This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Munk Debate with Matt Taibbi, Douglas Murray, Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg is now online: Be it Resolved: Don't Trust Mainstream Media.
Contrary to many alternative media takes, I thought that Goldberg had a surprisingly strong showing. I remember her from the Peterson, Fry, et al. debate where she seemed too crude at times. This time Goldberg's opinions clearly came from experience, and her points were well conveyed. Briefly she claimed that there are clear signs that the media does learn from its mistakes and "overcorrects," that the media would not have driven you to make bad decisions if you followed it, and that the processes and culture of the media remain in place. The debate was worth watching just for her.
Murray conveyed a deep sense of moral disgust at what he saw as the carelessness of the Con side. This too came off as having come from experience. There was a point lurking here that I thought needed more articulation. The Con side said that they were professionals who were still doing what needed to be done, and they pointed frequently to successes on their side. But can one be called a professional if only the broad "process" is followed, and no attention is taken to details such as promptness of reporting, accountability, and the taking of personal responsibility rather than pointing fingers? In the absence of the markers of professionalism, it seemed more like they were claiming that their status as mainstream reporters performing an essential service gave them the right to lead people to a better future. In this I am reminded of the film The Verdict. Few people really care ifa doctor will do a fine job in the future, if he can get away with criminal negligence just this one time.
Gladwell's performance dragged down the debate consistently, but I feel some sympathy for him. His system of diversity has left him in a place that he didn't think it would take him. His constant complaints about white people did not seem enlightened, but as bigoted as any racist tract. Still, his point about whether people like him would have been "included" in the past did have something to it. What we've seen in recent times is a concept of diversity that succeeded in pushing people forward, but failed in the end to bring them up to the same standards as those who they have joined. It is just like programs which try to give educational opportunities for the disadvantaged, but which children finish without learning proper English. If you forget the goal, then you have failed and must try again. Similarly, Gladwell wasn't supposed to end his journey as something that strongly resembles a bigot, but he seemed unable to stop himself from doubling down on it despite it being obvious that it was doing them no good. If men like Gladwell begin to recognize failure and try again, perhaps building on what they have learned so far, I have little doubt that they will do a lot of good.
Taibbi did well, not much to say there. I do think that the Pro side didn't adequately answer questions about their alleged fixations on culture war (edit: and Twitter) issues, but it seems like a charge that could easily be thrown back at the mainstream media over the past decade.
I've honestly never watched a more useless one of these. Gladwell is so bad he makes the whole thing into a nonsense omelette. He sounds like a robot programmed by GPT 0.2
More options
Context Copy link
I found her (Goldberg's) arguments to be the complete opposite of good straight from the get-go. The first point that stood out to me in her opening statement, that 'the media' is not 'ideologically captured' is just wrong. Like she doesn't understand what people are talking about. To reinforce her point she brings up the 'Red Wave' phenomenon the blue mainstream media were pushing in unison. A phenomenon that can be characterized entirely as 'I am afraid my enemy is going to win like they did last time'.
It seems to miss the point of what people have been saying about media bias. The point of the 'displeasure' of how the media was shilling for Hillary Clinton in 2016 wasn't that the media was saying that she was going to win. That was just a consequence of the actual problem. That problem being that 'the media' was obviously and completely in the tank for Hillary and an ill-defined political direction that we can code as 'blue'.
Because of this lack of understanding Goldberg's whole concept of 'over-correction' is just irrelevant at best. The media didn't 'correct' itself in any sense that relates to 'ideological capture'. It's still just as captured, just expressing itself differently. They recognized that they might have harmed 'the cause' and changed gears. They didn't change gears to correct their own beliefs. They changed gears so that they would stop harming the cause. From their perspective, in hindsight, it was obviously folly to say to your prospective voters that the election was in the bag. If you want to aid 'the cause' you must gin up your voters to vote. So you tell them that the enemy is mounting for an attack and that you must brace the gates, or you will lose everything you care about.
At risk of being too uncharitable to a person like this. Is she just that stupid? How can someone in her position look at this entire debacle, ongoing for years now, and still be so far off the mark? Is she a malicious actor?
She then moves into 'the big stories'. And says the mainstream media got most of them 'right'. She doesn't expand on what that means beyond that Trump and COVID where events that happened. Which, as a standard of 'rightness' doesn't seem to elevate mainstream media far above 'alternative' media but that's neither here nor there since she backpedals the argument a bit and says that you would be 'closer' to the 'truth' if you followed mainstream media and not 'alternative' sources. This is not really a truth apt claim since the 'truth' given out by blue media and non-blue media is simply not the same. This muddy language is then used to support her argument where she says that the hysteria ginned up about Trump was largely correct because January 6 happened. The problem here being obvious, one 'truth' says J6 was a coup attempt, the other 'truth' says it was a valid protest. If she is malicious, she is brilliant at what she does. If she isn't, she is an idiot savant at making stupid arguments.
I don't think you could underpin the concept of 'ideological capture' better that Goldberg does in her opening paragraphs of her opening statement. Not only does she demonstrate what it looks like, and that she is suffering from it. She also demonstrates that if blue journalists were fish, 'ideological capture' is the water they swim in. Lacking self-awareness to the point of absurdity.
Not to absolve Trump of anything -- I'm not a fan, and it seems like most of his problems are self-inflicted -- but I would also suggest that January 6 would be far less likely to happen if the media had been less hysterical about Trump from the outset. Trump and the oppositional media were like one of those dysfunctional abusive couples who thrive on fighting and then hate-fucking each other. And if you remove Trump from January 6 and look at the hectoring attitude of mainstream media toward Trump's supporters, there's an even more clear cause-and-effect feedback loop of distrust and antagonism from which the media cannot claim its part as an innocent dispassionate chronicler.
