Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
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User ID: 290
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3hr ago
Modus ponens, modus tollens.
But only one of them leads to rains of fire and pillars of salt. (Ezekiel 16:49)
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3hr ago
What is the difference between "discriminating" against people based on an inherent trait they have no control over, and drawing a "social distinction" between people based on an inherent trait they have no control over? I choose to give drunken male people a wider berth than drunken female people. No one forced me to do this, so it's not mandatory. Couldn't you therefore say that I'm not discriminating against male people, I'm just drawing a social distinction between male and female people?
I was referring more to the choices made by the people between whom the distinction is drawn, and whether they have the ability to opt out of it if they personally choose to. It is the distinction between an Englishman choosing to attend a Protestant church and an Irishman choosing to attend a Catholic church, either being able to diverge from this if he so chooses, versus a charity giving food unquestioningly to a hungry Englishman while giving a hungry Irishman the third degree over whether he might fall short of perfect virtue in some way which would allow the charity matron to leave him to starve while thinking her own hands clean.
That seems to be exactly what you're threatening, even if you're doing it on behalf of another group of which you are not a member.
No, I am merely observing that, when one racial/ethnic group keeps its collective boot on the neck of another, karma has a tendency to bite the first group in the derrière.
This is no more the same thing as one group demanding that another group bare their neck to its boot, than 'Kyiv threatens to bomb Russia unless Russia stops invading them' is the same thing as 'Moscow threatens to bomb Ukraine unless Ukraine resigns itself to being Belarus writ large', or than the Easter Rising is the same thing as Bloody Sunday.
Oh, so you mean that in reality you would come up with some pretext to preferentially hire a female babysitter over a male, but insist that it's just because the girl is more "experienced" than the boy and their sex has nothing to do with it.
No, I mean that I would judge on the same characteristics as were I choosing between two applicants of the same sex.
I just happen to disagree with what seems to be your assertion that "allow rapists and sex pests free reign to rape and sexually assault to their heart's content" and "keep half the planet on a de facto sex offender registry from womb to tomb" are mutually exhaustive. (If this is not your assertion, what precisely do you acknowledge as being between those?)
nine times out of ten, your child would feel safer being left alone with a female babysitter than a male
I doubt that it would be that often, but I acknowledge the possibility that my child might agree more with you than with me, thus "I think it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of sex – but my child disagrees with me, and I believe that attempting to force the issue risks undermining both my efforts to teach them the things previous generations had to learn the hard way and my strategy for protecting them from abusers, sexual or otherwise, and regardless of any definition of the would-be perpetrators sex or gender."
Also, "my child might very well have opinions of their own" was referring to a broader category, which could include other, less one-sided, subcategories, e. g. the often-depicted-in-media 'opposite sex has cooties' phase. (I'm not sure whether this actually happens, and doubt that it is anywhere near as common, but if it happens, it could tilt the decision either way depending on whether I have a son or a daughter.
(In my response to the artificially constrained Gedankenexperiment posited earlier, note that, following the coin toss, I specified that I would take measures to prevent abuse by a male babysitter; they just happen to be the same measures I would take to prevent abuse by a female or intersex babysitter, both due to the fact that, even conceding your statistics arguendo I do not want to be the one individual in thirty-seven who loses everything betting at the roulette wheel on 'Albania' only to see it come up 'Ghadaffist Libya', and due to the fact that what I believe to be the most effective way of protecting a child from nonces can't be applied selectively. To the best of my knowledge, a sexual predator does not go from zero to Epstein in a single day. Like a tiger¹ unto Cervidae, they seek the most vulnerable; instead of a sambar with a broken leg, they seek a child who has been taught that (1.) they have no rights that their parents, or anyone given in loco parentis authority by their parents, are bound to respect, and that any word of complaint will be met with a total dismissal of the substance thereof in favour of a laser-focus on the sheer temerity of a child having any response to anything decreed by their owners parents other than a joyous acceptance² that makes an LLM chatbot seem like the enfant d'amour of R. Lee Ermey and Oscar the Grouch³, and (2.) anything involving certain parts of their body is (a.) deeply inherently shameful, and (b.) somehow their fault (even if they were praying the whole time that they would wake up and realise that it had been a nightmare).)
