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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   23995 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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Texas's new required school reading list includes stories from the Bible

Texas is the first state to establish such a list, as others generally give wide latitude to school districts and boards to select their own texts.

There are fourteen stories, listed in order of grade level: Jonah and the Whale (Jonah 1:1-5, 10-17, 2:10), David and Goliath (excerpt from The Children's Book of Heroes), Daniel and the Lion's Den (Children's Adapted Version), The Necessity of Humility (Luke 14:7-11), Moses (Exodus 3, 14), Do Not Be Anxious (Matthew 6:25-34), The Shepherd's Psalm (Psalms 23), Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), To Everything There is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3), Lamentations 3, The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), Job (Job 1-7, 11, 14, 19, 28, 38-42), Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3), The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13).

They also select a variety of translations: the New International Reader's Version, which is for a third-grade reading level, the English Standard Version, the King James Version, and the Jewish Publication Society. The ESV/KJV have their own history as evangelical texts; this is why there are so many parochial Catholic schools, though it's doubtful whether modern Catholics (who make up ~22% of Texas's population) care as much.

Teaching Biblical stories as cultural or historical texts does not violate the 1st amendment. Certainly the Bible is the most influential book in Western thought and has relevance to any serious study of literature and history. That being said, certain passages err on the side of theology and perhaps should be avoided outside of a comparative religion course. And some atheists will be disappointed that the more controversial passages have been excluded.

I've long thought that an AP-Theology course would be a great idea at the high school level. An easy dunk of a 5 for well educated religious kids who know their bible, helps non-religious kids learn about the world, helps sell Conservatives on public education. Just an easy all around win.

Wait, you guys don't do theology in highschool?

Not in the slightest.

I remember telling otherwise intelligent kids at a selective private college that Jesus was Jewish, and they were confused.

Incredible

Religion is such an important part of history and many modern cultures; we're absolutely doing kids a disservice by not teaching it.

Of course, the problem is, how much does one trust teachers to teach this properly, from one angle or another?

In my high school in a blue district of a blue state we read Genesis chapter one. The King James Bible was a major influence on the written English language and is suitable for study in an English class. Which I understand is different than mandating teaching exclusively Christian theology.

Since you mention teaching Christian theology...

My high school American history teacher, when we were talking about the Puritans settling Massachusetts, spent most of one class period spelling out Puritan theology and how these historical Puritans applied it in their lives. He got it absolutely accurate, in such detail that I left that class convinced he was a Christian himself! But, some time later (after I was no longer taking his class), I found out that he's an atheist! That increased my respect for him in one way: he understood very well how important Christian doctrine was to American history.

One of the strongest signs of intelligence is the ability to present views you reject in a way that resonates with actual adherents of the view.

A person's background and prior experiences tend to colour their entire outlook, and for a large contingent of reddit atheists, it's pure trauma and resentment. Most will struggle (and make no conscious effort) to separate their emotions from their reading of religious tradition.

The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13).

From this it sounds like they will miss all the nuance. Luther rendered it as „Liebe,” but King James Version gave „charity.” The greek is agape which at the time seemed to mean not love as an emotion, but the condition of being in a pact of mutual cooperation with someone else. It relates most strongly to the requirement to „be in Christ,” that is, in a covenant or pact with Christ. One of the most major statements of Christ's divinity is when the Father uses this verb to state what is translated as „he is my beloved” in King James. It actually meant the Son was „in” the Father, as in a covenant.

Anyway, agape was not an emotional state but rather a perpetual action by a subject which requires an object. The object is not stated explicitly in 1 Cor 13, but it is implied that it is Christ or the church, not just a general exhortation to be a hippy. This is important because it has rebellious undertones that are impossible to extricate without adulterating the meaning. The same verb is used in Matthew 6:24 which states no man can serve two masters. Essentially the point is Paul is telling them they must place Christ above the state and money or their deeds are worthless. This has real implications beyond a feeling. Applied today, it's to tell the children that they must not be loyal to the government of the United States or its constitution or its capitalist market, but rather must donate their lives in the service of furthering the will of Jesus Christ. Paul is saying that any modern church that tolerates laws which diverge from the will of Christ are illegitimate and if one does not believe and indeed act on this, one's whole church is futile, there will be no heavenly reward and one's faith is entirely nullified.

I am sure they are not teaching that their own government is an infidel state for a litany of laws that mean it must be regarded as a occupying foreign nation which merely is payed its taxes but nothing more, as actual Christians treated the Roman state. So therefore they are adulterating the passage and failing to teach its true meaning.

So therefore they are adulterating the passage and failing to teach its true meaning.

That's kind of my problem with this plan in a nutshell. The bible is a tough read. You've got this very old-fashioned text, which probably began as some sort of oral history, only later written down by various different people at different times. Then that gets translated from paleo-Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then finally to English. On top of which, a lot of it is just plain confusing, with complex metaphors and moral lessons that only made sense from the point of view of a bronze age tribe living a harsh life. From my point of view as an atheist, some of it is fascinating and great reading, but some other parts are a horrible mess or just plain boring. I don't think it should be used to teach kids reading, because they're inevitably going to misunderstand it. I don't even trust most high school teachers to properly understand it- there's a good reason that theology and bible study is its own unique discipline.

You've got this very old-fashioned text, which probably began as some sort of oral history, only later written down by various different people at different times.

That's the point. Are you going to teach the Bible as ancient book written by ancient Near Easterners for ancient Near Easterners, or as infallible guide for all men of all times and places? Even if you mandate one, how you are going to monitor the teachers to do not thwart it into the other?

I mean, I would hope that they're just teaching it as a text like any other, and letting students make up their own mind about what it means. But I'd be worried that Texas is trying to mandate it into the latter.

I don't even trust most high school teachers to properly understand it

We had the littlest bit of Bible reading in my high school long ago and I recall my teacher having quite the shallow understanding.

Yes, a truly academic approach is classicist in nature. The students should be taught Ancient Greek and should read widely the texts written in it, and they should compare the New Testament and its actual language to the meanings found in other writings using that language around the time. The translations into modern languages are bad, as are most translation. Even English translations of Nietzsche are terrible, and he's modern and wrote in a living language still used by multiple nations. The main English translator of him turned his bioessentialism into self help garbage, what do you think they did to the Bible over the course of thousands of years then?

Kids spend so much time in school and language learning is accessible enough by little kids that I don't see why they don't do this, other than simply being excessively stupid as people by their nature. Even that probably does not explain it, because there are 90 IQ Muslim countries that teach children French, classical Arabic, modern standard Arabic, and an Arabic dialect. And then many of these people end up speaking English or German as adults too, to emigrate.

Very few 90 IQ students are learning French, Modern Standard Arabic, and classical Arabic. "An Arabic dialect" is their native language. MSA is a formal version they learn in grammar class and use nowhere else, and classical Arabic they only get from the Quran and most don't understand it any better than the average English speaker can follow King James Bible English. A version of French is learned by Arabs in North Africa but usually just enough to kind of get by.

You have an extremely exaggerated idea of how easy it is to become multilingual. And teaching elementary students a useless dead language to satisfy some classicism fetish would be a complete waste of time. They can learn Ancient Greek in college if they have an interest in it (but then you'd probably mock them for studying useless humanities).

extremely exaggerated idea of how easy it is to become multilingual.

I think it takes hundreds of hours, but those hours are themselves easy, unlike math. Such that, young children can complete those hours, whereas they often can't grasp algebra at all, so algebra hours have to wait. The thing about the Muslim countries I refer to is that they don't learn as much about Martin Luther King Jr., the American Revolution, or the reproductive cycle of flowering plants in elementary school while trying to get up to 400 hours of French study. There is a trade off but imo a foreign language is a skill and knowing factoids about history, American or Algerian, is not.

I think it takes hundreds of hours, but those hours are themselves easy, unlike math

More like one or two thousand for each language.

If that were true I wouldn't be writing in English right now. One or two thousand is for a European language to reach N1 Japanese, maybe. Especially if they don't use cutting edge methods. With efficient methods I've heard you can get it down to 700 or 800 hours. An English speaker doesn't need more than 400 good hours to learn French. Classical European languages will probably be in the higher 3 figures. Importantly, you don't have to be able to speak them, which actually saves time.

You probably have one or two thousand hours of reading just this forum.

I think it takes hundreds of hours, but those hours are themselves easy, unlike math. Such that, young children can complete those hours, whereas they often can't grasp algebra at all, so algebra hours have to wait.

Then why is it that so many students who spend hundreds of hours studying a foreign language in school come out the other end not knowing how to speak them?

Most kids have the capacity to learn a language really easily, because humans are designed to learn to talk. They don't have the capacity to learn two. At best, the second language overwrites the first language and they forget their native tongue (as happens to very young immigrants) or they completely forget the second language once they are no longer required to study it (as happens to millions of American students who take French or Spanish in high school). At worst, they end up speaking a shitty creole of both languages (e.g. Spanglish).

From "The Myth of 'They Weren't Ever Taught…'" by Education Realist:

All teachers working in low-ability populations go through a discovery process.

Stage One: I will describe this stage for algebra I teachers, but plug in reading, geometry, writing, science, any subject you choose, with the relevant details. This stage begins when teachers realize that easily half the class adds the numerators and denominators when adding fractions, doesn’t see the difference between 3-5 and 5-3, counts on fingers to add 8 and 6, and looks blank when asked what 7 times 3 is.

Ah, they think. The kids weren’t ever taught fractions and basic math facts! What the hell are these other teachers doing, then, taking a salary for showing the kids movies and playing Math Bingo? Insanity on the public penny. But hey, helping these kids, teaching them properly, is the reason they became teachers in the first place. So they push their schedule back, what, two weeks? Three? And go through fraction operations, reciprocals, negative numbers, the meaning of subtraction, a few properties of equality, and just wallow in the glories of basic arithmetic. Some use manipulatives, others use drills and games to increase engagement, but whatever the method, they’re basking in the glow of knowledge that they are Closing the Gap, that their kids are finally getting the attention that privileged suburban students get by virtue of their summer enrichment and more expensive teachers.

At first, it seems to work. The kids beam and say, “You explain it so much better than my last teacher did!” and the quizzes seem to show real progress. Phew! Now it’s possible to get on to teaching algebra, rather than the material the kids just hadn’t been taught.

But then, a few weeks later, the kids go back to ignoring the difference between 3-5 and 5-3. Furthermore, despite hours of explanation and practice, half the class seems to do no better than toss a coin to make the call on positive or negative slopes. Many students who demonstrated mastery of distributing multiplication over addition are now making a complete hash of the process in multi-step equations. And many students are still counting on their fingers.

It’s as if they weren’t taught at all.

But teachers are resilient. They redouble their efforts. They spend additional time on “warm-up” questions, they “activate prior knowledge” to reteach even the simple subjects that have apparently been forgotten, and they pull down all the kaleidoscopic, mathy posters and psychology-boosting epigrams they’d hung up in their optimistic naivete and paper the walls with colorful images formulas and algorithms.

They see progress in the areas they review—until they realize that the kids now have lost knowledge in the areas that weren’t being taught for the first time or in review, much as if the new activity caused them to overwrite the original files with the new information.

At some point, all teachers realize they are playing Whack-a-Mole in reverse, that the moles are never all up. Any new learning seems to overwrite or at best confuse the old learning, like an insufficient hard drive.

That’s when they get it: the kids were taught. They just forgot it all, just as they’re going to forget what they were taught this year.

From "Language is Culture" by Spandrell:

Mr. Lee held the popular idea that language was a zero-sum game? No, Mr. Lee understood the commonsensical idea that your brain has limited storage capacity. Like anything else. Your brain is made of atoms. It is not made of magic. It is not made of godly dust. It is a material thing. It is, in a sense, a container of information, and information takes space. It obviously does in computers; pray tell, NYT, why the brain should have infinite capacity? It doesn't make sense.

Now I don't know if LKY thought of it in these terms. I think that, as a language learner, he went by experience. I guess the more time he spent practicing Mandarin, or Hokkien, or Malay, the worse his English prose got. And that's exactly how it works. Happens to me all the time, and happens to anyone who uses 2 or more languages regularly. The more different the languages, the less commons structures they share, the more acute the problem. Again, there is no reason why it should not be so. Information takes space. It isn't hard.

Alas, it is true that academic linguists will not tell you this, even though they probably did in the 1950s. That is not because common sense has been "refuted". It is because since the 1960s academia has morphed into a worldwide racket of fraud and deceit. If you read this blog you already know that; economics is bogus, climate science is bogus, psychology is bogus; even more than half of medical papers are bogus. Well, surprise surprise, linguistics is also bogus. The language learning industry is huge. There's a lot of money in telling people that the brain is made of magic dust, that they can learn whatever they want whenever they want, as long as they give you money. 3 languages at the same time? Go for it! Kids are like sponges, they can learn anything. No, they can't.

Now of course, all human traits are distributed in a Gaussian curve. Some kids are pretty good, can learn 3 or 4 languages given some exposure. Some can't even speak 1 language properly by the time they enter primary school. Lee Kuan Yew, who was in charge of spending Singapore's money, realized he didn't have money to waste, and he took what was the most rational decision: let's focus on having everyone learn English, then let's make some half-assed effort at teaching a "mother tongue"; mostly for political reasons, so tribalists didn't complain. Some kids will learn the mother tongue well; most won't. Not the government's problem. Lee Kuan Yew was CEO and what he wanted was an efficient workforce, so English it was. And English he got. Well, kind of.

Japanese researchers, fortunately isolated from their American comrades because of their ineptitude at learning English, have long found that Brazilian immigrants in Japan often end up not bilingual, but "halflingual". They end up speaking shitty Portuguese and even shittier Japanese. Because Japanese is hard, they don't speak it at home, and whatever they speak at home tends to have very low vocabulary levels. So they end up sounding retarded even if they really aren't.

You know who else sounds retarded? Singaporeans. OK, sorry, that's overly harsh. I apologize to my Singaporean readers, I love you all. But I had to say it. With all due respect, Singaporeans in general don't speak proper English. They speak Singlish, which is a pidgin English with a fair amount of Chinese grammar and vocabulary baked in, and a pretty weird (and what sounds to me a pretty big Indian influence) pronunciation. As you may remember, even Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, by every account a 150 IQ genius, speaks what can only be described as pretty goofy English. Again, it's not their fault, it's just the unintended consequence of public language policy.

How did this happen? By forcing diglossia (widespread bilingualism) on Singapore. After independence most people spoke some either Chinese dialect at home, Malay or Tamil. The schools taught English, what is a foreign language to everyone. So yes, they learned, the minimum required to pass the exams, and went on with their daily lives. Given that kids spent almost more time at school than at home, eventually the exposure of English was greater than their respective languages. Let's say a random Singaporean teen was exposed to 65% English and 35% Hokkien during their formative years. So, surprise surprise, he ended up speaking a language which is 65% English and 35% Hokkien, and so did most everyone else, with all languages and dialects getting some of their stuff in this hodgepodge lingua franca that evolved into Singlish. And once that got widespread it became almost impossible to change.

And from "The Numbers Speak: Foreign Language Requirements Are a Waste of Time and Money" by Bryan Caplan:

The average high school graduate spends two years studying a foreign language. (Digest of Education Statistics, Table 157) What effect do these years of study have on Americans’ actual ability to speak foreign languages?

I started by looking at the Census, but it asks only about “languages spoken in the home.” Gallup has a survey finding that one-in-four Americans can speak a foreign language, but it offers no further details that would allow us to measure degree of fluency or the effect of foreign language instruction. After nosing around for better data, I turned to the General Social Survey. As usual, I was not disappointed.

...

The results showed an even smaller effect of foreign language instruction on foreign language fluency than I expected.

25.7% of respondents speak a language other than English. Within this sample, 41.5% claim to speak the other language “very well.” Within this sub-sub-sample, just 7.0% say they learned to speak this foreign language in school. If you multiply out these three percentages, you get 0.7%. The marginal product of two years of pain and suffering per high school graduate: less than one student in a hundred acquires fluency. (And that’s self-assessed fluency, which people almost surely exaggerate).

If you lower the bar from “very well” to “well” the picture remains grim: merely 2.5% of GSS respondents claimed to reach this level of foreign language competence in school.

Fans of foreign languages will probably just respond, “That’s why we have to pour more resources into foreign languages.” I say it would be far better to give fans of foreign languages a free economics lesson. Here goes:

1. Lots of stuff that sounds good isn’t worth doing. “Learning a foreign language” sounds noble, but so does “climbing Mount Everest.” The wise calmly weigh costs and benefits instead of being carried away by words. Any honest scale will tell you that the costs of foreign language instruction dwarf the benefits. Think about it: Even ignoring teachers’ salaries, we’re currently burning two years of class time per graduate. The payoff? Making less than one student in a hundred fluent.

2. Doubling an input normally less than doubles output. The world usually has what economists call “diminishing returns“: you can improve outcomes by spending more money, but the more you spend, the less efficacious each dollar becomes. The fact that two full years of instruction have almost zero effect implies that massive spending increases would be required to noticeably raise foreign language fluency. Think about all the Canadian adults who don’t speak French after a decade of required study.

3. Foreign language fluency is more common in other countries for a reason. People around the world strive to learn English. Why? Because English fluency frequently helps them get good jobs, meet interesting people, and enjoy culture. Pretty obvious, right? To understand why Americans don’t learn foreign languages, simply reverse this reasoning. We don’t learn foreign languages because foreign languages rarely helps us get good jobs, meet interesting people, or enjoy culture. Americans start in an unusually abundant and diverse economic, social, and cultural pool, so we have little reason to stray. And if Americans do decide to sample other pools, we can literally travel the world without needing to learn a word of another language.

I may sound like a typical philistine economist. So let me confess that I personally got a lot of value out of my two years of college German. I’m an opera fan; knowing a bit of German enhances my experience. But this hardly means that most Americans would benefit from learning a foreign language. All romance aside, requiring Americans to learn foreign languages makes about as much sense as requiring them to hear operas. What inspires the few, torments the many. Elites who relish foreign languages and opera should show some tolerance for the rest of humanity instead of calling for government spending to correct a “problem” that’s only in our minds.

Then why is it that so many students who spend hundreds of hours studying a foreign language in school come out the other end not knowing how to speak them?

They don't, I think Americans get maybe 40 hours of actual language learning per school year in those classes.

From "Language is Culture" by Spandrell:

Ironic substance considering I've read at least 100 writers who speak more languages than Spandrell (I'm guessing he's a monolingual American) and who are better English writers. Mostly dead people who could quote French, Latin, and Greek at will.

Japanese researchers, fortunately isolated from their American comrades because of their ineptitude at learning English

Oh, ouch. True, or does this writer have it in for the Japanese?

As one of our resident weeaboos and a big fan of Japan generally I'd say this is mostly true rather than the writer having an axe to grind. You see this all the time in anime and older games (especially in stuff from before western studios dedicated to localizing stuff into English became more commonplace, those have their own major issues related to wokeness and similar things that I won't dive into right now). There's just all kinds of gibberish and Engrish found all over inside of these works, and it's due to most Japanese people just not learning English very well (if at all).

Some fun examples off the top of my head:

Animes and mangas being given nonsensical English titles by their Japanese authors. My favorite example of this is the manga All You Need Is Kill. You probably know it better from its film adaptation (starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt): Edge of Tomorrow.

Opening and closing credit songs for animes being in horrible Engrish. For example the first line to the closing credits song for the first season of Frieren is broken English, with the singer saying "And you alright" instead of "Are you alright?" or "And you're alright" (not sure which was intended). Or the opening credits song to the 4th season of Legend of the Galactic Heroes clearly being sung by someone who doesn't speak a lick of English.

