This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
No, the table lists the perpetrators' natal sex. (I wish we could just say "sex" rather than "natal sex": the sex you're born with is the sex you're stuck with.) Of the 20 transgender murderers, two were female (i.e. trans men).
If, as is my understanding, a distinction between 'sex' and 'gender' uses 'sex' to refer to biological factors and 'gender' to refer to mental and social factors, then biological sex is a combination of things, some of which we currently have the ability to change and some of which we do not.
If one defines 'sex' as "If I look between this person's legs (and don't get a face full of pepper spray), will I see a tallywhacker or a hoo-ha?", at least 5% and possibly as many as 13% of trans individuals (per statistics linked in a previous post by above) have changed sex from that with which they were born, and an unknown fraction more retain the sex with which they were born only due to lack of opportunity.
Well, that's not how any sensible person would define sex, so I really don't know why you're bringing up this hypothetical scenario.
I've made it abundantly, abundantly clear to you that when I use the term "sex", I'm referring to whether a person was born with the organs associated with the production of large or small gametes, even if faulty. Obviously one cannot change what organs one was born with, and medical technology currently admits of no way to transform organs which produce large gametes into organs which produce small gametes, or vice versa. If you were born with functioning testicles, the only kind of gamete you will ever be able to produce throughout your life is a small one, and emasculating yourself doesn't change that.
Your continued insistence on trying to imply that, by virtue of being gender-critical, I'm therefore a sex pest obsessed with the genitals of complete strangers is not just tiresome and dishonest, but also profoundly immature. If this is the best rebuttal you can think of, maybe just don't bother.
As an aside: your contention that the configuration of the genitals belonging to trans-identified males are some kind of jealously guarded secret is not at all consonant with my experience. This is information that trans-identified males seem disproportionately keen to volunteer, even (especially) to those who have expressed no desire to hear about it (that is, if the legions of such people inviting TERFs to "choke on my girldick" and similar are any indication).
It's how they define it when a baby is assigned male or female.
To the best of my knowledge, when parents ask whether they had a boy or a girl, doctors and midwives do not generally take biopsies from the gonads of infants and culture them to see what size gametes they produce.
They usually look between the legs to see whether they find a sticky-outy bit or a hole.
Skill issue.
I do not accuse you of acting out of carnal desire. However, the fact that you are not thus motivated does not change the fact that other people's organs are none of your business. The reproductive system is considered especially private in most societies, but you would still be out of line if you insisted that people use bathrooms corresponding to the configuration at birth of their heart or kidneys.
If someone wants access to your medical records, do you think they should need a Good Reason, or is the fact that they are not touching themself sufficient justification?
If some wants to know the PIN for your bank card, not out of an intention to use it for fraud, but because they think it relevant whether it is a prime/square/triangular number, does the fact that they are not technically a thief mean that they are justified in prying it out of you?
I do not contend that all trans-women keep the state of their genitals secret, so much as that an individual trans-woman ought to have the right to decide for herself whether and when to disclose it.
Sincerely – what on earth are you talking about?
If the PIN for my bank card was tattooed on my forehead in 60pt characters and I didn't wear a beanie or a burqa, it would be meaningless to demand that people respect my privacy.
When we were struggling to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, a child born with cystic fibrosis had little chance of seeing their fiftieth birthday. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of our not yet having discovered the three ___caftors.
When the United Nations was founded, almost everyone contracted measles before they reached adulthood. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of our not yet having developed the measles vaccine.
When the first airplane flew, infected wounds were often terminal conditions. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of Mr Fleming not yet having invented antibiotics.
When the first telegraph cable was laid across the Atlantic, that events in Halifax could be known to Dubliners within the hour, anyone bitten by a rabid animal had no possibility of survival. This was not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; it was the result of M. Pasteur not yet having developed the rabies vaccine.
Our inability for someone born with small-gamete-producing organs to produce large gametes is not an inherent, unalterable law of the universe; we just haven't figured out how. (Yet. Growth mindset!)
"For every problem the Lord has made, He has also made a solution." --Thomas Edison
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bang its arse on the ground.
You can't always tell what gamete-producing organs someone had at birth. If you saw this woman in a crowd of women, and were not previously familiar with her, I highly doubt that you could clearly identify her as the one individual among them who was born with small-gamete-producing organs.
I will quote myself:
What constitutes a sensible course of action varies depending on a society's current tech level. You are correct that we can treat medical conditions now that we once could not. But don't you agree it would be phenomenally irresponsible to go back in time before the invention of the telegraph and urge a small child to play with a dog that was visibly foaming at the mouth?
If and when it becomes possible to transplant ovaries and uteri from female donors into male recipients such that trans-identified males can actually get pregnant and bear children, that technological development will surely have dramatic ramifications for our society. But that day hasn't arrived yet, it seems profoundly unlikely to arrive in either of our lifetimes, and I can't rule out the possibility that it never will.
