This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A common argument in trans discourse is "who are you to say someone isn't the gender he says he is? No one would know better than the person himself."
I've spent years operating on the opposite assumption about myself, that I'm a bad judge of myself. Furthermore, everyone has dissatisfaction with themselves and the world. Personally, I flip-flop, get dissatisfied about my life and direction, but most people tell me "that's life, get over it". But if I had a trans-like belief that "I know what I am, but the world won't let me be it," with tons of people telling me over and over that I'm right and there are evil people out to get me, I think I'd have latched onto it hard. Not because it's necessarily true, though. It converts vague restlessness into a clear enemy and a fixed identity, and that provides false stability and obsession for a feeling of listlessness.
So I don't buy that conviction is evidence of accuracy. If anything, the more invested I am in a belief about my identity, the less I honestly should trust it. I think it's at least possible that having an outside view is more accurate than one's own personal beliefs.
Is having skin in the game a reason to trust your self-read more, or less?
The loathsome worm whose idealised conception of himself is grossly at odds with the reality is a stock comic figure. When an adult male insists that he is a woman, but behaves in a manner entirely consistent with an entitled and pornsick man, that's funny to me in the same way that I find it funny when Michael Scott from The Office thinks (contrary to all evidence) that he's a great screenwriter, or Joey Tribbiani from Friends thinks he's a talented actor. Our conception of ourselves can never (perhaps should never) be entirely accurate, and yet extreme examples (wherein a person's self-conception is enormously out of step with the objective reality) are intrinsically funny.
What behaviour, if exhibited by a trans woman, would you concede is not 'entirely consistent with an entitled and pornsick man'?
Crocheting.
So, if Alice née Alan crochets, you would conclude that she is not 'an entitled and pornsick man'?
If that is not your meaning, than I might not have been clear exactly what I was asking.
The question I am attempting to ask is: Is there any pattern of behaviour by Alice née Alan that you would consider sufficient to establish that Alice is not 'an entitled and pornsick man', while also not accepting your previously expressed Views on men, women, and the distinction therebetween, or is this a Kafka-trap wherein the mere fact of Alice claiming to be a woman while being AMAB is proof of her being 'an entitled and pornsick man'?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Being obsessed with soap operas instead of military science fiction would be a good start.
A dizzying amount of transpeople are autistic, but I never met a single one whose associated obsessions didn't follow their birth sex very strongly.
But is that downstream of natal biology, or of assumed gender during childhood and adolescence?
(Also, I'm not so sure 'autistic person' and 'primary plot driver is the sort of petty social status competitions found in a high-school lunchroom' really fit that well together, even if the autistic person is a cis-woman. Does anyone have stats on the distribution of interests in autistic versus not autistic cis-women?)
Does it matter? This just means that even if you concede that gender would be somehow separate from sex and defined by apparent looks or behavior, these people still code in the bucket of 'male'.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Most of it just comes down to basic self-awareness/self-control, so stuff like:
But having basic self-awareness/self-control is negatively correlated with being visibly trans (and accusations of porn-brainedness are derivatives of that), so even if there is a dark mass of ex-men/ex-women who are doing this, it's significantly harder to observe attributes of someone who doesn't want you to see them. (I suspect this is far less common for ex-women simply because the male uniform is unisex.) At least the more self-aware types tend to wear masks as an anti-jawline measure.
Then again, "being an obnoxious attention whore" is a stereotypically feminine trait. So maybe I do indeed err by failing to take them at their word that they're a walking minstrel show and a loudly-ticking social time bomb. I'm not sure which is better.
In other words, yielding to others' belief that she is a 'delusional man in a dress'?
A name like that isn't doing any heavy lifting trying to force pronouns, be they deserved or not.
Being [able to be] at the mercy of external actors evaluating what gender they believe you are is kind of the point; forcing the issue is the root hostile action.
As opposed to actively imposing the belief that he isn't, which is the same problem from the other direction.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link