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How did transgender issues become your hobby horse? Personal interactions with trans people (online or offline), gender issues of your own, workplace politics…? I’m generally curious as to why non-trans people get invested in this when it seems easy to ignore (especially now that it seems to be fading from the culture war issues du jour).
In any case I agree that white Western trans women probably aren’t at an extremely elevated risk of murder and that the trans genocide narrative is overblown, but even in the West, being trans can lead to discrimination, being ostracised by your friends and family, and make you more at risk of low level violence and hate crimes.
I’m not sure that follows. A romantic partner might commit murder because of the shame of being publically outed as being in a relationship with a trans gender person, and honour killings of trans people by their family members do occur. This is more common in cultures that do not accept trans people, which is why victims tend to be non-white or non-western. If transphobia becomes more widespread and accepted, it seems obvious that violence and discrimination will increase as a result.
As a trans woman, I don’t avoid the men’s room because of the risk of violence, but to avoid unnecessary attention and disruption when I’m in a public place. It’s not as dramatic and convincing as saying I need to use the men’s room or I’ll get punched, but eh, I don’t see why I should needlessly inconvenience myself, and a bathroom bill would just make things even worse due to false positives, enforcement issues, etc.
There was a time where on seemingly every forum I frequented a transgender person would show up to own the chuds with facts and logic, whenever anything remotely related to the topic would come up. At the time I did actually feel "owned", as I was a good little science-truster, and they kept coming up peer reviewed papers, or fancy documents explaining all the safeguards on the provision of gender affirming care. Now that it's coming out these papers are of poor quality, that studies more critical of trans medicine were being deliberately hidden from the public, or that these safeguards are being constantly eroded, and weren't really followed all that rigorously, I think it's par for the course to point all of that out with equal vigor.
Aside from that, I think the question rests on a false premise. Why do people get invested in topics related to psychology, medicine, or philosophy? I think they're just interesting in themselves, and transgenderism covers all 3, and possibly more.
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Might. Sure. And how often does it actually happen?
Where we conveniently have no statistics or even informal obsevrations to back or contradtict your claims with.
Or the whole "trans" fad, the entire social contagion and online trend, just dies out altogether, and the violence and discrimination go away with it.
You don’t notice the common theme here?
One of the issues being raised in this thread is that white middle class trans activists are claiming to be at risk of violence and murder when the stats show the victims are overwhelmingly Black, Hispanic and Middle Eastern. I don’t think you can deny the latter?
And why would it die out? It might return to pre-2000s levels if the online trend goes down, but short of a global catastrophe I don’t see why people would stop wanting to transition. It might even increase in popularity with future improvements in biomedical technology.
Bit of a wording quibble but I would count that as dying out; pre- and post-2000s transness seem like quite different phenomena with quite different motivations, even if they rhyme somewhat.
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First let me obligatorily clear my throat and say I appreciate your willingness to participate here in what I know is a fairly hostile environment for you despite our rules.
For me, trans issues are not a big "thing" for me. They are not my hobby horse. In a sense, I push back on trans ideology for reasons similar to what @FtttG said, and similarly to why I keep getting into it with the annoying Joo-posters despite antisemitism not really being a big issue personally for me either: sometimes you see people saying offensively retarded shit that makes you feel like Roger Rabbit trying to keep it together while someone is tapping out Shave and a Haircut
"But," you protest, "most trans people aren't saying offensively retarded shit! We just want to be left alone!"
Well, yes. And no.
See, even the moderate, normal, well behaved trans people will generally be reluctant to criticize the strident activists,.the cancel mobs, the social censure that falls on anyone who clears their throat and says maybe trans women shouldn't be put in women's prisons. Sure, you might agree that Jessica Yaniv is crazy and acting in bad faith and maybe not even actually trans. But you still want us to take Caitlyn Jenner or Rachel Levine seriously.
In my personal experience, trans people I know are mostly chill. Most of the time.
Until you Ask Questions. Until they sense Doubt.
Then you get the Side-Eye. The "friendly reminders." The questions that aren't really questions. And you find yourself having to make Decisions.
I have had to make advance Decisions, simply because I know trans people. If they break the detente, if they sniff heresy, if they sense my Wrongthink and decide to press me, what is my response and how will I deal with the social fallout? Which friends am I willing to lose? Which online groups will I be forced to abandon?
Since I won't lie, I mostly stay quiet and Avoid the Issue and hope they will maintain the unspoken detente. Most do. But I know some won't. So whenever I am interacting with a trans person, besides having to suppress the occasional eye rolls at the inevitable water-testing declarations to claim ideological space (never met a trans person who didn't do this at least once), I have to be prepared for what happens if I am caught out.
And I resent this. I really fucking resent this.
If I were allowed to just admit "Look, I don't really think you're a woman and we can disagree about trans women in sports and JK Rowling, but I'll respect your pronouns and I honestly do want you to live your best life however you wish to," that would be fine.
But too many trans people, having had a taste of power, will not accept that. Not when they can Punish you. Not when they can either make you bend the knee and say deer-horse, or have you (socially) executed.
I resent this. And it makes me less well disposed towards trans people in general, to the point where even though I wish no ill to any individual, yourself included, I begin to cheer when trans people take losses even under the clammy auspices of Trump.
I'm sorry, but I wish we could go back to the detente where everyone agreed it didn't matter what's in our hearts as long as we outwardly treat each other with respect and civility. Can we do that? I'd like to do that.
Thanks! Maybe I’m a bit oblivious but I don’t detect that much hostility towards me personally, in fact many times I’ve been disappointed that I can’t seem to get into a proper argument with a gender critical person.
I’ve been happy to criticise them here I think, and I’m no different in real life.
I’m perfectly fine with you admitting that you don’t think I’m a woman. I might try to convince you that between “a woman is an adult female human that produces large gametes” and “a woman is anyone who says they are one”, there’s other definitions that have some usefulness.
Going back to this site’s rationalist roots, I feel like Big Yud’s classic post on bleggs and rubes applies here. Like what are you saying when you say you don’t think I’m a woman? Is it “for me, women refers to adult female humans, and you’re not in that category”, is it “I can’t override the part of my brain that sees you as a guy”, is it “I will not behave towards you the way I behave towards women because that goes against my beliefs”?
I feel like both the pro-trans and anti-trans camps are acting as if the debate is just about who gets to have the woman category and the man category, and then all the rest, prisons, sports, bathrooms, labelling sexual attraction, will magically get resolved.
Is a man gay for being attracted to a trans woman? No, because trans women are women! Yes, because trans women are biologically male! Well, both of those answers are kinda stupid, and are the result of ideologies trying to force reality into man-made categories instead of trying to find the actual question.
