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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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Contrapoints released her newest video yesterday. As someone who has found a number of her past videos to be well done and interesting (they're generally better the further back you go), this one was disappointing. Some random thoughts:

Contrapoints made a name for herself through actually engaging with the "alt-right" and by being willing to make real arguments in response to conservatives; now it seems like she's totally bought into some of the worst argumentation styles of the woke left. Most annoying to me is the frequency with which Natalie begs the question by referring to "trans rights" as if they're some unobjectionable, neutral thing that only "bigots" could oppose. Interestingly, the only time she actually concretely discusses a supposed "trans right" (males competing in women's sports), she agrees that there is a debate to be had here. Of course, no mention of kids transitioning, males in women's prisons, etc. Just "trans rights" in the abstract. The one thing Contrapoints is clear about is that not acknowledging that "trans women are women" is at the least "transphobic" (if not a violation of "trans rights" in some hard to define way), which is interesting. What does it mean to be "transphobic"? Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"? Because I would like to say that I'm not "transphobic" on the basis that I don't think trans people should be denied rights that we accord to others, or that they should be forcibly prevented from dressing like women, or even (if over 18) allowed to surgically alter themselves to match their desired gender identity (perhaps with some reasonable safeguards).

I think she makes some good arguments about the fact that there are always limits to debate. She talks about how LGBTQ activists essentially "cancelled" an old anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, with the implication that most people nowadays would agree with that cancellation. Of course, I would simply say that there are meaningful differences between gay activism and trans activism (e.g., gay people were fighting against laws that criminalized consensual behavior between adults; trans people often are fighting to allow children to mutilate themselves). Nonetheless, I do take her point: Arguing against "cancellation" or "illiberal" tactics in the abstract is kind of pointless, because almost no one is a true free speech absolutist here. If, say, someone was going around and gathering a following by literally advocating for the murder of Jews, I think a lot of us would agree that public shaming (at the least) would be appropriate. That means that one must always have some object-level discussion about what people are being cancelled for before one can reasonably argue that any given cancellation is unacceptable. It's hardly a groundbreaking observation, but it's true nonetheless that there must be a line somewhere that would make "cancel culture" type tactics acceptable; we're all just debating where that line is.

Finally, I was surprised to see how much more aggressive Rowling has gotten in her anti-trans rhetoric. Not that I necessarily disagree with her, but it looks like I can no longer say that she's being unfairly smeared as an enemy of the trans movement.

Anyways, I would be curious on others thoughts here (assuming anyone is willing to watch a nearly two hour video by someone most would consider an ideological opponent.

Natalie is digging her own grave by making this argument.

She is effectively saying that : "All historic change is was a result of coordinated bullying, and that the coordinated bullying of JK Rowling is justifiable as the next step towards social change desired by a subsection of the population." Natalie does not spend any time talking about the merits of her stance or the social social change she desires. (other than circular logic).

Power trumps all. Convincing someone or productive debate are for plebs like Megan Phelps-Roper.

This is what a ringing endorsement of Ron DeSantis sounds like. The new right has taken exactly this approach to politics. Who needs intellectuals who spend all their time convincing, when we can simply employ the most effective collective bullying technique in a democracy : elections. Just as once side can force you to use pronouns, the other now forces you not to.

In a desperate fight between soft-power (twitter cancellations, university tenure, hiring decisions) vs hard-power (supreme court, local govts), hard power always wins. Soft-power fares much better in an era that favors convincing over bullying, because hard power always feels like bullying. But in a world where bullying is ok, hard power can run rampant. Republicans are clueless about soft-power in 2023 (with the decline of the Church), but they sure know how to get themselves some hard-power.

“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

I personally still have some hope for good-faith negotiators.

The use of hard-power or hardened-soft-power to achieve goals feels unfaithful to the spirit of the US. However, in practice, Natalie is indeed right. Social change is often forced down our throats before we're willing to digest it. But with equal odds, Natalie might just find herself with a bitter pill being forced down her own proverbial throat.

She's accurately identifying the state of play. The right isn't gonna accept trans people no matter what at this point, when you start calling people pedophiles the conversation is kind of over.

I don't think the tactics of trans activists matter that much electorally. Us political obsessives can fight all we want about trans people but electorally it's all gonna get swamped by abortion/inflation among normies.

The right isn't gonna accept trans people no matter what at this point, when you start calling people pedophiles the conversation is kind of over.

When you openly and blatantly state your intent to convert people's children to an ideologically driven belief system backed by the power of the state, then no conversation is possible. Arguably it never started.

"We don't have to convince YOU of anything, we'll just teach your kids to hate your beliefs and we may convince a few of them to undergo invasive surgery to alter their very personal identity, against YOUR wishes."

Explain to me how there's any room for negotiation when such a position has been moved to the forefront of one side's platform?

Thats the default though. 60 years ago kids were being indoctrinated into an ideological system with the backing of the state, whether their parents liked it or not. And 40 years ago, and 20 years ago.

Arguably the issue with America right now is not that kids are being indoctrinated but that they are not all being indoctrinated the same way. Thats how you get a cohesive polity. Too many states, too many systems. Call it a civic religion, a shared mythos or whatever. The point is what you are complaining about is not new, every kid is getting indoctrinated into something.

The fight is over what. But the sholip on not having kids indoctrinated at all sailed a long time ago. But

Thats the default though. 60 years ago kids were being indoctrinated into an ideological system with the backing of the state, whether their parents liked it or not.

60 years ago, our society was much more homogeneous than it is now. The social systems in contention now weren't set up to create that homogeneity, they were set up because the homogeneity allowed the public at large to see value in systems and structures that achieved common, (that is to say homogeneous) goals.

Now we are heterogenous, and the systems and structures become a weapon to fight over, in the endlessly spiraling series of escalations. You're describing it as though that fight was the norm previously, only it really, really wasn't. There would be no public school system if the population that established it had suffered the level of values-conflict we currently endure. Likely there would have been no nation either.

I think you're wrong. This homogeneity is a historical illusion. 60 years ago you had the civil rights era. Was that because everyone thought and was treated the same?

60 years before that it was womens suffrage you were divided over. With differing feelings and laws in different states.

60 years before that you're fighting over whether men who can't own land can vote. Plus you know the whole civil war.

The difference i would argue in each of these cases is that one side won convincingly each time. And that then trickled down to all states. You had some forced homogeneity for a time before the next division erupted. But only because there was victory. There were always weapons to fight over. You just don't see them because the battles were so convincingly won. And that changed landscape is the water you swim in.

Women not being able to vote being a niche idea in the US is because a cultural battle was fought and won over it. Thats why 98% of people don't question it.

If the right wins the trans "war" in 60 years people will look back and say how the right side won and how quickly everyone fell into line. They get broad strokes. And someone then will say thats because 2023 is more homogeneous in views than 2083. Not realising that battleground is why homogeneity emerged.

If the right wins the trans "war" in 60 years people will look back and say how the right side won and how quickly everyone fell into line.

That's not going to happen. If the trans side loses the whole thing is getting memory holed. Best case scenario we'll be talking about it like we do about lobotomies as "bad thing crazy doctors were doing", not as something intimately connected to the progressive movement. Worst case scenario the whole thing is getting pinned on the right ("in Iran the government was forcing gay people to transition, and even in the west we had a movement trying to promote transition for gender non-conforming people") the same way eugenics is nowadays, and the only people knowing this is ass backwards will be a bunch of internet contrarians.

Which another way of saying the past will look homogenous right? It was only some crazy doctors and so on. That's my point, the past will look more homogeneous than it actually was.

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That's not going to happen. If the trans side loses the whole thing is getting memory holed

Might be naive, but I don't think things like that can get memory-holed.

The fucking President met with Dylan Mulvaney, on HD video, visible from the little clairvoyant in everyone's pocket. It's over.

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60 years ago kids were being indoctrinated into an ideological system with the backing of the state, whether their parents liked it or not. And 40 years ago, and 20 years ago.

Do you think that parents now have more or less control of the specific curriculum and lessons being presented to their children now than they did 40 or even 20 years ago?

Thats how you get a cohesive polity. Too many states, too many systems. Call it a civic religion, a shared mythos or whatever. The point is what you are complaining about is not new, every kid is getting indoctrinated into something.

Sure, and it is arguable how much that of that brainwashing actually 'takes' because it sure seems like most kids end up rebelling against whatever paradigm they were taught.

Sure, and it is arguable how much that of that brainwashing actually 'takes' because it sure seems like most kids end up rebelling against whatever paradigm they were taught.

Temporarily sure, but as this SNL Skit illustrates:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK0Lp43a8z0

How long do they actually rebel for before they settle down?

And parents probably have more control of curriculums than they ever did. Which is probably part of the problem.

And parents probably have more control of curriculums than they ever did. Which is probably part of the problem.

I see little evidence for that in a world where Teachers Unions can shut down school systems on a seeming whim, but maybe you have a different perspective.

How long do they actually rebel for before they settle down?

Almost my point. The boomers were the generation that produced hippies, and a full on counter-culture. And then they became, well, the Boomers, the ones who elected Trump.

It's not clear that schooling will produce lasting ideological commitment 10, 15, or more years down the line, without some external force acting (i.e. the CCCP in China).

Back in my day you had basically no access to the curriculum is my point. No internet, etc. You got to see homework and that was about it. No smartphones recording and so on.

Parents have much more access and thus control than they ever did when I was in school. 40 plus years ago.

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I see little evidence for that in a world where Teachers Unions can shut down school systems on a seeming whim, but maybe you have a different perspective.

Sorry missed this. Compared to the power unions had back in the 70's, where they could shut down close to the entire economy, yes it is significantly weaker. The reaction to that power and its use is quite a bit of what led to Reagan and Thatcher (not unreasonably, honestly). Teachers unions only look powerful compared to unions in other sectors which are nigh toothless tigers nowadays.

It seems less relevant whether parents have more or less control. 60 years ago there was probably more shared beliefs between the curriculum maker and parents compared to today. Thus the question of control was of less importance.

it sure seems like most kids end up rebelling against whatever paradigm they were taught.

Do they? It seems like most kids turn out to be conformist and mediocre members of their parents’ social stratum.

Obviously there’s a teenaged/youth rebellious phase, but I’m not convinced that’s a cultural universal even in America.

60 years ago it wasn't at all surprising that a Nixon or a Reagan could win 49 out of 50 states running on a platform of US civic religion.

A religion that academics, imagining themselves to be somehow more worthy than everyone, have always deeply resented and accordingly have spent the last 60 years trying to undermine and destroy.

Academics didn't undermine it. Its own inconsistencies and the number of people excluded from it did I think. In practice if not in theory.

I think a version of it can still stand, the shining city on the hill, but it has to be less exclusionary, probably less wrapped in actual religion.

I think a version of it can still stand, the shining city on the hill, but it has to be less exclusionary, probably less wrapped in actual religion.

It's nowhere near as exclusionary now after successive waves of accepting other groups - so why doesn't it reconstitute itself?

The answer is that academics and progressives continue to problematize it as fundamentally racist and sexist* and to push more atomizing forms of identity and a replacement civic cult (Pride, the "LGBT" nation).

* To give one of many examples: the 1619 project was made recently to attack the founding story of America. It wasn't published in NYT in the 1950s or in the Jim Crow era.

The answer is that academics and progressives continue to problematize it as fundamentally racist and to push more atomizing forms of identity and a replacement civic cult (Pride, the "LGBT" nation).

Do they problematize it? Or are they seeing actual problems? Are they pushing more atomizing forms of identity or were their forms of identity not accepted so they rebelled? Have they succeeded in convincing everyone their forms of identity should be accepted on the shining city or is that still ongoing with significant numbers of hold outs? Chicken or egg?

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Elections aren’t bullying.

Elected officials weaponizing the government monopoly on force—that’s the last word in bullying. To the extent which officials campaign on doing just this, voters may be complicit, but I think it’s worth making the distinction. The vote itself is not violence.

Other than that, I agree. Retreating from liberalism, from agreeing not to make those votes for bullies, is a bad look. Perhaps even inviting disaster.

Finally, I was surprised to see how much more aggressive Rowling has gotten in her anti-trans rhetoric. Not that I necessarily disagree with her, but it looks like I can no longer say that she's being unfairly smeared as an enemy of the trans movement.

I have still not seen a single quote or statement attributed to JK that reads as anything other than bog-standard third-wave feminism applied to a situation she perceived (correctly, I might add) is a threat to the gains previous waves of feminism made for biological women.

She's not come across as 'anti-trans' so much as 'pro-women' and defines 'women' in the terms that are directly related to biology and social roles that inherently set 'men' and 'women' apart.

VERY LATE STAGE EDIT: She confirms as much in her own words. You tell me whether you believe her or not.

If she's gotten 'more aggressive' it is probably just a result of the doubled and tripled efforts to redefine the aforementioned terms in the public eye and she, unlike many, can afford to actively fight back without risking her life being torn down.

If you're interested, the middle section of the video (starting around here) contains various screenshots of Rowling being fairly stridently anti-trans.

I appreciate you linking directly to the argument.

However, the presented tweets, especially removed from any greater context, barely budge the needle from what I already believe, as stated above.

It still reads like she's simply sticking to her guns under heavy, withering attacks against her in a battle she never invited but is, at this point, willing to fight. Her guns being that women's rights are a distinct, important cause worth upholding and that redefining 'woman' starts to erode those rights in a subtle way.

"Rowling is an extremely outspoken opponent of trans rights. This has been her main issue for several years now."

Yeah, so right around the time trans rights were made into a central social issue in the culture wars. Could it be that it's just her being consistently pro-woman in her beliefs and responding to just the latest attacks on women's rights as she would on any other matter? I don't think she's been harboring hidden anti-trans beliefs all this time, or that she arbitrarily decided to turn trans rights into her defining cause in the past few years. How does one differentiate between someone who started singling out trans people because they hate them vs. because trans people have been getting much, much more attention than previously?

Also, maybe because she believes that there's an inherent contradiction between what trans-rights activists want and what is good for women as a class?

You can't square that circle unless you agree "trans women are women" which... J.K. by all appearances honestly believes is not the case.

"Rowling doesn't ask her audience to think; she asks them to fear"

And HOLY SHIT if that's the standard for determining who is a bigot and creating '-phobias,' then there's a laundry list of mainstream personalities who are apparently spreading, among other things. incelphobia, Russophobia, and constant, CONSTANT androphobia.

Maybe explain why she's not allowed to invoke anger and emotional pleas while everyone else throws them at her, and happily invokes them on other issues?

