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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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so much as pointing out that accusations of sexual deviance were not first levied by the pro-trans faction.

Yet those accusations are the bread and butter of the pro-trans faction. "Why do you want to know about their genitals?" [intended with this implication] is kind of the standard pro-trans canard; hell, you're actively using it yourself.


Philosophy Bear's concept of 'inadmissible knowledge' gives the example of someone whose father is a murderer.

I'll start taking that seriously when [the set of people who are overwhelmingly likely to be pro-trans] stop blood libelling me for being part of the murder gender (and conversely, granting themselves extra privileges for being the should-protect-from-murder gender). Granted, this isn't directly the argument you're making, but it does point to the pro/anti-trans thing being more who/whom, and the actual "gender euphoria" is arguably just as much about ramming your ideology down everyone's throat (remember when 2010s atheists used to say that? Guess that aged poorly) than it is the psychological effects, or personal benefits, of dressing as the opposite gender in public.


I don't think it's generally right for what someone is and isn't allowed to do to vary based on accidents of birth.

Ok, so what about kleptomania or pedophilia (in the "older man hits on your 5 year old daughter" sense- not something that would raise 'consent' issues)?

I'd give you points for being consistent and accepting both on its face (after all, how could mere speech be harmful?)... but if you don't, well, now we're just haggling over the degree of "is and isn't allowed based on real or imagined harms to the participating parties, willing or not".


I'm not interested in the pretense that it isn't a sexual deviance. It pretty clearly is, on its face in fact- what we're actually debating is to what degree that should matter, and who should be forced to accept what.

Which is why the motte of the anti-trans argument centers around "they are completely unwilling to accommodate for anyone else"- something you yourself acknowledge. The bailey is stupid and absurd, but then again, the bailey of the pro-trans argument is "they should be forced at literal gunpoint to accommodate for me" and not merely "they want to be allowed to do the same things as cis individuals are allowed to do".

As [for the purpose of this argument] a cis-person, I don't have the right to summon the State to beat someone into submission should they call me a woman. That is, very literally, what trans-people insist on (or rather what their loudest advocates insist on; trans-people don't actually have a critical mass and most of the fight is an intra-woman conflict, but that's out of scope at the moment.)

[the set of people who are overwhelmingly likely to be pro-trans] ... blood libelling me for being part of the murder gender

I do not condone that, either. An individual ought to be judged by their own actions, not by the actions of an arbitrarily-defined group of people who are of a similar demographic.

Ok, so what about kleptomania or pedophilia

A kleptomaniac forbidden from pilfering my personal possessions and a paedophile forbidden from soliciting my five-year old daughter are not being forbidden from things other people are allowed to do, they are being forbidden from things that are forbidden to everyone else.

I'm not interested in the pretense that it isn't a sexual deviance. It pretty clearly is, on its face in fact

And what is your definition of 'sexual deviance'? To me, 'it harms people' is a necessary qualification for membership in that category. If one has a 'frowned upon by the local curtain-twitchers' definition, then two men in a lifelong monogamous relationship would have been considered 'sexually deviant' in the 1950s, and a man devoted to his wife and not interested in relations with other men would have been considered 'sexually deviant' in Classical Athens. If one has a 'goes against the Natural Law' definition, we don't have access to a set of tablets on which the True Natural Law is inscribed, and Natural-Law arguments tend to turn into just-so stories about why the Natural Law forbids exactly and only the things that the local curtain-twitchers don't like.

Which is why the motte of the anti-trans argument centers around "they are completely unwilling to accommodate for anyone else"

And what accommodation are they not making that they ought to make?

If it is 'allowing people who do not believe that Trans-Women Are Women to continue in their employment', per the initial incident pushing J. K. Rowling towards public TERFism, then you might have a point.

If it is 'they insist that society apply the same rules to trans-woman as cis-women, the same way the Civil Rights marches insisted that black people be allowed everything white people were allowed, and wouldn't/won't let the majority have a little discrimination as a treat', then I do not believe that it is reasonable to expect them to accommodate, just as, if Alice wants Bob to stop bullying her, and Bob wants to continue bullying Alice, Miss Take is completely out of line if she expects Alice to compromise.

they are being forbidden from things that are forbidden to everyone else.

So what are trans people forbidden from doing that everyone else is allowed to do?

To me, 'it harms people' is a necessary qualification for membership in that category.

That would exclude a lot of sexual behaviors clearly outside the norm, such as foot fetishists.

I don't think it's a fruitful exercise to come up with a definition that works for all societies across all of time, or to play cultural relativism and pretend that because societies disagreed on a definition that it must mean nothing (or everything) can fall under the definition. I can play the same game for a term like "rape" too. "Is 'rape' whatever is frowned upon by the local curtain-twitchers? If so, marital rape wouldn't be considered rape in the 1950s."

If it is 'they insist that society apply the same rules to trans-woman as cis-women, the same way the Civil Rights marches insisted that black people be allowed everything white people were allowed, and wouldn't/won't let the majority have a little discrimination as a treat', then I do not believe that it is reasonable to expect them to accommodate, just as, if Alice wants Bob to stop bullying her, and Bob wants to continue bullying Alice, Miss Take is completely out of line if she expects Alice to compromise.

The entire crux is whether or not "trans women" are women, or if they are men. If they are men, then it's not discriminatory to treat them like men, like it would be if white people and black people were treated as different people.