Trans activists sometimes accuse TERFs of being perverts who want to subject everyone to mandatory genital inspections before they're allowed to get changed. Interesting to see the shoe on the other foot. Note that such a rule would prevent ~95% of trans-identified males from using female changing facilities: advocating for it might get you tarred as a TERF by your erstwhile fellow-travellers.
I'm not advocating for it, per se; the operative word there is 'if'.
If you must have changing rooms divided by biological sex,
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Dividing by natal anatomy is more intrusive than by current anatomy, as the former involves digging into other people's medical charts as well as their genitals. If a woman walks into the women's changing room, takes off her clothes, and lo and behold! that individual has a vagina, than no woman had to see a penis in the designated penis-free zone; mutatis mutandis for the men's room.
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They should not be the only facilities available, compelling pre-operative trans people to use the facilities of their assigned-sex-at-birth, or the majority of them, making the use of the neutral facilities marked⁵ as indicative of transnessosity. Either would, in addition to exacerbating dysphoria and outing trans individuals, also demands that they endorse the anti-trans position; compare a Protestant schoolteacher demanding that the 80% Catholic student body recite the version of the 'Our Father' with 'trespasses' instead of 'debts'.
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Of the 87-95% (your link gave a range, 95% being only one end of which), how many have no intention or desire to undergo that part of transition, and how many have been denied the opportunity?
You realise what will happen, don't you? All of the male inmates who suddenly "realised" they had a female gender identity immediately after being convicted will be transferred to this shiny, comfortable facility. For a few months, all will be well in this facility. But eventually the number of "trans women" being transferred to this facility will reach the point at which the population density in this facility is the same as any other male prison
Perhaps I should have said 'one or more'; my point was that, if you cannot protect trans-women in the same facility as cis-men, and you cannot protect cis-women in the same facility as trans-women, then I don't know what else you can do but to treat trans-women as their own category in this instance.
What is not morally acceptable is to, whether it be motivated by personal animus or purely by bureaucratic indifference, decide that it is too inconvenient to fulfill the duty, inseparable from the practise of incarceration, of protecting all of the people one has deprived, even for the most solidly founded of causes, of the capacity to defend themselves⁴; this is the kind of thing that calls for people to end up in the dock at the Hague.
Yes, but doctors are gatekept and subject to safeguarding requirements.
¹My comparison is solely in terms of tactics; I do not intend to insult the character of these magnificent animals, whom I do not begrudge for their need to eat, any more than a military historian comparing the battle doctrine of an Allied general to his Axis counterpart is (at least prior to c. 2015) claiming any moral equivalency between them. Wildlife people, please do not send me angry letters again.
²If the sole determinant of entry into heaven is one's indirect effect on the prevalence of the sexual abuse of children, Aella will have had time to have an affair with every mutually consenting adult in the afterlife long before her mother's sperm donor (for he does not deserve any title a myriadth as respectable as 'father')⁶ has a snowball's chance in hell of coming within sight of the Pearly Gates. (And that's before considering the violent abuse.)
³Yes, I know they are both male; that is not in any way more than the most trivial obstacle, compared to the fact that one of them is a puppet.
⁴The same principle applies to the Ludovico Technique; if we posit an alternate universe, call it A Wind-Up Tangerine, in which Mr DeLarge either is never afflicted with or is cured of the part of the conditioning gives him an aversion to classical music, but is still incapable of violence, even if you think this is a improvement over the status quo, they shouldn't just abandon him to be victimised by everyone else.
⁵"The Joy Is Not Optional", Knowingless, May 2025
⁶"Marked Absent", Outlandish Claims, July 2024
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
14hr ago
Another possibility is that you could desalinate a small fraction of the literal ocean of water sitting next to California; however, this requires a lot of energy, the methods of obtaining which are unpopular.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
14hr ago
simply executing anyone suspected of assisting the Taliban in any capacity and the entire immediate family or tribe
If 'not assisting the Taliban' doesn't protect you from being murdered by coalition forces for assisting the Taliban, I'm not sure that that would have the desired effect. (cf. how Chen Sheng realised that 'not trying to overthrow the government' wouldn't protect him.)
The Taliban might have had less support if Allied commanders hadn't ordered their troops to ignore the rape of children by Afghan warlords with the 'it's part of their culture' excuse. ("In this house, General Napier is a hero. End of story.")
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
15hr ago
In short, mild discrimination and clear explanations of why that discrimination exists is the only thing that can make multiethnic societies work long-term.
No, the only thing that can make multiethnic societies work long-term is treating people as individuals rather than avatars of a racial collective.
Yes, I expect you to do something with this information because protecting the public is your job.
The thing to do with the information is to arrest and prosecute the individual black people who commit murder under the same standards as one does when a white person commits murder, and mutatis mutandis for other crimes.
Maybe it would be easier in the short term to haul the 'Black Race' before a magistrate and sentence them to a police regime that makes North Korea look like the Wild West, but that's why there's a Stairway To Heaven and a Highway To Hell.
recognise or guard against the increased threat that you potentially represent
shun you in any way they can possibly get away with
"They're the same picture."
Both of these come from a random Black person being judged not by his own actions but by the actions of people who resemble him. One may be state action while the other is un-coördinated private action, but to the Black man, day after day, being treated as guilty until proven innocent, watching his white neighbours enjoy the presumption of innocence he is denied through no fault of his own, the two are much of a muchness.
The mealy-mouthed apologetics given by these same people to excuse straightforward racism when it's aimed at whites.
I oppose that also; it just doesn't get defended here as much.
I am against it for the following reasons:
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It is wrong in itself.
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It undermines the credibility of those opposing racism aimed at other groups.
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Did I mention that racism, against white people as against any other group, is wrong?
(those that favour the 'prejudice plus power' definition of 'racism': you can substitute 'racial discrimination' if you would prefer, but don't think I haven't Noticed your attempts to amass the kind of structural power you attribute to white people)
It could all have been avoided if the Scottish government and the trans movement had just been willing to say 'no, the tattooed rapist who decided to be trans five seconds before his court case doesn't get to go to a women's prison'.
...and then a week later she gets assaulted/raped/murdered by the cis-male inmates, people send Strongly Worded Letters asking "what were you thinking‽" , and they have a much more principled case:
If you as a government take up the habit of confining people somewhere where they can neither defend themselves nor avoid potential violence, you have the responsibility to protect all of them. Not 'the ones that aren't scary', not 'the ones that have or had uteruses', not 'the ones that fit into your idea of how men and women ought to present themselves', not 'most of them', all of them.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
16hr ago
What exactly is the difference between "discrimination" and "social distinction"?
One is imposed on people to deny them opportunities, the other emerges from what people choose and is not mandatory.
I can't help but notice how parochial your dire warning is. [...] I note that this dire warning is only applicable in societies which contain a critical mass of black men. In Ireland, they represent about 0.65% of the population.
Then, for 'Black' substitute whatever subaltern group is closest to hand. (There were times when Irish people fell, or were shoved by Englishmen, into this category.)
Darkly reminiscent of the old joke about critics of Islam, but that's neither here nor there.
It is 'neither here nor there' because the demands in question differ in one crucial aspect; the Muslim extremists are demanding superiority, that you follow the rules of their religion, under threat of violence, while they are not similarly obligated to follow the rules of yours; racial/ethnic minorities are seeking equality, and a redress of the far more legitimate grievance that no person ought to spend their entire life on probation because of the circumstances of their birth. The same applies to the notion of expecting half of humanity to accept being treated as sex-offenders-in-waiting.
Are you implying that I'm some kind of weird outlier because I think it's legitimate to preferentially hire a female babysitter over a male? I actually think I'm the normal one in this regard....
No, it is entirely possible that you might be the normal one and I might be the weird outlier; however, sometimes the weird outliers are right and the normal ones are wrong.
would choose whether to hire a male or female babysitter by flipping a coin.
...in the thought experiment you gave. "You aren't allowed to learn anything else about the applicants other than their age and sex." In actual reality-based reality, I would be allowed to learn other things about the applicants, interview them, ask for references, &c. Furthermore, my child might very well have opinions of their own; these could also be a factor.
I think the overwhelming majority of people are actually in favour of sex segregation in certain key areas
One, the phrase 'certain key areas' miiiight be doing a lot of the work there. (see below)
Two, there is no shortage of historical examples of times when the overwhelming majority of people were in favour of something which wasn't right. How many stood against the Laundries?
then I think the latter half of that claim is simply ahistorical.
I do not claim that the conclusions were universally adopted so much as that they have been put forth and I find them credible.
