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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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You can't dismiss a problem just because it makes knowing things harder. Accurate information about controversial topics is hard to get and filled with tons of issues, in part because people don't talk about the controversial issues!

We have no idea of the true rate of transphobic violence,

Yes. Basing primarily off of reporting does not get you the "true rates" of something. Especially when they're clearly sourced differently with one sourcing being far broader than the other. Cause as I explained in the other comment, the trans victims site is clearly based off of national reporting (cause if it wasn't, they should have had to verify elsewhere for some cases instead of it all being BBC) whereas the trans crime site was using regional outlets and non BBC sources.

Your desire to ignore potential issues and just say "that's too hard so I don't want to consider it" is great evidence however that you aren't motivated towards truth.

This effectively means that "trans people face an elevated risk of violence and murder" is an unfalsifiable claim.

Unfalsifiable is not true. There is room between "this information is fuzzy and flawed" and "it is literally impossible to ever know"

I don't even believe that trans people are too likely to have higher rates of violence outside sex work because they aren't gonna be hanging out in racial minority enclaves.

But again, we can't dismiss obvious issues with basing data off of national reporting just because it throws a wrench into things. The average murder case doesn't get into the BBC to begin with and often requires friends/family to push for it, anything with social stigma attached is less likely for people to push for it.

Do you have better numbers? No really, do you? Or do you have fan fiction about how trans faces an elevated murder risk?

Because while those numbers are not perfect, they are a damn sight better than what radical trans activists base their statistics off of.

"if you aren't able to be flawless in your knowledge, you must assume other claims are" is a terrible argument. I don't claim to know the true rates, I am simply pointing out some glaring issues.

They're all riddled with errors and people want to gloss over "their side's" blatant errors because of motivated reasoning.

they are a damn sight better than what radical trans activists base their statistics off of.

I agree! I've even said multiple times on this site that I don't think violence against trans people is an issue. In part, because I don't think violence against anyone is an actual issue unless you hang out on like the five percent kill streets of a city.

Violence is incredibly rare in all directions from most groups in the modern western world. The only things that really kill you when you're young is drug overdoses, car accidents and by your own hand. If you don't get into trouble like gangs or hanging around the very few kill streets you're exceedingly unlikely to be murdered no matter who or what you are.

It is really funny however how blatantly motivated people are when I take this stance. People who might nod their heads when I say immigrants aren't some major victim group will freak out when I say there also isn't an issue with immigrant murderers either for instance. Same way there isn't a significant issue with either trans victims or trans murderers, and yet people freak out at me from "both sides" anyway. But these are all true, violence in the modern world just isn't an issue.

You can't dismiss a problem just because it makes knowing things harder

We're talking about a subject that has no real definitions, everything's circular and changes on a whim, the language is deliberately obfuscatory, etc etc.

While you're correct it's not literally impossible to know, any form of knowing would require forcing outsider definitions to pin things down.

any form of knowing would require forcing outsider definitions to pin things down.

Yeah, that's another good point. It's especially hard to know when definitions vary so much as well. Our information about "true rates" is fuzzy in all sorts of ways and we can either say "hey this is fuzzy and flawed in tons of different ways" or we can plug our ears and ignore the difficulty because we know what we want the answer to be.

"hey this is fuzzy and flawed in tons of different ways" or we can plug our ears and ignore the difficulty because we know what we want the answer to be.

As much as I hate that The Motte is not more influential than WPATH or the Beeb, shrugging and going "whaddyagonnado" is ceding the territory to much worse actors that also plug their ears, but do so with much, much more influence on the world.

Cause as I explained in the other comment, the trans victims site is clearly based off of national reporting (cause if it wasn't, they should have had to verify elsewhere for some cases instead of it all being BBC) whereas the trans crime site was using regional outlets and non BBC sources.

Untrue.