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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32144 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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I mean, yea, from her perspective it is. I'm curious how you think this compromise works. It seems like your perception of it entails that, since the sodomy law is repealed, nobody is ever allowed to argue for the legalization of gay marriage for all time. This seems like a strange perspective to me, and certainly is not how I understand it. The compromise is about particular legislation happening now. Not about some commitment to never ever changing laws or advocating they be changed in the future.

There's a gulf between "never changing laws after this" (unreasonable) and "this compromise holds only until we break our opponents"

The stronger the latter feeling, the more distrust and the less reason for the status quo power to compromise in the first place. If the opponents are going to be immovably opposed until they achieve maximal gains you might as well try to break them first while the mores are still somewhat on your side.

It undermines the very basis of compromise.

If it were a budget law there'd be less of an issue with the idea that we'll redo it next year. This is about social norms that need to be somewhat stable.

There's a gulf between "never changing laws after this" (unreasonable) and "this compromise holds only until we break our opponents"

To both the LGBTs and the people they're convincing, "break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter". Your arguments depend on the idea that gay or gay marriage bad somehow, which clearly can be argued for, and some people here agree with, but without that it's just "people who want law vote for it", which is not scary.

"break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter".

And break those we can't convince. That's always part of it no?

Look at the US government basically setting up a bounty system against people who don't want to do things like bake cakes for gays. Your business, but you could lose your life's work for your religious beliefs. That's breaking someone.

Your arguments depend on the idea that gay or gay marriage bad somehow

No, it depends on moral beliefs being sticky and having a normative quality: i.e. people who have them want to keep and instantiate them. Some people (in this case trad Sinagporeans) believe homosexuality is wrong. Therefore, when faced with an opponent that has clearly no interest in anything but tactical compromise on the road to utterly overturning your moral principles - the trads (who usually start out with an upper hand) have an incentive to not compromise at all, lest they succumb to salami tactics.

To both the LGBTs and the people they're convincing, "break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter".

It doesn't, of course. It means "convince a higher power to impose our will on our opponents." Very few people from either side actually engage with their peer-level opponents. The entire game nowadays is convincing people with power to execute your will over your enemies.

I remember reading something, and I don't remember whether it was here or elsewhere, about TRA groups saying their best strategy was to approach MPs or other people with power quietly, and try and keep what they were asking for out of the media and away from the spotlight. The public must not be told. They must not find out. Because the public will oppose them. But if they can convince these key people, they can bypass the public and force their will on them anyway.

I remember reading something, and I don't remember whether it was here or elsewhere, about TRA groups saying their best strategy was to approach MPs or other people with power quietly, and try and keep what they were asking for out of the media and away from the spotlight. The public must not be told. They must not find out. Because the public will oppose them. But if they can convince these key people, they can bypass the public and force their will on them anyway.

It was Joyce's book.

And yes, it was exactly as you framed it.

This stealthy approach has been central to transactivism for quite some time. In a speech in 2013, Masen Davis, then the executive director of the American Transgender Law Center, told supporters that ‘we have largely achieved our successes by flying under the radar . . . We do a lot really quietly.

We have made some of our biggest gains that nobody has noticed. We are very quiet and thoughtful about what we do, because we want to make sure we have the win more than we want to have the publicity.’

The result is predictable. Even as one country after another introduces gender self-ID, very few voters know this is happening, let alone support it.

In 2018 research by Populus, an independent pollster, crowdfunded by British feminists, found that only fifteen percent of British adults agreed that legal sex change should be possible without a doctor’s sign-off. A majority classified a ‘person who was born male and has male genitalia but who identifies as a woman’ as a man, and only tiny minorities said that such people should be allowed into women’s sports or changing rooms, or be incarcerated in a women’s prison if they committed a crime.

Two years later, YouGov found that half of British voters thought people should be ‘able to self-identify as a different gender to the one they were born in’. But two-thirds said legal sex change should only be possible with a doctor’s sign-off, with just fifteen percent saying no sign-off should be needed. In other words, there is widespread support for people describing themselves as they wish, but not much for granting such self-descriptions legal status. The same poll also asked whether transwomen should be allowed in women’s sports and changing rooms, sometimes with a reminder that transwomen may have had no genital surgery, and sometimes without. The share saying yes was twenty percentage points lower with the reminder than without – again demonstrating widespread confusion about what being trans means, and that support for trans people does not imply support for self-declaration overriding reality.

How would you attribute increasing 'acceptance' of homosexuality and trans people in society to "a higher power imposing our will on our opponents"? One could argue media, or social media, are playing a significant role, but that's not exactly "executing your will", more persuasion.

about TRA groups saying their best strategy was to approach MPs or other people with power quietly

This clearly isn't the general strategy of 'trans activists', who are all over twitter and are present on left-leaning TV and news websites with stories about legislation to protect trans people, how transphobia is bad, etc. 'Approach people with power quietly' is often a good strategy for actually getting legislation passed, whatever the area.

How would you attribute increasing 'acceptance' of homosexuality and trans people in society to "a higher power imposing our will on our opponents"? One could argue media, or social media, are playing a significant role, but that's not exactly "executing your will", more persuasion.

Here's a very obvious way:

  1. The government passes a "anti-LGBT discrimination law" that allows workplaces to be sued if anything conceivably homophobic or transphobic (by its standards) happens and is not addressed.

  2. Companies don't want to be sued and face punitive damages so they start putting up courses against disliking homosexuality or trans and encouraging acceptance. They institute a pronoun policy to push trans acceptance. They make it clear punishment is the cost of non-participation or flouting the rules. They hire a HR department to watch over all of this.

  3. People care about their livelihoods so they have no choice but to go along. Some falsify their beliefs by acting like they agree, some have the good fortune to be able to believe the things they're forced to conform to. Many go along to get along with yet another tedious corporate mandate like putting pronouns in their bio or introducing themselves with them even when they don't believe in the concept.

This has been the playbook since the Civil Rights movement and explains the rapid acceptance of the trans activist line without anything like the debate over gay marriage; the system is much more refined and entrenched now and so it can pivot very fast - especially by leveraging past successes to create an aura of inevitability that discourages resistance and encourages elite adoption (elites themselves educated in institutions that accept a lot of these things)

The people who are accepting... aren't your opponents and so you don't need to force your will on them? These two things are completely orthogonal. I'm unclear if anyone even has actually been persuaded to chance their minds, as opposed to the simple replacement of generations.

I'm unclear if anyone even has actually been persuaded to chance their minds, as opposed to the simple replacement of generations

I know several dozen people who've changed their minds on controversial political issues, including at least six who've changed their minds on either the morality of homosexuality or gay marriage. polling finds that " 13 percent of partisans have switched their affiliation in the last five years.", and switching party seems bigger than switching opinions on gay mrriage

To both the LGBTs and the people they're convincing, "break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter".

Like this charming song which is ha-ha only joking, we just mean we'll make everything and everyone nice.

That it comes across as extremely creepy is apparently not clear to this bunch, and gosh mate, that hairstyle? if I had a kid who copied that look, I'd lock him in the shed.

Yes, a bunch of gay men from San Francisco singing about converting kids to disco and rainbows is not at all sounding like "fresh meat fresh meat".

... yeah, that is a joke, and the normal belief really is 'we will make everyone nice and kids will wholesomely discover they are gay'. They'd justify this by pointing to the many gay people who grew up in conservative families, 'knew they were gay' from a young age, but couldn't say anything. They are intentionally playing into the 'creepy' idea of 'corrupting your children', as a joke. This is single joke of a truly massive amount of gay-oriented culture and music for a population of 10M english speaking gays. It doesn't represent the general attitudes or actions of gays at all, because it is a joke.

(as usual) that can all be true and gay can still be bad. but that has to be directly argued for. It seems like there's some vague ideas that there's something wrong with gays, but isn't really developed and just comes out in misdirected grievances against things one sees on twitter or discord.

To both the LGBTs and the people they're convincing, "break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter"

And that "our rights" includes taking a scalpel to your 14 year old daughter's chest, or being put in female prison on your say-so.

If that's your argument, that's one of substance not of the right of international institutions to try to promote change abroad.

No, hold on. This branch of the thread went off into the LGBT activism in itself. I still believe in everything I said about international organizations.

What do you think a (sufficiently intelligent and non-seething) LGBT-supporter would say when they hear that response?

Maybe ">90% of trans people are over 18, and maybe 2% of them are in prison. Trans people just want to be accepted as the gender they are, and put a lot of effort into being, and be treated similarly to anyone else. You're picking particularly contentious niches-within-niches - many trans people don't even get surgery, those that do >95% of the time get them over age 18, and even those who get surgery under 18 are 16-17, not 14. Why focus on those, when the bulk of what we want are thinks like insurance-covered hormones for adults and general social acceptance?"

The non-seething trans supporters are either on my side and cast out as heretics, or keep their head down.

This reminds me to some non-seething socialists' attempts to get to dodge the damage done by the culture war: "right wingers are using culture war to distract you from the real issues like economics, worker exploitation, etc". Well, if it's a ln existential threat to me, and merely a distraction to you, how about a compromise - you concede the entire culture war to me, and I concede the entire economy to you? Win - win! Oddly I never had takers.

Same goes for non-seething trans activists. They'll never agree to not trying to sell puberty blockers as a magical pause button, to minimum age limits on medical intervention, on sex segregation in sports, and all the other "neiche issues", at least not without landing in the same pit I'm in (and bless the ones that took the leap!). It's only so long that I can go by stated instead of revealed preferences.

And that's without going into the object level stuff. I think you're wrong on that too. IIRC the modal trans person today is an adolescent female.

IIRC the modal trans person today is an adolescent female.

Modal is like the peak of a distribution, or in a discrete sense the 'most common value' - it's plausible the modal age of a trans person is <18 because trans is becoming more popular, but the average or median i'm pretty sure is >18, just because the trans minors of 5 years ago aren't minors anymore, and many transition after 18. Citing a report on a report on studies is bad but The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults., which points to >18.

The non-seething trans supporters are either on my side and cast out as heretics, or keep their head down.

When I said 'non-seething', I meant 'not as a part of a partisan argument'. I think a lot of trans activists aren't that invested in the specific topic of surgery for minors (as distinguished from hormones for minors, or surgery generally). Many of them continue to believe that underage kids aren't getting surgeries, and usually won't directly defend surgeries for minors, in my experience. General trans activists and the transgender medicine community are different - a part of the latter does some surgeries on minors, but much of the former still has the 'common sense' reaction to surgery on minors.

And ... if you believe the 'trans people have severe dysphoria and surgery alleviates that, so surgery on trans adults is good' (which I don't), I don't see why that doesn't apply to kids as well. Of course, in that frame, children are still very stupid and will often say they're trans when they aren't, so it should be gated behind years of 'are you sure' (which was part of the motivation for puberty blockers) - and it is at the moment, I think.

I don't think that's true?

Here's something that could square the circle somewhat: most people, normal or otherwise, are not activists. Activists, people in power, etc, do not care about the opinion of the majority, as long as they can get away with it, which is almost always.

Though that only works until a point, because:

In the particular case of 'trans surgery on minors', i think the most 'normal' people either think 'it doesn't happen' (which isn't true)

So when you tell them it is true, and show them the evidence, do they thank you for it, and adjust, or attack you as a transphobic rightoid?

Activists, people in power, etc, do not care about the opinion of the majority, as long as they can get away with it, which is almost always

Aren't activists usually trying to wield power by influencing majority opinion? A trans activist might have a 100k follower twitter account where they post about how republicans are trying to ban trans people, being anti-trans is conversion therapy, etc. They're making arguments to an audience that agrees with them, and trying to both push that group towards political action and get more people to agree. People with political power in democracies, similarly, care about majority opinion insofar as the issue at hand is a political issue that might affect elections - and trans stuff, including trans minor surgeries, are a big issue on the right, at the moment.

I don't think "surgeries for minors" are something that any activists are really pushing for. Both because it plays significantly less well than "banning hormones for minors" or "banning hormones" generally - but also because they think it's less important.

So when you tell them it is true, and show them the evidence, do they thank you for it, and adjust, or attack you as a transphobic rightoid?

It depends on the context - if it's part of a confrontation that seems political, the latter often happens - but if you're a progressive or the conversation doesn't seen too partisan, what'll usually happen is they'll say something like "eh, that isn't great, but idk much about it and it's probably very rare". Which is a reasonable response - if i'm a christian and someone brings up sexual abuse in the catholic church - "that isn't great, but it's rare" is correct!

Aren't activists usually trying to wield power by influencing majority opinion?

Not that I've noticed. Most of the time it seems they wield power in order to influence the the majority opinion. Even that isn't a must, they're happy to wield power and just censor their opponents if they can get away with it.

A trans activist might have a 100k follower twitter account where they post about how republicans are trying to ban trans people, being anti-trans is conversion therapy, etc. They're making arguments to an audience that agrees with them, and trying to both push that group towards political action and get more people to agree.

Forget about the the trans stuff then, this is much closer to the core topic of this thread. I don't believe this is how power works at all. I completely disagree with this. We've been taught this democratic model of power to give us the impression our opinions matter, and that we're participating in these big decisions. This wasn't done to teach us how the system actually works, it was done to pacify us. The WEF panel I discussed isn't talking about what arguments to best use in order to convince people in Singapore or Ghana that homosexuality is ok (it's actually quite remarkable how little time they spend on that no that I think about it. There's one part when the lady from the US talks how they won by switching the conversation from talking definitions of marriage to a 'love is love' approach). They talk about winning through influence in courts, corporations, media, and education, and using Quiet Diplomacy when public opposition starts to become overwhelming. The closest strategy to "getting more people to agree" is leveraging youth organizations, and that isn't persuasion as much as it's indoctrination.

if i'm a christian and someone brings up sexual abuse in the catholic church - "that isn't great, but it's rare" is correct!

But this is an argument the Catholics open with. They don't deny it to your face, and only later, when they're sure they're among themselves say "that isn't great, but it's rare". If they did, it would be completely valid to claim they're in favor of defending pedophiles. And even knowing there might be a "that isn't great, but it's rare" said when I'm not there to hear it, the implication of it being said only when I'm not around is that there's also "it's not great, but it's better than agreeing with a rightoid".

Why focus on those, when the bulk of what we want are thinks like insurance-covered hormones for adults and general social acceptance?"

"Why focus on the purges, when the bulk of what we want are things like fair conditions for the proletariat?"

The topic in OP was "gay marriage", though. It's possible to have fair working conditions without purges (see: any modern country) - do you have any reason to believe "gay marriage or trans acceptance" necessitates "scalpel to your 14yo daughter's chest"?

It's much better to actually take issue with trans as a whole.

As an analogy, the gay rights movement came alongside a movement for free love more generally, which included love at any age - hence stuff like this and this. But as gay rights 'won', pedophile rights did not. It's still possible that something about the philosophies behind LGBT also justify pedophilia or transitioning minors in a way representative of why some LGBT things are bad, but that should be argued, instead of just vaguely hinted at with 'scalpel to 14yo daughter's chest'.

The "trans acceptance" part seems to be widely interpreted as requiring a scalpel, yes. (not to mention for everyone to pretend to be happy about it)

It's much better to actually take issue with trans as a whole.

Why is this better? I don't really have much issue with 'trans as a whole' in that I think grown-ups should do pretty much as they please -- just that I extend this to all the grownups, including the ones who don't agree that sorting trans people into the bucket of their chosen gender is overly helpful to anyone.

The "trans acceptance" part seems to be widely interpreted as requiring a scalpel, yes

What, precisely, are you trying to argue here? Is it that "trans activism is generally reasonable, but goes too far with <trans minor surgeries/drag queen story hour>?"

"trans activism is generally reasonable, but goes too far"

Can't speak for him, but for me it would be "trans acceptance is a reasonable goal, but that's not what trans activism is doing".

If so, that's a much more moderate position than arjin, which seemed to be against gay marriage

What are you talking about? Go back to the top level post and Ctrl+F for "gay marriage".

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I guess how stable is "somewhat stable"? In the United States over the 12 years between when sodomy was constitutionally protected and when gay marriage was constitutionally protected popular support for the latter increased from around 40% of the population to around 60%. Was that too fast of a change? Would it be a violation of this "compromise" if, a decade from now, Singapore has a substantial debate about legalizing gay marriage? What if popular support has changed similarly in that time?

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