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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31453 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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What is a woman?

I had an epiphany a while back and it's so obvious in retrospect that I'm mad about it. And I don't have anyone else to talk about it with, so you people can suffer this.

They actually don't know what a woman is.

Not everyone. I'm not saying there aren't any AGPs, or bad actors, or just people with extreme dysphoria. But a significant subset, including among the supporters? They actually just don't know.

Like, literally. They are not dissembling. They are not fucking with you. It's not Kolmgorov Complicity. They actually do not have a mental construct for "woman" that is a distinct referent class from a mental construct labeled "man".

I think this is the intersection of a couple of different things.

First, if a core conservative flaw is Othering, perhaps the core progressive flaw is the Typical Mind Fallacy. Think of the guy who can't even pretend to believe that fetuses have souls. Or the dude who looks at a religious extremist screaming "I love killing women and children in the name of my God!", and thinks "This person would adopt all of my beliefs about queer theory if they were just a bit less poor and uneducated and oppressed." Why on earth would that provincial fool do any better at understanding the alien category of "women"?

Especially with the elephant in the room, feminism, insisting that there are no meaningful between men and women that could justify any discrepancy in representation in any professional field. Women are just like men and want the exact same things, right? So, what exactly are the differences you're allowed to talk about?

(Writing prompt: explain gender variances in readership between romantasy and milscifi... to HR.)

And the cruel irony is that a lot of progressive men can traverse that minefield. Just blame the other men for gatekeeping and emotional immaturity. It's not a fair answer. It's not a true answer. But it threads the needle. There are plenty of people who can accomplish that task, because they have the mental agility and verbal IQ to mouth the platitudes while internally running logic straight out of a Hoe Math video.

It creates this doublethink world where everyone is supposed to know what a woman is and how to treat them differently, but never acknowledge the source of that knowledge, or openly admit to any real world implications. In fact, they have to actually deny that knowledge in a mass gaslighting. Remember Darwin? He was doing that all the time. A critical precursor to this epiphany was that time he pulled the mask down a little bit, and expressed his annoyed bewilderment that the rest of us spectrum-y nerds were taking progressive politics literally, instead of understanding it as a cynical exercise in tricking other men into acting like dumbasses.

Now what about the guys who aren't that mercenary cynical socially adroit? What happens when we combine the preceding socially-required doublethink with the common autistic struggle to model other minds? Remember that autistic-to-trans pipeline? Yeah.

So what the hell even is a woman, if you struggle to understand other people in general, and you don't think you're allowed to notice any impactful differences between men and women and all of the smart and successful people in your (blue) tribe sneer at the idea of any meaningful differences? The resulting rationalization is like a pastiche of the Jack Nicholson line: "I think of a man, and then add some cuteness and whimsey".

Which is, I observe, is exactly what it looks like when a pro-T prog guy tries to write women characters. They write women as men with some shallow "loli Dylan Mulanney" cuteness, because they don't actually have a mental model of "women" as having any differences in mentality, life experiences, preferences, traits, qualities or viewpoints compared to men. "A woman is a dude who spends 12 hours writing spreadsheets about Warhammer 40k battleships and then adds a heart emoji and a tee hee at the end. Don't deadname her, bigot."

And terfy ladies, you didn't just sow the seeds here. You plowed the fields, fertilized them, then set up aggressive arrangements of killbot scarecrows to fend off any threats to the seeds. I'm not sure how you can recover from that without rewriting a significant portion of third wave feminism, but maybe that's a me problem.

How would you explain to an autistic teenage boy the differences between boy people and girl people? In a way that provides useful guidance and doesn't make T seem like a normal thing for any boy who isn't obsessed with sports? In a way that let's them successfully navigate the differences?

How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?

... I don't think this is a good model. Even if you absolutely must frame it to sneer...

So, there's a joke that goes around in immigration contexts, where the CATO set think nationality is magic dirt, and national culture is food. And that's not a steelman, but it's not exactly an unfair criticism, either; there's a ton of long-built stuff just from one part of the US to another. If Alex Nowrasteh ended up in a SAW movie trap, you'd maybe get him to admit that cultural norms vary from one country to another rather than gnaw his own foot off, but I wouldn't bet on it. The idea that cultures tied to location of origin isn't just taboo, it's either unimaginable or a taboo behind a taboo. Nationality becomes what someone wants to do, in its most visible and immediate form.

What's that look like for gender, if a characteristic is only what the person wants to do? Well, what you were born with is a lot less actively chosen than what you carry in your pants, which is still a lot less actively chosen than what your call yourself. And that's clearly meaningless.

... but if you poke at it, that's not that incoherent. Yes, there are some obvious political compromise at the absolute edges (why is this butch a cis woman and this bitch trans male? why is that a femboy and that a transwoman?). But there's actually a lot of characteristics and terms we use like that: I use my current job title to describe my area of expertise, not the one I went to college over, and you'd probably be kinda weirded out if I used the field I started out with or what my family has historically done.

It's just not something you care about, and you see this as replacing a much more important term and concept. And it’s pretty reasonable to care more about what someone’s got in their pants than whether it’s wrapped in boxers or panties, and whether they want sir or ma’am even less. But that frame or most of the downstream characteristics are no more inaccessible to them than it is to you; the existence of "cis woman" as a term is a recognition of it.

Now, switching out 'trans woman' for 'lifestyle crossdresser' and 'trans man' for 'tomboy' isn't something the trans side is willing to offer for historical reasons even if soccons would accept it (and soccons wouldn't accept it, if they did). Perhaps even more critically, it won't solve the problems you or most soccons actually have, here. There are serious and difficult questions about how much we're willing to tradeoff opportunity costs for one group against another group's ability to reinvent themselves (am I talking about 'ban the box' or anti-college-diploma efforts?), of how welfare and entitlements need prioritize things that are actively undesirable to the wild majority of voters, of freedom of self-expression against social and regulatory norms, so on and so forth.

Everything before those questions is just disputing definitions.

and soccons wouldn't accept it, if they did

I mean, alienating people who also don't like social conservatives, don't care how you dress, and don't care who you fuck, seems like a good way to make those questions more difficult.

Fair, and maybe a decade or two ago a different focus on the side of trans advocates would have avoided some controversial landmines had they made that decision then. But path dependence is a nightmare; at this point, even assuming that committed (left-?) civil-left-libertarians exist in enough numbers to be a meaningful political force, I don't think this battle of terminology makes the top-ten list, and maybe even not the top-twenty list, of most alienating things.

meaningful political force

I can only shrug.

Guess we'll see who wins...

They actually don't know what a woman is.

Who are them which you mean? Are they in the room with us right now?

If you mean the LGBT* movement, I think you will find that they have plenty of cis-female members and allies. Surely these would know what it means to be a woman?

If you mean m2f trans people, you might be right that their idea of what a woman is might be different from the median idea of womanhood expressed by ciswomen in systematic ways. For example, it might be that for your warhammer nerd, rather than being driven to pursue some high platonic ideal of womanhood centered around social connections and care work has autogynophilia -- the thought of having boobs turns her on. Not that I find anything wrong with that. By contrast, I would expect there to be an anti-correlation between being trans and being unconditionally asexual, because if you are a man driven to do care work, that is a totally valid occupation for men today, and if you are a woman wanting to fix car engines, that is likewise fine. (Giant caveat here is that as a cis-by-default, I might not get people for whom gender is a big deal. Presumably, there are trans people for whom their transness is completely divorced from anything sexual, who knew that people were using the wrong pronouns for them based on the role models of men and women they observed at age eight, long before they even learned what the naughty bits were and how they worked.) Still, the autogynophile conception of woman has some significant intersection with the cis conception, I think. People being attracted to you and engaging in costly signaling to persuade you to have sex with them is not a universal experience of womanhood, but still a rather defining one, I imagine.

If we propose that any definition of womanhood should at least encompass all the adult female humans who have not explicitly rejected that label, then that definition of womanhood will by necessity be very broad. Sure, it will encompass the kind stay-at-home mum as a central example, but it will also include Margret Thatcher, car mechanics, butch lesbians, your odd XX warhammer nerd, nymphomaniacs, dominas, ruthless businesswomen, and so on. It would be really bad style to tell that car mechanic that she is not feminine enough to deserve the label woman. And once that is accepted, I think it would also be bad style to police the conduct of trans-women more restrictively. "Yes, Tina is a woman despite being a warhammer nerd, but you see, she was born with a uterus. You were not, so you will need to try to find a more suitable hobby before calling yourself a woman."

who have not explicitly rejected that label

This seems irrelevant?

And once that is accepted, I think it would also be bad style to police the conduct of trans-women more restrictively.

Men are, of course, welcome to have whatever (legal) hobbies their hearts desire.

Sure, you can just define women as "people born with pussies" and men as "people born with dicks".

However, I would argue that this is not exactly how these words are used in broader society. Your average six-year-old has a clear conception of which clusters in thingspace the words "men" and "woman" refer to, but are likely not aware of the exact differences in genitalia.

Sometimes, subsequent theories form neat cascades. When you do taxonomy, you might start with the phenomenology of extant animals, then include fossil records, and finally use genetic similarity as a great proxy for generations since last common ancestor. In each step, you might have to revise things a bit here and there, but mostly the shape of the cluster stays intact.

Likewise, if you go from Arrhenius acids to Brønsted–Lowry acids, you just generalized your definition in a useful way.

Contrast this to going from from Brønsted–Lowry acids to Lewis acids. While there is some overlap, these two definitions very much do not try to point at the same cluster in thingspace.

Now, you can argue that gender is such a neat cascade. As a kid, you start out with a vague definition centered around pronouns, then you learn about genitalia and use that as a definition, and finally you learn about X and Y chromosomes.

But I would argue that it does not work that way. Roughly, there are three different spheres where gender/sex is relevant, general social sphere (pronouns, bathrooms), sexual (whatever floats the boats of your partners, perhaps social passing and genitalia) and reproduction/medical (genitalia, chromosomes, disorders). Now, for 90% of the population,all three spheres agree on their sex/gender, but there are certainly cases where this is not the case.

Luckily, gender for the purpose of sexuality does not need to concern society at large. If someone identifies as a silly gender like "attack helicopter" in bed and finds someone who likes to fuck attack helicopters, that is great for them and their partner and ok for society. And if a prospective partner does not like the shape of their M230 in their pants, that is for them to negotiate and not for society to regulate any more than it regulates styles of pubic hair.

This leaves the social sphere and the biological sphere. There are good reasons not to try to unify both spheres. For example, in most societies, it is considered very impolite to pull down the pants of strangers to find out by what pronouns you should address them. From a pure biological point, XY's with CAIS are infertile men, not infertile women, but only a complete asshole would use that reasoning to tell a XY kid with CAIS to shower with the boys.

We solve this by separating sex and gender, and having one word "(biologically) female/male" for the one property, and another, "(cis/trans-) man/woman" for the other.

To add on to this, OP's premise that people don't know what a woman is, is incorrect for the reason that separating biological sex from sociological gender originated from progressive ideology. To do so, one must have a clear understanding of both biological sex and the sociological traits associated with it referred to as gender.

How would you explain to an autistic teenage boy the differences between boy people and girl people? In a way that provides useful guidance and doesn't make T seem like a normal thing for any boy who isn't obsessed with sports? In a way that let's them successfully navigate the differences?

Well, #1 I'd make him do some sports. That's the easiest way for any teen to get on the path of appreciating the differences between men and woman. That girl who was good at tag? Guess what, when you both at 15 shes no good anymore. Even the slow boys are beating her. And physical activities involving even a modicum of contact like basketball? Forget it. Its not just that she can barely jump by comparison, its that any man that does even a little physical activity can just move her. And, its actually scary in many ways, because you will be afraid that you are going to break her. Which you could easily do on accident.

Well, #1 I'd make him do some sports. That's the easiest way for any teen to get on the path of appreciating the differences between men and woman. That girl who was good at tag? Guess what, when you both at 15 shes no good anymore

Eh, actually 15 is still in the danger zone. Girls will have started puberty 1-2 years ahead (12-13) and so at 15 will still be ahead or apace. The boys will overtake them, of course, but sometimes not quite at 15. It's just at the inflection point.

15 isn't really the danger zone if we are talking about boys who do physical activity regularly. The gap widens after that, but still, the gap is surely there by 15 for the 90% or probably even the 95%.

Eh, actually 15 is still in the danger zone. Girls will have started puberty 1-2 years ahead (12-13) and so at 15 will still be ahead or apace

The adult women world champion football team is losing to the under-16 boys' teams (not even the champions) regularly.

There are many 15 year old boys who haven't quite hit puberty all the way yet. Presumably none of them on the u16 teams.

You don't need to hit puberty all way to beat a 15YO girl, what are you guys smoking?

I'm smoking about what you'd expect me to smoke at a rock climbing gym, where I routinely see teenage girls run circles around (some of!) their age-peer male counterparts.

Part of which is that when you graduate kids from the non competitive "kids classes" programs to the competitive "team" programs, the boys separate pretty severely: some boys hit puberty hard and fast and get muscular and athletic and turn into stars, some barely hit puberty at all until pretty late in high school and turn all gangly around 15 unable to climb like either a kid or a man. (Girls face a similar set of problems with puberty, in that some get a rack that will not cooperate with a sport built around being light and having great balance).

The idea that men and women are ultimately equal in physical strength and athletic ability is a bizarre feminist political cope.

The idea that any random male can beat every single female in every single sport in every single situation is a bizarre manosphere political cope.

In both cases, evidence is slippery and misapplied.

You say:

The adult women world champion football team is losing to the under-16 boys' teams (not even the champions) regularly.

Which is a statement about the top end of the athletes of both genders, and then use it in an argument about medians.

Feminists tend to take an obviously true statement like "Caitlin Clark would beat every mottizen in a game of horse" or "no mottizen would hit an oly total of 262kg at 71kg bodyweight" and bootstrap that into "therefore gender does not have any predictive value of athletic performance" which is obviously false.

Climbing is one of the most body-shape dependent sports - it's more like horse jockeying than it is like basketball. It's not height that matters, but frame size and natural muscle build. Almost all non-anorexic post-pubescent women will have too high a body fat percentage to be competitive. Lean-but-strong men dominate.

The reductio-ad-absurdum comparison here is chess: men are just better than women. It requires no physical ability. However, a girl that's been training since she was 6 and has a 1700 elo will kick the holy hell out of a random boy that sits down at the chess board.

Climbing is one of the most body-shape dependent sports - it's more like horse jockeying than it is like basketball. It's not height that matters, but frame size and natural muscle build.

Maybe when we're talking at the 5.14+ level of professionals, but at 5.12d and below a variety of body types are pretty common, from 6'2" beanpoles to 5'11" 195# muscular guys who can hang (hi!).

That said, the reductio ad absurdum is probably Golf. Men are way better than women, no women are competitive, it is impossible to imagine a woman ever being competitive with top tier men, it's broadly understood that women use women's tees that are closer to the green...and an LPGA pro is going to absolutely smoke any man over a 5 or 6 handicap, which is roughly your top 10% of male golfers.

The upshot of chess, or rock climbing, or golf, is that if you discriminate based on gender, you'll be right more than you'll be wrong. But you can probably find better tips if you look closely.

The idea that any random male can beat every single female in every single sport in every single situation is a bizarre manosphere political cope.

Is that the idea that was being put forward? I thought we were talking averages and percentiles.

This particular subthread starts with our learned friend in argument @anti_dan stating that to explain sexual dimorphism to an autistic 15 year old he would...

Well, #1 I'd make him do some sports. That's the easiest way for any teen to get on the path of appreciating the differences between men and woman. That girl who was good at tag? Guess what, when you both at 15 shes no good anymore. Even the slow boys are beating her. And physical activities involving even a modicum of contact like basketball? Forget it. Its not just that she can barely jump by comparison, its that any man that does even a little physical activity can just move her. And, its actually scary in many ways, because you will be afraid that you are going to break her. Which you could easily do on accident.

And @anon_ (apologies if I'm misstating your point) and I are pointing out that reality is actually a really noisy signal, and that taking your 15 year old autistic boy and making him play sports (which everyone should do anyway) may or may not lead directly into an understanding of sexual dimorphism. Depends on the kid, depends on the sport, depends on the social groupings the kid is involved in. It's not as simple as "every man is stronger than every woman" and human beings are notoriously bad at dealing with percentage chances that aren't 100/0 or 50/50.

