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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15599 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Great question! Although I don’t agree with your reasoning about rape being okay in this theoretical world.

Your point about how with this level of technology we could go either way on trans issues is exactly why I posted this! I’m curious if people are against it for social reasons (aka being forced to submit socially to pronouns), health reasons (dangerous to kids, fertility, mental health), or if it’s a fundamental moral attachment to the two biological genders. I think it has actually been quite illuminating in that people here have a wide range of reasons for not liking trans ideology.

Great question! Although I don’t agree with your reasoning about rape being okay in this theoretical world.

It's not 'okay,' it's just no longer the heinous and irreversible crime that (rightfully!) justifies massive punishment that it is now.

Indeed, the main reason we consider rape such a horrible crime is because it's typically big, strong, aggressive men perpetrating it against weaker, vulnerable women, and this warrants making said strong, aggressive men fear the consequences of exploiting the strength/size differential in this way.

If women are capable of defending themselves from rapists, that would present it's own deterrent.

In a world where one can switch between male and female at will, this justification falls flat. A male rapist could transition to female and suddenly she's much less of a danger. Or they choose to be a female 99% of the time, only switching to male to indulge in his penchant for the old Ultraviolence (Clockwork Orange Style). Things would just be weird, is what I'm saying.

Indeed, maybe the standard 'punishment' for the crime of rape in the high tech world is to force the rapist to switch genders and endure the same thing they inflicted on the victim. Eye for an eye and all that.

I’m curious if people are against it for social reasons (aka being forced to submit socially to pronouns), health reasons (dangerous to kids, fertility, mental health), or if it’s a fundamental moral attachment to the two biological genders. I think it has actually been quite illuminating in that people here have a wide range of reasons for not liking trans ideology.

I think you hit on it, though. There's a difference between having something against trans people and being against trans ideology (i.e. wokism).

Similar to how someone who has utterly no problem with black people might oppose the BLM movement, if only on the grounds that it is deceptive, socially corrosive, and ultimately fails it's own objectives.

If the goal is to allow whomever wants to transition to be permitted to do so (again, with actual consent) I think you find much less resistance than if the goal is to undermine the very basic assumption of society that men and women are different, and that's okay, and it is normal to accept your birth sex and to be monogamous and heterosexual.

The trans ideology seems to suggest that the very concept of a gender binary, a traditional family, and heteronormativity are a danger to them, rather than simply admiting that there's nothing wrong with being cishet.

A male rapist could transition to female and suddenly she's much less of a danger.

Funny you should say that. There's a real red-hot Culture War case of someone on death row appealing their sentence right now.

"It is extremely unusual for a woman to commit a capital offense, such as a brutal murder, and even more unusual for a women to, as was the case with McLaughlin, rape and murder a woman," Pojmann said.

What grinds my teeth about that sentence? McLaughlin was not a 'woman' when he raped and murdered his victim. I'm not even willing to give ground that he is a woman now, even if he has 'transitioned' and is wearing hair clips just like a Real Girl.

There's the usual defence pleading of mental incapacity due to childhood abuse, and I hate being cynical enough to wonder if that is all bullshit. But say that it's true - say that McLaughlin should not be held guilty due to mental incapacity? Then how the hell is he capable of deciding that he is really trans? If he is a victim of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, how is his brain not damaged sufficiently that thinking he's really a woman is just evidence of more mental damage? If he can't be held responsible for murder because his brain is so traumatised, how can he be mentally capable enough of deciding about his gender?

Make your damn minds up: is the guy mentally together enough to know, decide and consent to changing his gender, or is he so deficient he isn't capable of understanding the full gravity of his crimes or of controlling his impulses? Because you can't have it both ways.

“The lead investigating officer contemporaneously noted McLaughlin’s genuine remorse, as has every expert to evaluate McLaughlin in the years since the trial,” the application filed by her attorneys states, adding that McLaughlin has been “consistently diagnosed with borderline intellectual disability,” and “universally diagnosed with brain damage as well as fetal alcohol syndrome.”

But by comparison with another transgender Real Woman, McLaughlin looks good (what the hell is going on in Canada?) McLaughlin is in Missouri, this shining example is in Ontario:

A 68-year-old biological male that identifies as a woman who is serving a life sentence for murdering a woman and then raping her corpse has been approved for transfer to a women’s prison in Ontario, Canada, according to Heather Mason.

The individual's name at the time of the crime has not been confirmed but is named on the parole document as Catherine Lynn.

According to Lynn’s parole document, there have been a number of incidents in prison related to inappropriate sexual behavior with others, and Lynn wanted to transfer to a women’s prison to "look at how women walked, talked, and acted," said Mason.

The newly-minted Real Woman is 68 years of age and going to have sex reassignment surgery (or gender affirming, or whatever they're calling it this minute), so that means it should be just fine to put him in with other women, right? I mean, just because their offence was murdering and raping a woman, it isn't that big of a risk?

What "in the future a male rapist could transition to female and be considered less of a danger"? We're living that right now. Maybe the solution is to build special transgender prisons so all the New Real Women can be housed together, away from those dangerous and violent biological males in the men's prisons. Just because they tend to be sex offenders, surely they won't pose a risk to one another? (England and Wales prison figures for 2018 - 63 sex offenders out of 139 transgender prisoners = 45%. Male prison population in general: "As at 31 March 2020 there were 12,774 prisoners serving sentences for sexual offences, which represented 18% of the sentenced prison population.")

McLaughlin, now 48, was convicted of killing 45-year-old (ex-girlfriend) Beverly Guenther on Nov. 20, 2003. She was raped and stabbed to death outside of her workplace in St. Louis County.

And yet not a word about the victim or the crime in the article written after the perp put a wig on. "Intimate partner violence by men" vanishes from the narrative the second it runs up against a more powerful group. Incredible.

Also re. the death penalty discussion from the other day:

In 2006 in St. Louis County Circuit Court, McLaughlin’s trial lawyers made a strategic decision not to have a psychiatrist testify. They had discovered during the penalty phase that one of their expert witnesses had falsified data in a lab report 17 years earlier.

"Our own expert witness being a fraud should invalidate the trial and get our client off the hook" is one hell of an argument.

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