site banner
PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   3664 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There's some nitpicking to be done here, for example, maybe the patients already needed mental health treatment and just found out they needed it at the same time as they found out they're transgender, or that just seeing a mental health professional regularly doesn't necessarily mean that your mental health is worse than it used to be.

Neither of those argument doesn't work. There are 3 groups in the study:

  • people with dysphoria pre- some form of transition (blockers, hormones, surgeries)
  • people with dysphoria post- transition
  • people without dysphoria as controls

The conclusion isn't based on just comparing trans people to controls It's based on how theie mental health deteriorated after transition. I also remember the author of the interview saying all students get a regular (yearly?) mental health assesment in Finland.

But my fundamental objection is to the conclusion that no one should be allowed to transition.

I agree that this study is not enough to conclude that, but I don't I've seen anyone say "this study clearly shows that no one should transition". Instead, it is a rebuttal to the pro trans narrative that claims they are able to accurately diagnose dysphoria, and that these interventions not only help, but are medically necessary. This conversation has a long running context, where the pro-trans side was deliberately misleading people and attacking skeptics for years, so I don't think it's right to try and portray them as saying "well, we just think there's a non-zero number of people who might benefit from this"

Speaking of ROGD, its rhetorical use by anti-trans people is a peculiar example of a self-contradictory motte-and-bailey: usually the bailey is a stronger version of the motte, and thus necessarily consistent with it, but here the bailey ("all trans people are delusional and none of them are their stated gender") contradicts the motte ("some trans people with a specific presentation – primarily adolescent girls – are not actually their stated gender") because the latter presupposes that some trans people are, in fact, their stated gender.

The kind of people who say "no one should transition" don't so much believe some one "isn't their stated gender", they question the very concept of gender. I think it's a strong argument, "gender" is effectively a religious belief. Specifically it seems that it's a secular version of the belief in a soul, and I think it's fair to say that this is not a valid basis for a medical intervention

I also don't see the contradiction. You can say "no one should transition", and "this social contagions seems to be affecting mostly adolescent girls". I see no presupposition of validity of other people's gender dysphoria.

  • people with dysphoria pre- some form of transition (blockers, hormones, surgeries)
  • people with dysphoria post- transition
  • people without dysphoria as controls

One problem is that when considering the effect of an intervention, this is basically an apples-to-oranges-to-licorice comparison.

The gold standard for determining the effect of an intervention would be a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Take a patient and then prescribe them either a puberty blocker or a placebo, so that neither you nor they know what they got, and then follow up on the outcome years later.

Obviously this is hard to do for ethical reasons. But anything else risks simply measuring confounders. Perhaps the people opting for intervention simply had a higher trust in their medical system, and consequently were also more likely to seek psychiatric help with other problems. Or a million other things.

The kind of people who say "no one should transition" don't so much believe some one "isn't their stated gender", they question the very concept of gender. I think it's a strong argument, "gender" is effectively a religious belief. Specifically it seems that it's a secular version of the belief in a soul, and I think it's fair to say that this is not a valid basis for a medical intervention

This is not my experience. The anti-trans side believes very strongly in their conception of gender, hence all the bathroom bans. Someone who actually rejected the concept of gender might preach some kind of pansexuality where you simply do not care what kind of sex bit your partners have. They might reject the very concept of straight and gay couples because There Is No Gender, Man.

By contrast, the people most offended by trans people believe very strongly in the existence of gender, they just happen to think that it is identical to sex-assigned-at-birth.

The anti-trans side believes very strongly in their conception of gender, hence all the bathroom bans. Someone who actually rejected the concept of gender might preach some kind of pansexuality where you simply do not care what kind of sex bit your partners have. They might reject the very concept of straight and gay couples because There Is No Gender, Man.

By contrast, the people most offended by trans people believe very strongly in the existence of gender, they just happen to think that it is identical to sex-assigned-at-birth.

This is a weird framing. I wouldn't say I believe in gender, but think it's identical to sex (not "sex-assigned-at-birth", just "sex"). I would say that, of the two, sex is the only thing that actually exists. No one actually has a "gender identity" (hell, no one can even provide a cogent, non-circular definition of what "gender identity" even is), but even if they did, it's a bad idea to design public policies around unfalsifiable claims people make about their own inner experiences. "Gender identity" meets this description, "sex" does not, ergo "sex" is a good basis on which to design public policies and "gender identity" is not.