Because if you define gay as “person with XY chromosomes attracted to another person with XY chromosomes”, it’s not necessarily wrong, but it might not be useful. You’re going to get into scenarios just as absurd as defining gay as “person who says they’re a man, attracted to a person that says they’re a man”, where you can be a man insisting he’s straight while enthusiastically sucking the dick of someone that looks just like a hairy bearded man because “Hey, she’s a pre-transition MtF and trans women are women!” or “Hey, she’s an adult female human, still a woman even if she got phalloplasty, top surgery, has been on testosterone for 20 years and is in the top 1st percentile of height for women!”
Well, what does it mean for you to be caught out? Is it them flat out asking questions, like “do you think trans women belong in men’s prisons” or “what did you think of Lia Thomas?” and waiting expectantly for you to say the politically correct answer? That’s shitty behaviour and I’m sorry if that’s been your primary kind of interaction with trans people.
Maybe it’s a social circle difference, maybe it’s a European thing, but the trans people I know, myself included, don’t do this. In real life, I never introduce myself with my pronouns or whatever, I don’t talk about being trans, or related political issues, unless I’m explicitly asked. In a perfect world I wouldn’t even be trans, and I’m immensely grateful that I have many relationships where it just does not come up, ever.
May I ask what you're looking for? The term 'gender critical' can cover a lot of ground - in general I read it as 'gender-critical feminist', and you're certainly not going to find many of those around here. But if you mean people critical of 'gender ideology' in the broad sense, we probably have a lot, though I fear maybe a bit too spittle-flecked for useful discussion.
If it would be interesting, I suppose I'm gender-critical in the sense that I think the broad category of 'gender ideology' is mistaken. I am sympathetic towards the desire to be compassionate to people who suffer gender-related pain or angst, but as an anthropology I think it's limited and probably has done a significant amount of harm. I suppose I think that trans, as an issue, is linked to a larger trend of rejecting any un-chosen identity in human life, and viewing people and identity as fundamentally malleable? Once you get away from the usual hot-spots like sports, prisons, toilets, etc., and start digging into the larger philosophical question about what it means to be human, I think the conversation gets fascinating.
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Maybe you aren't trying hard enough! But seriously, it's probably partly that our rules prevent anyone who genuinely despises trans people (of whom I am sure there are some here who fit into that category) from really unloading on you, and partly because "gender critical" usually refers specifically to a particular brand of radical feminism, which is also not too popular here. Unless you are using it more broadly to mean the same thing as "trans critical." ("Gender critical" feminists are not just "anti-trans," though - they are critical of the entire concept of gender roles and innate "gender" which is distinct from biological sex.)
That's cool, but like most people on the Motte, you are probably quite outside the norm. Now would you actually defend someone who is facing a cancel mob for expressing trans-critical views?
It is mostly the first two. I realize "I can't override the part of my brain that sees you as a guy" is not a rational basis on its own to deny someone's identity, but it is certainly a rational basis to... not react to you the way I would to a woman, whether that be socially, sexually, in terms of threat perception, etc. And saying that I should because my brain does not get to overrule your self-identification is basically demanding that I ignore my instincts and evolutionary hardwiring and defer to something I have only your word for. To be clear, I am not claiming that you are asserting something ridiculous like "If I think I am a hot woman, you should perceive me as a hot woman." But it does to lead to situations like trans women accusing lesbians of transphobia if they can't override their brains and see trans women as women.
As for "adult female humans," yes, I do think a woman is basically an adult human female, and every edge case or exception you will offer is something I have heard already and does not convince me. The fact that there exists a tiny percentage of people who aren't easily classified into a sexual binary because of physical, chromosomal, or other abnormalities does not mean humans are not a sexually dimorphic species. Such arguments have always struck me as not unlike claiming that humans are not bipeds because some people are born without legs.
So, yes, if you were born with XY chromosomes and a penis, then I'm sorry, you're a dude. You can present as female as you like and live as a female and for social purposes, I'm happy to let you do that, but you're still a dude, and my internal mental state for you will always be "dude".
As for all the various combinations of sexual attraction you propose, I am also happy to concede some people might be more sexually fluid than they acknowledge, but again, a bunch of edge cases testing "But what if you're attracted to him? What if you're attracted to her?" does not prove anything about someone's actual sex.
Yes. Yes, she is. Even if she passes. Does it matter, if 99% of the people she meets never know she's not a man? Probably not to her. But she's still a female.
Generally speaking, no, I have not had trans people ask me such obvious interrogatory questions. It's more like "Well, you know I won't be watching the new Harry Potter HBO series because I refuse to support a transphobe (looks around meaningfully)." Or an obese man in drag lecturing us (men, not including himself in that category of course) about sexual harassment and women's safety. Or casual assertions about trans genocide, how dangerous some red state is for trans people, how all their rights are being taken away (because some sports organization just banned trans women in women's sports), etc. And my choices are (1) Nod affirmatively, (2) Say nothing (slightly less cowardly, slight chance of being noticed), (3) Say "Well Actually..." and bang! You're a transphobe!
For the most part, my interactions with trans people have not been "dreadful" as @SnapDragon put it. As I said, they are usually chill. But it's a regular series of... can I say "micro-aggressions," only somewhat ironically? Sexual innuendos, constant reminders of how trans they are, something dropped about JK Rowling or Trump. Nothing that a non-trans person might not also say, but you just notice it comes from them with greater than average frequency and there is always a sense that they are watching to see who reacts and how.
And from a non-trans person, if someone is annoying me with their pet hobby horse, I might be free to say "Give it a rest, come on," or if that would be overly aggressive for the situation, I would at the very least only suffer a smirk and a snort if I were to roll my eyes. But with a trans person... Tag.
I'm being vague here because I don't want to be more specific, you know? But take my word for it: I know some trans people, and they are mostly okay, but sometimes they Do and Say Things that really make me want to Say Things in response, and I don't because there would be Consequences that aren't worth it to me.
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I'm in the same position. I would love to just wait for the trans fad to blow over (as long as we minimize the long-term harm to kids - THAT'S something I truly can't ignore). Unfortunately I'm a shut-in whose only socialization comes from various online videogame and puzzle and rationalist circles... and they are absolutely rampant with trans activists (and far-left activists in general). My experience with them has been dreadful.
There's a giant yearly puzzle event that's run at MIT, and I used to be on a particular team. I didn't have a lot in common with them, except that we all liked math. Actually, most of them came from a math club whose emeriti included, um, Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison (cough). But this was enough to unite us. ...Until around 7-8 years ago when the social contagion factor really kicked in, and now 40% of them are trans and another 30% various other flavours of sexual activist. And one year we were doing the puzzle event, and the people running it made the mistake of making one of the events a funny riff on a gender-reveal party. Long story short, it ended in the organizers - who were volunteers who had spent a year of their life working hard to bring us this free event - visiting and tearfully (yes, literally) apologizing to us for their thoughtcrime. It felt almost like a struggle session. I was absolutely disgusted with our team, and I never felt comfortable around them since.
