people who understand the heft of a word like genocide can wield it to include people they are sympathetic to but for whom the term should not apply, heretofore.

Relevant: dissolving disease.

In the face of fatness, a consequentialist might posit 2 solutions to reduce suffering:

  1. Cure fatness.

  2. Restructure society so fat people aren't disadvantaged.

Arguments over whether transgender, fat, autism, etc. are diseases seem like rhetorical techniques in order to enforce a preferred aesthetic on society.

Anti-memocide activists take option (2) in order to preserve cultures they like, such as the LGBTQ or autism community (what's the difference? snicker). Others, disgusted by these groups, suggest (1) we thin out those populations (without violence of course) to reduce suffering.

I imagine the disgust reaction to transgender and fatness happens first, and the designation of disease happens second. Of course, it's the same for actual diseases, like leprosy.

Arguments over whether transgender, fat, autism, etc. are diseases seem like rhetorical techniques in order to enforce a preferred aesthetic on society.

Yes, that is the activists' argument.

The problem they run into is the diminishing returns of the social constructionist theory. This all works well and good to explain why, for example, dreadlocks aren't unprofessional.

But it's simply a much better founded belief that being fat is unhealthy. Unfortunately, activists can't pivot from their sophomoric "it's just a lens for the dominant power structure" one-size-fits-all explanation. So they spend time pettifogging you with debates about whether Kate Moss was a healthy figure, as if that changes whether Lizzo is.

I imagine the disgust reaction to transgender and fatness happens first, and the designation of disease happens second

Again: this would be true if there was no fact of the matter - no link between weight and health. But there is so this is a toothless point.

Our fear reaction to snakes predates our scientific understanding of venom. But our fear is still tracking something truth-apt and evolutionarily valuable.

Similarly, I think there's an obvious common sense intuition towards "if you wish to mutilate your body because you find it fundamentally unpalatable you're probably mentally ill". It actually takes a lot of "education" - aka decades of sexual revolution/LGBT social engineering - that suppresses our natural incredulity here.

Well, an activist's argument might merely be "you call fatness a disease to enforce your preferred aesthetic on society".

My argument is that in addition, an activist calls fatness not-disease to enforce their preferred aesthetic on society: A society with fat people in it. Which is why they would argue for medical or social interventions to remove the bad things about being fat, while still keeping the diversity of body size that they inherently value.

Clearly, this is not persuasive to you, because the fatness itself is disgusting. You correctly hint at the reason for our disgust towards fat people: evolution.

Here are other examples of this double-bind:

  • Babies are aborted. One fix is more birth control (maybe not the best fix), but if birth control is disgusting, then you're open to a gotcha like "If conservatives are against abortion so much, why are they also against birth control?"

  • Blacks are oppressed. One fix is ethno-nationalism (maybe not the best fix) but if segregation is disgusting, then you're open to a gotcha like "If liberals are against racism so much, why are they do they like diversity so much?"

  • LGBTQ is oppressed. One fix is to memocide their community so they don't exist anymore (maybe not the best fix) but if memocide is disgusting, then you're open to a gotcha like "If the woke is against LGBTQ oppression so much, why are they grooming children to be a part of this downtrodden culture?"

In all of these cases, there has got to be a second value difference:

  • The right is against birth control, independent of abortion, for some reason.

  • Liberals like diversity, independent of being against racism, for some reason.

  • The woke likes LGBTQ, independent of being against oppression, for some reason.

Well, an activist's argument might merely be "you call fatness a disease to enforce your preferred aesthetic on society". My argument is that in addition, an activist calls fatness not-disease to enforce their preferred aesthetic on society

And my point is that they're wrong and this isn't a symmetrical situation.

If this was just about preferring or not preferring curry or fish and chips this symmetrical framing work. But that's not the discussion.

Which is why they would argue for medical or social interventions to remove the bad things about being fat,

But not the bad things I care about. The ambiguity in "bad things" is doing a lot of work here. They fight to remove social stigma. They have no answer to the unavoidable bedrock issue (health).

