This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
No, but your having made that style of argument first does put you on thinner ground when you claim that your opponent, in making that argument, is behaving inappropriately.
If I were designing society from the ground up, there would not be gender-segregated spaces. A man preferring not to expose himself to women and a woman preferring not to expose herself to men would be accommodated by the same means as a man preferring not to expose himself to other men and a woman preferring not to expose herself to other women.
The examples I gave had the sexes/genders match because I was alluding to precedents from outside the 'what policies ought we have towards trans individuals' issue.
Saying "You think P. In reality, ¬P." does not prove ¬P.
DuckDuckGo results for 'trans man'
DuckDuckGo results for 'trans woman'
Which of these do you think would raise more eyebrows using the ladies' room?
Hence 'potentially'.
Which is still too many people to know personally (last time I checked, the upper bound was estimated at approximately 150.)
Yes! I am in favour of respecting people's privacy! That is why I do not condone requiring people to publicly declare or confirm private information about their bodies in order to use public facilities.
And this would still apply even if everyone involved is the same sex/gender by every possible definition.
I don't think you can.
And has Ms 'I want a locker room without people born with male bodies, and am willing to settle for 20% of the total' disavowed and shamed Mr 'round up all the [anti-trans epithet redacted] and dispose of them'?
(That famous picture of the Nazis burning books of which they disapproved? Those included the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which had promoted the rights of LGBTQI+ individuals during the 1920s.)
Note the bolded part.
"Which things, exactly, are black people not allowed to do? They can still use the bus, they just have to sit in the part that corresponds with their race (which is the same thing a white person has to do)."
Didn't fly then, won't fly now.
I think it is more appropriate to levy an accusation of sexual deviance at a cis-woman who pursues her desire not to undress in front of natal-biology!men not by petitioning for one-person curtained changing booths but by prying into other people's bodies, than at a trans-woman who wants to change clothes without declaring to everyone in line-of-sight that she was born with male parts.
It is a reductio ad absurdum, also known as 'high-energy ethics'.
"And people in hell want ice water."
That is why I said 'unless you have a very, very, very, very good reason'. It helps to read the entire sentence.
WRT your hypothetical, there are two critical differences:
P(anti-social behaviour|schizophrenic and ranting about alleged Jewish conspiracies) >> P(anti-social behaviour|biologically male).
It is reasonable to not let him in solely because of the anti-Semitic ranting, even if he isn't schizophrenic, and has documentation from a dozen psychiatrists attesting to this.
Why? Is there some sort of limited resource of charity, and me making that argument first means I have taken from the resource of charity, leaving my opponents less charity to spare, or something? Or does me making the argument mean it's okay for that argument to be applied to everything, including my argument? Why does it matter who said what first?
I don't accept that just because gender-critical people first said trans people are sexually deviant, that it's appropriate for trans people to levy the same accusation back at them. You can't just apply the same argument to everything or to itself. If I accepted this, I wouldn't be able to call pedophiles sexually deviant.
A: I'm attracted to kids.
B: That's disgusting and sexually deviant.
A: No u! You're the deviant one here because you're actually thinking of fucking kids when you accuse me!
There's more to it than just a woman wanting to not to expose herself to men. Even if there were enough private changing rooms for everyone, there are still safety concerns with allowing men in women's locker rooms just feet away from where women are changing. The safest and most practical way to alleviate those safety concerns is to have gender-segregated spaces.
I don't think you've proven P. On what basis can "trans women" be said to be women when they share 99.9% of their traits with men?
The "trans women", because they look like men.
It's impractical to know everyone personally enough such that one feels comfortable using a locker room, and it's not necessary to do so when the locker room is gender-segregated.
So are you against showing your ID to enter establishments that serve alcohol, then? That's confirming private information about your body (your age) in order to use a public facility.
Also, in what sense can gender be considered "private" when people can tell just by looking at you? That's like declaring hair color to be private. Age has a better claim to being private, since I've never seen anyone who was able to reliably and accurately tell exactly how old a stranger is without pre-existing knowledge, merely give estimates and ranges.
There's a difference between having rules and enforcing them. With gender segregation, there is a strong, bright line against a man entering the women's locker room. If he does so, it's immediately obvious to everyone that he's violated the rules and should be forced out if he doesn't realize his mistake and walk out immediately. Meanwhile, if we can't enforce gender segregation, it's much trickier to deal with rules violators. They can always claim plausible deniability that they're not actually taking photos or watching people, and if the offender is a man it's exponentially harder for a woman to confront him to remove him from the space.
Just because there are 0.001% of cases where this isn't true, that must mean I can't tell the difference between women and trans-identifying men?
I can tell the difference between a door and a fake door, but there was one time I was in a deceitful maze and tried to open a door only to find it was fake. That means I must simply be unable to tell the difference between doors and fake doors.