Even though I've since switched teams, the problem is endemic almost everywhere I go. Want to watch people solve sudokus on Twitch? You're 50% likely to hit a stream plastered with LGBT and trans and various other sexual tags (and they're all talking to each other, so you'd better not inform the guy with a male voice and a big-breasted avatar that he looks ridiculous). There are puzzle Discords that I'm on that I rely on to find good puzzles, but Discord servers are closed, controlled, ephemeral communities - the opposite of the old ideal of the Internet - and I will lose this access if I ever let a hint out of my actual centrist politics. (I'm actually a little surprised it hasn't happened already; at some point maybe people will connect my Motte posts with me, it's not like my identity is disguised.)
People often think of "The Emperor's New Clothes" as an inspirational fable, where the innocent child saves everyone from their plight. But in real life, it would not end well for the child. I try to be a genuine rationalist. I want to be able to say things that are true. And I'm simply not able to in any of my social interactions. It eats away at my soul.
The apology from the organizers at that club sounds ridiculous, but it's the only anecdote you actually mention to justify your idea that "your experience with [trans activists] has been dreadful". All the rest of your post is just complaining that you meet a lot of them, and possibly that they, uh, don't tend to like it when you tell them they're "ridiculous" out of the blue?… I don't mean this as an insult, but it's hard to avoid the impression that what fundamentally feels unbearable to you is their sheer existence in your vicinity, not anything egregious that they actually do.
Yes, I do find it extremely uncomfortable dealing with people who make everything about their sexuality (especially very weird sexuality). This used to be considered normal. And now I am not allowed to voice this preference, lest people like you call me a bigot. (You very clearly did mean it as an insult.) But I don't think you read "the rest of my post", because I clearly mentioned that I will lose access to my hobby if I ever inadvertently expose my true feelings. That's a rather different kind of dreadful than "gosh I sure hate that these people exist".
I meant it as a reasoned accusation of inconsistency in your argument - you tried to justify your rancor as based on specific "dreadful experiences" with trans activists, then failed to actually prove this claim. I take the point that your complaint is the fear of "losing access to your hobby if [you] ever inadvertently expose [your] true feelings" but that's still not an actual lived experience, just an assumption about a hypothetical scenario. I don't think your post was honest. If your genuine complaint is that you find it extremely uncomfortable existing in the vicinity of trans people, at a basic vibes level, then don't act like your actual problem is a particular subclass of "activists" behaving in specific dreadful ways! By your new, more honest claim, you'd still be extremely uncomfortable with having to share your hobbies with totally apolitical trans streamers and gamers who gave you no indication that they'd cancel you for your opinions.
(Also, I think you are wrong that trans people are "people who make everything about their sexuality". I know too many asexual trans people not to laugh that claim out of the room. I have too many relatives who I just don't buy are incestuously involving me in a kink by asking me to use their new pronouns. But I grant you that if you're talking about an instinctive "ick" you can't suppress, rather than a rational position, this doesn't necessarily make a difference - if it feels sexual to your lizard brain, it is what it is. I can sympathize: I find the sight of people with piercings very uncomfortable, no matter how many times my higher consciousness repeats to my empathy reflex that the other monkey doesn't actually have a dirty nail driven into its flesh.)
Well, not all of them, but let's say a disproportionate share. I've met hundreds of women in my life, and to the best of my knowledge not one has ever left the house wearing a T-shirt with the word "CUM SLUT" emblazoned across it. I do, however, know a trans-identified male (whom I'll call Dave) who has done this several times. Dave was doing a Secret Santa thing in work, for which the company was using a website in which you could add items to your wishlist and they would be visible only to the person assigned to be your Secret Santa. Dave requested a mug with the words "I LOVE GIRL COCK" emblazoned across it. One of her colleagues complained to a mutual friend that was profoundly inappropriate conduct for a workplace. ("He ain't persecuted, he just a asshole.")
To the best of my knowledge, Dave has never been formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria, gave no indication of a desire to transition as a child, and only came out as trans in his mid-twenties. Prior to coming out, Dave admitted to a close friend (who in turn mentioned it to me) that he was consuming so much pornography that he was debating whether, morally, he really ought to financially support the "content creators" thereof. I have a very hard time believing Dave's pornography consumption is wholly unrelated to his subsequent trans identification. I would go so far as to say that I don't think Dave identifies as a "woman" so much as he identifies as the hypersexualised portrayal of femininity which exists in porn and nowhere else. Women in real life don't wear "CUM SLUT" T-shirts, but women in porn certainly do.
Another example. Before we met, my girlfriend once worked as a tour guide in her home country, in which role she met a much older (i.e. retired) trans-identified male from an English-speaking country, whom I'll call Charlie. Literally the first time my girlfriend met Charlie, Charlie admitted that he'd fully medically transitioned, and asked my girlfriend if she'd be interested in seeing his neovagina. I believe they'd known each other for all of an hour.
I know, I know, generalising from a small sample size, Chinese robber fallacy, yeah yeah yeah. But I'd appreciate it if you could answer the following questions in complete honesty. Do you know any female people who habitually walk around in public wearing a T-shirt with "CUM SLUT" emblazoned across it? Do you know any female people who think it's appropriate workplace conduct to anonymously ask one of their colleagues to buy them a coffee mug reading "I LOVE COCK"? Do you know any female people who consume so much pornography (and so often) that they're debating whether they ought to financially support the companies or individuals who produce it? In your experience, when a female person meets another female person for the first time, do they typically expose their genitalia to one another? In your opinion, what is the difference between what Charlie proposed doing to my girlfriend and what Louis CK was cancelled over?
Like, when you have Pulitzer Prize-winning trans journalists openly admitting that they became trans as a direct consequence of watching too much "sissy hypno" porn, I think the cat is out of the bag. I'm not saying every trans-identified male is a pornsick fetishist (indeed, per Blanchard's typology I suspect that the homosexual variety has a completely different etiology to the autogynephiliac). But I am saying that trans-identified males are disproportionately likely to be pornsick fetishists when compared to males in general (and especially when compared to the females these TIMs supposedly identify as), and that this goes double for the terminally online trans-identified males which it sounds like @SnapDragon was interacting with.
And as an aside, I find it a profound insult to my intelligence that I'm expected to believe that males like this "identify as woman" or have an "internally felt sense of womanhood", when it's abundantly obvious to everyone that they are performing a misogynistic caricature of femininity that owes more of its particulars to Hugh Hefner and MindGeek than it does to any actual flesh-and-blood woman. I can't imagine how offensive I'd find it if I was a woman and I was expected to nod along with this and pretend that I believe that wearing a "CUM SLUT" T-shirt is just the sort of thing women do, that there are no meaningful differences between me and a male person wearing a T-shirt like that.
And if, after all of the foregoing, you still want to accuse me of Chinese robbering, then fine, I accept that. But at least meet me halfway and acknowledge that, even if not all trans-identified males behave anything like the above, it is perfectly reasonable (and not bigoted or hateful) to be creeped out by males who behave like the above, even if they identify as trans, and that they should not get a pass on their inappropriately sexual behaviour just because of how they identify.
Ironically, and I don't know whose case this helps if anyone's - I do, but they're biological females who identify as male. (No, not my trans relative. I know multiple FTMs.)
I do know of the type of trans woman you describe, but I still think parsing their lifestyle as a sex thing is reductive. For a start, many of them consider themselves lesbians - that is to say, they are, in biological terms, heterosexual - so I don't really buy that they get a sexual thrill from being acknowledged as women by men. Mostly, I think it's a combination of the queer community having relaxed sexual mores, and of biological males starting out hornier than the average biological female, but suddenly unlearning all the specifically male norms that cause men to disguise and obfuscate anything to do with their raw sexuality.
'Bob' is perhaps a different matter if she really was so taken with pornography, but 'Charlie' seems a very good example of the kind of thing I mean: boys in a state of nature love showing their willies to people, including straight boys showing theirs off to other straight boys. The only reason men don't do it to women is that society teaches them it's very, very rude indeed. (Perhaps ruder than it actually is, I daresay, but then, as I said, I have naturist leanings at a philosophical level, though the actual hobby has never appealed to me.) Now here comes 'Charlie', who, because she now holds herself to be a woman socially, no longer feels bound by the "it's very rude for a man to ask women if they want to see his willy" rule. But neither is she especially aware of a "it's very rude for a woman to ask women if they want to see her foofoo" rule; even if she knows of one, she'd would write it off as patriarchal prudishness. So the exchange you witnessed ensues.
I don't want to claim that the boyish impulse to show off one's cool willy is a wholly non-sexual one, or that this end result is okay; but I think it'd be wrong to necessarily treat expressions in trans women's behavior of this kind of spontaneous exhibitionism, or even more explicit male-style horniness, as a specific form of fetishism, or to conclude that they're sneakily getting off all the time just from being perceived as female.
(I don't deny that some trans women arrive at their decisions through sexual fantasies; but I don't think this means that their subsequent female identification need be a purely sexual thing, in much the same way that attraction between two people can start as sexual desire and blossom into the full spectrum of romantic love. You might put on a dress because you think it's hot, then look at yourself in the mirror, and realize, oh wait, this feels right, I want this even when I don't have an erection. It might be helpful to think of a certain kind of transition as a process of falling in love with a person you're becoming.)
Oh, the perfect-platonic-essence-of-gender-written-on-your-soul approach isn't my position either.
You know, I have a very hard time believing that a heterosexual male (that is, a member of the sex responsible for a good >90% of indecent exposure arrests and unsolicited photos of their genitals sent to people they barely know) has wholly innocent reasons for inviting a female person to inspect his genitals within an hour of meeting her, even if he has maimed said genitals beyond recognition. I think you would interpret Charlie's behaviour much less charitably if he did not purport to identify as a woman, and I don't think this is at all warranted. "I identify as a woman" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card to act like a creep and a sex pest.
Yes, it would be wrong to conclude that they're doing it sneakily. Plenty of them make no secret of it.
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I think you are being dishonest. Nowhere in his post (or mine) did we indicate that we are uncomfortable with trans people "existing in our vicinity."
See, this is exactly what I am talking about. You pretend that it's all about irrational "icks" and that trans people aren't actually doing anything. Are you seriously denying that to reveal an "ick" (and I don't mean by declaring something offensive, just revealing with a slip of the tongue that you don't really think of someone as female or that you aren't wholeheartedly onboard with Trans Rights Are Human Rights) has social consequences? Do you think someone deserves to lose their social circle for not being properly aligned?
You say we're imagining hypothetical scenarios. Come on. If you pay any attention to left leaning hobby spaces ( which is almost all hobby spaces) you know it's not hypothetical what happens to someone who says JK Rowling isn't a monster, actually.
As for being inappropriately sexual, I believe you that you know lots of asexual trans people. Do you believe me that most trans people I know dress or behave in off-puttingly sexual ways, at least occasionally, in a way that seems intended to test boundaries and tolerance? Do you think this common experience is something us "transphobes" make up?
Not in SnapDragon's original post - but SnapDragon's original post began with a claim that "[his] experience with them has been dreadful". And then most of the post amounted to listing all the spaces in which he encounters a high percentage of trans people, without actual elaboration on what made his personal experience with them "dreadful". This naturally led me to suspect that it was the sheer experience of interacting with them which he deemed "dreadful", rather than any particular objectionable behavior on their part - making the framing of the argument as "I'm only so worked up about trans people because they've been awful to me" deceitful.
I'm not saying that the worry over hypothetical scenarios where SnapDragon is ostracized for gender-critical views is paranoid or irrational. But I don't think it's honest to start with "my experiences with trans activists have been dreadful", and, when pressed, admit that in fact nothing dreadful has happened to you, you're just constantly afraid that it might. Imagine a black activist saying he's only anti-white because of his personal "dreadful experiences" with white people, but, when questioned, he admits that he just means the stress of interacting with random white people with a constant background fear that they're violent racists who'll beat him up if he ever accidentally does something to offend them. I think this would be disingenuous even if we imagine our activist living in a genuinely very racist town, where that fear isn't actually irrational. He hasn't had that experience. He just hasn't.
Moreover, I took SnapDragon's reply as agreeing that he ultimately felt an "ick" about interacting with trans people ("I do find it extremely uncomfortable dealing with people who make everything about their sexuality", where, FWIW, I glossed him as equating being trans with making everything about your sexuality, not just saying that a lot of trans people happen to be over-sexed). I'm not accusing all transphobes/GCs of only being motivated by such an ick; but SnapDragon's first post gave the impression that he, in particular, was, and his second post seemed to confirm it explicitly.
Hence:
I believe you, but this is a completely different claim from the claim that being trans is inherently a sex thing and therefore discomfort with being surrounded by trans people is justifiable as discomfort with people being off-puttingly sexual in your personal space without your consent - which is what I took SnapDragon to be saying.
If he has justified fear that it might, that counts as a dreadful experience, because he has actually seen things that have good reason to make him afraid, and seeing and reacting to those things count as experiences. Your hypothetical black shouldn't be talking about his dreadful experiences because he made up the cause of the fear inside his head and the fear is not actually justified.
I don't see "being trans is in practice a sex thing" as very different from "being trans is inherently a sex thing". At least in practice it's not very different.
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Sigh. @Amadan summed things up perfectly, but for the record:
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It's being forced to participate in a blatant, obvious lie that literally every human being in history except 5 weird tribes in the middle of nowhere would recognise as a lie.
If it were publicly sayable and reified that trans people are insane and think they're the wrong gender, the existence of trans people in the vicinity would be broadly okay. One would feel sorry for them, but not necessarily feel compelled to say so to their face. The fact that there has been a vast activist-indoctrination effort to punish people who don't play along is what people find uncomfortable.
