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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24338 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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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?

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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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