My favorite random example from the Studio Ghibli film The Cat Returns. In the background in one of the early scenes in the movie, there are banners in the background of some town square that read "Crossroad". Near the end of the film there is another scene in the same location and the banners now read "Crossload". I might have the order mixed up here, it's been a few years since I watched it. Studio Ghibli is basically the premiere animation studio in Japan, often called the "Japanese Disney", so that even they make mistakes like this is telling when it comes to the typical level of English fluency in Japan.

English is just a hard language, especially when coming from a language like Japanese. This has at least had the beneficial effect of somewhat insulating Japan from the world of woke retardation, so I can't really complain. And honestly the Engrish and other mistakes and issues are endearing.

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Then why is it that so many students who spend hundreds of hours studying a foreign language in school come out the other end not knowing how to speak them?

Because in monolingual countries with a large population, neither the student not the teacher cares enough to have the student come out with a strong grasp of the foreign language on the other end. In countries where getting good at English or another lingua franca is a practical necessity, you better believe a lot of students are coming out with functional language skills despite many of these students having a fraction of the investment rich Anglo countries do.

Most kids have the capacity to learn a language really easily, because humans are designed to learn to talk. They don't have the capacity to learn two

From "Language is Culture" by Spandrell:

This doesn't make any sense. While obviously there are physical limits in the extreme, there is no evidence that language acquisition is bottlenecked by storage space of all things - if you have a GeForce 256 and a 100TB SSD obviously storage is not going to be the bottleneck in your system.

As Pigeon says bilingualism is very common globally - the fact that many children don't learn multiple languages comes from a lack of incentives rather than a lack of ability. Many people across South America, continental Europe, Africa, and ex-CJK Asia will at least be conversant in a global lingua franca and a native language out of necessity: e.g the Nordic countries and the Dutch are almost all perfectly bilingual English speakers.

From "The Myth of 'They Weren't Ever Taught…'" by Education Realist:

And from "The Numbers Speak: Foreign Language Requirements Are a Waste of Time and Money" by Bryan Caplan

These are indictments against the requirement to learn languages in school, which I agree is useless for unmotivated students, but really this is a general argument against teaching anything in school above basic numeracy and literacy. I broadly agree with Caplan's Case Against Education thesis, but these posts do not support your bailey that secondary language acquisition is not possible or detrimental.

The motte here is that the opportunity costs of language learning are high, which I think is probably correct for English speakers even as a hobbyist polyglot myself, but in the long run everyone is dead anyways. There are much worse and unproductive things that most people do with their lives.

Most kids have the capacity to learn a language really easily, because humans are designed to learn to talk. They don't have the capacity to learn two. At best, the second language overwrites the first language and they forget their native tongue (as happens to very young immigrants) or they completely forget the second language once they are no longer required to study it (as happens to millions of American students who take French or Spanish in high school). At worst, they end up speaking a shitty creole of both languages (e.g. Spanglish).

I don’t think this is accurate. Most Swiss people use more than one language in daily life, something like 25% of India speaks 2+ languages, you have varying degrees of bilingualism for English and Tagalog in the Philippines, standard Thai and the various regional Thai languages (sometimes + a functional grasp on English), and so on. Even East Asian hubs like Tokyo and Seoul and Taipei will have a reasonable amount of people who are bilingual. And of course we have many examples of people here who are bilingual largely or at least in part due to education.

Surely the issue is that most American children don’t naturally find themselves in situations where they would need to speak a second language, and language perhaps rusts more quickly than other skills do.

(I am unsure about the value of formally educating children in a second language, but I want to nitpick a specific claim here.)

I think it takes hundreds of hours, but those hours are themselves easy, unlike math.

The ease with which children learn languages is exaggerated, but yes, it's easier to learn languages when you are young. It is not "easy." The "passive language-absorbing sponge" theory is not true.

The thing about the Muslim countries I refer to is that they don't learn as much about Martin Luther King Jr., the American Revolution, or the reproductive cycle of flowering plants in elementary school

I think you would be dismayed to learn what kids in Muslim countries do spend much of their school hours learning. And while I can guess what you think of Martin Luther King, Jr., I would be dismayed (am dismayed) at American students not being taught about the American Revolution or the reproductive cycle of flowering plants.

There is a trade off but imo a foreign language is a skill and knowing factoids about history, American or Algerian, is not.

Understanding history and being able to relate it to the world we live in is definitely a cognitive skill.

Kids should actually know something about the history of their country and the world. A population ignorant of history and science but which can speak a couple of languages is not a recipe for success.

Kids should actually know something about the history of their country and the world. A population ignorant of history and science but which can speak a couple of languages is not a recipe for success.

Actually I think this was one of the major early American education controversies. I suppose I fall on the side of the classics and against mainstream pragmatism. I don't like the framing I see where they were contrasting positivism and classicism. That's a false dichotomy. To me, the classics are positivism material, while pragmatic education teaches useless propaganda. Memorizing useless factoids is not positivism; mathematical theories are. Therefore, children should study Euclid and not flower reproduction. This will better prepare them to learn real science as young adults. Likewise, memorizing alleged factoids about the American Revolution is not positive history. Reading primary sources is. Therefore, children should study a classical language so that they can read ancient writings on their own.

The idea of science that the pragmatists believed in was common at the time. It was the type of science that gave us scientific socialism, which worked out so well, Lysenkoism, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and so on. It was a loose science where one justifies oneself with some observations here and there, then ties it together with some colloquial language paragraphs, and if others agree with it enough it gets the stamp of positive science.

The ease with which children learn languages is exaggerated, but yes, it's easier to learn languages when you are young. It is not "easy." The "passive language-absorbing sponge" theory is not true.

It's not easy. In fact, I don't think it's easier for school aged children. Just accessible, unlike logical mathematics.

Our modern school system cannot handle teaching kids Spanish. They take years of Spanish class and no point can any of them speak Spanish. I don't think they have what it takes to teach ancient Greek.

I was made to take years of French, never got any further than slowly being able to struggle through a newspaper, and have since forgotten all of it. My English, however, is decent.

The difference is that I actually use my English. I grew up watching American movies. Higher education is in English and office jobs require English. Bilingualism comes naturally if you are in a situation where you need to speak two languages.

Nobody is going to retain any Spanish unless they need it, except some language nerds. And anyone can (will, indeed) learn any language if they must, but not otherwise.

Maybe it's not the kids, but the teachers. The teachers don't have what it takes to teach linear algebra even though that's pretty accessible to a lot of high school students.

Maybe it's not the kids, but the teachers. The teachers don't have what it takes to teach linear algebra even though that's pretty accessible to a lot of high school students.

It's the kids and the system. The teachers have no authority to personally punish or transfer disruptive students, so when you get a little shit stain they disrupt the whole class, god forbid there are multiple of them, and due to a conflux of bad incentives a good bit of the teachers are women, as a class entirely unprepared to assert a subconscious fear of physical reprisal or an air of authority and respect.

It's the kids, teachers, and the system. Every part of it is rotten. The kids are not disciplined, but the adults aren't capable of it either, also the kids aren't smart enough for classical learning, but neither are the teachers, since the teachers reflect the parents and the kids are just recombinations of the parents. And the curriculum is set by the same people, so of course it reflects their essence.

It's not the modern school system, but rather the modern people.

There is no time when everyone learned classical languages in school- because most people didn't go to school.

As it should still be. Only a minority is capable of higher learning.

So I don't think state legislature calling for the school board to make a list of required books is a great idea, though I'm also not sure that I'm right on that, either. Both the school board and the local individual teachers can be corrupt so easily, that I'm not sure which one should have that sort of power, or how to regulate the corruption properly.

If we take for granted that the school board must compile such a list for public schools to follow, it occurs to me that having Bible stories in it actually strengthens the separation between church and state instead of the other way around, because it's treating Bible stories as equivalent to any other literature, rather than placing the Bible on a special pedestal as having status that's different from any other significant piece of writing. But I don't think anyone could have the confidence that individual teachers - perhaps especially in Texas - wouldn't teach these works of literature strictly as works of literature. In the private secular high school I went to, I was made to read Genesis in English class, and our teacher was very clear about this, but teachers and students in such environments are filtered so heavily that I'm skeptical that we can count on the same phenomenon repeating all across the public schools in any given state.

I'm not sure how to adjudicate this other than just letting someone sue and having the Supreme Court eventually make the call. It could ultimately rest on an empirical question of how real schoolteachers actually teach real students.

It's been pointed out, of course, that we already allow religious proselytization in schools by schoolteachers and administrators directed towards students in the form of social justice ideology, and so this is a "good for the goose, good for the gander" situation even if this led to the Bible being pushed as anything more than literature in schools. But I think the solution to that would be to find a way to declare such ideologies as religious in nature, which I'm not sure how would be done in a legal perspective, even if they clearly are in a logical and fact perspective.

Certainly the Bible is the most influential book in Western thought

Is it? In 1900, sure.

But in 2026?

Do our politicians read the Bible and actually implement biblical doctrine, socially or economically? Is Christianity a major social movement in the West today? The recent pro-life moves in the US only gave individual states the ability to ban or legalize abortion, that doesn't seem Christian so much as federalist.

Sodomy is very fashionable, there are literal Pride parades. Bigamy has made a comeback with polyamory. The less said about usury, lust, greed, sloth and envy the better.

In media, any major new works of Christian art? Film? TV? Video games?

What about the Pope? Any Crusades recently? His powers to excommunicate, have they been relevant in world affairs much? Or does nobody really care if they're excommunicated, what does that say about the Pope's abilities?

The Church of England? Well the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the King 'protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation' per the Palace description of the role of the Head of State. He still holds the role of being 'Defender of the Faith' but it seems fairly clear his heart is not really in it. De facto the King issues milquetoast proclamations that nobody pays much attention to:

His Majesty also has a special role in bringing communities and faiths together, engaging with them across the regions and nations of the UK. The King and the other working Members of the Royal Family recognise achievements and support charitable and voluntary work, serving as a catalyst for civic responsibility and charitable action.

No reference to Christ can be found in the whole 150 page document. Only in Russia, in Africa, in Latin America is Christianity taken more seriously. Defacing churches in Russia and LGBT behaviour is treated very seriously indeed.

Christianity's influence is mostly historical, like how mammals in the time of the dinosaurs were mostly tiny mouse creatures. They had tremendous influence in a certain sense. We are descended from tiny mouse creatures. There are still tiny mouse creatures around. But the tiny mouse creatures around today are not really influential and we are not really tiny mice. Even if most of our DNA is mouse there are important distinctions.

Marx is more relevant than the Bible to Western thought today, there are powerful cadres of communists, true believers (still!) Or the Limits to Growth - degrowthers and climatists have significant influence on the left and especially in Europe. They see datacentres, power plants, industry and development but unlike Christians they don't just murmur or complain about things they're against, they reach out and crush them to death. That's not to say that it would be good to teach people Marx or other bad ideologies but they're certainly more relevant.

Marxism's root is in Christianity, Wokeness is Christianity that has evolved to the point of opposing itself. The current ideological justification for tolerance of "sodomy and bigamy" is built off of Christian ethics. Christianity lies at the root of all Western, and therefore world, culture.

((FWIW I also think that high level studies at any ideological bent should include Kapital, if you can't understand why the majority of intelligent Europeans between 1860 and 1960 were admirers of Marx then it's a problem with you or your education))

Marxism's root is in Christianity, Wokeness is Christianity that has evolved to the point of opposing itself

How about Islam? Islam is monotheist and spiritual, it explicitly endorses Jesus as a prophet and endorses the general spiritualist ethos that Marxism denies.

Are Muslims then Christian? No. Even though Islam is rooted in Christianity to a certain extent, that doesn't substantially matter, they belong in separate categories not least because of a long history of hatred and warfare between the two. Islam is far more rooted in Christianity than Marxism is.

Wokeness also rejects Christianity and co-opts Christianity to be more like itself. Wokeness has roots in Christianity but it's like I was saying upthread. Humans have genetic roots in mice (about 85-90% of DNA being shared) but aren't really mice in a significant sense. Wokeness --- Marxism ------------------- Christianity --- Islam.

The Bible’s influence is everywhere in our culture. The year’s biggest game so far is Resident Evil Requiem. The most anticipated launch next month is Halo, about the savior “John 117” and a covenant, flood, and ark. The most popular movie this year is Project Hail Mary. Not to mention that the Bible is essential for understanding Western music and literature before 1900. If we were thinking objectively about what readings to include in public education for the purpose of cultural literacy, easily half the readings would just be the Bible. Probably more like 80% of the readings.

The most popular movie this year is Project Hail Mary

It's Super Mario Galaxy: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/

Project Hail Mary doesn't have anything to do with Christianity thematically, it's a sci fi alien story.

Resident Evil Requiem doesn't seem to have anything to do with Christianity in the game. The word itself doesn't carry much weight.

The most anticipated game of 2026 is GTA 6, which is a pretty unchristian game thematically given it's all about shooting police, robbing people and girls in bikinis. GTA is a 5x bigger franchise than Halo too. The Combat Evolved remake isn't even a new game or a new remake (they already remade it in MCC)

The one part I agree with is that the Bible is needed to understand pre-1900 culture.

The cultural power of an iron age desert cult does not extend to a post-industrialized hyperurban internet economy. We are not shepherds, we don't give servants talents of gold to invest. We pick and choose various interpretations of biblical verses to suit our arguments at any given time, you of all people must be sick of the good samaritan being waved around as a leftist sigil. In that case, it's Christian arguments being made for fundamentally secular reasons, objectification of Christianity as a bludgeon, not actual sincere belief which would probably be smeared as fundamentalism. And it is kinda crazy to try to live by these rules in a thoroughly different society.

Project Hail Mary doesn't have anything to do with Christianity thematically, it's a sci fi alien story.

Ah yes, the story of Ryland Grace, the man whose existence throughout the story constitutes an undeserved favor to others and who ultimately has to decide freely whether or not he must sacrifice himself utterly in order to deliver the entire human race from disaster after they put him to death. The man whose sidekick is a "rock". Yeah nothing Christian to see here, pure coincidence. I guess the characters literally talking about God didn't lay it on thick enough.

The cultural power of an iron age desert cult does not extend to a post-industrialized hyperurban internet economy.

You just think it doesn't because you are as a fish asked about water. What water?

"Forget about the industrial-scale killing of unborn children, parades devoted to sodomy and sexual deviance, pornography, breakdown of marriage rituals - the third biggest movie of the year's main character's name has Grace in it and he has to consider whether to sacrifice himself or not!'

Huh?

I confess I haven't read the book or watched the film, just skimmed the plot on wikipedia. But it's not exactly the Sistine Chapel! Looking at the themes, I see scientific materialism ranking ahead of Christian values.

The water I'm swimming in sure looks like it's about 98% iron oxide.

Go watch Mikhail Romm's Nine Days in One Year or Klushantsev's Road to the Stars and come back and tell me Project Hail Mary is a story of scientific materialism over Christian values.

Personal drama about redemption, survival and self sacrifice don't suddenly become something else because they drape themselves in soft-scifi technobabble.

Nor, frankly, does cultural influence work in the sort of all or nothing way you seem to imply. Post-Christian cultures are still determined by Christianity in the same way that post-Roman cultures are still determined by Roman influence. Cultural power reaches far further than naive notions of theocratic imposition, that it is a loose binding makes it no less scary a binding: rejection of the frame is still in the frame.

The Japanese routinely make stories that contain no Christian influence, but they're only able because it's not a core part of their civilization. Westerners don't have this luxury. The secular world you might want to see as separate does not contain a lot of mythic alternatives for artists to draw from. Either because the Catholic Church removed them in the high middle ages or because like Marxism they're themselves successors of Christian mythologies.

rejection of the frame is still in the frame

So Piss Christ is Christian art then? As far as I'm concerned, it's an insult dressed up as art. Defacing a Koran isn't Islamic art, no muslim would think that, they'd get really angry about it. Marxism may descend from Christianity in some respects but Marxists hate Christianity and work around the clock to undermine and suppress it as shown from when they get any scrap of power and usually start killing nuns and closing churches. It's not really Christian. Is /r/atheism Christian? Many users were Christian at one point. But it isn't a Christian website.

Cultural power is a kind of power, it has an effect on the world. Where is Christianity's cultural power? Are we getting new words from Christianity? Or just a sea of old words, old words that people can barely define anymore? Prelate, deacon, abbott, cardinal - even educated people might not know what they mean. When's the last time anyone went to a conventicle?

Power is about making things happen. What has Christianity made happen recently? You're saying that everything in Western civilization is drawn from Christianity in some respect and alluding to extremely broad ideas like redemption, survival and self-sacrifice (notably shared by other cultures that never heard of Christ). But what specifically has happened recently as a result of this power, tangibly? Gay marriage, pride parades, a tonne of porn everywhere, women wandering around with buttocks visible through some skimpy hot pants, a fountain of materialist greed in everyone's social media, gluttony, envy, sloth, revenge and more aborted kids in the last 60 years than died in every war in human history?

Where is the cultural power going exactly, what is it doing?

There are no live controversies about saying the lord's name in vain, only saying 'nigger'. What does that say about cultural power?

The secular world you might want to see as separate does not contain a lot of mythic alternatives for artists to draw from.

Christianity doesn't even measure up to long-dead religions in this respect. Drawing from pagans today: Age of Mythology, Titan Quest, God of War, Hades, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Jotun, Northgard, and The Banner Saga. Valheim. The Pharoah Series. The Witcher.

Drawing from Christianity today: Darksiders, Diablo and Dante's Inferno + maybe the Binding of Isaac which is anti-Abrahamist.

Both pale in comparison to thematically modern stories about man and technology which gives us huge rich veins of sci-fi, robots, ray guns, flying machines, totalitarian states.

So Piss Christ is Christian art then?

What else could it possibly be? Iconoclasm is still, ultimately, a form of respect for the power of the idol. True contempt is indifference.

is /r/atheism Christian?

Since 2024 even Richard Dawkins calls himself a Cultural Christian. All the parts of New Atheism that aren't ex-muslim apostates are so pretty much. And Old Atheism was so self evidently.

Power is about making things happen.

No, it's also about making things not happen. Which is mostly what cultural victory is about. Long settled arguments about things you don't even think about like whether children owe anything to their parents, whether individuality has any value, whether you should obey the law or your own internal morality first or whether humans can be property.

People say Tradition has no power, and then go on to not do all the things Tradition managed to eradicate.

Where is the power of Christianity? In that a lot of the things you list as contrary to its doctrine are still viewed as either outright sins or objects of moral debate. A civilization without this influence simply does not ask such questions.

It is waning though, you are right about that. Time makes everything diminish. And Western civilization is old now and far into its second barbarism. But just because power wanes doesn't mean it ceases to exist as a factor. The Romans still have eminent effects on us down to how we record time itself, never mind half of the world's laws.

Drawing from pagans today: Age of Mythology, Titan Quest, God of War, Hades, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Jotun, Northgard, and The Banner Saga. Valheim. The Pharoah Series. The Witcher.

Almost none of these are actual pagan stories full of pagan virtue though. They're Christian subversions. God of War was almost so explicitly.

The stories that actually extol pagan values are few and far between, and almost all of them are products of Nietzscheans like Milius or Coppola who are still haunted by the corpse of God despite their best efforts to transcend him.

which is anti-Abrahamist.

To be the most valiant opponent of something is to be its strongest proponent. Someone who isn't irremediably a son of Abraham would simply not think about him at all. Not make endless art about his mythology.

Gaze into the Abyss and it gazes back into you. Black Sabbath is Christian Rock.

thematically modern stories about man and technology

Which are all still derived from a cultural substrate. A setting is nothing but set dressing for themes. Which are in turn simply expressions of a worldview. All art is propaganda for something as Orwell famously said.

