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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4577 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Let's have some more CW over trans issues, because we can never have enough of those, right?

Now, I've been gently chided by other commenters on here about my attitude regarding transgender activism. It's only a few edge cases and nothing to do with the reality of trans people's lives, I get told.

So here's a story I stumbled across that is happening in my own country. I'm hoping really hard that this is just a legal stratagem and not a guy who is now a gal claiming "I am too the biological mother of this child" for realsies:

A British trans woman, who used her frozen sperm to have a baby with her wife, has been granted permission to bring a High Court challenge against a refusal by the State to grant Irish citizenship to the child on the basis that she is not the biological mother.

The woman – who has Irish citizenship while her wife does not – submits that if she has to claim to be the “father” of the child as part of the application, it would be an “offensive, discriminatory and unjust attack” on her person, gender identity and legal status.

...The woman is seeking a declaration from the High Court that she is legally and genetically a parent of the child.

She is also seeking an order compelling the State to register the child on the Foreign Births Register and for the child to be granted citizenship under Section 7 (1) of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956.

Persons born outside of Ireland who have an Irish national grandparent born in Ireland may obtain Irish citizenship through registration with the Foreign Births Register, which is maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In submissions to the High Court the woman, who was born male, states that she is a UK resident but with Irish citizenship through her own lineage.

The submissions state that the woman had stored sperm with a UK fertility clinic, intending it to be used at a future date. She changed her name and transitioned from a man to a woman under UK law, receiving a UK gender recognition certificate.

The woman married her female partner and frozen sperm was then used to have a baby with her wife by an IVF procedure at a UK clinic.

The woman says she fears any UK withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights would mean her family could lose its protections and status in that country.

It is submitted by the woman that her child was refused entry into the foreign births registry – thereby denying Irish citizenship – as the woman was not the biological mother of the child and because her wife, who gave birth to the child, was not an Irish citizen.

The woman submitted that the Department of Foreign Affairs informed her that “under Irish law, as applied to date, the mother of the child is the woman who gives birth to the child and therefore the child would derive their citizenship through that mother”.

It is claimed by the woman the department’s position is that, because she is not the biological mother of the child, she therefore does not meet the requirement of an Irish citizen parent and the application cannot proceed.

The woman further submits that she could have claimed to be the “father” of the child and “could have possibly obtained citizenship by descent that way”.

“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.

The woman submits that if she had to claim to be the “father” of the child, it would be an “offensive, discriminatory and unjust attack” on her person, gender identity, legal status and on same-sex marriage.

I'm trying to be sympathetic here, but my well of the milk of human kindness seems to have run dry. If this person applies as the father of the child, the child can be granted Irish citizenship and this will recognise the parent as "legally and genetically a parent of the child". Otherwise, they are asking our High Court for a ruling that (a) the child has two mothers and no father (b) being trans means you are biologically a woman (c) even if she didn't bear and give birth to the child she is still a mother not a father (d) in future such cases, the mother of the child is "whoever wants to call themselves the mother" and not "biological mother".

Remind me again about how, silly normies, gender is not the same as sex and we're not making any claims that biological sex is the same thing as preferred gender, so just shut up and give in on our totally reasonable requests? I don't care if this person calls themself daddy, mommy, or XibablaMakiNooNoo as parent of the child, what I do care about is precedent that "trans gender you identify as is now the same as your biological sex, now if you're a trans woman you're a mother even if you're the father because calling you the father would be offensive, even though you are a father not a mother" for future cases. If the precedent is set, it won't be limited to "parent of child wishing to be identified as legal mother not legal father".

EDIT: I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.

I already expressed my thoughts on why this case in particular is not actually about transgenderism downthread, and the decision doesn't contradict her being a woman.

EDIT: I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.

I don't see anything twisted in this logic at all.

I'll start with my steelman for transgender ideology, so you know where I'm coming from. I am aware that the stance in practice varies between activists, and they often contradict one another, but I suspect the framing I give below would still make most anti-trans people unhappy, so it is not about "twisted logic", but rather a values difference.

