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 -
That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something. Does their mental illness spring from a form of arrested development occurring at the puberty age? Could it have to do with a failure on behalf of those around them to reinforcement and affirm the biological changes that happened at this age? Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)
School shooters are narcissistic megalomaniacs who crave, more than anything, personal infamy. They notice that there are few crimes in our society seen as more heinous than murdering children (made particularly evident by the ghoulish amount of attention the most recent school shooting received). They conclude that murdering a bunch of children is the easiest way to achieve personal infamy. They look to places where large numbers of children congregate, and unsurprisingly find that schools meet this description. The nearest school is probably the one they are currently attending, or the one they attended (if they are a recent graduate or still live in the town they grew up). I'm not sure anything more needs to be explained beyond that.
On the TV Tropes page for the movie JFK, it's noted that one reason a lot of people didn't accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission was because they simply couldn't fathom the idea of a frustrated, unemployable, socially awkward loser murdering someone for no better reason than wanting to be famous for something, even something heinous. "Modern audiences, however, more than a generation after the Columbine massacre when such self-aggrandizing slayings have become almost mundane, might be more accepting that Oswald could indeed have acted alone." (Incidentally, there's something uniquely chilling about that phrase "self-aggrandizing slayings".) If Lee Harvey Oswald was around today, he would've been a school shooter: if all you're after is fame for yourself, it's much easier to gun down a bunch of minimally protected developing youths than a politician with a Secret Service detail. It also says something about how heinous a crime murdering children is that, for doing so, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are almost as famous as the man who committed the only successful assassination of a POTUS in the twentieth century. Innumerable books analysing their psychology? Check, check. An Oscar-winning movie about their exploits? Check (bonus points for going out of its way to attempt to whitewash and exculpate Oswald), check (and there are several other movies about both which didn't win Oscars). A video game about them? Check, check.
More options
Context Copy link
That is a lot of conjecture for N=2.
I am skeptical of your nurture hypothesis. I think people have different sliders in their heads towards which genders they are sexually attracted and as which genders they identify.
Social approval of LGBT will then make it more likely that they will reveal their nonstandard orientation to the world. If your gender identity slider is at 0.7 away from your birth gender, if you see your classmate being called brave for coming out you might decide that you are trans. If your society reacts to LGBT by throwing them from tall buildings, you are much more inclined to play being a cishet.
Here is another explanation: quite a few kids make traumatic memories in school. Often because other kids are jerks, sometimes because teachers are jerks and sometimes without any concrete bully to blame.
I think mass shooters are somewhat likely to pick a place with strong emotional connotations rather than shooting up a random mall they have never set foot in before. Ideally, they would want to travel back to the past and shoot up the place where they feel it all went wrong, but the best they can do is to come back to the same place and murder some kids.
Is it really “playing”? It seems completely obvious to me that even if these sliders exist, most people would be much happier with a wife and children, compared being some old queen alone in your apartment with a terrible body condition due to years of abuse.
You’d have to be pretty far off baseline for that not to apply.
I know a Mormon man, as queer as a three dollar bill. Married many kids, greatly enjoys child birth. His son came out and his response was "Get over it, I'm gayer than you are!"
I’m a catholic but I greatly admire the Mormons. What a story.
More options
Context Copy link
Excuse me, what?
Maybe he meant 'child rearing' and married with many kids.
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
Does this theory apply to the VA Tech, Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland, UT clock tower, or Columbine shootings? Because that’s how far down the list I had to go before finding one that wasn’t a current or former student.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure there's much meaning to be ascertained, most school shooters target their own current or former school as a default.
More options
Context Copy link
From my perspective, it seems pretty obvious that a lot of FtM types in particular are far less interested in becoming men than they are afraid of becoming women, and so their "dysphoria" is driven more by a desire to prevent adulthood. It's less about what they transition to ("boys"), than what they don't transition to (adults). This makes sense when you assume they've been infected by a highly virulent memeplex that is essentially uses their bodies to reproduce itself and spread laterally (using modern communications technology) rather than generationally. Arresting their development is a good strategy, because it prevents them from wasting time and energy on such irrelevant things as their own reproductive success. I perceive this pattern less among MtF types, but I guess it exists.