My understanding about this topic is that Trump was the one promoting the election fraud narrative in question. Why would his decision be conditional upon his relationship with the media?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I recently had a discussion with a guy who had a take along the lines "We should focus more on economy and not on culture war such as abortion or gay things that conservatives jin up constantly". When I pointed out that this would require the same sentiment from the left: stop going for trans rights, extending term of abortions or stop going for women quotas in professions and so forth. His answer was something along the lines that these are not CW topics, they are matter of unalienable rights that are outside of any discussion. And to me it seemed that he really believed it, he could not probably comprehend that let's say abortion from the position of conservative can be also viewed as question of human rights and preventing genocide. It just did not click.
I think that the whole "justice" angle fried the brains of some people. Everything is now matter of justice, fairness and human rights: we have climate justice, racial justice up to mundane things like dental care justice. In a sense this is "genius" position: every topic and policy I am in favor of is domain of fairness, justice and basic human rights. These are nonnegotiable and there is no compromise possible here, these are topics outside of standard political process and all reasonable people already agree. If you disagree it means you are extremist and not worthy of engaging in a discussion.
I'll grant you diversity quotas as a culture war topic the left is actively pushing on... but from my perspective the abortion and trans rights issues look entirely defensive from the left. The left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade and wants trans people to be left alone. The right is the side making those into culture war issues, not the left.
Just say you want this and stop the equivocation and gaslighting. https://twitter.com/TheLaurenChen/status/1543405646049058816
And don't you fucking dare pretend it's "defense" to push this shit.
More options
Context Copy link
By their revealed preferences, they do not; they knew it was going to get repealed in that leaked decision and they did nothing, and then it was repealed and they still did nothing.
If they cared that much, I would have expected a bill on the floor of the House the next day- but they didn't even bother to even do that. It's not like they're incapable of throwing together a law quickly; after all, they do that for assault weapons bans at every opportunity- so they must not value it that much. (That said, the ruling by and large didn't affect the people agitating for abortion rights.)
There was nothing stopping a Blue state from making their abortion laws even more liberal than they were in the RvW times. You can certainly argue "the right is imposing its standards on us" in the context of, say, Bruen (imposing gun rights on Blue states), but not so much for this.
I definitely saw social media comments on the left annoyed at this... but also, this is all about noisemaking, not policy. No one was under any illusion that such a bill would pass the Senate, so it's just a question of whether it was good politics to force a (virtual filibuster) vote in the Senate. Maybe the Democratic Party made a tactical error by not forcing a vote (i.e. maybe making Republican senators commit to their abortion views would have been bad for them in the midterms... but I'm guessing the Democrats would have held the vote if they believed that), but they lacked the power to pass a bill so it seems strange to blame them for not doing so.
Hence why I brought up the gun bills; they still present them even if the same thing would happen (passes House, stalls Senate). Just because it's (locally) bad politics doesn't mean they're not going to do it anyway; this is true to an extent for the Republicans winning the abortion battle in the first place, if you believe the pundits.
Interestingly, the only thing that makes sense here (and their failure over the past 40+ years to actually back up abortion rights with legislation) is that making Democrat politicians commit to their abortion views would be bad for them. But then again, this makes sense if you assume the left's distance from "center" is larger than it is for the right's.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Does it really? Can you really look people in the eyes who've been ordered to put pronouns in their bios and stop using the word "mother", and say that you are just defending yourself against them?
Tell me, do you keep a diary of your political goals and beliefs? I think it would be very interesting to see how it evolves over time as the Overton window in your head is shifted by party doctrine.
Banned for a day. You've been told repeatedly to knock this shit off.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't like lying to my face. They don't want trans people left alone, they want them brought front and center, celebrated and glorified, shoved in my face relentlessly. If only I could simply leave them alone, but no, that hasn't been the case for years.
The left took the W from Obergefell v Hodges, then immediately escalated and moved on to the next fight, which was the T. This is the culture war of leftist aggression.
The slippery slope has proven to be prophecy, not fallacy.
Don't accuse people of lying unless you can prove they are lying. (Hint: unless you can read minds, you probably can't.)
@token_progressive may be demonstrating exactly what @hanikrummihundursvin is talking about (and man, it is not often that I agree with him...), that he is a fish who doesn't recognize what water is, but that indicates a difference in perception, not dishonesty.
Talking about how we genuinely see things differently, even if you literally can't believe that someone else sees things the way they say they do, is what the Motte is for. Calling people liars because they see things differently than you and you don't believe it is not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And I might even have believed that, were it not for things like the Kermit Gosnell case, and now the whole "Drag Story Hours" rubbish. Are trans people disproportionately represented in modern drag is a theoretical discussion I have no idea about. But taking primary school children to drag shows for some nebulous notion of "allyship" or even worse is stupid. If anyone suggested "let's bring kids to strip clubs because sex work is real work" then they'd be pilloried. "Let's bring kids along to a club with signs like this in the background, but oh no it's nothing sexually-tinged at all, how dare you say that you bigot" is the new orthodoxy.
And then we get stupid, stupid clashes like antifa versus Proud Boys because both sides want an excuse for a rumble, and some UU church was dumb enough to provide them with one.
So "the left just wants trans people to be left alone" is not going to wash anymore.
Don't give anyone ideas.
If I left this comment at that, I'd have to mod myself for low effort, so to expand on this: among the things that have nudged me further into sympathy, if not allyship, with the right, is the speed at which drag shows - which have always been explicitly sexual events, the whole point is for men who like to dress as women and act slutty to parody and exaggerate female sexuality - have been relabeled as "family-friendly" events that are intended to show children the beautiful rainbow of diverse gender expressions. Like, no, everyone knew until a minute ago that a drag show was meant as adult entertainment. The fact that a child too young to know much about sexuality or "gender expression" just sees a man dressed as a lady clown doesn't mean it's children's entertainment.
