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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Transvestite passes were just an example of men wearing women's clothes and not being stoned to death. I brought it up as an example of behavior, not identity.

Look back through my posts in this subthread. Where did I ever get off of the specific topic of responding to your specific claims about 8000 years of stoning men for dressing as women?

Dressing as a women was clearly in personal life and by choice and not like a professional reason such as being a spy and needing to sneak into a location. And besides yes you directly said transvestites

Are male transvestites not definitionally, "men who dress in women's clothes"?

I also don't think I brought up professional examples like spying. Are you confusing what I said with someone else in this thread?

I think you are very clearly trying to play a disingenuous Motte-and-Bailey game of trying to compare a Bruce Jenner situation to someone dressing as a women for a short-time period for a professional reason. A spy might disguise themselves as a women similar to an actor maybe need to play a female role. These are not the same things. You know they are not the same things. You know in a culture war conversation when I refer to a man as a women I am not talking about an actor playing a female role in theatre (for whatever labor market limitations existed then)

How am I the one doing Motte and Bailey here? You're the one making an expansive claim about how civilization stoned men who dressed as women for 8000 years and retreating to more defensible claims when you receive pushback?

I am bringing up narrow and specific counterexamples, because they are enough to disprove a statement as broad as the one you made.

It is totally fine if you think we should start stoning male transvestites to death, or you admire historical periods where that happened, or you won't consider society normal until we start doing that, or whatever you actually think. But don't pretend that you have more historical precedence for your position than you do.

I am against putting utopia in the past or the future.

What is my Motte? I think I’m just making a Bailey argument that for most of history transexuals likely faced violent deaths?

What is my Motte? I think I’m just making a Bailey argument that for most of history transexuals likely faced violent deaths?

I was responding to a specific claim about what would happen to "a man wearing women [sic] clothing", not about transsexuals. If your original wording is not a fair reflection of your views, then I withdraw my original objection.

I do still think you should have been more careful in your original wording. If you meant male transsexuals, you should have said:

For 8k years of human civilization a transsexual man likely got executed.

instead of bringing up men wearing women's clothing, if that wasn't what you were trying to talk about. I have different objections to that new formulation as well (is "transsexual" a category that easily applies to individuals across different historical periods, or is it a bit of an anachronism?), but I'm much less interested in that particular discussion.

Maybe I’m wrong. Personally, I think most of the time men wearing female clothes is a synonym for m to female transitions and most would not include basically Arya Stark type situations of pretending to be the other sex. But technically I guess you could.