Unfortunately these past eleven years, many people have been crawling out of the woodwork who don't acknowledge that racial discrimination is wrong. As their policy proposals carry with them an alarming possibility of some very ugly outcomes, I can only conclude that, if we set precedents which have the potential to be used in an attempt to justify said actions, we are playing with fire, and risk being very badly burned.
sports, changing rooms, women's prisons, hospital wards
My proposals:
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Each sport decides for itself (trans-activists and TERVes can direct their advocacy to the sporting bodies and hopefully turn down the temperature knowing that the other side gaining the upper hand won't be for all the marbles), defaulting to a definition based on hormone levels.
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If you must have changing rooms divided by sex, use the 'currently possessed anatomy' or 'hormone levels' definition, the former of which would shield people from having to be exposed to the other genitals; also have a sufficient quantity and quality of one-person gender-neutral changing rooms that they are regularly used by both cis-men and cis-women.
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Designate one facility specifically for trans-women; if you cannot protect a trans-man among cis-men, designate one for trans-men.
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I was unaware that there were sex-specific hospital wards, other than for sex-specific conditions; there will still be male and female doctors even in a single-sex ward, and the patients are unlikely to be in a condition to cause much if any harm.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
In the UK among other jurisdictions, rape is defined as forcible penetration with a penis.
And it used to be defined as to not apply within marriage; we changed that, and we can change the other.
No one has ever been impregnated via digital penetration alone. I imagine the number of people who have contracted STDs via digital penetration is vanishingly small.
If Alan rapes Barb with his penis, and he wears a condom, Barb is unlikely to be impregnated or contract a social disease; he is nevertheless prosecuted no less vigorously.
Do you have young children? If so, have you really just multiplied their risk of being sexually assaulted by 9x purely to prove how progressive you are?
No, I take measures to protect them even from a cis-woman.
"if the babysitter has sexually interfered with them, don't hire the babysitter again"
I was more referring to the prodromal phase; what would have been referred to twenty years ago as 'grooming'; don't hire that baby-sitter again if he/she/they start laying the groundwork for the worst offences.
you are demanding we stop discriminating on the basis of one trait we have no control over (sex) in favour of another (gender identity).
No, I am also opposed to discrimination on that basis.
you claim that some males feel "humiliated" by people correctly inferring that they are male, and that they might lash out in consequence.
I truthfully don't get what the threat is here.
I am attempting to illustrate possible nth-order effects.
Society treats people-born-with-male-anatomy as suspicious-by-default --> a precedent is set that people may rightly be judged by the behavior of their demographic rather than innocent-until-proven-guilty --> the 13/52 crowd ignores your distinctions and uses that precedent to treat Black people as suspicious-by-default --> years and decades of being followed in stores/avoided on the street/not picked up by taxicabs/&c. build up until Black people (and their white allies) decide that they have Had Enough, as we saw in 1968 and 2020. If it doesn't boil over, it can still lead to Bad Things done to Black people, such as Emmitt Till; the same can be said of judging individual Jews, such as Anne Frank, by the alleged acts of the Jewish people as a whole.
After the revelation of the horrors of the Third Reich, combined with the cruelties in the Unitedstatesian South, progressives, and in subsequent generations moderates, came to the conclusion that judging individuals by their race/ethnicity is dangerous, and ought to be treated as radioactive. (I don't mean realistic radioactivity, e. g. a glove 1% more radioactive than the 80%-lower-than-global-average local background, or spent fuel pellets that, had they powered Kublai Khan's stately pleasure dome, would have cooled off to the point where one could pick them up bare-handed and, as long as one doesn't eat them, be none the worse for wear. I'm referring to the Hollywood/Simpsons image of three-quarters rusted yellow barrels full of glowing Avada-Kedavra-green sludge that, had they existed in the hoary days when first were laid the foundation-stones of the Great Sphinx, would still cause cancer and monstrous birth defects at 100 metres.)
Subsequently, the same logic was extended to sex/gender, which, even if one does not believe it obligatory per se, nevertheless functions in a manner akin to the Jewish practise of gader saviv HaTorah, a fence around the Law.
"avoid hiring a babysitter who is a member of the demographic most likely to sexually interfere with them in the first place". Being progressive and not discriminating against male people is so important to you that you are completely fine with a male person sexually interfering with your child as many times as is necessary for your child to come to you and tell you that the babysitter has touched them inappropriately – as opposed to just taking the commonsense approach of not hiring a male babysitter in the first place.