The Soviets had scifi stories that weren't about Christian themes, or at least not so directly since those values were still filtered through Marxism and irrigated by non-western cultural input like Cosmism. Even China today exports award winning scifi that works from its own cultural lens.

But the West can't run away from its own shadow. It is futile to try.

All those examples look like shallow references where a thing was named after a biblical or Catholic thing to sound slightly cooler. Are any of those media Christian beyond that?

What's called a 'Hail Mary pass' in the USA is called a Garryowen over here, or at least that's the nearest thing to it. Upon first encountering the term, I had to look it up as to why it was called that. Do so, and you find out Notre Dame, and then you find out it's a Catholic prayer:

Crowley often told the story of a game between Notre Dame and Georgia Tech on October 28, 1922, in which the Fighting Irish players said Hail Mary prayers together before scoring each of the touchdowns, before winning the game 13–3. According to Crowley, it was one of the team's linemen, Noble Kizer (a Presbyterian), who suggested praying before the first touchdown, which occurred on a fourth and goal play at the Georgia Tech 6-yard line during the second quarter. Quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, another of the Horsemen, threw a quick pass over the middle to Paul Castner for the score. The ritual was repeated before a third and goal play, again at Georgia Tech's 6-yard line, in the fourth quarter. This time Stuhldreher ran for a touchdown, which sealed the win for Notre Dame. After the game, Kizer exclaimed to Crowley, "Say, that Hail Mary is the best play we've got." Crowley related this story many times in public speeches beginning in the 1930s.

Even on Tumblr, I've seen people making direct connections between the ship name and the name of the main character: Hail Mary, full of Grace.

Learning the origins of common terms is not a bad thing. "Why is this called that?" decreases ignorance, you don't end up going "Dunno" and sounding like you are dumber than a box of rocks.

Are any of those media Christian beyond that?

Although the Project Hail Mary title is a play on words, the movie itself takes the time for a pretty on the nose and fairly-needless-to-the-plot discussion about belief in God, which I would say is far from a shallow reference.

Mainstream Hollywood films with a fairly overtly Christian message aren't actually all that rare (see Unbroken, Silence, Hacksaw Ridge, etc.) and for every one of those there are two that take Christian ideas seriously, even if it's in more subtle ways. I was recently watching the Fallout show and one of the characters reaches for the Golden Rule, not as part of a come-to-Jesus sideplot, but because it's an important moral principle - obviously not one unique to Christianity, of course.

The first 5 Halo games are arguably far more "Christian" in both message and tone than many churches these days. Ditto Project Hail Mary though I don't have a effort post I can link for that one.

Specifically the themes of hope in the face of hopelessness, and the idea that the righteous and honest will always find themselves in conflict with the worldly.

In Halo 3, the Master and Savior of humanity sacrifices himself in the “gravemind”, says “it is finished”, and is then entombed cryogenically frozen and later “resurrected”, all of which is very Biblical. But this is shallow because most things in our culture are shallow. To Kill a Mockingbird? Lord of the Flies? Not just shallow but actively detrimental to cultivating wisdom. Just worthless slop.

What is the complaint against To Kill a Mockingbird? (And no fair bringing up Go Set a Watchman.)

Presumably because it shits on secular morality in the same w as y that the story of Jonah does.

Do you means shits on "non-secular" morality? Jonah can be easily read as a critique of religious righteousness. Personally, I think the critique is fairly trenchant.

No, it "shits" on secular morality by explicitly rejecting identity in favor of conduct.

More comments

The heuristics it teaches about life and history are inaccurate.

[Contains mild spoilers for Lord of the Flies]

Can you expand on this criticism of To Kill a Mockingbird? I consider the novel as offering very powerful lessons about (e.g.) conformity and the nature of the legal system.

Also, what's the criticism of Lord of the Flies? I've always been partial to interpreting it as an anti-war novel - by having the boys rescued by a warship, Golding's emphasizing the parallels between modern and primeval expressions of savagery.

Defacing churches in Russia and LGBT behavior is treated very seriously indeed.

That's because these things are perceived as against the state not because they are against Christianity. Homosexuality is mildly suppressed in Russia but so is Evangelical Christianity. Because both are perceived as foreign Western ideologies. And homosexuality is at most mildly repressed not "treated very seriously" There are open Gay bars and clubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg, gay men from all over the former Soviet Union move to Russia for it's tolerance of homosexuality. The whole reason Russia passed those gay propaganda laws is because they have enough organic western liberals they needed to suppress them.

And all of this flows from the state. When Russia was more open in the 90s they were more open to both Protestant missionaries and gay activists and now that the state is stronger both have been curtailed as foreign ideologies. Defacing churches is illegal but so is defacing any state approved religious house of worship Mosques included.

Christianity's influence is mostly historical, like how mammals in the time of the dinosaurs were mostly tiny mouse creatures. They had tremendous influence in a certain sense. We are descended from tiny mouse creatures. There are still tiny mouse creatures around. But the tiny mouse creatures around today are not really influential and we are not really tiny mice. Even if most of our DNA is mouse there are important distinctions.

This one paragraph seems to completely override any point made earlier on in this post. The bible and stories therein aren't the tiny mouse creatures that are still around; the evangelical Christians and Catholics and such of today are the ones that are still around. The parts of our DNA that are mouse DNA (which in this hypothetical is most of our DNA) is the bible. Which means that it has tremendous influence.

Marx is more relevant than the Bible to Western thought today

In terms of "books to read to understand modern culture" Marx is less relevant than Harry Potter.

The Bible is still far and away the most important single book you can read to understand modern culture (including Marxism/socialism, which is a post-Christian ideology).

How does reading the Bible help you understand modern culture, exactly? It can teach you about the values some people profess to believe, it doesn't teach you about what actually happens, about real behaviour in the West. Harry Potter is more relevant.

In the England of King James II people really cared about the Bible, interpreting from the Bible about what the church was supposed to be, they were ready to stake their lives for particular interpretations of that book and the meaning of various rituals. That is not happening today! Nobody is waging war for Christianity in a Western country. They are fighting for oil, for national pride, for security interests, for human rights...

it doesn't teach you about what actually happens, about real behaviour in the West.

The values most people act on, including woke people, Marxists, and a/antitheists, are downstream of Christianity and the Bible. If you came back to the West after being gone for a few millennia, the questions you would ask (besides "what's a cell phone?" and "does anyone have a Latin-English translator?") would be things like "wait, why can't I buy a sex slave at Wal-mart?"

And the answer to that has nothing to do with cell phones.

That is not happening today! Nobody is waging war for Christianity in a Western country.

It's 2026, the weapons of war are a laptop and a Westlaw subscription.

Well if the weapons of war are a laptop the US could save a lot of money by scrapping all those jets and bombs.

Furthermore, there's nothing in the bible about not having sex slaves, not buying sex slaves! Slavery was commonplace in biblical judea, there are parables about sending out slaves to do work for you. That's just in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the appropriate treatment and trading of sex slaves is laid out in black and white. So reading the Bible is quite misleading for this point you're making.

Genesis 30:1–13 repeats the pattern twice over. Rachel and Leah, competing over Jacob's affection and fertility, each give their slaves — Bilhah and Zilpah — to Jacob as wives/concubines so they can claim the resulting sons as their own. Four of Jacob's twelve sons (ancestors of four of the twelve tribes of Israel) come from these unions.

Deuteronomy 21:10–14 covers a foreign woman taken captive in war. The Israelite man may take her as a wife, but only after a month-long mourning period for her family, and if he later doesn't want her, he can't sell her as a slave or treat her as property — she must be set free.

Again, you'd be better off reading Harry Potter which makes more of a critique of slavery than the Bible!

Furthermore, there's nothing in the bible about not having sex slaves, not buying sex slaves! [...] That's just in the New Testament.

The New Testament is a pretty important part of the Bible, yes.

No, there's nothing in the New Testament... about not having sex slaves. There's plenty in the Old Testament about having sex slaves!

The New Testament condemns sexual activity outside of marriage, mistreating slaves, and deviant sexual practices. It doesn't say something like "sex slaves are banned" because the things it explicitly enjoins rules out sex slavery. (True, I suppose a first century Christian could buy a sex slave and...treat them in a chaste and kind manner, but at that point I'd say they were a former sex slave.)

It's as if I said "I think using force to harm other people outside of the due process of law is wrong" and you said "you'll notice that Shrike never condemns murder."

The fact that we're having to go over the basic sexual ethics of the largest religion on earth instead of arguing about anything Marx said is frankly a better refutation of your argument than anything I've said here. (Although I will say that it's making me want to suggest the Didache should be on a school reading list rather than anything that's technically from Scripture.)

Yeah. How many 'marxists' have any real comprehension of the book itself beyond a vague understanding of 'Marx says we should all share everything equally and stop being mean'?

Which of course is far from unique to Marx!

People are still using terms like "Good Samaritan" in "Good Samaritan laws", so there's an amount of cultural knowledge still remaining. "Golden Rule", "love your enemies" and the likes. While I might be dubious about required reading of Bible stories, it's no harm to show where such terms came from, since there's a lot of modern ignorance (same with ideas from Greek myths and the likes, the level of assumed cultural knowledge that past generations had has decreased hugely in modern times).

Yeah but so many random books are part of the canon now. How many books on slavery or Jim crow will be mandated in most states for random bludgeoning with.

I must note about Russia, from my perspective here it does not look like its trad values such as slightly lower (relatively when compared to both USA and Afghanistan) acceptance of LGBT is in any way connected to greater influence of Christianity.

The penetration of the Orthodox gilding on top of the Russian state into Russian society is dismal. From what I see, being either an adherent Christian or a cultural Christian is a lot more common and "mainstream" among Americans than Russians. Hell, Americans actually prioritize Christmas above New Year's Eve.

I have elaborated on that elsewhere. For now, as per your metaphor the only legacy of mice Russia seems to keep over USA is that we eat more real cheese rather than the synthetic orange stuff.

Only in Russia, in Africa, in Latin America is Christianity taken more seriously. Defacing churches in Russia and LGBT behaviour is treated very seriously indeed.

I can never understand the trad Christian love for the Russian state as some enabler of Christian virtue - it's really really not the case.

Russia is a larp, pretending to be bits of the Soviet bear and the Imperial eagle whenever it suits, and as such they have made the Russian Orthodox Patriarchy an arm of that project by stuffing their mouths with gold. This is done for state aims, and many Eastern Europeans (including in Ukraine) attend churches regularly - more than Russians incidentally (which is kind of obviously true due to Ukraine's far lower muslim population for a start). The orthodoxy is another state pillar, and part of the legitimizing claims Russia projects, but I don't see much beyond that.

Russia comes down hard on those who damage churches as its popular among a fairly conservative core population that likes tradition and the larp (which I actually understand and respect), and because its a disrespect to a state arm like attacking a police station. It also lets Russia project an image of being against globalhomo too, which is popular for some and where the gay bashing comes in.

But what does being a supposedly trad Christian state actually do for morality and behaviour of the Russian system in general? They have mass muslim migration, onto a population that was already fairly muslim - 10-15% of the population (~ double to triple the poor UK), and a string of terrorist attacks to match. Homosexual rape and general degeneracy is embedded deeply into the Russian military, and the whole anti LGBT thing seems to miss out a lot - Russia is just repressed, not some trad paradise. I'm not sure Jesus would love old King Charles and his mealy mouthed words, Russia however is a few steps away from Sodom by comparison.

To be clear, this is aimed at the Russian state and high leadership of the church - I actually think a good chunk of normal Russians have solid christian convictions that are to their credit. However, that's inherited through time, was failed to be stamped out via the Soviets, and they seem to happily wage war on their very Christian Ukrainian neighbors. The Russian government itself is just very cynically using them, and burning through what it inherited - this isn't going to last long-term. Drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, divorce and spousal abuse are through the roof, that's your Christian paradise?

I'm not a fan of globalhomo, and Ukraine is going to have to navigate a minefield post war to chart its way through the various failure modes of the West, but Russia is just sad. Punching gays as strength and golden watches while the structure rots and now burns, if that's the best of the Christian project then it needs to find Christ too.

I can never understand the trad Christian love for the Russian state as some enabler of Christian virtue

It makes sense once you recognize that it's mostly Edge-lords and Astroturf. As a general rule, sincere trad Christians aren't hanging out on "this part of twitter" and the ones who do are weird.

“Christianity done for political aims” is the traditional form of Christianity. The State has been invested in Christianity and using it for her own influence since Constantine. Remember that America got Pope John Paul II elected as an anti-Soviet measure.

Russia has mass muslim migration

You mean the central Asian migrants that will not receive citizenship? Who cares? The problem has always been political enfranchisement and replacement. Moscow is 90% White while NYC is like 30% White.

already fairly Muslim

Because the North Caucasus was always Muslim, and they took it over. It’s not because of migration. Russia’s cultural capitals are way more Russian than ours are White American.

the whole anti LGBT thing seems to miss out a lot - Russia is just repressed, not some trad paradise

This is like NAFO propaganda. No, they are not all secretly gay or doing secret mass rape in the military; no, the new ayatollah is not gay either. They do not have 1% of the gay culture that America has, neither do they have gay mafias in their arts scenes or in tech like America. I would prefer that we “bash the gays” than allow them the kind of power they have in the West. I know two straight men in the classical arts who have been prevented from advancing in the industry because they aren’t gay. This is common where homosexuals get into power and I am personally envious of Russia’s ability to throw them back into the closet. I actually want straight men in all influential positions, but perhaps this is a matter of cultural taste, ie I like their cultural products and their conservatism and do not like to see homosexuality celebrated in our major cities.

Moscow is 90% White

The Muslim immigrants ruining Europe are mostly white. Mohammad Atta and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were white. And a lot of the white ethnics (both immigrants and indigenous ethnic minorities) in Russia are Muslims in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev mold. Assimilability has more to do with cultural Christianity than it does with skin colour.

John Paul II was elected because he was conservative and seen as a diplomat; the Soviets actually assessed him as being relatively weak on communism at the time of the conclave, and the cardinals wanted a conservative who would just stop tinkering given the disaster of Paul VI.

I am not certain I will be able to change your mind on much to do with chronic Russian hazing and rape, both by their own and by Kadyrov's boys, here. As I recall you thought that the Bucha massacre wasn't Russian discipline immediately collapsing once in an environment where they hold power, as is common, but instead somehow Azov who decided to kill everyone post liberation and then go back in time and doctor satellite footage of the massacre.

However, I guess it's worth a go:

Christ being misused and twisted by politics certainly is very old, and is a factor that can bring down such states in the past. This is a failure mode, not something to aspire to for a Christian and the states they wish to live in surely?

Your Youtube link doesn't work, but as I understand John Paul II was elected for several reasons, none of which support any relevant thesis that Russia is a model for a Christian state.

Moscow has an official Muslim population in the 1-2 million range, comparable with Paris, and many more unofficial migrants as you point out that will certainly push it much higher. Relations are not great, which boils into open war in the past, and terrorist attacks here and there. You might say the same about the west, but this is the same story, not a solution by the Russians.

Rape is endemic in the Russian military, including as hazing "Dedovshchina" where it is extremely common. All forces struggle with some incidents worldwide, but the Russian structure is famously bad for it since forever. For example: Russian recruits sold for sex, 1500 army sexual assaults reported in 2019 which must be a floor, and that only came to light after a guy snapped and shot those who were raping him.

We also have many incidents in the war, both by and inflicted onto Russians, but possibly the one you'll most be interested in was the Russian soldier raped by Kadyrov's troops who are used as barrier troops and left to run rampant over their Christian charges, who then hung himself. Not sure if you read Russian, but a rough translation is: "Goodbye. love, in the time that I am here I have seen hell. There were not so many deaths in Chechnya or even Afganistan. seas of human meat. but that is not why i depart. We here, Russian people, are nobody, and Chechens rule. They drink, are lawless and rape, they despise everyone and no ones doing anything about it. Kitty, they took all the money you sent and they did a thing to me. This is to let you know that I resisted. Remember that you and me owe nothing to anyone. This is the only way out. See you after death"

I can never understand the trad Christian love for the Russian state as some enabler of Christian virtue - it's really really not the case.

My experience as a European member of a conservative church is that this is mostly an online and political phenomenon and doesn't represent people who actually go to Church. It might be different in the USA, I don't have any info on the ground from over there, but over here in the Netherlands right wing populist politicians will exhibit sometimes the trad love for Russia and they will make some vague remarks about our country being Christian or whatever, but none of those politicians actually go to Church and if you push them all of them will admit they are cultural Christians and don't actually believe any traditional Christian dogmas. Just like you can get more liberal politicians to sometimes dress up progressive politics with vaguely Christian language about love or whatever, the right wing populists will dress up their anti Muslim sentiment with some vague rhetoric about us being a traditionally Christian nation or whatever. In both cases it is just superficial rhetoric trying to appeal to some cultural memes and doesn't really mean anything. In practice, people who vote for those parties mostly don't actually attend Church regularly and people who do attend Church regularly almost never vote for those parties. Maybe in other countries actual trads are more tempted to vote for the right wing populist parties as the lesser evil, but in the Netherlands having no electoral threshold and proportional representation in our parliament, we are spoiled with not just one, but two actual traditional Christian political parties and almost everybody who regularly attends a theologically conservative Church votes for them and both of these parties are not pro Russia.

In America russophiles are a bit more fringey than they are in Europe, because our right traditionally defines itself with strong russophobia, but also the right wing populists get the church attending vote.

I have always been fascinated by Christian political parties. The idea seems repulsive to me both as an American (due to separation of church and state) and as a Christian (I'm from a tradition that sees even voting as borderline sinful).

Do you think Christians should completely abstain from politics? In the end somebody has to run the country and I cannot imagine a version of Christianity that doesn't at least espouse some values that will inform how Christians think a country ought to be run. If you think Christians should completely abstain from politics, what do you think Constantine or Clovis should have done after converting to Christianity? How should a country be governed when almost all of its citizens profess Christianity, like most Western countries up until quite recently?

Jesus clearly teaches political quietism in the New Testament, and historically most radical Christian "back-to-the-fundamentals" movements are politically quietist (like the Amish). The first modern capital-F Fundamentalists were obviously not politically quietist (the extent of mass government-backed secular education in America c. 1900 made already it a lot harder to be politically quietist if you didn't withdraw completely from the wider society like the Amish do), but there is no discussion of secular politics in The Fundamentals.

Politically active Christianity is, obviously, almost as lindy as politically quietist Christianity. I think this is because Jesus doesn't say why he is preaching political quietism, so it isn't obvious how "don't be a Zealot and render unto Caesar" translates to contexts other than living as a religious minority in a pagan Empire.

How should a country be governed when almost all of its citizens profess Christianity, like most Western countries up until quite recently?

The most common view between the time of Constantine and the present was "Christians should not seek political power unless it is explicitly thrust upon them by Divine authority" - the exception is broad enough to cover the political power of the Church, Divine Right kingship and appointed authority under it, religious visionary leadership like Joan of Arc, and even Cromwell and his major-generals.

"Democracy good" is an idea that largely skips from pagan Athens (and, to a lesser extent, the Roman Republic) to the explicitly anti-clerical French Revolution without touching the intervening Christian millennia. The first country to see itself as both Christian and democratic is Jacksonian America. I don't know enough about the political thought of the medieval and early modern Christian republics (like Venice or the United Provinces) to comment, although I note that American republicanism was established by men whose Christianity was somewhat heterodox (especially Jefferson) and looked more to the Roman Republic than any of the usual Christian examples.

"Democracy good" is an idea that largely skips from pagan Athens (and, to a lesser extent, the Roman Republic) to the explicitly anti-clerical French Revolution without touching the intervening Christian millennia.

