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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7647 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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But ask a random person what's in it for someone who wants to be a woman and he'd likely be at a loss.

I mean, let me just ask: do you really think that there's so little to recommend in the lives of half of all humanity, approximately 4 billion people, that no rational actor, under a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, could ever want to be one of them?

If you do believe that to be the case, then the logical corollary is that you should become the most ardent of committed feminist activists. Alleviating their suffering would surely be the most pressing of political issues.

(I'm intentionally being a bit glib, but, what you said could be interpreted in that way.)

I'm sure there will be many people who can answer this. And they will probably be more sympathetic to the trans cause. But to the average person's point of view the trans person's pov is so alien as to be indistinguishable from insanity.

Well now I'm kinda curious. Do you think being a woman is that much worse than being a man? (I don't want to draw you into a long obnoxious argument, I just want to make sure I'm properly understanding you.)

I don't think it has anything to do with "better" vs. "worse". I just think the imaginative gap that a lot of people struggle to even get their heads around the hypothetical.

The average person with a net worth of less than a million dollars does not struggle to imagine what it would be like to have a million dollars. The average person who does not live in Germany does not struggle what it would be like to live in Germany. (I'm not even saying their imaginary conceptions of these two counterfactuals are accurate: I'm just saying that most people don't struggle to imagine them, even if their imaginary conception thereof is wrong.) But waking up tomorrow morning as a member of the opposite sex is such a bizarre and alien concept that the average person struggles to get their head around it. I think the average person would have an easier time imagining what it would be like to be blind or paralysed than to imagine what it would be like to wake up as a member of the opposite sex.

I think you're making some good points and my argument is phrased quite poorly. I think it kind of conflates and the idea of wanting to become a woman and the idea of wanting to transition. I'm kind of too tired to put this coherently for now but you're definitely largely right.

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