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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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What you or I think the tie-breaker should be does not matter - this is being adjudicated in courts of law and the current rule was made quite clear yesterday:

The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear. The medical defendants, speaking through their attorneys, have admitted it. At least one defense expert also has admitted it.

...

Despite the defense admissions, there are those who believe that cisgender individuals properly adhere to their natal sex and that transgender individuals have inappropriately chosen a contrary gender identity, male or female, just as one might choose whether to read Shakespeare or Grisham.

...

Any proponent of the challenged statute and rules should put up or shut up: do you acknowledge that there are individuals with actual gender identities opposite their natal sex, or do you not? Dog whistles ought not be tolerated.

Gender identity is real, the gender someone says they are is their real gender identity without respect to natal sex, and attempting to hedge will simply result in being legally overrun. Personally, I would have preferred to live with some detente, a Schrodinger's gender situation, wherein I agree to be polite and pretend to not see what I plainly see with my own two eyes and my easily clocked interlocutor agrees not to be too pushy about the matter. But no, that's not where we're at in 2023 - the legal status of this is going to demand that you either accept that trans woman are women, full stop, or stop dog whistling and declare openly that trans women are men.