If they actually had a pill that made fat people as spry and healthy as thin people I would bet that our dislike would inevitably dissolve, just as it has for other situation where the downsides are purely social or we have otherwise mitigated the non-social ones (e.g. dreadlocks, unattached sex). But we aren't there.

So, in the absence of that precondition, you might as well say that I am trying to impose my aesthetic preference against smog and the corporation is trying to impose its aesthetic preference for smog.

In some sense, this can be said to be correct. But would you choose this framing? It misleads more than it enlightens.

In all of these cases, there has got to be a second value difference:

Not in this case. Because they haven't actually cleared the first hurdle (being fat is actually tied to real problems that don't boil down to people being mean)

When they invent the fat pill and people are still against fatness then this argument would work.

I find it kind of objectionable to call wanting people to not suffer from something that very clearly makes life less pleasant a disgust reaction. There's a way that it fits, in a "I'm disgusted by needless suffering" sense, but the word has such a connotation of being unreasoned that it makes the whole comparison feel unfair. The difference between me and fat positive activists is not that one of us is disgusted and the other isn't, it's that one of us has given up on solving the root problem.

What is the "root" of the problem? Is it that people get fat? Or is it that fat people suffer increased health risks, beauty-ism, and are a literal poor fit for clothes and spaces? I'm going to do a little bit of mind-reading and assume that in your world where the problem is solved, everyone is thin.

A fat-activist does not have any disgust to fat people, and aesthetically values diversity of size, In her world where the problem is solved, there are fat people, but they don't suffer health risks due to improved medical technology, nor beautyism or logistical issues because of social engineering.

To make another unfair comparison to your position -- would you say glasses solve the root problem of poor eyesight? Of course, nobody is disgusted by poor eyesight...

You might argue that you consistently are taking the path of least resistance:

  • the easiest solution to fat people probably is a world where everyone is thin (based on what the past was like)

  • the easiest solution to poor eyesight seems to be glasses

The question then, is what is the fat-acceptance movement doing differently? You say they've given up on solving the root problem, but (if my mind-reading was correct) you would be modeling fat-positive types as giving up on making everyone thin. I do not think they want everyone to be thin. I think they are willing to implement more difficult solutions (medicine, social engineering) to achieve their preferred aesthetics.

I suspect even, that they are so against memocide, that they would approve of societal interventions to increase fatness, because interventions to decrease it are problematic. Whether or not they can do this openly is a political question of optics. This also explains LGBTQ groomers.

A fat-activist does not have any disgust to fat people, and aesthetically values diversity of size, In her world where the problem is solved, there are fat people, but they don't suffer health risks due to improved medical technology, nor beautyism or logistical issues because of social engineering.... I do not think they want everyone to be thin. I think they are willing to implement more difficult solutions (medicine, social engineering) to achieve their preferred aesthetics.

If this was the belief of fat activism then its activism should either be limited until our medical technology reaches this level OR be focused on lobbying for health research and dissemination of the resulting tech.

But this is manifestly not what fat activists do. Instead they idolize fat people like Lizzo today despite the manifestly bad impact on life being fat has. They criticize anti-fat standards as imperialist, racist white strictures and muddy the waters on whether one can be healthy at any size. Fat acceptance involves a significant ambiguity (at best) on whether being fat is bad as such, whereas your hypothetical activist recognizes this and seeks to mitigate it with medical advances that change the biological (not just social) landscape.

You are defending an idea that might be viable and worth looking at in spherical cow land but the dynamics of real world movements differ significantly.

And that difference is important. Because remove that element - focus on medical advances to mitigate the known downsides of being fat- and you have a movement founded on what is fundamentally a delusion : that you can simply think your way out of a medical problem if you call the standard tied to that problem unfair.

Fair enough, you're right that actual fat-activists are not the consequentialists I described in my first post!

