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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2669 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Sure. I think my general approach is that if trans is some weird mental disorder that like .2% of the population get, whatever. I can see that happening, and it's probably not too harmful to let them cross dress.

Modern trans ideology is far, far, far away from that and is evil. Even if we let transgender people cross dress, it still needs to be weird. Normativity being enforced around the heterosexual family is crucial imo.

Being a transsexual is not treatable by crossdressing and requires hormonal replacement therapy at a minimum, and usually surgery. If you look at that 1966 book I linked, the author brought up a treatment plan where the patient would take hormones but otherwise dress and appear as their natal sex.

Do share what angle you’ll be going for if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you will have much headway with the people you’re arguing with (I assume highly educated, compassionate people with a progressive bent, perhaps in the rationalist sphere or STEM), from what you’ve shared so far. Those people also view your own ideology as an evil cult, and will oppose you on principle for wanting to enforce hetero norms.

Those people also view your own ideology as an evil cult, and will oppose you on principle for wanting to enforce hetero norms.

Oh I'm well aware. To be quite frank I am mostly writing this to settle my own niggling doubts, and to have an article to refer someone to for the hundredth time someone asks me to explain why I'm anti-trans. I hope it convinces people, but that is not the main goal.

Frankly most of the people I've talked to in the twitter post-rat scene (or tpot) don't seem to have a coherent ideology explaining why they are pro-trans at all, besides "some people are born intersex" and "it's mean to not let them do whatever they want." Along with the classic sob stories followed by the implication that my views are going to make people commit suicide.

Sadly I do believe they're straw men, but hey what can you do. Most people don't think about things very deeply, news at 11.

I think you might strawmanning their replies yourself. The intended message is probably something like

  • Intersex people show that the gender binary is not inviolable - someone can have XY chromosomes but appear completely female externally
  • It costs nothing to be polite and use trans people’s preferred pronouns, and not doing so, or making their lives more difficult, is pointlessly rude and mean spirited
  • If the majority of people had views like yours, the life of trans people would be significantly worse and some would commit suicide, see how it was before widespread trans acceptance in the West, or how it is currently in many parts of the world where being trans means your family disowning you

Although it is X/Twitter, so it is possible you got the replies you wrote verbatim. But I would still encourage you to consider their arguments more charitably, otherwise they might just dismiss you what you wrote after a single one paragraph.

If the majority of people had views like yours, the life of trans people would be significantly worse and some would commit suicide, see how it was before widespread trans acceptance in the West, or how it is currently in many parts of the world where being trans means your family disowning you

Yes but the huge reorientation of society doesn't seem to make a ton of headway on the suicide or social alienation issues, especially considering that human lives are quite long and most transitioners have decades left yet. It's a valid response from society to say 'No you cannot be Trans' and plausible that on the aggregate that aggressively tamping down on the issue is better than leaving a plethora of individuals stuck in weird individual culdesacs of human expression that ultimately produce more sadness than happiness.

The intersex bit is an almost complete nonsequitur. Next stage typically being some sort of 'Historical societies had a third gender, typically a designated sexworker or eunuch-lite therefore I am a hecking validerino'

It's a valid response from society to say 'No you cannot be Trans' and plausible that on the aggregate that aggressively tamping down on the issue is better than leaving a plethora of individuals stuck in weird individual culdesacs of human expression that ultimately produce more sadness than happiness.

The Middle East does that, and I don't think their approach produces more happiness than sadness.

Big chunks of the Middle East are fairly pro-trans all things considered, if only as a weird loophole since homosexuality is verboten and punished by death so it's better to transition anybody with any inclinations.

see how it was before widespread trans acceptance in the West

I notice you're making a factual claim about the recent past here. Do you have any evidence for your claim that suicide rates for trans people have declined over time?

Fair points! Yes and these are the arguments I plan to investigate and take down in depth. I have looked into this topic at length and concluded all of these arguments are fallacious, or at least not worth the costs.

If you're arguing in favor of cisheteronormativity, you probably should be at least aware of the Freedom of Form-style arguments. It, and a thousand weirder variants, are each individually too uncommon to be really necessary to counter or even counterable, but they or stuff like them underlies a lot of the nonbinary and what-you're-probably-seeing-as-ROGD stuff.

I don't know of any good summary articles, but there's also a bit of a will-to-power one: what Defense Distributed's 3d printing and Cathode_G's DIY nitration mixture said to gun control exists for hormonal modifications. You don't really have the ability to make things weird, just difficult. Never underestimate minor inconveniences, perhaps, but it points to policy limitations.

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