Without any kind of gender theory:

  • Humans can be separated into the categories "male/men" and "female/women" (male/men, woman/female and sex/gender are synonyms)
  • These categories are hard to verbalise. There are a bunch of single criteria (XX vs XY, penis vs vagina, ovaries vs not ovaries, etc) that almost totally overlap, and deal with most cases. And they all make up the definition: a woman is still a woman after a hysterectomy (because she satisfies all the other things)
  • But the existence of these categories, and the way we assign people into them, is common-sense to everyone (outside of extremely rare medical cases)

Let's call this the "old" system ("cis(hetero)normativity", I suppose)

Now let's make binary transgender ideology (just 2 genders for now):

  • I define a new sort of identity marker (next to stuff like race, sex, age, etc) called "gender identity" (or "gender" for short)
  • This is a redefinition of the old concept of gender. We will still keep the word "sex" to refer to the old-fashioned thing above.
  • I also redefine "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" to now refer to gender identity, instead of sex
  • Same for any other gendered (pro)nouns (fireman, mother, lesbian, etc) - we can only refer to sex by male/female (and references to sex should be avoided where possible)
  • Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be male/female (this, but unironically)

To address the typical complaints/questions about gender ideology:

  • This is not tethered to claims about objective reality: nothing about trans women having "female brains", the effect eostrogen has on sports performance, etc - this is a purely moral framework
  • There are no weird logical contortions about how sex is a spectrum. Sex is real, but it just shouldn't talked about for moral reasons.
  • In this framework, it does not count as a "lie" to use trans people's pronouns. It is merely an acceptance of a redefinition of language, and agreement to look at things a different way (people might still be uncomfortable with this, but it wouldn't be an objective lie, like saying "the sky is red")
  • The definition of man/womanhood is not-circular (it goes back to referencing the already established notion of sex)
  • There is the issue of practically judging "sincerity" of desire. But I think most anti-trans people are unhappy even in cases where there is clearly a sincere desire (e.g. this one!)
  • And as for the general "Is a [bunch of masculine features] person really a woman? Seriously?" type "questions": yes. That is what this framework includes under the category of "woman" - you can of course morally oppose the framework on this basis. But it doesn't prove the framework itself is illogical.

With this framework, let's address your complaint.

"You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!"

Correct, she is not a father. She is a woman, and fathers are men. Calling her a father is in direct violation of transgender ideology ("transphobic", if we wish to pathologise it)

Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women

Individuals with "functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant" are males, and are typically men. But they do not have to be men, and in this case, the individual is not a man, she is a woman.

Now of course, this framing I gave above doesn't get respected by TRAs in real life. Indeed, the woman in this very case makes a mistake:

“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.

She is supposed to say same-gender marriage! (Or gay/lesbian, which sounds less awkward than "same-gender")

Remind me again about how, silly normies, gender is not the same as sex and we're not making any claims that biological sex is the same thing as preferred gender, so just shut up and give in on our totally reasonable requests?

You are right to call this out. My most charitable explanation is that she just misspoke when she said "same-sex" (other than that, she didn't say anything contradictory) - though it does seem that as of late, TRAs has started conflating the 2 concepts (more egregiously are the terms MtF and FtM, which refer to sex!)

Transmothers are mothers. /s

Notice how, while advancing that womanhood and motherhood are socially constructed floating signifiers, nationhood and citizenship remain resolutely concrete assumptions in this argument. Hmm!

“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.

What is being invalidated is same-sex conception and the notion that a child can have two birth-mothers. Denying this individual the status of motherhood very much validates and upholds their legal status as a "woman" in a ""same-sex"" marriage, I assume other women in same-sex marriages are equally unable to be registered as a second birth-mother.

Semantics aside this person is an Irish parent, and if the purpose of the law in question is to offer Irish citizenship to the children of an Irish parent then the child should qualify for the same. That's reasonable! I don't think children should be denied Irish citizenship because one of their parents is Irish and trans identified, but I don't think radically redefining motherhood is a remotely sensible means to that end.