I still wouldn't support this hypothetical, steelmanned movement because I find fatness disgusting, but the thought-experiment was novel to me. Maybe I'm just behind.

health risks

This one. Although it's incredible to me that of the options you put forward this one is so small and modified by "risks". I'm someone who needs to work pretty hard to not be fat. If I didn't think about food I would eat and drink to excess constantly. I have seen both sides of fat and thin plenty of times and I can say with zero doubt that it is far better to be fit. Everything you do when you're fat has this unpleasantness almost as a tax. It's unpleasant to lay down, it's unpleasant to sit up, it's unusually difficult to just move in the world, not because of society but because your body is not supposed to be this way, your heart and lungs are no supposed to support twice as much mass as they did in the ancestral environment. I'm fit at the moment and it is difficult to overstate just how much better life is when you're fit. You move through the world with an ease, you sleep better, wake up more easily, it's a genuine pleasure just to move about in the world.

And then the more medical health risks as you've mentioned. Sure, of course, lets get medicine to alleviate what we can of them. I'd celebrate a side effect free pill that would solve these issues. I've seen enough loved ones die decades too early because of these "risks" and I'd cherish those extra decades. But we don't have that medicine. And activism is not going to bring us that medicine. Fat acceptance is not going to bring us that medicine.

would you say glasses solve the root problem of poor eyesight? Of course, nobody is disgusted by poor eyesight

My eyesight is starting to go a bit, I'll be thirty soon and this is around when other people in my family moved to needing glasses. A solution? No. And I'd eat more carrots if that would fix the issue even though I despise that particular vegetable. But we don't have the equivalent solution for eye sight that we do for being fat.

You might argue that you consistently are taking the path of least resistance

I would not phrase it like this no, I'm trying to take the best paths taking resistance into account. I'm aiming for optimal and will take the carrot or kale path if they are worth the expense.

The question then, is what is the fat-acceptance movement doing differently?

They are taking the greased path into a pit of despair and human suffering.

they would approve of societal interventions to increase fatness, because interventions to decrease it are problematic. Whether or not they can do this openly is a political question of optics. This also explains LGBTQ groomers.

I will oppose them so long as there remains breath in my lungs.

You'd welcome medicine to fix those health problems but will it fix the unpleasantness that you spent a paragraph detailing? I think more medicine is good but I'd still prefer a world where everyone is thin. It's less disgusting in my opinion.

My point is that a philosopher of perfect emptiness couldn't choose between these two:

  • making fat people no longer exist

  • making it healthy to be fat

It takes an additional axiom like:

  • most efficient solution

  • fatness is disgusting

  • fatness is beautiful and diverse

In order to really care for one over the other.

I'm normally quite good at decoupling but the whole point is that we don't have this choice. It's not just a matter of efficiency, it's make fat people no longer exist or just be worse off for every marginal increase in obesity. We, at the moment, cannot mitigate the totally natural impacts of obesity. My disgust is totally irrelevant to diabetes and heart disease. The choice in the world that exists is not difficult.

Honestly, it's the opposite. It is a disgust reaction in a sense - because there isn't any specific form to 'disgust', it's a broad term, and because disgust reactions are often correct and useful. Okay, so i'm disgusted at the mold in my floorboards, viscerally unpleasant stringy foam - but it's disgusting because the mycotoxins will make my life worse. So in a sense, you are 'disgusted', or maybe not, but it doesn't matter either way, because - the issue is the root problem.

I've seen something very similar in offline spaces and certain "deaf community" people. It's disturbing. Further they would argue if a procedure to completely "fix" (whatever that means) deafness would be available that would be the "end" of them.

Don't forget the people who are against deafness and autism cures for similar reasons. That one absolutely infuriates me. I don't care what people say, being deaf (or autistic) is objectively something broken about your body and worse than getting it fixed. One can personally decide that they would rather stay that way, and that's their right. But people who want to deny that choice even being available to others? They aren't just wrong about what constitutes genocide, they're complete assholes because they're trying to stop sick people from getting better.