And I'm not even addressing the sexuality of drag show participants, because it doesn't matter if all or most of them are gay or trans or just straight men who like dressing as women or whatever. Their costumes, their dances, their displays, are very obviously sexualized. I would have qualms but not severe apprehension about a drag queen just going into a library and reading books to children who only see a pretty clown, but apparently sometimes they do the routines too. This really pushes it over the edge for me: I definitely do not think most drag queens are groomers, but I do suspect some groomers are drag queens.
Right now, if you suggested taking children to a strip club to show them that sex work is real work, yeah, you'd get pilloried. But if I were, say, the leftist accelerationist groomer out of right-wing nightmares who actually wanted to achieve that, I do not have a hard time imagining a campaign to first introduce strippers and the concept of sex work as legitimate and worthy of respect, and then some strip club putting together a very cleaned-up version of a strip show (no actual exposure of R-rated parts) for kids, who just see a pretty lady dancing in swimwear, and that being pushed as a family-friendly event. (I mean, pole-dancing is now marketed as a kind of aerobic exercise and you can buy pole-dancing kits for children, ffs.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Only in the "cries out in pain as he strikes you" sense, holy cow.
It's really interesting that you simultaneously suggest that "the left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade," (nevermind that was imposed by SCOTUS and not anything like the result of a legislative process where all citizens had their say) because when it comes down to it the right wants the "status quo" of people with penises and Y chromosomes to have separate bathrooms, prisons, sports teams, and certain other facilities from people with uteruses and lacking Y chromosomes.
And definitely prefers the status quo where it doesn't matter what the person claims to identify as, the term 'man' and 'woman' has an easily verifiable component that isn't subject to the individual's personal preference. And that, on it's face, is entirely compatible with trans people being 'left alone.'
If trans people 'just want to be left alone' that message REALLY hasn't gotten through to the actual left.
Why else are, among other things, the existence of a biological male competing against biological females and unsurprisingly dominating the sport supposed to be celebrated as an achievement, even if this ruins the competition for biological females?
In what sense does this gel with trans people being 'left alone,' if it imposes on people who are trying to compete on something like a fair playing field?
Because blanketing a whole town with flags that represents your identity is almost fundamentally opposed to the concept of 'being left alone.' By this very act you are demanding people confront, acknowledge, accept, and support your particular beliefs. In so doing, you are requiring them pay attention, which is the opposite of leaving you alone.
Similarly when you make biological females wax your penis. That's not 'wanting to be left alone.' Nor is insisting to be allowed into a women's changing room with pubescent females. If this isn't some version of culture warring, then what is it?
You don't get to call it 'defensive' and then literally threaten to take people's kids away for failure to comply with your beliefs.
Or appoint openly trans officials to high ranking federal government positions seemingly only on the basis of their trans identity. This is not behavior that implies a desire to be 'left alone.' It is being openly stated there:
What is 'the faith' in this case?
"Just want to be left alone" but if you disagree with them, people at the very highest levels of government are ready to come for you.
I don't know that you're even arguing in good faith, but assuming you are, please put forward a plausible narrative of the last twenty years in which the right is the side that pushed trans issues to the forefront of public conciousness as a culture war issue.
I think this is a major part of the disagreement. Genetic testing for Y chromosomes is not exactly something done often. Literally checking people's genitals to determine which sex-segregated group they belong in as opposed to relying on appearance of secondary characteristics which can be faked with varying levels of success (generally much easier for trans men than trans women, the latter usually requiring some amount of surgery to pull off) or just trusting their identification or (possibly faked) documents also seems like an escalation.
Yes, this is why one designs laws that punish defectors who manage to evade detection, since we choose NOT to adopt more intrusive measures and trust people to follow generally accepted social edicts. You're just quibbling about the enforcement mechanism, not the validity of the norm it enforces.
A trans person who wants to be 'left alone' need only choose the bathroom or facility that corresponds to their biological sex and I daresay they will be left alone. Maybe they're a bit offput because social norms aren't 'accepting' their identity, but we COULD have a discussion to weigh the costs/benefits of accepting their identity vs. enforcing said norms.
But we HAVEN'T had that discussion and at present CAN'T have that discussion because even attempting it will get you literally banned from most social media sites. And that's not the right doing the banning.
But you'll have a hard time convincing me that the left is willing to cede any ground on this debate.
Prisons, of all places, are CERTAINLY capable of checking people's genitals before admission, and yet:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/transgender-rikers-inmate-gets-7-years-for-raping-female-prisoner/
If the left is incapable of even admitting that there exist valid reasons to keep people born with penises out of facilities delegated specifically for people who menstruate (I don't know what the most up-to-date prog terms are and don't care enough to check) then THEY are the source of the disagreement here.
But then again, if they admit to such valid reasons, this pretty much unravels the entire "your gender identity is what you believe and say it is!" logic.
Back a few years ago I saw multiple social media posts along the lines of this selfie of a trans man in a woman's restroom with a caption asserting the absurdity of that belief. Following the hashtags in that tweet finds some similar ones (although mostly a lot of screenshots of that one as far as I can tell).
Again, you're just quibbling about the enforcement mechanism, not the validity of the norm it enforces.
Do you think there are valid reasons for the social norm of penis-havers and people of menstruation being assigned separate lavatory facilities?
Why should the extant status quo be altered?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. That proves we used have a high trust society, where people expected everyone to follow the rules without having to be verified, not that we as a society used to believe in the concept of "gender identity", by which we decided to segregate our bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, and prisons.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think the majority of trans people probably do want to just be left alone. But the loudmouth activists, and the mentally ill, have captured the microphone and are the ones getting all the publicity, and then you have the cis 'allies' who want to be patted on the head as one of the Good Ones who are marching right alongside them in the increasingly bananas demands.