My argument is isomorphic to the late Charlie Kirk's 2023 remarks on gun control.
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In both cases, there is a horrifying-to-contemplate problem threatening the most vulnerable members of our society (rape/mass shootings of the sort of which Columbine is the type specimen).
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In both cases, a seemingly simple solution is proposed (treat half the population as guilty until proven innocent/abolish private ownership of firearms).
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In both cases, many innocent people are held responsible for the actions of a few.
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In both cases, proponents of the suggested policy frame the drawbacks as meaningless, and their opponents' objections as petulant whinging and/or evidence that they deserve to be so held responsible.
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In both cases, the proposed policy is criticised for potential nth-order failure states (less credibility in opposing the more fanatical thirteen-fiftiers leading to either a racist dystopia or mass civil unrest/Iran in 2026)
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In both cases, the argument is made that the proposed policy is both:
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a cure worse than the disease, and
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not necessary as there are better solutions (Mr Kirk's proposal to have armed guards at schools/teach children that certain parts of their body are private and if the baby-sitter shows too much interest in those parts they should tell an adult whom they trust; listen to them if they do so. [Note that if my young child thought as you do and did not wish to be left with an assigned-male-at-birth baby-sitter, I would not attempt to force the issue; this will also show that he/she/they can trust me if the assigned-female-at-birth baby-sitter behaves inappropriately with her fingers/an object, or brings in another person, assigned-male-at-birth or otherwise, who does so.])
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
civil liability that requires Knuth's Up-Arrow Notation to write down
That might run into eighth-amendment issues....
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
When you are walking down the street late at night, and you pass a drunk person acting aggressively, I'm going to hazard a guess that the size of the berth you give them depends heavily on whether they're male or female. You do this not on the basis of what they, personally, have done (you don't know if they have a criminal record, they're a complete stranger to you). You do this on the basis of: if they're a male person who gets in your face and tries to hit you, if they succeed, they will do a lot more damage than if they're a female person.
Another example. If you're not the parent of a small child, imagine that you are. You need to leave your child alone for an evening, your child is too young to be left alone, and none of your friends or family are available to look after the child. You put up an ad saying you're looking for a babysitter, and receive two applications: a fifteen-year-old female, and a fifteen-year-old male. (If you like, the fifteen-year-old male can claim to "identify as" a girl, but still has fully intact and function male genitalia.) You aren't allowed to learn anything else about the applicants other than their age and sex. Who do you hire?
Am I wrong about any of the above?
Yes, you are wrong about both of the above.
WRT the baby-sitter, I flip a coin, and take the same protective measures for 15F as I would for 15M, 15tF, 15tM, or 15X.
only demographic capable of penetratively raping others with anatomy alone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger
although most of them are mature and empathetic enough* that they can eventually learn to understand why parents are more willing to leave their child alone with a female stranger than a male
Agreeing with you is not a sine qua non of maturity.
without throwing a tantrum
Disagreeing with you does not necessarily constitute a 'tantrum'.
I just think that the amount of mental distress caused is infinitesimal compared to the amount of mental distress caused by a child being sexually assaulted or penetratively raped by an adult male. It's a trade-off I am perfectly willing to make
But if you consider second-/third-/umpteenth-order effects, people being treated as suspicious by default on the basis of natal anatomy and its physical sequelae creates a precedent, which will be seized upon by the 13/50 crowd to support similar suspicion-by-default on the basis of skin colour.
This will lead to escalating tensions in society, until it boils over. If we're lucky, we get a rerun of 1968 or 2020; if the dice come up snake-eyes, society collapses and we end up less able to prosecute rapes by strangers, and much less able to prosecute rapes within families.
you're invoking the historical example of marital rape
To make the point that, even if your sole goal is to minimise the rape of people-born-with-female-genitals, your strategy might be less than optimal.
the policy you're advocating is a rapist's credo
Less of this, please.
If parents legally could not take "candidate's sex" into account when hiring a babysitter, [emphasis added]
Legally, I do not support non-discrimination law intruding into that particular case; I do not think you should end up in the dock on suspicion of favouring a woman over a man, a white woman over a black woman, or any other such distinction, in hiring, in your personal capacity, an individual for services in your personal residence, even if I disagree with your reasoning.
can you envision any scenario in which this wouldn't result in tens of thousands of additional child rape victims every year? If so, how?
