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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31377 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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Hello Motte world! Some of you may remember me as /u/M_T_Saotome-Westlake on the Reddit incarnation. (I've since dropped the pseudonym which I was using for my political writing.)

I recently published the first two parts of my memoir telling the Whole Dumb Story of my conflict with the so-called "rationalist" community about (at first) the etiology of gender dysphoria in males and (later, much less excusably) the philosophy of language regarding categorization, which I would like to share with you today:

Thanks for sharing these. I've read your earlier writing and found it very good - you explain very well ideas that I'm sure many people who are intellectually honest have every time trans topics come up.

Saying "peace be unto him" is indeed a speech act rather than a statement of fact, but it would be bizarre to condescendingly point this out as if it were the crux of debates about religious speech codes. The function of the speech act is to signal the speaker's affirmation of Muhammad's divinity. That's why the Islamic theocrats want to mandate that everyone say it: it's a lot harder for atheism to get any traction if no one is allowed to talk like an atheist.

And that's why trans advocates want to mandate against misgendering people on social media: it's harder for trans-exclusionary ideologies to get any traction if no one is allowed to talk like someone who believes that sex (sometimes) matters and gender identity does not.

This has made me rethink how willing I am to "be polite" about pronouns and trans identity. It really is a kind of lie to put someone or something into a category that doesn't correlate with their characteristics. Making it harder for a truthful worldview to spread seems like low-grade evil. "Complicity" in the language of the day.

Edit: I tried to finish the article but it is LONG. I have to sleep for my health (I'm sure you can relate). Can I suggest using an editor (whether human or AI) to condense your work?

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