Yes? The Kiwi Farms is a good example of a mass of anti-trans people that (unfortunately) has very few allies, even with gender-critical people. To the point that many people avoid mentioning the farms at all, and if they must, they always say "this is a place that gathers lots of good information on the crimes of trans people BUT I don't condone doxing or harassment or swatting or deadnaming or misgendering or slurs or..." I remember Ovarit (a gender-critical site) allowed discussion of the farms, but not linking to it on account of all the dox we had.
There are some rare exceptions, but my impression is that the farms' reputation is sufficiently toxic that anyone with even minor notoriety getting sufficient pushback for appearing to support the farms (and by proxy, any alleged harassment/swatting) is going to take the easy path and disavow any of that stuff, even if it means disavowing us.
Are you saying that gender-critical people are aligning themselves with neo-Nazis?
So I can't take notice of other people's bodies at all, even things which are obvious like their hair color? Am I supposed to pretend to be blind and not know what color someone's hair is?
These situations are not analogous. There are more differences between men and women than there are differences between white and black people. Moreover, the nature of male/female differences justify gender segregation, while white/black differences do not justify racial segregation.
I also note that black-designated facilities were almost universally in poorer condition than white ones, while there's no reason to think that men's facilities are any worse than women's facilities (or at least worse to the same degree as blacks' were to whites').
This is quite a lot of tortured logic to characterize keeping men out of women's locker rooms as "prying into other people's bodies". There seems to be an assumption here that "trans women" look and act just like a woman in every other regard besides having a penis, which is simply not true. "Trans women" overwhelmingly look and act like men. And from this assumption that "trans women" pass, you seem to be imagining a Karen who sits at the door of every locker room, asking everyone who enters if they have a penis. That is simply not how gender segregation is enforced. How it's actually enforced is that men will read the sign that says "men" and go into the men's room, and women will read the sign that says "women" and go into the women's room, and should there be any man who (by mistake or otherwise) enters the women's room, the women inside will recognize him as a man, and then notify him and/or other people that he is in their space and will do whatever it takes to get him out of said space if he doesn't leave by himself. None of this enforcement requires "prying into other people's bodies" and I'm struggling to think of how it could be described that way. Unless, of course, merely looking at someone and noticing things like their hair color is enough to be considered prying into their body.
I don't see many trans activists petitioning for one-person curtained changing booths. They overwhelmingly advocate for trans-identifying men to be able to enter women's spaces.
Also, this is a moot point when "she" looks like a man, thus already declaring to everyone in line-of-sight that "she" was born with male parts.
Ok. I'm legitimately confused as to what your point here is then. Obviously, it's not acceptable for someone to go up to a complete stranger and ask verbatim "what's in your pants?"
It's easier for people to tell what sex someone is than for people in hell to get ice water. They can tell just by, you know, looking at them.
You wrote down four "very"s in a row. I assumed that meant the reason had to be extremely rare or held to a very high bar. I thought that "I think he's schizophrenic" would be a good reason, but I wouldn't consider it a "very, very, very, very good reason" because it's an educated guess and I could be totally wrong about it.
I'm really trying to imagine myself in this hypothetical. If I really was a bouncer, I would normally just reject anyone even slightly fishy, on account of the fact that a private business reserves the right to refuse service to anyone (modulo the Civil Rights Act and ADA). But if you told me that I wasn't permitted to forbid people based on educated guesses about their medical history, and I wasn't even allowed to know if my guesses were correct, I would definitely be a lot more cautious about who I reject, including the schizo homeless man.
So it's a matter of degree, and not of kind, then? As Churchill said, now we're just haggling over the price.
And to be clear, unless the club was women's-only or something, I as the bouncer would never reject entry solely based on someone being male. It's a totally different set of rules and expectations when it comes to enforcing gender segregation and ensuring only women are allowed in the women's locker room. That's to say, I don't fully accept even you comparing the two probabilities this way as if that's the only difference between my bouncer hypothetical and gender segregation.
Ok, forget the anti-Semitic ranting then. I only included that to establish that he was schizophrenic, since many schizophrenics do tend to veer into expressing bigoted sentiments despite not actually holding such sentiments deep in their hearts (such as Kanye West).
More options
Context Copy link
Do you take the principled stance that any groups being forbidden to go into a place reserved for another group is recreating apartheid? If random adults off the street are prevented from going into the local elementary school's changing room while in use, is this an intolerable breach of their freedoms? They might have a reason for doing it other than to leer at naked little boys.
If you respond to every scenario where Group A is prevented from sitting in the same place Group B by calling it the return of Jim Crow, you are not going to suddenly make everyone realise they are the second coming of the KKK. You are going to make them wonder if Jim Crow was really as bad as it's cracked up to be.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link