With respect, I don't really think this is a great post. There isn't some strong pro-trans orthodoxy among the posters in this forum; if anything, I think that the forum leans pretty anti-trans. And I agree with you that the situation you are discussing is a farce, but it doesn't seem like it actually is all that interesting as a discussion topic. It's crazy, but I'm not seeing the substance apart from "can you believe what those crazies are doing now?".

The substance is, here is someone attempting to create a legal precedent. The substance is, here is something happening which I was assured would never happen. The substance is, here is someone who wants something but does not want to go the normal route about it.

The substance is not "can you believe what those crazies are doing now?" but rather "we are being told we must accept black is white, up is down, and fathers are mothers". The person may be a crazy, but it's gone past "those crazies" into mainstream society.

... there's a fun kink sense for 'making a trans guy a dad' , but ime most of the ones that don't get incredibly squicked by the whole idea of pregnancy tend to be into getting sexually misgendered, so there's a whole bunch of off-color comedy here that doesn't actually work in practice, to the disappointment of a lot of bi men and Blanchard theorists.

On one hand, yeah, the transwoman needs to grow up and deal with a bit of paperwork that isn't custom-built for their specific extremely rare circumstance, especially if the child's citizenship is of any serious relevance (and if it's not, having this whole tempest in a teapot for something that's just paperwork is more than a little obnoxious). On the other hand, while Irish law prefers to recognize gestational mothers and genetic fathers, it recognizes citizenship by adoption, has since 1956, recognized gay adoption since 2017, and IVF since 2020; you could well have a 'mother' that isn't the actual egg donor and a 'father' who wasn't the sperm donor, and it seems like the IVF provisions specifically are dependent on where the turkey basting occurred(?). If the transwoman wasn't the sperm donor, that wouldn't necessarily stop citizenship so much as add extra steps. On the gripping hand, there are places where it's genuinely relevant to know things like genetic ties, and this does smell a little too much of the activists who go rabid at the idea that transwoman might have XY chromosomes or different bone structure, and damn any evidence otherwise.

I guess it just seems like the whole things filled with namespace collisions. Are fathers just sperm donors, and mothers just wombs? Well, no, for a wide variety of reasons ranging from the legal recognition of adoption to more serious ones about deadbeat dads (and from a quick google, the status of unmarried-but-present biological fathers gets weird)... but the law here isn't about that, either. Genetics? No, IVF screws that up, and even pre-IVF there was a presumption of paternity (since 1987?) that can probably get into weird spaces if uncontested even where the facts clearly aren't in compliance. Okay, well, are we really focused on a more spiritual or philosophical definition of parenthood? Eh, not that either, because a surrogate can figuratively flip the kid the bird and walk out and remains the 'mom' if she got IVF in the wrong country. And while I like that perspective on parenthood, my preferences aren't something that has to happen in every country on the planet, or even necessarily the best policy.

That makes this legal argument stupid, but it's hard to get too worked up about it while the Irish legal system's definitions seem kinda broken for situations well outside of this one. Which doesn't leave this specific legal argument in a better place, but makes it kinda hard to get too worked up over it.

Now, I've been gently chided by other commenters on here about my attitude regarding transgender activism. It's only a few edge cases and nothing to do with the reality of trans people's lives, I get told.

Indeed. The pro-trans lobby here is vicious, I'm not surprised you were mauled for daring to bravely express your skepticism of trans activism.

what I do care about is precedent that "trans gender you identify as is now the same as your biological sex, now if you're a trans woman you're a mother even if you're the father because calling you the father would be offensive, even though you are a father not a mother" for future cases. If the precedent is set, it won't be limited to "parent of child wishing to be identified as legal mother not legal father".

Why? What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father? At least in the women's sports and prison rape questions I can see the negative externalities, here I don't see how it affects your life at all other than People Are Doing Things You Don't Like. You seem to agree that the child should legally have a right to Irish citizenship so presumably the outcome will be the same either way.

I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.

In a future where genuine SRS is possible and she could have first extracted sperm, then either grown a womb or implanted with an artificial one, would you call her a woman? What's your threshold?

But remember, it's just a few crazy college kids, it's only edge cases, and none of this will have effects on your life, straight cis people! It's just asking to be allowed to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity, nothing more!