Ho ho, let's roll up our sleeves and get stuck into that one! "Democracy good" perhaps, but in pagan Athens it's not democracy as we know it, Jim. Participation confined to free, male, Athenian citizens, and the definition of who was an Athenian became more rigid over time (you had to be born of an Athenian father and an Athenian mother, otherwise out of luck). You could lose your civic rights, and this might even become a heritable disqualification:

"Also excluded from voting were citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia); for some Athenians, this amounted to permanent (and in fact inheritable) disqualification."

Some (such as Plato) thought democracy itself was suspect, others considered it could be good and bad forms, "true" democracy was distinguished from "rule by the mob" (which, of course, is always the danger and probably the form of this distinction today is "populism is the bad form of democracy").

Democracy as we think of it, the will of the people, one man one vote, everyone who is a citizen has a voice and there are no racial or gender disqualifications to citizenship, may not have "touch[ed] the intervening Christian millennia" but (a) democracy as we think of it likely would not have been recognisable to the Athenians and (b) some kind of limits, councils, advisors, parliaments, etc. did occur in the Christian era. Take our friend Henry VIII, he had parliaments which had to at least notionally agree with and consent to his desired policies, and he didn't always get his way, even though those would not have been "democracy as we know it".

Groups like the Amish do not have this tension, and I think the ideal Christian behavior is far closer to the Amish than it is to the modal American/European Christian.

All that is kind of true but how can a country with state sanctioned, state-promoted pride parades even be anything but anti-Christian? Both the medium and the message are pretty explicitly anti-Christian? How can a country with legal gay marriage be considered Christian, never mind divorce rates?

Even if Russia's goal is just vaguely seeming to be against globohomo, that's still way closer to Christianity than the Western countries who are promoting, spreading, directing globohomo.

I don't believe in the 'based trad Russia' meme. But in terms of social vice, it's hardly worse than America or the West generally. Abortions: 13.1 per 1000 vs 14.4 in America, 20 in UK. Russia is number 7 in drug deaths per capita but America is far ahead at number 1 worldwide, 4x Russia.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country

https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/drug-use/by-country

Trying but mostly failing to be anti-LGBT in the military seems a lot more Christian than promoting LGBT and diversity in the military. However cynically Putin may use Christian rhetoric he's 10x more Christian than the average Western leader who's mentally redefined Christianity to mean 'more leftism but with cross aesthetics'.

However cynically Putin may use Christian rhetoric he's 10x more Christian than the average Western leader who's mentally redefined Christianity to mean 'more leftism but with cross aesthetics'.

Vladimir Putin who swore he was an Atheist to join the KGB for decades and is on record (via hot mike) of hoping tech not Jesus will make him immortal? That Vladimir Putin? He's against western Liberalism and LBGTQ+ sure but that doesn't make someone a Christian. By that standard Joseph Stalin was a Christian.

I will take 50 Stalins before the rule of Big Red and Greta Thunberg or whichever stand in with the politics of Merkel/Jean-Claude Juncker

He's a Hirsi Ali Christian: i.e. Christian because it's the only thing they see that can push back against liberalism (and, in Hirsi Ali's case, Islam and the alliance it's made with the left) and provide an alternate civilizational narrative.

This is obviously very different from communists, who think they already have said narrative.

He makes the same cultural noises every European leader does. But he's no more Christian then the liberal Western Europeans. Nor are Russians anymore religious then Western Europeans. Putin suppresses quite a bit of Christianity as well, Evangelical missionaries are not welcome in Russia。 America is a far more religious society then Russia.

Making the noises and then doing globohomo stuff seems worse than making the noises and keeping globohomo out/maintaining some semblance of Christian values.

But YMMV I'm not a Christian so maybe I don't value enough the value it places on the spirit rather than the form.

But, if you were a (Orthodox) Christian seeing your faith fade who would you rather support you? A leader like Putin or someone like Talarico that'll come up with some doctrine about how Genesis 1 means transing kids? Or a Stalin who just outright wants you gone?

Better an emperor driven purely by pragmatism than an outright heretic Buffalo Bill-ing your religion or someone hostile to the concept entirely, surely?

If your a non Orthodox Christian you have much more freedom to practice your faith under the Western Liberals. Look at the Amish and Hasidic in the US. America lets weird hyper conservative religions exist the Netherlands and France both have small but thriving communities of conservative Christians.

Do you consider restricting marriage to be between a man and a woman such a core part of Christianity that it beats all the rest of Christian practices and virtues, or lack thereof? It's hardly even exclusive to Christianity. Any run of the mill jungle tribe faith practices heterogamy.

Yes, marriage is a very important ritual in Christianity and public life generally. Who can marry whom is one of the most fundamental pillars of society! You used to need an act of parliament to divorce. Henry VIII had no end of religious problems with marriage.

The state has basically reduced marriage to a tax strategy and a party.

Furthermore, it's not like everyone is abiding by all the rest of Christian dogma on usury, fasting, work on the sabbath, lust, abortion, licentiousness and only gay marriage slipped through the net.

Just on a quick look through the list there's quite a lot of odd choices. Like why does seventh grade have so few items, most of which are short poems - and then they double up on Robert Frost and Langston Hughes? Why?

What was the goal here? It doesn't seem like breadth of cultural understanding. It seems more like a list put together by a committee with a few busybodies each pushing their own favorites and no clear criteria for what to include. Why is Pride and Prejudice, essentially Victorian era chick lit, required reading? Answer: who knows?

Like many such efforts, I can get behind the concept but find the implementation unimpressive at best.

Probably just a bias for short works cuz it takes less time to teach, easier to get kids to read the whole thing, etc.

Why is Pride and Prejudice, essentially Victorian era chick lit,

I will not suffer such Austen slander!

First, Austen was Regency era. A generation before the Victorians, and there are some pretty significant differences (like the freedom with which Austen's heroines go unaccompanied to parties or go on walks with men without escorts and such, something Victorian ladies basically were not allowed to do).

Second, today Austen's novels are mostly considered "chick lit" and generally filmed as romances, but in her time, they were widely read by both sexes and considered comedies of manners with insightful descriptions of human fallibility, not female wish-fulfillment ("chick lit") despite the fact they generally ended in a good-hearted but poor woman marrying up.

First, Austen was Regency era. A generation before the Victorians, and there are some pretty significant differences

Also, critically, before railways. The minor gentry (the class the Bennets belong to) was much less geographically mobile than they would be in a Victorian setting.

It seems more like a list put together by a committee with a few busybodies each pushing their own favorites and no clear criteria for what to include.

It was set by the Texas state board of education, which is elected in partisan elections with a voter turnout that rounds down to zero.

It seems more like a list put together by a committee with a few busybodies each pushing their own favorites

That's literally what it is.

Why is Pride and Prejudice, essentially Victorian era chick lit, required reading? Answer: who knows?

Ask my Irish school curriculum circa 1978 (and then 1980 for Persuasion*) about that one, friend. It wasn't chick-lit in those days, the term was yet to be invented. Instead it was considered a classic novel in English. If Manly Men could be Janeites, I don't see why the non-gender-binary-normative young human animals (as distinct from non-human animals, don't be speciesist!) of our day can't be introduced to her writing! Granted, the highly intelligent youth of our time probably would struggle to read English that is not contemporary but let's be hopeful and make the experiment, yes?

It has been said that the early twentieth century, Janeitism was "principally a male enthusiasm shared among publishers, professors, and literati". Rudyard Kipling even published a short story entitled "The Janeites" about a group of World War I soldiers who were secretly fans of Austen's novels.

*One of the girls in the class had the surname Durand and it was always deemed hilarious when we had to read (yes, we read it aloud in class, everyone taking their turn as the teacher went through it):

"The little Durands were there, I conclude," said she, "with their mouths open to catch the music; like unfledged sparrows ready to be fed. They never miss a concert."

the non-gender-binary-normative young human animals

This is Texas. The teachers may not be particularly based, but the elected officials setting curriculum standards do not believe in 'non-binary', and might think this is some kind of new computer technology, and if I had to guess a majority of the state board of ed would vote in favor of sodomy laws if they thought they could get away with it.

Let us be correct and pure in our thinking and expression, even if the Texans are woefully recalcitrant.

Jane Austen's novels primarily concern themselves with moral education. Is it possible to ruin good breeding with poor moral education? This was actually a somewhat scandalous take back then.

The primary application of Pride and Prejudice today is to present young women with caution about their selection of mates. Which is a very worthy task, even if half the class is male and might not see the point (though the truly wise will understand what make's Austin's heroes the hero and not the villain, and maybe learn from that.)

Is it possible to ruin good breeding with poor moral education? This was actually a somewhat scandalous take back then.

It's arguably a pretty scandalous take here and now.

I think we struggle right now with the opposite question: are there some people whose poor breeding cannot be improved with a good moral education?

It's not "the opposite question" it is the same question.

That question is which has the greater effect, education or breeding?

It's perfectly possible that bad education can ruin good breeding, but bad breeding can't be improved by good education. In short, the relationship may be asymmetrical.

Anyone can make a tall man short by cutting off his legs, but good luck making a short man tall.

Bullshit, either education has a sufficiently large effect size to overcome breeding or it does not.

Why should the world be so convenient? Give Albert Einstein enough alcohol and you can make him a slurring, slumped vagrant. But there is nothing you can drink that will turn you into Albert Einstein.

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The boys can learn from Darcy and Bingley and Mr. Bennett and Mr. Collins and Wickham. Darcy nearly ruins his chances by appearing proud (really he's mostly socially awkward and bad at expressing himself) because he unthinkingly sticks to the rigid social hierarchy of the time. He does have a strong moral foundation, though, and is capable of thinking for himself without needing to destroy all the rules (that last is important, I think; you can change and grow but that doesn't mean you have to be radical rebel punk burn it all down).

Bingley is just a sweetheart who deserves to be happy and he gets to be happy.

Mr. Bennett is a neglectful parent. He may be unhappy in his marriage (which was for love, or at least lustful attraction between him and his wife, so it was not well-established from the start) but retreating into his library, indulging his favourite daughter, and neglecting his other daughters and responsibilities to them is not the way to do it. The estate is entailed so when he dies, his daughters will be turned out and have nothing to live on. That's why Mrs. Bennett is so anxious to get them all married off and settled as fast as she can. His neglect bears fruit in Lydia's caprice and what happens to her, and too late he decides to be more strict with Kitty so she won't turn out the same way.

Wickham is the superficially charming 'cool' guy who presents himself as a victim but who has not taken useful advantage of the help he received, instead he permitted envy and entitlement to shape his actions, and now he's basically a con man living off his wife and her in-laws, being bribed to shut up and go away quietly.

Making a good marriage is also an important message for the boys as demonstrated in this novel; Mr and Mrs Bennett's marriage was imprudent, Wickham's father was drowned in debt by his wife's extravagance, Mr. Collins is trying to marry based not on his own choice and judgement but 'what will please my patroness?', and Darcy almost runs off the rails by how he treats Elizabeth ("your family is terrible, I am lowering myself by being associated with them, but in spite of all the bad things this union will bring, I condescend to propose to you" is not a good way to propose marriage!) and Wickham runs himself into a shotgun marriage where his tricks of trying to compromise a rich girl in order to force such a marriage get turned on him (he runs off with Lydia but never intended to marry her). He's been fortune-hunting, the male equivalent of a gold-digger (there's another heiress he tries to nab but is foiled) and ends up caught in his own trap.

Bingley probably has the smoothest, most trouble-free, romance and marriage of them all, and that's because both he and Jane are good people. He's not foolishly proud, he's not marrying simply because of lust, she's not wealthy herself but she's a good match due to her character and upbringing, and they genuinely fell in love. Walk the middle path between greed (marriage based only on personal advantage and pecuniary gain) and lust (marriage based only on romantic and sexual attraction), be sensible, and you have the best chance of being happy.

Excellent post!

As an aside we need more adaptations with a hot MILF Mrs. Bennett, she's only in her 40s and supposedly a complete smoke-show. Her character becomes so much more layered if you imagine her as coming into the room with "hot chick at the club" type energy only to get brushed off.

That would be funny, adaptations tend to make the Bennetts older side of middle age. They both probably assumed they'd have a son to inherit the estate, I wonder if the five daughters were the results of efforts to get that son.

Once the New Relationship Energy wore off, they found they had nothing in common. Mr. Bennett couldn't share his intellectual interests with her and she couldn't get him to be interested in her social ambitions and (later) worries about marrying the girls off.

Still hot MILF Mrs. Bennett would be a great role in any new adaptation!

Isn’t that part of the point? Mr. Bennett is a weak man who married the uncouth but gorgeous party girl. He made a bad choice but never had the spine to guide her to a better path.

I think it's not that he didn't have the spine, as that he couldn't be bothered to make the effort. That's his weakness, as contrasted to Darcy who does change his mind and put in the work to win Elizabeth and meet her halfway. Mr. Bennett instead retreated to his library, let his wife handle running the house, and made a pet of Elizabeth because she was smart and he influenced her in how she viewed the world (part of Elizabeth's character growth is growing beyond her father's simplistic scorn for society around him and their neighbours).

Isn’t that part of the point?

In the the Book? Yes. I think a lot of the film adaptations end up missing out by casting Mrs. Bennett as a silver-haired matron and Mr. Bennett as a dottering old man, rather than as they were originally described.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice really is the classic popular novel. Most of what people read today are novels written for the masses, and before ~Austen's time no one was really doing that. (I'm not saying she was the groundbreaker, but she's certainly the one that had staying power.)

[SPOILERS BELOW I GUESS]

Also Mr. Darcy is quite an admirable character; he's on my personal list of exemplars of male virtue. The novel really does a great job of taking you with the viewpoint character in really hating him for half the book. I remember reading it and feeling mad at the thought that he was going to turn out to be the love interest, namely how dumb it would be that she "changes" him for the better. But it turns out he was actually a stand-up guy the whole time, and it was Elizabeth who had fallen into trapped priors! She's the one who changes, and Darcy is ultimately rewarded for his steadfast honesty and integrity.

It's both of them. The title says it all. Both of them are proud, both of them are prejudiced, and both of them have to learn to change their minds about snap judgements, about compromise, and seeing below the surface.

My understanding (see for example this old article) is that Texas has a public comment process that allows random unhinged people to have a disproportionate input into curriculum design.

Side notice: Goldilocks and the Three Bears and the Grashopper and the Ants seem both a bit heavy-handed for kindergarden.

Also, the Texans (or Americans) really seem to love their founding fathers and presidents. Though I will also notice that Texas had the good taste not to make a hagiography of The Greatest President of All Times required reading. And I do not even want to speculate what kind of dirt Bennett (whose Children's Book of Virtues provides texts no less than seven times) has on the state board of education.

I think that religious background knowledge is often important context and the school should probably try to teach kids the basics. Quite a few of the great writers did have an education heavy on both Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman mythology. If Melville's narrator introduces himself as Ishmael, he is implicitly assuming that the reader knows of the biblical namesake.

On the other hand, there is a thin line between education and indoctrination. Jonah (author credit: Jonah in the HC article, which is amazing, like crediting Odysseus with writing the Illiad) is basically a story about God railroading some unwilling guy (whom he gave free will for some reason) into delivering some ultimatum to some city, then chickening out when it came to follow up on his threats (remind you of anyone? Sadly, God does not always chicken out.), leaving Jonah pissed for a lack of fire and brimstone. Kindergardeners might not understand that the character of God is every bit as fictional as the character of the Grandmother Spider from How Grandmother Spider Brought Fire, because adults around them take one more serious than the other.

On the third hand, there is also merit to letting kids discover for themselves that the adults are full of shit. I got a bible in fifth grade (German schools have opt-in religious education), which is the book I credit with turning me atheist around ninth grade or so.

Also, it seems likely that blue states will retaliate by finding out what stories are most effective at turning kids away from Christianity and making them required reading. They can even co-opt Texas guise of providing Judeo-Christian context, the story of Lot should be enough to give most teens the Ick.

Also, it seems likely that blue states will retaliate by finding out what stories are most effective at turning kids away from Christianity and making them required reading.

That would be the actual bibliography of the bible. Kids could get a real education on the jewish state, how they got their ass handed to them and how the bible was rewritten by no less than 16 different authors spaced in time so much that you could track who retconned what just by the way language mutated over time. Also there's like a whole book/scroll that was removed at one point. Lets not even mention the original polytheistic origins and the cast of various Elohim.

then chickening out when it came to follow up on his threats (remind you of anyone? Sadly, God does not always chicken out.),

With an interpretation like that, sounds like the inclusion of Bible stories is a good idea! and maybe you could attend the same class? 😁

For those of you what never heard the Mass readings, God sends Jonah as prophet with a warning message to Nineveh and they convert and He spares them. I don't know what is "chickening-out" there, Jonah is explicit that God is merciful and will spare the truly penitent:

1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you. 3 So Jonah set out for Nineveh, in accord with the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an awesomely great city; it took three days to walk through it. 4 Jonah began his journey through the city, and when he had gone only a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” 5 the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, no cattle or sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. 8 Man and beast alike must be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; they all must turn from their evil way and from the violence of their hands. 9 Who knows? God may again repent and turn from his blazing wrath, so that we will not perish.” 10 When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.

1 But this greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first toward Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, repenting of punishment. 3 So now, LORD, please take my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 But the LORD asked, “Are you right to be angry?” 5 Jonah then left the city for a place to the east of it, where he built himself a hut and waited under it in the shade, to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the LORD God provided a gourd plant. And when it grew up over Jonah’s head, giving shade that relieved him of any discomfort, Jonah was greatly delighted with the plant. 7 But the next morning at dawn God provided a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8 And when the sun arose, God provided a scorching east wind; and the sun beat upon Jonah’s head till he became faint. Then he wished for death, saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry over the gourd plant?” Jonah answered, “I have a right to be angry—angry enough to die.” 10 Then the LORD said, “You are concerned over the gourd plant which cost you no effort and which you did not grow; it came up in one night and in one night it perished. 11 And should I not be concerned over the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot know their right hand from their left, not to mention all the animals?”

In Markdown, you have to add two space characters at the end of a line in order to create a line break.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Isn't that the kind of bedtime story parents will already be reading or telling to their kids? Depends on what version is in the curriculum, I suppose, but kindergarten is 4-5 years old, isn't it? Plenty old enough for a simple form of the story.

Also, it seems likely that blue states will retaliate by finding out what stories are most effective at turning kids away from Christianity and making them required reading.

Aren't we already there? If the books aren't explicitly all LGBT+++ friendly, the new interpretations of them are, e.g. this 1970s series of Frog and Toad which I only knew of from seeing the characters presented as gay on Tumblr posts, and the author's daughter saying "yes, my gay dad meant them to be a gay couple".

Of course, Ernie and Bert are gay. What, you thought those two were straight? Pfft!

In Texas, kindergarten is five to six. Pre-k is four to five and officially optional(technically, so is kindergarten- but there isn't quite as strong a norm of going to Pre-k as there is kindergarten). After that grades count 1-12 in ascending order.

Goldilocks was extremely popular with small boys of my generation as soon as they were old enough to read - you didn't need to set it as a course book for illustrated copies to fly off the library shelves. I don't think this was motivated by misogyny because Tailypo was equally popular with boys who came across it.

Jonah is essentially about the mercy of God. Your claim that God 'chickens out' is embarrassingly backwards - the people of Ninevah clearly respond as required to Jonah's warning, which is why they are spared. What's interesting is that Jonah doesn't want them to be spared. That's why he initially tried to avoid God's call, not because he was lazy but because he hated the Ninevites and hoped they would be struck down. The ending of the story is the whole point - that God can destroy or give mercy to whomever he wants, and it's not for humans to complain because we have a limited perspective. Jonah tried to avoid God's call because he disagreed with God's plan, and it's only when he repents of that in the depths of metaphorical hell that he's saved. It's quite an interesting and layered story.

