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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8831 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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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"?

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 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?

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.

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?

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.

I do know that I feel more uncomfortable in many situations now than before (...) Maybe I’m just being paranoid. It’s hard to tell.

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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