Again, I fail to see the effect on your life besides you getting angry about a news story and complaining on the internet.

Years back when I was asking "but what about if someone abuses this?" and was being assured (in a rather patronising manner) that nope, that would never happen ever. Slope, slippery, what that? We can dismiss that happily as just a fallacy, nothing that will ever occur in the real world.

How is this an abuse of the system? The kid is going to get citizenship either way if I'm understanding correctly, it's just a question of what gender/sex the state recognizes this individual as?

Is anyone surprised I'm a cynic?

Not particularly; some not insignificant fraction of your political allies in this community are genuine misogynists who think women have the intellectual fortitude of children and should mind the house. You're attracted to this place because you like complaining about the trans people and the abortions, but you flame out when the leopards inevitably start eating your face.

The modern major general one was good though, can we do that again?

I appreciate your post for pushing back, but

What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father?

Modus ponens, modus tollens. If it shouldn't matter to me, why should it matter at all?

A little less facetiously, it matters because if these terms become floating signifiers that are only realised when claimed by an individual then I don't know whether my father was in a same-sex lesbian relationship with the man that gave birth to me. Saying that it doesn't matter doesn't suffice. The words have lost 98% of their meaning and what's left is "I have parents", which is little more than a truism.

"My father is a Nazi". Was my father a man who served in the wehrmacht, or was my father a woman in trousers who used the okay gesture? Does it matter?

Was my father even my father? I can't even check the records because they might have been assigned fatherhood at transition. Who knows?! Eh, what does it matter.

It boils my piss when people throw out accusations at people in the Motte in the general sense. If you're going to smear a 'not insignificant' fraction of his fellow partisans in this community as misogynists, you better have everything cut and dry or I'm going to assume you're talking shit. Name names.

It boils my piss

That sounds unpleasant.

If you're going to smear a 'not insignificant' fraction of his fellow partisans in this community as misogynists, you better have everything cut and dry or I'm going to assume you're talking shit. Name names.

Her fellow partisans.

Naming names is either ban-baiting me or trying to start drama, but if you like, here are incidents where her piss is being boiled -

Here's her and sloot. Number of other comments in that thread.

Took me a while to figure it out, but here's her getting into it with 'The Mountain' guy on her previous account (you can follow her comments on his weekly posts if you like).

Here's what I thought would be the next flameout.

I would call the viewpoint that women are lesser, less agentic, less intelligent, less capable (excluding less physically strong) misogynistic. I don't think these arguments are particularly rare around here. Would you disagree with either point?

Why? What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father?

State-endorsed science denialism is bad. The government should not assert that the male person who fertilised an egg is the child's mother, any more than they should assert that homeopathy works or that the earth is 6,000 years old.

State-endorsed science denialism is bad.

It's especially bad in states that don't have US-style free speech protections.

The government should not assert that the male person who fertilised an egg is the child's mother

But who fertilized the egg is not what is being asserted, and outside of hospitals and genetics studies, 'who fertilized the egg' is not equivalent to 'father.' A baby wearing a shirt saying 'I love my two dads' isn't engaging in science denialism, it's just an expression of their relationship with two same-gender parents. Ditto for children of a remarried widower calling their father's new partner 'mom.' Gattsuru has other examples above.

"Dad" is not a term of art in law, unlike "father". There is no meaningful legal sense in which this person is this child's mother: he did not gestate the child in his womb for nine months, nor is he a woman who adopted a child with different biological parents. I find it almost impossible to divine any sense in which the assertion "this child's male biological parent is not their father" is not simply a lie. You can say that you're not lying, you're just proposing to change the definitions of words to newer, more "inclusive" definitions. Well, I don't care if an official proclamation from a state body that "the earth is 6,000 thousand years old" is followed by a footnote clarifying that the word "year" is here defined as a unit of time equal to 756,667 rotations around the sun. That might make creationists feel more "included", but it's still a lie.

Legal documents do not exist to validate narcissists' claimed sense of self.

Why? What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father? At least in the women's sports and prison rape questions I can see the negative externalities, here I don't see how it affects your life at all...