Hypothetical: an only child homeschooled 15 year old boy, the rock climbing gym is his PE class. ((I know several kids/families like this irl, the parents are climbers and think it's a great way to get their homeschooled kid both exercise and socialization)) Which factor is going to cleave reality at the joints better to classify human beings by physical ability: whether they have tits, or whether they have their own climbing harness? In rock climbing, having tits will allow me to say with certainty that you aren't in the top 1% of climbers in the gym and you're less likely to be in the top 5%, but beyond that it has little predictive value: plenty of women climb 5.11 or 5.10, plenty of men can't. "Having your own climbing harness" allows you to make a pretty accurate hard cut: people who don't own gear pretty much never climb anything tougher than a juggy 5.10a. Athletic freaks who climbed 5.11 before buying a harness have been much rarer in my life than women who climbed 5.13.

So is our rock climber kid going to classify reality first by male/female, or by climber/civilian?

I do think that athletics is exposure to reality, hence why Plato tells us that Gymnastics is inimicable to Tyranny. Over time a kid will develop a nuanced understanding of the reality of sexual dimorphism. But, you know, it'll take time, and long exposure across multiple fields, and it will probably be quite nuanced.

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Yes, but that doesn’t mean the median 15YO is in the same boat.

If somewhat more athletic 15YO boys tend to win against the absolute world elite of adult women, then a girl their age is screwed. If being a full-grown adult doesn't give you enough head start to win, than starting puberty a bit earlier won't be of much help either.

Sure an athletic 15YO girl might beat a fat slob boy her age (this is also true of adult men vs. adult women), but that doesn't make 15 much of a danger zone.

My assumption is that the difference between a median 15yo boy and one who seriously does sports is more than "somewhat more athletic". On top of the training, they're going to be selected for natural testosterone levels, perhaps even artificial testosterone levels, higher chance of being on the later end of 15 year old if not outright age fraud, etc.

Ok bro whatever, show me the statistics that show a median 15YO girl is roughly as good as a median boy.

The point of the objection about having it be 15 year old is that it's not yet an open and shut total domination of the bottom male percentiles over the top female percentiles (which is required for making kids grok the sex difference), not that she'll be roughly as good.

Obviously the average man is much stronger than the average woman, and elite female athletes cannot compete at all against elite male athletes, but I think you and a few posters here are exaggerating the disparity because there’s no way the “slow boys” can compete with actual athletic women.

When I was forced to play basketball in high school PE class, there were some girls who played with the boys, and I can tell you from first hand experience, a clumsy autistic nerd who’s just getting into shape absolutely cannot just move a 5’10 elite female athlete with broader shoulders than him.

Like, I was in OK-ish shape and could do a 5k in 21min, and there were girls who did it in 17mim. Sure, there were boys who could do it in 15min, and most girls did it in 25min or more, but I didn’t stop to think about the statistical distributions, I just saw that there were both boys and girls way ahead of me.

Just look at female athlete records in any sport, compared to the mean or even advanced male performance.

When I was forced to play basketball in high school PE class, there were some girls who played with the boys, and I can tell you from first hand experience, a clumsy autistic nerd who’s just getting into shape absolutely cannot just move a 5’10 elite female athlete with broader shoulders than him.

The existence of such a person is a failure of the public schools.

I agree with you with regards to comparing elite female athletes with average guys. But the fact is almost no high school has even one such elite female athlete. Under a proper physical fitness regimen, if the school held a 1v1 tug of war competition girls would win against guys like 5% of the time. That there are so many weak and feeble men is a choice propagated by the system that not only doesn't prioritize physical fitness, it actively discourages it for all but the top percentages. That is why you have guys thinking girls can beat them at things. Because those 20% are working out everyday while he eats potato chips and does nothing. If he merely did 20 minutes of running and 20 minutes of lifting every other day he'd instantly be in the top 5% of females.

I am by no means an elite athlete. That said, I once faced a girl who would go on to be an Olympian in a 1v1 match. I won. It was not close. I wasn't even fully into puberty at the time. I was embarrassed by the existence of the match.

The fact is, if you are losing to girls as a guy in basically every sport but super long distance swimming they are substantially outworking you. If you told George Washington that his country would be dominated by places of child education wherein the average kid just sits all day and cant run a 2 mile sprint to notify the neighbor you need some butter for a pie, he'd be appalled. Movement is the solution. It is, of course, pain as well. But pain is weakness leaving the body.

I am not from US so take it with the grain of salt(still underlying school system is basically the same in Europe and America), but most people who fit description of "clumsy autistic nerd" didn't end up with zero physical abilities because of the teachers or school program but out of their own volition. They just didn't like to play the games that everybody played, and they didn't have a spirit of competition that would motivate them to give their all to running the distance or doing pull ups. And your only means of forcing them is through grading but they also often don't care about it(or care enough to raise enough stink to get themselves an exception or just transfer to a different school without such constraints).

Yes that is true. It should not be an option though. School PE should resemble an R. Lee Ermy boot camp at the start of each school day and failure to participate would be treated with latrine duty instead of being able to go to other classes.

Eh, when talking about specifically "autistic nerds" (i.e. like 1% of the population), there are certain caveats on that. Autists typically have retarded* co-ordination, and the top end of the "nerds" (i.e. aspie savants) sometimes get accelerated. A 13-year-old boy with garbage co-ordination against a 14-year-old girl isn't such an uneven match.

*I use this word precisely; adult co-ordination is usually normal, but it takes longer to get there.

Too much of this problem is derived from the coddling of your "autistic nerds" being allowed to sit out gym glass, walk the track, etc instead of having to do pull ups, push ups, and windsprints every day. School PE should mirror boot camp in most respects with a bit of additional recreational sports added in.

People should get to be agentic rather than being forced into activities. (Not that I am against promoting physical activity in society).

We are talking about children. They are already being forced to go to school. I am merely advocating that the time spent there be productive.

I can understand why you are advocating for what you are advocating for. But it is a very let's try to add something to a badly run system argument, when the whole system needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch.

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And kids should be forced to do certain things, wear certain things learn certain things, so that as adults they have the agency to make choices for themselves about how they want to live.

Letting a kid get through high school with no physical activity is decreasing rather than increasing their agency. It's putting them on a path of laziness, sedentary sloth, and identity formation against athletics.

Forcing a kid to practice athletics when young increases their agency as adults. They can continue to their athletic practice or choose to be a fat slob or choose to try a new sport and it will be easier as a result of their experience.

I don't think it is forcing kids to do things that makes them agentic per se, as opposed to exposing them to different things and having an environment that ensures they engage in various healthy activities. Forcing people typically tends to do the opposite, it raises them to be conformative (unless they turn rebellious as a result of being forced).

Note that I am not against promoting sports or physical activity for kids, I took issue with forcing people to do things in the specific way anti_dan advocated for.

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But in the previous comment’s context, they’re already being forced into activities and have limited agency, by virtue of being in high school.

Why is promoting a culture where physical fitness is an important aspect in any way less agentic or more forced than the situation where kids already have to be at school doing things adults tell them to do?

You can have a culture that promotes physical fitness as an important aspect, but doing so in a boot camp like space and forcing them to participate in it in what a school environment typically is like currently is what I am against, because I believe it hurts more than it helps and sucks all the joy out of physical activity and sports just like school typically sucks all the joy out of maths/science and everything else you are forced to study there. Plus, schools tend to be ineffective.

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I don’t disagree that it’s appalling that physical fitness being neglected for the majority (although calling men “weak” and “feeble” as opposed to just unhealthy is an odd choice of language). It doesn’t really matter for the main point that there’s elite female athletes, but it’s still important to know that the delta is not that big at the extremes. The top female athletes are about ~10% worse than the top male ones, and if you look at something like a 5k run, the top females today are better than the top males from the 1930s. That’s way closer than most posters here would suggest, and to compete with female Olympians in most sports you’d still have to be in like the top 0.1% fittest men. The average Joe, even with a decent amount of training, doesn’t stand a chance.

But that’s getting aside from the main point. How exactly is knowing that he can easily surpass most women at sports with relatively little training supposed to dissuade the hypothetical autistic teenage boy from transitioning? If anything it might backfire and make him stop exercising altogether to match more female levels of performance/muscularity (and on estrogen, male performance is drastically reduced anyway).

I would postulate that regular exercise would probably improve the mental health of these teens to the extent that something around 99% of all the trans candidates would no longer be so. In fact, they probably wouldn't by "autistic" anymore either (because we are generally not talking about genuine autism diagnoses in this sort of hypothetical). Sound of body resulting in sound of mind is real.

I don’t want to discount the psychological and physical benefits of but come on, it won’t stop anyone from being autistic, or even trans. I wish it did! I went to the gym and I just became an autist with a six pack. And it didn’t stop me from being trans either, unfortunately.

Plenty of athletic people I know are various flavours of neurodivergent or queer. Some trans guys I know are particularly into bodybuilding and powerlifting and it uh… has the opposite effect of making them conform to the social expectations of birth sex.

I fed your comment into Gemini 2.5 Pro, and it came up with an incredibly insightful answer meant to be shared with these supposedly struggling men. Unfortunately, the majority opinion here frowns on reproducing AI output, so I'll be uncharacteristically catty and keep it to myself. Anyone curious can copy and paste for the same result, I'd presume.

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If that "insightful answer" turned into any actual understanding on your part, you could have just reformulated the concept in your own words.

I know what a woman is, or at least I know 'em when I see 'em. I don't need an LLM to guide me in that regard.

Iconochasm didn't ask you to reformulate the concept because he doubts your understanding of a woman. He did so that you don't have to be uncharacteristically catty. If you reformulate, then the curious wouldn't have to each individually go through the effort of getting a response, and hoping that the response was similar enough to yours.

Well it would be a similar result, but not the same result. To synthesise what it told me into a sentence it was basically "stereotypes are real but just a guide, people are a composite of their genes and their upbringing."

I don't think there's a rule against clearly attributed AI output. And I'm also curious.

...this is even worse than just posting the damn slop.

I'm glad I posted this because the responses revealed a serious flaw in my explanation.

I very specifically do not mean "they don't know what a female is". They get that, for the most part. I'm talking about the internal experience of womanhood, the preference for faces over mechanics, the keen interest in social networks and how much a man makes and the low-key rape fetish. Instead, when they think about the differences between men and women, they think the women are just smaller men. It parses the same way you would consider the differences between The Rock and Kevin Hart. They treat their female friends and girlfriends like a guy, and then don't understand why it backfires. To them, a woman is just a guy with a vagina in a skirt. So if a person with a penis puts on a skirt and claims to be a woman, what's the difference?

And the solution is to have other men explicitly teach them about the differences in perspective. The full Boomer Wisdom.

Or they can just watch Hoe Math videos.

Instead, when they think about the differences between men and women, they think the women are just smaller men. To them, a woman is just a guy with a vagina in a skirt.

And from that, witness the fundamental anxiety: there are women who qualify as this (tomboys are not trans men, though they function like the platonic ideal of one, including attitude and general outlook on life- there are women who just act like this more generally without specific tomboy markers, and they're harder to spot, but they'll always show you who they are eventually), and there are women who do not.

Women who qualify tend to get lots of high-quality male attention, for reasons that are blatantly obvious (the self-awareness alone makes a much better partner, to say nothing of the other stuff; hostile unproductive attitude, which is something TERFs don't solve, is corrosive). Pick-me-s. This makes Mean Girls jealous.

So, how best to attack such a woman? By doing the same thing to these men-women that they did to men more generally- take away their spaces, destroy what was good about them through gender politics. That is the sole purpose of having men in women's sports: destroying the spaces where participating in a male-type pursuit is productive, and making them as miserable as every other worthless bitch (and now a disadvantage in the instinctual quest for the highest sexual price that defines womanhood). Mission accomplished.

The spear counterpart to this behavior is, of course, as you described:

that time he pulled the mask down a little bit, and expressed his annoyed bewilderment that the rest of us spectrum-y nerds were taking progressive politics literally, instead of understanding it as a cynical exercise in tricking other men into acting like dumbasses.

I'm talking about the internal experience of womanhood, the preference for faces over mechanics, the keen interest in social networks and how much a man makes and the low-key rape fetish

"Lived experience" of a thing is not required to know how expressions of it can be destructive.

tomboys are not trans men, though they function like the platonic ideal of one, including attitude and general outlook on life

Ive thought this too. If self-identified trans men really are men, theyre the type of man who worrys that his canthal tilt isnt enough - ie a loser, who we would consider at least as deficient in masculinity mentally as physically. Obviously the really masculine thing to do is to just be one of the boys.

And while youre right that theres some obvious reasons why men would be interested in those women, I also think there is something particular to it for nerds. We are a culture thats mostly male and at least used to believe in gender equality, and so have accumulated a lot of masculinely inspired but genderneutrally applied ideals. Jocks might like the convenice of a more masculine mentality, but they also like acting steretypically all girly. How do you act girly in accordance with nerd culture? Dimorphism exists for a reason, and I feel sometimes that this remains a mote in our eye, who now complain about other unnatural degeneracy.

How do you act girly in accordance with nerd culture?

You can't, that's the main draw of it. The topic of what you're being a nerd about at the time, or the thing that you're trying to do at that moment, is the 'woman' in this context. Women who do this have either explicitly chosen, or have an innate affinity for, not being the 'girl' in this social context; that's what separates tomboys from your standard representative of Women, Inc. (and is part of why tomboyism is more common in childhood).

The thing about these topics, or goals, is that the mystery is... external, not personal. You either measure up to be rewarded for examining something or you don't- this can be from hunting to computers or music or anything in between [you either have the right answer], but it's not going to shut itself off, turn its nose up at you, or try to murder you for examining it like Women, Inc. will. This is an existential threat for us in a way the average man can't understand (they're missing a piece).

Obviously the really masculine thing to do is to just be one of the boys.

And from the male side, the really feminine thing to do is to just be one of the girls.

This manifests as the "gay best friend" phenomenon from Women, Inc. reps that don't fully understand this (they've identified the 'not a sexual threat' part correctly though, and something that tends to get in the way of nerd relationships; just because you spend most of your time as masc-presenting doesn't mean your attraction patterns aren't fundamentally female). If you watch [or were] the little boy who hangs out with the girls a lot (something more common for nerds than for the average man), this is what he is doing.

Guys have the attraction-dampening effects on for tomboys in a similar way, but the specifics are a bit different.

I feel sometimes that this remains a mote in our eye, who now complain about other unnatural degeneracy.

The people who do most of that complaining are not nerds. While I agree that "unnatural degeneracy" is the best way that the average man, or Women, Inc. representative, should describe someone not obeying their instincts, I also think that those are the people for whom (as you put it) dimorphism exists in the first place. From that viewpoint, that is why it is possible to "be turned [LGBTQP][1]", and I also agree that in some cases this is an accurate statement to make (especially since these people can be manufactured from stuff like "being a victim of sexual assault", and the meme that one can be "traumatized" by seeing porn or sex at a young age comes directly from this place)... but if you're not starting from that viewpoint then these claims become an incoherent mess.

masculinely inspired but genderneutrally applied ideals

Yes, I think that forms some anxiety, especially for autoandrophiles. Real women-men know they don't need to have a penis to be a man, but not all women are capable of getting to that state (and Women, Inc. has done its best to distract them for the reason I noted earlier- women-men are not a threat in the same way). So, if the ideals of your culture and the rewards given are disproportionately masculine... then it makes sense that more women will perceive they don't measure up. Combine that with the tactical and strategic implications of being a woman (where your only value at that point is childbirth, and the odd social crusade once you're too old for that) and it's not exactly a surprise why one would want to opt out.

[1] Which is part of why these "conditions" are grouped like this in the first place, and is also why these people claim P is an inextricable part of that grouping and are very invested in that "most gays were raped as children" statistic.

the topic of what you're being a nerd about at the time, or the thing that you're trying to do at that moment, is the 'woman' in this context. Women who do this have either explicitly chosen, or have an innate affinity for, not being the 'girl' in this social context

Could you clarify? Is this saying, "women and girls are the primary attention-attractor in most situations. In nerd spaces, the special interest is the center of attention instead. A female nerd [Tomboy?] abdicates her role as the center of attention [girl]. Tomboys are more common in childhood because little boys still like their action-figures and do not yet like girls."

This is an existential threat for us in a way the average man can't understand (they're missing a piece).

To clarify: us is... [nerds]? Nerds (who want to artistically examine everything) are threatened by the defense (offense?) mechanisms deployed against them. Is there something specific about "average men" that makes them incapable of understanding? Or can we replace it with "non-nerds" and retain the same meaning, if this is just about group lived experience?