As with other groups, this starts to read as a special pleading. "The mere fact that you're criticizing [group] at all indicates you must hate them." But why is THAT group thus immune to criticism in a way others are not?

Why do I even feel like defending J.K. Rowling? I just get really sick of this whole "we picked a fight against someone and they didn't take a dive in the first round as planned, so we've doubled, tripled, quintupled our efforts and HOW DARE they continue to fight back" approach employed by activists.

I say this as someone who’s roughly on her side: the thing that bugs me most about the X-rights movement is the lack of concern for anyone else. These movements are narcissistic all the way down, and worse, no one is allowed to voice these very real concerns without being shouted down as a bigot, a terrible human being, or whatever other sneer term you can come up with.

She has a point on some of her stuff. Women are extremely vulnerable in women’s shelters and changing rooms. And especially since the de-facto policy is “if they say they’re a woman they are,” this means that some nonzero number of men who want access to women’s changing rooms or shelters with vulnerable women in them will simply put on a dress and go for it. And at present women aren’t even allowed to object. Women will almost certainly be raped in this situation (which I suspect has already happened), and it seems like all of society has decided that this is acceptable provided it’s kept out of sight.

And as far as children (which to my knowledge JKR hasn’t addressed) I think there are enough concerns that i understand the impulse behind the anti-movement. There’s at least some evidence that ROGD is a social contagion. Kids aren’t necessarily claiming gender dysphoria because they have some long standing issues with their natal gender, but because it’s cool and attention grabbing and makes adults squirm a bit. Or maybe they have trouble fitting in, and believe that as the opposite gender they’d have an easier time. My issue is that society has chosen the worst possible way of dealing with the issue.

When I was a kid, there were scammy CD clubs that you could subscribe to initially cheaply and later on would get really expensive. And they absolutely went after kids because they obviously weren’t mature enough to understand completely what they were getting into. And fortunately for them there’s a provision to protect kids from being scammed this way — until they’re proper adults they aren’t held to contracts, or at least can use their age to back out. Kids aren’t allowed to hold jobs or get tattoos until they’re old enough to understand what they’re getting into. Gender is different. The same kids who can’t get tattoos or hold jobs or sign up for CD clubs can absolutely at least socially transition with full support of the faculty of the school. If they tell their parents, the parents are not allowed to question it, or slow it. But, that’s only if the child gives the school permission to tell their parents.

So I understand the pushback here. Parents for very good reasons don’t want the schools keeping secrets from them. Especially for things that involve medical care or large social changes. Finding out that schools are conspiring with children to hide a major and potentially life altering decision from them is rage inducing for most parents. They know their kid and understand that kids need guidance from parents.

But to me a lot of the over-the-top responses are precisely because they’re shut out of the conversation. The only thing they can do is shout it down, to ban it, and to require an approval process for classroom instruction and books. Shouting in school board meetings is the only thing parents can do here.

I wonder if the whole trans kids issue might be a good way to get more people to turn against non-consensual circumcision. After all, if a person is horrified by the idea of their kid deciding to do a life-altering and probably unnecessary medical procedure because the kid wants to get it done, logically the person should also probably be horrified by the idea of the kid being completely non-consensually forced into a life-altering and unnecessary medical procedure. It adds to the parallels that in both cases it is primarily the sexual aspects of the anatomy that are affected.

The problem here is that you have a large chunk of the population who's experienced circumcision first-hand, and consider the anti-circumcision arguments vastly overblown. If you don't like the practice, don't practice it with your kids. There's no need for laws, you can just let people make the decision for their own children as they see fit.

If on the other hand circumcision were being mandated, or secretly being encouraged for children to get themselves while hiding this fact from parents, that would be a rather different matter.

If you don't like the practice, don't practice it with your kids. There's no need for laws, you can just let people make the decision for their own children as they see fit.

Don't you see how that seems rather like saying "If you don't like the practice of double mastectomies, don't practice it with your kids"? Obviously double mastectomies are vastly more destructive than circumcision, but I don't see any principled difference. The foreskin exists for a reason and I suspect most guys who have one will testify to the anguish they'd feel if they learned they'd henceforth be deprived of it. For example, see the responses to the relevant question in the ACX survey.

I implore you to let your psychological guard down for a moment and sincerely examine whether your attitude towards circumcision is simply a result of having been circumcised (which I'm assuming with 95 percent confidence that you have been) and the distress you'd experience if you were no longer able to avoid truly reckoning with what was inflicted on you.

Don't you see how that seems rather like saying "If you don't like the practice of double mastectomies, don't practice it with your kids"? Obviously double mastectomies are vastly more destructive than circumcision, but I don't see any principled difference.

The fact that it's vastly less destructive is a principled difference.

Literally anything can be labeled "abusive" or "harmful" if one engages in sufficiently enthusiastic linguistic masturbation. If one is to retain one's sanity, it is necessary to understand that the application of a label does not automatically shift reality. Yes, I understand that circumcision impacts the mechanics of sexual pleasure. The thing is, they do not seem to impact it all that strongly, given that orgasms still fuckin' rock even with one, and sexual pleasure is not remotely the sum of human existence. The simple fact is that I and a lot of other men have had one, and it does not appear to us to be that big a deal. This is in fact born out by the survey you linked: those with their foreskin intact very much want to keep it. Those who've lost it mostly don't care.

I implore you to let your psychological guard down for a moment and sincerely examine whether your attitude towards circumcision is simply a result of having been circumcised (which I'm assuming with 95 percent confidence that you have been) and the distress you'd experience if you were no longer able to avoid truly reckoning with what was inflicted on you.

This is quite absurd. What, exactly, was "inflicted" on me? I take it for granted that uncut men experience more intense sexual pleasure, but having experienced a goodly amount of sexual pleasure in my life, I do not find myself mourning the lack of additional intensity. What I have is good enough to be frankly dangerous; Having more would be nice, but why should its absence be some terrible crushing tragedy? Do you approach all pleasures this way, mourning that your car isn't a lambo and your house isn't a mansion, and that you didn't buy bitcoin for .001 cents a coin when you should have? How would it benefit me to obsessively mourn the things I theoretically might have had, rather than enjoying the good I do have in a spirit of contentment?

Why is it not good enough for me to freely decide that I won't continue the practice with my own children? Why is more than that needed?

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No, that's analogous to people who have had a double mastectomy then mulling over whether to let their kids undergo the same procedure.

I was circumcised for, in hindsight, unnecessary reasons, but I don't really miss my foreskin or care much either way, not that I'd do it to my kid without good reason.

The problem here is that you have a large chunk of the population who's experienced circumcision first-hand, and consider the anti-circumcision arguments vastly overblown. If you don't like the practice, don't practice it with your kids. There's no need for laws, you can just let people make the decision for their own children as they see fit.

I think this is almost entirely a result of circumcision having been around for a long time and people being familiar with it. Most people who are fine with circumcision would not be fine with the idea of allowing parents to decide to cut off parts of their children's ears or fingertips or any other body part the non-consensual removal of which in infancy has not been traditionally practiced in the West.

secretly being encouraged for children to get themselves while hiding this fact from parents

I think that this would still be much better than parents having the right to get their kids circumcised in infancy. With the secret encouragement, at least there is some form of consent from the person who is actually going to be affected.

I think this is almost entirely a result of circumcision having been around for a long time and people being familiar with it.

Well, sure. It being around for a long time shows that it's not a novel practice with unknown consequences, and people being familiar with it means that it's pretty tough to convince people that it's somehow disastrous or monstrous when roughly half of them have a lifetime of experience to the contrary.

More generally, it seems obvious to me that this entire argument is yet another round of the usual Progressive word games. Circumcision is not an obscure practice, the outcomes are not in doubt, and those outcomes do not justify the histrionics activists inevitably deploy. Circumcised men get on just fine. If some think the practice harmed them, they are free to act differently with their own children, but there is no crisis here, and attempting to force the outcome you prefer will cause vast amounts of harm for very, very little benefit.

Most people who are fine with circumcision would not be fine with the idea of allowing parents to decide to cut off parts of their children's ears or fingertips or any other body part the non-consensual removal of which in infancy has not been traditionally practiced in the West.

Our current experiment with prepubescent transition rather indicates otherwise; we've just in the last few years started letting parents put their children through incredibly invasive surgeries on the very slimmest of justifications, of a sort that would have been absolutely beyond the pale as recently as a decade ago. In any case, it seems to me that circumcision is considerably less harmful than losing a fingertip, and I think if people decided they needed to do weird ear stuff with their kids, we'd probably let them.

I think that this would still be much better than parents having the right to get their kids circumcised in infancy. With the secret encouragement, at least there is some form of consent from the person who is actually going to be affected.

I disagree. Kids don't have a good understanding of the consequences either way; parents do, because in most cases they've lived with the consequences all their lives. More generally, I do not see why we should consider children free agents capable of making serious life decisions. Baring the small fraction committing severe abuse and neglect, there is not going to be anyone more committed to a child's welfare nor more invested in good outcomes for them than their parents. I absolutely do not trust teachers or other agents of the state to make better decisions for children than parents on net, and deeply resent their attempts to usurp parental powers while conspicuously neglecting the attendant responsibilities.

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If you think people are logical, I have a logically sound bridge to sell.

Maybe on the margins, but I doubt it’s going to make much difference.

I was against circumcision before I knew what trans even is, but I don't think this idea is going to work. People are very good at compartamentalizing.

As a person who doesn't care about this issue, no not really. I don't see it as life altering in any meaningful way. i'm not sure what would move the needle enough to make me concerned, a high complication rate? But no, very different from chemical castration and brain growth retardation.

As with other groups, this starts to read as a special pleading. "The mere fact that you're criticizing [group] at all indicates you must hate them."

To be clear, I lean more on the open side in terms of Trans Rights/identity. I think it makes sense that some people are born with gender dysphoria, and I do think transition probably is a good treatment when this happens. (That said, I do think there's a socialized version that should be treated entirely different).

But the question really has to be asked. Is this special pleading...and let's be clear, it absolutely is special pleading...enough to oppose a group? It sucks that it is this way. I'm not a fan of this. But ultimately, I do believe it's entirely rational to oppose a group/identity who is claiming this power with some semblance of success. I'm not saying it's the best way to go about things. (Nor am I saying it's the worst, to be clear, although my personality/aesthetic leans towards a more pluralistic, open approach).

But at the end of the day, I do think this type of politics drives a large amount of the identity culture warring we see today.

But at the end of the day, I do think this type of politics drives a large amount of the identity culture warring we see today.

I guess I see it as almost the reverse.

Identity culture warring is ingrained in the human species, and that drives our politics, and has since literally all recorded history. We notice the things that make ingroup similar and outgroup different, and we find reasons to attack the outgroup, often based on the things that make them different. In some cases this might even be justifiable.

In this way, trans people as a group provide a 'useful' wedge for cynically amoral actors to generate tons of heat and lend cover to their other cynically amoral activities that might bring ire upon them.

I think it makes sense that some people are born with gender dysphoria, and I do think transition probably is a good treatment when this happens.

This doesn't answer the policy question, however. Stuff like "can a child who is too young to consent undergo this invasive procedure? Should their parent have a say? Should a transitioned person be legally entitled to be treated as their assumed identity?"

And the way we answer those policy questions is going to inherently impact how we answer many other, arguably more salient questions, and I can say that I, personally, am uncomfortable with the implications that come with denying parents input into their child's major medical decisions or forcing people to accept a person's "assigned" identity as a legally binding matter.

Wait, did she say, “self-described theocratic fascist Matt Walsh”? She knows that’s a joke right? Or is her saying that itself a joke? What level of meta-irony are we on?

You can quibble with fascist if you want, but theocrat pretty well describes a guy with Walsh's stated opinions lines up with wanting a theocracy, or at the very least, a laundry list of socially reactionary policies. Maybe it's not a theocracy theocracy, because Walsh would be OK w/ some form of representative government, as opposed to priests in charge, so insert what you best wording of a right-wing reactionary government would be.

He's quibbling with "self described". We got used to labelling people as fascist as an insult, but it's presumably different when they endorse the label themselves. Unless of course it was an obvious joke!

I mean, it is technically an accurate statement. He has "theocratic fascist" in his Twitter bio. There are in fact theocratic fascists out there. If someone is unfamiliar with Matt Walsh they may not understand the difference.

I am unironically updating against ironic profile descriptions. Seems like a bad norm.

it's true nonetheless that there must be a line somewhere that would make "cancel culture" type tactics acceptable; we're all just debating where that line is.

I'll bite the bullet and say I don't think there's any line where cancel culture type tactics are acceptable.

If person A wants to speak and person B wants to listen, then it's not acceptable for unrelated third party C to prevent this from occurring.

The only exception would be if person A or person B was breaching some duty they owed to person C. For example, if person A signed a non-disclosure agreement with person C.

So, you think if you were in Weimar Germany around 1930, it wouldn't have been acceptable to "cancel" Hitler (lol) if you thought that was a tactic likely to prevent his coming to power? To me there is no question it would be legitimate to disrupt Nazi rallies, throw pies in Hitler's face (a tactic Contrapoints discusses LGBTQ activists using against anti-gay activists), etc., if you legitimately thought it would prevent Nazism and the Holocaust. The problem for me with current activists is simply that they've set the bar for using these tactics way too low.

I'd suggest that if it's okay to shoot someone dead, it's also okay to cancel them.

It's okay to shoot Hitler dead. But nobody's going to seriously argue that it's okay to shoot J. K. Rowling dead.

But nobody's going to seriously argue that it's okay to shoot J. K. Rowling dead.

By "nobody", you mean "nobody here, out loud", right? Because I'm pretty sure I can find a whole lot of people in the general trans orbit who will in fact argue that it's okay to shoot J.K. Rowling dead. Certainly there were people making that argument for the Tennessee shooter regarding random Christian adults and kids, possibly including the shooter herself.

Certainly there were people making that argument for the Tennessee shooter regarding random Christian adults and kids

Were there? The closest is that one tweet from the "Trans Resistance Network" (the "network" being a Twitter account and a Wordpress website) that said that the shooting is a tragedy but it's also a tragedy that trans people are mistreated. It did not say that the shooting was justified.

There were definately additional twitter randos opining that the Christians had it coming and that Hale was a freedom fighter. I'm not claiming that they represent anyone other than themselves, but they do exist. I think there would be more people willing to make the argument for Rowling, since in her case no violence has actually happened, so the edginess draws less social oprobrium.