If we grant the premise that it can affect someone's life via sports/prison, then the question of the extent to which trans women should be recognised as women in any facet of life becomes relevant. If she is treated as a woman in something unrelated to sports/prison, then it makes it easiser to argue to treat her as a women in sports/prison too.

You seem to agree that the child should legally have a right to Irish citizenship so presumably the outcome will be the same either way.

Again, I fail to see the effect on your life besides you getting angry about a news story and complaining on the internet.

The kid is going to get citizenship either way if I'm understanding correctly, it's just a question of what gender/sex the state recognizes this individual as?

See above.

Having said that... I don't think this particular case is an example of anti-trans legislation. Quoting the article:

The woman submitted that the Department of Foreign Affairs informed her that “under Irish law, as applied to date, the mother of the child is the woman who gives birth to the child and therefore the child would derive their citizenship through that mother”.

This law discriminates against this woman on the basis of her infertility, not her AMAB status. And since there is no widespread movement to try and declare infertile cis women as not-real-women, I don't think this, to quote the defendant, "invalidates her legal status as a woman"

"How does this affect you?" is the lowest form of discourse.

Really? One would think that "My Tribe is good vs the enemy who is bad, Zug-Zug!!" would be the lowest form of discourse as it is the one most commonly found in the animal kingdom. People who can't behave better than animals are generally locked up in prison, and definitely shouldn't be enfranchised.

Careful, you're going to trigger the libertarians.

Why? What does it matter to you if the state calls her a woman or man, mother or father?

It is important to me that the state has a grasp of basic facts of reality. If it does not, then all sorts of things become fraught; evidentiary standards being a big one.

It is important to me that the state has a grasp of basic facts of reality.

Do you apply this principle to other topics as well? There are a lot things the state operates on that are not objective reality, do you write posts about those too? You know religion, psychology, conspiracy theories/misinfo, fiat currency, borders, markets, etc. None of these the things exist in basic reality, they are all fictions. You mentioned in the AI-thread about your big problems with science. The scientific method seems like a very basic fact of reality.

There's something sociolinguistically peculiar about treating government form submissions as in the same class as conversations among peers or speeches in the public square. Reserving judgement, I would venture to say that most people worldwide treat government bureaucracies in a purely utilitarian way, as an alien beast that must be appeased by certain sigils or spells that are otherwise meaningless.

(Presumably there's a statement on this Irish citizenship form like "I swear under penalty of perjury that the above is true and correct", but is the transwoman in this story really worried about the Gardai busting down their door on charges that they lied about their gender identity? I strongly doubt it.)

It seems like this attitude towards paperwork is a relic from an earlier time, when the State really was "just the things we do together" and not something imposed from above. Which is not the case anywhere anymore, but it's nice to be nostalgic about.

Seems like most of this has a simple cause and a simple fix. Ireland can stop discriminating against fathers, under the implication they are some sort of second class parent, in determining parental citizenship. We have the tests for it now, it's not abusable (only one father can be listed per child anyway after all) and it's the right thing to do regardless.

It doesn’t. Ireland would allow this trans to pass on citizenship paternally- but requires that it list itself as the father, which it doesn’t wish to do.

That's not the issue here. The child can get citizenship through the biological mother or father, but the trans person doesn't want to register as the baby's father, and Ireland will only recognize the person who gave birth to the child as the mother.

Case where the US Supreme Court did something like this: 1 2

  • If a child is born outside the US and out of wedlock to a citizen parent and an alien parent, then the child becomes a citizen only if the alien parent lived in the US for N years before the child's birth. By default, N is 10 under the law applicable when petitioner was born (5 under the law applicable today). But a separate law establishes an exception setting N to just 1 if the alien parent is the mother, implicitly making N = 10 applicable only if the alien parent is the father.

  • Petitioner is born outside the US and out of wedlock to a citizen mother and an alien father. The alien father was present in the US for literally 9.95 years. Petitioner doesn't get citizenship, and sues.