(As an aside, I feel like I've seen (you post?) Women, Inc. in lots of other posts. Is there an explanation? I assume there is no Men, Inc. and that Women, Inc. is getting at how female cooperation (as opposed to male competition) means women prospire as a coordinated group. There's also official female-centric organizations with no male-centric counterparts. Or maybe it's a cheeky way to say "We live in a gynocracy.")

average man, or Women, Inc. representative

Ah, unambiguous meaning: A woman is an NPC of the Corporation, unlike a man, who has individual identity.

I also think that those are the people for whom (as you put it) dimorphism exists in the first place. From that viewpoint, that is why it is possible to "be turned [LGBTQP]"

Just so I catch your meaning: We can say only average people are sexually dimorphic. Nerds, but also queers [gender nonconformits] are not dimorphic. To be turned queer is to stop conforming. That's true and not a hot take: just believe them when they tell you what they are.

Finally, in regards to the footnote: Who are "these people" [who claim P is inextricably linked]? Someone who uses the phrase "turned queer?" I think of queer as a Movement/Tribe and that means people convert, or have the pre-existing differences. Is your phrasing emphasizing that queer conversion is forced upon a passive vessel? Take your pick of the meme-ified version of your argument, I suppose. Tomboy hypnosis, medium-rare, for your relevant enjoyment. Still, I don't think the ability to manufacture tribe members says very much. Even an /r/atheist can be manufactured, like with domineering-enough Christian parents.

You can't, that's the main draw of it.

My point is that, as nice as it may be to have something like that, it cant be all of society. You need? women, not just biological ones but social ones too, and you need to have some space for that. Even if they are then not nerds, then nerddom would need to have some kind of interface for an intended complement, and it doesnt. Nerds just want to marry nerdettes, and want them to not do the women things except when the need for it is really in your face, and then they copy something from mainstream society or wing it.

And from the male side, the really feminine thing to do is to just be one of the girls.

Is it? Concern about your appearance really is feminine behaviour, so IMO its congruent that trans women pursue a female body.

The people who do most of that complaining are not nerds.

Yes, but a lot of people from the overlap are here, thats why I brought it up. I didnt really understand the rest of your paragraph there.

So, how best to attack such a woman? By doing the same thing to these men-women that they did to men more generally- take away their spaces, destroy what was good about them through gender politics. That is the sole purpose of having men in women's sports: destroying the spaces where participating in a male-type pursuit is productive, and making them as miserable as every other worthless bitch (and now a disadvantage in the instinctual quest for the highest sexual price that defines womanhood). Mission accomplished.

We must secure the existence of our tomboys and a future for girl's sports.

That's also why traps aren't gay.

(But that category has been poisoned into undecideability, where truly boyish girls/girlish boys are pushed to the side and their prosperity sacrificed for women and men who are not, in fact, worthy of opting out. Traditionalists have identified, correctly, that the drive to trans your children is a communist impulse- they just can't explain why.)

Of course traps are not gay. We have already covered this:

What never ceases to amaze me is that there are three completely different types of gay male smut available for all kinds of genders and orientations. There is gay male smut aimed at straight men, otokonoko, which is exactly the same as regular smut aimed at straight men except that the "girl" is a little flat and has a certain extra hidden in "her" underwear (the infamous Boku no Pico is a prime example). Then there is gay male smut aimed at straight women, yaoi, which is exactly the same as regular romance aimed at straight women except that instead of a guy and a girl you have a seme and an uke. And then there is the gay male smut which is actually aimed at gay men, bara, which I know little about because trying to read it triggers my disgust instinct (by contrast, yaoi is just boring, not disgusting, and otokonoko is hot).

I want to fuck Astolfo up the ass. That doesn't make me gay, that makes me straight, because only a straight man would be attracted to a trap character like Astolfo from Fate. Actually gay men are not attracted to traps; they are attracted to beefcake characters like Endeavor from My Hero Academia. And women are attracted to aloof, dominant, broody, abusive, violent assholes like Sasuke from Naruto.

I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of any group that you are not a member of. You can approximate, sure, but my question to anyone claiming to be having the internal experience of being the opposite sex is “what does being that gender feel like exactly?” Like, im a woman and im not sure I could explain the feeling of femaleness to another person. And I’m certain I could never understand the internal experience of maleness. I could approximate, but my thought of what maleness feels like (interest in competition, visual based sexuality, practicality, and disinterest in arts) would likely offend males much like any other stereotype even if true in other areas.

I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of any group that you are not a member of.

Don't worry about "knowing". Settle for "being able to usefully predict the results of". For example, I have read books from an author with a feminine name that I knew literally nothing about as a person. And halfway through my brain just says "Sorry, but there is no chance a woman wrote something this spectacularly autistic", and then I go look and of course the author is trans. There are tells, in what gets highlighted and how things are approached.

Perhaps, but the offense comes more because discussing them quickly pattern-matches into angry venting (in the "I don't see the use of you, let us clear you away" Chesterton's Fence sense).

That, and "knowing"[1] someone in public is just fucking obnoxious. "I read in a book that You People do X, so I'm going to do X then get frustrated that it's not working" kind of comes off like stealing in the... sense that you've taken information that wasn't being emitted then drawn conclusions based on that to gain a personal advantage. Compare the "I read that black people like fried chicken, so we'll serve it for Black History Month" thing for a more neutral? example.

But then, how to balance "making the attempt to understand" against "there's a right way and a wrong way to do this", combined with the fact that the people who aren't all that experienced (or competent, in some cases) at the former are less likely to understand the required secondary knowledge of the latter? And then you have people who want to do it for the wrong reasons anyway.

[1] I find the Biblical meaning of "knowing" to be instructive here (and as a consequence, take being trusted with certain other kinds of information more seriously than I do the knowledge gained by 'merely' sleeping with someone; there are plenty of things that can be way more destructive than that).

And I’m certain I could never understand the internal experience of maleness

Sure, but when people say that, a "so you don't have the right to call them out for destructive behaviors that I'm trying to normalize for myself" is being smuggled in. You don't need to internally experience being an X to have the right [when it is within my political power] to impose costs designed to constrain nastiness that the statistically-average member of X exhibits.

But that’s quite often how trans comes off to me as a woman. They’re wearing super feminine things while tge cis women I know are rocking sweats and hoodies. Like one trans woman comes to work dressed in a pink or black dress and knee high socks and having his/her hair up in a ponytail with a ribbon. The actual women he/she works with are wearing hoodies, tee shirts, jeans or slacks. And the mannerisms seem to be trying too hard, like they’re consciously trying to be as feminine as possible, something other women don’t really do. At times, a lot of this feels exactly like what you’ve describing here, like someone took every stereotype of what women are like and chose to do all of those things. And I can’t help but mentally go into trans-racialism which isn’t a thing yet, but would explain better how this comes off. Imagine that I decide that internally, im black. So I start buying the kinds of clothes I’ve come to understand black people wear, I bring watermelon and fried chicken for lunch because black people like watermelon and fried chicken, I start talking in redicuoulsly bad Ebonics. At some point, you’d point out that you’re not only not acting like real black people, but you’re acting out a racist’s idea of what black people are like. Saying that you “feel like a black person in a white body, and all of this stuff im doing im doing because im an authentic black person,” is silly. And I really think in either case the question must be asked “what does being black/male/female/hindu etc. feel like?”

And at some level nobody else is thinking about their various identities in that kind of way. You’re living life, a perfectly ordinary life where you do things without thinking about them too much.

I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of any group that you are not a member of.

Forget groups, I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of anyone else.

We just had a whole discussion about how one man thought no men would be willingly be kicked in the balls to have a child. And was immediately corrected several times over by multiple other men. So clearly even for men, for a fairly universal experience of being kicked in the balls our individual internal experiences vary massively.

Well that's just explicitly denied by ideology. Everything that you described is what Butler would call a performance of gender, and argued to not be innate.

That's where this whole thing starts, that's what gender as a concept is: social constructivism.

I agree that it's probably not true and renders the endeavour impossible, but let's be fair, they understand what a woman is, they just want to change that or destroy that, because they think the world will be better for it.

What is a whale? Or a crab, a tree, a planet, a psychdelic drug, cannibalism, a champagne wine, jazz music, a poem...?

What is "knowing what a woman is?" If Person A shares your conception, but cannot articulate it, while Person B has a different conception and can pass an ideological turing test for many different conceptions of womanhood, who would you recognize as "knowing what a woman is" and why?

What is a whale? Or a crab, a tree, a planet, a psychdelic drug, cannibalism, a champagne wine, jazz music, a poem...?

The categories were made for man to make predictions. The purpose of words is to point at empirical clusters in thingspace. Extending the definition of the word "woman" to encompass "XY-chromosomal human in a dress" is... not cleaving reality at the joints.

Keep seeing same link. Keep making same response

If "is a fish" really were just semantic, then by the same mechanism "has tiny hairs" would be just semantic. So there would be no facts based on which you can classify things... The only thing that makes this theory remotely workable is that you already know which things you want to apply it too. Its pure Humpty-Dumpty-ism in practice.

Good words refer to clusters in thingspace.

In Scott's article, this is a shared understanding between "you" and King Solomon, because both are assumed to have read the sequences. Both can happily agree on a definition of "hair" at least as long as no disputed example (such as the hair on a coconut) becomes relevant.

The thing with thingspace is that it has a really high dimensionality, and often people do not care about all of the axis. Solomon is basically saying "for the projection of thingspace I am interested in, it makes sense to classify a whale as dag.

In mathematics, you can really build your definitions bottom-up, so that new definitions only contain stuff already defined (as well as pre-agreed syntax, such as quantors). In all other human endeavors, not so much. Every definition is its own can of worms, and it is highly practical to be able to open up a minimal number of them, for example to debate what should be included as a mammal without pre-emptively also debating what "hair", "water", "leg", "swim", and "definition" mean, exactly.

This is also how LLMs and NLP lexical models like Wordnet understand words. I would say instead of good words, all words are like this, but some words are more clear in what cluster of concepts they are referring to exactly than others.

Yes, this is another example of asserting that there are two kinds of words, and that the "pragmatic" ones should be optimised according to reasons provided using the "primary" ones (the axis of thingspace), without explaining how to distinguish the two. Yuds version is better in that it at least gives you a concept of a plan he might propose - like "primary properties are continuous" - but it doesnt give us a system that could be evaluated for corresponding to our epistemic situation, or even being coherent. I also dont think his version of "optimise" has considerations like "Norton really wants to be an emperor so lets include him in the category":

Suppose we mapped all the birds in the world into thingspace, using a distance metric that corresponds as well as possible to perceived similarity in humans

This helps, because you have to describe your "optimisation target" in terms of primary words to avoid circularity - I doubt the Yud primary words could actually be used for the Scott objective. For the Scott version, you need to make it so "aggregate human preferences" is a real word, but "woman" is not. For an illustrative example of this problem, see here:

Similarly, if I’m thinking about whether shrimp are conscious, I’m thinking about how shrimp are similar to and different from creatures we normally think of as ‘conscious’, and what these differences indicate about whether there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp.

where you might notice that "whether there’s something it’s like to be an X" is well established in philosophical discourse as being pretty much exactly as difficult as "consciousness", and has in many ways even started the trend of considering consciousness difficult in analytic philosophy. Thats what happens when your redefinition attempts accidentally hit on one of the terms in the optimisation objective, which happened because youre not systematic about it, because youve convinced yourself its unnecessary by intellectual descent from the exact thing in Scotts post Im objecting to.

(This isnt really relevant to the gender conversation, but one consequence of these cluster words is that all logical arguments, which require language compositionality, come with an asterisk to them. This is highly relevant when you try to use such arguments to convince people of a rather unusual conclusion, where you will not have an opportunity to see if these particular words "empirically describe the cluster well enough for these purposes" until its too late.)

it is highly practical to be able to open up a minimal number of them, for example to debate what should be included as a mammal without pre-emptively also debating what "hair", "water", "leg", "swim", and "definition" mean, exactly

You, on the other hand, seem content with there not being a real distinction, and as far as I can tell youre saying here that my complaint that "this principle requires selective application" is true of Scotts theory and also in reality, without any way to be systematic about it.

When the FTX thing happened recently and people argued about consequentialist justifications for lying, I realised Scotts theory of categories literally cant tell the difference between the truth and the highest-utility-thing-to-say.

How is that supported by anything Scott has written? My interpretation is "categories are an example of 'all models are wrong, but some models are useful' and [I can't remember if this is in that specific essay, but it doesn't really matter] reaching a shared vocabulary for categories is a coordination problem." Scott knows what noble lies are and has written about them:

What if all this stuff about sexism driving away women is all a big hoax? And so after we make women feel safer, stamp out prejudice, enforce common decency, and encourage everyone to treat each other with compassion – darn it, we created a better world for nothing! If the goal is “eliminate malignant sexism” – and surely it should be – why be so upset about one argument for eliminating malignant sexism which might not be entirely accurate?

First, because I’m a heartless thing-oriented systematizer, and I despise bad arguments on principle, and I don’t care if you people-oriented empathizers think they serve a prosocial community-building function.

But second, because this gives fuzzy-empathizing-humanities types a giant hammer with which to beat all sciency-systematizing-utilitarian types forever.

(Don't be shocked that this does not become a call for consequentialists to use noble lies.)

'all models are wrong, but some models are useful'

Yes, what do you think "useful" means? Of course, your evaluation of whats high-utility will have to include all sorts of knock-on effects - but it cant include things like "this is useful to say because its true". This is of course incoherent, you cant actually decide whats high-utility without knowing whats true, and Scott the human knows what truth is when its about normal topics - but thats what the argument of the post implies when taken seriously (you will notice that the section thats actually talking about how language works is very short relative to the post). Theres no conceptual role left for truth, as distinct from "the outcome of usefully structuring language".

Yes, what do you think "useful" means?

Understanding the world, e.g., which hypothetical ancient Hebrewite government ministry would be better suited whale issues.

Those are two different things. Whats useful for dealing with whale hunting is not whats useful for understanding. As for the latter, Scott disagrees with that:

If I’m willing to accept an unexpected chunk of Turkey deep inside Syrian territory to honor some random dead guy – and I better, or else a platoon of Turkish special forces will want to have a word with me – then I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone’s life.

I think that's an uncharitable reading, given the "unexpected chunk of Turkey deep inside Syrian territory to honor some random dead guy" situation was explained as an example of complex borders, but I'll grant that Scott didn't do a great job disproving he believed your interpretation.

How is that uncharitable? Im not interpreting it that way so that its less defensible, but because whats even the point of the post otherwise? The turkish border is not simply a complex border, it is from a domain so explicitly political that we all know its just down to negotiating peoples preferences. There are plenty of examples of complex boundaries you could pick otherwise. The biologist arguing with king Solomon is suggesting a categorisation thats better for understanding the world, and is rejected by Solomon on the basis of prioritising economic considerations. Even the quote in my last comment is quite clear about purposes: Turkey has its exclave to honor the Ottoman ancestor, and "man" has an exclave around someone if itll save their life.

The point of the post is to change categorisation from an attempt-objective assessment to a negotiation, such that to consider someone a woman even though it causes them distress, there has to be some downside to doing so thats more important in absolute terms. A downside that occurs with regards to a specific purpose, like scientific simplicity, can still be judged as "not important enough" because its only the general purpose (in Scotts case, maximising utility) that really matters.

If the only thing you do with whales is hunt, then understanding hunting them is understanding them in general.

Do you think gay conversion therapy is bad? If so, can we make it not-gay-conversion-therapy by insisting that the opposite sex partner we're trying to hook the gay person up with is actually of the same sex?

I'm not sure precisely what scenario you're imagining, but how you describe the people involved doesn't seem like a factor in whether or not that scenario is bad.

How would you explain to an autistic teenage boy the differences between boy people and girl people? In a way that provides useful guidance and doesn't make T seem like a normal thing for any boy who isn't obsessed with sports? In a way that let's them successfully navigate the differences?

The way the Masai tribesmen in What is a Woman? do. Of course progressives can't do that. I never said they could. Just that it is a solved problem. Just like 'strong female characters who actually act like women' was a solved problem... in the BC days(that is, after all, what Hera/Juno is). But woke doesn't want that. Woke is basically progressivism as a totalizing identity.