I'd agree with this as a heuristic for where it is absolutely OK to cancel someone. But certainly there's a middle ground? It can't only be either "I can only use reasoned debate to stop this person" or "I can shoot or cancel someone". Surely there's a place at which it would be acceptable to cancel but not murder someone?

Why should there be such a middle ground? "Cancellation" aims to make someone unemployable, which is several steps short of murder but absolutely moving in the same direction, and not in the slippery-slope sense.

JK Rowling, maybe not. There’s definitely people who at least say they think it would be justified to shoot Matt Walsh or other prominent anti-gender-ideology activists dead, whether or not they believe it(I would point to the lack of any attempts on their lives as evidence they don’t), and these are regular and frequent targets of cancel culture.

Your reductio ad hitlerum is especially bad considering the history of why the Sturmabteilung were formed in the first place.

If you're saying that disruptions of Nazi rallies led to the creation of the Sturmabteilung and thus indirectly led to the rise of Hitler, okay. It doesn't really affect my point, because I specifically qualified the use of "cancellation" on the legitimate belief that it would prevent his rise. If you think that cancellation is counterproductive (I largely tend to agree), that's a tactical disagreement, not a moral one.

It doesn't really affect my point, because I specifically qualified the use of "cancellation" on the legitimate belief that it would prevent his rise.

I think part of the issue here is that a legitimate belief isn't necessarily a correct belief, and someone who genuinely wants to do good in this world has the responsibility to make sure that his beliefs are not just legitimate but also correct. That's an endless endeavor, of course. But in this particular case, one could argue that someone who has a legitimate belief that this sort of "cancellation" would prevent the rise of Hitler in the 1930s is someone who hasn't take on the proper responsibility of figuring out if his legitimate belief is also a correct belief.

This is rather far away from the initial discussion about "cancel culture" and its possible usefulness in general, though.

First off, there were lots of attempts to "cancel" Hitler and the Nazis and those attempts didn't work. Criminal laws against hate speech were brought to bear, and if anything those attempts at shutting down the Nazis made them stronger and gave them better rhetorical tools. "What don't they want you to know?" was their argument.

Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters.

But even if I thought it would work, I'm against censorship on principle.

I largely agree that cancellation is tactically counterproductive. But one could also say that the Woke left uses cancellation all the time and seems to have amassed a large amount of cultural power, which might indicate that in certain circumstances it is effective.

But even if I thought it would work, I'm against censorship on principle.

So would you be opposed to "cancelling" Hitler if it was guaranteed to prevent his rise to power? Or what if it provided a 50% chance of preventing his rise?

So would you be opposed to "cancelling" Hitler if it was guaranteed to prevent his rise to power? Or what if it provided a 50% chance of preventing his rise?

It depends on what you mean by cancelling, but if you mean violating his right to speak freely, then yes I would be opposed. The whole point of rights is that everyone has them, including bad people. The whole point of free speech is that it protects the right to say vile and reprehensible things.

Okay. Disrupt him. Throw pies at him. And then, shockingly, him and his ilk form brownshirts and distrupt the distrupters. The Nazis don't become reformed moderates when punched. Instead it's Hitler and his buddies beating and dog whipping people all the way to victory.

That's not an argument against disrupting Hitler, that's an argument for doing it harder.

Hitler was the instrument the army of the Weimar Republic was using to cancel the German Workers Party. Kinda backfired on them.

The cancel culture debate isn't about whether people can have private conversations it's about people's rights to speak from various platforms. Speaking from a platform isn't a private transaction between person A & B, it involves the approval of whoever owns the platform. Consumers and employees play a role, as they can boycott or stop working for platform owners who use the platform to promote things they think are harmful. That's not physically preventing person A from Person B, it's just creating an incentive structure for the platform owner to deny person A from using their private platform to talk to Person B.

That's not really the "cancel culture debate". Often the "cancel culture" is enforced by outrage mobs creating a hostile environment precluding debate where the mob isn't supposed to be the owner of a given space, or by the mob "leaning" on the owners of the space/platform or trying to sabotage infrastructure or payment providers.

Leaning on the owner is usually a second degree boycott though. We can't directly boycott x because we aren't its consumer base, but we are the consumer base for company y that works with x and we can threaten to boycott y if they don't boycott x. It's still a sort of social shunning rather than a direct censorship.

TBH i'm mostly fine with boycotts. Where I draw the line is physical violence and literally intimidation and interference with business like sending bogus DMCA strikes or trying to get some one fired by badgering their boss.

None of the cancel culture ever took form of a boycott, and when they do try it, it tends to fail miserably - see the latest harry potter game affair. If these were actual boycotts, whether first or second hand, I'd have no issue with progressive activism.

Ok, so are you supporting the various threats sent to people for streaming a video game?

Seriously, look at some of the tactics used to boycott a video game (with no transphobic content). Do you support everything that happened there? Who (aside from rightoids, whom I don't listen to) is saying anything about some pretty nasty tactics (rape/death threats are never ok).

Saying, 'they are genociding us' to any criticism is not helpful to the cause... It just makes self-righteous people feel better about themselves. :marseyshrug:

I don't think that has much to do with what I wrote. Death threats aren't the same thing as boycotts and I don't support them.

Yes, self righteous people saying edgy things to signal ingroup loyalty is a lot of internet content.

The cancel culture debate isn't about whether people can have private conversations it's about people's rights to speak from various platforms.

People wanted to stream a game on their twitch channel (some channel were very small). Those people got a lot of nastiness threats put their way.

If you're going to talk about the boycott, this nastiness is part of it... And where pretty much at the point where bringing it up gets you called a bigot. Shouting down and arguing against empathy (like the contrapoints video does) is not helpful.

When you speak through a private platform (e.g. youtube), you incur various contractual duties to that platform. If your speech violates those contractual duties, then it's permissible for the platform to prevent you from speaking. Similarly, I would say boycotting or quitting one's job is permissible and doesn't count as cancel culture because no one is being prevented from speaking by these actions.

But a situation such as the one that recently occurred and Stanford, where the Federalist Society invited Judge Duncan to speak, followed all proper rules and policies to obtain a room for him to speak in, but he was then shouted down and prevented from speaking, is an example of "deplatforming" that is improper.

I think there's another place where blocking the communication between A and B, where both A and B want that communication to happen, where a third party C still has a legitimate interest in preventing that communication from happening. Consider the case where person A (Alice) has access to detailed instructions on how to construct nuclear weapons, and person B (Bob) wants to buy those instructions off her. Alice wants this communication to happen, because she estimates that the chance that Bob will actually build and use nuclear weapons in a way that harms her is fairly low, and Bob wants this communication to happen because he wants to gain the ability to construct nuclear weapons.

I claim that it is legitimately in the interests of person C (the rest of us humans on Earth) to prevent that communication from happening, even if Alice had never signed a nondisclosure agreement.

I think there is in fact a line. Though that line is pretty fucking far from "misgendering someone".

If Alice is breaching a duty, for example if she works for the US government and is obligated to keep nuclear secrets confidential, then it's proper for the US government to intervene and stop her from speaking. If Alice obtained the nuclear secrets without incurring or breaching a duty, for example if she found them laying on the street, then there's no proper basis to stop her from speaking, even if her speech is likely to cause harm.

I claim that it is legitimately in the interests of person C (the rest of us humans on Earth) to prevent that communication from happening, even if Alice had never signed a nondisclosure agreement.

There are lots of things that may be in Person C's legitimate interest but are nevertheless are impermissible because they infringe the rights of others. Person C may want a new Rolex watch and it therefore may be in Person C's interest to steal a Rolex from the jewelry store, but that doesn't make it permissible to do so because stealing a Rolex involves violating the rights of others.

The current policy in the US is that certain information, specifically the design, manufacture, or utilization of atomic weapons, is born secret. Philosophically this is a really ugly and unprincipled hack, and it's probably unconstitutional. As you say, there is no proper basis to stop her from speaking, and it totally violates her rights. Moreover, once the exception is carved out, I expect that politicians will twist the intent and make it illegal to talk about other, non-dangerous-but-enraging-or-embarrassing stuff for the purposes of "national security".

I hate it. And yet, on the balance, I'd rather live in a world where the policy exists than one where it doesn't, because I expect the world that has that policy to contain nice things like "cities" for several more decades than the one where that information is a free-for-all.

I guess I come out on this the way Sam Harris comes out on torture. He argues torture should be illegal, but nevertheless there are situations where it should be done anyway, such as if a terrorist has hidden a nuclear bomb in a city and torture is the only way to discover its whereabouts. In truly extreme situations, morally repugnant acts may be necessary.

I think censorship is repugnant even when it's used to prevent the disclosure of nuclear secrets, but perhaps it's a necessary evil in extremis.

I’m a trans person and I don’t really have the attention span to watch a 2 hour video, but I’m familiar with Contrapoints and willing to engage on a few points you mentioned.

What would refusing to acknowledge that “trans women are women” entail? If you use a trans person’s preferred pronouns, don’t treat them differently than you would a cis person of the same gender, and support their right to the healthcare they need, it’s just a fight over definitions about what a woman is, which is largely fruitless - see many LessWrong and SSC posts i.e. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/

However, the terms and arguments you are using would get you quickly lumped in with the transphobic crowd, regardless of your own opinions. Namely - calling gender affirmation surgery “mutilation” and implying that pro-trans right individuals want it done on kids. For most trans people the focus is on hormone replacement therapy, not surgery; allowing trans teenagers access to HRT would actually drastically reduce the need for surgeries for both FtMs and MtFs: FtMs wouldn’t need top surgery (which is almost all what’s done in minors) and MtFs wouldn’t need facial feminisation surgery, tracheal shave, voice feminisation surgery, hair transplants, etc.

You’d also be solving what l think is the crux of the issue that conservatives have with trans women: they find them disturbing to look at and interact with (FtMs, who pass more easily and at worst look like effeminate men, don’t trigger any of that same response as MtFs). People who transition early enough wouldn’t trigger that “uncanny valley” effect and would just pass as their new gender to anyone interacting with them.

Personally it also stems from the fact that I wish I’d transitioned when I was younger, and like many other trans people, would like to spare others from the hell that’s going through the wrong puberty and be stuck with a body you hate that you want to surgically alter.

I'm not sure I read you right, but I take it your post means that you do want hormone treatments for children and teenagers?

That’s the current medical consensus (for teenagers - actual pre-pubertal children don’t need hormones).

I can only speak to my personal experience, but I’ve been through childhood gender dysphoria and I wish I had know transition was an option then. I grew up outside of America and before it became engrained in the popular consciousness, so when I was a child the only thing I could come up with was pretend I’d gotten in an accident that cut off my genitals, so doctors would be forced to reassign me. I didn’t go through with it due to low pain tolerance, but that would have been actual (self-)mutilation, and I had no awareness that being trans was a thing so you cannot blame social contagion.

I think it was a mistake for current trans activists to focus on a nebulous concept of gender identity instead of gender dysphoria, which is a serious psychiatric condition that has widespread medical consensus about how to treat it. For people with it, puberty is an unwanted, traumatic experience that ends up giving you a body you despise and that you end up spending tragic sums of money fixing. Perhaps if that was the primary discourse, you’d also get fewer people that only do it because it’s trendy or whatnot.

I can only speak to my personal experience, but I’ve been through childhood gender dysphoria and I wish I had know transition was an option then.

Do you think you would have been better off with medical transitioning pre-puberty, even if that meant you would never orgasm or have functional male or female sexuality (like what seems to have happened with Jazz Jennings)?

I don't think there's enough studies on the sexual development of trans women who completely blocked male puberty, as it's fairly rare. I probably would have preferred that at the time, since my sexuality made me feel very distressed in general, but "completely block puberty" and "transition as an adult" aren't the only two options. I don't see why I couldn't have transitioned shortly after the onset of male puberty, enough to gain the ability to orgasm and some sexual functioning, but before my voice dropped and height increased. And there's also the potential use of topical testosterone for normal genital development, that's very promising but under-studied.

FWIW, it isn't even true that starting medical transition early on results in an inability to orgasm or a lack of sexual function. Even trans women who start puberty blockers so early that they don't have enough skin to use for a penile inversion vaginoplasty are still as likely as cis women to report being able to orgasm, after vaginoplasty using an alternative technique.

Yeah, I guess there's a line in the sand somewhere around here. It'd take a lot of convincing for me to consider your misfortune more pressing to prevent than the harm likely done to impressionable teenagers who needlessly undergo such treatment. I'd wager many conservatives have similar preferences in this issue.

But there's probably an underlying debate about the rights of parents to override the wishes of their children that we'd need have first. Or differently phrased, in how far the state should be able to override parental authority.

Thats been tricky for a while, if a Jehovahs Witness raised child and their parents all agree that they don't want a life saving blood transfusion should the state override them considering the childs best interests?

If the child wanted the transfusion and the parents did not, does that change the calculus?

That’s the current medical consensus

Where? Certainly not across Europe.

What would refusing to acknowledge that “trans women are women” entail? If you use a trans person’s preferred pronouns, don’t treat them differently than you would a cis person of the same gender, and support their right to the healthcare they need, it’s just a fight over definitions about what a woman is, which is largely fruitless - see many LessWrong and SSC posts i.e. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/

Speaking for myself: you have, like many decent folks on the trans activist side, buried a lot of very salient details in reasonable-sounding language.

If you use a trans person’s preferred pronouns

As a general rule, yes, I will use someone's preferred pronouns. But what if I earnestly believe someone is a fraud, a bad actor, someone whose "transition" is at best highly suspect, and at worst, a cynical grift? Someone like Jessica Yaniv, or Dylan Mulvaney, or a convicted rapist who discovered during his trial that he is actually a woman? I would like to reserve the right to say "No, I don't think you are claiming a trans identity in good faith and I refuse to respect it." A lot of trans activists would tell me that I need to use whatever pronouns someone tells me to, period.

and support their right to the healthcare they need

"Need" is a bit of a question mark, though. But again, if you are an adult of sound mind, sure, do whatever you want to your body, I guess. But trans inmates who demand that the prison system foot the bill for their transition, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars from an already overstretched prison budget that barely accommodates the very real medical needs of other prisoners? To say nothing of minors who say they "need" to make permanent alterations to their body at the age of 14? Phrasing it as "the right to the healthcare they need" sounds like opponents want to deny them medical treatment in general, and ignores the actual issues.

it’s just a fight over definitions about what a woman is, which is largely fruitless

Again, if it was just trans women saying "I'm a woman, please call me a woman," I think most people would accept that, with varying degrees of grudgingness. One of the thiings that's made it such a flashpoint, though, is trans people demanding that references to "women" (when talking about, e.g,, pregnancy, menstruation, etc.) be changed to awkward if not offensive circumlocutions like "pregnant people" or "uterus-havers." There are many examples of even more egregious howlers. These are things being pushed by the same folks who say they just want us to accept their "reasonable," flexible, and constantly changing definition of "woman."

