This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I said two months ago I would reply to a comment about this study on the mental health effects of gender transition. I have only now managed to find the time, so I'm going to post my reply as a top-level comment lest it get buried. You can find the previous discussion here.
To be honest, some of the statistical manipulation seems dubious, but that's above my pay grade, so I'm going to assume the study was conducted in good faith with no shenanigans.
In short, the study finds that, contrary to assumptions that transitioning should improve mental health, the share of people needing mental health treatment rises drastically after transition. Anti-trans people conclude that this means transition actually worsens mental health, and, hence, people should not be allowed to transition.
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.
But my fundamental objection is to the conclusion that no one should be allowed to transition. Suppose the anti-trans side is completely correct on the facts, that transitioning did, in fact, directly worsen the mental health of many or even most patients. There are still some patients who are better off. There are countless anecdotal reports online of people who are happier after transitioning. The most you can conclude is that the criteria for who should transition need to be changed. (If I'm interpreting the data right, the likelihood of needing mental health treatment after transitioning was higher in those born later, consistent with the rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)/social contagion hypothesis.) But if you care about people's happiness, some people should still be supported in transitioning.
Obviously if you believe all trans people are delusional and object to transition and treating people as their stated gender regardless of the effect on their mental health, this does not apply to you. But in that case the study isn't an argument you can use.
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. If you believe all trans people are delusional, why do you care about the specific etiology of the transness of a specific subgroup of trans people? The treatment, whichever you prefer, should be the same.
I consider myself pro-trans, but I believe ROGD/social contagion may well be a real thing. If you agree about the possibility of social contagion, you should try to minimize the attention trans people receive, yet anti-trans activists have been the main publicists of transness for about a decade now – trans people really entered the mainstream with the North Carolina "bathroom bill". It used to be that you would only find information about transness if you went looking for it because you were questioning your gender, but now that trans people are everywhere (thanks to anti-trans activists), you get impressionable young people who were not predisposed to questioning their gender hearing about it and joining in for the standard reasons impressionable young people join trends. (Cf. media coverage of school shootings encouraging more school shootings – a common argument among anti-gun-control people.)
I highly doubt you're arguing in good faith here.
Not sure who you're talking to, but that isn't the modal "anti-trans" view, and I doubt anyone has that strawman view on this forum. Sure, many trans people are delusional (the ones who merely declare they want to be treated as the other sex aren't, but the modern line that they are and always have been another sex is just obviously false). But adults are free to pursue happiness in their own way, including transitioning, and it's no big deal for me to be polite and play along with their preferences most of the time.
I suspect you know that most people's main objection is to forcing the rest of society to play along. That includes:
This is a hilariously absurd take. You're just shit-stirring.
Where does that happen? Let's look at Wikipedia specifically. The articles for Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Page have their former names right there in the first sentence. I think a lower-profile trans person who wasn't notable before transitioning might have their name excluded, maybe because there are no reliable sources available stating their former name, maybe as a courtesy, since it is of no interest to the public anyway. The same courtesy was unfortunately not extended to Scott Alexander, but it is extended to, for example, the streamer Jerma985 whose real name you won't find anywhere in his article. It formerly contained a fake real name, which he presents as his real name, presumably to protect his privacy, but even that has now been removed.
Has anyone ever lost their job because they didn't use the right pronouns? If they did this consistently, especially if they did it to customers, it could be seen as disrespectful, akin to calling their coworkers or customers names, which is a valid reason to lose a job.
Has anyone ever gone to jail because of pronouns? As far as I can tell, that is just a fantasy of Jordan Peterson's.
Has that ever happened?
If you look carefully, you'll notice that all they've done is change the terms to "AMAB" and "AFAB", respectively. Having these categories is, in fact, necessary, and even trans activists can't get away from them. All they can do is be politically correct.
If that's your concern, talk about that instead of claiming that all trans people are perverts, rapists, misogynists, etc., and none of them should be treated as their preferred gender. FWIW, I agree these concerns are valid.
