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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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If society were built to tell anyone who believed themself capable of astral projection, constantly, day-in, day-out, "You aren't really capable of astral projection, that isn't a thing, you are Delusional and Wrong.", and never let the matter rest, I think that that would justify 'demanding a sweeping reform of society'.

a) I don't see how. People are perfectly within their rights to tell anyone day-in, day-out that they are delusional and wrong. Christians, vax-skeptics, climate change deniers, opponents of Critical Race Theory, and indeed people with gender critical views... take your pick, people are being told their beliefs are delusional and wrong, and as far as I can tell, that's exactly the way things should be.

b) Please do go on and tell me how the people who're draping entire cities in their flags, inserting mastectomy scars into marketing materials and children's cartoons, adding genderwang into school curricula, get people fired from jobs, and terrorize venues into cancelling events, are that one's being followed around, and who just want to let the matter rest.

If you, as a result of some preternatural phenomenon, woke up to-morrow in a body of the opposite biological sex, how motivated would you be to reverse the change?

Not at all.

Precisely what benefits are those, and why ought we not extend them to identity!men?

The benefits vary, anything from an earlier retirement age, lower physical test requirements, scholarships, carveouts for seats on various boards. Rather than extending them to men, I'd be in favor of removing them from women.

Another benefit is safety from people of the male sex, who are disproportionately more dangerous. You can't extend that to men, because we've found no way to as easily and accurately corral the individuals, as separating males from females does.

That depends on whether he is harming anyone with the latitude given him.

He'd be doing the exact same thing your examplary trans woman would be doing, except twirling his mustache villainously as he does so.

I was referring to the oft-invoked spectre of 'cis-man claims to be trans-woman, goes into women's toilet, does Harvey Weinstein impression', which is equally bad if the perpetrator is a cis-woman.

Yeah, but females are far less likely to engage in that sort of behavior, which is one of the reasons we give them their own spaces.

And? If they aren't harming anyone....

The only way this argument makes sense is if you are arguing for abolishing segregation. It makes no sense in the context of keeping segregation, but allowing "trans women" in. And if you're in favor of desegregation, then there's no need to modify the definition of "woman" to begin with.

It's not a definition.

There are multiple pairs of categories into which human beings can be divided

Don't you mean it's not the definition? Either way, it's not a definition either, and that's my point. Like I said, the point of definitions is communicate concepts between people, not to pre-define the kind of categorization schemas you'd prefer for people to use. Your categorization schema may be better than mine, but you have to provide an argument for it being so, and to do that, we need some definitions for the basic concepts we are discussing. Trying to tell me we should use your categorization schema without defining these concepts is absurd.

...and yet demands that they buy into its beliefs.

I see no reason why it is more justified for the latter group to demand assent to their beliefs by the former than vice versa

And who is demanding assent to their beliefs? Go ahead and believe in "gender identity". If you want to change the definition of "woman", I can step over that and use another word, like "female" for the concept I'm referring to. You're free to believe what you want, and I'm still making the argument I wanted to.

'it's always been this way' strikes me as a very flimsy premise, given how many times it has been used to support things which are now widely considered indefensible.

The possibility space for different ways of doing things is nearly infinite, so if you want to change things, you need to show how your way is better than all the other possible ways. On the other hand "it's been working fine all this time" is a perfectly valid reason for keeping things the way they are, because change requires energy, and that energy could be spent on more important things.

That would last about five minutes before a woman with PCOS or endometriosis and a Maine or Minnesota driver license

...which is why I explicitly postulated a sex-based marker.