It is unfortunate that so much of the debate is driven by bad actors, and not by reasonable people like (I assume) yourself who just want to live your lives and be left in peace. But the fact that even the reasonable people will generally refuse to even acknowledge the possibility of bad actors means that when you get the "trans woman" who makes a point of strutting around a women's locker room naked, waving "her" erect penis at a captive audience, it discredits all the other trans women who say "No, really, I just to want to use the locker room and change in peace."

It is unfortunate that so much of the debate is driven by bad actors, and not by reasonable people like (I assume) yourself who just want to live your lives and be left in peace. But the fact that even the reasonable people will generally refuse to even acknowledge the possibility of bad actors means that ...

I could have said this, word for word, re: Islam during my Internet Atheist years. And the fact that this epistemic rigor was not observed by the people I argued with really opened a lot of cracks in my old, blue-tribe worldview. (Charlie Hebdo and the reactions to it opened those cracks into fissures, and from there it's been rabbit holes all the way down.)

I don't really have a point here, but I found the historical resonance startling.

The primary one is noticing and rejecting the following general pattern: if we have a good thing G, and we add some stuff to G, we still get a good thing G that is just as good. It shows up in many contexts. Some examples:

  • The addition of "arts" to STEM, making "STEAM" (while liberal arts are fine in their own right, they're completely different to STEM);

  • The addition of arbitrary numbers of foreigners to a country, while expecting the host country's culture to remain completely unchanged;

  • The addition of experimental mRNA medicines under the label of "vaccine"; or

  • The addition of anything with vaguely-positive emotional valence to the label "democracy".

Interesting that Sam Harris is one of the people targeted by Contra in this video too for saying the activism has gotten a bit crazy when there're reasonable questions.

He's still showing cracks.

I agree "mutilation" is a little tendentious, but only a little. You are removing healthy body parts, which in almost all other circumstances is mutilation. I also note that you do admit that minors are getting top surgery, so I wouldn't say hormones are the only focus for minors. Not to mention that hormone replacement can leave minors sterilized and sometimes unable to orgasm for the rest of their lives, or cause osteoporosis-type symptoms, so I wouldn't exactly consider it a minor intervention even if no surgeries were being done.

A lot of our disagreements probably come down to empirical questions. How many kids would simply get over their transgender phase and never experience the "hell" of being in a body they hate if they weren't "affirmed"? For how many people does gender transition actually lead to long term mental health gains? How many people will regret being put on hormones or going through surgery as minors? How many people would go through the "hell" of being stuck in the "wrong body" in the absence of trans activists constantly telling them about transgenderism? These seem like very relevant questions to how we should approach this issue.

There is growing evidence that associates being transgender with a cluster of physical disorders linked to a genetic abnormality on chromosome 6p21. An enormous proportion of transgender patients have nearly all of the below conditions:

  • Hypermobility/Ehler-danlos syndrome

  • impaired thyroid functionality

  • gastrointestinal issues of varying severity

  • autism

  • adhd

  • dysautonomia/postural orthopedic tachycardia syndrome

  • in natal females, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and PCOS

  • some more random markers like acidic urine

Transgender healthcare specialist Dr Powers*, who noticed the above list and corroborated it with other doctors, also managed to successful treat teenage female dysphoric patients with a completely different approach: prescribing them anti androgens. The earlier, the higher the chance of the dysphoria being “cured”. Unfortunately he has not had much luck with natal male patients and the hypothesis is that it could be due to androgen exposure in the womb.

In the light of the above, a hypothesis based on endocrine disruption instead of cultural contagion makes more sense as an explainer of gender dysphoria. Perhaps elevated micro plastics in the environment, or perhaps chemical in the water turning people gay, I don’t know.

But the “wait until they’re adults to do anything” approach for dysphoric teens is clearly not optimal, especially when you have patients that fit so neatly in a cluster, and have some for who transition is not necessary if the endocrine abnormality is treated early enough.

Now the medical treatment needs to be optimised for the best outcomes, sure, but currently the detransitioners are a small minority (2-5%), with most of them detransitioning because of social reasons and not due to desistance of dysphoria, and many retransitioning later. You are thus suggesting throwing 95% of the trans population on the bus to protect 5%.

*Dr Powers is also known for reversing sterility in transgender patients and also enabling normal genital development in younger patients by the use of topical HRT.

Yeah, I think, especially with the rise of what I think are more transitioners due to cultural contagion, that the 2-5% detransition number is quite likely a severe undercount (and as far as I know, some of the low detransition numbers were collected from studies that had serious flaws).

The empirical landscape here is really complicated, both because it's a relatively new phenomenon and because the political stakes are so high for any given study that it can be hard to trust the results/interpretation from either side. So I don't think either of us will be able to convince the other by throwing studies/etc. at each other. I will mention that some European countries are pulling back from the affirming care model as more evidence comes out that the mental health gains claimed for transitioning are less certain than was claimed. See, e.g., here.

I respect Dr. Powers, but one clinician noticing that he has a lot of patients with certain comorbidities and doing informal surveys on the internet with his fanbase is not high quality evidence.

One possibility is he's too good at his job, he's one of the few endocrinologists who actually run hormonal assays on his patients before prescribing them new hormones. He always does a mental health referral before doing anything else. In other words, he's ethical. It is entirely possible that he and his band of clinicians using the "Dr. Powers'" method have already weeded out the tucutes from their patient list and are only looking at a smaller subset of the transgender phenomena - those with actual hormonal issues and would have a problem regardless of the culture. Not every underweight person has anorexia!

I am 100% supportive of trans-identifying teens having a hormonal assessment and then prescribed methods of making their hormonal profile more closely fit with their sex assigned at birth. Medicine should be focused on restoring health and biological functioning when possible. I would love if the battle over trans-identified individuals took place over polluting corporations, identifying all the endocrine disruptors and removing them from our environment.

I do want to note that opponents of transitioning have also noticed the correlation with ADHD and Autism, and have taken it as evidence that it is a social contagion (we would expect these groups to be more susceptible to feelings of not fitting in with peers, body dysphoria, etc.)

it’s just a fight over definitions about what a woman is

It's a fight over the definition of what a woman is all the way down. Whether or not trans people are the gender they've claimed is the whole and entire point and the disagreement on this is not some minor squabble. If you believed what they did you likely would not consider yourself a trans person. And they know this, it's why they don't want their children to believe what you believe.

I disagree, I couldn’t care less about gender “identity” myself. I have gender dysphoria and the most effective treatment has been to transition. I don’t care about “really” being a woman or not, what matters is, does my body distress me, and do people perceive me in ways that make me uncomfortable? If I look enough like a woman that people assume I am one when they see me, that’s good enough for me.

If you are laying claim on the perception of others then you do care about their concept of 'woman', I can't see any way around that unless you'd be just as happy with 'feminine man', a concession I think conservatives would be willing to make.

I suppose I didn’t make that clear enough - I didn’t mean I want to people to see me, know that I’m a trans woman, and then classify me as a woman because they respect my gender identity and that they should thus consider me a woman. Instead I want to pass well enough that people see me and just assume I’m a woman based on how I look, sound and act, and not give them any reason to think I’m actually a feminine man instead of a normal woman. If once they learn of my chromosomes they come to another intellectual conclusion, that’s a different story than a shopkeeper calling me “sir” or “ma’am” when they see me.

Both the modern left and right perspectives on gender is wrong imo. People won’t think you’re a man or a woman based on your chromosomes, but neither will they think that because you have a tag with your pronouns on it. They’ll look at you and their brain will subconsciously put you in one category based on your physical characteristics - with mental effort, you can force yourself to go “oh, this tall broad shouldered person with a deep voice is a woman”, but the brain is still making that snap judgement. Note that it also goes both ways - in a recent video Ben Shapiro instinctively called Hunter Schafer “she” and had to consciously correct himself, in an ironically similar way to how some leftists correct themselves when they misgender someone.

I guess you could call me a gender descriptivist, which is oddly enough a perspective I haven’t seen much of.

There's not sufficient evidence to justify this anecdotal opinion and while you're welcome to have your opinion, especially about yourself, I'd suggest you think about how you don't have the counterfactual, even for yourself.

P.S. I would think the ethical bar and evidence standard would need to be very high for the puberty blockers, then HRT treatment for children when we know the majority of people who don't go through their natal puberty, will be infertile. Not to mention the problems with inability to orgasm. Can a child make that decision?

the majority of people who don't go through their natal puberty, will be infertile.

To be clear, that's an effect of HRT (cross-sex hormones), not puberty blockers.

Not to mention the problems with inability to orgasm.

There's no evidence for that. Even trans women who start puberty blockers early are as likely as cis women to be able to orgasm.

That link is not very good evidence even if you have access to the paper.

I know it might be hard to believe, I thought it was a right-wing talking point at first but when you think about it, it makes sense. Biological sex does actually mean something.

The sterility is all about not going through natal puberty (so puberty blockers). Puberty is the process of gaining sexual function (who knew?) What do you think happens to your body if you stop the process and go straight onto cross-sex hormones? For boys, this will lead to permanent sterility as sperm production doesn't occur, for girls the ovarian follicles don't develop (though girls could preserve their eggs which they are born with).

Another important feature related to the use of GnRHa is the fertility issue. Adolescents that undergo puberty blockade, invariably display a scarce maturation of the gametes, as happens in hypogonadism. In addition to this aspect, there is the scant attention that the subjects with GD/GI shows towards this topic, given the psychological distress related to the condition, associated with the anxiety of wanting to transit to a more congenial body, as fast as possible. In male to female subjects, the only possibility is the cryopreservation of testicular tissue, given that, at Tanner stage 2, only 20% of transgender girls will have begun spermatogenesis. In the case of a blockage in later stages, it would be possible the collection of mature sperm via ejaculation, but the problem of the appearance of secondary sexual characters would occur [54]. In female-to-male subjects, the situation is quite similar: ovarian tissue cryopreservation is the only option available if the follicular stimulation is ineffective, as happens in the first Tanner stages (prepubertal ovaries). On the contrary, during later stages, it would be possible the oocyte cryopreservation, as done in oncological patients [55, 56].

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40618-023-02077-5

The effects of puberty blockers on sexual function:

Even less is known about the effects of puberty suppression on sexual functioning. Jennings, who started on GnRHa at the age of 11, has no libido and cannot orgasm. Jennings’ surgeon, Marci Bowers, who has performed over 2,000 vaginoplasties, acknowledges that “every single child … who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2, has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it’s really about zero” (Bowers, Citation2022).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238

Side effects of GnRH agonists are related to sex hormone deficiency and include symptoms of low testosterone levels and low estrogen levels such as hot flashes, sexual dysfunction, vaginal atrophy, penile atrophy, osteoporosis, infertility, and diminished sex-specific physical characteristics. They are agonists of the GnRH receptor and work by increasing or decreasing the release of gonadotropins and the production of sex hormones by the gonads. When used to suppress gonadotropin release, GnRH agonists can lower sex hormone levels by 95% in both sexes.[2][3][4][5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonadotropin-releasing_hormone_agonist

Personally it also stems from the fact that I wish I’d transitioned when I was younger, and like many other trans people, would like to spare others from the hell that’s going through the wrong puberty and be stuck with a body you hate that you want to surgically alter.

This is a very reasonable motivation, and the mirror image of this would be people who transitioned when they were young and regret it, knowing that they would have been happier if they had just waited it out and realized that they were cis. I've personally known someone like this, who started transitioning FTM in her late teens only to regret it and try to reverse it in her early 20s, which still left her with many permanent changes that she didn't like. There's also the fact that if I had been a preteen in the current social environment, there's a high chance I personally would have been convinced to transition MTF, which, as an adult now, I know for a fact would have been vastly harmful to my life.

Unfortunately, until we achieve true technological transhumanism, false positives and false negatives will always be with us and cause immense suffering for the people in those groups. I do think it's incumbent on anyone who wants to make life better in the future for children to acknowledge the downsides of both and to seek out better ways to identify and prevent them. This not only means more concern for making sure that kids who believe themselves to be trans have to go through sufficient screening to determine if they truly are trans, but also making sure that kids are provided the resources needed to even know what transness is and whether or not they actually fit it. Which I see both the self-proclaimed trans rights activists and their opponents mostly failing at, respectively.

The base rates also make the mirror image scenario far likelier than you'd think.

Let's assume that about 0.5% of the population would benefit from medical transition and about 20% of gen-Z are drawn to being LGBT / gender-questioning at same point in their lives. Then a 10% false positive rate for gender-affirming care, would mean 4 detransitioners for every real trans person. Those are terrible destructive odds and I was rather generous to the current state of trans care with my the numbers I assumed. My personal intuition is that far more of gen-Z is drawn to gender-questioning ideas, that the base rate of trans-ness is less than 0.5% and that the rates of desistance/de-transitioning are significantly higher than 10%. But, I'll stick to these numbers for now.

This is exactly why doctors do not mass refer people for invasive surgeries early into a rare diagnosis. The odds of you not having the disease and reducing your lifespan due to surgery, are much much higher than the odds of saving a life due to early surgical intervention for said rare disease.

Stepping out from the moral argument, these kinds of statistical and logistical issues with transitioning are a bigger and dangerously ignored problem.

There is no end to the expensive surgeries needed by trans people to feel fully integrated into their new gender. If trans-ness is accepted as a human right, how do we plan to handle this massive new healthcare burden. If it is not covered by insurance, then does this mean that only the top 10% of trans people can actually transition ? If it treats body-dysphoria, then should all superficial surgeries be covered by insurance ?

I sympathize with trans people. They seem to be dealing with the 'big man in a hoodie walking down a dimly lit street' problem. Irrespective of a young woman's moral judgement, she is better off crossing the empty street. It sucks that those who tick more of those boxes are treated unfairly, but rather an accidental bigot than dead.

don’t treat them differently than you would a cis person of the same gender

Which we have to if we want sex-segregated sports or prisons, especially in the setting of self-ID. So this seems like a bigger pill to swallow than you are presenting it as.

don’t treat them differently than you would a cis person of the same gender

As I don't have to ask about/learn/memorize new pronouns for a cis person, from square one I'm being asked to treat a trans person differently.

