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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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Why is that trans activists' attempts at "gotchas" always reside solely in the realm of the hypothetical?

Firstable, that question was not an attempt at a 'gotcha', so much as a request for clarification of your particular definition of 'sex'.

Secondable, it is not necessarily hypothetical; any chirurgeon will tell you that human organs never look like the diagrams in medical textbooks: there are always variations, and sometimes they can both be very weird and go unnoticed until the body is scanned or opened up for some other reason. I have even heard of men who were born with all the visible male parts, never considered that they were anything other than men, fathered children, and then went to hospital for some procedure and found out that they had been carrying around uteruses for seventy years!

Thirdable, I believe that the Rightful Caliph has written a defence of the use of hypotheticals in argument.

I continue to insist that asserting that one's sex ought to be kept "private" is a meaningless demand when, in 99% of cases, it can be reliably inferred at a glance.

א, cis individuals outnumber trans individuals by such a degree that, given a sample drawn from the population at large, one can get past 90% just with their gender identity.

ב, Do I need to tap the sign?

given how many trans people will openly announce "I am a trans [woman]/[man]"

I am not claiming that biological sex be kept private at all times; I am saying that the choice should be left to the individual. If Alice wants to declare her transness to everyone, Betty wants to keep it a closely guarded secret, and Carol wants to tell her friends and the readers of her blog but not strangers in the shops when she wants to empty her bladder, their decisions should all be respected.

Returning to the analogy with other forms of medical confidentiality, if Daniel wants to post his entire medical history on his website for everyone and their brother to peruse, he is welcome to do so; other people are disallowed from making that decision for him.

ב, Do I need to tap the sign?

I don't know what this is supposed to mean.

I have even heard of men who were born with all the visible male parts, never considered that they were anything other than men, fathered children, and then went to hospital for some procedure and found out that they had been carrying around uteruses for seventy years!

Some concrete examples or citations would be appreciated. The sex-is-a-spectrum people routinely claim such edge cases exist and then are unable to dredge up even a Weekly World News article.