  • The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that the second law establishing a gender-based exception is unconstitutional discrimination. However, it is empowered only to strike down the second law, and cannot rewrite the first law to extend the 1-year exception to fathers. So the petitioner still doesn't get citizenship.

I'm a little confused. Does Ireland not give birthright citizenship though the father's line? Or is it that he had the option to pass on citizenship rights as the father but refused, and claimed to be the mother which wasn't accepted?

The "mother" has Irish citizenship via the granny rule. If you read further down the article, "she" could apply as biological father of the child and pass on citizenship that way. but "she" does not want to do it that way, because that would be offensive to "her" as a "woman". And a "lesbian". And trans.

Instead, "she" wants the High Court to let "her" apply as the child's "mother" (second mother, presumably) for citizenship. The biological mother, "her" wife, does not have Irish citizenship and so can't apply as the relevant parent.

It does, yes. The person is entirely able to obtain citizenship for the child by identifying as the 'father' of the child. It is, of course, a true biological fact that this person is the 'father' of the child, if by 'father' we mean 'the source of the sperm that contributed 50% of the child's genetic make-up'.

This is a purely semantic dispute. The person is the biological parent of the child, but wants to be referred to legally as 'mother' of the child rather than 'father'. No actual facts are in contention here.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

My gut reaction is that this issue should have been resolved earlier because it is analogous to the situation of a child adopted by a same-sex married couple (which while not exactly common, is something that happens often enough to be legible to bureaucracies), or to a child born by IVF (with donor sperm) where the mother's lesbian partner is a legal parent (which is routine).

I wonder if lesbians are happy to just fill in the online form as "father" but transwomen are not.

It isn't quite analogous since adopted children don't automatically get citizenship. With most same-sex couples this isn't an issue because a typical scenario in e.g. the US would be that both the biological parent and the adoptive parent are US citizens and the child is born in the US. If a man who is a US citizen living in Europe marries an Italian widow and adopts her son, and an amended birth certificate is issued recognizing him as the father, the child will not be considered a native-born US citizen as he would if the man were the actual father. The child could get US citizenship through naturalization, but that would require the family to be living in the US. By the same token, the kid in the case in question could probably get Irish citizenship if they were actually living in Ireland, but they aren't and there's no indication that they ever plan to.

It looks like the adoption form is very specifically about Parent #1/Parent #2. I'm not able to find much information about lesbian IVF specifically, but some sites are claiming that there's a version specific to that case which recognizes them as 'parents' rather than mother/father.

At least from other jurisdictions, every pretty butch lesbians tend to complain a lot about having to id as 'fathers', even on far-less-formal paperwork, although it doesn't seem as philosophically aggravating at it is for transwomen.

The most infuriating thing about this court case is that there may be legal precedent for this in the EU:

McConnell gave birth to a son, publicly known just as SJ, in January 2018. When attempting to register the child's birth, the Registrar denied McConnell's petition to be listed as the child's father on the birth certificate, though allowing McConnell to use his current name. In September 2019, McConnell lost an application for judicial review to be described as father or parent on the child's birth certificate... The president declared that McConnell was legally the child's mother and thus possessed parental responsibility of the child accordingly. Because of this decision, McConnell could not be listed as the child's father on the birth certificate... McConnell announced his second pregnancy in August 2021,[12] with plans to give birth in Sweden in order to be listed as the child's father, rather than mother, on their birth certificate. His second child was born in the UK in January 2022 via emergency c-section.

If I'm reading this correctly, the second child was actually born in the UK rather than Sweden, meaning the same legal ruling would apply to the second child as the first. If the child had been born in Sweden, would the Swedish courts have ruled in McConnell's favour, and allowed her to be listed as the child's father? Apparently so.

But remember, it's just a few crazy college kids, it's only edge cases, and none of this will have effects on your life, straight cis people! It's just asking to be allowed to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity, nothing more!

Years back when I was asking "but what about if someone abuses this?" and was being assured (in a rather patronising manner) that nope, that would never happen ever. Slope, slippery, what that? We can dismiss that happily as just a fallacy, nothing that will ever occur in the real world.

Is anyone surprised I'm a cynic?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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