I saw a video yesterday of an interview with a trans person whose declared pronouns were "he/they," which doesn't even make sense as a typical pronoun pairing. There's no way to incorporate this narcissistic chaos into a workable reflexive vocabulary, so I reject participating in it. And now you're being treated how I would treat anyone else.

What does it mean to be "transphobic"? Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"? Because I would like to say that I'm not "transphobic" on the basis that I don't think trans people should be denied rights that we accord to others, or that they should be forcibly prevented from dressing like women, or even (if over 18) allowed to surgically alter themselves to match their desired gender identity (perhaps with some reasonable safeguards).

To state a truism, words gain meaning through usage, rather than through some sort of application of logic on first principles. "Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means. In practice, the people who use the term "transphobia" - and hence the people who most get to define what it means - use it in such a way as to describe people who refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women" and more generally just disagrees with self-proclaimed trans rights activists on anything trans-related. Obviously that's an imprecise definition, but words tend to have imprecise definitions, and I think, based on observations of self-proclaimed trans rights activists, refusing to acknowledge that "trans women are women" is solidly in the "transphobia" camp.

If, say, someone was going around and gathering a following by literally advocating for the murder of Jews, I think a lot of us would agree that public shaming (at the least) would be appropriate. That means that one must always have some object-level discussion about what people are being cancelled for before one can reasonably argue that any given cancellation is unacceptable. It's hardly a groundbreaking observation, but it's true nonetheless that there must be a line somewhere that would make "cancel culture" type tactics acceptable; we're all just debating where that line is.

This looks like the fallacy of gray to me. Yes, (just about) everyone carves out an exception to free speech when advocating for literal murder is involved, but the advocating for literal murder is one of those things that's close to black and white, with many mostly well understood and mostly agreed-upon boundaries. And for things like the kind of things that fall under the "transphobia" umbrella, it's quite clear which side of those boundaries they lie on. This, I believe, is why so many self-proclaimed TRAs claim they're fighting against "trans genocide," in a way to evoke the affect of crossing that boundary, even as each individual specific example of such "genocide" clearly falls on the other side when examined closely. Self-proclaimed TRAs aren't unique or even unusual in this, though.

Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means. In practice, the people who use the term "transphobia" - and hence the people who most get to define what it means - use it in such a way as to describe people who refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women ...

In other words, they are being intellectually dishonest in order to delegitimize their outgroup and/or views with which they disagree. How is that ok?

Why was it ok for "homophobia"? I mean, you're not wrong, but the argument applies equally well to things that we've already allowed to become completely ubiquitous, doesn't it?

Homophobia refers to an actual phenomenon --discomfort with or dislike of gays (whether it is aptly deemed a "phobia" is another question). It does not refer to a set of policy beliefs.

Your logic continues to baffle me, sir.

If homophobia is not an actual phobia, what possible purpose is achieved by calling it one? And the claim that it is not used to refer to a set of policy beliefs is beyond credence. I am confident that I can find you an arbitrary number of examples of prominent progressives referring to laws, policies, rules, and so on as "homophobic". Certainly I have not seen a time in my own life where the term was applied narrowly to an actual phobic condition, rather than broadly to anyone skeptical of the LGBT social agenda.

"Homophobia", from its introduction to the public vernacular, has been used to label people who refused to validate homosexual behavior and lifestyles, in precisely the same way that "Transphobia", from its inception, has been used to label people who refuse to validate transgender behavior and lifestyles. Ditto for Islamophobia, for good measure. The entire [thing_we_like]phobia family has, from the very moment these terms were coined, been a weaponization of language, an attempt to frame dissent from Progressive values as mental defect. Such framing is never applied to fears or dislikes or even hatreds that Progressives approve of, only to those of their opponents.

I am confident that I can find you an arbitrary number of examples of prominent progressives referring to laws, policies, rules, and so on as "homophobic"

You are confusing the noun and the adjective. I am sure that you agree that some people, and almost certainly most people in the not-too-distant past, had a visceral aversion to / disgust with gay people. That aversion/disgust was labeled "homophobia." The claim that a law or policy is "homophobic" is simply a claim that said law or policy is rooted in homophobia. Just as a practice of refusing to hire Catholic teachers can be labeled "prejudiced" if it is rooted in prejudice.

Now, look at what the OP said. OP did not say, "transphobia" is an aversion to or disgust with trans people, and these laws are transphobic because they are rooted n that aversion or disgust; rather, OP said the exact opposite:

Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means. In practice, the people who use the term "transphobia" - and hence the people who most get to define what it means - use it in such a way as to describe people who refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women ...

I am sure that you agree that some people, and almost certainly most people in the not-too-distant past, had a visceral aversion to / disgust with gay people.

Sure, in exactly the same way that a whole lot of people currently have a visceral aversion/disgust reaction to Trans people. On the other hand, I don't agree that all or even most opposition to the normalization of homosexuality or was reducible to that visceral aversion/disgust, as opposed to more serious social, philosophical, religious or political objections. In the same way, the fact that a lot of people find transsexuals gross doesn't mean that grossness is their only or even main objection to the various demands of the trans movement.

That aversion/disgust was labeled "homophobia."

All objections to homosexuality were and are rounded to "homophobia" without distinction, and this was done because it was correctly perceived to be effective. "Transphobia" is being deployed in exactly the same way now, again to great effect. It's the same shit it always was: pretend the only sources of disagreement are stupidity, insanity, or irrational hatred, ignore the legitimate concerns, shout down anyone who objects. And again, this only goes one way; there are no culturally-recognized *phobias for anything Progressives don't like, no matter how irrational, bigoted or divorced from reality their dislike of those things may be.

Now, look at what the OP said.

I did. They're describing exactly what I laid out above: the term is constructed to imply "irrational, unhealthy fear/hatred", and then applied overwhelmingly in situations that do not involve irrational or unhealthy fear or hate. It's exactly the same thing that was done with Homophobia: abusing language to smear the opposition. They're claiming "what it actually means" is based on the objective reality of who it's used on, not on the implication meant by the user and drawn by the listener. This has no impact on "what it actually means", in the sense of the intended message and the received message.

Such framing is never applied to fears or dislikes or even hatreds that Progressives approve of, only to those of their opponents.

Indeed, the best attempt their opponents have made to do the same thing is "hoplophobia" (fear of weapons), and of course it has not caught on generally, because the progressives control the culture.

It does not refer to a set of policy beliefs.

Yes, it does. The phrase "internalized homophobia" is typically used specifically to equate homophobia-as-in-active-opposition-to-homosexual-coexistence and homophobia-as-not-privileging-homosexuality-above-heterosexuality.

The latter, of course, is what progressive political policy seeks to establish (the best example being plastering the Pride flag everywhere; if all sexualities are as equal as all religions, the State should not be [doing what equates to] plastering symbols of Islam everywhere).

No, "internalized homophobia" is homophobia by gay people: "Among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, internalized sexual stigma (also called internalized homophobia) refers to the personal acceptance and endorsement of sexual stigma as part of the individual's value system and self-concept. It is the counterpart to sexual prejudice among heterosexuals (Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 2009)."

And see here

I don't think it was. Or "Islamophobia", for that matter.

I'm not sure it's "ok," but does that really matter? People choose to do things not based on whether or not it's "ok" in some abstract moral sense, but based on whether or not they can get away with it. The people who are defining "transphobia" to mean "disagrees with me on trans issues" seem to be able to get away with it. They're probably being intellectually dishonest - at the very least, intellectually lazy - but it's not like we can impose negative consequences on them for being so. My personal approach is to just embrace and accelerate the redefining; yes, it's transphobia, and transphobia is the morally/logically correct position to take.

To state a truism, words gain meaning through usage, rather than through some sort of application of logic on first principles.

...Does this apply to "Groomer" as well? I mean, I think the argument is spurious in this case and not actually what's happening with "groomer", but doesn't this position completely undermine the arguments of those who disagree with me?

"Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means.

That is exactly the meaning that both the people using it evidently intend, and the people listening to them evidently derive from their arguments. If words derive meaning through usage, where can that meaning possibly come from but how they're used and understood?

Of course it does, but why should that matter? Nobody is going to be swayed because from a descriptive linguistic stand-point, "groomer" means X and "transphobia" means Y.

The people who say something like, "J.K. Rowling has never said anything that is transphobic" and the people who say that she has, don't necessarily disagree about what she has actually said. They disagree about whether what she said is bad or not.

The people who say something like, "Left-wing groomers are brainwashing children to mutilate themselves" and pro-trans people, don't necessarily disagree on certain statistics like the number of transitioners or detransitioners. They disagree about the causal web that leads to that, and whether schools with more permissive policies nudges the causal web towards bad outcomes or not.

Of course it does, but why should that matter?

Because a lot of people here have spent a fair number of comments accusing people who use the term "groomer" of playing deceptive word games, of using the term to insinuate a false picture that can't be supported by facts, and now someone is arguing in a top-level comment that this exact strategy is totally acceptable when Progressives do it. I'm highlighting the fact that these two viewpoints are contradictory.

The people who say something like, "Left-wing groomers are brainwashing children to mutilate themselves"...

Blues objecting to the term "groomer" have insisted (incorrectly, in my view) that "groomer" exclusively refers to preparing a child for pedophilic rape, so applying it in the way you're saying is uncharitable and waging the culture war, in exactly the way OP refuses to recognize for "transphobia".

Being one who made that argument, that wasn't what i said. Groomer does have other connotations but how you frame it is part of which connotation you are trying to communicate.

If groomer as its use is intended by people "attacking" trans ideology had positive or neutral valence then it wouldn't be an attack. So it wouldn't be a problem. Their communicative intention HAS to have specific negative valence otherwise they are not actually criticising trans ideology. As they tell us they are (and we should believe them!) then we can infer their intended meaning, ie, the negative usage of grooming.

If they said "that groomed teen sure looks shiny and new and resplendent while transitioning" then they might be refering to grooming in the looks sense. But thats a positive not a negative!

If they don't mean that grooming is bad then why use it as part of an attack?

That grooming can be (and often is!) used in positive ways doesn't mean people complaining about kids being groomed into becoming trans mean it positively. Because if they did then they aren't complaining, they are being supportive. Which does not appear to be the case i assume you agree?

If you are telling me they mean in the positive sense of grooming your sucessor, or grooming a horses mane, or grooming yourself to look better, then are you saying conservatives are pro-trans?

Can’t it be both?

“Groomer” is an insult and an attack. Both sides know this. It would be foolish to deny it.

BUT I think it’s also an apt description of a certain pattern of behavior that Very Online trans people engage in. Kid joins a discord, says he’s having trouble fitting in with the other guys at school and he doesn’t feel “manly” enough, people start telling him “hey why don’t you use she/her pronouns for a while and see how it goes, oh by the way there’s a guide for DIY HRT pinned in the #resources channel”… I think it’s accurate to refer to this as “grooming”.

It’s kind of like how “stupid” can be both insulting and true.

I think it’s accurate to refer to this as “grooming”.

Call it "proselytizing".

You know perfectly well that "grooming" as an insult typically means something like "mentally conditioning a vulnerable victim to agree to a sexual relationship with the perpetrator". By talking about "grooming", you implicitly bring up this sexual aspect of the conditioning. Do trans activists want to have sex with trans children?

If you mean "mentally conditioning a vulnerable victim to adopt the same belief as the perpetrator" instead, that's what churches do. Physical harm? Circumcision and Hussainia qualify. Targeting minors? Actually banned in Israel. Negative connotations? Everyone dislikes JWs going "Do you have a minute to talk about our lord and savior?"

I completely agree! Trans ideology is a type of religion, and what they do is a type of proselytizing.

I would once again like to remind people that at the height of metoo it was not uncommon to use "grooming" to describe consensual relations between adults, and that progressive literature used a broader definition of the word until the it was used against them, for example:

If you mean "mentally conditioning a vulnerable victim to adopt the same belief as the perpetrator" instead, that's what churches do.

Converting other people's kids behind their parents back is a big nono, and would at the very least get you labelled a cult, and no one would balk at "groomer" either, but that's not what most churches do.

If groomer as its use is intended by people "attacking" trans ideology had positive or neutral valence then it wouldn't be an attack. So it wouldn't be a problem. Their communicative intention HAS to have specific negative valence otherwise they are not actually criticising trans ideology.

Sure. And the argument, from you and others, is that the only specific negative valence attached to "grooming" is from pedophilia, correct?

Nope. But when used in reference to kids with the rhetoric being used then its intent is clear. And this isn't some secret. From Red State talking about a teacher assisting a child socially transition:

“This is the very definition of child predatory sexual grooming. Predators work to gain a victims’ trust by driving a wedge between them and their parents.”

Another article

"They want grooming and pedophilia to be something our society embraces.…"

And another:

"Yet you have people on the left side of the aisle who seem to have issues when Americans call out pedophiles or groomers. …"

They aren't talking about being groomed into a cult or a terrorist group. The language is very specific. Wedding together the concepts of grooming and pedophilia so the connotation is clear, when it is used on its own.

I also want to point out, this is a smart and useful thing to do. Its good strategy. Out in the world its exactly the type of rhetoric I would have suggested back in my days of political consultancy. From a pragmatic point of view the right should hit this hard. It's effective.

But here i think we should at least admit when our side uses things as a weapon. Doesn't mean we have to put the weapon down! But we try to discuss, not wage the culture war.

And just to be clear this is not a right only issue. Nazi is a weapon wielded by the left for people who are kind of on the right and "therefore" a Nazi. Its a rhetorical weapon. Fascist, similarly. Trump is not a Nazi or a fascist. He's not an existential threat. Those are weapons used against him. And..some people actually believe it. Just as some people on "your" side probably do believe its pedophilic grooming. But its still a weapon. And both can have collateral damage.

I do think it applies to "groomer" as well, and the people who call others "groomers" for advocating for minors to take steps towards transitioning, particularly in-secret-from/overruling their parents may very well be successful in their (re)defining of the term. Who knows how it will play out; certainly it's being pushed back on heavily, not least because "groomer" is a slightly more generic word than "transphobia."

That is exactly the meaning that both the people using it evidently intend, and the people listening to them evidently derive from their arguments. If words derive meaning through usage, where can that meaning possibly come from but how they're used and understood?