I think totalizing identity is key here. Scott touches on it a few times, where he talks about what progressive attitudes are identities or not- the post where he said something like 'John and Jane are united by their shared environmentalism, OK, pretty normal, John and Jane are united by their shared support for gun control, pretty weird'. The DR touches on it where it goes on and on about 'hollowing out your religion and wearing it as a skinsuit'. Themotte talks about it with progressivism as a religion. But I think 'gay rites are civil rites' is the most head on treatment. I think back to my childhood- we learned about Elizabeth Ann Seton and Our Lady of Guadalupe, and about how Jesus treated women equally(unlike those saracens America is at war with). In more secular contexts we learned, risibly, that native American religions were proto-Christianity- they believed in 'the great spirit' and lots of them had Jesus analogues(TTBMK, both of those claims are ludicrously false). This very much fit the needs of the church state alliance of 2002. But there is a limit to how much Christianity can accommodate. Woke doesn't have that, or at least it doesn't have to. But obviously there's no woke pope, no woke council of Nicea. There's no woke bible. In analogues to different traditions there's equally no woke Sharia law, no woke imamate, no woke talmud, no woke temples or dalai lama, no woke oracle of delphi. The civil rites religion as a state religion fits the needs of a total state very well. And when you totalize it, some of the prescriptions- like gender equality even if it entails embracing some fictions that are gonna be a rough fit- get taken too far.

People yearn for a totalizing identity. It's comforting for normies to be told what to do, how to think, what each day is for, how to interact with whom. It soothes a certain personality type to have the progressive version of apostolic Christianity instead of mere progressivism; woke has saints and a special calendar and observances of near-liturgical set rules. It has moral theology, but not in the autistic legalism of other Abrahamic religions. It has a special priest class which is made, not born. It prides itself on better treatment of women. It claims to be the one truth, and formal adherence is the lion's share of being a good person(not too long ago, I listened to a homily by an SSPX priest who explained that formally practicing traditional Catholicism was just being a good person- almost identical in mentality to 'it's called just being a decent person'. If I find it on youtube I will copy the link over.).

The way the Masai tribesmen in What is a Woman? do.

Never saw the documentary, but found the scene on yt:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6yAnHFj4IK0

I think you replied to the wrong comment (you appear to have wanted the one above the one you replied to).

Especially with the elephant in the room, feminism, insisting that there are no meaningful between men and women that could justify any discrepancy in representation in any professional field. Women are just like men and want the exact same things, right? So, what exactly are the differences you're allowed to talk about?

This did short-circuit my brain for quite a while. Arguably the whole trans thing is a massive conspiracy to genocide and/or cause misery to the autists - even if they don't get you to sterilize yourself, navigating sex differences without ever being able to acknowledge their existence will be quite a minefield.

And terfy ladies, you didn't just sow the seeds here. You plowed the fields, fertilized them, then set up aggressive arrangements of killbot scarecrows to fend off any threats to the seeds. I'm not sure how you can recover from that without rewriting a significant portion of third wave feminism, but maybe that's a me problem.

On one hand, not wrong, on the other we've all been subjected to psyop upon psyop, and it's not like the male counterpart - "Tits and beer liberalism" - has nothing to answer for here. As long as they're willing to move on and work with men in a constructive capacity (and I've seen some indication of that happening, the Men's Sheds drama in the UK got quite a pushback from TERFs), I'm for cutting them some slack.

I think knowing what a woman is is pretty deeply rooted in our biology and no amount of gaslighting and enforced consensus can change that. 1984, famously about the Party's ability to make people say black is white and up is down and war is peace, spent a lot of time describing how much effort went into enforcing these edicts, and the implicit message there (though not the one Orwell was getting at) is that people actually knew the truth, even if they knew better than to say it. Even the most loyal enthusiasts might convince themselves they really believed war was peace and we had always been at war with Oceania, but people would slip because they couldn't actually turn off memory and reason entirely.

So it is even with the most devoted adherents of trans ideology. They tell themselves they really, truly believe trans women are women and "woman" is just an arbitrary socially constructed label. But they don't actually want to fuck a person who clocks as the wrong sex (it's more than just genitals, we all know this). On a deep, instinctual level they recognize the difference. To the degree that they are sincere, they may convince themselves TWAW but they have to work at it to keep their words and behavior in line with what they claim to believe or they will slip up. And I think actually a lot of them are insincere and will ditch TWAW as soon as it is no longer the thing all good progressives believe. You'll see then how attached they really were to this professed lack of difference.

That said, you are right about some things. A lot of unphysical guys who've never done sports or martial arts really don't understand just how significant the physical differences between men and women are. If their last time in physical competition was middle school, they probably knew some girls who were more athletic than a lot of boys and hadn't yet seen just how rapidly that changes once the T hits.

I have to admit to being a nerdy, awkward kid who hated sports in school, and I was one of those guys... until I took up martial arts as an adult. At first I was a little confused that a woman with a higher belt wasn't wiping the mat with me the way more experienced men did, and that in fact I had to be careful not to hurt her. This was, you might say, a little red-pill moment.

Which is, I observe, is exactly what it looks like when a pro-T prog guy tries to write women characters. They write women as men with some shallow "loli Dylan Mulanney" cuteness, because they don't actually have a mental model of "women" as having any differences in mentality, life experiences, preferences, traits, qualities or viewpoints compared to men. "A woman is a dude who spends 12 hours writing spreadsheets about Warhammer 40k battleships and then adds a heart emoji and a tee hee at the end. Don't deadname her, bigot."

You've read John Scalzi, I see.

And terfy ladies, you didn't just sow the seeds here. You plowed the fields, fertilized them, then set up aggressive arrangements of killbot scarecrows to fend off any threats to the seeds. I'm not sure how you can recover from that without rewriting a significant portion of third wave feminism, but maybe that's a me problem.

TERFs are mostly second wave feminists and very much want to rewrite third wave feminism. Second wavers largely believe that absent the patriarchy, men and women would behave the same, but physical differences are real. Third wavers are the ones who went post-modernist about gender categories.

You've read John Scalzi, I see.

I haven't actually. He never rose high enough on the TBR pile before his antics and personality turned me off. That's not a total dealbreaker for me, but there's a lot of other stuff to read.

But that character trope is a fairly common issue.

I thought Old Man's War wasn't half bad. It's far up from the disgustingly mediocre level of stuff that populates the Hugos these days.

But I don't think Scalzi is ever going to write anything that transcends being formulaic genre fiction. And him not being that great of a character writer probably is a big part of that, never mind the antics.

That said, I don't recommend holding his stuff in the same level of contempt as Martha Wells or something.

Old Man's War is a better Scalzi work than most, but it makes it there by being a knockoff of the far-better execution of the same concept in Haldeman's The Forever War -- if you haven't read it, I far recommend it. I don't think Scalzi was intentionally ripping that earlier story off, but I'm also exceptionally skeptical that he was unaware of the earlier story or never read it.

Starship Trooper spoofs are their own genre at this point, but I'm a military scifi connoisseur so of course I agree that the "everyone suddenly went gay when I was in 'nam" one is pretty good.

Hah, I feel like there are two unintentional 3 book series by different authors in sci-fi:

Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Old Man's war

Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Ready Player One

In both of these sets, the first is the original, genre-defining, and by far the best of them. The second is quite good, with an interesting take on similar concepts. The third is a fun read, but upon further reflection is substance-free and as deep as a joss whedon film.

All his modern books have the same plot and the same relatively mediocre writing style but they're still fast, enjoyable reads. Grab on the next time you have a 3 hour flight-- they're peak airplane fiction.

Of course we do. The entire debate is meaningless semantics. Obviously there is such a thing as biological sex, obviously there are some differences in behavior of the two biological sexes on average. Obviously there is such a thing as a male brain and female brain. None of that is inconsistent with allowing people to transition. Transgenderism is a transhumanist technological development, not an ideology. The only people who are confused about what a woman is are feminists and christians who think there is some deep meaning to gender roles and gender identity.

Transhumanism is the chief ideology of TESCREAL fascists and extremely right-wing and problematic.

No wonder Moldbug always claims to be the most right wing person in the room.

Eh? Is he a transhumanist? I mostly only noticed all the blogging.

No (or rather it's unclear and complicated depending on how you read him), but if mild progressive nerds the likes of this are already fascism, I dare not think how hyperfascist NRX sounds.

Land must be mecha-Hitler.

if mild progressive nerds the likes of this are already fascism

Oh, no idea. I was just quoting the doctrine.

(I'm pretty sure the real progressives like Gebru just enjoy hurting people. More the merrier, so why limit yourself?)

I notice that for all your discussion of how obvious it is, you did not, yourself, say what a woman is.

Why would I? I don't care about the term "woman". I know what conservatives and radical feminists mean when they say the word "woman" - they mean one of the two natal sexes. But again, I find meaningless arguments about semantics to be really boring.

Of course we do. The entire debate is meaningless semantics. Obviously there is such a thing as biological sex, obviously there are some differences in behavior of the two biological sexes on average. Obviously there is such a thing as a male brain and female brain.

Many trans activists and progressives now explicitly reject all of those premises.

None of that is inconsistent with allowing people to transition.

There are really only a handful of anti-trans people who literally believe people shouldn't be "allowed" to transition. You are an adult who wants to have surgery and hormones and live your life as the opposite sex? Okay. Probably most conservatives would even be willing to go along and use your preferred pronouns out of politeness. They might think you're mentally ill and should reconsider your life choices, but only assholes go out of their way to "misgender" someone just to make sure you know what they think of you.

It's when the "debate" went far beyond semantics and social kindness that trans people became seen as more than just troubled individuals who deserve sympathy. It's not meaningless semantics when we're talking about puberty blockers for children, or men competing in sports and being housed in women's prisons and taking over women's spaces, or people being shunned or professionally harmed for saying there are four lights.

There are really only a handful of anti-trans people who literally believe people shouldn't be "allowed" to transition.

I think this just cheap consensus building, a semantic trap which rests a lot on what the word "allow" means. Not many people would for instance literally believe, that it should not be allowed for people to drink themselves to death or that they are not allowed to cut off their fingers or any number of other gruesome things. But these arguments would be more in line with thinking that alcoholism or self-harm is bad, and that the society should do everything to prevent it using shaming and other tools. Because any other measure to prevent it would be worse and not really applicable.

But many more conservatives and also liberals would be against let's say having "gender expression" as a protected characteristic in law or having transition being financed by taxpayers.

'Only a handful' is not accurate. The median social conservative believes people with a position of social trust(eg teachers, cops, clergy) shouldn't be allowed to transition, that the fringes who transition should be required to use same-sex restrooms and not ones matching their gender identity(and that if it is a safety issue for FTM's to use the men's then they shouldn't have transitioned), and that using preferred pronouns is a lie. They would refuse to allow their son to wear dresses or use a female name(tolerance for gender bending the other way is typically higher just because gender roles are loosey-goosier).

More to the point, 'homosexuality among consenting adults should be explicitly illegal and a serious crime' still has just-below-20% support in the American public, and most of them believe it should be punishable by death. We can presume that the 15% or so of people who think homosexuals should be hanged also believe gender transition should be illegal. That is a minority, but not a handful.

…Where are you getting your numbers from? I simply cannot believe that support for criminalization of homosexuality approaches 1 in 5, let alone support for construction crane conversion therapy. By my observation, the anti-LGBT crowd generally don’t desire to go on the offensive, they just want to be left alone.

Probably from this or this poll, though I'll caveat that in both cases a) YouGov, b) not great wording, c) specifically about overturning Lawrence v. Texas, rather than reimplementing the laws (though in turn, some states never got rid of their pre-Lawrence statutes).

I don't think I've seen any polls about construction crane conversion therapy as a punishment, and it'd require overturning Kennedy v. Louisiana. Which, tbf, on much worse legal ground than the already-post-hoc Lawrence, but doesn't usually get polled much either.

By my observation, the anti-LGBT crowd generally don’t desire to go on the offensive, they just want to be left alone.

Then you probably don't live in the right areas of the country. People still disown their gay kids. There are a lot of very socially conservative spaces in America, they are just not visible online mostly.

Being left alone is clearly not an option. I would speculate the number of people who want to criminalize homosexuality is increasing as a result of being exposed to it more often. I certainly have moved away from a libertarian position for those reasons.

Indeed. As AntiDem put it:

Is the existence of homosexual pride parades reason enough to re-outlaw same-sex sexual intercourse?

You ban it to preserve your society - your faith and traditions - against fatal poisoning by degeneracy.

Fifty years ago, the gay rights movement said that all they wanted was to be left alone to do as they pleased behind the privacy of closed doors. That was a lie. What they really wanted was to upend society in order to serve their own aims, to spread Cultural Marxism, and to bring low our faith and traditions. We know this, because that is what they have actually done. If it is a case of "they are always either at your feet or at your throat", then they shall be at our feet. And so it is: they have proven themselves to be the kind of monster you don't let out of the basement, so next time we won't.

We gave them an inch, they took a mile; next time they get nothing.

Whether or not those conservatives should be required to pay taxes towards your seen-as-elective medical treatments is probably also a sticking point. That one comes up with abortion too, and has with birth control in the past --- I'm not sure if anyone beyond Hobby Lobby really cares quite as strongly there these days.

I know several people who belong to 'christian health sharing ministries' in lieu of insurance because they can't stomach paying for birth control with their premiums.

It's when the "debate" went far beyond semantics and social kindness that trans people became seen as more than just troubled individuals who deserve sympathy.

One additional factor: it's when transness began to be seen as contagious. I don't know if that makes the eventually-anti-trans position look better or worse but there it is.

The problem with this position taking is that the popular messaging and what most activists actually say is against you. So they're either cynically lying or you very transparently are on the outside.

I think it's fair to say that any movement will have people who sincerely believe in the motte and do not believe in the bailey.

What does believing the motte cash out to? If it's mere preference, a transhumanist freedom of form where we let people edit their own bodies as much as they want surely this doesn't imply much in terms of trans women in women's sports, endorsing childhood intervention or nearly any other culture war hot point. Consenting adults can do whatever they want is the old truce if people want to return to it then they shouldn't be on the trans rights advocates side of most disputes.

trans women in women's sports, endorsing childhood intervention or nearly any other culture war hot point

Yep that's the bailey. I'm not trying to speak for the other poster, and it's not my position, but it seems reasonable to me that people who believe the motte but not the bailey can still pick their side based on whether they think it's more important to avoid being caught out in the bailey, or whether defending the motte from people who are 100% anti-trans is still worth it.

Isn't the freedom of form objective already achieved in practice? Surely the motte dwellers should be wherever possible advocating against the gender essentialist model?

What does believing the motte cash out to?

Believing a motte shouldn't "cash out to" partisan/tribal goals.

My point is that believing in the motte version excludes them from the group under discussion. They believe something entirely different. It'd be like a libertarian responding with of course we care about the deficit when discussing whether the people supporting the big beautiful bill care about the deficit. Great that you care but the actual party passing the actual bill isn't listening to you and thinks your concerns are stupid and wrong.

I think your implicit line of argument/theory about the relationship between articulating differences and policing boundaries fails generalisation to the usual counterexamples. Take a boundary that is still policed by most Americans, progressive and traditionalist alike - how do you explain to the autist the difference between black people and white people? You can't take something silly like the one-drop rule, because everyone knows Donald Trump would not enjoy a late bestowal of the n-word pass if it now turned out some great grandmother of his was a castaway African slave, any more than in the discerning conservative's eye anything about the femininity of the serial West Coast testicle shaver would change if it turned out that he did actually have XX chromosomes plus some weird novel genetic abnormality producing the phenotype.

In other words, there is something going on in your post that is similar to "proving too much".

Americans understand the one drop rule makes Meghan Markle black, but not the pope. But race-as-a-spectrum is actually literally arbitrary; there are cultures which see mulattos as not-black. There are cultures which see whiteness as a one drop rule. The same is not true for man and woman.

how do you explain to the autist the difference between black people and white people

I like Brazil's solution: a committee looks at you and then states your race. They don't accept one-drop "my grandmother was a quarter [something]" stories and don't need DNA tests. They look and state the obvious truth. If Elizabeth Warren stood before them, they'd yell "she's white" and be done with it. Because it is perfectly clear that she is white. "I share a common ancestor with some modern Guatemalans around 10 generations ago." Yes, yes. That's called being white.

Categories are fuzzy and sometimes you get a perfect wobbler: someone who is mixed race and self-identifies as some Brazilian racial category, but the committee disagrees. Categories being fuzzy doesn't mean they don't exist. This is an acceptable outcome.