I've discussed before elsewhere but it's incredibly unpleasant to interact closely with a trans person in a Blue workplace, consciously choosing every day to lie because you're a coward who's afraid to be thrown out of the program you've invested years of work into, dreading the day when you slip up and absent-mindedly call the squeaky-voiced 5ft person who was a girl six months ago 'her'.
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If you have a large enough family, trans issues are going to happen to you at least once.
One of my cousins became trans in high school. She didn't show any sign of being masculine as a child, was a very picky eater, wanted to marry a lead singer of a boy band to the point where she plotted killing his wife... and then a year later her mother was dying and she decided that men are better able to handle such awfulness and transitioned into a boy, hormones and all.
We once pooled resources with my husband's friend to rent a house together and one of our friend's sons married a transwoman who dressed in a way that was really inappropriate all the time.
Another of that friends' sons is super autistic, didn't finish high school, and decided recently that he's a woman.
The last of that friend's children was raped as a teenager and decided to become a man in response. All three of these young adults suffered obvious physical and mental health challenges that were exacerbated by their belief they could improve their lives by trying to live as another sex.
Now I have a family reunion coming up on my husband's side, and my sister in law messaged our family to say that her oldest son was transitioning, that her husband still used masculine pronouns and my sister-in-law used female pronouns, my nephew was still using the same androgynous first name and was wearing androgynous clothes, and it was up to us how we want to prepare our children to see their cousin.
Trans people are everywhere and each individual has to figure out what to do about it. How do you address them, do you encourage them or discourage them from transitioning, do you even feel a gender? A small group of people can't just change how all of society thinks about sex and language and think, "Why do people keep talking about us?"
Nah. The closest they ever got to me was
I can confidently say that "trans people" are a fringe phenomenon at best; one that is easily explained by social contagion.
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I have a very large family and trans issues are entirely theoretical, just some weirdos that come from other, worse, families. Ditto for my in laws.
Yeah, I bet the Noem family would've said the same thing at the beginning of the year.
In the Evangelical circles you run in, this stuff is entirely theoretical right up until it isn't.
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How old is your family? What percentage is under 25 years old?
You've never even had a coworker change gender on you?
Four of my examples are from Washington State, but one is from Texas.
Not to my knowledge, maybe a former coworker changed after I left but to date the women are still women and the men are still men.
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I've had one in Australia from a pretty nerdy/biologically-male dominated industry. Also hilariously a remote dev we all kinda assumed was MTF then finally met after a year and a half and 99% sure that they're biologically female.
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Going back four generations. Probably roughly a third 20’s and younger. Keeping track of exact ages is a woman thing, thats a best guess.
No? Is this a common experience? I don’t work in big tech, I don’t think I’ve ever had a coworker transition.
Yeah kinda. A software developer who is ill fitted to their position changes gender and then for a year becomes unfire-able.
Am I just really unlucky here?
It does seem to be a tech thing, but not necessarily un-fireable; at the same time James Damore was the big public firing from Google, a less publicised case of a transman, Tim Chevalier, getting let go also happened (they tried bringing a case against Google but I think the employment contract was held to apply). Chevalier tried to claim they were being persecuted for being queer, disabled, trans, and speaking out against racism and sexism and the rest of it, but the facts seem to be that Chevalier spent more time being active on the internal chat channels being activist than doing actual work.
Chevalier actually spent a good deal of time policing the internal chat channels and making complaints against wrongthinkers. At one point he was going after people (partially successfully) for asking the wrong kind of questions at the "TGIF" company presentations from the founders and upper management. I suspect his firing was mostly because many of those on his side realized he would turn on them sooner rather than later.
I did think at the time it was very unusual for a member of a protected class (maybe multiple classes, given they were going for 'I'm trans and queer and disabled and fighting for the rights of the oppressed' as a rationale for why Google was picking on them) to get the boot, particularly when the Damore firing was such a hot topic, but the little I could dig up did suggest Chevalier was more interested in being the Thought Police than doing any coding and that's why the hammer dropped.
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You're just really unlucky or surrounded by autists in a particularly woke environment.
I've worked in tech for the last 30 years and personally know of exactly one (1) trans person (and that's not via anything work related). She had obvious autistic tendencies (severe enough to prevent holding a steady job for very long) before transitioning.
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Yeah, but the cases sited on various activist sites for TRANS DAY OF REMEMBERING WE ARE BEING GENOCIDED! really do fall into, ironically, 'typical domestic violence for cis women' bucket. A broke up with B, who went on 'if I can't have you nobody else can' retaliation. C was openly living with D who fully knew C was trans, everyone in their families knew of their relationship and had no problem with it, and then... murderation. Where it's not "sex worker who may or may not have been killed by client", it genuinely is one of the few instances where trans women are being treated like cis women.
And that's before we get into "so trans woman A and trans woman B were on-again, off-again lovers and turns out B was nutty as a fruitcake and ended up murdering A".
EDIT: I apologise if that comes across as flippant, but I've gone through some of these lists from the previous years and looked up all the cases of "E and F and G were murdered, E and F and G were trans, now we're not saying E and F and G were murdered for being trans, except we are saying that" and there were examples like "G was pushed into the road and got hit by a car driven by H who had nothing to do with G" and that is treated as "trans death", i.e. this person was trans, this person died, ergo this is another instance of a trans person dying because of transphobia and hate crimes and violence and The Genocide. The one that most made my eyes bulge out was a trans guy who was also an environmental activist, was in a camp with other activists, the camp got raided by the cops and this guy was shot while in a tent. That was treated as "murdered for being trans" where there was no way on earth the cops could have known "ah yes, the person in this tent is trans, we must deliberately target them". You can't even say "the cops deliberately shot this person", it was more "when you start shooting, bystanders get hit" kind of death.
Sometimes the lily gets gilded in these accounts for the sake of "but we must tell a few lies in order to achieve the greater good".
EDIT EDIT: Take, for example, this case:
Now, this is definitely a murder. Was it "murdered because trans/for being trans"? No, but it's being used to bump up the statistics. Sites such as this hand out lists of numbers to media outlets who then dutifully run stories on "300 [figure pulled out of the air] trans people were victims of murder last year, shocking rise in transphobic violence, stop hate crimes now, killed just for their gender identity!" when that ain't the reason. If you took only the genuine "yes, the motive for this murder was transphobia", you'd have one or maybe two (those were the most I could find out of the lists). That doesn't play so well when you're trying to sell the mainstream on "there is a transgender genocide happening!"
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It wasn't for several years, habits die hard, and the degree to which it's easier to ignore now than at its peak is going to vary wildly depending on local culture, social class, and familial considerations.
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In my experience on dating apps back in the day I did always question people who were like 85% clocky who'd try to obscure their status in app profiles. I, personally, have enough awareness of cultural cues in order to opt out of those particular matches but if I consider the reaction of somebody who's less culturally aware on account of being non-white, non-western I'd imagine that it's a dicey proposition to deceive somebody less informed and more likely to react badly on discovery.
