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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Sure there is, you can't tell other people what they find important.

Surely I can express an opinion on what it's reasonable for them to find important.

It's disingenuous to try to boil the debate down to these things.

I'm not trying to "boil down" the debate to those statements, but just using them as glosses for whatever the positions actually are (which probably gets lost at the soundbite level anyway). As far as I can see, the preferred narrative of the anti-trans camp here is that they seek to protect women's sports from trans incursion (are you disputing that?), and if one side says that we need to do a thing in order to right a historical injustice against a small minority that is subjected to suffering far in excess from that experienced by most people in our society, while the other says we need to not do that thing in order to have fairness in women's sports, then I figure that as a neutral and largely indifferent bystander I'd think that the former side has a pretty good case that they care about their cause because it's important but the other side should not care so much about theirs because it's unimportant. Why do you figure are the people against MtF in women's sports largely saying that they are doing it to protect women's sports? Are you saying we shouldn't take them by their word, and instead imagine that they are fighting for a cause equally as grandiose?

Surely I can express an opinion on what it's reasonable for them to find important.

You can do whatever you want, but what does it bring? You think they're being unreasonable, they think you're being unreasonable... is there a way to move this conversation forward in any way? Or does it make more sense to accept it's important to everyone involved for different reasons, and go on from there?

and if one side says that we need to do a thing in order to right a historical injustice against a small minority that is subjected to suffering far in excess from that experienced by most people in our society, while the other says we need to not do that thing in order to have fairness in women's sports, then I figure that as a neutral and largely indifferent bystander

If this is how you're describing the controversy then you're neither neutral, indifferent, nor a bystander.

The other side doesn't accept the first side's premises, it would be just as trivial to paint the pro-trans side as unreasonable if you "neutrally" described everything starting with the "anti-trans" premise and rejected any possibility to have any of them questioned.

Why do you figure are the people against MtF in women's sports largely saying that they are doing it to protect women's sports? Are you saying we shouldn't take them by their word, and instead imagine that they are fighting for a cause equally as grandiose?

Why are you ignoring all the other things they are saying? It is true that women's sports will be destroyed if it becomes an open category, so they're correct when they say that. But the grandiose question that they do bring up, which for some reason you've avoided mentioning is "what is a woman?".