You can't take something silly like the one-drop rule, because everyone knows Donald Trump would not enjoy a late bestowal of the n-word pass if it now turned out some great grandmother of his was a castaway African slave

I see you've missed the recent "the new pope is actually black" discourse elsewhere, you lucky person you! And yes, they're invoking the one drop rule: hey, if under slavery/Jim Crow laws he'd be considered black due to the discriminatory one drop rule, then yeah he counts as black now.

I don't know about Trump, but I think it would be hilarious. Especially in light of the John Oliver "Drumpf" stuff - he's not just descended from a recent immigrant, he is the Second (Just As) Black (As Obama or Kamala) president! 😁

Louisiana's one drop rule never applied that strictly because a large portion of the French speaking white population had a black ancestor somewhere in the family tree, even if you couldn't tell by looking. IIRC the pope identifies as partially creole, which is a catch all term for french-y and not Cajun, but usually is a code word for southern Louisiana black, so it's even more complicated.

But TL;DR is that in 1900 he'd have ridden in the whites section of the train.

Didn't Obama have some very distant claim to descent from ADOS through his white mother? His father was African-(not-American).

We managed to dig up (not literally) his Irish ancestors, as we do for every American president! 😀

Seriously one of the funniest things I watched on TV at the time was the Obamas pressing the flesh with the denizens of Offaly (I had to admire Michelle for how well she handled it).

Not only a Slave, but the first legally enslaved person under criminal law: an African indentured servant ran away with friends and was caught, his European mates got 4 years extra, but he was sentenced to service his master for life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/us/obamas-mother-had-african-forebear-study-suggests.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

records suggested that Mr. Punch fathered children with a white woman, who passed her free status on to those children, giving rise to a family of a slightly different name, the Bunches, that ultimately spawned Mr. Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

Quite an interesting colonial story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_(slave)

Through continued intermarriage with white families in Virginia, the line of Obama's maternal Bunch ancestors probably were identified as white as early as 1720.[15] Members of this line eventually migrated into Tennessee and ultimately to Kansas, where descendants included Obama's maternal grandmother and his mother …. Y-DNA testing of direct male descendants of the Bunch family lines has revealed a common ancestry going back to a single male ancestor of African ethnicity.[15][9][38] Genealogists believe this male ancestor to be John Punch the African. He was probably born in present-day Cameroon in Central Africa, where his particular type of DNA is most common.

That was in the early 1600s and before cattle slavery as an institution though. But cool that Obamas roots are going way back into colonial times.

Edit:
The first black slave “just because” was an indentured servant named John Casor whose (ironically) black master refused to release him: “Although two white planters confirmed that Casor had completed his indentured contract with Johnson, the court still ruled in Johnson's favor.“

how do you explain to the autist the difference between black people and white people?

  1. if they look unambiguously black

  2. if they look ambiguously black and at least one parent is black (recursively)

If the autist is not able to tell if someone looks unambiguously black, there is nothing you can do.

This fails if someone is wearing a good disguise. But that's a general problem with determining anything by sight. This problem also applies in obvious ways to the trans issue.

Compare to a hypothetical progressive definition of women:

  1. if they look unambiguously female

  2. if they look ambiguously progressive, claim to be a woman and at least one woman agrees they are a woman (recursively)

Of course you might be tempted to argue that parentage is somehow more solid as an axis of identity conveyance than being part of the same society, but this would be too convenient since "genetics matter" is a known non-progressive moral precept.

I wouldn't endorse applying this logic to gender, but "I, an outsider, think a person's face-value claim to group affiliation is of ambiguous merit, but a confirmed member of that group endorses their claim, so I will recognize it" isn't per se unreasonable.

this would be too convenient since "genetics matter" is a known non-progressive moral precept.

That's all right, I'm not a progressive.

The other difference between this and defining "woman" is that people who disguise themselves as other races are not really an issue, and the equivalent for women is. If a lot of white people claimed to be black and tried to look black, the definition would no longer work.

that people who disguise themselves as other races are not really an issue

It is maybe less of an issue, but it does come up from time to time. There have been several prominent fake Native Americans within the last few decades. There are fewer examples, but not zero, for other races.

I dont think thats a good analogy. While people do try to police race boundaries sometimes, there is not in fact a consensus sorting everyone into white and black. I would tell our autist about definitely white and definitely black people, and the ones in between will depend on whos making the judgement and whats convenient for them at the time. I dont think progressives are happy with this a model for how transgender should work.

There isn't a consensus sorting of everyone into male and female either, though of course there the disputed set is much smaller (consider the case of that Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif. I do not believe in transitioning or self-id and do not consider any transwoman I am aware of an instance of the class "woman", but I would genuinely struggle to assign them to one of the categories based on what I have heard).

Either way, this should not be relevant - transwomen are in general not saying something that amounts to "there is a fuzzy boundary between men and women, I understand I am somewhere near it, but I contend that on the balance of evidence I should fall on the 'woman' side", but rather "whatever the boundary between men and women is, I am a reasonably central example of the category 'woman'". OP essentially has to contend that the latter is something that is transparently false to his camp and ambiguous to progressives, i.e. whatever notion of women they have is so weak a separator that it can't even refute what to conservatives is a claim that a central example of a man is actually a central example of a woman. OP proposes that the test that evidences this is that they cannot provide a verbal definition of "woman". However, I would argue that the reason people fail to do this is the real or imagined fuzzy boundary of the category - progressives would also have no trouble identifying what they call a definitional core of "unambiguous women", but this would look like "phenotypical women not asserting they are not + progressives in good standing asserting to be women". The same situation holds for the category "black" for either side, where both agree on central examples, the boundaries are fuzzy so few would be comfortable defining an exhaustive predicate and committing to it, and yet neither side is okay with transracialism (central-example whites asserting that they are central-example blacks).

There isn't a consensus sorting of everyone into male and female either

I agree thats the status quo; but success for the trans movement would be creating one. Thats what I said.

they call a definitional core of "unambiguous women", but this would look like "phenotypical women not asserting they are not + progressives in good standing asserting to be women".

I think this goes back to whether the definition by self-identification is circular or not. I think we all, including OP, know that progressives can answer "a woman is whoever says theyre a woman" in response to the question. He must not consider that a real answer.

neither side is okay with transracialism (central-example whites asserting that they are central-example blacks).

Actually, I dont think theyre necessarily fine with non-central people asserting to be either, either.

where both agree on central examples, the boundaries are fuzzy so few would be comfortable defining an exhaustive predicate and committing to it

The difference is that with gender, progressives are accused, IMO accurately, of their criteria ultimately depending on sex stereotypes, and they deny it. The right on race, once its out that they care about it at all, doesnt really mind their categorisation judgements being understood. I dont think progressives even have a theory there, true or not, that they would want to deny.

How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?

The same way it was managed before the revolution: you tell people the truth that men and women differ , and then you impose social costs on the males who can't behave appropriately . No focus on sympathetically explaining this, no "uplifting as Simone Biles demands even as she calls for transmen to be exiled to their own league. That implies ambivalence and people can sniff it out.

Start with unbelieving denial - of course you're not a woman, don't be ridiculous. Then mockery, contempt, maybe informal punishment from their fellow men when they step out of line by doing things like demanding to enter female washrooms (when administrations turn a blind eye men can rectify even the most stubborn)

I'm not convinced that most people are legitimately as clueless as they claim, I think many are just entitled and coddled (hand-wringing about how to get them to see this is,imo, part of the same coddling instinct). Jessica Yaniv knows what he's doing, he's outright malicious imo. Artemis at the very least knows that he makes women feel uncomfortable. He just knows he can get away with it.

But the lawyers are in charge of things now and you live in an age of "zero tolerance" for bullying. These sorts of men are harder to convince because they know they have the option of filing a lawsuit or complaining to some administrator or finding some advocacy group. That's most of it. It's not a matter of rational debate or education if one side can win by tattling to the teacher. It's just about power.

They actually don't know what a woman is.

No, they do.

We know that they do because they're able to distinguish between ciswomen and transwomen with 100% accuracy (or at least, they can achieve the same level of accuracy that everyone else does). They have to be able to do this, otherwise the trans movement would fall apart because no one would be able to consistently identify the trans people in the first place. This requires an implicit model of what a (real) woman is, because they need to be able to distinguish the real women (ciswomen) from the men who simply desire to be women (transwomen).

You seem to be gesturing at this concept here:

It creates this doublethink world where everyone is supposed to know what a woman is and how to treat them differently, but never acknowledge the source of that knowledge, or openly admit to any real world implications.

although I'm not entirely sure what your exact position is here. Do you think there are "thought leaders" at the top of the progressive movement who actually do have an accurate model of reality, followed by a legion of "footsoldiers" who uncritically imbibe the propaganda? I don't think I find this to be very convincing, because even among the "footsoldiers", we can tell from their discourse that they're able to consistently and accurately distinguish between transwomen and ciswomen, and thus they have an at least implicit model of what a woman is, although they may use doublethink to not consciously acknowledge it.

How would you explain to an autistic teenage boy the differences between boy people and girl people?

Well, how would you?

(I don't actually know how I would do it without sounding a bit mean, while also being honest and avoiding overly romanticized depictions. I suppose the most brutally honest and concise way of putting it is that "woman was fashioned by nature for one thing, man for several".)

Trans women are trans women.

Your (correct) point highlights the biggest flaw in their arguments. "Trans women are women", well no they aren't because you already gave them a category called "trans women" which you can obviously identify, is obviously useful to you, and obviously has a meaning. That meaning is: men who are dressing like women, or in other words again: men.

That does not follow. We have tons of sub-categories that are labelled {adjective}-{super category}. As an example "green-apples". They're still apples, but the category of green apples is useful for certain reasons.

This, of course, doesn't mean you're wrong (or right either), but you argument isn't good and it isn't helpful.

The ultimate argument is that the categories of human gender gets weird near the edges, are the parts near the edges part of the super category, part of the other super category, or something else entirely.

You're just continuing down the linguistic treadmill. Are trans-women a distinct category that is different than "cis" women?

Yes, that is why you can identify them as "trans women". Regardless of the semantics: trans woman(2030 parlance) = man(<2030 parlance).

It doesn't matter. The language is simply describing the reality, which is that "trans women" are men.

To use your analogy: if we genetically engineer an apple to be the color orange, it is still an apple, just an orange one. We could call it an "orange apple", but tit's still just an apple which is orange.

A man in a dress is still a man, just a man with a dress on.

You're just continuing down the linguistic treadmill.

No, I'm positing that the category {adjective}-{noun}, does not automatically imply zero overlap with category {noun}.

We could call it an "orange apple", but tit's still just an apple which is orange.

Correct, it still belongs to the super category. That's why I think your argument is so dumb. Your argument is because people have categorized something into a subcategory, they no longer believe it's part of the super category.

Specifically this part:

well no they aren't because you already gave them a category called "trans women" which you can obviously identify

Your argument, translated into your apple example, involves accusing people of thinking it's no longer an apple because they called it "orange apple". Apple's right there in the name, it's unlikely any human being means that.

No, I'm positing that the category {adjective}-{noun}, does not automatically imply zero overlap with category {noun}.

Is an orange apple any part orange? There are many subcategories of orange, but is an apple which has been colored orange in any of them?

No. An orange apple is an apple.

This is also why trans-activists fight so hard to call these men "trans women", instead of the correct "trans men" (men, who are trans). They are part of the super-category "men", and then part of the subcategory "trans", as in: they are men who wish to violate the typical dress and behavior norms of other men.

There is no amount of linguistic sophistry that means that a man in a dress is no longer a man. Even if you could get the entire world to refer to men in dresses as women, we would create a new word for actual women, and the language would change to accommodate this. Changing the words does not change the underlying reality of what they're describing, in this case: men.

Is an orange apple any part orange? There are many subcategories of orange, but is an apple which has been colored orange in any of them?

I was referring to orange the color alone, not the fruit. Insisting it's an orange would, in fact, be linguistic trickery.

But that's not the part of your comment I disagree with. I disagree with your assertion that the category of "trans women" implies a particular belief of the user of that term. Especially the one you've put forward. I think it's a bad argument.

I don't have a particular problem with your further arguments. They're much better than your original one, you should have lead with them. In fact, I vehemently agree with this part:

Changing the words does not change the underlying reality of what they're describing

FWIW, I perceive BinaryHobo as making a point purely about the structure of your argument, rather than about the actual trans issue specifically. And I think their point is correct. We can all tell based on their behavior that TRAs can clearly tell the difference between trans women and cis women and have to use linguistic sophistry and "mind-killing," as Arthur Chu might put it, to justify bucketing them into the same category of "women" instead of the former being a sub-category of "men," which is distinct from "women."

But it's at least theoretically possible for someone to honestly, in good faith, have separate distinct sub-categories of things which both fit into a larger category that they share. Like how someone can categorize apples painted orange as "orange apples" which fit into the larger category of "apples" that also include non-painted red apples. As such, the mere usage of "trans women" as a category distinct from "cis women" doesn't necessarily logically imply that they're using linguistic sophistry to paper over their true belief that "trans women" don't fit into the larger category of "women." All the other stuff surrounding it does.

I mean, if you want to make the overarching category “women,” but allow for the subcategories to be defined as “cis” and “trans,” I think that’s acceptable, as long as people can use this as an actual distinguishing factor (cis-women only bathrooms, attracted to cis-women, cis-women only sports, etc.)

Even under that mindset, I’m not sure I agree with you saying that trans women are a type of woman; in a lot of ways, they are much closer to men (larger, stronger, have traditionally male interests). The only reason we’re calling them a subset of women at all is that is the term that the activists coined. Do you consider sea horses to be a type of horse? Or panda bears to be a type of bear (edit: I have been informed that they are a type of bear; pretend I said “Koala” instead)? We could easily have said the term is “trans men” (for MTF, as they are a man who is transitioning).

The problem is that the cis/trans distinction matters a lot for most people - it isn’t like green vs red apples, more like peanut vs cow butter.

Panda bears are a type of bear, yes.

My apologies, for whatever reason I thought they were a type of raccoon (and I have no excuse for thinking that, this was resolved prior to my birth).

Thinking of red pandas? They are basically Asian racoons.

Substitute koala bears instead - they are definitely not bears.

We know that they do because they're able to distinguish between ciswomen and transwomen with 100% accuracy (or at least, they can achieve the same level of accuracy that everyone else does). They have to be able to do this, otherwise the trans movement would fall apart because no one would be able to consistently identify the trans people in the first place. This requires an implicit model of what a (real) woman is, because they need to be able to distinguish the real women (ciswomen) from the men who simply desire to be women (transwomen).

I don't follow this line of argument. Imagine a world in which progressives could not distinguish between ciswomen and transwomen at all, ever. In this world, what progressives would see is essentially that there is a subset of women that a large part of their outgroup inexplicably asserts are not real women, and wants to treat badly. Assuming that progressives have no issue adopting the term "trans" for this subset that the outgroup inexplicably discriminates against, how would this not be fertile ground for a "trans movement"?

If transwomen and women were identical you'd imagine that progressives would at least be accidentally on the side of women a few times.

On their side against whom? Transwomen? Do you think "I was trying to help B against C, but accidentally helped A against B instead" (with A=cis women, B=trans women, C=conservatives) is an easy mistake to make, even if your distinction between A and B is solely based on who is the target of C's enmity? Consensus men (men as defined by progressives \cap men as defined by conservatives)? I'm pretty sure they do side with cis women against consensus men much more than a few accidental times; let me know if you actually need examples.

(Are you in fact trying to make a serious argument there, or are you just attached to the snappy sound of this line of polemic for your side?)

I was trying to help B against C, but accidentally helped A against B instead" (with A=cis women, B=trans women, C=conservatives) is an easy mistake to make, even if your distinction between A and B is solely based on who is the target of C's enmity?

But they don't just help against "conservatives". The movement against maximal trans rights in Britain didn't run through conservatives but apostates who were themselves lesbians and former feminists in good standing.

I'm not OP, I do think in this situation things likely just dissolve. But if transwomen were making some sort of demand that made them distinct from women (the male version would be being forced to tolerate Sam Smith's ridiculous name shenanigans), without a clear indication of who wins on the stack, you'd at least think sometimes the bulk of the movement would sometimes just side with the women who don't want to deal with it. Especially since they couldn't appeal to the alleged suicide epidemic.

(Are you in fact trying to make a serious argument there, or are you just attached to the snappy sound of this line of polemic for your side?)

Yes.

But they don't just help against "conservatives". The movement against maximal trans rights in Britain didn't run through conservatives but apostates who were themselves lesbians and former feminists in good standing.