Also transphobia is a tiresome setup. I'm moderately autistic (thus aligned with most of the trans population, there but for the grace of god go I) and whilst I'd appreciate some level of understanding I don't consider people thinking I'm weird for being eyecontact avoidant is somehow 'phobic'.
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Not the OP, but a couple of points here. I could very easily say:
(I've omitted the ostracisation part, as I don't think that's supported in my parallel; but I don't think omitting it fundamentally changes the idea.)
The above is just true. But if men then had a culture of saying there was a "male genocide", and that their society was "androphobic" because of this, I'd get very annoyed, because -- as @WandererintheWilderness says -- it's an attempt to parlay a weaker, true claim ("men are more likely to be victims of violence") into a hysterical false one ("society is systemically murdering men!!")
Part of why I'm raising the parallel: one way trans activists misrepresent this stuff is by comparing trans women to women rather than to men. IIRC, men have a higher rate of being victims of violence than trans women? (It might require some statistical stuff like "once you correct for dangerous occupations like being a sex worker", or it might just be outright; I don't remember.)
There's something kind of ridiculous about this world model:
Like... no? This isn't even epicycles; this is no model at all. The dangerous portion of being (1) trans and (2) biologically male... is not the trans part. If a soldier chooses to call themselves a "trans accountant", they don't get to go "My workplace death rate is higher than cis accountants -- this is discrimination".
I appreciate you saying so, but this does seem like a weaker formulation than what you should probably agree to. "extremely elevated risk"? Is your position that white Western trans women are at an elevated risk of murder -- possibly even a very high one -- but it just doesn't rise to the level of "extremely"? Because I'm reasonably sure the accurate version of this would just be "they aren't at an elevated risk of murder". Similarly, I wouldn't say "the trans genocide is overblown", I'd say "the trans genocide is fictitious". We can certainly discuss different patterns of violence and how they interact with being trans, but framing that as "genocide" needs to be immediately met with "you are lying for political expediency". (The generalised "you", I mean; you're not lying.)
It's also a bit of a motte and bailey: the bulk of trans activism focuses on white Western culture as performing some kind of trans genocide. Then when criticised, it becomes "Well, in this non-white, non-Western part of the world, these non-white-non-Western cultures are dangerous for trans people!" Again, you're not personally responsible for what other people are arguing; but you get how this is frustrating, right?
I don’t have a strong position this to be honest. As @hydroacetylene said below, many white western trans women probably fit the “basement dweller” archetype which significantly reduces the risk of murder. If trans people are (random number) 2x more likely than cis people to get murdered walking a random street at night, but 5x less likely than cis people to take that kind of stroll where they’d be exposed to that risk, does that count?
Again, I don’t know. I do know that I feel more uncomfortable in many situations now than before, so I’m more cautious. Maybe my risk of murder/general violence actually went down because I was completely oblivious before and the increased precautions I take counterbalance the increased risk. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. It’s hard to tell.
It’s equally frustrating for me, perhaps more so, because this kind of activitism is doing more harm than good. It’s unfortunately a common theme in identity politics, same thing happened with white middle class feminists.
Yeah, that's the flipside of what I was gesturing towards with "[making statistical corrections for] dangerous occupations like being a sex worker". I'd say that, in your hypothetical, that would indeed count! It would be a real problem.
... but it's not true. I know you said it was a "random number", but the "random numbers" we choose are typically representative of what we think are reasonable values. Trans people being 2x times for likely to be murdered for walking down the street isn't a reasonable random number. Again: cis men are more likely to be murdered than trans women! Assuming that you're a trans woman, then you are literally safer as a trans woman than your other option (i.e. being a cis man). We can discuss the hypothetical world where you receive a 2x multiplier to being randomly murdered, as long as it's on the record that this is utterly non-representative of the world we live in.
Yeah, sorry about that; that sucks.
For most trans people I know, I'd try and (incredibly carefully) gesture towards something like: "You live in a catastrophically damaged epistemic environment. The people around you take anything less than complete submission to their religion as being literally genocide. Even if you personally don't express stuff like that, the people who say these things are contributing (negatively) to the general epistemic structure around you, and it's fucking with your ability to calibrate. Even high-decoupling, disagreeable humans aren't really built to completely ignore this kind of endemic social messaging -- it's going to seep in and cause you stress, anxiety, and a constant sense of being at war."
I think that's not quite the right message for you (but I'm still going to sneak it into evidence via quotation). I have no idea what kind of environment you're in; and obviously you're, y'know, actually thinking about this stuff already. I guess I'd suggest that your impression of things like trans-related discomfort, rudeness, or social difficulties are probably picking up on a real signal -- but when you hit the threshold of violence/murder etc, there's a good chance you're massively overestimating that stuff for whatever reason. (I stress again that I don't know you or your environment; if you're in a place with atypically high violence against trans people compared to the rest of the West, probably disregard my comment.)
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Better to say, I think, that the trans genocide is a motte-and-bailey. What queer theorists mean when they discuss "trans genocide" among themselves is rarely anything to do with the murder rate - the actual analogy is to residential schools, not Auschwitz; cultural genocide, forced assimilation and reeducation, an attempt to stamp out trans as an identity. I think it's hard to argue that this isn't happening, given that a majority of conservatives on and off this forum would openly advocate for it. There's just a root disagreement about whether it's actually a bad thing or not.
(There's also a terminological dispute about whether it's ever appropriate to use "genocide" to talk about processes that don't involve literal mass murder, or if that's always, inherently, motte-and-bailey. I can see both sides of that argument, but I don't think we should over-focus on it in the trans case, because advocates of the "trans genocide" terminology are ultimately just drawing on what is, as per the Wikipedia link, a widespread use of the term in their intellectual milieu. They're doing a separate disingenuous thing when they try to bring up the sloppy statistics to justify the trans-genocide thing, deliberately blurring the line between genocide-as-murder and genocide-as-assimilation more than they need to.)
"Disingenuous" is being kind. See this example, where a death is treated as "Well it must be because the person was trans, it can't just have been an ordinary hit-and-run" from that "here's the list of our dead" transgender activist site:
If you don't feffin' know the reason, and "so much else remains unknown", then you are scaremongering with "we can't assume this was unrelated to Blair's identity". Until the driver is found, and unless it can be established they (1) knew this person (2) knew they were trans (3) wanted to kill them for being trans, we are left with "random driver immediately identified cyclist as being trans and ran them down in a homicidal rage", unless we really want to push it to "driver was driving up and down deliberately looking for random trans people who might be on the road in order to run them over".
And yet this death will be included in that list of "2025 list of transgender people dead by violence" handed out to media etc. and treated as a reputable source (just like the SPLC with their list of hate groups).
