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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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Why exactly would outing by another person suddenly make it go from not OK to fine for discussion?

Um, it wouldn't?

If it's obvious in the way you say then it's already common knowledge to everyone. They would know, and they would also know everyone is aware because it's obvious.

No, not everyone knows that everyone is aware. The trans person himself does not know that everyone is aware. In particular he doesn't know that everyone else won't take issue with him being trans. So he doesn't want the subject brought up. Polite people know this and so uphold a social norm of not outing a trans person unless it's been made clear that he is ok with it. If he knew that everyone was aware, and observed that everyone is friendly and respectful to him, there would be little reason not to discuss the subject. One of the very useful things about common knowledge is the ability to freely discuss matters like this without potentially crossing someone's boundaries.

How often is "enter into a dark room already drunk and banging a stranger" a thing that happens?

I figure that if one is deviating from sexual norms like that, they might be deviant in a way that makes them more likely to encounter transgender people. Regardless, people discuss disclosure because of the potential legal liability, not necessarily because it's so likely and frequent that a trans person passes to the point they have to think about disclosure. It's the same legal mindset that promotes always labeling "this package may contain walnuts" even if it's very unlikely to happen, simply because it reduces the 0.001% chance it does happen and results in a lawsuit for failure to disclose.

And even this caveat doesn't explain situations like this where someone only finds out from social media that the girl he was crushing on is trans

Bad example. The comments aren't even sure if the girl OP is referring to is even trans.

or this where some guy is dating and didn't know

Hard to find an explanation for a random Reddit post when not much detail about the situation is given. Any arguments made would inevitably be smuggling in assumptions. Should I assume OP is an adult? How much dating experience has he had, especially with real women? When I was young (around 13) and didn't know much about the world, I incorrectly identified a girl as a boy, but now having seen more women I don't think I could make that mistake again.

Yes, if the signs aren't reliable and wrongly identify women as trans when they aren't, they aren't flawless signs.

Those signs aren't being used whenever I correctly identify someone's gender.

If you're the average person, you've never met a transitioned trans person to begin with in your daily life, yet alone one who is close enough to tell you.

I admit I'm not the average person. I wouldn't be saying trans people don't pass if I've never actually seen a trans person in real life. But I have, many times, likely due to life circumstances I won't divulge here. I've met them and talked with them and know a lot about them. They are easy to clock.

If your whole argument depends on a known logical fallacy and the "I don't know a licensed submarine operator" fallacy I made there combined, it's not very strong.

My argument does not depend on any logical fallacies.

Meanwhile I have presented lots of positive evidence that passing can occur.

I still disagree.

Better way to think of this, depoliticize it in your mind and instead think of it as just the toupee fallacy. Would your arguments and logic work for "toupees never look natural to anyone, every toupee I've ever seen is awful"? If not, then make a better argument.

I suspect that if I counted the number of noticeable toupees I've seen and divided it by the number of people in my daily life, it would not be proportional to the percentage of the population that wear toupees. Though it's probably hard to empirically test this when I've noticed zero toupees. Either way, I wouldn't argue that toupees look awful.