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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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Did your argument change from "they are not being discriminated" to "they are and it's good"? Because that how it reads.

In the previous comment your argument seemed to be the discrimination shouldn't count because they are trivial and tiny, but in this one it seems like you are agreeing that the discrimination is material, but that it's justified. If my interpretation is wrong, please clarify.

I don't recall ever saying trans people aren't being discriminated against. What I've been consistently saying is that there's a big difference between discrimination and unjust discrimination. If you have gender dysphoria and people "treat you like a mentally ill person", that's "discrimination" – in the same way that it's "discrimination" to make accommodations for people with disabilities. Definitionally, you are treating people differently based on a trait. I literally don't know what the demand is here: "I have a mental illness (gender dysphoria), I am receiving treatment for that mental illness (hormones), it's obvious to everyone around me that I have a mental illness – but I don't want to be treated like I have a mental illness"? It just seems incoherent to me.

If you experience autogynephilia and people treat you like a sexual deviant, that's "discrimination" but, well, you are a sexual deviant. If you dress in a knowingly unconventional manner for your sex and people look at you funny, that's discrimination – but I also just think that's part of the game when you dress unconventionally. No one would care if a goth complained that he stopped being a goth because everyone was looking at him funny, so why should we care here?

I also think the practical effects of the discrimination being experienced matter here a great deal. I don't want trans people to be murdered, beaten up or harassed because of how they identify, nor to be unable to secure accommodation or employment. As trans people are so fond of telling us, they just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace. Over the last ~decade I've had an increasingly hard time believing that's all they want – but if the worst discrimination you can claim to personally experience is that people sometimes look at you funny but otherwise leave you alone to do your own thing, that sounds as close to their stated goal as makes no difference.

I think what you've wrote so far in the previous two comments are reasonable, but the key thing I'm still caught up on is why you don't think such discrimination can motivate someone to de-transition.

Like with the example with the clown suit guy going to interviews, surely when he gets rejected often, he might rethink the clown suits? Okay, maybe not all the time, because there's institutions preaching clown suits acceptance, but a percentage of the people who de-clownsuited give this as the reason is at least plausible?

Or perhaps the example where folks with atypical tattoos and piercings getting treated adversely by society, surely it's understandable that some percentage of the people who covered up their tattoos or gotten rid of their piercings can point to this as the reason?

If a person begins socially and medically transitioning, as a consequence of which they begin to face harassment, abuse, violence and so on, and hence decide that it's not worth the hassle and resume their original gender presentation (even though doing so makes them unhappy) – then that's a travesty the trans community has every right to be outraged by. Whether they're trans women, cross-dressers or drag queens, I don't want any male people getting bullied or assaulted just because they're wearing clothes cut for women. A male person should not get harassed or beaten up for wearing women's clothes, even if by his own admission he's doing it to fulfil a sexual urge.

But if a person begins socially and medically transitioning, as a consequence of which they attract a few funny looks, and hence decide it's not worth the hassle and resume their original gender presentation – I have to be honest, I'm nowhere near as sympathetic. To me, the fact that they were so easily swayed by minor social influences like this suggests to me that their gender identity wasn't a particularly stable one in the first place. It's grist for the social contagion model of trans identification. If getting someone to change their mind and revert back to being cis is as easy as getting a fence-sitting goth to remove their piercings, then I have a hard time believing that their gender identity is anywhere near as fixed, deep-seated and innate a characteristic as trans activists would have us believe. And if ten strangers giving you funny looks is sufficient to trigger a change in one's gender identity (or at least sufficient to make you change your mind on socially and medically transitioning), it stands to reason that medical transition on the basis of something so flighty is an even worse idea than it sounds at first brush. Like it or not, if you do anything a bit unconventional, there will be some amount of people who will laugh at you or give you funny looks. Imagine you heard someone say "I tried being a musician, but some people laughed at me and told me not to quit my day job, so I gave it up". A determined musician will keep at it in spite of people laughing at them and telling them not to quit their day job.

Maybe I'd be a bit more sympathetic if the study found that this was a common story: "I started socially and medically transitioning, but some people started looking at me funny or giving me dirty looks, so I decided not to bother – as a consequence of which my anxiety and depression have returned tenfold". But somehow I suspect that this isn't the case.