To me, this is what should be front and center in any discussion about trans issues or more broadly the culture war. The so-called "pro-trans" activists have absolutely no credibility when it comes to representing what trans people actually want. They didn't take a poll of all trans people, they didn't win an election held by trans people, they didn't even take some survey of a randomly selected distribution of trans people. As it is now, none of these things might even be possible, since we don't have some Great List of All Trans People that we can refer to.
It's just some people, some of them trans, claimed really loudly that the things they want are the things that are good for trans people. This isn't "pro-trans" in any meaningful way, and neither is opposing them "anti-trans" in any meaningful way.
So maybe a majority of trans people just want to be left alone. We have no way of knowing. What we do know is that there's no reason to believe that what any activist says has any sort of relationship to what the majority of trans people want.
More options
Context Copy link
Most likely. But that position blows up the claim that its the right who opened up this particular culture war front.
The left, once they won on same-sex marriage pivoted to this specific battle and pushed it forward with aplomb, anything the right did was directly in response to that.
The left pushed it forward? To my memory, the North Carolina "bathroom bill" was what pushed the trans rights discussion to the national stage. You apparently remember things differently? Wikipedia does mention various events leading up to the passage of that bill.
Yes, it is right there in your link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Facilities_Privacy_%26_Security_Act#Background_and_passage
The right was responding to a direct action the left took in favor of removing the status quo.
"Oh, but the right escalated it!"
Okay. Remember what happened after that?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/13/obama-public-schools-transgender-access-restrooms
Or is it ONLY an escalation when the right does it?
But let's wind back the clock a bit further:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-quiet-transgender-revolution/2015/11/30/6879527e-95e4-11e5-b5e4-279b4501e8a6_story.html
Obama being the same guy who ran on the concept of marriage being between a man and a woman then oversaw the enshrinement of same-sex marriage into the constitution. Remember?
You notice that the left isn't HIDING the fact that it is pushing this agenda? Indeed, celebrating it? Back in late 2015?
Obama wasn't doing all this stuff in response to the right attacking transgender persons or passing laws that oppressed transgenders in particular.
He was doing it because, as mentioned, THE LEFT IMMEDIATELY PIVOTED FROM SAME SEX MARRIAGE TO TRANSGENDER RIGHTS. As stated multiple times now.
This is a basic fact that I am pretty convinced on, and you've presented no evidence to change my mind.
Indeed, it looks like the left was planning all along on this tactic, and what we're seeing now is simply the continuation of their long-term strategy.
More options
Context Copy link
The original pushing forward of LGBT issues was actually still done with gay rights, when they sued that Colorado bakery, and we went from "just leave us alone" to "bake the cake, bigot".
As for trans issues, was the enstunnening and enbravening of Caitlyn Jenner before or after the bathroom bill?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, have you tried getting anything through to Twitter activists? They will call LGBT people bigots just as easily as straight white men for disagreeing with the agenda. In short, I agree, but I'm not sure we chill trans people can do much about it.
I will say there's a few concessions I'd really like, such as having gender neutral cubicles available as standard (often there's a disabled bathroom that works for that, but also often not).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of people have already given the Red Tribe arguments, but I think there's a more complex underlying one that's easy to miss.
This morning, literally, I had a discussion about whether overheard joking or misunderstood naming or pronouns applied against a trans person (in this case, trans male, but I've had the awkward 'you know she used to be a he' version before from a guy who apparently thought I was very clueless) could be unlawful harassment. It's not wrong, either as a matter of law or a matter of policy.
And yet, it's hard to understate how much of a change this is from even local Blue Tribe norms less than ten years ago! I'd had similar conversations in deep Blue Tribe LGBT-friendly spaces at that time, but the equivalents were over things like when and how it becomes appropriate to handle pronouns without risking involuntarily outing someone. There was interest in passing something like GENDA, but it was far from an obvious and certain thing. Even in LGB-specific spaces, trans men are pretty new to a lot of people's radars.
That's not to say that makes the novel standards wrong. But they are, to a very large part of society, both novel and potentially ruinous to violate, while also completely unknown to one side and wildly obvious to the other. I don't think people understand the extent this make the 'defensive vs' offensive' framework even less useful than it might otherwise be.
Women secretly passing as men is a common literary trope partially because there are multiple instances of it happening historically. How many of those would identify as trans men by today's definitions is impossible to know (probably some, certainly not all?). But all of them would have expected to be treated as their identified, not birth, gender.
That said, putting trans people on people's radars is exactly what the left is accusing the right of here. Until the right started making noise (and laws) about which bathrooms people were using, it wasn't something people were paying attention to, so trans people were often able to fly under the radar.
This seems like reversing cause and effect to me. Isn't it quite likely a more accurate explanation that people simply noticed some odd presences in their bathrooms, that those who objected to them were the only people who had any reason to "mak[e] noise" about it, and that those people by implicit virtue of objecting to them automatically became right-sorted on the issue (even if they're perhaps otherwise fairly centrist (or even left-wing, those exist) or politically apathetic)?
Your version implies that, for example, the classic image of the "MtF" aspiring transsexual who looks, in terms of the general strength and direction of their biological secondary sex characteristics, somewhat like "Macho Man" Randy Savage in a dress (and though this obviously isn't all of them, they absolutely do exist and in many cases the volume of their behavior matches that of their appearance) was just hanging out in women's bathrooms with nobody the wiser or concerned until some dedicated, already dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers (like I'm imagining a MAGA cap-wearing "bathroom patrol" clothed in all red, not that I imagine that you meant to imply something quite so strawmannish) started "making noise" about it. Even a heavily toned down version of that doesn't seem realistic to me.