Obviously this is hard to do for ethical reasons. But anything else risks simply measuring confounders.

Oh, that's rich. When the Cass Review pointed out that the evidence for trans medicine is of low quality, the pro-trans side was claiming that it's oh-so-unfair that Cass would only declare a study "good" if it's double-blind (spoiler: she didn't), but now we're supposed apply that standard to studies with negative results, otherwise the interventions should be deemed good by default? How does that make any sense?

This is not my experience. The anti-trans side believes very strongly in their conception of gender, hence all the bathroom bans.

Thay sounds lime your belief in gender being so strong, that you can't conceive of someone having an alternative belief, and interpreting their thoughts through your lens. Why would I need to believe in "gender" to segregate people by sex?

By contrast, the people most offended by trans people believe very strongly in the existence of gender, they just happen to think that it is identical to sex-assigned-at-birth.

That makes no sense. Let's say I accept "gender" exists, even under that belief system it's possible to say "even though we sometime segregate people by gender, in this context it's more appropriate to segregate them by sex". I've been told that by pro-trans people! So if I can segregate people by sex when gender exists, I can do so when I think it doesn't.

Gender-as-distinct-from-sex is either of nonsense or actively reifying stereotypes, take your pick. Souls are more coherent than strict self-ID gender. That sounds harsh, but for those following along at home, play this out for a minute. If your gender has no connection to the outside world, it's just your internal experience and label for yourself that you definitionally can't be wrong about, then there's absolutely zero reason for anybody to ever treat anybody else differently based upon their gender. There's no reason for gendered spaces or activities or anything at all, and so since the outside world has no reason to care, poof! Bye, gender. Trying to hold onto it is going to just wrap around into it not mattering or build up inconsistencies and nonsense. So for gender to be A Thing about which We Should Care, it has to have some ties to the outside world. Being distinct from sex, we're already ruling out biology. So that leaves social/cultural factors, which are not innate, not inherent, and indeed we see them vary by culture. So we should care about a bundle of traits and properties a particular culture has decided go together - that is a stereotype!

If women are people who X and only X, then let's just deal with X directly rather than lay an extra category on top. If women are people who X and Y, then baby you've got a stew stereotype going! If women are people who call themselves women and nothing else, then we've no reason at all to care. Once you take the biology out of the gender, you have nothing left that anybody can or should care about but social and cultural baggage, and so by clinging to it and impressing how important it all is to you, you're just strengthening your cultural stereotypes and calling 'em sacred. Quit it.

The '90s had the right idea. Boys can wear dresses and have tea parties, girls can play with monster trucks and hit one another with sticks, etc and so on, and none of those things make them not boys or not girls. Let the words refer to the biological reality underneath that is true and correct in 99+% of cases, invent special terms for the outliers if you must, drop the social/cultural barriers, and just let people do their thing. There's no reason for all the hassle, and it can't and won't get anybody any more freedom anyway.

You want to take hormones and are otherwise okay with opening the gates on letting people put stuff in their bodies if they feel like it, go for it. You want to wear 'gender inappropriate clothing' and are otherwise okay with a general lack of expected dressing standards, go for it. You want elective/cosmetic surgery so that your body is more pleasant for you and are otherwise okay with people having other such surgeries, go for it. Do What You Want, up to the limit of what you think society should allow in general, because you are not a special case. You cannot be a special case, because there is nothing special underneath. You're just a boy or a girl who wants to do an activity which is not gated by gender.

IMO trying to completely separate gender from its biological aspect is partly cope for the fact that transition is an imperfect technology and not everybody ends up passing, and no surgery can make you have the reproductive functionality of the opposite sex yet.

Most trans people desperately want to be the opposite sex on a biological level and a trans woman being allowed to wear dresses because boys can dress however they want won’t help with the fact that her hips are too narrow and she hates having stubble and that having a penis means most men will be uninterested in dating her, and that she won’t be able to have a normal sex life regardless, or have children the normal way, etc.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats