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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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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.

When an adult male insists that he is a woman, but behaves in a manner entirely consistent with an entitled and pornsick man

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'?

I don't think that all trans-identified males are entitled pornsick men, and have a certain amount of sympathy for the homosexual variety (per Blanchard's typology). But plenty of them are, and aren't even being discreet about it.

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'?

A Kafkatrap is when denying an accusation of X is taken as evidence that the accusation is well-founded. I have never claimed that anyone who denies being pornsick therefore is pornsick. Even the claim "any man who claims to be trans is entitled and pornsick" wouldn't be an example of a Kafkatrap, although that isn't the claim I made. I don't believe all trans-identified males are pornsick, nor all pornsick men trans. I believe this was abundantly obvious from my original comment.