Do I think that your Average Joe who wasn't personally affected by the issue was paying attention to it? No, as they rarely do to any issue other than to maybe drop a quick virtue signal about the designated cause of the week. But it wouldn't have been something that "noise" was fit to be made about unless actual real people were affected by it. I guess what I'm trying to say that is that right-wingers by no means invented the inherent weirdness and discomfort for many people of certain gender/sex presentations and characteristics showing up in contexts where they traditionally had never and that "noise" almost certainly would have been made about it in any case. (I certainly remember much "noise" being made about it before any laws regarding the subject were even proposed much less passed.)
People were going to notice if they had seen so much as more women with prominent Adam's apples in their bathrooms (and even left-wingers probably would have "ma[de] noise" about this if they hadn't been given the appropriate ideological mandates), much less the more extreme retention of masculine secondary sex characteristics by many feminine-identifying aspiring transsexuals. You can stop many people from declaring their findings out loud, but, at least for now, you can't stop most of them from simply noticing (in the unofficially illegal sense) themselves.
There's a gradient here between more and less gender-non-conforming (to be clear, I mean identified gender, not sex-assigned-at-birth; I am intentionally not using "trans" here because gender-non-conforming cis people are also affected). I expect that more gender-non-conforming people have always had trouble in gender-segregated spaces while only moderately/lesser gender-non-conforming people may have been more likely to go unnoticed. The recent culture war over the issue means some people are a lot more aware of looking for gender-non-conforming people and therefore noticing ones that are only slightly gender-non-conforming that would have gone unremarked on before.
The question is who made the first attempt to move the Chesterton's fence of what level of gender-non-conformance is acceptable in gender segregated spaces. I had pointed to the North Carolina bathroom bill, but there was apparently a year or so of lead-up involving the left winning court cases and making rules at various legal levels that that was in response to. Of course, with court cases, it can be difficult to determine the aggressor (e.g. was it an intentionally set up test case), but it looks like the left started it, not the right.
That's just like if a few high-profile heists make shopkeepers more alert and thus more likely to detect petty shoplifting though. Nobody's fundamental values have been changed.
That is, similarly to how there's never been a "Chesterton's fence" among shopkeepers declaring any amount of shoplifting acceptable (as opposed to simply too financially trivial and difficult to detect to be worth worrying about), I don't think there was ever any "Chesterton's fence" declaring any level of "gender-non-conformance" in regards to not belonging to the biological sex conventionally associated with a particular space acceptable. (Meaning I don't think there was ever any point at which people who objected to the more extreme cases of highly visible biological males in spaces generally reserved for biological females accepted the less visible ones, just that, like petty shoplifters, they weren't worth trying to detect because the overall general risk of having any biological male in such a space was seen as lower.)
So unless you deny people's rights to those values/boundaries, a positive service has been performed in increasing their vigilance in enforcing those values/boundaries.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's a darkly humorous irony there. Transmen hitting the point where they're completely ignored and no one acknowledges their existence is a big sign that they've made it and are passing. Welcome to manhood, brother, no one gives a fuck, have a beer and deal with it.
Ah, sorry, that is the case to some limited extent in a few subcultures now -- furry treatment of the topic isn't great, but it's closer to the 'have a beer and deal with it' than anything else -- the post I'm linking to is more about a period where it was not really understood as a possibility, even for people who did not pass and were recognized. There were some places that were aware enough: eg, Norah Vincent's Self Made Man is further complicated by her own politics, but recognized the possibility of a "man trapped in the wrong body", as did some NPR interviews with her. But a lot of places could and did just treat as butch female, and not in a 'just one of the guys' tomboys extent even then.
More options
Context Copy link
There's a "funny" corollary to that with detransitioners, where everybody's focused on the harm done to FtMtFs, while MtFtM's tend to get the "have a beer and deal with it" treatment.
This is somewhat justified with FtMs being the majority of trans people, but given their invisibility while trans, your theory is probably more likely to be correct.
FtMs are the majority? Maybe recently but historically the ratio is 10:1 in favour of MtFs
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Obligatory Norah Vincent reference.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is not.
It is not defensive to tell confused teenagers that they might be trans, hide any concerns from their parents and then push them into the pipeline, where they're quickly given hormones, hormone blockers without any serious evaluation.
It is not defensive to redefine asking confused people whether they're sure they want to undergo irreversible medical procedures as 'conversion therapy', which, in case you don't remember was trying to condition homosexuals with aversive stimuli so they'd stop being same-sex attracted.
The clockwork orange treatment. Didn't really work to no one's surprise.
All without proper psychiatric evaluations or any sensible measures that are standard in somewhat well-run countries such as Finland or Sweden.
It does seem all the PR efforts have paid off. I'd feel pity about all the female to 'male' types who get into this.
More options
Context Copy link
People have already addressed the trans issue, so I'll tackle the Roe v. Wade one. With regards to abortion rights, the right views the "status quo ante" of Roe v. Wade as being premised on illegitimate grounds and essentially sees it as a form of imperialism where liberals are imposing policies they want on largely conservative states that would otherwise not adopt them. I think this view has merit, given that Roe v. Wade was quite honestly a bad ruling with the flimsiest of rationalisations offered up to justify overriding state autonomy on the issue, and so the right likely views what they've done to overturn it as defensive action on their part (returning things to how they should be). They probably identify the moment Roe v. Wade was decided as the attack, and I don't think they're wrong.
I'm not actually very strongly opinionated about abortion myself and I think it is a complex issue with a lot of moral greyness involved. But it seems to me that the pro-democracy move here is to allow states more decision-making power on the topic of abortion, and it's fairly easy to see that the left's position on this is "It's perfectly okay for the Supreme Court to explicitly misconstrue the U.S. Constitution and pretend it protects an activity that it clearly does not - if we think it is for a good cause".
Not just the Right, frankly.
Legal theorists on the other side have criticized the grounds for Roe.
The difference is that the Left obviously has a pragmatic incentive to maintain it and many feel like the outcome was right, if not the reasoning.
No reason why a conservative would adopt that position so, to them, the problems are disqualifying.
Certainly it's just an empirical fact that Roe wiped out a bunch of anti-abortion laws across dozens of states. The fact that it took this long for the GOP to respond effectively doesn't mean that that wasn't an attack. If you are defensive only insofar as you've pulled off a Pearl Harbor-like legal coup, you're not really defensive imo.
Seems like an entirely arbitrary place to draw the starting line.
You should be telling the OP that, not the users providing arguments as to why the OP's starting line is flawed. The OP was claiming "The left is defending against conservative attempts to attack Roe v. Wade" when in fact the right-wing attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade can be seen as a defence against a very questionable attempt by the left to impose their preferred policy decisions on states which would not otherwise have adopted them.
The left doesn't get to claim "I'm defending against an attack" when the act that they are purportedly defending against is, in and of itself, an attempt at defence against something that was initially done by the left. You might be able to push the starting line back further and place conservatives as the first stone-thrower if you could prove that 1: before Roe v. Wade conservatives were imposing their preferences regarding abortion on liberal states or something along those lines, and 2: Roe v. Wade was a leftist attempt to defend against this somehow, but you'd actually have to convincingly make your case instead of simply claiming that Tanista's argument is an arbitrary one.
And Roe v. Wade can be seen as a defence against attempts by the right to impose their preferred policy decisions on women who would not otherwise have adopted them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd argue that demanding other people to use neopronouns or different pronouns or in general pushing for hate speech laws or pushing DEI trainings and initiatives is exactly opposite to your claim that left wants to "leave people alone". I do not think we need to rehash the whole CW discussion of left vs right that is discussed here every day.
Rather the point is that whatever the case - be it "leave trans people alone" or "go back to Roe v. Wade" - is automatically taken as natural and proper value to hold, everybody who argues against it is evil. Which would BTW mean that the SCOTUS members who struck down the law are somehow evil and they should not even be allowed to discuss ever weakening these "human rights".
Even if we assume that the left is "just defending", I do not see why this should be redeeming in any way. This means that any left wins are to be enshrined in sacred text as unassailable rights? Why should the left have power to create this new holy book of human rights, which is then used to forcefully prescribe social values and that can never be questioned? Who defines what is a "right", what is the source of the legitimacy for it and who adjudicates in case when different rights are in conflict? Apparently it is not SCOTUS as the left went bonkers after the judgement, immediately questioning legitimacy of the ruling and rehashing all the possibilities like packing the court and so forth. Also what you say would basically guarantee that the Cthulhu can ever only move left or at worst stay in place. Why can we not say that conservatives are just "defending" a position that existed prior to Roe v. Wade? What made the year 1973 so special that we can never move before that in any shape or form?
I think that most people on the left do not even think about these issues - as the OP said, they just swim in the water of their own values and do not even consider them as such. They see them as something natural, as "a right" and enforcing those values as "doing good" and unlike religious people they are often unable to articulate source of those values. I think that it is a feature and not a bug. Every other value system is "ideology", our own value system is the default and correct one, and thus above even being included in ideology category.
The comment I was replying to started
The "just defending" is relevant because it's a claim that if the other side stopped talking about it, it would no longer be an active culture war fight leaving more air in the room for discussions about economics or whatever other political issue is more important. You and the other replies have given some reasonable pushback on that actually being the case for the two issues I mentioned. Maybe it is true in the other direction for diversity quotas?
Or more likely, the next culture war issue the left wants to push.
More options
Context Copy link
Actually, yes. Diversity was pushed offensively in some spaces a few years ago, but now it's just how things are run, and it's the non-progressive side launching attacks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Pushing for minors to be allowed to have surgeries and drug therapies with permanent effects over the wishes of their parents, is not wanting "trans people to be left alone" under any reasonable definition.
I regularly see claims like that with no evidence that anyone actually believes that. The closest I've seen is arguments over whether puberty blockers are appropriate for trans teenagers (and the pro-trans people like to point out that no one thinks puberty blockers are inappropriate for cis teenagers when medically indicated). I'm not sure exactly what age children are normally allowed to make medical decisions without parental approval, I'd assume 16? But it probably varies by jurisdiction. And it isn't a trans-healthcare-specific thing.
Puberty blockers are in fact considered inappropriate for cis teenagers in all use cases that I'm aware of -- they are normally given to kids experiencing puberty many years before they come teenagers, to delay it until a more age-appropriate time.
The use-case for trans teenagers seems to be mainly "park 'em on blockers until they are old enough to consent to hormones/surgery"; this seems quite different, most obviously in that the patients never do experience puberty.
More options
Context Copy link
In Washington state a child can access certain "sensitive" health care services starting at age 13 without their parents being in the loop. These are services related to reproductive health, sexually transmitted diseases, substance use disorder, gender dysphoria, gender affirming care, domestic violence, and mental health.
So, your kid can be addicted to heroin, have been beaten and raped by their older brother and have contracted HIV, be suicidal about the whole mess, and you have no right to even be consulted about it, or even know about it.
Oh, and they can also surprise you when they show up with bandages where their breasts used to be.
More options
Context Copy link
That seems to be around the general age, yes. But fear not, WPATH is out there fighting for the rights of 14 year olds to start on hormones!
Look, my position on this is: you're 18, you want to chop your breasts off because you're mentally ill, I don't like it but you're a legal adult. Go ahead, even if a few years down the line you will then be suing the doctors who did the surgery you are now demanding:
You're 14-16, you're too damn young to know and evaluate the long-term effects of this stuff. Your parents are not horrible monsters who want to mistreat you, they are genuinely trying to do what they believe is good for you by not giving permission.
Even this requires precision because it may concede more than we otherwise do, a sign that the Overton window has been shifted.
