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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26016 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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The reasoning is similar to regulations in which adults are not permitted to enter public playgrounds unless they are the parent or guardian of a child: obviously a child molester can simply ignore the regulation, but the regulation is designed to make bad actors more obvious to bystanders.

More right than you know.

Missing children are overwhelmingly runaways, actual abductions are overwhelmingly the parents, non-parent cases are overwhelmingly someone else known to the child, actual stranger abductions are overwhelmingly of teens.

Young children being abducted from a playground doesn't happen literally never, but it's so close to never that spending time thinking about it, and letting it drive larger policy issues, is both insane and counter-productive.

We talk about it because it's emotionally valent and easy to imagine. Not because it's important, not because it happens.

Same thing here. You can clearly imagine this situation in your mind, but it doesn't really happen. Not enough that we can actually say that trans bathroom rights make it more likely, not enough that it's worth warping public policy over.

Also, you know, the whole claim is mistaken to begin with, because: if trans people must use the bathroom of their birth gender, then Buck Angel has to use the women's room.

If your worry is that seeing male-looking people go into the women's room will make life more dangerous for women, then you should be in favor of letting trans people use the right bathrooms. Because way more male-looking people will go into trans bathrooms if you force all trans men to use them, than if you don't.

Same thing here. You can clearly imagine this situation in your mind, but it doesn't really happen.

How about Peeping Toms? Do they happen? Bathrooms seem like a great place to be a Peeping Tom.

I'm sure there's not very many pervs out there who get off on hearing women pee, but it's definitely not zero -- can you understand how women might not like wondering whether there's a perv jerking off in the next stall while they are trying to pee?

if trans people must use the bathroom of their birth gender, then Buck Angel has to use the women's room.

Do you think the sort of women who is concerned about males in the woman's room would prefer Buck Angel, or the "IT'S MA'AM' guy? Is Buck Angel prohibited from going into gender neutral bathrooms? Not sure how Buck Angel is relevant here, but under the trans-acceptance framework it seems like women are expected to put up with both Buck Angel and "IT'S MA'AM'.

Not sure how Buck Angel is relevant here, but under the trans-acceptance framework it seems like women are expected to put up with both Buck Angel and "IT'S MA'AM'.

First of all, your mask is slipping - your original claim was that you were worried about cis men pretending to be trans in order to access women's spaces, not about trans people themselves. But you have immediately moved your rhetoric to 'women putting up with trans people', revealing pretty much exactly what I was talking about in relation to the 'scrutiny' thing.

Second of all, I'm not sure if you're confused or what... under the trans-inclusive framework, Buck Angel and people who look like him go to the men's room. He only goes to the women's room if forced to do so by bathroom bills. That's the point.

  • -27

He only goes to the women's room if forced to do so by bathroom bills.

So there are police outside bathrooms stopping people and saying "Yes, I know you look like a man but you have to use the women's room"? Or checking birth certificates? Apparently there was some such allegation, but I have to say - this is so clearly "used to be a guy" that I can see why they were allegedly asked for ID. There's an unfortunate photo doing the rounds but, um, yeah. Real Woman versus Cis Woman imagery.

This is the kind of "so stunning, brave, courageous!" puffery that annoys me. (Is the person portraying the trans girl trans or cis, because I have my doubts). Mainly I'm live-and-let-live about this; so long as you don't look too much out of place or behave weirdly, go right ahead (and hell, if you're cis male or cis female and the relevant bathroom is too crowded and you really need to go, then use the other one in an emergency).

But if you're having a cute little 'all girls together' online discussion about "so what is the etiquette about unsolicited offering tampons to another woman in the woman's bathroom" or similar, that's when you've crossed over from "I just need to use the bathroom" into "this is getting into fetish territory".

Whenever I see a photo of "Charlotte" I can't stop laughing, because the motivation for her "transition" is so transparent. What a sick indictment of woke culture that you can have people calling for your head over some meaningless "infraction", and all you have to do is play Transition Card (+10 to cancellation resistance) and, literally overnight, you're back in the Twitterati's good graces.

Wow, 2014 was a different time.

Still—less booing of the outgroup, please.

You're right, I was in a bit of a goofy mood at the time of writing, I could've worded that better.

It really is crazy comparing 2014 Discourse (TM) to current.

I can’t imagine Scott wading into that kind of beef today. Not because he’s unwilling, but it’s so…earnest. I’m struggling to put it to words.

Maybe everyone learned something from the last ten years. Now the battle lines are drawn, the witty rejoinders are prepared, and the epistemic helplessness is learned. There’s no alpha in an earnest chat about the philosophical grounding of tribal affiliation. Which isn’t to say there’s no value—just that it’s harder to stand out in a field of cynics. No one leaves home without his umbrella and his casual disdain for Twitter randos. Delivered, of course, on the same site.

I dunno. Surely I’m overthinking the issue.

To be fair, Scott was an outlier at that time. I didn't and don't have his way with words, but I'd had similar drive to overtures of earnest engagement and disarmament, and then had them burned out of me in around 2010-2011. I hope that there's something more or deeper, and in a way I'm reminded of Chuubo's, where :

So, there's two ways to look at wish-fulfillment. One is "wishes are immature: they're all about wanting gratification without consequence." It's like when a cynical realist scoffs at an idealist: "yeah," they say, "your ideals are great and all, but this is the real world."

The other way is "wishes are about building something better."

Like when the idealist scoffs at the realist: "yeah," they might say. "Just accepting the way things are and lowering your standards might be 'realistic,' but it's also what KEEPS things the way they are."

And the truth of dreams, love, hope, hearts, wishes, ideals, fantasies, ambitions, purposes, striving, and even creative chaos is—-

It's both. It's always, always both.

We learn realism. Then we learn idealism. Then we have to learn realism again. Then we have to learn idealism again. If you're an idealist, there will always be realists out there whose narrow-minded embrace of the status-quo is something you've grown past, and there will always be realists out there whose wisdom see through your nonsense and overambition. And if you're a realist, there will always be goofy airheaded idealists out there whose starry eyes you've grown past, and there will always be idealists out there who've accepted and seen everything you've accepted and seen but also gone beyond it.

Wishes are bleak when they're bleak. That's all it is. Wishes are bleak when they cut away the sense in the world. They're bleak when they're the idealism that the realist looks down on. They're bleak when the principal lesson you can learn from them is "possibly you need to do less wishing."

And they're Imperial when they're fundamentally reaching for something better—-when maybe they cause a lot of trouble, when maybe "do less wishing" is a big lesson you can learn from them, but when there's a hint of them of the idealism that's grown past realism.

But there's reasons I can't post on rpgnet, anymore, and reasons why they never responded to my appeal, and why I only bothered to send one because one of their moderators demanded it. There's a reason I don't have discussions like those here, on a wide variety of other locations and nyms that are tots open to serious debates, fingers crossed. There's a reason Scott knows that there are things that put his practice or license or career at risk, or whatever is left of his friendships.

There's a reason Moran finished her otherwise-excellent piece about the horrors of a Bleak worldview with

And there are worse things, of course. I mean, a little bit of substanceless fantasy can be better than, like, having the world drown in nothingness, or, say, letting someone suffer from a harsh reality to too great a degree. In fact, really, it should be good in exactly the same circumstances that our cynical realist would be OK with a spot of idealism. You know. To entertain kids. To keep things from breaking down further. To organize volunteer labor. To comfort someone in grief.

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