Older highly successful memeplexes tended to be much more symbiotic with their hosts, since being pro-natal was a good way of spreading itself. Making children was one of the most effective ways the memeplex's host could make more hosts, but modern communications and transport technology changes everything. This is probably the fundamental reason for collapsing birthrates, and transgenderism is an extreme manifestation of that.
I think that objectively, female puberty can be a rather unwelcome change.
Getting your period (and knowing that this will continue through the next few decades) seems much less desirable than getting the odd nocturnal ejaculation.
If you are a sporty 10yo who was so far playing soccer with 10yo boys, knowing that they will get more muscles while you will grow tits, and that your character sheet has just gotten a new core stat "hotness" which will strongly influence most social interactions in your adult life might very well feel unfair.
And the very idea of pregnancy might thrill some girls but invoke Alien-level body horrors in others.
Of course it's understandable, and also why it's no coincidence that the demographic now most likely to come out as "trans men" is the same demographic which a generation ago would have been most likely to be diagnosed with anorexia. In many regards, the practical end result is identical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I have seen some reasonably compelling anecdotal evidence that FtM correlates very strongly with eating disorders ("take hormones to avoid getting curves!") and also with childhood sexual abuse ("I don't want to be seen as a woman if this is how they're treated!"). And also that those two are nontrivially correlated with each other.
Not trying to imply that this fits all cases, but it read as quite believable to me.
Also it feels like MtF are more likely to try and achieve some sort of performative attractive sexbomb femininity, whilst FtMs acknowledge they're not going to be Arnold Schwarznegger even with Estrogen blockers so settle for the invisibility of a 5'5 chubby guy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Huh...
This makes me think that FtM transsexuality and MtF transsexuality are actually a lot more symmetrical than I previously realized.
Someone here once mentioned that FtM transsexuality was driven by an urge to "self annihilation", which I thought was great and accurate. Although it did make FtMism out to be a rather different phenomenon than MtFism, since MtFism is pretty clearly driven by positive desire.
But if we instead think that the key issue underlying all forms of transsexuality is the individual's relation to femininity. FtMism = rejection of and flight from femininity, MtFism = attraction to and desire to possess femininity. Then we can start to conceive of the two forms as being separate manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon.
I happen to agree with the radfems who claim that men are the "default" gender and women are a deviation from the default. Although I might disagree with them over the specifics. Rather than conceiving of femininity as a "lack" of masculinity, it's relatively clear to me that femininity is something that one possesses in addition to the "default" human state. And this is exactly what we see expressed in the two distinct forms of transsexuality.
I'm curious how you'd distinguish this from desire-to-be-masculine. I think both components are present, but to provide a pretty straightforward (hur hur) example, this and this comic (cw: furry, NSFW, FtM/F) says a lot of things about how the ftm character reacts to someone he's penetrating touching there... and also is more gynophilic in his partners than I am, and a longer-running thread revolves around wanting to be a dad, and not just (or even primarily) in the breeding kink sense.
Now, tbf, I haven't stalked the writer's twitter/bluesky enough to be sure they're specifically transmale... but a lot of transmale people in tumblr space found it pretty resonant. And it's not exactly an uncommon framework: most of the other good examples just look like M/M or M/F, are really gay, and/or just a lot kinkier than bedupolker's, but I can provide links if requested. Not always or even often a plausible one in every way -- very few transguys are going to get six-foot-three with a Christian-Bale-as-Batman voice -- but if we're talking about what people want or are attracted toward or fantasize about, it's kinda relevant that you can just look at people's fantasies, these days, and find at least existence proofs.
I'm with Iconochasm here: I've triangulated that I'm at the far high end of male tenderness and romantic shyness, and those examples strike me as painfully unmasculine. The rat character just feels hunched over, passive, depressed. Maybe a desire is there, but if this resonates with the trans masc community than I don't know if they really get what men aim to be like. Although I love my tenderness, I also don't want to be the guy who apologizes for kissing a woman who really wanted me to kiss her. Ask me how I know.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean -- I'm really not trying to be a jerk here. But, I mean, you are bisexual, and obviously you have a deep connection to gay culture. I'm not sure that being more gynophilic than you means a whole lot, particularly when we're talking about people who are exclusively attracted to women. Do you have a preference for women?