In the case of Autism, it can be subjective. Plenty of Autistic people can pass as nt. the definition of Autism has become so broad that a 'cure for Autism' may well remove all future programmers from the population, which would be inconvenient.

In the case of deafness, I understand it a little. The fewer people who speak a language, the less likely someone is to be understood. The technology doesn't exist yet to cure everyone of deafness, there will always be someone left behind. Unless we can convince more people to learn ASL, healing deaf people will be removing people from their community.

The thing that gets me, or is at least really tricky, is when people feel that they could not be the same person if their mental health problem is cured. People often feel like it would be the same as killing them. I can understand how someone could feel that way under their current mental model of personality, self, sentience. I also don't believe anyone is the same person over the course of 70 years and I don't feel like I've died yet. There is something about our philosophy of self that is broken. It doesn't lead to the best outcomes and it does not match with people's experiences.

I think it's worth trying to empathize with these people. Consider this previous discussion on some comments by Matthew Cortland, where he vociferously argues against the concept of QALYs, because as a disabled person, QALYs value his life less than that of someone who isn't disabled.

On the one hand, it is devastating to be told that you're not an entire person, even in an accounting sense.

On the other, when you're doing a utilitarianism, either you're going to count disabled people less than non-disabled ones, or you're going to see nothing wrong with deafening someone, or blinding them, and so on.

The silliest part of the anti-QALY argument also means that its not worth spending money to help disabled people, since we can't count their health as being less. The QALY is mostly an attempt to quantify health for resource prioritisation, but most critics don't believe there should be prioritisation at all. Either the societal health budget should be infinite, or they don't consider it at all.

I think your argument makes sense, but you're also talking about something very different from me. You seem to be addressing the position "a person should not be counted as worth less because they're deaf (autistic, etc)". I have no quarrel with that position at all (I agree with it). My beef is with the position "a person should not be cured of being deaf (autistic, etc) because that is destroying the person they were". That position is something I find morally abhorrent, because it is in effect preventing others from getting better (even if the intentions are pure).

Also, tbh I think your post is as much a strong argument against utilitarianism as anything else. I think utilitarianism has its place, but I think that it is actually pretty horrifying and immoral when applied at any sort of scale. Give me deontology or virtue ethics any day of the week!

Yeah, but by saying those things should be cured you are implying (not deliberately) that being deaf or autistic is lesser than. People who argue those things have usually made being deaf or autistic part of their identity, they have communities they have built their lives around that would cease to exist without their disability - and (this is a bit harsh but I can't find other words atm) those communities make their disability a strength, something special and unique to them that the rest of the world can't share. Learning that your child will never be a part of your world - worse, will become yet another normal who looks down on you for it - would be soul crushing. I'm not saying you are wrong, I don't think you are, but I do wish there was another way.

Edit: clarity

Well yes, of course it's less than (ideal). It's an illness. People aren't lesser for having the illness, of course. And if they want to keep it, that's certainly their prerogative. But to say "we shouldn't cure these conditions because that implies having them is lesser" is like saying "we shouldn't cure polio because that implies having polio is lesser". I wouldn't accept the latter argument and I don't accept the former, either.

I don't think that was the argument grendel was making, and it wasn't the argument I was making. I was just explaining why they take it so hard, and why I don't view them as morally abhorrent for taking that position - even though, absent their situation, I probably would.

Autism cures are a weird subject in my view, since it depends where exactly you sit on the spectrum.

Which of the following needs a cure?

Somebody with severe life-impacting autism who is happy day-to-day as a result of simply not comprehending their condition and having relatively simple needs & wants. Their perceived quality of life might actually drop if 'cured' from a POV of pure day-to-day happiness.

Somebody with largely high-functioning autism who's prone to depressive episodes due to their social difficulties but can nonetheless fundamentally function in society. Probably most people in the Motte with a diagnosis.

Somebody who's a borderline genius savant, who's accomplished great feats in their preferred discipline, but who is nonetheless incapable of functioning in broader society. Your Paul Erdos or whatever.

