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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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They haven't re-cast them as sex, they just disagreed with the goal of the pro-trans faction.

The re-casting was how they sought to thwart the goal of the pro-trans faction.

To the best of my understanding, the pro-trans faction proposed to divide sex from gender, such that all social distinctions would fall under the latter category, and the biological differences would be as private as any other medical history, HIPAA avant la lettre.

The anti-trans faction, believing themselves entitled to know, and act on the knowledge of, the genital/gonadal configurations of strangers, then started referring to 'sex' instead of 'gender', 'males' instead of 'men', and 'females' instead of 'women'; thus allowing them to make the assertion that other people's genitalia are any of their business without being seen to make said assertion, and avoid anyone asking why they are concerned with other people's anatomy.

  • -19

The re-casting was how they sought to thwart the goal of the pro-trans faction.

It wasn't recasting. Prior to to pro-trans proposition , everybody was using a sex-based distinction. Even the word "gender" was just a euphemism for sex. The anti-trans side just adapted to the pro-trans lingo to try to have a meaningful conversation, and not fight over definitions.

and avoid anyone asking why they are concerned with other people's anatomy.

That makes no sense, no one on the anti-trans side has an issue answering that question. We're a sexually dimorphic species, and the dimorphism manifests itself in both behavior and physical capabilities.

and the biological differences would be as private as any other medical history, HIPAA avant la lettre.

Can't say I noticed the pro-trans side wanting to keep their genitals private.

Prior to to pro-trans proposition, everybody was using a sex-based distinction

And, like many other things 'everybody' was doing, some of us realised that it wasn't right.

(Many of the social movements of the post-WWII era are of this sort; someone realises that "Yes, we've always done it this way, but it's wrong. It's hurting people, and it needs to change. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is an early example of this argument, being a reductio ad absurdum; see also Edgerton's Sick Societies.

Can't say I noticed the pro-trans side wanting to keep their genitals private.

I will concede that, in that case, they are justified in dividing by currently possessed genitals, i. e. the ones with which they are presented, and for this purpose, a trans-woman remains a man unless or until she has that part of her anatomy altered.

I will concede that, in that case, they are justified in dividing by currently possessed genitals, i. e. the ones with which they are presented, and for this purpose, a trans-woman remains a man unless or until she has that part of her anatomy altered.

So 95% of trans women are men?

In the context of genital care, yes (assuming your statistics are correct).

In contexts where their underwear stays on, no.

So you think a male person can flip back and forth between being a woman and being a man, purely depending on what clothes he's wearing at any particular moment?

I'll say the same thing every gender-critical feminist I know has said at one point or another: femininity is not just a costume to be put on and taken off at will. A male person does not become a woman just because he's wearing a dress and makeup.

So you think a male person can flip back and forth between being a woman and being a man, purely depending on what clothes he's wearing at any particular moment?

No, I believe that whether a person is a man or a woman depends on why you are asking, just as with the difference between a 'blegg' and a 'rube'.

A male person does not become a woman just because he's wearing a dress and makeup.

No, if she identifies as a woman, she is a woman for most purposes. Things which involve the genitals are, assuming she has not had the relevant chirurgery, one of the exceptions; medical concerns are another, in which biological sex must be broken down into multiple aspects, such as hormones, current anatomy, natal anatomy, and chromosomes. (cf. Neural Categories, E. Yudkowsky, February 2008; How An Algorithm Feels From Inside, ibid.)

No, if she identifies as a woman, she is a woman for most purposes.

What "purposes" are these? Not physical strength and speed; not aggression; not propensity to commit assault (including sexual assault); not absence of the male reproductive organs (as previously established, only 5% of trans women undergo bottom surgery); not the corresponding ability to rape and impregnate female people; not the corresponding ability to infect others with STIs; not likelihood of being a victim of sexual assault; not ability to bear children; not menstruation; not likelihood of suffering from assorted medical conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, uterine cancer and so on; not likelihood of holding typically female interests (indeed, the overwhelming majority of "trans women" I know hold stereotypically male interests like math rock, D&D and video games); not likelihood of being sexually and romantically attracted to male people only (it seems to be a toss-up as to whether "trans women" are heterosexual or homosexual males, and female lesbians have been complaining for decades about how many lesbian spaces have been effectively colonised by "transbians" i.e heterosexual males, many of whom don't even make the most token effort to pass).

Once you subtract all of those, I'm genuinely curious which "purposes" are left by which a "trans woman" can be considered a woman. This really seems like a "what have the Romans ever done for us?" situation. When trying to predict how a trans woman will behave or what life experiences they will have, for what purpose does their maleness provide worse predictive power than their "identifying as" a woman? I've interacted with far more than my fair share of trans women in my life, some of whom had gone to significant lengths (up to and including medical interventions) to modify their appearances to more closely resemble a typically female one. At no point did I ever experience a subjective sensation that I was talking to a female person: 100% of the time, I felt like I was talking to a nerdy man who expressed himself exactly as I would expect a nerdy man to, and who had all of the interests and habits of mind expected of a nerdy man, coupled with an incidental fondness for cross-dressing (and sometimes not even that). A subset of these trans women barely even pretended to hide how pornsick they were (outside of pornography, female women do not typically walk around wearing t-shirts with "CUM SLUT" emblazoned across them) or their unabashed hatred for female people, but that's beside the point.

You also haven't answered my earlier question as to whether "gender identity" is a trait just as innate as "sex".

What "purposes" are these?

The ones that, if you don't know her very well, and aren't being hired for purposes involving her body, are any of your business.

An individual is responsible for what they, personally have done; they are not responsible for what they are capable of doing but haven't done, or what people who share characteristics with them have done. Therefore, the decision about how much, if any, of an individual's body is relevant to you belongs to that individual alone, unless and until that particular individual commits a wrongful act.

Admittedly, this is dependent on the axiom that the well-being of individuals is the measurement of ethics, with one's duties being derived from the effects on other individuals; however, the contrary world-view, of the subordination of the individual to the family/community/other collective abstraction, has been known to lead to many Bad Things, including, as part of many societies' traditional marital practises, the forcible rape of women-as-in-people-born-with-vulvae (when they first landed on the moon, it would be another seven years before it became a crime for a husband to rape his wife).

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