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 -
It's weird. Gender seems obviously more tied to biology than race, which is, in large part (oc not fully) mediated by cultural association.
A black man is more like a white man than a black women. Yet the progressive thinks he is more capable to become the latter than the former because reasons.
A middle class African American is more like his middle class American white neighbor than he is like a rural African farmer. Not just culturally, possibly genetically too through racial mixing. Yet we are to believe that their dominant skin tone represent an impenetrable, immutable, objective racial feature of more import and gravity, than the separation between males and females.
Oh well, freddy has always seemed like a joke to me. I even think his 'education' takes are quite lacking. It's just that the right leaners here are already don't apply any critical eye to those takes because they're too busy clapping.
Isn't the idea that gender is more biological than race an argument in favor of transgender being acceptable and transracial not being acceptable? Biology can be altered by taking hormones that have a variety of physiological and psychological effects. Get a dark spray tan and dreadlocks doesn't have the same sort of effect on the transitioning person's physiology and psychology.
That's something of a 'trans-medicalist' perspective, most trans activists wouldn't endorse the idea that you have to take HRT to be legitimately trans. I think that's mostly for 'big tent' solidarity reasons, most trans people won't shut up about how much hormone therapy changed them.
I think if "I'm pregnant, using the ova produced by my own ovaries and carrying the foetus to term in my own uterus when I will then deliver it via my own vagina, but I am 100% a man and it's not legal for you to say otherwise" applies, then it damn well ought to apply in the case of "So what if my melanin levels don't match that person's levels?"
Why should testosterone be considered any different to taking antioxidants and vitamins to naturally increase production of melanin?
Or even tanning? If Chris (new name) needs an artificial source of testosterone to be a real man and this is acceptable, why should it be unacceptable for Shaniqua (new name) to use tanning booths and fake tan to be a real biracial woman? Depending on her ethnic background, it might be possible for Shaniqua to naturally achieve darker skin, while Chris will never be able to naturally generate testosterone. So which is more truly affecting physiology?
If you put a transgender person alone on a space station and give them HRT they're still going to have experiences aligned with their gender identity. How they experience emotions, sexual arousal, and some of their personality characteristics are going to become more closely aligned with the gender they identify with. On the obvious stereotypical stuff, trans women will find it much easier to cry, trans men experience more arousal in response to visual stimulus.
If you put a white person on a space station and let them increase their melanin levels are they going to have any experiences that constitute 'the black experience' or are part of black culture in the U.S? I would think not, because those experiences are inherently social. Perhaps they might have to change their skin care routine, but that doesn't seem a comparably large change in internal subjective experience.
That is to say that melanin is constitutive of race almost entirely because it's a flag that indicates how others should treat you socially. Gender is both a social cultural experience and an internal psychological one.
It makes sense to me for someone to say "my internal psychological experience is closer to the gender I identify with than my birth sex, so I would like to occupy the social position of my gender identity and take hormones so my internal experiences and body align more fully with that gender". It doesn't make sense to me for someone to say "my internal psychological experience is closer to a different race" because I don't think races have unique internal psychological experiences outside of social treatment.
As you point out with the case of pregnancy there are going to be all sorts of things where trans people have experiences that are wildly atypical for someone of the gender they identify with. Obviously criminalization of speech is bad and I oppose that. But if someone says to me: "I think my internal psychological experience is closest to a man's and I would like to occupy the male social position and take testosterone, but the only way for me to have biological children is to become pregnant and so I have chosen to do that please refer to me as a man" I would do so.
But this ultimately does not make sense. It's a claim to knowledge that the person cannot possibly posses. There is not way to differentiate between in the internal experience of "I am a male who correctly identifies that I internal psychological experience closer to what women have" and "I am a male who incorrectly believes I have internal psychological experience closer to what women have and actually the experience itself is inherently a male experience". We all only have one first person experience.
You could say the same for all internal mental states because language is an imperfect medium for communicating lived experience. How can I ever know if I'm really "angry", or if I am incorrectly describing some other emotion as anger? I can never directly access everyone else's experiences to know what anger truly is, I just have to construct an idea of anger based on other people's descriptions.
Very little usually hangs on the accuracy of such comparison. Yes - you can't actually know if the anger you feel is the same as the anger I feel although you do at least have a lot more evidence it does(especially if we're the same sex), because anger serves a common biological purpose. Your gender's body has very little reason to be able to accurately model such a thing and probably a few reasons to not perfectly do so.
And hell, I'm open minded, I'm not bothered by Men who want to dress as women, act like women, even get cosmetic surgery/take hormones to look like women for whatever reason. They just enjoy looking cute, they feel sexy, whatever. But don't expect me to agree that there is some cosmic way that they're actually fundamentally women. I gave up religion a long while ago and this is precisely the thing I will no longer accept on faith.
We're social animals so there's lots of evolutionary utility from being able to predict other people's actions and accurately modeling other people's internal states would be helpful for that.
Sure I'm not big on metaphysics. I think labels are about communicating useful information not cosmic essences. But I think in most cases the useful information to communicate is the social role a person is presently occupying not their birth sex. I think trans inclusive language in medical contexts is pretty dumb because the anatomical details are relevant there, but in most social contexts expected presentation and mannerism are the relevant content of the gendered label.
I disagree - in my experience, trans people tend to act in ways that confirm and pattern-match to their birth sex, with transbians being some of the most "malebrained" people I have ever interacted with. When I try to model the behaviour of trans people, I ignore their gender identity and operate on the basis of what they were assigned at birth, because that approach generates far more accurate predictions (with the exception of same-sex attracted trans people, who tend to be closer to their target gender). That understanding also makes for good predictions - if I see a trans person talking about computer programming, striped socks, slice of life anime, Final Fantasy XIV and making threats of physical/sexual violence against feminists, I think I can make a pretty good guess as to their assigned gender at birth.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link