This is a fair point, and the other half about how they're understood is something I didn't consider properly above. What I think is happening is that the people using that term are relying on the inertia of the term to get the people who listen to the term to experience negative affect from the term. That is, when someone hears "-phobia," it automatically triggers a sense of observing some sort of irrational/severe fear, hatred, or bigotry, and the people using the term are relying on this. However, the actual concrete thing that they're describing do not fit those things; they're merely things like disagreeing that trans women are real women. This is probably an intentional tactic, learned from observing the success of similar usage of other terms like "misogyny" or "white supremacy" in similar ways. As they say, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, and so they're able to bankrupt plenty of their perceived enemies along the way while the market sorts itself out and figures out what they actually mean when they use these terms.

The problem is that things that seem morally obvious now weren't always so. In the antebellum United States, there were millions of people who thought slavery was totally acceptable, and many others who thought it was in fact a positive good. I think we'd all agree that someone advocating for a return to chattel slavery (at least assuming they had a real chance of success) would justify the use of "cancel culture" tactics today (if anything could), but this simply wasn't a morally obvious truth in the 1850s. You could make a similar argument about Jim Crow, which wasn't all that long ago. Activists would simply argue that their cause is today's slavery/Jim Crow/Holocaust/etc., and I think to justify why their use of "cancel culture" tactics is wrong you have to engage in the merits of their arguments to some degree

I think we'd all agree that someone advocating for a return to chattel slavery (at least assuming they had a real chance of success) would justify the use of "cancel culture" tactics today (if anything could), but this simply wasn't a morally obvious truth in the 1850s.

You think wrong. I would disagree, and on the strongest possible terms. Not unless that advocating took the form of, say, literal kidnapping and enslaving of people or even calling for specific sorts of actions by his followers to do the like. If someone were to write essays, make YouTube videos, give speeches, run for office on a platform, etc. where they explicitly called for the repeal of the 13th Amendment and legislating the chattel slavery of certain types of people, I would support their right to do so without impediment or difficulty in their livelihood and such. Now, the "assuming they had a real chance of success" is a very difficult theoretical to imagine, as such a world would look vastly different from the current one, but if we're in an environment where someone like me would find chattel slavery to be as obviously morally wrong as the real me does now, it would have to be one where that person also has a very real chance of failure due to the incredibly strong political will to prevent return chattel slavery. And I would direct any and all energy that might have been used in "canceling" this person towards amplifying the voices of the political figures who would defeat this guy and his ilk in the polls, as well as other influential people who could sway opinion in the masses. Perhaps I wouldn't have the energy left over after that to fight against whatever people might be trying to "cancel" this guy, but I would certainly want such "cancel culture" attempts to not exist.

Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"?

I personally think it would be more helpful to break things down along two axes. The first axis is how one thinks society should deal with trans people, and the second would be one's "trans metaphysics" or how they answer the question of what trans people are, and whether there are any important differences between trans people and cis people.

Obviously, in some people those two would be connected questions. If one thinks that trangenderism is a fetish that children are being brainwashed into to mutilate and sterilize themselves, then one might have a different attitude towards trans acceptance than if one thinks that medical transition is the least bad option for a group of sick people who would commit suicide at an unacceptably high rate otherwise.

I think I'd reserve "transphobic" for people who are illiberal on the social axis, but I think many trans advocates take a wider view, and consider a trans metaphysics that doesn't allow for "transwomen are women" to be a true statement to be transphobic as well.

I'd say that anybody who says the word transphobic seriously, is medicalizing a political ideology as well as hurting people with debilitating mental health conditions such as arachnophobia, claustrophobia and other types of real phobias, by implicitly insinuating that they may also be based on some personal choice or ideology, such as in the case of transphobia or homophobia.

Of course I am very much aware that this opinion of mine will make me a transphobe in eyes of certain radical groups who are pushing this term in the first place.

And would you likewise say that chemists who describe a molecule as "hydrophobic" are medicalizing a simple physical phenomenon as well as hurting people with debilitating phobias?

If it isn't clear, I am saying that a word with the suffix -phobic does not necessarily imply a phobia in the medical sense. No one is claiming homophobia or transphobia is a phobia, i.e. an irrational fear of those respective groups. That is a strawman.

It’s not a straw man, it’s something I’ve seen being claimed constantly - that right wingers are actually afraid of muslims, or gays, or trans people or immigrants or black people or whatever. Happens quite often in fact

Yea. "Why are you afraid of them?" is a frequently-posed rhetorical question.

And would you likewise say that chemists who describe a molecule as "hydrophobic" are medicalizing a simple physical phenomenon as well as hurting people with debilitating phobias?

People with rabies, in that particular case.

But no, chemists are just using the jargon of their field, which does not derive from medical phobias but from the original greek roots; "hydrophobic" is basically an anthropomorphism. The same does not apply to "transphobic" which is being used as a general term, and is definitely coined by analogy to "homophobic" which was used to denigrate those who were politically opposed to homosexual rights.

Except that for instance in the case of homophobia according to this article it was coined by the Pschologist George Weinberg and then used by activists of the magazine Screw in late 60ies. Here is what Weinberg thought about the term

He suggested that those who harbor prejudice against homosexuals, and not homosexuals themselves, are suffering from a psychological malady, an irrational state of mind.

So no, this is not like hydrophobia.

Are these axes really independent? Who's that person that is metaphysically OK with transgenderism, but isn't OK socially?

I'm imagining the trans-related equivalent of the Catholic who is morally opposed to abortion, but doesn't think it should be illegal. Or the gay man who lives with his male partner, but doesn't believe being gay should be valorized and celebrated as much as it is in society, in favor of more "traditional" family structures.

I'm sure there are people disgusted by transgenderism who don't believe that medical transition should be illegal for adults who want it, and who are okay with pronoun hospitality on a case-by-case basis. Or people who say that "transwomen are women", but who still think social contagion might be a factor that should be quelled as far as possible.

Or the gay man who lives with his male partner, but doesn't believe being gay should be valorized and celebrated as much as it is in society, in favor of more "traditional" family structures.

Yes, that's called "internalized homophobia", AKA "you're being gay wrong/working against (what the powers that be consider) your own interest".

That quadrant might indeed be empty, but I kind of fit in the opposite one. I'm mostly ok with transgenderism socially, once we iron out the wrinkles like sports, prisons, and kids, but I'm vehemently opposed to trans metaphysics.

I am! ( @arjin_ferman ) I'm agnostic on how real the idea of being born in a wrong body is, but I think no persecution of trans people is too strict, no measures against them are too cruel, because they are one of the most fanatical factions of my enemies, and because of my personal disgust reaction to them.

I think there are religious people who basically believe this. That a person can be "born trans" in a metaphysical sense, but that it's a sin to act on it. In the same way they might think someone could be "born an alcoholic" but it's still incumbent on them to avoid the sin of drunkenness.

I personally think it would be more helpful to break things down along two axes. The first axis is how one thinks society should deal with trans people, and the second would be one's "trans metaphysics" or how they answer the question of what trans people are, and whether there are any important differences between trans people and cis people.

Here's a transcript of Veronica Ivy on Trevor Noah:

VERONICA IVY: There’s lots of ways you can respond to that. So, the first is the very language of you were born and I’m not biological somehow? Like, I don’t think I’m a cyborg. So, like, this idea that, like, “Oh, you’re not a biological woman”—well, I am a woman. That’s a fact. I am female. So all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records, all say female. Right? And I’m pretty sure I’m made of biological stuff. So I’m a biological female as well.

So this question of do trans women have an advantage over cis women? We don’t know. In fact, there’s basically no published research on this question. However, there’s good reason to think that there isn’t. But, I think it’s irrelevant, because we allow all kinds of competitive advantages within women’s sport.

The two can no longer be separated, because TRAs are now using the metaphysics to push for more things on the political front. The silliness around women's sports and prisons imo only makes sense once the metaphysical belief of TWAW is set. So to ignore it helps no one but the people pushing that.

Theoretically we had them separated in the beginning, when TWAW was less likely to be believed literally (and people didn't demand that) and people just wanted to be kind to gender dysphoric people. But that position clearly didn't hold. It collapsed into TWAW and metaphysical transness (probably because otherwise we're essentially maintaining that this sexual minority is mentally ill and needs to be medically gatekept- which is dangerous territory politically) and then that metaphysical transness is assumed and used as we can see from Contrapoints' videos to demand more concessions or smear any obstacle as transphobic.

So I'm not sure why anyone would try to build on this unstable foundation again. Fool me one time..

I do think it's only a tiny minority of trans people claiming to be "biological men/women" of their identified gender. "Biological" as a modifier for sex and gender is one that fell by the wayside years ago - but I think words like "gametic" or "chromosomal" are much more specific while emphasizing the point being discussed.

Veronica Ivy might be viewed as an "honorary" woman, the same way adoptive parents are "honorary" parents despite their lack of biological connection to the children they're raising. But with current technology, "honorary" women lack many of the feature of cis women, such as the ability to produce large, immobile gametes or XX chromosomes. Maybe that technological barrier will be overcome some day, who knows?

I do think it's only a tiny minority of trans people claiming to be "biological men/women" of their identified gender.

Does it matter?

Like, we continually have to run around playing this exhausting game: when activists overreach and push for (and perhaps get) things that are liable to piss off a reasonable normie then we need constantly be reminded that Ordinary Transpeople don't think or act like this and deserve respect. But then activists also hold moral authority to speak for the community of normie trans (especially the Suicidal Trans Child), who you will be accused of attacking whenever you make any critique of their more absurd positions.

JKR never attacked Ordinary Transpeople. She made a specific point about policy. By your argument that should have worked out fine, yet JKR is a "'transphobe" and here we are.

And, of course, when they dogpile you people like Natalie Wynn who claim to be the reasonable types will be nowhere to be seen or they will be carrying water for the crazies and their tactics with the standard "it's not ideal but in this political context..."

We're dealing with what we're dealing with. Activists don't get to have their cake and eat it too.

Veronica Ivy might be viewed as an "honorary" woman, the same way adoptive parents are "honorary" parents despite their lack of biological connection to the children they're raising.

If Veronica Ivy was just an honorary woman why didn't Trevor Noah correct her?

What would we do if someone with an honorary degree decided he was going to teach a full class of undergrads cause "it says right here I'm a doctor." Do you think Noah would find it as hard to laugh that one off?

The shadow cast by the metaphysical stuff is long, even if someone like Noah may not say "okay, it's true in the strongest sense".

I personally think it would be more helpful to break things down along two axes.

No! Axes are a demonic religious lie!

They don't have to be axes if you don't want them to be. You could just view them as two different components of a person's view of trans people.

Yes, this seems like a useful distinction. Also highlights how unspecific terms like "homophobia" and "transphobia" are. People tend to use them to cover both social and metaphysical phobias, which confuses these issues. I guess most activists would argue, 1., most people who hold "metaphysical" transphobia tend to have "socally" transphobic ideas as well (probably true), and then also, 2., even if someone only holds metaphysically transphobic ideas, the expression of those ideas will lead to more hate crimes and more "social" transphobia.

Whatever came of Contrapoints getting canceled by other trans figures? Some right-wingers gloated about meta-cancer back then, but I guess you don't really cancel your stars after all?

Contrapoints made a name for herself through actually engaging with the "alt-right" and by being willing to make real arguments in response to conservatives

This is a narrative which was promoted by the media, yes, I even imagine there's a grain of truth in it, but if she actually engaged with the «alt-right», it was on the condescending level of cooing and petting a spooked animal (and argument-free reviews to the effect of «I used to be in a dark place as a 4channer giganazi Cookie Monster joke enjoyer, but Contra detransitioned deradicalized me, thanks now I can be myself» only reinforce this image. I have to plug in my old post «On Nazi Whisperers and closed memetic surfaces».

In general, there are a few things I try to do to prepare for these sorts of debates. One has to do with simply picking the right people to debate. The point of a debate is not to convince the person I’m talking to, it’s to convince people watching. So before you even start the debate you want to think about whether the people watching it are persuadable.

Saul responds to Fritz by completely shutting down, by being baffled and bewildered and offended and shocked. He's frankly astonished... If Cockbane debated Fritz nothing productive would happen but at least she wouldn't be bullied. She'd interrupt, accuse, get real ugly. ... So if there's a "lesson" I guess it's that we have to work on not being Saul. Maybe that means walking out of rooms like that. Or maybe it means developing anti-Fritz rhetorical strategies. But I honestly don't yet know what those are. I can't say I've ever seen someone in debate with a Pepe-grinning fascist come out on top. But if it could be done it'd be worth doing.

Almost four years later, I still can't get into the mindset of a person who thinks his side loses every unbiased debate, but keeps believing in the cause and evangelizing it. This is a total profanation of what debates mean to me, on any level from the most brutish, chimp-like rhetorical power contest to the most quokka-esque rationalist «collaborative inquiry»; if not rigorous doubt, then at least depressive resignation ought to settle in as a result of repeatedly getting routed, I feel.

What I do know is that such robust belief grows coupled with disregard for debate and honesty in general.

The worst part of all this "the Nazis and fascists are super good at rhetoric" talk is that it's not even true. Destiny has been consistently demonstrating that they're no different from most debaters i.e garbage for the most part. Destiny's retorts aren't perfect, and he has a certain attitude necessary to deal with this kind of debate, but he's consistently come out on top rhetorically against basically every far-right person he's debated.

If Destiny didn't exist, I would understand, but he's literally spent years doing exactly what they're claiming can't be done. Which is understandable for Breadtube, whose creators are not interested in developing the skills to be internet debaters instead of content creators. But their community is collectively responsible if they can't generate anyone who is willing to do the dirty work.

This only holds up to a point. Destiny can get away with saying things in the moment that would torpedo someone else. In part due to having an audience that seems a lot more antifragile and less 'normie' than most. On top of that Destiny has been very careful in selecting who gets to talk to him. And depending on who he is talking to he will drop all pretense of believing anything at all.

His 'debate' with Sean Last was illustrative of that and his inability to argue against 'race'. Prior to that he 'debated' with Mike Enoch where Destiny all but ceded the ground to American white nationalists that pro-white advocacy was valid and needed. Not being able to pinpoint exactly what the problem with something like the American white nationalist project that Mike Enoch was associated with.

Destiny can do that. If things go bad he just rolls with the punches. His audience will stick by him and nothing really happens. It's not like the far right has any platform to advertise their victories on anyways. But if you are a lefty that exists in and relies on a network of media personalities that feed on drama and purity spirals, you can't afford any of that. You really don't have the wiggle room. Not debating the nazis and just doing the mainstream thing of calling them evil and stupid seems a lot more optimal play.