My framing would be: if you wish to cut off your own breasts you are free to attempt it and take the attendant risks. But you are not entitled to help from licensed medical professionals to do this, anymore than someone who has alien limb syndrome gets to have that procedure or any teenager with body dysmorphia but wants to get jacked instead should get on demand access to test.
Because, before this started, those things were unquestioned as being unacceptable.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, if no one actually believes this, can you go to whatever progressive hangout you have, and say "I believe parents should have the right to prevent their children from getting blockers, hormones, or trans-surgeries, until whatever age people are allowed to make their own medical decisions", and tell me how it goes?
Sure, and if you express the sentiment that you don't want your kid to take puberty blockers, you will be called every name in the book, and it will be implied that you want to kill trans children. That's not a defensive posture.
And it's not just blockers. Minors are also getting surgeries.
That argument does not make sense, when the validity of the medical indication is precisely the thing in question.
Exactly. "Rights of parents" are red herring - no one except of few ultra weirdos, least of all the left, respects decision of parents to deny their children medical care necessary to save their life and health.
Try "in this house we believe in Bible and prayer, not surgery and blood transfusion", you will not get too far anywhere. Many such legal cases.
Is "trans health care" really necessary to save life and health? This is the question what is it all about.
Are you familiar with Jehovah's Witnesses? They refuse blood transfusions, and have won every court case that has challenged that practice.
More options
Context Copy link
In actuality the question seems to be about who has the power to determine what "necessary to save life and health" really means, by imposing a conclusion on the matter on the entire populace and quelching dissent.
That is, much like certain other important questions of our time, they claim 'the science is settled' and then use this as a basis to impose the outcome they wanted anyway because who can argue with science?
There seems to be no desire to engage with the question you brought up because that would imply being willing to meet the opposition on somewhat equal footing.
More options
Context Copy link
To be fair, I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice as many progressive and Jehovah's Witness' kids as it takes, to secure my right to prevent gender experiments on my kids.
More seriously, I think those are parallel debates. There might be parental rights ti decide this stuff (why do parents get to veto tattoos or piercings otherwise?), and it may or may not be true that trans-medicine is life saving.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, it's a tactic I can't really describe charitably, but it has been becoming more and more common since 2016. One way to think of it is like a reverse application of hanlon's razor - it is better to appear ignorant than malicious.
Everyone has blind spots it's true. But how can you tell if they are legit blinded or just behaving that way? One of the other benefits of trying to appear ignorant is that it is really easy, because even if you do a bad job of it you still look stupid.
Also what would be the benefit of pointing out the contradiction if you were partisan and thoroughly on board with the narrative? All you would be doing is giving the opposition ammunition. You might even put one in the white house. You would be better off keeping up appearances at all times. Eventually you won't even have to think about it, it will become muscle memory. Do you think those people would have been silent about the contradiction if the sides were switched and a right wing workshop told them the problem with democracy was left wing opinions? Because in my experience they would not. In my experience people these days who would, usually end up on obscure internet forums for wordy misanthropes.
We were taught about the Hollywood blacklists in school in the 90s, not long after the Berlin Wall fell, when the full extent of Soviet deprivation and historical oppression was becoming clear, and I thought it was so noble of everyone in these more enlightened times to be willing to stand up for the political and economic freedoms of even such dangerously foolish people. The architects of the Holodomor and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been slipping spies up the ranks, trying to subvert Western governments and culture, and acquiring nuclear weapons secrets, but if we couldn't ferret out the evil people without doing evil things ourselves, hurting innocent and merely-mistaken people in the process, that was too high a price to pay.
It's been so dismaying, in the decades since, to discover what fraction of the modern population loves blacklists after all. Of course you're supposed to boycott anyone who would hire someone with bad politics!
Were we actually enlightened before but we fell so far in a single generation? Was so much of the "opposition to blacklists" never truly more than a love of communism, reexpressed in a way that wouldn't spook idealists like me who bought the cover story?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
“Open democracy is only working properly if it consistently generates the outcomes we deem acceptable.”
I'd definitely agree that this level of self-deception is pretty par for the course. There's a massive streak of illiberalism buried in the progressive mindset, but it is usually buried in a layer or two of obfuscation and framed as "making people free" (or something along these lines). This allows them to put enough distance between their openly endorsed values and their actual positions for them to live with the cognitive dissonance.
I have far more respect for totalitarian hardliners. At least they're honest and open about what they want.
Yea, if the "liberals" said, in old time aristocratic style:
"The people are ignorant and vicious mob. We are in charge, because we are the best and the brightest."
it would be more "honest", but open to easy reply that, judged by fruits of their work, they are not the "best and brightest" at all.
Now they have the best of both worlds.
Things are good? We did it!
Things are bad? Not our fault, we are just humble servants of the people. The racist and bigoted people voted for it, and got what they wanted!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems he contradicts himself. He says journalism should aspire to impartial, bipartisan, and fact-orientated ideals, yet he made a huge name for himself doing the very opposite, like his highly viral article about Goldman Sachs role in the 2008 financial crisis, which was as much fact as it was editorializing. Same for that Trump book.
regarding Michelle Goldberg, covid, and the MSM, everyone was wrong. The MSM overestimated vaccine, lockdown, and mask efficacy . They overestimated the infection fatality rate. The finge-right was probably wrong about underestimating death toll. But probably many deaths were erroneously labeled as Covid deaths.
Gladwell is predictably bad in debate form, like his books.
I have found that it's not so much that the media is right or wrong, although it is wrong a lot, but it's like wrong through omission, not admission. There are always key details left out. Most media sucks, either mainstream or alternative. Alternative is better ,but not that much better. I think random blogs, anons on 4chan, and twitter accounts of people with few followers and no status/clout, are the most accurate. Mainstream and alternative media are both affected by the same clickbait incentives, just different biases. Non-profit media is bad, too, because it's also biased , even if not as click-baity.