What I was describing as disingenuous was the rhetorical move where they go "a trans genocide is happening; for proof, see these examples of hate crimes against trans people". This is a classic motte-and-bailey maneuver, intended to blur the line between genocide qua mass murder, and genocide qua cultural erasure. I think "disingenuous" would be the right word even if the hate crimes being pointed at were solid cases; the validity of the anecdata wasn't what I was addressing one way or the other in that paragraph. (I agree that "disingenuous" would be an understatement for some of this stuff, but I think it's the right word for this kind of motte-and-bailey vagueness around different definitions of very loaded words like "genocide".)
So it's the same kind of word-gaming as around "racism/racist" where people use the term about "B is a racist", then go "no no no I don't mean the KKK type racist, I mean systemic racism means we are all a little bit racist" and so forth, where they damn well did intend the reader or listener to take "B is a KKK racist who would be out there lynching Black people if he gets a chance" in order to win a political point.
That's not helping the sane trans people who just want to get on with their lives.
I agree. I did say I thought it was a motte-and-bailey; that's not a compliment.
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As a person who is on the side that genocide should be intentional mass murder, we've already lost this in the mainstream. Between stuff like the residential schools, the holodomor (a tragic event but reserving scarce resources for your favored groups by taking away from your less favored groups is not murder, regardless if they die or even if the scarcity is a result of your economic incompetence), and the "Uyghur genocide", it's already clear that intentional murder or even death at all is not a requirement to how people use the phrase.
If we mean it in the most abstract cultural sense then yeah I think "trans genocide" isn't really that off, but that's largely because genocides of all types are happening then. If you genocide Muslims by banning practice of the extreme parts of their religion, then why can't zoning laws be a genocide of would be home builders? In that case, efforts to ban hormone treatment or whatever are also genocides too.
Although ofc this also does depend on the country. If you're like in Saudi Arabia where the state will death penalty you and the population will reliably chop off your head or stone you for being LGBT, then yeah I guess that's an actual real genocide there. But in the west? No. Mass violence does not happen in the west.
Edit: Importantly, not being genocide doesn't mean something is good! The oppression and collective punishment of the uyghurs, the starvation and mistreatment during the holodomor, the residential schools, etc are still bad things! I am a maximal freedom libertarian type and don't think you should be banning stuff like hormones and surgery regardless of anything like regret rates. I don't think collective punishment is ever acceptable, genocide or not. And zoning laws are still the work of the devil, even if it's not genociding home builders.
Plenty of Uyghurs have been intentionally murdered by the CCP.
Even the Wikipedia page for it doesn't allege that as an actual common thing.
In all the stuff they list, none of them are death or murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
You can check with other major sources, even the stuff actively calling it genocide won't allege that there is mass murder.
This is a UK tribunal literally calling it genocide and they still concluded that mass killings didn't occur and most end up freed. There have been a very small number killed by guards or whatever, but some prison guards beating people to death is not the same as widespread murder policy.
This article from 2020 claims that China conducts in excess of 60,000 organ transplants a year, including for vital organs like hearts. Given that this is vastly in excess of the number of people on the voluntary transplant list, and the number of people killed in traffic accidents or executed in conventional prisons isn't sufficient to meet demand, it logically follows that China must be killing, at the minimum, thousands of Uyghurs every year in order to harvest their organs.
Taking Falun Gong complaints seriously makes me immediately distrustful of any numbers the article wants to throw out. Falun Gong claims that they are being harvested by extra dimensional aliens who have taken over and corrupted society in order to use human bodies (which are the best bodies in all the dimensions apparently) and they are especially targeted because their bodies are extra perfect. It is impossible to trust their numbers and claims about organ harvesting.
And yes that is seriously what they believe https://time.com/archive/6954898/interview-with-li-hongzhi-2/
If someone is saying Falun Gong complaints around organ harvesting are serious and truthful, there is no reason to believe they have a good epistemic hygiene and solid sourcing with their claims about Ughyurs.
Especially when it's not backed up by any other mainstream claimers of genocide! That's the important thing here, the only claim of mass organ harvesting of Uyghurs is also from a dude stupid enough to fall for "the extra dimension aliens are harvesting our organs". Maybe he's just stupid.
Does the data about the number of organ transplants per year come from Falun Gong?
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It may be that they die in custody without being actively executed, though I agree that there's a certain level of "herding people like cattle and torturing them to such an extent that they die in droves" that becomes indistinguishable from mass murder whether or not gas chambers and firing squads are involved.
The article also alleges that people have been told, in effect, "go to this hospital on this date and there will be a heart waiting for you", which is the kind of specificity that implies people are being executed.
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Would it be useful to compare this to the Christian Genocide, for which I am confident an equivalent and much more strongly-evidenced argument could be made? I have examples of Christians who show themselves in public being beaten by uniformed thugs while the police look the other way in Blue territory. Does that sort of thing happen to Trans people in Red territory?
Would the above argument be one you likewise see both sides of?
Well, I don't think mainstream Blues in America have "we should make all Christians renounce the faith and ban indoctrinating children into Christianity" as an explicit or even implicit goal in the way that a lot of mainstream Reds would proudly endorse "we should make all transgenders detransition and ban indoctrinating children into questioning their gender" as reflective of their agenda and beliefs. And as I said, I think that such large-scale policies are much better grounding for a cultural-genocide claims that acts of individual violence - i.e. whatever degree of validity the "trans genocide" case enjoys, it rests on the existence of political will towards dissolving trans identity, not on anecdotal claims of thugs beating people up.
But certainly, to the extent that policies intended to erase Christians as a cultural identity exist, there is a valid case that they would fit the bill of "cultural genocide" as leftist theory defines it. For example, I think that to the extent that the application of "genocide" to crimes that aren't literal mass murder is ever reasonable, it's reasonable to call Muslim jihadis genocidal even if they ideally want to forcibly convert all infidels rather than slaughter them.
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Not sure about violence, but a per capita analysis shows that cis American men are more likely to be murdered that trans-identifying American males.
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Not the OP, but five or six years ago, I was on the side of supporting transition and never criticizing it. After that, I became interested in the issue because of several factors that came together.
So, if the school or state is silently aiding a child in transitioning - and, for the sake of a thought experiment, let’s say it’s my child - does that really look like an issue I can ignore? I don’t think the people who push this policy in schools are ignoring me; they are putting me in a position where I have to take some sort of stance.
Not all of us. The sentiment is sadly common, but I wouldn't call it a consensus, there's very much an alternative, more positive viewpoint floating around - e.g. the whole "Cis+" concept.
It may not apply to literally everyone in the community - people differ and hold different views - but effectively, there is an atmosphere of fear around being ostracized for questioning anything. Many people share my views in private (which are much more liberal than FtttG, for example), but are afraid to dissent, because if they do, they cease to be a good person in the eyes of their peers and colleagues.
Are you saying people are more liberal than me, or your views are more liberal than mine?