I get the vibe that you're some kind of angry atheist type? It's possible that if you'd been properly taught Jonah and other Bible stories as a kid you would have more respect and understanding for them, and maybe less hostility towards God.

It's possible that if you'd been properly taught Jonah and other Bible stories as a kid you would have more respect and understanding for them, and maybe less hostility towards God.

To someone who grew up with western secular morality, properly explaining the lesson "God grants and denies mercy capriciously and we should not question his decisions" makes God less sympathetic, not more. The kiddie moral of "Johan was punished for his disobedience but forgiven in the end" is much more palatable to even Victorian sensibilities, let alone today's.

God doesn't need to be sympathetic. The purpose of the Bible isn't to make you think God is a chill dude, it's to describe his actual nature.

Also, the mercy in this story isn't capricious, in fact it's the opposite. God gives Ninevah the opportunity to repent, and they take it.

Anyway, the point of this story isn't God's treatment of Ninevah, it's Jonah's response to it. The person reading should see themselves in the person of Jonah, who seeks to avoid God's will for his life. Even a child can understand this basic theme. Jonah gets in trouble because he tries to flee from God's will, and is saved when he returns to that will. This concept is deepened by the context of Jonah's reasons for fleeing (his hatred for the Ninevites). There's no contradiction, this theme of Jonah's anger is an expansion of the simpler concept.

Except it's not "capricious" in the slightest. The people of Nineveh repent their wickedness and are spared. Jonah rebels and is punished. And all the while God tries to reason with Jonah and bring him on side rather than just leaving him to suffer.

It's a story about free-will and the difference between punishing sins and punishing sinners.

Jonah (like many people who subscribe to a "secular morality" these days) has become high on his own sense of righteousness and as such has become more concerned with sticking it to his outgroup than addressing real problems. This prompts God to test him and ultimately call him out on his bullshit. If God calling someone out on their self-righteous bullshit violates your precious sensibilities perhaps you are the one who needs the message most.

But it's not just about Jonah's punishment, it's about Nineveh being spared not capriciously, but after repenting. Caprice would be God telling Jonah after he arrived and proclaimed the message, but the people of Nineveh didn't believe and didn't change, "You know what? Changed my mind, you can go home".

The lesson for us is "don't be vindictive and punitive for the sake of it, don't try and tell God what to do based on our own desires and hatreds". If the wicked truly repent, they can be forgiven. The whores and tax-collectors enter the Kingdom of God before you, the self-righteous who look down on others.

It's not exactly capricious, the Ninevites explicitly go overboard in their repentance. Even the cows repent of their wickedness!

There are lots of layered takes to get out of the story, that's why it's so good! Jonah was punished for his disobedience but forgiven in the end. Also, God didn't just kill Jonah but brought him back - He could have just picked a new prophet but Jonah was given a second chance. Nineveh better at repenting than Israel/Judah. Israel has prophet after prophet spitting reams of flowery poetry sent to convert it and no one changes. Nineveh gets a half-assed "God's going to come down hard on you!" and they all immediately undergo a ridiculous level of fasting and repentance.

Another layer is that Jonah himself is not destroyed. Even after doing as God commanded, he still wishes to see Nineveh destroyed, and is angry when it is not. The story ends with God attempting to reason with him, rather than simply smiting him for his rebellious attitude.

he still wishes to see Nineveh destroyed, and is angry when it is not.

I think this is the part that trips up a lot of secular readers, they see God as "chickening out" because, like Jonah, they aren't really worried about fighting sin as much as the are hating the outgroup.

Jonah is a wonderful piece of satire, and it's a shame it will just be used as "kids, look at this time a whale vored a dude". Basically every other prophet suffers rejection, humiliation, and violence from their own people. Meanwhile, Jonah is sent to Israel's mortal enemies, tries to get out of doing his job, walks through the city giving the most half assed proclamation ("Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!")... and it works perfectly. Even the cows cover themselves in sackclothes and sit in ashes. Absolutely brilliant.

That said, it's unclear if teachers will present the narrative excerpts as clearly work of fiction, like Aesop's fables. Is that too close to establishment of religion? Schools are obviously allowed to teach evolution even though it offends young earth creationists.

The beautiful part of Jonah is the prayer, which is unfortunately not part of the reading. It acts as a sort of maximum externalization of salvation from a rock bottom psychological state, with Jonah poetically describing himself as being barred into the bedrock of the ocean (literal rock bottom). Many of the metaphors we use today to describe being in psychological disaster — can’t get above water; trying to stay afloat; drowning; out of our depths; swallowed whole; confined; in hell; fainting / dying; flooded with work; suffocating — these are all found or implied in the small little poem-prayer. In my view this is the real utility of the work, with the tale of empathy placed around it for added tropology. When the ancient Israelite found himself in disaster, he would remember Jonah, and in remembering Jonah he would remember what Jonah did. Jonah’s salvation comes from three behaviors:

  • His cessation of avoidance (no more fleeing from the Great Ought)

  • His expressing out of his troubles in words, imagery, and emotion (extremely useful psychologically, functioning as catharsis and rubber duck debugging in one)

  • His orientation toward hope and eventual deliverance from his troubles (“(though) I have been banished from Your sight, yet once more I will look toward Your holy temple”)

These are great behaviors. If you were to teach these behaviors in a class, it would be an advantage to those students who would otherwise avoid, ignore, and despair over their troubles.

What even is the moral of Goldilocks, other than that burglary is bad?

Bears can and should eat bratty little girls, and if the little girls get away that's a disappointing ending.

Seems there were three versions, the first with a nasty old woman instead of a cute little girl:

Out the little old woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her.

Digging into it is fascinating, the history seems to be that it was originally an oral folk tale and when it was first written down seems to be difficult to pin down; this one attributes it to Eleanor Mure in 1831 written down as a version of a story told inside the family but not published, and the bears are more violent to the intruder. First published version seems to be Robert Southey published in 1837 and that kicked off mass-market popularity and new versions.

Over time, the story got tidied up (the dirty old woman becomes a beautiful young woman and then a little girl, the three bears change from three bachelor bears to three friends sharing a home and then become a family of father, mother and baby) and softened (the bears don't do anything to the intruder, she jumps out an open window and gets away scot-free so far as the ending goes) so that it became suitable for children.

Moderation is best. Be neither too hot nor lukewarm; walk the middle path.

I actually have a book that's the sequel where the bear family shows up at Goldilocks' suburban house while the parents are out. They trash the whole place while she's frantically running around trying to fix all the messes. Then the parents come home from grocery shopping and there's her long explanation of what happened, starting with 'I know I'm not supposed to let strangers in but technically I knew them I've been to their house...'
Fun variation, maybe something to do with [large, furry] brown home invaders. They're not like us, tell you what.

I actually have it in a collection of preschool books. Small kids love hearing the three voices ("Papa Bear said in his great BIG voice...") It teaches concepts of hot, cold, lukewarm. Big, small, medium. If there is a moral it might just be: looks can be deceiving. A nice cottage may look inviting, but maybe a family of bears lives there! Remember kids, don't take candy from strangers.

"Don't wander around in the forest" and "don't take other people's shit" seem sufficiently didactic for a old children's story. (The first in particular is a very popular theme)

Yeah. Goldilocks is a brat, the bears leave their house open because they don't expect any intruders and she doesn't seem to have even the plea of necessity about needing shelter and food, she tries all the porridge and sleeps in all the beds and doesn't explain herself when discovered, she just runs away without making good for the damage she did.

"Don't take stuff just because it's lying there" is a very good lesson for small kids. They need to learn about "this belongs to someone else, ask first" at that age.

Sometimes things aren't the right fit for everyone?

More pointedly, I think the image of "trying Papa's things and Mama's things and then realizing that the Little One's things are just right" is supposed to lead children away from messing around with their parents' things when they're home alone. Which is less of a moral lesson and more of a practical, avoiding-accidents-in-the-home sort of lesson. The story doesn't actually illustrate that lesson, so much as wrap the image in a fun little story that'll stick in kids' minds.

One would think it should be the Christians who would be disappointed that parts of God's Word have been omitted.

Basic Biblical literacy is good, and I suspect any attempts to teach as if the stories are actually God's Word will not exactly convert nonbelievers.

Does anyone who is pro-trans want to steelman gender ideology for me and try to field questions? It's always seemed rather ridiculous to me (for example, the idea that someone with XY chromosomes, a penis, and the physical size of a man might actually be a woman) but I realized the other day that I haven't looked carefully at the details of pro-trans arguments.

I realize that this is something I could probably look up elsewhere online, but I would like to follow up with critical questions so that the whole argument is laid bare without any motte/bailey pivots.

To start things off, I understand that those who adhere to gender ideology draw a distinction between "sex" and "gender." "sex" refers to the markers such as male versus female genitalia; XX versus XY chromosome; etc. which have traditionally been used to distinguish between human males and human females. "Gender" (according to gender ideology) refers to a person's internal feelings in regards to their sex. So that a person who is of the male sex, might possibly be of female gender and vice versa. The purpose of sex reassignment procedures (hormones, surgery, etc.) is to align the disconnect between the person's sex and their gender. But even in the absence of such procedures, a person who is of the male sex and the female gender should be treated by society as a female (and vice versa). Even to the point where a another person's sexual preferences should go to the gender, not the sex, of a potential romantic partner. So that a straight man or a lesbian woman should be okay dating an individual who is of male sex but female gender, and if not they are a "transphobe."

Is that a fair summary of gender ideology? If not, what did I leave out? Or what did I include that's incorrect?

You say vague things like "pro-trans" but it is better to stick to specific claims and policies. You mention a particular kind of framework called "gender ideology" but of course it's not clear what that framework specifically entails. For the first, I will talk about dating expectations since you mention it; for the second, I will give arguments that actual woke people seem to give.

In another reply, you bring up the superstraight TikTok trend. Here is something you missed: Woke gender ideologists are still relatively libertarian from a love perspective. They would not require a lesbian to suck any particular girl dick, or for anyone to date any particular trans person. The same non-entitlement arguments used on resentful incels apply to resentful trans people.

The key is understanding sexual orientation and gender expression. The only valid sexual orientations are those based on a certain allowed list of things: personality (pansexual), gender expression (hetero-, homo-), maybe some other aspects, whatever. This means "attracted only to people with college degrees" is not a sexual orientation. The reason is that "having a college degree" is not an aspect of gender expression. This is also why "attracted only to people with tattoos" or "attracted only to people with certain genitals" is not a sexual orientation.

College degrees, tattoos, and genitals -- these things are mere preference. (Flashback to Amy Coney Barret's verbal blunder!) So you can be attracted to someone and later lose interest once you find out they don't have a college degree or whatever.

One intuition pump for you is (assuming you are a normal straight guy): imagine a very attractive young woman, and then imagine learning later she has a penis. You probably don't want anything to do with her anymore. That's fine! But it is proof you can be attracted to trans people.

The woke way for a transphobe (or undercover-racist) to date: "Yes, I'm attracted to trans (or black) girls." And then just don't actually date any of them.

One intuition pump for you is (assuming you are a normal straight guy): imagine a very attractive young woman, and then imagine learning later she has a penis. You probably don't want anything to do with her anymore. That's fine! But it is proof you can be attracted to trans people.

I don't understand how this wouldn't be a demonstration of the exact opposite: that a transwoman being a transwoman (i.e. male) is exactly what makes them unattractive to a straight man, overriding how they appear superficially.

If genitals were the actual thing that "attractive" meant, then this thought experiment would be incoherent. If genitals were the actual thing you meant by "attractive," then "imagine a very attractive young woman" would cause you to visualize a scene where the woman has taken off her clothes for you to inspect her.

My thought experiment is perfectly coherent to you, because you intuitively treat "attractive" as what the woke call gender expression: makeup, face shape, personality, stuff like that.

Of course, realizing that you can be attracted to trans people is alarming and offensive, which is I guess what causes all this kind of reaction.

This is just word games around what "attractive" means, though. If you mean "someone that I am sexually attracted to," as in, "imagine a very attractive young woman" means "imagine a young woman that you are very sexually attracted to," then yes, obviously it's a scene where it's a woman for whom I have some knowledge of her genitals and all that (likely personality too). But that's rarely what people mean when they say someone is "attractive," which is really just short-hand for referring to those "gender expression" characteristics, since most interaction with most people happen on surface-level, and often has little to do with "am I sexually attracted to them?" I find Hanry Cavill an "attractive" man, but I'd find sex with Oprah Winfrey - whom I find "not attractive" - to be more appealing than with him.

Obviously, those are two different things. Again, your thought experiment perfectly demonstrates the opposite: that a straight man is unlikely to be "attracted" to trans males, even if they might find their superficial characteristics to be "attractive."

Also, I would prefer if you did not engage in Bulverism.

imagine a very attractive young woman, and then imagine learning later she has a penis. You probably don't want anything to do with her anymore. That's fine! But it is proof you can be attracted to trans people

Imagine you like the colour red but you want to paint your shed green, and when the person you paid to paint your shed buys a pot of green paint and opens it they find that it's full of red paint, and you get annoyed that they've painted your shed red and their explanation is that the label says that it's green, and besides colour exists on a spectrum and what we call red is a neuro-socio-linguistic construction, and you're failing to account for people who are red-green colour blind.

Imagine if the painter tells you they have painted all of their own sheds red because they believe that red sheds are better than green sheds, but they reluctantly agree to repaint your shed and then go and pour the leftover "green" paint into a new pot of green paint, making it neither red nor green. How is that possible to add red-called-green to green and get something that isn't red, red-called-green, or green? Does it matter if they show you their revised work in a black-and-white photo where you can't tell what colour the shed is? Does it matter if they show you the lid from the new pot they used that objectively proves the new paint was green before it was opened, or that the labels on both pots say green?

You say vague things like "pro-trans" but it is better to stick to specific claims and policies. You mention a particular kind of framework called "gender ideology" but of course it's not clear what that framework specifically entails.

Agreed, that's why I started the thread. I am trying to understand the mainstream progressive/leftist/woke view on transgenderism and to scrutinize it. If you are saying that no such consensus view exists, fine, but that's a different issue.

The only valid sexual orientations are those based on a certain allowed list of things:

Ok, and who gets to decide what is on the allowed list?

One intuition pump for you is (assuming you are a normal straight guy): imagine a very attractive young woman, and then imagine learning later she has a penis. You probably don't want anything to do with her anymore. That's fine! But it is proof you can be attracted to trans people.

Sure, if "attracted to trans people" includes "unknowingly attracted to trans people." But so what? What's your point here?

I'm a normal straight guy. I have no sexual attraction for men (as that term is traditionally defined). This includes trans-identifying-men, no matter how traditionally feminine they are in their appearance. (By "sexual attraction," I am not including unknowing sexual attraction.) I suspect that because of this, many Leftists would label me a "transphobe" and imply (or state) that there is something wrong with me. Do you agree that many people would do so? And would you agree with those people?

Ok, and who gets to decide what is on the allowed list?

Oh, woke people do of course.

Sure, if "attracted to trans people" includes "unknowingly attracted to trans people." But so what? What's your point here?

The point is an illustration of what the words "attracted to" and "preference" actually mean in practice.

  1. We don't make sexual orientations out of preferences (or woke people don't)
  2. We are attracted to gender expression
  3. Genitals are like college degrees, not gender expression.

By "sexual attraction," I am not including unknowing sexual attraction.

Hopefully you're starting to understand the woke argument? If you have to say "By X I am not including certain kinds of X" then there's a problem here.

I suspect that because of this, many Leftists would label me a "transphobe" and imply (or state) that there is something wrong with me.

I think they would say you are not actually attracted to femininity at all! The core gender-ideologist claim is that Caitlyn Jenner is in the same bucket as Angelina Jolie, and they call that bucket femininity. They wouldn't quite say "you are attracted to genitals" because genitals are not a kind of gender expression. (I want to re-iterate that 'attracted to college degrees' is incoherent, but 'preference for college degrees' is not.)

Finally, they'll darkly hint that you seem to view women as bodies attached to a hole, or something.

Hopefully you're starting to understand the woke argument? If you have to say "By X I am not including certain kinds of X" then there's a problem here.

Well the problem is that some ambiguity has been injected into a commonly used word.

Oh, woke people do of course.

In any event, thank you for answering my questions. Assuming that your responses are consistent with mainstream progressive thinking on transgenderism, I am satisfied that it's a bunch of ridiculous nonsense propped up by silly word games.

I agree with this. I am not pro-trans, but I understand it enough I'd say. The entire "gender identity" idea starts with noting that some people have a condition that causes them to feel like they have the brain of a woman but the body of a man, or vice versa. Take the idea that said people feel uncomfortable being reminded of their sex, and work backwards to make sex as irrelevant as possible. With the exception of an extreme fringe, they won't directly insult you for not wanting to date a trans person. They just insist it be called "genital preference" and avoid pointing out that it's because they're trans, in keeping with never mentioning what sex a person is.

Though they will occasionally imply that "genital preference" is internalized transphobia conditioned by society, so they can tell themselves they aren't pressuring you to change, simply offering a helpful suggestion.

Yes, trans people have a lot of trouble dating and are the left-coded version of incels. For transwomen, most are disgusted by them and society sees them as stealing valor. For transmen, they have the typical difficulties. I think the quagmire of being unwanted nicely explains the resentment that incels and (some) trans people feel about all this. This is opposed to the other, Just World narrative where (e.g. Incel's) moral failings cause dating problems.

What is interesting to me, and I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, is that so many trans women start off looking like nerdy and loser guys -- these guys seem like they would be vulnerable to becoming incel in the first place. Likewise, a lot of nonbinary girls start off with an unattractive face shape and are probably fat.

What is interesting to me, and I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, is that so many trans women start off looking like nerdy and loser guys -- these guys seem like they would be vulnerable to becoming incel in the first place.

Yeah, I have some acquaintances like that. Sometimes people will show me their transition glow-up pics and say things like, "I used to be a fat ugly dude, now I'm a pretty girl," and while they often do look much better than they did before, it often strikes me that they lost weight and started to put effort into their appearance, and I sometimes wonder if it's like veganism, where lifestyle improvements that come from paying attention to what you eat and working on a balanced diet are attributed to the vegan lifestyle specifically.

The downside is that I also have some acquaintances that seem to struggle with broader body image issues (my belly pooch makes me fat, my forehead is too big, my butt is too small) and I wonder sometimes if the gender dysphoria is related to more complex body dysmorphia that goes unaddressed because transition becomes the panacea for body image issues.

That said, on the ftm side, this is complicated by the relationship between being overweight and PCOS syndrome, which describes an increase in testosterone that can cause male-pattern physical changes like hirsutism and sometimes even increased libido. A friend of mine believes that some young women with PCOS begin to identify with the male-pattern traits and transitioning becomes a way to 'embrace' them.

For transmen, they have the typical difficulties.

The typical difficulties?

What is interesting to me, and I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, is that so many trans women start off looking like nerdy and loser guys -- these guys seem like they would be vulnerable to becoming incel in the first place. Likewise, a lot of nonbinary girls start off with an unattractive face shape and are probably fat.

"Transmaxxing" or the "incel-to-trans pipeline" has been joked about for as long as incel was a commonly used term. I've seen at least a couple of memes that take on some form of "which way, autistic man?" with 2 diverging paths towards "trans" and "incel" or the like. My pet theory is that nerdiness/near-autism tends to make young men extremely unattractive to women (citation needed), which pushes them to becoming incels, which leads some of them towards "transmaxxing" for cultural reasons.

One intuition pump for you is (assuming you are a normal straight guy): imagine a very attractive young woman, and then imagine learning later she has a penis. You probably don't want anything to do with her anymore. That's fine! But it is proof you can be attracted to trans people.

