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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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I feel like "gender critical" is confusing terminology, in that it really is transgender critical

I don't agree, though I'm confused because there are so many definitions of "gender".

The ideologies that sprung up around this word, in living memory, have various implications that I and others disagree with. Only one of these implications is proposition 1 - that it's actually possible to be a woman in a male body.

Whereas I and many others have no problem with proposition 2 - that some people with male bodies really wish they were women, and will behave in ways more typical of women where doing so causes no harm to others (in the usual classical liberal sense).

I am 100% accepting of proposition 2, so the only aspect in which I am "transgender critical" is in the gender aspect. I'm critical of those ideologies around "gender" that endorse proposition 1, and have other implications I don't like.

As I understand it, the word "transgender," in current usage, specifically means someone who considers themselves to actually be a gender that is incongruent with the one they were initially sorted into. So, you've got no problem with trans people's gender expression. The thing you have a problem with is that they are transgender.

How society treats people mostly doesn't depend on whether they're a man or a woman, because that mostly doesn't matter. Where it does matter (prisons, sports, changing rooms, healthcare, etc.), it's almost entirely an issue of sex, not any of these new conceptions of gender.

Consider proposition 3 - that it is immoral not to replace sex with some conception(s) of gender, in the above contexts.

Perhaps the biggest sense in which I'm "gender critical" is that I'm critical of proposition 3.

The thing you have a problem with is that they are transgender.

This doesn't seem correct. I have a problem with people who push proposition 3. Most of those people are cisgender. Some of the people on 'my side' are transgender. (For all I know it could be a silent majority of transgender people who are on 'my side'.)