I personally know many people that share my views, that I think are more liberal than yours
Hmm. Opinions about trans issues in particular?
Yes! It's your hobby-horse, as you put it yourself, so I think it's pretty much your only set of opinions that I can coherently judge
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Well, that's one thing. What I'm saying is that there's no consensus on equating personal detransition with questioning the overall construct. There are trans spaces where even "I thought that I was trans but I'm not" is viewed with suspicion, but equally, there are many where it's viewed as a perfectly valid thing to say, so long as it doesn't entail doubting other people.
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There are a range of answers I could give to this question, some very flattering to me and my worldview, some much less so. The answer that feels most honest is that I have this thing where, when I see people proudly, confidently asserting things I know to be false (especially in a calculating, emotionally manipulative way), I feel this compulsion to push back and say no, that's not true, and I can prove it. Covid brought out the same compulsion in me. Basically this comic.
Another part of it is a sort of Emperor's new clothes/"are you seeing this shit?" effect, where something stands out to me plain as day, but it feels like everyone around me is tiptoeing around it and trying not to Notice™ or draw attention to it.
I commend your honesty.
Yeah but people do this about everything! Covid affected everyone so it’s understandable, but trans people aren’t very common outside of a few specific scenes.
Mostly I’m curious because many gender critical people seem very invested in this issue, certainly more than I am, and it’s hard for me to understand why if you don’t have a personal link to it.
Sometimes I pose to people a hypothetical: how willing would you be to vote for a political party, if in general they align with you quite well, and endorse all your niche little political positions, and seem to be competent and reasonable... but also, they want to redefine pi to be equal to 3.
That's the only problem. They think pi being 3.141 whatever is a bunch of stupid bullshit for nerds who've never had sex, and life would be much easier if it was 3.
It's an interesting hypothetical to pose, because a lot of people (especially left-liberals, in my experience) do see this as a deal-breaker. I don't know if it would be in actual practice, but they realize that they are supposed to say they believe in science and experts and whatever, and vocalizing that they would support a party committed to something so unambiguously, objectively wrong tugs at them the wrong way. Especially because it is a sort of nonsense idea that would never happen in reality (see a lot of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the red vs blue button debate).
Now, sometimes this is a preamble to me explaining that progressive dogma on trans people sometimes feels like declaring pi to be 3 to me. Or maybe I'm talking to someone more conservative about global warming or vaccines instead. But the point is that it feels very difficult to endorse someone for a leadership position when they are so nakedly willing to stare truth in the eyes and declare it a lie. They are so obviously choosing to preserve the structure of their worldview than admit an uncomfortable truth. That's the kind of thing that can breed the worst kinds of radicalism.
Maybe it irks me to an unreasonable degree, but it seems to me a particularly salient example of this kind of thinking.
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True, but also: no!
@FtttG's description resonated with me a lot (thanks for putting it to words).
I think you (rae) are right that the median person does feel a compulsion to push back on things they think are wrong. But... does the typical pushback on social media look anything like the Motte (in its best, idealised form)? Most popular pushback takes the form "your political bloc is dumb and stupid and evil, here's why".
Everyone (including people like me, and presumably FtttG) probably feels an urge to drop zingers on people who say dumb/evil things, and to push back against our tribal enemies. Call this "Pushback Type 1". PT1 lets us feel smart and good, and signal to our tribe that we are smart and good, and to enjoy the schadenfreude of our enemy getting squished. This is probably a universal thing that people are predisposed to like.
I think the thing FtttG is referring to is distinct. Call it "Pushback Type 2". PT2 is about criticising what we think is false even if (a) it can't be done in a crisp, devastating zinger, (b) it doesn't help some tribe we're aligned with, and (c) we don't get to enjoy having put someone down a peg. It's the obsessiveness of going: "This person is wrong, I don't care if the whole world is behind them; I need to explain why!"
The Motte is fuelled by a proprietary blend of PT2 spiked by PT1 (the exact formula is a closely-guarded secret).
There's still the question of why trans stuff specifically has captured FtttG. Obviously that's not for me to say, but a general explanation would be: people with PT2 inclinations can get sniped by any particular instance of falsehoods; it's a crapshoot.
... but I'd also then say: to me, trans stuff is the quintessential example of people "proudly, confidently asserting things I know to be false". I can't think of a stronger example. It's as ontologically broken as transubstantiation.
(I'm very sympathetic to your position of trans people basically wanting to be left alone, btw.)
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I mean, sure, but lots of people get intensely emotionally invested in issues that have zero practical impact on their lives. I'd hazard a guess that an outright majority of Westerners attending pro-Palestine marches in the last two and a half years have never met a Palestinian or an Israeli, much less been to the region. In absolute terms gender ideology has a minimal impact on my life, but it has a far greater impact on my life than the death of George Floyd had on any given Irish person, which didn't stop hundreds if not thousands of Irish people attending BLM protests at the height of Covid.
I've long felt that "why do you care about this, it doesn't even affect you" is a textbook Russell conjugation. Caring about the people affected by an issue, even if it doesn't affect me personally? I thought we used to call that "empathy".
In my defense, I’d have the same reaction to a westerner with no links to the topic regularly attending pro-Palestine marches or an Irish person attending BLM rallies.
But also, I personally want people to be less interested in trans issues, so it would be in my benefit to have you care less about this.
But your attention is limited and you have to pick your battles, so why this one? Effective altruist types will go by maximum impact/effort and end up donating 10% of their income to shrimp welfare, but most of us generally have to have a reason to care about a specific topic, and I think it’s important to look at why you’re invested in a specific cause.
Like if you’re an Irish person marching for BLM, it’s useful to realise whether you are actually doing it because you care about African Americans, or because it was the trendy thing to do.
Have I got a link for you!
(Seriously, the extent to which our chattering class and wannabe activists have been taken over by
mind flayer larvaeAmerican progressive talking points, you would not believe).I mean, the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and the Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, so...
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Well, I do donate 10% of my post-tax income to charity, I have done for years, and none of that money has ever gone towards e.g. a think tank trying to combat the intrusion of gender ideology into schools. To the extent that this is my hobby horse, all I mean is that I sometimes discuss it on a pseudonymous internet forum and on my blog. Frankly, I think I have my priorities in order.
I certainly don't think I could be accused of taking on this hobby horse because it's "trendy". If anything I'd say it has more to do with my reflexive contrarian streak. I've been a "well actually" devil's advocate gadfly type for as long as I can remember.
Why?
That’s fine, again it was genuine curiosity, not me trying to discredit you.
In my opinion, the increased attention, both positive and negative, has made things worse for trans people. I don’t want to have trans scissor statements in the media so that woke people can show their support, I don’t want pronouns in bio, I don’t want my medical condition to be in the spotlight and have it become politicised with everyone having to have a take on it. I want people who are indifferent, not allies who go out of their way to make me feel “accepted”.
That's fair. I sincerely apologise if I came off as hostile or defensive.
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