I admit, I didn't even realize you had any interest in the fairer sex until you explicitly said you were bisexual -- my ingrained mental image, which is hard to shake, is that you're twink who likes wearing programmer socks. I guess I've known too many geeky MSM or furries that fit that frame that I slotted you into it. And I genuinely want to know how wrong I am.
The "trans men are really gay" thing actually contributes to the point you're refuting: if you're flying from femininity, what is less feminine than being gay? As you've said before, femininity isn't really all that prized in gay culture, stereotypes aside.
Well, a parent, at least. There are obviously differences between moms and dads, but I don't know how to meaningfully distinguish "I want to be a parent, but I don't want to get pregnant" (which would actually contribute to the point you're trying to refute!) from "I want to be a dad."
It is also slightly humorous that the rat character throws a party to interview candidates for impregnating his girlfriend, which seems, well, like something a lot of men would find somewhere between uncomfortable and enraging.
EDIT: A few more reflections after downloading the comic PDF. I braved the rat pornography so everyone else wouldn't have to.
But most of the sex doesn't come off to me as gay, or male -- they come off to me as lesbian wish fantasies about doing masculinity better than men. In particular, the initial sex scene in the comic features the rat character pulling a strapon out of his everyday carry bag (as one does) and then insisting on putting a condom on it, because ????. This is a contradiction to the stereotype that men won't wear a rubber.
Then, during the sex scene, he asks the female character, "how do you like to do it?" and she responds by saying, "Nobody's ever asked me that before!" Again, this is a contradiction to the view that men don't give a damn about women's sexual enjoyment, which is puzzlingly common among women. The point is that the trans masc rat is a Better Man (TM) than those dirty cis rat boys who didn't treat her right.
Maybe that is how a lot of men are, I don't know. But the idea that I'd have a sexual encounter and not aim to make it a good one for my partner is like suggesting that I set my pizza sauce-side down. What's the point of getting my rocks off without having a memorable experience that ends in mutual satisfaction?
(Of course, she doesn't know what she likes, and the trans man rat character just substitutes his own judgment for her inability to state her sexual preferences, and those happen to be absolutely exactly what she likes. Another trope in sexual fiction written by women.)
The "single pregnant woman meets Good Man (TM) with dad vibes" is also a common female fantasy -- obviously it's quite adaptive. But it's not necessarily something that I'd say reflects an internalization of maleness so much as a desire to perform proper maleness for women, or in other words to be the butchest lesbian who ever strapped on a dildo.
I did definitely enjoy the transition from "we literally just reunited on the street randomly" to "we are having sex, we can separate physicality from emotions, right?" to "we are now madly in love," which took all of one evening. Can I make a u-haul joke?
Also... it really does seem like the "main character" in the sex scene I read was the female character. It was all about her. I'm not getting "I AM A MAN FANTASIZING ABOUT BEING MASCULINE" vibes, but very much a projection of women's sexual desires onto the trans male character. Particularly in the "you're my princess but you're also my slut" thing, that's textbook girl next door with a naughty side energy. Of course, I think many men would be happy to do that for a woman if she asked (but in the comic she doesn't ask -- he intuits).
The comic's depictions of sex read more to me like something written by a woman than by a man -- might as well have been written by women I've dated, it's so painfully familiar. (ngl, didn't hate it.) He's a woman's ideal man, not a man's ideal man. That's not an insult, but it is important. I don't think this proves what you think it does.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm just going off of my general impressions from hearing FTMs talk over the years. There seems to be a much bigger focus on escaping the responsibilities and restrictions of femininity, and the actual positive desire for masculinity is secondary (but it certainly still does exist in at least some individuals, as your examples show).
It's noticeably different with MTFs because there's such an obvious strong fetishistic sexual component. Of course there's a confounding factor here that explains why we might not see that as much with FTMs, because women have fewer paraphilias overall than men, and the paraphilias they do have aren't felt as intensely. But FTMs could still desire masculine traits in a non-fetishistic way. My impression is that that part of it just isn't quite as important for them on average, but I freely admit I could be wrong on that point.
Of course, if it were the case that FTMs simply straightforwardly desired to be masculine in the way that MTFs desire to be feminine, then that would be fine, because it would still support my original claim that there's a symmetry between MTFism and FTMism. But enough people have pointed out that FTMism seems different on the surface that there should be some sort of explanation for this apparent difference.
More options
Context Copy link
Presumably the presence of a real effort at actual masculinity. Isn't it kind of a trope that many FtM want to be soft, emo, cuddle-and-cry boys? It seems that many transmen don't really have any idea what being a man means, aside from yaoi porn.
Many of them do; I suspect a dynamic (broadly) symmetrical with AGP-vs-HSTS.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
See I tend to see it in the opposite way. Men are not the default, as men have to earn the right to be seen as men. Women have to basically grow boobs and they’re women. Children are children by default as they are born as children and remain so until they become something else. If I have to achieve something to be considered a real man, then being a man is not the default.
I think in both cases you see the person not really wanting to grow up. They want to be the opposite gender in ways that don’t force them into adulthood.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Given the memes separating "women and children" from "men," there's something deeply ironic and perverse and even darkly hilarious about this. Of course, an FTM doesn't transition to becoming a man, but rather a transman, and I have to wonder, once we remove all the ideologically-based praise and support from being trans, if a typical FTM's experience as an adult in society is closer to that of a masculine/low status woman or that of a median man.
Depends on the type of FTM. One type specifically tries to look like Danny Devito because it will make them invisible. Their dysphoria seems to be related to discomfort with getting attention from men, and becoming invisible is the way to avoid that attention.
Another group transitions, and either the desire to reify their masculinity by becoming culturally gay or perhaps the influence of testosterone, leads them to become hypersexual. 2rafa's description from a few years ago of someone she "knew as a girl and she was a blue hair, tumblr type, I suspect into Yaoi. Now he’s a twinkish bottom with a thin beard addicted to Grindr hookups" rings very true to me. I know people like this. There's always the beard.
Sometimes this seems to happen to people who identified themselves as lesbians before transitioning, which means that they jumped the shark from not wanting male attention to really wanting male attention. I once met an FTM transitioner in a marriage with a woman who was looking for men to sleep with. "I like women and she's nice, but I need to be fucked, what she doesn't know won't hurt her" was a real quote. First time I ever encountered the concept of a lesbian sham marriage. I guess in this case the beard was more of a person.
More options
Context Copy link
That is certainly one dimension along which that particular type of person will benefit according to her own desires, as intended. I suspect that this, even moreso than other typical decisions which are already filled with them, is the kind of decision that has a lot of unintended consequences with significant impact in one's quality of life.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I see a lot of potential insight in this. One pattern I noticed is that the way that some transgender people's understanding of being the opposite sex appear almost nostalgic, certainly childish, and naive. Namely, MTF appear to see being a woman as akin to being a nubile, young, attractive woman, while FTM appear to see being a man as akin to being a high status man. Which are pretty likely and reasonable misconceptions for someone to form at adolescence.
Now, these are common enough misconceptions among non-trans people that it's possible that there's nothing particularly going on there. It's also possible that these misconceptions being so powerful play into making identifying as trans appear much more attractive. It's unfortunate that we lack a credible social science institution with resources to research something like this, since it's had such huge, transformative effects in our society just in the past decade.
More options
Context Copy link
This seems obviously correct to me, and has a ton of explanatory power when considering the motivations of advocates for childhood puberty blockers. There is a subset of the larger trans activist sphere who clearly see puberty as (at least in some cases, for some children) a profoundly traumatic and unwelcome experience. They want to introduce methods by which kids can have more control and more agency around their pubertal experiences, because they assume most kids (and even most adults) are dealing with the same level of angst about it that they are. These people are obviously typical-minding to an extreme degree — the vast majority of people navigate puberty without too much trauma and get over the awkwardness pretty smoothly — but it’s useful to understand their perspectives.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link