Especially acknowledging the spectrum is broad and that there's tons of points between these three. My experience of most 'cure autism' groups is that they're focused expressly on reducing the incidence of the first group of people who are totally unfit for society. Meanwhile as somebody in the second group, who comes from a lineage of other people in the second group, it does feel like a peculiar form of erasure. I've been able to parlay the trade-offs from being high-functioning autistic into professional and personal success, and whilst I'd love some sort of 'everything remains the exact same in terms of intellect and skills but suddenly my brain parses social cues intuitively' trade-off, I suspect that wouldn't be the case. Without even getting into the societal level trade-offs of 'alright we've cured autism, but suddenly we're running low on iconoclastic disagreeable genius inventors'.

I can't really remark on Deafness, and I'm sure there'd be similar arguments to be made that whilst Deafness is clearly a disability, there's a certain attachment to the culture of Deafness that exists, but I feel that Autism is fundamentally different since there's more of an associated trade-off than with most conditions.

Somebody with severe life-impacting autism who is happy day-to-day as a result of simply not comprehending their condition and having relatively simple needs & wants.

The answer to that is "utilitarianism sucks". This is not the first time utilitarianism has produced bizarre results because it can't handle blissful ignorance.

The simple solution is to consider the downsides to his caretakers.

Which layer of caretakers? The immediate family are the chief 'victims' from that POV, though it does raise a question of whether paid assistants can be considered to have downsides.

They're doing an ostensibly unpleasant job, but they're getting paid etc.

True, but this just takes the analysis a layer further. Someone is paying those caretakers - whether it be the immediate family or the State. If it's the former, the same applies, if it's the latter, there's diffusion of a downside across everyone who pays taxes.

Isn't that essentially the same as the one meme X-Men argument?

"We don't need a cure!" said the lady who could make snowclouds, to the teenager who killed anything she touched.

What ratio of snowclouds to touch-killing is acceptable, though?

I think even acknowledging that the illness exists on a spectrum, there still is no reasonable case to say "no, don't cure autism". If one feels that their situation is within what they will accept, there's no need to get a cure. We shouldn't force people to get cured if they don't feel they are sick, of course. But neither is it acceptable to deny a cure to those who may want one for themselves. Even the person who is just barely on the spectrum deserves the right to make that choice for themselves, after all.

The real life cures we're going to see are going to be embryo selection, so it's unlikely that any individual will be able to choose cure or no cure for themselves.

Any good ideas on how to call out and shut down this particular dis-ingenuity, perhaps?

Yes, win on everything else and gain control of the media and the discourse.

Saying "it's tiresome that people twist language to call people evil" is like saying "it's tiresome that people beat me up". It's not false, but it misses the point.

How to do the former is left as an exercise to the reader I assume?

This argument is also made against genetic enhancement and cochlear implants. From my article:

Singer (2003) excellently critiques these sorts of arguments:

If the use of cochlear implants means that there are fewer Deaf people, is this ‘genocide’? Does our acceptance of prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion mean that we are ‘drifting toward a eugenic resurgence that differs only superficially from earlier patterns’. If the use of the term ‘genocide’ is intended to suggest a comparison with the Holocaust, or Rwanda, it overlooks the crucial fact that cochlear implants do not have victims. On balance, it seems that they benefit the people who have them; if this judgment is contestable, it is at least not clear that they are worse off for having the implant. Imagine a minority ethnic group in which all the parents reach separate decisions that their children will be better off if they marry a member of the majority group, and hence urge them to do so. Is this encouraging ‘genocide’? If so, it is genocide of such a harmless form that the term should be divorced from all its usual moral associations.

The UN uses a liberal definition of genocide that includes things other than killing, so it's certainly not constrained to progressives.

Your post definitely crystallized the "cultural genocide" angle, but I wonder if you're thinking too hard about it. If I asked the TRA's I know in real life to explain what they mean by "threatening trans peoples existence" I wonder if they would give me a nuanced argument about cultural genocide, or if they would cite the 42% statistic.

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