? This seems very dumb. Imagine I surgically modified a great ape to look like a very attractive young woman from a distance, and you had any flicker of sexual interest upon seeing the ape from a distance. You are therefore an enthusiast in Apes. Elsewise, imagine I put a hologram of an attractive woman nearby and you had a flicker of sexual interest. This proves you are robosexual.

Also clear AI response.

The believer in woke gender ideology would just tell you that the sting of your analogy is precisely that robots and apes are not people. Which by the way, makes your analogy dehumanizing and problematic, etc.

Furthermore, my guess is you are being "sex-essentialist" and focusing on the person's genitals. As I explained, having a genital preference is fine, but is not a sexual orientation. This means the analogy's conclusion should not be "you are robosexual" but rather "you can be attracted to a robot." A nitpick, I know.

If I got an early bloomer 12 year old girl, dressed her up and made some mild surgical enhancements then went 'gotcha you're a pedophile' it's the same thing, though.

I think there is an empathy gap where you don't know what woke people think. they would consider you, not the "pedophile," to be the bad guy in this scenario, if your enhancements made the girl look like an adult.

(obviously, some consider any 30 year straight guy wrong for liking girls 18, for reasons unrelated to trans issues, which muddies the waters, but...)

To turn it around on you, suppose you took an adult woman and did something to her to make her look 12 or whatever. Turns out woke people think its pedophilic to be attracted to that!

So, hopefully I am getting across the point that to woke people, "attracted to" really means that initial gut feeling about the outside characteristics, it doesn't refer to preferences and important dealbreakers.

Does anyone who is pro-trans want to steelman gender ideology for me and try to field questions?

I am broadly pro-trans, but don't really come at it from a progressive/woke angle.

The basic foundation I'm coming from is a combination of libertarianism (people with different belief systems should be allowed to do what they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else), trans-humanism (people should be allowed to do what they want to their bodies), and a little bit of pronoun hospitality (when you are speaking with someone, it is nice to meet them halfway and use their preferred terminology, even if you don't agree with their metaphysics or ontology.)

I also think there's a strange way in which a lot of the trans debate is primarily a linguistic debate. I've said this before, but I think well-informed pro- and anti-trans people are generally in agreement on empirical questions like, "Can trans women get pregnant?", or "What chromosomes do an overwhelming majority of trans men have?"

I think in a lot of ways, it is less mystifying to model trans people as people with "strange" desires. The same way some people want tattoos and piercings or breast enlargement surgeries, they want to change their bodies to look more like the opposite sex. And the same way some people ask for nicknames and hate their birth names, they want nicknames and "nickpronouns."

My feeling is if they have the money, and that is what they want to do with their life, why shouldn't they be allowed to do that?

I'm okay with private sports organizations making whatever choice they want about which sex trans people compete with, let the free market sort such things out. For government-controlled domains, we'll have to work out what we want to do through a combination of voting, and application of constitutional principles. I'm personally okay if trans women get housed with male prisoners as a stop gap solution, though my preference is for all prisoners to be treated humanely and to be safe from other prisoners, and I am open to other possible solutions that still accomplish those goals.

I am broadly pro-trans, but don't really come at it from a progressive/woke angle.

Thanks for posting this, but I'm more interested in understanding and questioning what I have referred to as "gender ideology," i.e. the mainstream progressive/leftist/woke views about transgenderism.

I agree that one could defend a libertarian take on transgenderism, and in that case I basically agree with @07mk that it comes down to questions of coercion. Which raises a lot of issues, one of which is whether the social norm of being polite is being abused to coerce people into pretending to accept gender ideology. So as to create a false consensus which then becomes a real consensus because people are afraid to speak out publicly (in some circles) against gender ideology.

In this subject it’s way easier to be against something than it is to be for something. Both on a wider level and the details!

Epistemically it’s interesting that someone presents a relatively cogent view and you say “but that’s not what I’m mad at”.

My point is not a criticism of you though. It’s that this works in the opposite direction as well, and creates a lot of confusion. What you depict or want to depict as a monolithic and coherent gender ideology is also best understood as being “against” a caricature of conservative/religious gender ideology.

As an example you might say “there are two genders” or “two sexes” and they might get all worked up and excited since there are all of these edge cases both historically and individually.

It’s actually my observation that there are very loosely two camps: one says that gender is a social construct, and this should be ignored since people can do whatever they want. And individuals can and should be able to discard the baggage on demand since that’s an inherent right/is just. The second says that yes social constructs are real but we need to modify said social constructs in order to better represent the true underlying diversity of things. This camp believes that the constructs are stifling or harmful and need to be consciously expanded. In a way you can see that these don’t actually fit together very harmoniously.

Layered on top of this are various attitudes towards individualism and its sorta-opposite (however you want to phrase it, but the idea that societal or economic or other macro forces are overpoweringly strong). That’s why you see such a disconnect between the libertarian approaches and the other more “oppression” based narratives. The “gender ideology” camp as you describe it doesn’t actually care about reconciling these, since as long as you externally talk about your opposition to the conservatives you are usually going to be accepted.

And this works in reverse as well. You see everything from “gender dysphoria isn’t real” to “gender dysphoria is real and should be treated X way” with varying X’s to “gender dysphoria is ‘real’ but misunderstood or misinterpreted in Y way” and varying degrees of prescriptivism. “Defined” mostly as being in opposition to something.

In this subject it’s way easier to be against something than it is to be for something

Can you give me a few examples so I know what you are talking about?

Epistemically it’s interesting that someone presents a relatively cogent view and you say “but that’s not what I’m mad at”.

Ok, I'm going to stop here for a couple reasons. First, coyly saying that something is "interesting" tells me that you want to imply something without plainly stating it. I don't have the time or energy to puzzle over what you are trying to say. Second, whatever your point is, if you need to misquote me to make the point, then it's probably not much of a point to begin with.

"Can trans women get pregnant?"

No, but trans men can, and they're still men, and by the way that's non-binary erasure, bigot.

This is the linguistic jiggery-pokery which annoys most ordinary people, I think. Pregnant people are mothers, not fathers. Women get pregnant, men don't. You can talk about gender all you like and being inclusive and sensitive and all the rest of it, but right now - even with uterine transplants - biological males can't get pregnant, only biological women. EDIT: You want to be called "Bob, pronouns he/him" and after the kid is born everyone refers to you as the father, sure, okay. But you're not a male who got pregnant and you're not the father father. I can see how this leads to the kind of tip-toeing language around terminology that gives us "some people with uteri who carry pregnancies" (thankfully only confined to research papers like this so far).

Later, when technology and medical science unleashes horrors hitherto unimagined by the human mind progresses and it is possible to get an entire transplant of donor uterus, donor ovaries, construct a neo-cervix and neo-vagina to be birthing canal, a ton of immunosuppressants and hormones, make sure the entire surgically-implanted new system functions, then yes trans women could get pregnant. Probably go with donor uterus, surrogate ova implanted by IVF, and delivery by Caesarean first since creating a complete and functional reproductive system in a body not meant for one is going to be a huge hurdle and will have to be taken step-by-step.

Even uterine transplants, at present, are only good for a couple of pregnancies before needing to be removed in order to come off immunosuppressants:

If the woman is approved for the procedure, the process starts with creating an embryo using in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which the woman’s eggs are retrieved and fertilized with sperm. Next, a healthy uterus is transplanted into the patient. About six months after a successful uterus transplant, a single embryo is implanted into the uterus. If it leads to a successful pregnancy, the pregnancy is treated as high risk, and the baby will be delivered via Cesarean section, because women with uterine factor infertility (UFI) cannot delivery vaginally. Babies born from uterus transplant recipients tend to be born early, at about 35 weeks of gestation. Caring for these premature infants often requires a stay in a neonatal intensive care unit for several weeks. The entire process can take 2-5 years.

As with other types of organ transplants, the woman must take immunosuppressive medications to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted uterus. After the baby is born and if the woman does not want more children, the transplanted uterus is removed with a hysterectomy procedure, and the woman no longer needs to take anti-rejection medications.

This is the state of the art at present even for systems set up to be child-bearing. Imagine the difficulties to be overcome for a system that is not intended for same.

Imagine if we could analyze every trans person, find immune compatible pairs and swap their genitalia.

Still a long way from that, but I'm sure Science! is working on it.

I think I read something about male genital transplants? Lemme check - ah yes, Johns Hopkins got you covered there, but only if you're cis I'm afraid.

I also think there's a strange way in which a lot of the trans debate is primarily a linguistic debate. I've said this before, but I think well-informed pro- and anti-trans people are generally in agreement on empirical questions like, "Can trans women get pregnant?", or "What chromosomes do an overwhelming majority of trans men have?"

I don't think much of the trans debate is a linguistics debate, actually, though some of it certainly is; it's primarily a coercion debate. That is, e.g. whether trans women are women is somewhat a linguistic debate, but it's more about coercion, of whether people who don't think that trans women are women ought to be coerced away from being able to refer to them as men or with male pronouns or to deadname them or etc. Of course, a strong argument is that private organizations ought to be able to coerce their members in this matter, but an equally strong argument is that people ought to be free from such coercion from private organizations, such as existing rules and norms against discriminating on the basis of race in certain circumstances. But that's where I see the real debate taking place, and the specific meanings of words are merely tools by which to put forward arguments around that.

I just don't think the linguistic debate can do what people want it to do.

The statement "trans women are women" can be true in some sense, and you can still have policies to prevent transition in minors, and make trans women use men's bathrooms, play on men's sports teams, and be imprisoned in men's prisons.

The words cannot compel the desired action, regardless of anything else.

Like, even if you accepted a "maximalist" supernatural trans position, and said that souls are real, and trans people are acts of the Abrahamic God putting souls in bodies of the opposite sex, nothing about that would imply anything about how we should treat such individuals as a matter of law or custom.

Like, even if you accepted a "maximalist" supernatural trans position, and said that souls are real, and trans people are acts of the Abrahamic God putting souls in bodies of the opposite sex, nothing about that would imply anything about how we should treat such individuals as a matter of law or custom.

I agree with this. However, many people seem to disagree with this, and they insist on making sure that people who think like you or me must behave like we think like them.

My personal preference is that trans people are free to metaphysically perceive their transness in whatever way they want and also to prefer that society at large respect that perception. I think the conflict comes from the ones who seem to believe that "respect" is a synonym for "submit to" and demand the latter under the guise of the former. IMHO, a trans person should be exactly as free to have the preference that others treat them like their felt gender to the same extent that everyone else should be free to treat the trans person like the gender that the treater perceives the trans person as.

Does anyone who is pro-trans want to steelman gender ideology for me

The canonical defense in these parts would be what Scott Alexander wrote almost twelve years ago. He is always worth reading in full in my opinion, but the trans defense starts in section IV.

So that a straight man or a lesbian woman should be okay dating an individual who is of male sex but female gender, and if not they are a "transphobe."

I am not doubting that there is some penis-haver who is asking women in a Lesbian bar if they would want to suck their cock and cries trans-phobia once they get kicked out. From my personal experience, this is rare. As a straight guy, I do not have to fend off trans-women cancelling me for refusing to fuck them basically ever. Love is the last bastion of libertarianism. You can be into one gender, one sex, one type of genitals, hair or skin color, a certain BMI or age range and people will usually accept this and not try to cancel gays for having some anti-women bias in their dating partner selection or whatever.

Love is the last bastion of libertarianism.

Amazingly upside down. Love has been heavily regulated since forever. Heard of monogamy? It still is today, just in a way that aggressively favors feminists.

Is it enforced by the state, though? I think the state mostly messes with dating as far as age of consent is concerned. Social disapproval seems out of scope for libertarian demands, I imagine.

If I dress in a nonstandard way (e.g. as a clown), and this results in the cops arresting and fining me, I imagine this would upset libertarians. If I dressed as a clown and it turns out that most ice cream vendors will not sell to people dressed as clowns, this is something which would likely not upset libertarians.

Yes, it is enforced, formerly it was enforced in a patriarchical way, now we have family courts. And age of consent is extremely high where Scott Alexander lives, so much so that it criminalizes at least part of the sexuality of the majority of straight men, so again it's funny how wrong he is. Love is libertarian huh? Try consensually dating a 17 year old in SF and see how that goes, pal.

The canonical defense in these parts would be what Scott Alexander wrote almost twelve years ago. He is always worth reading in full in my opinion, but the trans defense starts in section IV.

Are you adopting his position? Because I would like to ask some critical questions.

I am not doubting that there is some penis-haver who is asking women in a Lesbian bar if they would want to suck their cock and cries trans-phobia once they get kicked out. From my personal experience, this is rare. As a straight guy, I do not have to fend off trans-women cancelling me for refusing to fuck them basically ever. Love is the last bastion of libertarianism. You can be into one gender, one sex, one type of genitals, hair or skin color, a certain BMI or age range and people will usually accept this and not try to cancel gays for having some anti-women bias in their dating partner selection or whatever.

Ok, so I take it that you are disputing that according to gender ideology (and by that I mean the general progressive/leftist/woke position on transgenderism) if a person claims to be "superstraight," they are considered to be transphobic? And that other than that, you agree with my summary?

Are you adopting his position? Because I would like to ask some critical questions.

Mostly, I am. I still reserve the right to say "oops, I do not agree with him on this sentence in particular".

Feel free to ask some questions. Note that I am defending SA's position "it is worth having trans-inclusive gender definitions", not woke positions like "it is fine to put a third of a school class on puberty blockers" or "if you have any preference for genitals that makes you trans-phobe".

Ok, so I take it that you are disputing that according to gender ideology (and by that I mean the general progressive/leftist/woke position on transgenderism) if a person claims to be "superstraight," they are considered to be transphobic? And that other than that, you agree with my summary?

I am sure that people who use the term "superstraight" are widely decried as transphobic by the wokes. On the other hand, I think that there is not a consensus in the LGBT community that lesbians who are not into dicks are transphobic. On priors, I would expect that a lot of lesbians are not into dicks.

I agree with your summary that trans acceptance requires that we separate sex and gender, and have actually argued previously that we should.

Feel free to ask some questions.

Ok, thanks.

"it is worth having trans-inclusive gender definitions",

I'm not sure what this means. As I understand gender ideology (or whatever you want to call it), a "man" is anyone who self-reports that they are a man, and a "woman" is anyone who self-reports that they are a woman. Have I misunderstood? If so, can you please set forth the "trans-inclusive gender definitions"?

In any event, as I understand Scott's argument, his position is that there is nothing inherently incorrect in re-defining categories, it's just a matter of semantics. So for example, if I change the definition of "King of England" so that it includes not only King Charles but also myself, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's just a matter of definitions. Moreover, Scott's position is that one can and should do so, at least to some extent, in the interest of helping a psychiatric patient. So for example, if my mental problems will be greatly alleviated if my therapist starts addressing me as "Your Highness," then he should do so.

Do I understand his argument correctly?

As I understand gender ideology (or whatever you want to call it), a "man" is anyone who self-reports that they are a man, and a "woman" is anyone who self-reports that they are a woman. Have I misunderstood?

As far as I am concerned, this is correct. Obviously there can be people who are gaming this system where self-id is the tiebreaker, like Cartman self-identifying as a girl so he (!) will get his own bathroom in school, or trolls insisting that their gender is "attack helicopter" and making up weird pronouns for themselves or whatever.

his position is that there is nothing inherently incorrect in re-defining categories, it's just a matter of semantics.

To quote the man:

I’ve been told some people are misinterpreting this post as “you can define words any way you want, don’t worry about it”. While nothing is stopping you from defining a word any way you want, you should definitely worry about it.

Definitions should preferably carve reality at its joints. A definition of fish which includes some whales but excludes other whales is probably not a good definition. But sometimes there are multiple options for a workable definition.

That being said, society runs on on polite fictions to some degree. If you are invited to dinner and find the food barely tolerable, it would be poor form to communicate this fact directly to your host. Likewise, if your colleague introduces you to his "beautiful wife", most people know better than to contradict him. If you get asked on a date and feel insulted that the asker even considered you in his league, it is poor taste to let the disgust show, and the appropriate response would be to tell them to that you are not interested without going into the specifics of his shortcomings. If my English teacher introduced herself as Mrs Smith, it would be extremely impolite to call her Miss Smith even if I knew for a fact that she has never been married.

There are topics where other considerations overrule polite fictions. If some parents believe that prayer is better than chemotherapy for their kid's cancer, you can tell them that this is an insane view even if it will likely upset them. However, the gender in the social sphere is IMHO not something which is especially worth protecting. It used to be that your gender/sex had a lot of legal implications, but today in Western societies that is no longer the case.

The reality is that in the social sphere, we generally have to infer the gender of people through indirect evidence rather than just looking at their genitals. That is fine for most social situations, if I am selling you a cup of coffee, I do not really care if I sexed you as "female" because you are a cis-woman or because you are a trans-woman who was able to pass as a woman. There is no law prohibiting the sale of coffee to penis-havers, so I do not care either way. The same is true for most social interactions, with the exception of sex and procreation.

Few people would support tattooing people their birth gender on their forehead or criminalizing cross-dressing, so the social gender will not be co-extensive with the sex assigned at birth either way. Given that background, I think it is not a huge step to let people pick their pronouns. Of course, if someone is a trans-woman presenting as a bearded guy, I will probably misgender her a lot more by accident than if she is presenting at least somewhat feminine, and I will not lose a lot of sleep over it either.

So for example, if my mental problems will be greatly alleviated if my therapist starts addressing me as "Your Highness," then he should do so.

In the SSC article, the canonical example seems Napoleon, but that is the same up to isomorphism.

For a psychiatrist, how they will refer to their patient is up to them. If they decide to indulge some fantasy or not I will not second-guess them. If you feel they do not have your best interests at heart, find a different psychiatrist.

In a world where a few percents of the population identify as Napoleon, I think it would probably not be helpful for strangers to go to them and tell them that they are not Napoleon, and that the real Napoleon died on St Helena a long time ago. Perhaps the psychiatric community finds that the best outcome is for the public to indulge their fantasy (within limitations -- no invading Russia). Let them put Napoleon Bonaparte as their artist's/order name in their passport, whatever.

It is pretty much the same for your "king of England". Obviously Charles has constitutional duties which we won't let everyone handle who claims they ID as the British monarch. But if it affected multiple percent of the population, I would be fine with making "king of England" free-for-all and having a separate term, like "constitutional monarch of Great Britain" to refer to Charles.

It is different if you were to id as a physician, because society has good reason to not politely play along with you. We should not change the laws to grant you a MD to make you feel better.

Definitions should preferably carve reality at its joints.

So it seems like you are saying that defining "King of England" as I have is not technically incorrect but it's disfavored because it doesn't "carve reality at its joints."

Meanwhile, according to you, defining a man as "anyone who self-reports to be a man" and a woman as "anyone who self-reports to be a woman" is NOT disfavored because it DOES "carve reality at its joints."

Do I understand your position correctly?

It is different if you were to id as a physician, because society has good reason to not politely play along with you. We should not change the laws to grant you a MD to make you feel better.

Ok, so if I understand you correctly, your position is that the decision of whether society should go along with these redefined terms depends on (1) whether doing so will be beneficial to some people; and (2) whether there is a "good reason" not to do so.

Do I understand your position correctly?

What do you mean by “gender ideology”? The mainstream progressive leftist/woke perspective on gender? Any pro-trans viewpoint? There’s tons of different variations and subcultures, including very unhealthy, sometimes fetishistic terminally online ones, to more academic gender studies type ideas. I don’t agree with many of those, so my pro-trans arguments will be very different and don’t rely on the gender/sex distinction.

As far as I know the term “gender ideology” is a term used only by some conservative/gender critical people to refer to a bunch of different LGBT and leftist/“woke” concepts - there’s no central ideology or agreed upon theory. Most academic “gender studies” doesn’t have anything to do with trans gender people and concerns itself more with feminism.