Regarding Douglas Murray, the media dropped the shooting story in part because it was no longer in the news cycle. the media does this even when the perpetrator is white, like the 2017 las Vegas shooting, which also inexplicably vanished from the headlines despite being a much worse shooting and having far more unresolved elements, so it's not so much a race or identity issue. I think though the media is more likely to omit information if the perpetrator does not fit a convenient archetype or narrative. But a story is dropped when the key details are resolved, and or it stops being interesting, or it is replaced by the latest outrage or whatever is attention-grabbing at the moment. The Canadian trucker story also vanished equally abruptly. It's interesting how stories end so fast sometimes. but other times they drag on forever even though nothing has changed much, like Ukraine.
Gladwell makes a compelling case that old time media was right to exclude people like Gladwell! Kidding aside, there needs to be more to the argument than “diversity good.” Question is has diversity improved the media product.
Did Gladwell turn out to be the long lost father of Sean King and Rachel Dolezal? What exactly is Malcolm's claim to being "diverse"?
Apparently both of his grandparents on the mother's side were of partial black ancestry. This is also news to me.
So he's.....an octaroon? A quintroon?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem is, he immediately turned around and undermined his own point by arguing that it would be bonkers to expect that media writ broadly take into account and reflect the political diversity of the country. Either we're aiming at representation, or we're not, "Malc."
Yeah, Gladwell's monologue near the end was an incredible display of compartmentalism. He really didn't seem to realize what he was saying.
Murray's objections about the disorderly manner they conduct their thoughts was spot on.
It's a standard form of double-talk amongst the liberal elite: they must simultaneously claim to champion the people and their will, while believing that the people are not necessarily fit to lead or take care of themselves.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Goldberg was better than Gladwell but she, at one point, did something you should never do in a debate: she basically ceded the argument to the other side by admitting that the media is captured and distorted...by consolidating corporations and powerful moneyed interests like Bezos.
Um...you can't do that. As a sign of good faith it was better than anything Gladwell said. As a matter of tactics, that probably made her, on net, worse than he was.
I might be accused of being uncharitable, I think a lot of this debate employed very common "woke" argumentative tactics that were simply out of place due to the different debate topic, which led to a worse showing than expected.
Turn it into a semantic discussion by insisting no one can define their terms. Gladwell tried this, no doubt having seen it work as a useful defense mechanism/way to run out the clock when progressives ask conservatives to define "woke". The problem is that it obviously doesn't work because all sides seemed to have relatively similar views of what the mainstream media is. Gladwell was guilty of the very thing he accused the other side of (wrongly, since they did define their terms both before and after being asked): just assuming we had the same definition of mainstream media in his anecdotes. Which he was right to do since "mainstream media" is not as contentious as "woke".
Grant that something is happening but it's for [Other Reasons Here]. No, that college professor wasn't fired for saying gays should be careful in conservative African countries. It's actually for this Other Thing That Doesn't Indict Wokeness (e.g. higher tuition fees leading to the idea that the customer is always right). Therefore it isn't damning to wokeness. It's a very common thing around college kerfuffles. Well, yes, the college students overreacted but there was this Holy Context^(tm) of this supposedly egregious thing that happened that makes it make sense besides wokeness being bad.
Yeah, well, everything sucked in the past and you're suspect for even thinking anything was better then (though Taibbi should have really clarified the difference between the media being racially inclusive and politically polarized. Murray's catty defense of Taibbi was true but not really substantive)
Suffice it to say, #2 may work in debates centered around how bad wokeness is, but is horrible in the case of this proposition. Since it doesn't matter why we can't trust the press, the question is merely if we can.
She's probably correct actually but, again, it doesn't help.
There's a very good argument, made by people inside the media who would understand the psychology, that the media assumed Clinton was going to win because they were in a bubble and, believing this, pivoted to attacking Clinton to prove their bipartisan bona fides.
The problem is twofold:
They had to do this because of the accurate perception that the mainstream media skews to the Left/would support Clinton
The backlash to Trump's victory led to the criticism of this very tendency and the belief that bad actors exploit false balance (see "butter emails"). Arguably, this "overcorrection" led to things like the reaction to the Hunter Biden story or the firing of anyone who broke message in any way during the 2020 riots/protests. Nobody wanted to be the "rube" who helped Trump win again by reporting something that was unflattering.
The problem is: this isn't actually flattering for the MSM since the underlying fact here is that it is biased towards the Left and its attempts to fix this are intermittent, doing their own harm and will be washed away when things get tough.
I think this was balanced by their focus on the Hunter Biden story which was probably what Taibbi hammered on the most.
(I guess the trucker protest counts as culture war but the implications Murray was concerned about don't seem to fit in the same bucket as shit like the Covington kid or the other such "meaningless" topics).
This is public forum, hardly even a debate. Unlike political debates, there is nothing at stake, hence no need for 'strategy'.
There's only a need if you want to do well. If the argument is that she didn't feel said desire, fair enough.
I think it's silly to go up there and make bad arguments for your side (then why bother going?) but YMMV.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The complaints about who was "allowed" to be in the media during the Cronkite era are ahistoric. Cronkite was on the air at the same time as the first black national news anchor. During this era the NYT put a woman in charge of the Op-Ed section for the first time, had women reporting from Vietnam, Ms. Magazine was founded. The National Association of Black Journalists has plenty of hall-of-famers from this era: https://www.nabj.org/page/PastHallofFame.
That seems almost tautological that the points of contention are going to be Culture War issues. Those are the issues that that get a thumb on the scale.
No one has reason to complain about how the New York Times covers, say, long lines at the airport at Thanksgiving, unless they decide to put some ideological spin on it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link