Fine, replace "conservatives" with "everyone who is not declaring allegiance to Team Trans". It really doesn't seem important to the hypothetical what the exact boundaries of C are - I'm just positing, as a counterexample to what seems to be @Primaprimaprima's argument, a contrived scenario in which the conjunction of things he needs to be impossible is actually true, namely that trans women exist in just the same way as they do in reality, progressives are a sort of perceptual mutant set that really can't distinguish trans women from cis women at all, and yet there is a trans movement similar to the one we are in fact seeing.

There are in fact real examples of what seems to be discrimination over nothing at all, and opposition to that discrimination by people who do not have any understanding of the discriminated-against set except by way of "they are the ones that are inexplicably targeted for discrimination"; and I don't think the Cagot truther would have an argument in saying that the people fighting against anti-Cagot discrimination must actually have a model of a real non-Cagot good Frenchman, because they need to be able to distinguish the real humans (non-Cagots) from animals that simply desire to be humans (Cagots), or that "if non-Cagots and Cagots were identical you'd imagine they would at least be accidentally on the side of non-Cagots a few times". Note that I am on some level agnostic about whether Cagot discriminators have a point; for all I know, the Wikipedia article could be progressive propaganda and they might actually be a lineage of evil sociopaths that would put all of European racists' usual boogeymen to shame. I still default to being for equal rights for Cagots, and I have no more of an understanding of what sets them apart than the wiki!

Of course, you could say that yes, the hypothetical progressives and real Cagot rights campaigners actually do have a clear sense (in extension) of who are the Cagots/transwomen, even if in intension their sense is different - the anti-trans team thinks transwomen are definitionally men who claim to be women, and the pro-trans team thinks that transwomen are definitionally women that the anti-trans team claims are not women. The resulting consensus definition winds up being exactly the same, even though I don't think this is what @Primaprimaprima would consider an "accurate model of reality".

But a big part of why the whole Cagot discrimination thing fell apart is that there really was no way to physically distinguish a Cagot from any other person either at a glance, or by thorough examination. Once families stopped living in the same medieval town of 800 people for generation after generation it became untenable. Even back then it relied on an elaborate system of written records and forced signaling.

How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?

Easy. Inter-sex physical combat.

And forget "teaching them to understand", this is one of those truths you have to feel in your bones. Every school could do it for gym. Perhaps Freshman year?

Feminists to the front.

We did it the opposite way. You just didn't fight women. It was made clear that you were a bitch for even attempting it (let alone attempting it and losing). Do it enough and some men would step in. The implicit message was clear.

Then again, we hadn't ceded our entire teaching apparatus (if it even counted as one) to feminists and bureaucrats. There may be advantages to backwardness

That's why people have unrealistic expectations of the physical differences between sexes.

The question was how to teach people the difference. Your way is the reason we're here.

How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?

You don't? But I'm not sure why you'd want to. Watching the last wave realize that the next wave is really a wall of autistic guys who took "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" as an honest description of reality has been fairly funny.

I don't want my nephews to chop their dicks off. I can see how it was humorous maybe for prior generations, but as always millenials took the joke too far and ruined it.

I am laughing as we speak. (And JK Rowling is posting as we speak. The windmills, the windmills are calling...)

(I admit "entirely voluntary eugenics program" was not on my Bingo card.)

What else was "humorous maybe" in the past, but ruined by millenials taking it too far?

Deconstructionist art, funny quips in serious dramas, political satire, etc.

Pretty much everything "humorous maybe" was ruined by millenials. We took gross out comedies too far (Freddy got fingered) we took teen comedies too far (Van Wilder sequels) we took sports comedies too far (Baseketball), we took internet absurdism too far (somethingawful), stoner comedy too far (Pineapple Express) meme comedy too far (shit my dad says), political comedy too far (Trump vs Clinton) - I love elements of everything I just mentioned, but each of those killed their genres.

we took sports comedies too far (Baseketball)

Isn't this a Parker and Stone movie? They were born in 1969 and 1971 and are Gen X af.

That's the secret. Every generation's culture is actually made by the one right before.

Similarly, most of the shit boomers get blamed for culturally was actually made by silent generation people. But we all name it after the people most attuned to the cultural artifacts.

P&S are gen X, South Park is millennial culture.

Or to think about it another way, a generation's pop culture isn't the pop culture created by that generation necessarily, it's the pop culture enjoyed by them. So there is a Charlie Brown Christmas special for boomers and one for Gen x and one for millenials despite them all being written by Charles Schulz who was born in the 20s.

How do you know there aren't equally excessive gen-x examples of those things, and that the humor typed weren't ruined some other way?

I made my response multiple choice. Pick as you please:

A) Magic. The gathering, I mean. The cards speak to me in tongues man has forgotten - but our genes remember. And my neighbour Gene is happy to translate for me.

B) Because human perception of time is linear so things aren't ruined until they are?

C) Are you hoping that disproving my jovial rebuttal of the 'gaslighting kids is funny' argument will convince me transing kids is a good idea? Because it won't.

D) All of the above.

Heck if anything I've always considered Freddy Got Fingered to be a Gen X comedy. The movie came out in 2001 when the oldest millennials would have only been 20 and Tom Green himself is Gen X.

Major Protests in Las Angeles

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/paramount-california-home-depot-protest-rcna211650

Earlier the LAPD had to rescue a group of federal agents surrounded by, ahem, 'boisterous' protestors.

The Los Angeles Police Department today responded to a claim by ICE acting Director Todd Lyons that officers took two hours to respond to help calls from federal agents who faced boisterous protesters yesterday.

Lyons said it took LAPD officers more than two hours to come to the aid of federal agents downtown after help was requested multiple times. He said agents were surrounded by more than 1,000 protesters following federal immigration raids on three locations in L.A.

In response, the feds are federalizing the national guard to deploy to LA:

Border czar Tom Homan said authorities are mobilizing to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids this weekend.

Gov. Newsom doesn't like the idea:

The federal government is "moving to take over" the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers, Gov. Gavin Newsom said today.

“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” he said in a statement. “LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice.”

Of course, that last bit is patently false- see above- but the current situation on the ground is very much fog of war.

So why this protest now? As far as I can tell, this all started when federal agents arrested David Huerta for obstructing an ICE raid(https://ktla.com/news/local-news/union-president-among-44-arrested-in-los-angeles-ice-raids/). David Huerta, for those of you who don't know, is president of the SEIU, America's more aggressively left wing federation of labor unions(the AFL-CIO is moderately pro-Trump). He released the following statement:

“What happened to me is not about me; This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

Maybe-maybe not a call to arms, but the SEIU absolutely does not play around when it comes to protests, so put two and two together- and the union released its own statement, separately, which is more clearly combative:

In a post on X, SEIU California wrote: “ICE picked the wrong side. The wrong state. The wrong person. and the wrong union. David Huerta stood up. And 750,000 SEIU workers are standing with him.”

Again, not unlawful incitement. But most people would interpret that as mildly threatening. Newsom is maintaining that this was an arrest for 'observing'- patently a lie, given video evidence.

This has the potential to be a domestic test of Trump. I'm of the impression that the SEIU, like most unions, Does Not Play By The Rules when it would mean not getting their way, so selective prosecution under RICO is possible, but more than likely Trump will just make himself look strong and Newsom weak by cracking down on LA protestors. This is a pretty core federal power and assaulting a federal law enforcement officer is almost definitionally something with federal jurisdiction for prosecution; presumably the feds can access the database of everyone who clashed with the LAPD to charge them too.

Agree with most of this. On the last part, I don't think you can prosecute your way out of corrupt unions. Labor law in the US was broadly designed to keep the peace, not to promote virtue.

I also think putting the DA on dealing with dozens oir hundreds of obstruction charges is probably a tactical success but a strategic mistake, given that it diverts resources from more serious prosecutions. If it were me, I'd tell them to pick a few to make an example of and plea the rest out to save powder.

Riots during Trump admins have been politically genius. If the admin Does What It Takes to restore order, he confirms the image the left has painted of him of being a dictator. If he just lets them run their course (which he has done every time thus far) his presidency looks chaotic and people yearn for normalcy.

Puts him in a double bind.

(If you ask me, if you're in a double bind anyway you should do the right thing.)

To be honest, it's only had the opposite effect for me. The riots have actually made me more authoritarian inclined simply because riots are bad and we should stop the riots. Never in my life have been more open to the idea of simply shooting rioters dead (with the exception of the BLM riots). To be clear, I still don't support killing rioters, but I am now less against the idea than I was in the past.

Riots during Trump admins have been politically genius. If the admin Does What It Takes to restore order, he confirms the image the left has painted of him of being a dictator.

Nope. If he does what it takes to restore order, then as long as the Guard doesn't shoot anyone too sympathetic, he wins. The left has overplayed their hand on rioting.

as long as the Guard doesn't shoot anyone too sympathetic

They've at least got to be better than the LAPD, right?

He said anyone sympathetic. That's a journalist.

If that was an American reporter and the National Guard, it'd be front page banners on every news site in the US (including Fox except the headline might suggest she had it coming). Since it's an Australian reporter, the LAPD, and a rubber bullet (that was in fact non-lethal), it'll just be an amusing footnote.

The summary here -- "US Correspondent Lauren Tomasi has been caught in the crossfire as the LAPD fired rubber bullets at protesters in the heart of Los Angeles." seems wrong. There's no crossfire, in fact no other shots, as far as I can tell, and it doesn't even look like a miss (unless there was someone just out of frame who was up to something), it looks like the cop shot her on purpose, though I can't imagine why.

it looks like the cop shot her on purpose, though I can't imagine why.

I'd bet that, ironically, the root cause is the same as the root cause of the protests becoming riots in the first place: because we're violent apes, and we evolved to rely on our own little groups' capacity for violence to protect us from all the other little violent groups, we therefore excuse even unprincipled violence by guys on "our side" rather than cracking down on it and risking intra-group conflict undermining our inter-group conflict. This gives sociopaths opportunities just as soon as they join whichever group gives them the most opportunities for their particular flavor of sociopathy.

When he saw someone who annoyed him, he got to make her suffer with no immediate consequences. It probably felt pretty sweet! The cops surrounding him didn't even turn to look and see what the hubbub was about, and he didn't even glance around to double check on that. He had about as much expectation of being punished by the other cops as the car-torchers had of being punished by other protesters. This asshole is doing more to undermine the support for aggressive law enforcement than the protesters are, and the jackasses waving Mexican flags in front of their barbarian pyres are doing more to undermine the opposition to mass deportations than the ICE and cops are, but because they're all superficially signaling commitment to their groups' cause, they don't get called on it by their other group members.

In general I'd guess police sociopaths are much smarter than rioter/arsonist sociopaths, because they found a group that will pay them overtime while they get to fuck around. Perhaps shooting a woman while a camera was pointed at her may have been going too far, but it is the LAPD, so even if some minor discipline eventually occurs we'll probably never know the details.

Do you have a different video that provides more context than the one I've seen?

You've written up a whole story, psychoanalyzed this officer and based on very scant video. We have no context for what was occurring around her, or the officer, we have an incredibly narrow field of view and for all we know someone adjacent to her could have been throwing something and the shot was errant.

I'm making a lot of soup from very little meat here, I admit. The LAPD chief later said "I know that situation you’re referring to, with the member of the media. We saw that, we’re very concerned about it and we’re looking into that.", so hopefully there'll be more context later; I'm not finding anything in a quick search now.

It's hard to imagine what any exculpatory context will look like, though. I am somewhat sympathetic to anyone who tries to enforce Niven's Law 1a ("Never throw shit at an armed man.") but ends up accidentally enforcing Niven's Law 1b ("Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."), but I'd be surprised if that applies in this case. There's about 4 or 5 seconds after she's hit before we hear the sound of anyone (not necessarily the original cop; the camera has turned by this point) firing a second shot, and in the brief bit of that we have on video her assailant is lowering his gun barrel, not trying to adjust his aim or get another round ready, so he at least doesn't seem to think he's in any kind of imminent danger.

It's possible that he legitimately thought he spotted some danger before the shot, but realized it was a false positive and calmed down immediately afterward? That may be what happened in the famous Austin case from 2020: the video of a kid standing by himself harmlessly and getting his skull literally caved in by a beanbag round looks pretty damning, but the kid was apparently repeatedly throwing shit at the cops earlier, and the cop who shot him had just gotten multiple (incorrect) verbal reports that the kid now had a large rock in hand. The exculpatory evidence has a bit of a "cops closing ranks to protect a cop" vibe to it, and even the police report noted that there was no way the kid had a large rock as claimed, but the DA who dropped the case is so famous for conflict with the cops ("ran on a platform of ending prosecutions for low-level drug possession to focus on violent crimes, holding police officers accountable for misconduct, and pursuing restorative justice ... advocated against cash bail and promoted diversion programs to prevent felony convictions ... was asked to leave the funeral of fallen Austin Police Officer ... due to Garza’s history of prosecuting police officers") that I can't imagine him dropping this case unless he was confident he couldn't win it.

I have family that were in law enforcement and I am very much aware of my pro-blue default nature but I also have some vestigial libertarianism that counterbalances my bias.

I'm not even saying you're wrong, I just think it's too early to judge (the soup/meat analogy is perfect).

If anything the last 10+ years has taught me is patience, especially with incidents like these.

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I mean, it's the LAPD. You've got a choice between evil or incompetent, and it's probably better to select the healing power of "and".

LASD is a totally different organization to LAPD and the worse of the two, IIRC.

Fair. My impression is that LASD has a lot of the same issues, but I'll admit I've got less current evidence on that.

I don’t see these people as tactical geniuses. Up until this point, they’ve basically been able to thus far force Chuck Schumer to use his angry letter writing pen, have Cory Booker sit on the Capitol steps (before he voted in favor of a Trump nominee), and get a New Jersey mayor arrested. Even this isn’t a loss, he gets to look tough and make the governor of California display his impotence. All the while Trump can continue to work on getting his budget passed, arrest migrants in the court house (and now that judges are on notice, they don’t even try to sneak them out the back door). All of this is losing handily, no matter how many times they swear that it’s making Trump look bad.

I'm sure all the civil libertarians are just struggling with how passionate they are about norms and standards and the rule of law, and that's why none of them have come around to express outrage at the gangs of foreigner men waving foreign flags and attacking federal agents performing lawful duties.

🍿🍿🍿

I don’t see how anyone intelligent can see the protests continuing when the NG can arrest and shoot people who interfere in a federal investigation. Nor do I believe that Newsom is going to avoid prosecution for siding with the protesters assaulting federal officers. They wanted this, they wanted to mess with the government because they have TDS. Now they can paint tge ground with the blood of protesters who want to LARP as rebels.

You don't think Newsom will avoid prosecution? What kinds of timeline and odds are you offering for this, because I'm eager to take the other side of that one.

He’s publicly supporting a group of rioters. It seems like at best to be incitement, and given that he asked the LA PD to go and protect rioters, might well be more serious.

That’s not incitement, not least because he’s called for nonviolence.

We still do have a First Amendment, it still applies to public officials, and Brandenburg v. Ohio is still the controlling precedent. Unless Newsom says more or less "Come on out right now and wreck the place", he's reasonably safe from prosecution. And he's not dumb enough to step over the line. (Trump might be dumb enough to try to prosecute anyway, but probably not)

Eh, George Wallace didn't get prosecuted, and defying immigration enforcement has infinitely more elite buy-in than resisting civil rights, enough to smooth over any degree to which Newsom is less shrewd at playing the game (The stand at the schoolhouse door was more carefully scripted LARP than real resistance.). Performative (save for the not so performative 1860s) displays in the name of states' rights have been a feature of Democratic Party politicking for more or less the entire history of the party.

Have the police fire on the crowd. That always works, just look at history.

I think the issue is that it works iff the police obey the order, but that if they don't then it is instadeath for the regime's credibility. The chance that police (or troops) will refuse to fire on their own countrymen engaged in a protest half the population finds sympathetic is high enough that governments don't normally want to risk it.

One of the advantages of a large multinational empire is that you can post troops from province A to keep order in province B, so the troops don't see the locals as their own countrymen. This doesn't work in nation-states, but the same general approach applies - this is why Singapore uses Ghurkas as riot police.

so the troops don't see the locals as their own countrymen

I think sympathy is not exactly high. Here is a video of LAPD trampling a protester with their horses:

https://x.com/SilentlySirs/status/1931987304760881629

I've seen that incident noted out in the wild a few times, and so I'm guessing there's an effort to make it the signature image of this fiasco.