Even to the point where an another person's sexual preferences should go to the gender, not the sex, of a potential romantic partner. So that a straight man or a lesbian woman should be okay dating an individual who is of male sex but female gender, and if not they are a "transphobe."

Again there’s different viewpoints on this. Some will say that yes, the internal gender is all that matters, and some online trans spaces are pretty strident about it, but I believe it’s mostly cope/sour grapes rather than any coherent belief. Maybe it’s about the other person subconsciously feeling the internal aura?

The way I would steelman it is that human sexuality is more flexible than people assume, and a lesbian could be attracted to the feminine energy and vibe of a small, cute femboy, or a gay man to a buff butch, and feel conflicted about calling themselves bi because it feels more like an exception to the rule.

And when you add HRT/surgeries on top of that, someone of the female sex can look male enough that you don’t see them as a woman anymore.

But that’s not the same as an otherwise masculine male self-IDing as a woman and expecting sex with straight men/lesbians without changing anything. Being charitable, that sounds to me like someone taking advantage of progressives/pro-LGBT people having trouble not affirming or including absolutely everybody, even bad actors, and not wanting to be the gatekeepers who’s “actually” transgender or not.

The way I would steelman it is that human sexuality is more flexible than people assume, and a lesbian could be attracted to the feminine energy and vibe of a small, cute femboy, or a gay man to a buff butch, and feel conflicted about calling themselves bi because it feels more like an exception to the rule.

I don't think this is remotely universal. On the contrary being flex is pretty rare, as any gay man will tell you. I want to stress that straights, gays and lesbians actually exist and they're not lying when they say they're only aroused by one sex.

But also, yeah theres a reason everyone jokes about the "straight" guy into femboys.

I don't think this is remotely universal. On the contrary being flex is pretty rare, as any gay man will tell you.

I actually suspect it is more common than you think. Look at prison sexuality, Afghanistan's bacha bazi, and ancient Greek homosexuality.

What I think they all have in common, is that if you sex segregate a population, some men who aren't really "bi", and who would self identify as straight in most circumstances in a modern context, will have sex with smaller weaker men (often of the more effeminate variety, where they can be had.)

But I think this would be less common in less sex segregated places like the United States as a whole.

I don't think that sexuality can be partially a product of one's culture or coercive environment has much to do with the initial notion of how, e.g. a lesbian who doesn't find sex with a male who self-identifies as a woman is being transphobic, where we're using "transphobic" to mean something to be judged as irrational or morally negative or. If you ran an experiment of sticking one lesbian in prison with a bunch of trans women, I'm sure on at least a few of the trials, the lesbian would find sex with the trans women to be fine or even desirable, but the situation in real life that we're dealing with is where lesbians aren't so limited in their choice of partners.

Look at prison sexuality

Better yet, look at how much prison sexuality differs just between the different Anglo cultures. I’ve watched the occasional Ladbible / Insider interviews of British career criminals and several remarked that the ”watch out when picking up the soap” (while of course an obvious exaggeration) is an American thing and does not work the same in British prisons. Clearly the amount of flex is heavily affected by cultural factors.

I have an alternative explanation for why american prisons are gayer than british prisons. In america a lot of the prison population is black and blacks are twice as likely to be gay and whites.

I don't think the population that answers "gay" in polls is the same population that is likely to be the top in dub-consensual male sex in prisons.

I think pure orientations are more common than zoomer self-reports would indicate, but rarer than naive 5% statistics would indicate. And like most things there seems to be a spectrum.

That said, genital preference seems to be the strongest binary, with exceptions, which is important because hormones and self-care can change your secondary sex characteristics to a degree but not your junk. I’m familiar with the GAMPs, roughly ‘straight’ men with low genital preference and quite adjacent to your referenced femboy enjoyers, but I’m not familiar with women having a similar phenomenon (though given how situational women’s attraction is, who knows, and there are obvious… anatomical considerations that are relevant in that case).

a lesbian could be attracted to the feminine energy and vibe of a small, cute femboy, or a gay man to a buff butch, and feel conflicted about calling themselves bi because it feels more like an exception to the rule.

How would you describe them?

The mainstream progressive leftist/woke perspective on gender?

More or less, yes. The mainstream progressive leftist/woke perspective on transgenderism. If you are not versed in this perspective but consider yourself to be pro-trans, then we can go with that.

So the first question: Is my summary more or less fair? Is anything missing or wrong?

"Trans" is a word used by woke LGBTWhatever people to capture a large number of wildly different phenomena.

Some of these you may believe in or not believe in, some of these you may have sympathy for:

-Old school cross-dressers.

-Drag.

-People using their appearance for social and financial opportunity (ex: some of the Thai Ladyboys).

-Blanchard Typology Types.

-True "Trans."

-BPD or serious mental illness with identity disturbance.

-Autistic and socially adrift people who latch onto trans identification.

Some of these are social contagion, some of these are "traditionally treatable" (ex: pure mental illness types), some of these are reasonably healthy or unburdensome (fetish types and people looking to make money).

But modern culture homogenizes them and thinks they all need to be treated the same. That's tremendously unhelpful. A true trans person who does great and is very happy after top/bottom surgery does not need the same type of support and engagement from society as someone who just needs some Haldol or protection from being trafficked. Distraught young men need counseling but a different type of counseling, not to be piped straight into LGBT.

So the steel man is something like: "fuck these idiots, real trans people exist but are rare and other conversations obscure what these people are like and what they need."

So the steel man is something like: "fuck these idiots, real trans people exist but are rare and other conversations obscure what these people are like and what they need."

In your view, what's a "real trans person" and is there any objective way to distinguish such a person from non-real trans people?

A real trans person is pretty much what you expect, they do exist and are rare. The clearest examples I can find are people who have absolutely zero social deficits or mental health issues they just seem to have identification with the opposite sex. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a weird misfiring of biology could create this (rarely) and that in a permissive social environment these people would be allowed to exist.

Slicing these people off from "fake" trans people should be reasonably easy but in the modern environment where you aren't allowed to asks questions it is impossible. A fact of life in medicine is that we treat people who are almost certain not trans (especially a category I didn't mention above - malingering types) as trans because it's not acceptable to ask questions.

Hopefully things will settle down and we'll be allowed to get more focused care each segment.

he clearest examples I can find are people who have absolutely zero social deficits or mental health issues they just seem to have identification with the opposite sex.

Is there any objective way to distinguish?

I think the science would have to advance beyond the politics for the answer here to be yes.

I think the science would have to advance beyond the politics for the answer here to be yes.

I'll take that as a "no."

The answer also isn't no.

Does an objective way exist? Almost certainly.

Do we know what it is? No. Politics impairs true scientific verification.

Is that too strict a bar? Likely.

Could myself and a bunch of other non-woke educated professionals hash out something that is "good enough" in a day? Likely.

Scientific rigor encapsulates a wild and wide range of certainties.

Does an objective way exist? Almost certainly.

What's your evidence for this claim?

More comments

I mean, here's a simple model that's probably not true. (But maybe...?) Say there's a generic factor of "brain mutation rate". The higher it is, the more unusual things are going on with your brain. In such a world, one would expect most trans people to have other mental disorders, but one would not necessarily expect the trans part of a trans person brain with mental disorders to look different from the trans person brain without mental disorders, because the common cause is high mutation load causing both ("real") trans and mental disorders.

I think you're operating on a mental model where mental disorders cause people to present as trans, but I just don't see why this would necessarily or even plausibly be the case.

In my clinical experience (which is admittedly anecdote, research on anything related to this topic is poor) I've encountered people who seem to be trans because of mental illness, people who have predisposition to mental illness and are trans and mentally ill, and people with no mental illness whatsoever but are trans.

Just like depression is a word for a variety of phenomena that include "I live in a war zone" and "my brain is clearly malfunctioning in an obvious way that generates depressive thought content" and a million things in between, "trans" refers to a variety of complex social, psychological, and biological phenomena.

The clearest examples I can find are people who have absolutely zero social deficits or mental health issues they just seem to have identification with the opposite sex. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a weird misfiring of biology could create this (rarely) and that in a permissive social environment these people would be allowed to exist.

I’ve met a few with pretty good mental health but the vast majority of transgender people I’ve met complain of mental health issues of some kind, even if “just” anxiety and/or mood issues, I have a friend who’s transgender, bipolar (but seems to be doing better with treatment), and extremely online and shy.

I guess the difficulty is, how do you differentiate between people who both have an identification with the opposite sex and have mental health issues, and people who have mental health issues alongside identity instability with which the gender identity issues are fellow travelers? I’m sure you have a clinical perspective, but this is also a philosophical question as to what constitutes “pure trans identification” with regards to gender ID, especially since gender dysphoria can come with acute mental suffering.

From a clinical perspective - my licensing bodies and professional and social milieu have very strongly embraced the idea that trans identification needs to be accepted without clarification or question, even when it is deeply questionable (for example patients in the forensic setting clearly seeking special privileges).

I don't have any interest in harming my license are ability to teach by deviating from this in the slightest so I will not.

That said.

You can investigate the various "trans" phenomena, explicate on the types, do research on outcomes and care needs, test questionnaires and scales that help you identify what's going on for an individual person...all the usual things.

We know what to look into but nobody really does it because countries are either "burn the trans" or "transition children immediately" with no effort at moderation.

This has improved a tiny bit in the US in recent years, however.

Psychiatry in particular has a pretty good history of breaking apart various phenomena into healthy, range of normal human experience, and mental illness (this side of the conversation is missed by normies for the most part).

Disclaimer: I'm not pro-trans.

Sex is defined in biological terms. Gender is defined as the social role and performance of being a man/women. A dress, or stoicism, or makeup, or such and such do not have much to do with the physical sex in a strict sense, playing instead a social role and one of identity.

These social roles are distilled from but divorced from our biological reality. A "feminine" man or a "masculine" woman typically experiences much strife and social conflict because of their inclinations. Which is a bit silly, because the expectations, behaviors, and treatment of the genders is largely separate from a biological basis. A woman must cook and clean and raise the children because she is a woman, which has little to do with being female, yet society insists that a female is a woman and a woman must be female.

A transgender individual is thus a male who desires to take on the role of a woman, or a female who desires to take on the role of a man. To take the former case: not the role of a man acting out a woman (cross-dressing,etc) but as a woman. The need for sexual reassignment surgery and for transgender individuals to act out stereotypical behaviors is resultant from the reality that as a social role, it only exists as it is recognized by the collective. The recognition of the identity is just as much a part of a social role as the identity itself.

Sex is defined in biological terms. Gender is defined as the social role and performance of being a man/women. A dress, or stoicism, or makeup, or such and such do not have much to do with the physical sex in a strict sense, playing instead a social role and one of identity.

It sounds like you more or less agree with my summary. Is that correct? If not, what did I leave out? Or what did I include that's incorrect?

Even to the point where a another person's sexual preferences should go to the gender, not the sex, of a potential romantic partner.

I'm pretty sure you're not entitled to anyone else's sexual desire. I remember being told this by Social Justice during the NiceguyTM era of dating discourse.

This is also the crux of why I find gender ideology so dementedly self-centered; your gender is ultimately only truly relevant when it comes to who you want to fuck and who wants to fuck you, which is a basic drive of being human. If you're ugly enough that a very narrow band of people will fuck you, that sucks. If you groom yourself weird, act/dress weird, and mutilate your body into something weird that an even narrower band of people want to fuck, that's a self-own. You don't get to shame and berate people for their sexual preferences because you made yourself less attractive to 99% of human beings, who's sexual preferences are tuned towards finding a fertile mate that they can produce offspring with.

This is also the crux of why I find gender ideology so dementedly self-centered

Well yeah, every -supremacy movement is kind of by definition self-centered (it's in the name), and gynosupremacy is not any different.

You don't get to shame and berate people for their sexual preferences because you made yourself less attractive to 99% of human beings, who's sexual preferences are tuned towards finding a fertile mate that they can produce offspring with.

In the 99.9% case, it's a woman being angry at men for this. Transgender ideology is simply a projection of that (i.e. to solidify their right to do it) and the equalization of "women can be men too".

that's a self-own

Why would it be? You don't even have to pair off, the State will take care of you in your old age.

and gynosupremacy is not any different.

I don't think gender ideology and gynosupremacy are the same thing. Trans-identified males are famously filled with homicidal rage towards feminists who deny that trans-identified males are women. TERFs routinely decry the trans activist movement as a sexually frustrated men's rights movement, and it doesn't take a lot of squinting to see how they arrived at that conclusion.

TERFs routinely decry the trans activist movement as a sexually frustrated men's rights movement

Feminists of all kinds claim it's all men's fault, all the time. Why take them at their word on this?

TERF vs. not-TERF is at its core an intra-woman slapfight. The not-TERFs are pretty blatantly betraying the revolution for personal gain (as strivers do), the TERFs notice it, but they have no words for "women at fault" (every mechanism to restrain them from bad ideas has been destroyed) and no rhetorical tools to express it, so they just reach for the usual and hope it does the job.

I don't personally know any TERFs. All my woke friends, all their woke friends, all say bad things about TERFs. I don't think my woke friends (who are male and female, of course) are betraying the revolution for personal gain? It's just the oppression totem pole.

"Women at fault" is called "internalized patriarchy" or something, right?

I don't get the sense at all that trans activism is a frustrated men's rights movement. Maybe I'm just in a bubble with all my woke friends?

I don't get the sense at all that trans activism is a frustrated men's rights movement.

As I've argued before, if you go on /r/MTF and take a shot whenever you see a post which boils down to "why won't cis lesbians fuck me even though I identify as a woman?", you'll be dead of alcohol poisoning before the day is out. MtF spaces and incel spaces are alike in that they largely consist of male heterosexuals complaining about feeling sexually frustrated.

It's also a men's rights movement in a very literal sense in that it's a subset of men demanding special privileges. The reason I characterise it as such is that it's primarily asymmetric: while trans-identified males are keen to be housed in women's prisons and keen to compete in women's sporting events, the reverse is generally not true of trans-identified females. Consider this article about trans identification in the penal system. In California, well over 90% of the requests to be transferred to the opposite-sex prison came from male inmates. Some trans-identified female inmates were even housed in the male estate, but requested to be transferred to the female estate. Shock, horror: heterosexual male rapists in an environment thitherto devoid of female people don't care how a female person "identifies" or even if they've undergone a double mastectomy. Heterosexual male rapists are not attracted to anyone with "big femme energy": they are attracted to female people. Kind of surprised it took you being physically incarcerated in a men's prison before you figured this out.

I don't think my woke friends (who are male and female, of course) are betraying the revolution for personal gain?

From the point of view of the original gynosupremacists, "let's declare supremacy over all men" turning into "except if they put on a dress, then they have even greater privileges than women ever did" (and are given the permission to be even greater sex pests than they ever were before) is pretty blatantly a betrayal. A real "4 legs good, 2 legs better" moment.

Naturally, those who are trying to do it don't see it that way.

I don't get the sense at all that trans activism is a frustrated men's rights movement

That is what I said- it's mostly woman vs. woman here, nothing to do with men (outside of their being an incidental/token). [Insert stereotype where men think it's all about them here.]

"Women at fault" is called "internalized patriarchy" or something

Kind of. That phrase is generally used to complain about there being any standards for female behavior, but it runs out of steam once you're past the initial conditions of the revolution outside of a meme to convince low-information/former revolutionaries.

It does make me laugh that the reason women who want to maintain their privileges can't in part because they forgot to invite any men (in the sense that there are very few men who actually understand women enough to effectively argue/aid against the ways women go to excess), though.

If I understand, you are saying the raw social power that caused wokeness (it certainly wasn't any mechanisms to detect or restrain bad ideas) is anti-TERF because the powers that be personally gain somehow? Are the trans sex pests running the universities?

I definitely agree the TERF intersex intersect squabble is a fight between women, and I certainly think its a little funny (because I hate women). Your last comment -- you're saying TERF gynosupremists wouldn't even let transphobic men come to their aid? It seems unlikely to me. What does this look like, all the NYT columnists and writers being women nowadays, or something else...?

the TERF intersex intersect squabble is a fight between women

Well that is the dispute: are the trans women really women, or men LARPing as women? If you think trans women are indeed the exact same as cis women and you hate all women, then too bad gay man, the trans men are coming for you as well and that fight will happen on your doorstep.

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the raw social power that caused wokeness

The raw social power that caused wokeness was basically just the revolution turning on itself after achieving its original goal. Women at large pounded the laws flat (the ones that would have prevented the transgender 'enforcers'; the 1950s would have solved this with them being genocided physically removed with the requisite violence), then the Devil turned 'round on them.

They don't have the 'cultural' (for lack of a better word) vocabulary to stop the badness- and why would they, being that men generally do that for them.

Are the trans sex pests running the universities?

No, they're just the enforcers/auditors of the power of the subset of [the striver women] who are running them.

TERF gynosupremists wouldn't even let transphobic men come to their aid?

How many black members did the KKK have? Why do you think that would be? (Was it for lack of effective outreach, perhaps?)

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I'm pretty sure you're not entitled to anyone else's sexual desire. I remember being told this by Social Justice during the NiceguyTM era of dating discourse.

This was already mentioned, but it’s the usual who/whom.

If a man isn’t able to attract a woman he finds attractive, it’s because he’s the problem.

If a woman isn’t able to secure commitment from a man she finds attractive, it’s because men are the problem.

If a transwoman isn’t able to attract a man he finds attractive, it’s because cishet men are the problem.

Oppression olympics, it's all who/whom. Transgender lesbians are entitled to the sexual attraction of real lesbians(and being women, they don't cure this with Antina The Butch and her strap on, but rather with freakouts), because being trans they are more oppressed than lesbians.

One of the dumbest things I've encountered IRL was a petite, plain-at-worst FtM complaining that gay guys didn't want to fuck him.

So, you want to fuck people with dicks. And you have a vagina. But, instead of dating one of the numerously eager people who like vaginas and have dicks, the dick that fucks you HAS to like dicks, which despite your grooming and manner of dress, you do not have. And instead of compromising on your rather esoteric preference, you choose to waste everyone's time with this woe-is-me bit. Also, I suspect you only have this preference for dicks-that-like-dicks because, despite being heterosexual, you've been conditioned by external influences to think dicks-that-like-vaginas are bad. And no one is allowed to tell you that your desires and how you go about seeking to satisfy them are back-asswards.

This is someone who’s oblivious and/or masochistic enough to choose living life on a higher difficulty setting, so I suppose wittingly or unwittingly nuking their pool of eligible sexual/romantic partners is part of the experience.

Them complaining about it is pretty funny though. It’s like the Bike Fall meme/comic of a man jamming a stick through his wheel. Damn, if only there was a way one could have been attractive to a larger population of penis-havers…

I'm pretty sure you're not entitled to anyone else's sexual desire

I agree that this is potentially a valid criticism of gender ideology, but I'd be interested to know if adherents of gender ideology agree that it's transphobic for a straight man (or a lesbian woman) to categorically rule out dating an individual who would traditionally be thought of as a man but is of the female gender.

I do remember that a few years back, there was an online commentator who declared that he was "super-straight," a sexual orientation which meant that he was sexually attracted to women as the term is defined more traditionally. As I recall, trans activists did not find this acceptable or amusing.

I'd be interested to know if adherents of gender ideology agree that it's transphobic for a straight man (or a lesbian woman) to categorically rule out dating an individual who would traditionally be thought of as a man but is of the female gender.

I'm pretty sure they do think that. Or at least that's what I've seen ostensibly-straight gender-ideology-adherent women posting angrily about on social media.

Gender ideology is a big-tent movement, and many of its members can be pretty slippery about assigning concrete meanings and labels to things, so it's going to be difficult to make a specific set of claims that "those who adhere to gender ideology" believe.

