site banner
PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   24427 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

When discussing pharmaceutical and surgical interventions in the treatment of gender dysphoria, the gender-critical among us often draw parallels with bodily integrity identity disorder. This is a rare psychiatric disorder in which a person experiences profound distress because of the presence of one or more of their limbs, and requests to have these limbs amputated to alleviate said distress (or tries to amputate them themselves). Colloquially, one might say that people with this condition are able-bodied but identify as disabled.

Given that no one thinks that surgical amputation is the correct treatment for this psychiatric disorder, we gender-criticals argued, it follows that surgical intervention is the wrong approach for people with gender dysphoria. If it's wrong to amputate a mentally ill's person's arm just because they say it's causing them distress, how can it be right to do the same for a penis or breast?

Sadly, one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens, the medical establishment has noted the parallels, and it is coming to a rather different conclusion:

Sensational news from late last week, that doctors amputated two fingers for a 20-year-old patient to alleviate the young man’s mental distress over being able-bodied, contained a buried clue: “He related his condition to gender dysphoria.”

... A 2018 ethics analysis in a Cambridge University Press publication concludes that there is “no logical difference between the conceptual status of BIID and transsexualism”. It goes on to say that, “given that individuals with transsexualism are offered gender reassignment surgery it seems to us that individuals with BIID ought at least to be considered for treatment, including elective amputation in some cases.”

... But what would it mean to accept the amputee identity at scale, the way we have accepted trans rights as a universal humanitarian movement? Drawing exact parallels, we would likely see a total saturation of amputee culture, from amputee story hour to centring amputee voices in DEI training, and doctors warning parents of the very real suicide risks for amputee-identifying children whose parents refuse to accept them as surgically modified cripples or invalids. Advocates would talk of being “assigned able-bodied at birth” to persuade activist teachers and medical associations to adopt the absolutist position that any attempt to talk kids out of amputee surgery amounts to “conversion therapy”.

The journalist Mia Hughes recently asked readers to imagine a society in which amputee advocates enjoyed the same cultural and political victories as trans advocates.

“Imagine there were a sudden 4000% increase in teens identifying as amputees, but we were all forbidden from being concerned. Instead we were supposed to celebrate it,” she posted on X. “Imagine schools teaching children as young as kindergarten that some people have amputee identities, that they get to choose how many limbs they have. Posters promoting body mutilation adorned the walls of many classrooms.”

Nothing specific to add to this* beyond despair. The Anglophone medical establishment appears to be fully ideologically captured. It doesn't matter if the Tavistock is shuttered and there's a rash of lawsuits directed at youth gender clinics in the US: if you're a medic who's internalised (or been made to internalise) the gender ideology worldview, the implications of that worldview and the role of the medical establishment it affirms have far-reaching implications in medical domains unrelated to gender medicine itself. At this point I honestly can't rule out psychiatrists prescribing anorexics appetite suppressants to aid them in achieving their "bodily attainment goals".

*Other than why the fuck are Canadian doctors so keen to help their fellow citizens maim or destroy their bodies??!!

Touching on this subject, and also following on from the previous Culture War thread where I was asked how I feel about the current state of the Catholic Church, here we go - something to offend everybody!

Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity, 08.04.2024

The RadTrads are already heresy-hunting, the media will be all over the bits about abortion, surrogacy, and transgender rights, and of course the Spirit of Vatican II types are disappointed, sorely and gravely disappointed, as per usual.

  1. The dignity of the body cannot be considered inferior to that of the person as such. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly invites us to recognize that “the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’” Such a truth deserves to be remembered, especially when it comes to sex change, for humans are inseparably composed of both body and soul. In this, the body serves as the living context in which the interiority of the soul unfolds and manifests itself, as it does also through the network of human relationships. Constituting the person’s being, the soul and the body both participate in the dignity that characterizes every human. Moreover, the body participates in that dignity as it is endowed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition. It is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as generated by others, and it is through their bodies that men and women can establish a loving relationship capable of generating other persons. Teaching about the need to respect the natural order of the human person, Pope Francis affirmed that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.” It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception. This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! As someone allegedly said, the Church may be a whore, but she's my Mother 🙆‍♀️

I don’t understand the distinction between curing congenital defects and sex changes? Surely the person undergoing the procedure would consider them one and the same? If the one doesn’t affect the unique dignity of the person, why should the other? Why does the natural order of the human person exclude some chromosomal ”abnormalities” but not others?

I’m not Catholic, but I’d readily accept some argument to this end. This one feels really light on God.

I don’t understand the distinction between curing congenital defects and sex changes?

Because having a congenital disease is a disease and being a man or woman isn’t.

I don’t understand the distinction between curing congenital defects and sex changes?

They would be wrong. God made some men and some women, being mentally ill or preferring to be the other doesn’t change it.

Thank you for translating.

What would you say the pope would say if we had actual etiology with a highly predictive biological test for trans? I also wonder what progressives would say for those who tested negative and want to claim the identity.

Symptom alleviation and palliative care towards conformity with biological sex?

Catholic doctrine does not have room for trans as, like, a real thing. It might be a mental illness contracted through no fault of the individual’s own, but the onus is on the individual to seek to conform with biological sex roles. It might be a hormone disorder, but treatment would be to adjust trans women’s hormones towards a more typical Hetero-male profile. It might be a social contagion, but the onus is on the individual to seek to conform themselves to the will of God. What it most certainly isn’t is women in men’s bodies that society has to accommodate. Some individuals- like the entire LGBT community- simply have a hard time conforming to the will of God, but that doesn’t make God’s will the one that is wrong.

But do the genitals at birth necessarily correspond to God's will more than experienced gender identity does?

(also, given the Church's recent history, concerning themselves with the genitals of infants is, as they say, Not A Good Look.)

It seems likely. I mean, if someone says they're actually a fish, and if we had the technology to turn them into a fish, we'd still probably err on the side of their mind having a problem as opposed to their bodies having a problem. If someone is physically male but claims to be a female, either their body or their mind is wrong. Given all the ways the mind can go wrong, and given that there is nothing obviously abnormal about their body, it seems reasonable to assume the abnormality is in the mind. Especially since we can't actually physically change someone from a male to a female or vice versa, we can make them look and feel a bit more like the other gender.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats