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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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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".

"trans acceptance is a reasonable goal, but that's not what trans activism is doing".

Yep, more or less -- with the caveat that "trans acceptance" doesn't need to mean accepting that they are members of whichever gender they would like to be. (which is probably an even bigger no-no than knife-denialism to the activist community)

that was dumb on my part!