I concur, Destiny doesn't have the best answers in multiple cases. But it's at least doing something. He's showing up and defending the status quo as he typically does. People like Contra and the rest of Breadtube can't even do that much.

Edit: Realized I didn't answer the rebuttal. I don't think many lefties have to rely on the media personality networks. As much as BreadTube is a thing, I'm not aware of people being ostracized from it or similar community for having these kinds of debates. I don't see people, for example, criticize Destiny for having those debates, but rather for disagreeing with them on some point.

People in that sphere primarily catch flak when the debate goes poorly for their side. You can't afford a string of bad debates, so as soon as one goes bad other lefties put the pressure on by asking why the person was platforming nazis in the first place if they couldn't perform.

Destiny gets slightly different kind of flak, for example by inviting Nick Fuentes on and being cordial with Lauren Southern or his most recent appearance with Richard Spencer on 'NoJumper' or whatever. To name a few examples.

I think the big breadtube channels make it seem like there is no specific reliance on networking but you can't really exist without being in the green, so to speak. Outside of channels like Contrapoints and others, that are practically too big too fail, there are plenty of channels that are one scandal away from ostracization. If they don't have friends behind the scenes they are just as likely to be drama fodder for the other channels, since they all partially share the same pool of viewers. Unlike someone like Destiny who kind of has his own dedicated base of hardcore supporters. But even then Destiny felt the squeeze during the whole Rittenhouse thing.

People in that sphere primarily catch flak when the debate goes poorly for their side. You can't afford a string of bad debates, so as soon as one goes bad other lefties put the pressure on by asking why the person was platforming nazis in the first place if they couldn't perform.

Oh, sure, but there's ample room to start with training wheels. Become a Destiny orbiter if you have to, but learning to do what he does is a matter of personal skill that can be entirely learned.

Destiny gets slightly different kind of flak, for example by inviting Nick Fuentes on and being cordial with Lauren Southern or his most recent appearance with Richard Spencer on 'NoJumper' or whatever. To name a few examples.

Right, he gets flak for not debating them. But I was ignoring that because I figured we were restricting ourselves to his debates. Also, I'm not sure where the flak is for appearing with Richard Spencer. Any examples?

But even then Destiny felt the squeeze during the whole Rittenhouse thing.

I don't recall all the details, but my understanding is he got departnered from Twitch over saying that the rioting had to stop in an incendiary manner. Hardly for simply defending Rittenhouse at all.

The point is there's no reason to start at all. You don't need to debate them when you can just silence them and tell lies about them.

Right, he gets flak for not debating them. But I was ignoring that because I figured we were restricting ourselves to his debates.

Well, kind of, he gets flak for platforming them and not making them look like they are evil. It's not about 'debate' in that sense. It's just about who the enemy is.

Also, I'm not sure where the flak is for appearing with Richard Spencer. Any examples?

I misremembered, it was the host that got flak.

I don't recall all the details, but my understanding is he got departnered from Twitch over saying that the rioting had to stop in an incendiary manner. Hardly for simply defending Rittenhouse at all.

Destiny had been building on the more lefty viewer pool from debating the nazis. Routinely talking about all the 'tankies' and 'socialists' he had in his chat. He was still a 'liberal' but there was a very clear crossover of viewers. That came crashing down when he did a debate with Vaush on the Rittenhouse stuff. After the pushback he got from that, a lot which coming from 'personalities' he went on a much more direct anti-left thing as a response.

It's kind of true. "Super good at rhetoric" is relative. Normies get BTFO by guys called Dirlewanger_Respecter on twitter all the time. When you adopt extremist and fringe political positions you have to develop at least some rudimentary rhetorical skills to defend them, which may not be all that much, but are still leagues beyond those of your average person who rarely thinks even that much about their politics.

The people in question are internet political and cultural commentators. Not normies. They're not those annoying prank channels, these are the people discussing ideology, philosophy, politics, etc. They talk a lot about ideas and theories, they only show their own incompetence when they demonstrate an inability to do rhetoric effectively.

I think another contributing factor might be that everyone else is using weighted clothing, so to speak. Dirlewanger_Respecter doesn't have to give a shit that his argument could be construed as racist or sexist or transphobic, and at the same time he doesn't have to dance around all the various inconvenient truths that lie in wait for non-shitlords. Adolf_Kekler_42069 can make the correct argument that having massive riots and burning things down isn't actually a method of protest that contributes to achieving political goals, but if you're on the left saying something like that is enough to get you fired, even if you're so non-racist you actually worked on Obama's campaign. A significant portion of the "good, useful arguments" space is just completely verboten thanks to social justice culture/purity policing.

I still can't get into the mindset of a person who thinks his side loses every unbiased debate, but keeps believing in the cause and evangelizing it.

I am not sure that any such people actually exist.

"I can't say I've ever seen someone in debate with a Pepe-grinning fascist come out on top." does not mean "I can't say I've ever seen someone win an unbiased debate against a Pepe-grinning fascist." There are many ways besides logical argument to come out on top of a debate. For example, you can Gish Gallop the opponent into giving up. Or you can out-charisma the opponent and make him look like a geek. Or you can decide to only debate in front of audiences that you know will be pre-disposed to support your side. Etc.

I am not sure that CounterPoints meant "I can't say I've ever seen someone rationally win an unbiased debate against a Pepe-grinning fascist."

I guess a lot depends on what "unbiased" means in this context.

I am not sure that any such people actually exist.

It happens from time to time in religious debates. A few months ago there was a debate on sedevacantism (the idea that Vatican II was heretical and thus there hasn't been a true pope since the 1950s) where the "orthodox" Catholic got trounced so bad the moderator had to make a follow-up video defending his decision not to take down the debate.

My recollection of the incident was that Dimond(who, to be clear, is a lunatic that other sedevacantists want nothing to do with) won partly through happenstance and partly through his opponent’s overconfidence, with a side of it being a low point for orthodox conservative Catholicism, and that orthodox conservative Catholics mostly view it as a failed example of nutpicking rather than an indication of the sedevacantist position having particularly strong arguments in favor.

There’s plenty of examples of orthodox or mainstream traditionalist Catholics winning arguments with sedevacantists, after all.

partly through his opponent’s overconfidence,

Yeah, the overconfidence was thinking he’d be able to win a fair debate with rigorous cross-examination against Dimond. That won’t happen again.

There’s plenty of examples of orthodox or mainstream traditionalist Catholics winning arguments with sedevacantists, after all.

How many of these are since Francis?

The one decent anti-sedevacantist argument is the Vatican I canon that Peter shall have “perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church,” but this doesn’t make any of the Vatican II era heresies non-heretical, it just means that the papacy was BS from the beginning.

Whatever came of Contrapoints getting canceled by other trans figures? Some right-wingers gloated about meta-cancer back then

She apologized and managed to not piss them off a second (well, third actually) time (yet).

but I guess you don't really cancel your stars after all?

When you're cancelling your enemies the goal is to get a scalp, and to put a friend in the position they were occupying. But when you're cancelling a friend, the goal is just to ensure they stay on message.

I suppose sometimes you can cancel a friend that outlived their purpose, and you want to replace them, just as you would an enemy, but that day is not today.

I see a lot of dancing around the obvious so far.

Contrapoints, aka Natalie Wynn, is herself a trans woman, i.e. a man. She has spent a large part of her life and her entire career living/identifying/posing as a woman, despite having a Y chromosome and no uterus. When JK Rowling and her buddies over on "TERF Island" say that people with a Y chromosome and no uterus are not women and should not be treated like women, this is a personal affront. It is not taken as an invitation for an academic debate. In an academic debate, a meaningful "yes" requires the possibility of "no". For Natalie, there is no possibility of "no, trans women should not be categorized as women," because accepting that statement would jeopardize her personal identity, her relationships, her career, and her mental well-being.

So people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest? I grant that it's true that Natalie is unlikely to be persuaded to the belief that she is a man, but does that mean we should automatically disregard her arguments for why she is a woman? Can we disregard any arguments about the existence of God from religious people? Arguments about why cancel culture is bad from people who have been cancelled?

So people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest?

I am sure it's possible, but most people really can't. Putting emotion and personal stake aside is a really hard thing to do, especially when your peers have been whipping fervor into you by drumbeating night and day that any opposition to you is tantamount to attempted genocide.

So, no, the vast majority of people are motivated reasoning at all times. This is usually okay if we can pit the two opposing motivated reasoners against each other on equal ground, but this is less and less possible these days thanks to the proliferation of biased platforms and speakers who aren't at all interested in engaging with anything except an echo chamber.

No, my point is that if you see someone who is otherwise intelligent and clear-thinking make uncharacteristic fallacies and bad arguments on a specific topic, and that topic is something that they have a strong vested interest in, and they did not argue themselves into that vested interest, then you should have a strong prior that their vested interest is causing their bad arguments.

I will note that the best religious apologists tend to be converts. This is not a coincidence.

Sure they can, but it's a big ask. IMO discourse is at its best when everyone just lays out their bias and self-interest in clear terms and stands by it. Being honest about your stake is marginally easier than trying to represent someone else's. And representing everyone's at once, as many demand as the baseline standard for decency, seems outright impossible to me.

This seems to be really reaching for things that weren't in the above comment. It's not that people can't rationally argue for things that are in their own interest, it's that they can't be trusted to do so. That doesn't mean we should automatically disregard her arguments, but it does provide one explanation why her arguments are so bad when judged on its own merits, in this particular context. And it means one should be extra skeptical of their arguments and look out for sleights of hand that allow them to gerrymander the desired results, since the desired results are the only allowable ones that the person is likely to engineer their arguments around.

Can we disregard any arguments about the existence of God from religious people?

Presuming "religious people" refers to people who lack the ability to be convinced of the nonexistence of God, rather than merely people who follow or believe in some religion, we can't automatically disregard such arguments, but certainly it would explain why their arguments are so bad.

Arguments about why cancel culture is bad from people who have been cancelled?

Being "canceled" doesn't automatically imply that one has a dogmatic belief that "cancel culture" is bad. Plenty of people who have been "canceled" believe that their own "cancellation" is bad for the specifics around their own "cancellation" but that the general concept is okay. Heck, I think JK Rowling is one of them, though I'm not sure she's made any specific comments about "cancel culture" in the past. So this analogy doesn't really work.

So why are you calling him 'her'?

My general rule is to use apparent pronouns. Natalie passes, so she gets she/her

I wouldn't call a woman 'he' just because she looks like a dude, though.

You're obviously right of course. (I've never heard of "A meaningful 'yes' requires the possibility of 'no'". Thanks, that's good.) But I guess psychological arguments aren't something I have much interest in, and indeed they're one of my pet peeves from the Left. In my experience, woke people LOVE to psychologize the "real" reasons their opponents are claiming XYZ, and then using that (hypothesized) "real" motivation as a reason to dismiss their opponents' substantive arguments. I also don't see why someone couldn't have both a very strong psychological reason to believe something and provide good arguments for believing in it, so I'd rather just evaluate someone's arguments on the merits than speculate as to their motivations.

But I guess psychological arguments aren't something I have much interest in

I don't particularly like them either, but in this case it seems like there's a bunch of people sitting around going, "Huh, her other videos are usually pretty good. I wonder why this one sucks?" and once you ask the question like that it becomes clear what happened.

Yeah, nah. Doesn't have any good videos. I'm aware of this person since even before the transition and the arguments then and now weren't that good. They were ok-ish if you already believed all the premises, otherwise not that compelling.

It's not just that Contra is a transwoman. She's also proven herself particularly fragile in the face of pushback to even minor criticisms she's made of gender activists. By her own account the trauma she felt when she had a brush with cancelling was....disproportionate (walking around wearing sunglasses cause she thought the real world hated her)

I'd also not trust Lindsay Ellis to give a fair shake for similar reasons.

Thank you for pointing it out. I wanted to bring it up myself but had trouble explaining how her cancelation relates to her argument.

I really wish Lindsay Ellis had quit twitter rather than youtube over that idiocy.

Contrapoints is a sophist. The purpose of "her" videos is not to convince , it's to basically provide a good narrative to her own base as well as something they can point to as a retort to the criticisms they'll face defending their ideology. Example: how so many Breadtubers who were challenged on what exactly Rowling said that was bigoted would bring out her original video - you wonder how many people actually read the substance of her words vs the mediated version Contra gave? (IIRC the question-begging on "what is a woman?" was there too btw.) The fact that no detached observer would dedicate time to this must have simply given them the chance to write their opponent off.

I watched the video. There are so many flaws. Not only the question begging but also the desire to psychoanalyze Rowling as projecting her hatred of her rapist unto transpeople or being horrified at the idea of sterilizing children due to internalized misogyny since that's all society values women for.

First off - this once again deliberately ignores the distinction between being worried that allowing any men in female washrooms will allow predators and the predators being trans. Contra is smart enough to know better. She chooses not.

Second- the simple answer is that Rowling is aggressive towards TRAs because they're the ones trying to do things like invade single sex sexual assault shelters. They started it. If someone else did it she'd have furiously tweeted too.

Third - the idea that JK Rowling thinks the only role for a woman is motherhood is insane. But Contrapoints apparently can almost never admit that there are serious downsides to trans activism (this was quite clear in the Phelps-Roper podcast) so she can't admit that there is a risk of children being rendered sterile - which is awful since they can't consent - that JKR is right to be concerned about outside of some pathology around being a self-hating self-made billionaire who wrote one of the most famous feminist characters in YA fiction.

The one thing Contrapoints is clear about is that not acknowledging that "trans women are women" is at the least "transphobic" (if not a violation of "trans rights" in some hard to define way), which is interesting. What does it mean to be "transphobic"? Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"?

This is exactly the problem Nicola Sturgeon ran into: they call anyone who argues that TWANW(sometimes) a bigot but are forced to admit that even they believe in exceptions that imply TWANW.

Good thing they never address this incoherency.

Nonetheless, I do take her point: Arguing against "cancellation" or "illiberal" tactics in the abstract is kind of pointless, because almost no one is a true free speech absolutist here

This is exactly why I say Contra is bad faith; this doesn't capture the landscape.

People aren't just arguing about it in the abstract. Contrapoints is ensuring that only the most abstract case gets discussed by insisting on begging the question on whether trans activism is in some ways distinct from other forms of activism (which would mean the cancellations could be more unjust than past ones without requiring an abstract "no cancellation" principle).

As you say, this question-begging is silly when her own concession on trans sports violates it but she otherwise sticks to it. As a result, it makes it sound like her opponents are just saying "cancellation is bad" cause that's what she criticizes.