At least one British man was convicted for misgendering, although his conviction was overturned on appeal. Something similar happened to a British woman, who was convicted for calling a trans-identified male a man, a conviction that was likewise overturned.
To the best of my knowledge no one has actually been sent to prison for misgendering, but at least two people have been arrested and held in jail cells for misgendering.
Which amounts to destruction. No one's sex is "assigned" at birth, like you just arbitrarily bestowed a sex on them but another one would have done just as well. Sexes are observed at birth. The claim that a doctor simply "assigns" them on a whim does, in fact, amount to a fundamental demolition of what the word "sex" means. Which would be bad enough if that was all trans activists were doing, which it isn't. See the absurd attempts to portray sex as a "spectrum", the inability of medical doctors to give a straight answer to simple questions like "can men get pregnant?", the replacement of commonly used anatomical terms with ghastly, dehumanising substitutes like "front hole", "chestfeeding", "birthing person" and "menstruators"...
It would be bad enough if "all" trans activists had done/wanted to do was replace the words "male" and "female" with "AMAB" and "AFAB" respectively. But it's abundantly obvious that that is not all they have done or want to do. Frankly, it strains credibility that you are so ignorant of the specifics of this group you're so routinely going to bat for.
Both cases are from several years ago and, as you said, both were overturned, so no further prosecution will be brought for similar cases. Note that overzealous prosecution for tweets under the Communications Act 2003 that later gets overturned is nothing new and doesn't even have to involve culture war topics.
Everyone knows that "AFAB" is just a euphemism for "born female". Do you campaign against euphemisms in general or is it this one specific pair of euphemisms that you consider the great political issue of our time? I myself think euphemisms are stupid and would prefer just "female at birth", but I recognize that they're harmless in the grand scheme of things.
The case of Imane Khelif is instructive. We have people here claiming she is a man. Yet she has a vagina and from birth she was assumed to be female. Would you not agree that, in her case, "assigned" rather than "observed" is the correct term to use?
"Front hole" and "chestfeeding" are terms trans people use for themselves and are not meant to replace terms used for cis women. "Birthing person" and "menstruator" are medical terms, not intended for general use or to replace any existing terms, created to be very specific. They are similar to the term "men who have sex with men" ("MSM"), widely used in medicine because it describes exactly what is meant and avoids unnecessary controversy over whether they are gay or bi or whatever else. No one identifies as a "man who has sex with men" and the term is not meant to be used outside medicine.
I really hate this specific breed of whataboutism that so many trans activists practise, when literally any criticism of any component of the trans activist agenda is met with derisive accusations that their interlocutor thinks this issue is the most important issue facing the entire planet!!!!1!
Where, exactly, did I say that the demand that the words "male" and "female" be substituted with "AMAB" and "AFAB" is "the great political issue of our time"? Why do you insist on repeatedly putting words in my mouth and attributing things to me I never said, beliefs I never endorsed?
"People here" including Khelif themself.
Yes, "assigned" is the appropriate phrasing to use in the specific case of people with disorders of sexual development. Trans activists, however, want to use the "assigned at birth" phrasing for everyone, including the 99% of people who were born without DSDs. I was not "assigned" the male sex at birth: the doctor who delivered me correctly identified my sex as male.
"Destruction" and "demolition" are very strong words.
She says she has an SRY gene. She doesn't say she is a man. You may consider the two equivalent, but evidently she does not, so no, she didn't say she is a man.
True, but my asserting that trans activists are trying to destroy or demolish the meaning of the word "sex" doesn't imply that this is the most important issue in the world, any more than "a construction company demolished a building in my neighbourhood" implies that there's anything especially important about said building.
Clearly you care about the words' meanings, and I would say that the use of such strong words does imply that you care a lot. Accusing your political opponents of "destroying" or "demolishing" anything is clearly very charged and implies that you think the destruction is a very bad thing. It is totally unlike using the word "demolish" in its neutral, literal meaning.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link