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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32518 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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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.

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