With that being said, I think the main way your explanation differs from the usual story is that "sex" is not considered a category that exists. Each person has a "gender", which is an innate property that's not externally observable. Then they have several externally observable traits, things like what kinds of clothes they wear or what kind of genitals they have. Society generally has associations with which traits correspond to which genders (e.g. sundresses are typically worn by women), but it's not necessary for a person's traits to align with their gender (e.g. putting on pants does not cause you to cease to be a woman).

Taken to the extreme, it's not necessary for any of a person's externally observable traits to align with their gender. While many people feel an innate, personal sense of despair when their externally observable traits do not match their gender identity (according to their/society's general associations between traits and genders) and they should be given the resources and medical care to bring their traits into alignment with their gender identity if they wish, that's a purely personal decision on their part. It's important for everyone's gender identity to be respected regardless of the traits they have.

"Externally observable traits" here is a term I made up. The term used most often is "gender expression", which refers to the traits that other people can actually observe in practice, which is what matters most of the time. But things like "the feelings caused by the hormones in your body" are also usually considered to be something external to your gender identity, such that you might want to bring them into alignment but are not required to. (Things like the Y chromosome are not considered relevant here because they aren't easily observable. It's nice if you happen to get a bunch of traits that all align with your gender identity, but the "how" of that doesn't matter much.)

Thank you for responding.

Each person has a "gender", which is an innate property that's not externally observable.

Ok, and is it fair to say that (according to gender ideology)

(1) each person is the sole and ultimate arbiter of his own gender;

(2) there is no objective way to test for gender, it's just a matter of what the person says; and

(3) society should treat people based on their gender, so for example any adult of the female gender should be able to referred to as a "woman"; should be permitted to use women's changing facilities and play women's sports; and straight men or lesbian women who refuse to date this person would be considered "transphobic."

(1) Yes.

(2) Yes.

(3) Yes, with the caveat:

straight men or lesbian women who refuse to date this person would be considered "transphobic."

This works similarly to anti-discrimination law. You're allowed to refuse to date any individual, but you aren't allowed to refuse to date people because they're transgender (or, more broadly, because you do not accept their gender identity). You can express preferences based on gender identity, and you can sometimes get away with expressing preferences based on physical traits, but you can't express preferences based on transgender status or things that obviously correlate with it (like "gender assigned at birth").

(You can't even express preferences in favor of them, that's called being a "chaser".)

(1) Yes.

(2) Yes.

(3) Yes, with the caveat:

straight men or lesbian women who refuse to date this person would be considered "transphobic."

This works similarly to anti-discrimination law. You're allowed to refuse to date any individual, but you aren't allowed to refuse to date people because they're transgender (or, more broadly, because you do not accept their gender identity). You can express preferences based on gender identity, and you can sometimes get away with expressing preferences based on physical traits, but you can't express preferences based on transgender status or things that obviously correlate with it (like "gender assigned at birth").

(You can't even express preferences in favor of them, that's called being a "chaser".)

Ok, thanks for responding again.

My next question is this:

What's the evidence that "gender" exists in the way you have defined it? Is there any evidence other than self-reporting?

Speaking as a very pro-trans person: I don't especially believe that "gender" "exists" in some objective sense separate from subjective preferences - nor that it needs to.

I think it might help you understand my perspective if we look at another marker of identity with huge emotional significance to individuals, but very little biological basis if any: names. If an individual whose legal name is William would prefer to be known as Bill or Tex or Archimedes, it's clearly the correct thing to do to call him by his chosen name. In some technical contexts it might be necessary to bear in mind that the name on his ID papers is "William", but it would be dickish and bizarre to chime in whenever he says "Hi, my name's Tex" and go "ackshually, your name is William; either you're lying or you're delusional". If one of Tex's coworkers keeps passive-aggressively calling Tex "William" no matter how many times he explains that he doesn't like hearing that stuffy-sounding name that doesn't feel like it reflects him as a person, that coworker would clearly be engaged in a kind of low-grade psychological harassment.

Social transition, to my way of thinking, works very much like this, except in addition to a "William" who would rather be an "Alice", it's a "Mr" who would prefer to be called a "Miss", a "he" who would prefer to be called a "she". It is clearly, I feel, the nice, the civil, the moral thing to do to respect that person's wishes; and it doesn't require anyone to be confused about what William/Alice has got in his/her pants. She can be a conversational "she" and a medical "he" in the same way that the first guy was a conversational "Bill" but a legal "William". It's just that, unless you're a doctor/an IRS employee, the underlying technicalities of Tex or Alice's identities are none of your business. If a guy tells you "I'm Tex" it's none of your fucking business whether it says "Tex" or "William" on his driving license, outside a few specific technical circumstances; likewise if someone tells you "I'm a woman" then it shouldn't be any concern of yours what she looks like naked, unless you happen to be a doctor, or a prospective date. To put it another way, under normal circumstances, the only relevance that the sex of a random person has to you, whatsoever, is by what titles and pronouns it would be polite to address that person; how you should refer to them if you don't want them to feel insulted or misrepresented. So if that person dislikes the pronouns and titles that their biological sex would normally entail, sex loses relevance altogether, trumped by self-identification.

And a similar analogy can be devised for medical transition. Let's say you like to shave your chin but keep a mustache. Is there some specific factor in your brain that makes you a Person Whose Inner Identity Is A Mustache Guy? Probably not. It's besides the point. It would still be dickish of someone to say "biology says the male Homo sapiens is meant to have hair all over his face, you're not allowed to shave your chin", or indeed "it's better for society if grooming norms are cohesive, shave that mustache as well or you're a hippie freak". How you want to style your facial hair-growths is your business; if it's emotionally important to you to present the face of a Mustache Guy to society, and you don't feel like yourself with a lumberjack beard or a full shave, then it would be dictatorial of society to force you to do otherwise; it would be rude and invasive of any private third party to tell you how they think you ought to be styling your body.

"Gender identity" is just a kludgy concept lumping together a lot of disparate preferences, positive and negative; and even when two trans people share a preference, they might have come to it for completely different reasons (much as you may like to shave your beard because you think a full beard makes you look like some kind of caveman, while I like to shave my beard because I don't like how sweaty and itchy it makes my neck). But all those preferences, individually, should be valid in any free, humane society.

If an individual whose legal name is William would prefer to be known as Bill or Tex or Archimedes, it's clearly the correct thing to do to call him by his chosen name.

Well, I would like to test this claim with a thought experiment or two:

Suppose it's the late 80s. You know a guy whose legal name is "Clarence Johnson." He is tall and black and he likes to follow the Chicago Bulls around, pretend to be Michael Jordan, capitalize on the similarity in appearance to get free drinks; to pass bad checks; and to pick up girls. He has told you that he prefers to be known as "Michael Jordan." You see him in a hotel gift shop and he says "Hi Wanderer" right in front the clerk as he is making out a check. Would you say "Hi Michael, how are you doing" in response? Is that clearly the correct thing to do?

Ok, now suppose it's 2026. You know a guy who, unfortunately, has had a mental breakdown and genuinely believes that he is the King of England. He has expressed to you that at some point, he would like to travel to London to "take out the imposter" who currently is residing in Buckingham Palace. His legal name is Charles Johnson but he has told you he wants to be known as "King Charles" or "Your Royal Highness." Would you call him by his chosen name? If so, is that clearly the correct thing to do?

Well, there was, of course, an implicit "all else being equal" in the sentence you quoted. In your thought experiments as stated, all else is not equal; but that doesn't impinge upon my point, which was that insisting on calling Tex "William" isn't necessarily the right thing just because it is, in a technical sense, "the truth". There can be other, context-specific reasons why it might be good to identify a person currently calling himself Tex as his legal name of "William" against his will - if he's a wanted murderer hiding under an alias, for example. Your Michael Jordan impersonator largely falls into that category. (And mind you, it could be the case that a tall black guy's legal name happens to be Michael Jordan (e.g.), and suddenly the ethical thing would be to only refer to him by a nickname where it might cause undue confusion! The underlying "truth" is besides the point!)

I don't think trans people are in this category in the vast majority of cases. The most crucial difference is that it is legitimate for a hotel to treat the real Michael Jordan differently than they would a random lookalike, whereas if people treat a random person differently depending on whether they believe that person to be a man or a woman, that's their problem for being sexist. Moreover, most trans people are not trying to pass themselves off as the real Michael Jordan. The typical trans woman puts a trans flag in her Bluesky bio and will start talking about her transition journey as light conversation - she will certainly mention it before a date gets to second base. The "trap" who passes perfectly and uses that to lead on a potential sex partner all the way to the bedroom is largely a creature of fantasy, and not behavior mainstream modern-day trans people would endorse (if only because it doesn't tend to go well for the trans woman herself).

Similarly, in your King Charles example, there is more at stake than politeness and self-identification. If Charles Johnson is suffering from a delusion that he is the King Charles then perhaps I shouldn't go along with that (unless medical professionals recommend going along with the delusion for the patient's wellbeing, which does happen with e.g. dementia patients, but that's another question). Nor would I go along with it if a trans woman started telling me about her uterus or a childhood memory of her first period. But normal trans people are not like this. They know they are biologically of the opposite sex; in fact they often advertise it. If my friend is an eccentric who knows perfectly well that he's not really a Windsor, but would like me to call him "your majesty" as a kind of 24/7 LARP (perhaps he's into micronations?), I'd happily roll with it - and if for some reason I refused, it would be absolutely fair of Charles to not want to be my friend anymore.

(This doesn't change if my friend has maverick philosophical opinions that lead him to defend the position that at the end of the day, the "king" of a micronation and the "king" of a real recognized countries are more alike than they are different, in the way that a trans woman might know perfectly well that she's not the kind of woman who has a uterus and a vagina, and simply defend the esoteric metaphysical point that she's still as entitled to the word "woman" as anybody else.)

The "trap" who passes perfectly and uses that to lead on a potential sex partner all the way to the bedroom is largely a creature of fantasy

There have been a surprisingly large number of "creatures of fantasy" convicted and imprisoned for rape by deception.

not behavior mainstream modern-day trans people would endorse

Curious, then, that the "rape by deception" Wikipedia article

  • cites multiple trans activists affirmatively defending the "right" of trans people not to disclose their sexes prior to a sexual encounter
  • doesn't cite a single trans activist who doesn't endorse this behaviour
  • but does cite a gender-critical feminist who does not endorse this behaviour.

Maybe Wikipedia is unrepresentative of the median opinion of trans people, maybe you move in different circles than I do, but I honestly cannot ever remember seeing a trans activist arguing that trans people have a legal and moral obligation to disclose their sex before getting into bed with someone.

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Well, there was, of course, an implicit "all else being equal" in the sentence you quoted.

No there wasn't. There really wasn't. You made an unqualified statement, which you now (apparently) concede to be incorrect.

I don't even know what you mean by "all else being equal" here. The phrase "all else being equal" normally comes into play when one is comparing two or more alternatives. I think the qualifier you are trying to insert retroactively is "absent extenuating circumstances"

So my next question is this: Under what circumstances is it NOT clearly correct to call someone by their chosen name?

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it would be dickish and bizarre to chime in whenever he says "Hi, my name's Tex" and go "ackshually, your name is William; either you're lying or you're delusional".

There's a British anti-immigration activist who goes by the name Tommy Robinson. Whenever assorted progressive outlets like the Guardian or the Journal refer to him, they almost invariably include a parenthetical afterwards like "Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon)..." It need hardly be said that both outlets scrupulously avoid referring to trans people by their "dead names".

In your opinion, is this "dickish" behaviour?

Yes. I don't think it's as dickish as deadnaming a trans person unless he's actively stated hearing his legal name spoken is painful to him - and conceivably he might be enough of a menace that being dickish to him is a defensible strategy in any case - but all else being equal, it's clearly not a nice thing to do, and the people who do it know that it's not a nice thing to do. A lot of anti-Ratsphere leftists make it a point to call Scott Alexander "Scott Siskind" and I think that's dumb and rude of them, too.

In your opinion, is this "dickish" behaviour?

It is smart way to discredit him in the eyes of his fans - double barrelled hyphenated name is very posh and (Norman) elite coded, not well fitting to champion of common Englishman born on common English street.

It ain't working well, but it is the best they have.

A name doesn't claim to be a statement of fact about anything except an arbitrary designation. A term about sex does.

People who have this sort of pro-trans viewpoint would probably argue a term like "woman" isn't anything except an arbitrary designation either, the trouble is this does not really match how the term has been used colloquially throughout history, during which it has been synonymous in almost all cases with "female." Pro-trans people arguably are attempting to break that association whereas anti-trans people either don't understand this and believe the pro-trans side literally think transwomen are female, or they don't want to surrender the association because doing so would be extremely unintuitive and/or make it difficult to prevent males entering women-only spaces.

People who have this sort of pro-trans viewpoint would probably argue a term like "woman" isn't anything except an arbitrary designation either, the trouble is this does not really match how the term has been used colloquially throughout history, during which it has been synonymous in almost all cases with "female." Pro-trans people arguably are attempting to break that association whereas anti-trans people either don't understand this and believe the pro-trans side literally think transwomen are female, or they don't want to surrender the association because doing so would be extremely unintuitive and/or make it difficult to prevent males entering women-only spaces.

Well here's a thought experiment. Suppose that society reaches a point where the trans folks win on words like "man" and "woman" and everyone agrees that a "woman" is someone who self-reports to be a woman and a "man" is someone who self reports to be a man. Suppose further that a couple new words come out: "X24" and "X25" which are defined basically the way "man" and "woman" are traditionally defined. It's gotten to the point where even traditional Christian ministers will say something like "This X24 and X25 would make a great husband and wife" Nightclubs will have signs up saying "Free Entry for X25"

Ok, would trans advocates be happy with this situation? I am pretty sure the answer is "no." I am pretty confident that they would try to commandeer the words "X24" and "X25" just like they are trying to commandeer the words "man" and "woman."

So it's inaccurate to say that "Pro-trans people arguably are attempting to break that association." I mean, it's true, but that's not the actual goal. The goal is to coerce people into pretending that trans-identifying-men are women and vice versa.

What's the evidence that "gender" exists in the way you have defined it? Is there any evidence other than self-reporting?

There have been relatively low-quality MRI studies that attempt to draw physical evidence of the concept of gender identity, but mostly it is by definition a self-reported trait, so the fact that people are self-reporting it is the evidence.

A common argument is to ask the person you're arguing with, "If you woke up this morning and found you had been transformed into a stereotypical example of the opposite gender, how would you feel about that?"

  • If you would prefer that to your current body, this means that you are transgender.

  • If you would feel negatively about this change, this demonstrates that you have an innate gender identity, and it's at least possible to imagine your body not being aligned with that identity. It just so happens that your body happens to be aligned with your gender identity. Lucky you!

  • If you would genuinely feel ambivalent (are you sure you're not repressing anything?), then... okay, that probably exists and is a valid category of gender identity. But lots of other people do have strong feelings about that, and gender ideology is the most inclusive way to support those people.

A common argument is to ask the person you're arguing with, "If you woke up this morning and found you had been transformed into a stereotypical example of the opposite gender, how would you feel about that?"

If you would prefer that to your current body, this means that you are transgender.

This is a terrible argument, though. I would personally prefer it, but that doesn't mean that I'm transgender, it's just an indication of my autogynephilia. Or perhaps my assessment of gender roles in society. All this argument proves is that different people can have different preferences about hypothetical fantasy scenarios, and then maps it onto "gender" which is fine as it is, but is also trivial and tautological.

so the fact that people are self-reporting it is the evidence.

Ok, thank you. So it seems there is nothing to distinguish trans people from those who self-report as being Jesus; or who self-report as having been abducted by aliens; or who self-report as having been spoken to directly by some deity; etc. Agreed?

A common argument is to ask the person you're arguing with, "If you woke up this morning and found you had been transformed into a stereotypical example of the opposite gender, how would you feel about that?" If you would prefer that to your current body, this means that you are transgender.

I think this argument proves too much. If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that I had been transformed into a man who looked pretty much like Henry Cavil and was 25 years old, I would be pretty happy about the change. That doesn't say anything about my innate identity as a short mediocre-looking man in his 50s with graying hair, though.

I think this argument proves too much. If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that I had been transformed into a man who looked pretty much like Henry Cavil and was 25 years old, I would be pretty happy about the change.

I think the assumption here would be that there are people who would basically go crazy and try to tear their skin off every time they looked in a mirror and saw Henry Cavil. Like, the fact that you would be personally fine with it is not necessarily a generally true fact about how identity works.

(Sadly, we'll have to wait until the singularity to properly test this.)

I think the assumption here would be that there are people who would basically go crazy and try to tear their skin off every time they looked in a mirror and saw Henry Cavil

There may be people like this, but I'm not. (But I'll make it even easier. If I woke up tomorrow morning and I was transformed into a 25 year old version of myself, I'd be delighted. ) This single counter example disproves the entire generalization.

Unless of course, what transgender really means is that the person desires to be the other gender. Which I strongly suspect is pretty close to the truth.

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So it seems there is nothing to distinguish trans people from those who self-report as being Jesus; or who self-report as having been abducted by aliens; or who self-report as having been spoken to directly by some deity; etc. Agreed?

These other claims all, to varying degrees, depend on external facts to be true. For example by asserting you've been abducted by aliens, you're asserting that aliens exist.

Gender ideology views gender claims as being more similar to someone saying "I had a dream about aliens last night." If you're talking to some weirdo who's never had a dream before, you may need to convince them that it's possible, but to most people it's obvious that the claim is both plausible and not really possible to disprove.

These other claims all, to varying degrees, depend on external facts to be true.

What external facts need to be true in order for a person to be Jesus?

What external facts need to be true in order for a person to be black?

What external facts need to be true in order for a person to be a cat?

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That thought experiment seems to prove to much - would you accept transracialism if people would be happier transformed into a different race? Let alone other identity features such as age, nationality, weight, sexuality, etc.

Maybe I’m reaching a bit, but if you think about it, progressives do support an equivalent of trans “ethnicicity”, in the form of immigration!

In this case “biological sex” would map to race, which is unchangeable, but gender would map to nationality. For a conservative, a German is someone that’s born German, but leftists say that a Middle Eastern immigrant that gets German citizenship should count too.

Maybe I’m reaching a bit, but if you think about it, progressives do support an equivalent of trans “ethnicicity”, in the form of immigration!

I don't recall "I don't have white privilege, I live in a black neighborhood" being accepted as a valid argument.

You can not become trans-ethnic short of marrying into an ethnos and having children. An ethnicity encompasses religion/culture and shared genetics.

Sexuality is definitely another one of those unobservable things that you have to take people's word on.

On the other hand, weight is straightforwardly an observable physical trait, and age is a straightforward historical claim (the date on which you were born). Race and nationality are social constructs that are hard to pin down, but generally people agree that they involve some combination of physical and historical traits.

"Racial identity" does exist, but it is not considered very useful most of the time; it's mainly used as a tiebreaker when the physical/historical facts don't fit nearly into the categories. A lot of gender ideology boils down to a values claim that "gender identity" is a much more important concept that everyone should care about.

There are many people who wish they could change their sexuality magically - but does that mean they "really" are of the desired sexuality rather than the one that corresponds to how they are attracted?

You say that race and nationality incorporate physical traits. Are you claiming that gender does not?

I will say that one of the main things that broke me off of accepting transgender perspectives was how credulously accepting advocates are of transgender self reporting while being completely unaccepting of the idea of transracialism (e.g. Dolezal). Race is, to me reckoning, far more socially determined than gender is, but the political left sees it as immutable and sacred.

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That thought experiment seems to prove to much

Yeah, I made a similar point before I saw this comment. But now that I think about it, the argument is rather telling. Because I strongly suspect that most, perhaps all, trans identifying men are simply men who really enjoy the fantasy of being a woman.


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