Teach children that certain parts of their bodies are private, that they have the right to not have them touched is a way that feels wrong, that this right supersedes parental or parentally-delegated authority; or at least don't ban books that teach this.
If their baby-sitter makes them feel uncomfortable in some un-nameable manner, listen to them and possibly find another baby-sitter rather than telling them to shut up and not be 'disrespectful'.
You still, still, still have not answered my question on whether "gender identity" is innate or not.
I believe it most likely is, per the reported experiences of transgender individuals; as I do not personally identify with gender any more than any other aspect of the meat-puppet I inhabit, I do not have the ability to say for certain.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
What "purposes" are these?
The ones that, if you don't know her very well, and aren't being hired for purposes involving her body, are any of your business.
An individual is responsible for what they, personally have done; they are not responsible for what they are capable of doing but haven't done, or what people who share characteristics with them have done. Therefore, the decision about how much, if any, of an individual's body is relevant to you belongs to that individual alone, unless and until that particular individual commits a wrongful act.
Admittedly, this is dependent on the axiom that the well-being of individuals is the measurement of ethics, with one's duties being derived from the effects on other individuals; however, the contrary world-view, of the subordination of the individual to the family/community/other collective abstraction, has been known to lead to many Bad Things, including, as part of many societies' traditional marital practises, the forcible rape of women-as-in-people-born-with-vulvae (when they first landed on the moon, it would be another seven years before it became a crime for a husband to rape his wife).
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
3d ago
So you think a male person can flip back and forth between being a woman and being a man, purely depending on what clothes he's wearing at any particular moment?
No, I believe that whether a person is a man or a woman depends on why you are asking, just as with the difference between a 'blegg' and a 'rube'.
A male person does not become a woman just because he's wearing a dress and makeup.
No, if she identifies as a woman, she is a woman for most purposes. Things which involve the genitals are, assuming she has not had the relevant chirurgery, one of the exceptions; medical concerns are another, in which biological sex must be broken down into multiple aspects, such as hormones, current anatomy, natal anatomy, and chromosomes. (cf. Neural Categories, E. Yudkowsky, February 2008; How An Algorithm Feels From Inside, ibid.)
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
In the context of genital care, yes (assuming your statistics are correct).
In contexts where their underwear stays on, no.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
We were talking about whether or not the anti-trans side was recasting the distinction raised by the pro-trans side. If the anti-trans side was the first to set the distinction, than it was the pro-trans side that was doing the recasting.
I'm referring to the distinction between 'gender' and 'sex', not the distinction between 'men' and 'women'.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
I've heard the interpretations that they ate some dodgy grain.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
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If I were to claim that I was entitled to know any other aspect of your medical chart, on the grounds that it is statistically correlated with propensity to commit assault, most everyone would agree that I was out of line. The pro-trans faction is attempting to apply this consistently; the anti-trans faction is the one claiming that genitals are somehow less of a personal matter and should follow a different set of rules making them more of a public interest.
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It is possible to, by observation, deduce someone's probable genital configuration, just as it is possible to deduce many other aspects of a person's medical history. However, this does not mean that one is entitled to know whether their deductions are correct, nor that they ought to be brought up in polite company.
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The statistical correlations between biological sex and violent crime are claimed by many with whom you are probably familiar to have parallels with race. (I am sceptical of these claims, but the following argument holds even in a parallel universe in which they hold.) If people act on their knowledge of those statistics, innocent people of certain races are subjected to lifelong humiliation and ill-use, until it blows up in everyone's face. Thus, *we regard information derived from that source to be inadmissible.
Because it makes a bunch of autogynephiles sad when they don't. Because this group of totalitarian, controlling narcissists cannot tolerate the slightest suggestion that anyone, even a complete stranger, is failing to "validate" them and their "identity" 100% of the time, even unconsciously. You are not only demanding that cisgender people yasslight trans people, but also that they gaslight themselves. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
I, personally, am not making any demands regarding your, or anyone else's, beliefs regarding transgenderism. You deserve the ability to think what you want, and any attempt to deter you from doing so by imposing Consequences is an injustice. The same applies for arguing, in the general case, for your beliefs; I do not endorse any employer refusing to hire you because they read your Posts.