And that sort of mushy view might be a fair characterization of Phelps-Roper and some but a lot of these critics like Rowling are progressives themselves. She, iirc, inveighed against Corbyn for anti-semitism. Sam Harris said there was reasonable discussion on the issue activists were suppressing but he was fine pushing people like Alex Jones off platforms. They are not necessarily opposed to cancellation as such, they think it's awful here (uncharitably, since the leopard ate their face).

This entire "debate" is a virtual debate Contra has constructed based on her undefended premises. As I said, it's not an argument for anyone who doesn't already agree with her on everything. It's really about talking to her audience and telling them "hold strong on cancelling these guys. Resist the siren's call of 'reasonable discussion'. The past bigots did that too. It's okay cause we've done it before and it works". It's about inoculating her base using the weakest version of the argument, the one Nazis could use instead of the ones their fellow progressives (who are out of step with the tribe on this one issue) would use.

Finally, I was surprised to see how much more aggressive Rowling has gotten in her anti-trans rhetoric. Not that I necessarily disagree with her, but it looks like I can no longer say that she's being unfairly smeared as an enemy of the trans movement.

It's a case of mutual polarization. Because Rowling actually believes in the misogyny of this situation she reacts badly to the reaction she faced (and they have also become more hysterical in turn). With some justice. Seeing men like Contrapoints brush off her concerns about sexual assault is jarring because not too long ago it would seem clear misogyny.

As for whether she's an enemy of the trans movement: it depends on what the trans movement is. If all it wants is reasonable accommodation for ordinary transpeople then no. If what it wants is total victory at the potential cost of women's spaces then yes.

Once again Contrapoints' question-begging comes back to haunt us. If trans activism is somewhat distinct from other movements, what might seem very aggressive in the case of gay rights might be justifiably less so here.

People aren't just arguing about it in the abstract. Contrapoints is enforcing that abstract thinking on the discussion by insisting on begging the question on whether trans activism is in some ways distinct from other forms of activism (which would mean the cancellations could be more unjust than past ones).

I think this is exactly right, thanks for articulating it. As someone who is relatively sympathetic to the original gay rights movement, the whole time she was talking about Anita Bryant I was thinking, "Okay, sure, it was unjust for gay people to be thrown in jail for sodomy, and so maybe some form of "cancellation" was justified here, but that's way different than the kind of changes that trans activists are demanding!"

You see this kind of rhetorical move used a lot by the woke--drawing on the essentially universal consensus that the civil rights movement was a good thing, and then trying to make parallels between the activism of that era and the activism of our own, and implying that the moral questions are just as easy to answer now as they were back then. I see a similar move being made by "abolitionists" who clearly chose the term to evoke slavery abolitionists, even though abolishing slavery and abolishing the police are radically different types of policies and have almost nothing to do with each other.

As to Rowling: I guess by "enemy of the trans movement" I was more trying to get at the fact that she is now someone who says things that your average progressive wouldn't agree with, even in private (whereas saying there should be reasonable restrictions on sports, minors transitioning, etc., can get agreement in private even from a lot of liberals). I used to use Rowling as a good example of unreasonable cancellation because she wasn't even saying things that were outside the realm of normal progressive discourse, but now that she's passed that boundary she no longer can serve as an easy example of leftist overreach (although I still think she has been unreasonably cancelled and I largely agree with her).

You see this kind of rhetorical move used a lot by the woke--drawing on the essentially universal consensus that the civil rights movement was a good thing, and then trying to make parallels between the activism of that era and the activism of our own, and implying that the moral questions are just as easy to answer now as they were back then.

I think to be fair, during the actual civil rights era these weren't considered easy questions to answer. We went from 4% of polled Americans supporting interracial marriage in 1959, to 94% today. The argument is that it was only because a small and annoying minority of 4% argued their point in the marketplace of ideas that support for interracial marriage can be so high today. MLK Jr. was one of the most hated men in America, and considered a dangerous radical.

Certainly, for any civil rights struggle there would have once been a time when the average American wouldn't have accepted that the thing under discussion was an easy question, even if we look back and see it as a no brainer.

I think it goes without saying that if trans activists "win", then in 40 years it will be just as "obvious" that they were right to most people.

I think it goes without saying that if trans activists "win", then in 40 years it will be just as "obvious" that they were right to most people.

It goes without saying because it's tautological. No one will see them as having won, unless most people agree with them.

I agree with you he made a mistake by saying the moral questions of the past were easy even back then, but the rhetorical trick he pointed out is real. It goes more like: people like you objected to civil rights, but almost everybody including you is now on board with them, therefore you should now support X without objection, because it's just a question of time before we all realize this is the Right Side of History. Being correct is assumed, and the necessity to argue their case is rejected.

The issue is that there are also plenty of horrors that we have carried out in the name of progress, and it also wasn't obvious at the time how horrifying they're going to be. I'd have no issue with the process of us living and learning, if it wasn't for the obvious difference in how these things are remembered. Horrors against progressivism are enshrined in history as things we must Never Forget, lest we repeat past mistakes. Horrors of progressivism are either outright forgotten, swept under nervous coughs, covered up with "well, we had good intentions", or pinned on a different ideology.

MLK Jr. was one of the most hated men in America, and considered a dangerous radical.

And today that's how we see transphobes! Coincidence?

Bingo.

Consider that state-enforced eugenics used to be a progressive policy. Just following the science!!

Alcohol prohibition too. That gets a little muddled (protestants/evangelicals and progressives working together??) but consider how progressives call for bans on trans fats and sugary drinks nowadays.

Progressive policies often win the day, but not always. And they usually write their failures so they do not get attributed to their ideology and they write their successes to seem inevitable.

This adds an extra layer of fallacy by pretending opponents of progressive policies all either changed their mind or ended up on the wrong side of history, even if the issues ARE comparable.

This is one reason why, as a progressive, I believe that a strong and vibrant conservative movement is not just desirable but necessary for progressivism to succeed. Progressivism is supposed to be about progress (I think the term has been mostly redefined due to use by its own proponents to mean something else in recent years), and progress isn't the same thing as change - for change to be progress, it has to be forward in some meaningful way, in this context something like better. Anyone is going to have the bias that the change they want will accomplish something better than before, and so progressives can't be trusted to accurately assess whether the changes we're calling for is actually progress or just change that we genuinely believe is good. So we need people to argue and fight against us so that the strongest, most correct changes are the ones that stand up to scrutiny and are actually implemented, while the weakest, most misguided changes get trashed. It's highly imperfect and messy, but that's the best way I can see for us to even make a sort of attempt at achieving actual progress rather than merely change that I've convinced myself is progress.

I think it goes without saying that if trans activists "win", then in 40 years it will be just as "obvious" that they were right to most people.

Counter-example: pro-abortion activists "won" in 1973, but the thing they won remained just as controversial as ever for the next fifty years.

‘Her’ argument is arc-of-history triumphalism, but am I the only one who notices that arc-of-history triumphalism is by nature an inapplicable argument even if you accept the underlying frame? Opposing interracial marriage is verboten today because 94% of the population supports it, and this wasn’t something anyone could have predicted in 1965.

You see this kind of rhetorical move used a lot by the woke--drawing on the essentially universal consensus that the civil rights movement was a good thing, and then trying to make parallels between the activism of that era and the activism of our own

Ignoring, of course, that the moral righteousness of the Civil Rights era resulted in too-expansive laws that have permanently perverted the relationship between the federal government and the people. Moral righteousness doesn't automatically convert to good solutions, and actually usually results in bad solutions because too much righteousness overwhelms temperance and rationality.

Anyways, I would be curious on others thoughts here (assuming anyone is willing to watch a nearly two hour video by someone most would consider an ideological opponent.

My 2 cents are - if she wants me to engage with her arguments, better start a substack or something. Or not put 'herself' in videos.

I've had her videos bludgeoned into my youtube feed, and .. there's something about elaborate theatrics and 'her' entire 'performance' that repulsed me. Watched maybe 4 minutes and then told youtube to give me a break.

My takeaway from this whole 'trans and gay' craze of the last decade is I'm very sympathetic to the way the old communists treated the topic.

They tolerated it, as in, the more thoughtful places did not jail them, but it was given absolutely zero media visibility.

And were they wrong? Anorexia and bulimia are (see SA's "Crazy Like Us") are self-inflicted problems.

I maintain that to a large degree, the trans issue is the same thing. Even if you look at google trends, ftm and trans are slowly replacing bulimia /anorexia in search interests.

As a society, we'd be better off if these concepts were taboo, unspeakable. Same as you don't tell kids "do not lick frozen metal" because of course they'll give it a try, you shouldn't tell kids "if you feel like you don't belong with your sex, maybe you are trans".

No, maybe you're just weird. Plenty of people are weird and don't find it easy to belong. Either get used to it, but trying to use the uncanny-valley to get somewhere where you belong never ends well.

The benefit to teenagers who'd avoid getting into deep trouble would outweight the discomfort of genuine cases.

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I don’t know why women are interested in seeing men show off cosmetics, but nonetheless James Charles had a huge following among women before his cancellation.

There’s probably an interesting psychological explanation- anything from ‘it can even make a man look pretty and feminine’ to ‘women want to follow a man’s lead’.

In my less charitable times I feel like there’s no difference, and the trans identification is just a part of the play-acting, a minstrel show of femininity, like a costume

That reminds me of a thread on the old Motte, which was about a trans man saying, "Hey, bros, step it up! I'm spending all this time dressing smartly and performing masculinity really hard, while you're not even thinking about it."

For him, being a man was a costume (get the products and clothing right to perform the role) whereas for normal men, it's just something that sort of happens. Even "Be a man" means "Be a man, not a boy" rather than "Be a man, not a woman."

My observations are reversed: most of the current-generation trans people I've met take on extremely feminine names and presentation, and give me a disquieting sense of being forced to participate in their fetish with no meaningful ability to refuse consent. Older transwomen I've known have given me the "I just want to quietly pass and get on with my life" vibe.

I think you’re probably right about the approach, though with the internet being what it is, not getting official coverage doesn’t matter much because it’s trivial to find that content— along with everything else weird and kinky— with minimal effort. I don’t even want to know what “hypno-porn” is but I’m positive if I wanted to find out, a 14 year old would know.

not getting official coverage doesn’t matter much because it’s trivial to find that content

My personal belief is that there should be open source heuristic or NN pornographic filters built into every widely used OS, which disable viewing if there's a pattern of overuse.

No, maybe you're just weird. Plenty of people are weird and don't find it easy to belong. Either get used to it, but trying to use the uncanny-valley to get somewhere where you belong never ends well.

I am a fan of "weird," but society doesn't function well when "weird" becomes the establishment. We need institutions to be focused on the "normies" so the weird can continue to be weird on the colorful fringes of a society that functions.

I think it's also because she unwittingly participated in the Witch Trials of J.K Rowling podcast and now feels like she must make amends.

She basically says exactly this in the video.

The very online trans community has been mad at her for insufficient zealotry since she started. She did a paywalled video on the subject of 'Groomers' and said she didn't feel there was much room for persuading people who think you're a pedophile. The center cannot hold, cycles of escalation gonna escalate, etc etc

What does it mean to be "transphobic"? Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"?

You do not have to be transphobic to object to trans ideology, just like you do not have to be hippophobic to object to Caligula's horse appointment to the office of consul.

Does ‘transphobic’ have a definition other than ‘objects to trans ideology in any way, regardless of how anodyne’?

I mean I say this as someone who is proudly opposed to transgenderism and homophobic in the actual, literal sense- it really doesn’t seem like the terms ‘transphobic’ and ‘anti-lgbt’ draw any distinction between ‘you should have to be AFAB to be on a woman’s powerlifting team’ and ‘homos and trans should be hanged from construction cranes’. Obviously there is a distinction, but part of the point of using those particular snarl words is not making it.

The word tansphobic itself is already part of the whole stupid CW game. It is obvious that homophobic or transphobic means something else compared to let's say arachnophobic or claustrophobic.

In general you have to identify this whole ad-hominem weapon used in culture war. Your opponents are either evil (racists, white supremacists etc.) or crazy (you say it because you are hurt) or stupid (you do not have PHD). Or ideally combination of all of these. Saying that you are transphobic achieves at the same time medicalization of your view and it also makes makes it evil. You can often see it applied in various lefty spaces like sneerclub, Contrapoints himself uses it a lot.

I want to give them half credit, my reaction to seeing a trans-identifying male is not unlike that to seeing a spider. There are also rational parts to opposing them too, while spiders are beneficial, but there certainly is some similarity in the instinctive response.

I used to really like her videos but this last one got me to unsubscribe.

She goes into so much detail and makes very good points, only to ignore some of the main points of what she's arguing against. It's just kind of disappointing, I guess. Natalie kind of lost her ability to honestly acknowledge counter-arguments when she got called out and 'cancelled'.

It's become this thing where no one can criticize anything about the trans movement. And I get it, I really don't care what tucker carlson has to say about it... but if contrapoints can't call something out, who can?

Like, sure. Go after JKR... She's got money, a platform, plenty of lawyers, etc. But sending threats to a nobody streaming a video game is wrong.

It's become this thing where no one can criticize anything about the trans movement

I listened to her Megan Phelps-Roper interview (Episode 6) and this was extremely clear. The party line is "this isn't happening"' or deliberately misinterpreting what people mean, e.g. on bathrooms and Contra stuck to it like a pro.

It's also insane to me that her justification for trans activists bullying people reads word for word like a description of narcissistic injury - something to the effect of "transpeople have fragile identities when they transition so they lash out at anyone that doesn't validate them". Yikes.

Kind of an aside, but didn't Contrapoints appear on Hillary Clinton's show/podcast thing?

Contrapoints made a name for herself through actually engaging with the "alt-right" and by being willing to make real arguments in response to conservatives.

I haven't followed her that closely, but that description feels extremely off. Ages ago he (it was still before transitioning) had a conversation with the Distributist, and a few with Sargon, but since years her entire brand was talking to sockpuppets, and smuggly dismissing viewpoints she disagrees with. The idea she was actually responding to conservatives, let alone making serious arguments is bizarre to me.

Nonetheless, I do take her point: Arguing against "cancellation" or "illiberal" tactics in the abstract is kind of pointless, because almost no one is a true free speech absolutist here.

This is one of the issues she always brings up and never addresses properly. If you want to talk about limits of free speech, have at it, but you have to do q better job then "there are some limits to speech, therefore this instance of speech I don't like should be limited".


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