This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In the Culture Series by the sadly departed Iain M. Banks (not to be confused with his more mundane doppelganger Iain Banks) humans can decide to change sex entirely and actually become the opposite sex in a very real sense, they are exactly like someone born that sex including womb or sperm etc... Often couples that want 2 kids will take turns doing the gestating.
If humans go on long enough a perfect sex change will indeed be possible at a genetic level. Would anyone living hard in the trans debate still have a problem with it then? How could they?
I say this as someone that thinks it is ridiculous that a man can DECLARE FEMALE Michael Scott BANKRUPTCY style and crush swimming records and smackdown college girls in basketball.
In that society, the very idea of "what does it mean to be a man? to be a woman?" will have changed dramatically. The concept of gender roles mediated by society isn't total nonsense, there are different views at different periods and in different cultures of how men and women should behave.
So in the Culture, we're at the point where it's not behaviour on the grounds of leading or advancing society (as with the argument that men are more rational, more intelligent, more inclined to STEM, more adventurous, and the rest of it) because well, the Minds do all that. Social roles for humans are pretty much "you're a pet; a cherished, indulged, and well-maintained pet, but a pet". Sometimes some of the humans are given jobs, the same way we have working animals like draft horses and sheep dogs, interacting with other societies outside the Culture.
On a physical/physiological basis, as you say, there's no "on average men are stronger/taller/whatever than women", because you can rewrite your body so that "you want to be a seven foot tall Olympic weightlifter champion female? done and done!" Complete sex changes, so that now former male you is in a female body and pregnant by your former female, now in a male body, lover happen. In the same novel, that sex-swapped male to female back to male human gets changed into the body of a different species because he wants to explore their society which he finds more exciting than that of the Culture.
So there will only be a psychological notion of "I feel like a woman/I feel like a man", and that's pretty much what is going on with trans issues today. I think in Culture terms, since there is such a huge difference between what is possible for us today, and what they can do in their society, that even the ideal of maleness/femaleness will have greatly changed. If you can indulge in recreational gender-hopping, then the idea that you should be one particular sex forever is probably gone, even the idea of "okay, you're trans, now you're a woman, stay like that" will be too limiting.
I think the change in mindsets will be too great for arguments of today to hold for the future society; they won't accept "you are one particular sex and must be that way" because they're used to being able to tweak their selves any way they want. Even, as I said, the idea that "okay not your natal sex but your real innermost Real Woman sex", because what's a woman? what's a man? That depends on what you want it to be.
So to address it on the basis of today's arguments, I don't know. If you take an adult, or even an adolescent or child, and transform the body into the body they would have had if only the chromosomes had lined up... they're still going to have the experience of living as a man (just to take male-to-female trans people) and having that mindset. If you do it very early, at the ages of "my two year old knew they were trans" as some claim, then that may be different: if little Timmy is only Timmy for two years and is then Talitha for the next twenty, how much of an effect does the tiny period of 'boy' treatment affect them?
But then we run into the David Reimer case, where the person raised as a girl resisted and revolted against that, and maintained they knew they were really a boy (a very sad case, and John Money should have been locked up for life instead of celebrated as a pioneering genius).
So in that case, we're back to the arguments about the brain: is there such a thing as a male brain and a female brain? Is being trans a result of having a feminized brain in utero and so the sex change to the new body only works if there is a female brain in a female body?
Suppose we grow the brain along with the body, and everything is 100% female from the start, and then we transfer the mind over. Again, is there such a thing as the male mind versus female mind?
I think it theoretically would work best in the case of "we can identify at three weeks old that this is a trans baby, now we just need to switch the original's mind into the correct body and let it grow up as their real sex and gender" but at that stage, we're so far advanced that we're back in Culture territory where the parameters of the debate have changed drastically.
The real problem is the "I'm a real woman but I am not obligated to pass, or even try passing, and that is society's problem if it can't accept me as a woman" people/activists. I don't think someone with that belief would be happy about being given a 'real' woman's body, because that isn't the precise thing they want as acceptance. Indeed, by offering that, you're forcing them to comply with your views on gender and sex, which is the problem in the first place about cisnormativity and heteronormativity.
I guess I just an adaptable human. I'm a man's man today. I hunt, love to fuck, ski way too fast. If you plunked me in a woman's body tomorrow I would also love those things and I've met woman who do. Why wouldn't any curious human want to see both sides of sexuality if they could do it with perfection?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link