I am only asking that, when it comes to interactions with actual people, you not treat their genitals as relevant by default, and not bring up the matter any more than you would any other medical condition.
I realise that some people on the 'woke' left demand further concessions, and in that circumstance, even though I disagree with what you say, I support your right to say it.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
Prior to to pro-trans proposition, everybody was using a sex-based distinction
And, like many other things 'everybody' was doing, some of us realised that it wasn't right.
(Many of the social movements of the post-WWII era are of this sort; someone realises that "Yes, we've always done it this way, but it's wrong. It's hurting people, and it needs to change. The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is an early example of this argument, being a reductio ad absurdum; see also Edgerton's Sick Societies.
Can't say I noticed the pro-trans side wanting to keep their genitals private.
I will concede that, in that case, they are justified in dividing by currently possessed genitals, i. e. the ones with which they are presented, and for this purpose, a trans-woman remains a man unless or until she has that part of her anatomy altered.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
everyone didn't immediately hand the reins of society over to them
It's not 'immediately handing the reins of society over to' someone to change a particular thing that is unjust.
The abolition of segregation wasn't 'handing the reins of society over' to the Civil Rights advocates. (Some of Ibram X. Kendi's asks might fall under that heading, but I don't think he would have made them if there hadn't been an above-lizardman-constant section of society trying to maintain Jim Crow.)
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
5d ago
And the Southern States didn't agree that 'it isn't right' for plantation-mongers to own Black people.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
6d ago
You frame this as though this was some novel innovation on the part of an "anti-trans faction", but in fact entitlement to know and act on the genital/gonad configuration of strangers has been a bog-standard feature of society for centuries, and arguably back to the beginning of recorded history.
And when the pro-trans faction were like, 'But this isn't right!', and sought to change it, the anti-trans faction objected to their cheese being moved.
This is far from a unique pattern in history.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
6d ago
But is that a circumstance of birth, or of them being carefully taught before they are six or seven or eight?
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
6d ago
I have a hard time envisioning a helpful "purpose" for which the answer to the question "what is a woman?" includes people with penises.
Any purpose that does not involve anyone interacting with said penes.
Big Yud put a lot of stock in the idea of definitions that "cleave reality at the joints"
Sometimes reality has multiple sets of joints, and at which ones we choose to cleave reality can be a function of our goals; e. g. the currently accepted definition of 'fish', excluding whales, cleaves reality at the joints of 'evolutionary relatedness', whereas older definitions which include whales cleave reality at a different set of joints, namely body shape and habitat.
An entity born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes.
So you would consider someone with XY chromosomes, who, due to some hormonal-response factor, developed ovaries instead of testicles, to be female?
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
6d ago
They haven't re-cast them as sex, they just disagreed with the goal of the pro-trans faction.
The re-casting was how they sought to thwart the goal of the pro-trans faction.
To the best of my understanding, the pro-trans faction proposed to divide sex from gender, such that all social distinctions would fall under the latter category, and the biological differences would be as private as any other medical history, HIPAA avant la lettre.
The anti-trans faction, believing themselves entitled to know, and act on the knowledge of, the genital/gonadal configurations of strangers, then started referring to 'sex' instead of 'gender', 'males' instead of 'men', and 'females' instead of 'women'; thus allowing them to make the assertion that other people's genitalia are any of their business without being seen to make said assertion, and avoid anyone asking why they are concerned with other people's anatomy.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
6d ago
The trap is that they are hoping to get a soundbite that looks bad when taken out of context, which they can run endlessly in attack ads.
Celestial-body-NOS
Social Dominance Orientation is the root of all kinds of evil.
6d ago
It's also a bad analogy because nothing actually hinges on the question of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich.
...until some arcane point of tax or tariff law depends on it (this was why the Supreme Court had to weigh in on whether a tomato is a fruit), and the Red Tribe and Blue Tribe converge on different answers.
among progressives the stock response to the question "what is a woman?" is a sputtering refusal to answer
Again, that might be different if progressives had read the Sequences.
Another possible response might be "With what purpose do you inquire?".
an adult human female
And what is a 'female'?
Even limiting ourselves to biological factors, there are at least five possible definitions.
All traditions were recent once....
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