I think it makes sense to promote policies that will produce the best outcomes for our current tech level, not the hypothetical future tech level a few decades away. If you went back in time to the pre-telegraph era, urged a small child to play with a visibly rabid dog, and the child contracted rabies and died – I can't imagine the child's parents would be mollified by your assertion that a reliable treatment for rabies was just around the corner, even if that's true. By the same token, perhaps in the future medical technology will advance to the point that people born male can literally become female (and vice versa) – but they can't now, and it's foolish to act as if they can and design policies on that basis.
You're the one who brought up gamete-producing organs. If you asked someone at any time prior to the invention of the microscope what the biological definition of 'male' and 'female' are, they would point to the configuration of the parts between the legs. I can think of no reason for preferring your definition over the classical one as the One True Criterion Of Biological Sex that would apply in any society in which either both or neither were changeable; thus I can only come to one of two conclusions:
You started with the assumption that biological sex is both unchangeable and single-variable, chose 'gamete-producing organs' as your dividing line because we do not yet know how to fully transition them, and, having chosen that as the definition of biological sex, used it to support your claim that biological sex is unchangeable.
You have some valid reason, which would have applied even prior to the development of what, even thirty years ago, was called a 'sex-change operation', for favouring one definition over another, but that reason is entirely beyond what I can derive from the extent of my knowledge.
I am not assuming that (1.) is the case, but if it is (2.), can you spell out your reasoning for defining sex on the basis of gamete-producing organs?
I wouldn't think that advisable even now. I just don't think letting trans-women use the ladies' room is equivalent to that.
Wrong. You seem to have this idea that I'm carving up categories in a convoluted and unintuitive fashion with the specific aim of disenfranchising and ostracizing trans people. That is, you think I'm the mirror image of trans people, who start with the end goal of including males in the category of "women" and work backwards to produce a definition that satisfies that goal, even if it's a contrived one that doesn't match common usage. (Given you're so fond of quoting the Sequences, I'll note that Eliezer points out you can never come up with a truly rational answer if you already know what the answer is "supposed" to be at the beginning of your chain of "reasoning".)
Rather, my gamete-based definition of sex is the one used by biologists and zoologists when examining every sexually reproductive species other than humans: no one thinks that a female giraffe is "any giraffe who identifies as a female giraffe" or some such nonsense. (See Dawkins and Wright for more information.) Humans are mammals, and I have yet to see a persuasive argument why our sexual categories should not be defined in the same way as those of all other mammals are. ("Because it makes some people sad" is not a persuasive argument, even if Scott seems to think so.)
The gamete-based definition of sex is the one that biologists and zoologists use. According to that definition, no trans-identified male is female, nor will become so in either of our lifetimes. In the event that we reach the tech level that enables us to do this, we may have to revise our categories such that people born male but now capable of producing large gametes are considered literally female. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it, and given the current state of the art it doesn't strike me as an especially pressing issue. To the best of my knowledge, no one has even attempted to transplant a uterus, ovaries etc. into a male human recipient, never mind done so successfully such that the male recipient actually can menstruate, become pregnant etc.
Is your contention that the entire medical community made the wrong call when they started referring to these procedures as "gender reassignment" or "gender-affirming" surgeries?
"People in the past used to call things by misleading or inaccurate names – therefore we should continue doing so today". By this "logic", we ought to refer to Native Americans as "Indians", people with Down's syndrome as "mongoloids", Inuits as "Eskimos", rubella as "German measles" and so on. I find it very strange how you freely recognise that people in the past were more ignorant than we are now, but only selectively. I mean, seriously: "the first name applied to something always captures the true Platonic essence of that thing and is never inaccurate or misleading in any way" is one hell of a hot take. Has it never occurred to you that people can be mistaken? Even doctors and surgeons? History is littered with examples of trained medical professionals being mistaken about matters of far graver import than simple naming conventions.
If I'm reading you correctly, you seem to believe that every male who undergoes bottom surgery literally becomes female. I will emphasise that, even if we insist on defining sex according to what's in between your legs, emasculated males are not female. The absence of a penis is not the same thing as the presence of a vagina. Per your genital-based definition of sex, it is currently possible to change one's sex, but only to change it from "male" to "neuter". If you want to say that emasculated men are neither male nor female – well, I still think it's a rather convoluted way of looking at it, but I would object to it less than the claim that emasculated males are literally female.
And here's the part where you tell me that trans-identified males haven't just emasculated themselves, but also undergone bottom surgery which bestowed vaginas upon them. Sorry, not having it. A neovagina is a crude imitation of a vagina, not the genuine article. Everyone with a neovagina will need to dilate it for several hours a day to prevent it from closing up as the open wound that it is. A trans-identified male whose neovagina was bleeding for five consecutive days would be strongly advised to seek medical attention: for a female person, this is called "menstruation". When a symptom of grave illness for one organ looks exactly like normal bodily function for another organ, I think it's fair to say the two organs should not be placed in the same category.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link