We'll see if that sticks. I was rather nonplussed by the video given what 'trampled by horses' conjures in my mind. I see a miscreant whose actions finally met their consequences in the middle of a firework-exploding fracas, and he is actually OK by the end of it.

I'm obviously based, but I think the currency of 'poor innocent protester hurt by fascists for literally no reason' is losing value.

It looks like they clipped the part right before where it appears the protestor and two other guys with backpacks firebombed the mounted officers. It also seems like the fireworks that get mostly cropped out in that edit might be startling the horses. Although I'm not discounting that the third backpack guy wasn't with the other two. It isn't clear from the video but he gets pulled out from under the tree where the 30ft bolt of fire came from. https://streamable.com/e/bc1sog

Can Trump dissolve the LAPD and replace it with the Feds until a new police force is assembled? Imagine resolving a long-standing problem practically by accident.

No, but he can put national guard there practically indefinitely. In any case the LAPD is presumably, like most police forces, very pro-Trump and moderately conservative even if the city that pays them definitely isn't. Police are a different stratum these days in large part because of the dysfunction of the social classes who would see policing as an attractive gig making those people unsuitable as cops. Young men get rejected from the police force for marijuana and minor wouldn't-even-be-noticed-otherwise crimes(duh) but also for gambling debt(a big, growing problem among the communities police recruit from most heavily). It's also not a super popular profession with big chunks of the public.

The police are their own social stratum and they protect their own. The actual sympathies of the LAPD aren't the issue, because those are mostly pro-Trump(and the rest are taking bribes). The civilian political leadership is Trump's obstacle.

Is January 6th the only time that's worked?

Worked on the Bonus Army.

I think it would have worked at Tiananmen square if anybody had ever protested there

If you're trying to analogize based on yesterday's event's, it's unclear what crimes, if any, were committed, besides normal low-level protest crimes like failure to disperse and whatever charges you can levy against people throwing objects at police. Getting someone for interfering with an investigation or official duties would require showing both that the agent were actually engaged in official duties and that the person took a specific action to interfere. Realistically, this would look like ICE trying to make an arrest and the protestors physically impeding the officer from doing so. The reports I've read suggest that ICE was merely staging for a raid (which is itself just an interpolation from the authors; there's been no official word that I'm aware of) so there's no official duty at this point to interfere with. At this point it looks like there was a raid that was about to go down but got called off because of the protests. Charging everyone present because their protesting made it inconvenient to undertake a planned future action is already stretching the law beyond anything it's been used for in the past, but it comes with the additional complication that actions that you are claiming are obstruction are core First Amendment activities. So even if you could show that the elements of the crime were satisfied, you still might not be able to get a conviction due to constitutional issues.

require showing both that the agent were actually engaged in official duties and that the person took a specific action to interfere

I think the guys [EDIT later: in the famous video I surmise everyone has seen] standing in front of the ICE vehicle probably qualify. The agent was engaged in an official duty (going to/from some place) and standing in front of a vehicle is a pretty specific action to interfere with it.

The rest of the crowd egging them on are obviously not though.

So if the cops arrest my neighbor, and I see them gathering outside, I can get between them and my neighbor and not have interfered? As long as the cops haven’t officially declared they’re now on official duty they just aren’t? It like, cool, I can loot a 7-11 and have twenty big guys “protest” outside and keep the cops out. It’s just ridiculous to me to say crowds of people can surround a bunch of cops, prevent them from even starting their official duties, and hide behind the first amendment even if they’re throwing rocks (which is assault).

If they're actively in the process of arresting him you'd be interfering. If they were gathering across the street in preparation for a raid, and a group of protestors gathered on the sidewalk in front of your neighbor's house, the police would have to ask them to move before they could be arrested for interfering, and at that they'd only have to move enough to let the police through. In the 7-11 raid the guys would have to let the cops in, but they couldn't be arrested for just protesting outside. The rock throwing would be covered by assault, and may also be impeding, but it would depend on the circumstances. Suppose for a moment that the protestors in LA knew nothing of the ICE raids, didn't know ICE was there, and were having an unrelated protest about environmental policy or something else totally unrelated to ICE. It did, however, make it difficult for ICE to execute the raid. Should all of the protestors in that scenario be charged with impeding official duties?

Charging everyone present because their protesting made it inconvenient to undertake a planned future action is already stretching the law beyond anything it's been used for in the past

Jan 6th?

I don't believe anyone from Jan 6 was charged with obstructing an ICE agent performing his official duties, or any corollary that would apply to the National Park Police or DC Police.

Newsom is going to avoid prosecution for siding with the protesters assaulting federal officers

I don’t think Newsom has actually done much- strongly worded notes in whatever direction are legal, and that’s basically all he did.

Not if they rise to the level of seditious conspiracy.

I don't think whether Newsom has actually committed any specific federal crime is going to be a major factor in whether or not he draws the attention of federal law enforcement.

Newsom is the last person I expect to put himself in legal jeopardy because he got carried away defending left-wing sacred values.

I would agree with that assessment.

I'm eagerly waiting for all the deeply sincere civil libertarians who were minted on January 6th, 2020, to come forward and angrily denounce these insurrectionists. I expect calls for Palantir to have them all IDed and then rounded up and fed into a woodchipper of a prosecution storm, including random grandmas who just happened to be at the protest, but too close to someone obstructing federal business.

Trump sends in the National Guard, Newsome looks like a pussy.

It is a strain to compare a large protest which involves people obstructing and assaulting law enforcement to a large protest which involves people breaking into the country's main legislative building. Whatever you think about the severity of either, they are firstly surely quite different in nature, and secondly the former is quite common across Western countries while the latter is very rare.

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Please explain your line of reasoning because i do not see how anyone could reasonably make this claim in good faith.

"We burn, break shit, and threaten people all the time, which is fine and good"

"You only do it the once, when you're really upset, so that's bad."

It's really solid, well founded logic.

I'm genuinely confused as to why you would say that, since in my eyes the factual claims I made shouldn't even be particularly controversial. Could you restate what you think my claim is in your words?

The country's main legislative building is arguably the most legitimate target for protest in the country.

That the J6 protest escalated into a riot that eventually spilled into the building itself is more about the abject security failures than anything special about what the rioters did.

I don't think it's particularly useful to argue about which of the two protests-turned-riots(?) has more merit - my point is just that they are sufficiently different that blanket accusations of hypocrisy towards anyone who judges them differently make no sense.

It's perfectly consistent to think that legislatures are sacrosanct but largely autonomous devolved subunits of the executive like police are fair game (they represent nobody and have a lot of leeway in how they act), and it's also perfectly consistent to think that legislatures are fair game (they are supposed to be the people's bitch) but police are inappropriate targets (they are wageslaves doing a hard job and owe allegiance to some command superior, not the people).

people breaking into the country's main legislative building

I could point to the 1954 Capitol shooting, in which Puerto Rican separatists (Americans) fired 30 rounds in the House of Representatives chamber, hitting five representatives. Their sentences were commuted by Jimmy Carter in 1978 and 1979.

Or the 1983 bombing of the Senate, done by a self-described "Armed Resistance Unit" protesting US involvement in Lebanon and Grenada. Their sentences were commuted by Bill Clinton in 2001.

Or the 1971 bombing of the capitol done by Weather Underground, whose leadership largely escaped any criminal charges and went on to be professors in universities throughout the country.

Comparing those three to Jan 6th (or even seeing them as strictly worse, considering the clear murderous intent) seems fair to me. That doesn't mean the LA stuff is.

The actual best comparison is the 2011 Wisconsin statehouse takeover, wherein a large mass of hostile protestors Occupied the legislature building for the express purpose of preventing legislation from being passed, while openly calling for the deaths of the Republican legislators and governor.

But leftists disrupting legislative proceedings in DC is so common it's banal. There's procedures, where the "rioters" wait in line for their turn to get into the room, make a scene, get "arrested" and then released to go brag about it to their friends.

I have to agree. While I'm broadly more aligned with the right, all of the equivocation of BLM riots with Jan 6th is annoying and mealy mouthed in my opinion. Breaking into Congressional buildings is an extremely different situation than protesting and even rioting.

Breaking into Congressional buildings is different than protesting but (in the context of a mass event that started as a protest) a central example of rioting.

Breaking into Congressional buildings is an extremely different situation than protesting and even rioting.

Why? It's political violence either way.

Political violence directly or indirectly, charitably, aimed at the congressional capital where legislators are actively working is quite different than rioting in a random city. Even if the rioters are attacking city hall or police stations, the degree is significantly greater.

Acting as if they are equivalent is ridiculous and playing games with “political violence.” It’s like saying slapping a politician you don’t like the exact same as murdering them, because it’s “political violence” either way.

So you're just going to say it's obvious and not actually explain why? Come on.

Is it mere geographic proximity? Are you saying one is more likely to work? What?

I could understand if congressmen were assaulted. Hell, going to people's homes might actually be an escalation. But it's just rioting on some official building we're talking about.

It’s like saying slapping a politician you don’t like the exact same as murdering them, because it’s “political violence” either way.

I can explain the difference for that one, only in one case is the politician removed from play and unable to do anything anymore. Which is how Japan's left wing coalition once collapsed.

I don't really see that clear a difference between causing property damage in fed buildings or police precincts except who has to pay for it.

All I see is people with no power breaking things to make themselves look more intimidating than they actually are. I think your degrees are more aligned to the targets of the intimidation or the symbolism thereof than its actual severity or destabilizing effect.

So you're just going to say it's obvious and not actually explain why? Come on.

Is it mere geographic proximity? Are you saying one is more likely to work? What?

The symbolic and indeed legal status of say, Pittsburgh downtown versus the Capitol of the United States are indeed quite different, and I do think it's obviously true. There are specific laws about threatening Congress, crimes on federal land, etc. Even if there weren't, the implicit statement the rioters are making is vastly different. One is random wanton destruction, one is destruction aimed specifically at the ruling body of a nation.

I could understand if congressmen were assaulted. Hell, going to people's homes might actually be an escalation. But it's just rioting on some official building we're talking about.

Congressmen were in the building that was raided. That counts as attempted assault at least, in my book. If the rioters had gotten to the elected officials, I don't doubt there would've been some violence.

All I see is people with no power breaking things to make themselves look more intimidating than they actually are. I think your degrees are more aligned to the targets of the intimidation or the symbolism thereof than its actual severity or destabilizing effect.

Not sure what you're saying here. I agree that rioters with no power are breaking things - I see it more as a sort of mob pressure release rather than an actual plan to become intimidating, but don't think that is a big deal.

What do you mean my degrees are more aligned to the targets? Are you saying the BLM riots were more severe and destabilizing than J6?

Are you saying the BLM riots were more severe and destabilizing than J6?

It's as obvious to me as the opposite seems obvious to you. And not just because the deathcount is an order of magnitude higher.

I see it more as a sort of mob pressure release rather than an actual plan to become intimidating, but don't think that is a big deal.

I just see another irregular verb.

I release pressure. You riot. He is an insurrectionist.

What do you mean my degrees are more aligned to the targets?

You think trashing the desk of a congressman is a strictly less legitimate form of political expression than trashing that of random people or that of policemen. As a Frenchman I find that exceptionally weird. If anything the proper order of a republic would go the other way around.

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What do you mean my degrees are more aligned to the targets? Are you saying the BLM riots were more severe and destabilizing than J6?

Yes, definitely.

@ArjinFerman

I thought you said there was a legal argument for it being worse, rather than merely symbolic?

Violence committed on federal property is a bigger issue. Violence or threats of violence against Congress is a bigger issue than property destruction, legally.

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Nah. The singling out of "main legislative building" is nothing more than special pleading aimed at pretending one is different from the other, when they are very clearly not.

No, it's special pleading to pretend like breaking into Congress directly after a Presidential election is the exact same as rioting in a city. They are quite different things, even legally.

I'm open to hearing your case. Please tell me what is the argument for setting a police station on fire being less illegal than breaking into the building of the legislature.

First, police stations are state property. They are of a lesser legal status than federal property when it comes to crimes against them, is my understanding.

Furthermore you've got specific laws against obstruction of Congressional proceedings, and threatening officials. Not sure if the J6 people were charged with those in particular.

Either way the major argument I'm making is more symbolic - I think the legal points are relevant but not going to fight to defend them if it's not the case.

First, police stations are state property. They are of a lesser legal status than federal property when it comes to crimes against them, is my understanding.

On the other hand, burning something down to the ground is an act of greater violence than breaking in and aimlessly walking around the premises until asked to leave. How do you know the former amounts to greater crime?

Either way the major argument I'm making is more symbolic

The symbolic argument is far more subjective, I don't see how you can insist you're obviously right with it.

Furthermore you've got specific laws against obstruction of Congressional proceedings, and threatening officials. Not sure if the J6 people were charged with those in particular.

They were charged with "obstruction of an official proceeding", which is a fairly new crime created by the Sarbanes-Oxley act. You may recall that Sarbanes-Oxley was about financial stuff -- the official title is "Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act". The application here was a stretch, and one the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against, though prosecutors were trying again with some defendants when Trump rudely interrupted them.

Well, I think that pretending that the seat of one of the branches of government is nothing special just so you can equivocate is special pleading. If it's so non-special, why do protesters not storm it more often? Manifestly, doing so would shut down a central government function that pisses a lot of people off, and guarantee eyeballs in a way that torching some random police station in bumfuck nowhere won't.

Other countries also hold that legislatures are special: in Germany, for example, where there is otherwise a fairly strong right to public protest, there is a special cutout prohibiting assemblies in a certain radius around federal and state legislatures and the constitutional court. This has been in place since 1920.

Well, I think that pretending that the seat of one of the branches of government is nothing special just so you can equivocate is special pleading. If it's so non-special, why do protesters not storm it more often? Manifestly, doing so would shut down a central government function that pisses a lot of people off, and guarantee eyeballs in a way that torching some random police station in bumfuck nowhere won't.

Oh no. I think it IS special, just in the opposite manner. There is no reason for anyone to protest a Binny's Beverage Depot in Chicago and take 300 bottles of Tequila because a cop stepped on a black guy too long in Minnesota. OTOH, protesting the seat of government over their proceedings is inherently legitimate activity. Therefore, the question turns more to how an ordinary protest turned into a riot and a riot turned into a bunch of unarmed, uncoordinated, people essentially sacked a 18th century fort.

As to the first question, I would say its about 20% that the J6 protestors were a more animated group of folks than the average protestor, but thats not a very good explanation. They really werent a particularly aggressive group, and very few professional agitators were in the group. Law enforcement's failures explain a lot more. They were severely understaffed, as you can see on video and as was testified by many witnesses at the Congressional hearings (multiple requests for additional staffing were denied). Given that, they were also incompetently deployed. You can see multiple teams of 2-5 police standing behind a couple of those metal gates they use at Six Flags to make sure people queue in an orderly fashion. This is not actually a crowd control device. Given the size of the crowd, those poorly thought out isolated positions would have been overwhelmed with no violence at all. And, of course, they were. And that is what led to the escalation, because the retreating police from those idiotic positions were the first to physically engage with protestors in an aggressive manner.

So now we have multiple rapidly collapsing "defensive" positions with police having the obvious fallback position of the building's doors. If they can just close those and lock them. No amount of people shoving, kicking, etc can get into the building. You'd need a SWAT battering ram to start to have a chance, and even that would probably be inadequate, those doors are thick and heavy. BUT, of course, the doors are never closed and people just kind of flood in right behind the retreating police. Often you can see people entering the building while officers just kinda stand there at the door watching. In other words, the entrants at that point shouldn't even qualify as trespassers or rioters. They are, implicitly, invitees, as the local authorities have implicitly blessed their entrance.

I think that pretending that the seat of one of the branches of government is nothing special

I would argue that this is a very American sentiment actually. The only reason there's a building is that Congress kept getting hassled without one.

The building itself is not meant to hold any sacred character because government is the affair of the people for themselves, not that of their betters. Be them kings or Gods. Congress is just a bunch of Americans deciding for themselves what to do and explicitly not a holy ritual. Though I always thought it was a funny contradiction with the intense Rome aesthetics.

The Romans thought "a bunch of Romans deciding for themselves what to do" in the Senate or the assemblies was a holy ritual, or at least something where the special protection of the Gods was necessary and where certain ritual forms had to be followed in order to ensure that protection.

