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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Are stepmoms real moms?

The things that stepmoms may or may not be able to do that distinguish them from non-step-Moms are, except for a vanishingly small set of cases, not based on the stepmoms' physical traits. Whether you think they count as moms or not, or whether they should count in some cases but not others, that's very different from trans.

The critial difference, of course being, is that if I choose to refer to my step-mom simply as "mom" (and vice versa), that's a relational identifier that the two of us have chosen to engage in based on mutual trust/love/history/etc.

No such consensual agreement exists between myself and some dude in a dress who tries to get me fired if I don't refer to him as "ma'am".

Well one can easily think of an analogous case. Let's say you're a school teacher and you refuse to call a step-mother a 'mother' without qualifier, and that she got upset because of that. It would seem that any decent person would not refuse to use the word 'mother' to describe them even though there is no 'consensual agreement' there.

I would think that's a fairly rare scenario. At least in my experience growing up, every one of my many friends with a step-parent referred to them by first name.