The analogous idea that the operation of American democracy has a special relationship with Divine Providence not shared with a group of pubgoers arguing over whose round it is was part of proto-Blue Tribe civil religion since the Colonial era, and remains so modulo changes in the Blue concept of divinity. It was generally accepted by proto-Red elites at the time of the Founding as well - both Washington and Jefferson talk like that a lot.

There's a way in which this is true and there's a way in which this is not true.

The form of "Divine Providence" invoked by the founding fathers, and famed deist Thomas Jefferson in particular is not at all that which requires ritual or at least not in the sense that would be relevant here to the holiness of a place.

The God which protects the American project is the God from whom rights are derived, it is Nature's God, impersonal, far removed, non interventionist, the God that set the world in motion according to the laws that were meant to govern in his absence. Not YHVH, not Jupiter, nor even really Jesus Christ.

Natural law in the American sense isn't something that can only be obtained through specific ritual or revelation, but a permeating tendency of reality that one ought to align with.

If the people who made the United States truly believed that demonstrating on government property was not permissible for a regress of grievances, the history of Boston makes them all hypocrites and liars.

The special pleading started during the summer of love. It was the fact that protest was so essential to our nation that it overpowered medical science, so essential that it justified burning and looting cities, that caused the Jan 6ers to think storming the capitol was a good idea. In a way they were primed to do it - if burning and looting is an appropriate response to the perception that black men are being slaughtered by the police, what is the appropriate response to the perception of the theft of the election?

If it's so non-special, why do protesters not storm it more often?

For the same reason people don't burn down that specific police precinct in Minneapolis more often.

Manifestly, doing so would shut down a central government function that pisses a lot of people off

The protest in question did not result in the shutdown of the central government.

God-willing these lawless men who roam our streets, threatening innocent people will be identified and brought to justice.

Particularly the paid agitators from out-of-town who wear masks to cover their faces.

Trump sends in the National Guard, Newsome looks like a pussy.

Why would he look like a pussy for refusing to help ICE agents who he disagrees with? Letting them get locked in a building for 2 hours is an alpha chad move, he's showing that feds aren't welcome in California.

Rock and a hard place. Newsom has ambitions to run for the presidency in 2028 but he needs the California vote to get anywhere, and if he loses that then he loses the primary (most likely) because the party is not going to pick the guy who lost the support of the safe state or if he makes it to be selected as candidate, he loses the national election (because no way he has enough support nationally).

That’s fine, but throwing a hissy fit about activating the national guard and then letting the feds commandeer his troops anyways makes him look like a pussy.

In the Texas border standoff Greg Abbott correctly calculated that the administration was too weak/indecisive to take over the army he’d assembled on the border and so he could continue taking over a core federal function while impeding the federal operation of the same. This made him look strong, because he got what he wanted. But Newsom won’t raise his own army, he won’t defy federalization orders, etc. He looks like he’s all bark, no bite- and already has that reputation.

We'll see. It would be really dumb for him to move against Trump right now, but that doesn't mean he won't. The patriots in the streets fighting back against the brownshirts are already doing a good enough job.

The patriots waving the Mexico flags?

Best of luck to them.

feds aren't welcome in California.

I feel like Newsome isn't stupid enough to call for a second Civil War, but you could be right.

Newsome is trying to pivot to look like a moderate in preparation for a presidential run. He needed a Sista Soulja moment here, and instead he's whining on Twitter about how Law and Order will only make things worse. Meanwhile protestors, his constituents, are slashing tires, breaking into federal buildings, and assaulting federal officers while they carry out their duties.

Newsome is a clown whose chances of winning the presidential nomination are approximately zero. Ironically, he's generally making the same mistake you are wherein moderation is confused with accommodating and/or praising the Trump administration. While I believe that a moderate is going to win the nomination in 2028, it's going to be a real moderate like Shapiro or Beshear who has show that they can govern moderately and give pointed criticism toward the administration when it does something bad for the state, as opposed to governing like a lefty and trying to compensate for it by schmoozing with Republicans. That, and Newsome has no record of outperforming Biden/Harris is red districts.

I wouldn't put him at zero because right now who do the Democrats have? Tim Walz? Kamala again (if she doesn't decide to run for Governor of California instead)? The others - Pete, Gretchen, etc. who have already been rejected in previous primaries? Josh Shapiro, who they couldn't even decide to pick as Kamala's running mate?

I agree that Newsom does not have national appeal, but the Democratic party is stuck for a choice of "does not appear totally crazy progressive, can be painted as a moderate" candidates, and Newsom has been making some recent moves (or speeches) in that direction.

"random moderate from who knows where" is going places I think. Whoever comes up with a winning coalition formula might just become the next Bill Clinton.

I'm not sure you're really raising any good arguments here. Most elections feature a major party candidate who has lost a primary. Regan, Bush I, Dole, McCain, Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Biden had all sought the nomination in the past and failed, and that's not counting Harris. I don't see how you could argue that having lost in the past somehow prevents you from getting the nomination. And to my knowledge Gretchen Whitmer never entered a presidential race, so you can cross her off of that list. I don't see what Shapiro not being selected as vice president has to do with anything. Literally every Democrat not named Tim Walz wasn't selected. I'm not going to go through a list of names, but there are plenty of people out there who can be nominated, and I can probably name more moderates than progressives at this point.

I feel like it's trendy now to see the Democrats as a party in disarray, and while those criticisms are valid, the Republicans might actually be in worse shape going into 2028. We've spent the past decade-plus wondering why Democrats have underperformed the polls in the past several presidential elections, which is especially baffling considering that the polls have been more or less accurate in other elections, and have even gone in the opposite direction, with Democrats winning against the apparent odds. This is coupled with MAGA candidates regularly losing any election that isn't a 100% safe Republican lock. While various theories for these phenomena have been proposed, I think the reason for this is pretty obvious at this point: There is a huge mass of traditional non-voters who will only vote when Trump is on the ballot. Since these people traditionally don't vote, pollsters don't get to them, because pollsters have traditionally only been looking for people who are likely to actually vote.

The upshot is that the Republican nominee in 2028 can't expect to get the same amount of support as Trump did in 2024. For instance, suppose it's Vance. Vance is a MAGA creation and Trump's heir apparent, and nominating him is as clear a signal as you're going to get that the party intends to continue riding Trump's legacy. Well, Vance simply isn't going to get 100% of the Trump voters, and it's difficult to see him pulling in enough non-Trump voters to make up the difference. In fact, Vance seems to offer the worst of all worlds politically, considering he'll have been in office just the wrong amount of time by election day 2028. 6 years total, 4 of them completely subservient to the president. He can't run as an outsider, he can't run as an insider with tons of experience, he can't run as a maverick who forged his own path, he can't run as a bipartisan dealmaker, he can't run as a moderate, he can't run as an arch-conservative, he can only run as a continuation of an administration that will undoubtedly enter election season with net negative approval ratings. The only case in which a Vance nomination has a ton of upside is if Trump pulls off some miracle where he gets his approval rating up among Independents and Democrats, but that seems like a longshot. Ronald Regan he is not.

This wouldn't be that bad if the Republicans had enough of a buffer where they could afford to lose votes. But Trump won the "Blue Wall" states by razor thin margins in 2024 and lost all of them in 2020. Winning any of them in 2028 would be a tall order in any election, and they don't have the votes to spare with Trump off the ballot. Of course, the Republicans could always nominate someone else, but that would suggest that Trump's star has faded even within the party, and would probably be an even worse outcome. It would be like McCain in 2008—The Republicans nominated a good-natured moderate war hero who was well-liked by the opposition and had the misfortune to represent a party that was in such disarray pretty much everyone who mattered had stopped trying to defend the incumbent president. Now imagine what would have happened had the Republicans nominated Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld instead, and tried to sell it as a continuation of the Bush presidency. Because Bush at least had the self-awareness to largely sit that election out. Now imagine the party tries to move on with Trump constantly talking about how anyone who doesn't back Vance is a traitor to him personally. Because that is what is going to happen if Trump doesn't get to pick his own successor.

Beyond that, I haven't seen any suggestions that the Republicans have a particularly deep bench. And for all the criticism I see of Harris's performance in 2024, no one seems to realize how close she came to winning. Trump had a 1.7% margin in Pennsylvania, 1.4% in Michigan, and 0.9% in Wisconsin. Take away the Trump Bump. Take away Harris being tied to an unpopular incumbent. And take away it being Kamala fucking Harris (who isn't getting the nomination, though she has a better shot than Newsome), and the Republicans have their work cut out for them.

And take away it being Kamala fucking Harris (who isn't getting the nomination, though she has a better shot than Newsome),

Yeah, but I think you've encapsulated the problem right there: they picked the wrong candidate. Now, there are reasons for that, mostly to do with Biden insisting on running again and everyone in the tight inner circle hiding his decline until it couldn't be papered over anymore, leaving the party with a very short run-in to the election and only Harris as their main choice.

But they still refused to have a primary, refused to consider any alternatives, and let her/her campaign staff run a terrible campaign. Add in that allegedly she picked Walz over Shapiro because Walz was willing to stay in the background and hold her handbag, and that tells you where it was going.

Do you honestly think the same party, with the same people in charge, are going to turn around and pick "well Shapiro is electable!" this time round?

Considering the same people aren't in charge, having declined to continue their leadership due to what you just posted, I don't think that's a possibility. It's also worth pointing out that Democratic leadership doesn't pick the candidate, the voters do.

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I don't see what Shapiro not being selected as vice president has to do with anything. Literally every Democrat not named Tim Walz wasn't selected.

Shapiro was such an obviously good pick (popular, moderate, highly increases chances of winning an important swing state) that not selecting him his strong Bayesian evidence that being a Jew is considered electoral poison by the DNC. If he's the nominee, leftist anti-Semitism becomes a major campaign issue and major source of internal strife for the Democrats.

I feel like it's trendy now to see the Democrats as a party in disarray, and while those criticisms are valid, the Republicans might actually be in worse shape going into 2028.

They're not in disarray, they're in freefall, posting record low popularity ratings. Meanwhile, Trump is polling in the 60's with Hispanics. A lot can change in three years, but Democrats are facing relegation.

Also, I think you are wildly overestimating how much people give a fuck about experience. Obama was plenty inexperienced, and look how that turned out.

I don't think we can rule out that Shapiro looked at the odds and turned them down, deciding he was better off trying in a later cycle.

The DNC has factions, and the Harris faction disliked Shapiro for some reason (maybe Jewishness, maybe not -- personally I think not choosing him was galactically stupid). The same faction is unlikely to be to driving the boat in 2028.

Shapiro was such an obviously good pick (popular, moderate, highly increases chances of winning an important swing state) that not selecting him his strong Bayesian evidence that being a Jew is considered electoral poison by the DNC. If he's the nominee, leftist anti-Semitism becomes a major campaign issue and major source of internal strife for the Democrats.

Why? The case for Walz was that he was the most left-wing candidate available that could LARP as a regular guy. Shapiro is only an obviously good pick if you see Harris as too left-wing for the median voter and want to balance the ticket with a centrist. Choosing Walz over Shapiro is the obvious thing to do if you are running a left-wing base mobilisation campaign, which is what the Groups wanted Harris to do. It is also the obvious thing to do if you think you are the candidate as a result of a centrist coup and need to shore up credibility with the left (which is what the campaign staffers Harris inherited from Biden did think).

P(Walz as VP|Harris is too left-wing) and P(Walz as VP|Harris is afraid of anti-Semites) are both close enough to 100% that Walz as VP is not strong Bayesian evidence for one over the other. It is Bayesian evidence for both of those theories over something like "The Democrats are sensible moderates at heart, but too incompetent to communicate this to the voters", but if your prior on this in summer 2024 was still high enough for it to be worth collecting evidence against it then I want some of what you are smoking.

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Off the top of my head- you're leaving out Desantis, Hawley, Abbott, Cruz, Youngkin, Rubio, and Noem as conventional presidential candidates who could easily win over Trump's anointment.

To be clear, I'm assuming that these people would have to compete against Vance running with a Trump endorsement. It's possible that Vance doesn't run or that Trump doesn't endorse anyone, but I don't see that happening. VP is a traditional springboard to the presidency. If Trump had wanted a skilled insider who could negotiate with congress or provide behind the scenes advice, he would have gone with Rubio. Instead he picks a guy whose political experience is a year and a half in the Senate and who won't win him any votes he wouldn't otherwise get. The only reason Vance made sense as VP pick was because Trump wanted a young guy who owes pretty much all of his political success to him. As for Vance himself, I don't see him leaving a Senate seat to be VP for four years before going back into private life. With that, let's look at who you mentioned:

Noem: She had little national profile before becoming DHS Secretary, and none prior to Trump becoming president. And, for whatever it's worth, she had trouble winning the governorship in 2018 in a state where it should have been a blowout. I don't think she has the juice to resign from her cabinet position and win the nomination over Trump's objection.

Rubio: He's the candidate you listed who has the best chance of winning, but I only see this happening if Trump endorses him. But if that were going to happen, why not make him VP? Without Trump's approval, he has the same problem of running against the incumbent administration, which may require him to resign and stake his entire political future on a presidential bid, since it's doubtful that Vance would bring him back into the fold if he were to become president. Even in that case, his current position makes him too tainted by Trump for Republicans looking for a change to support him in the primary, and for independents and moderates to consider him in the election.

Desantis: His tightrope act of refusing to embrace Trump as governor and refusing to criticize him as a candidate backfired horribly; it still isn't clear what his opinion on Trump is. Unless he starts criticizing the administration soon, he's going to lose all credibility as a possible Trump alternative, and it's a long shot even then. He also has the face of a dogcatcher and absolutely zero charisma. When Nikki Haley does better in the primaries than you do, you know you're in trouble.

Cruz: He could win the nomination over Trump's objection, but he has too much of a history as a far-right firebrand to win a general unless the Democrats nominate a real lefty.

Hawley: He has a decent record of going against the grain, most recently with his opposition to Trump's spending bill, but he has the same image problem as Cruz.

Abbott: He might win the nomination over Trump's objection, but he's unelectable nationally. First, he's a Texas product, but without the homespun relatability of George W. Bush. Worse, he's another firebrand who is most known for ignoring the Federal government. That kind of thing might play well in the South, but whether he'd be able to beat Vance plus a more moderate candidate elsewhere is another story. The way the primary calendar is set up he'd have to withstand early losses and hope for a big Super Tuesday just to remain competitive. In the general he'd be dead on arrival.

Youngkin: He's the only one I can see winning over Trump's objection. He has shown he can win over moderates. He hasn't leaned into MAGA, but he hasn't done anything to piss them off, either. I only see him winning the nomination over Vance, though, if there's a massive blowout in the midterms, followed by a series of Trump boo boos, such that only the real MAGA diehards will vote for Vance in the primary.

Compounding the problem is that it isn't likely that one of these people gets a shot against Vance head-to-head, but that two or three of them will by vying to be the Vance alternative once primary season gets into full swing, splitting the vote. Any of them will have the same problem Desantis had the last go-around. Every Republican I talked to with an IQ above room temperature preferred Desantis to Trump, and I argued here repeatedly that if Trump ran again, he didn't have a chance. I was excoriated for this opinion, but the Desantis campaign did miserably. The problem for Republicans is that enough Trump voters will lose interest in voting for another candidate that it will keep them from winning the general, but not enough to keep Vance from winning the nomination, if only due to establishment inertia. Anyway, I'd love to hear why I'm wrong and what kind of scenario you think would lead to any of these people winning the nomination over a Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.

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I don’t see Newsom getting the nomination in any contest that involves an actual primary. Older black Democrats in the south have a lot of pull in the primaries and they don’t like slick sharky Patrick Bateman types. Biden’s goofiness was actually a big advantage for him in those contests.

I don’t see Newsom getting the nomination in any contest that involves an actual primary.

That is part of their problem. He does great in California, but nothing elsewhere. But he's the white male liberal guy that might win an election, because hell knows running women/black women hasn't done anything for them, but oh no isn't that the systemic racism and sexism problem, shouldn't we be fighting that? And then they have nobody that everyone can agree on, because X is too progressive and Y is too mainstream.

LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice

I don't see how this is false. He said "LA authorities", not federal authorities. ICE is not an LA authority, and should not expect any help when they're interfering in states where they aren't wanted.

I feel like Alabama tried this line of reasoning 60 years ago.

Then they can't reasonably complain about deploying the national guard.

interfering in states where they aren't wanted

Federal law enforcement does not need local permission to enforce federal laws.

National law enforcement is 'interfering' now?


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