As someone who has become deeply radicalized (and the truscum types lost anyway so who cares?) I'm not sure that their position is attractive either.
Gender dysphoria existing doesn't necessarily justify turning everyone into, essentially, a care provider to people with that condition by affirming their identity. Or being forced to deal with the inevitable externalities that come with allowing such changes to their perceived sex. They simply aren't women, even if they have a condition that makes them want to be and acknowledging it is dangerous.
Arguably the attractiveness of the "truscum" position is partly because it coincided of both low visibility of transpeople and also just a lower level of ability in legally enforcing their claims. One of these is intrinsic, the other contingent.
And, of course, there's the argument that the sort of society that wants to Be Kind^(tm) in this way simply will not/cannot maintain that sort of sharp distinction.
We only have a couple of examples but...
Historically, the distinction was "gender"= social norms for manhood and womanhood, while "sex"= biological X/Y/ gamete status. A child raised in a distant lab by sexless robot aliens, with absolutely no conception of human society, might not have a "gender"; but they would still have a "sex."
If blank slateism is true, yes.
That's kind of the problem. The ideological fortress is of use to larger groups than just the trans activist segment that captured it so now people don't have a way to disentangle themselves from ridiculousness like Tickle without losing their motte entirely. And they haven't found it because
That version of gender did have real uses as a rhetorical countermove against the sex-determinist appeal-to-nature fallacy
If they were only attacking the fallacious version of that argument then trans activists would have a thinner wedge to work with. You can accept that it's ludicrous to assume static or totalizing gender roles without accepting that gender has nothing to do with sex (which is where we are) or the sort of doctrinaire blank slateist/anti-sex-based role position that came to dominate.
It also only has to hold for a couple of months
(Before someone says that Kamala is no Obama)
Tanista
2mo ago
Admirable goals. But if you can't actually pay for your rumspringa yourself some pragmatism has to seep in.
Maybe two years of fornicating and drinking and less debt to worry about is a good compromise.
Tanista
2mo ago
Yes. This is the standard response I get, and it seems plausible (though one wonders why less "woke"/diverse nations don't simply institute IQ tests).
I guess the only real response is "I said 'most viable', not 'easy'". Yes, cutting away whatever makes businesses unwilling to do straight IQ testing and starving the large administrative sector attached to colleges is not going to be easy. And huge swathes of the educated populace are not in favor of it for both self-interested and ideological reasons.
But, if the government is going to be involved in backing and forgiving loans, there has to be rationing. Much stricter rationing.
I can see employers get more legal leeway on IQ tests and other disparate impact bait before you actually roll back women in the workplace or actually pay to fully compensate people for their perceived economic loss they suffer when they have kids
Tanista
2mo ago
Sure. But even cutting a lot of degrees down to 2-years would be a not-insignificant gain.
And I'm unconvinced that certain non-technical fields especially need a long stint in college.
Putting aside deeply illiberal solutions that both sides refuse to even consider, it seems like the most viable solution suggested by your post is to simply cut down on college as a necessary rite of passage.
How many people really need to spend four years (and an increasingly large amount of money) on a degree, if we're being honest?
Tanista
3mo ago
He said this before getting Man of Steel:
Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan’s] Batman Begins. ”Batman’s dark.” I’m like, okay, ”No, Batman’s cool.” He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go.
So did the producers push him in that direction or did they find the man for the job?
My intuition was that Batman vs Superman was a studio mandate to rush the shared universe, Snyder tried to do some comic grimdark/Frank Miller inspired stuff and couldn't pull it off.
Just as, iirc, a lot of Watchmen fans argue he didn't get Watchmen either. There were a lot of complaints about Snyder insisting on the violence and gore itself being cool for their own sake so this isn't even new. But obviously far more people feel invested in Batman and Superman than Watchmen so they didn't make as much of an impact.
Ironically it even managed to ruin gravitas by proxy in making the DC films, Snyder and all that copy him double down on seriousness to insane degrees.
Nothing about Snyder's work before DCEU implies that he had to take a turn to go where he did. I think that's just who he is. I sometimes even appreciate his clear disdain for certain allegedly immovable parts of DC canon
And who he is is someone who should never have been given control of an entire cinematic universe. Zach Snyder being allowed to act as some sort of auteur or writer-director when his best works like 300 were mainly strong on visuals and he needs at least two tries to make a decent superhero movie is one of the more amazing coups in Hollywood
He really must just be a great guy to be around.
I said she wasn't stupid. Which is what's implied by wondering how an econ student could make these basic mistakes.
She's not making mistakes, she's pandering. We know this because of how she treats something she has even more experience with. She was openly contemptuous of a (very stupid imo) left-wing view up until it suited her politically. Whatever else she is, she wasn't stupid enough to believe that view when she actually had to enforce the law and practicality mattered. She simply doesn't care now that her job is different.
aren't you somewhat responsible for greatly strengthening the existing circuitry that links that visual cue to a state of arousal and sexual reward?
It may be true but most men won't perceive it that way because our perception is that abstaining will just make you more distracted. This is actually the most common advice: fast long enough that you redirect the inevitable energy towards something useful. The idea of retaining your sexual energy has taken on a life of its own amongst the porn-saturated via NoFap but seems to predate it so the idea was out there.
It's unlike chocolate, so I think the condemnation might actually be stronger from the other direction: you're going to feel arousal anyway. The problem is you're associating sexual arousal with an ultimately fraudulent reward and powerlessness, which heightens the anxiety that comes with feeling sexual desire.
She was also a prosecutor and actually did that job for years and actively mocked left-wing views on crime before turning around when BLM was big and downplaying her experience.
It's not a mystery and she's not stupid, just a weathervane.
Tanista
3mo ago
Just neurotic people looking for something to be neurotic about.
I guess them larping as Saudi women at least spares the video game and rock industries their tender mercies.
Just the opposite of any recent progressive justice system "reform" like the NY bail reform (that let those migrants who got in a brawl with the cops or people arrested with body parts out) that would be a start. The knob was turned in one direction and made things worse, they can turn it in the other.
Yeah, he was asked specifically about Elon and pivoted to talking about "keyboard warriors" in general. People just ran with it because he didn't explicitly admit there was little he could do.
Which would be accurate but kind of unproductive and humiliating when you're trying to discipline the kids who're still gonna be in school next semester.
Tanista
3mo ago
There was a post recently about how Elon is a "reply guy" (meaning not really creating imaginative content and more just reposting and adding minimal commentary).
And it's true.
And yet, the bluntest, least original things can be funny if you have the right target.
Tanista
3mo ago
There are people who still desperately cling onto the notion that crime is directly a result of poverty.
Except sex crime of course.
And why would your first solution to "there's a refugee problem" be "stabilize that entire country"?
Tanista
3mo ago
Contra @Amadan and @100ProofTollBooth, I'll say that I pretty much agree with the core of this post and I don't think it's content-free.
I can't deny that this video of Kara Swisher writing off Elon for moral reasons before being reminded that Elon actually does try to build things that matter to actual people immediately came to my mind reading that post. It's definitely a thing, though the level of generalization and invective may be against Motte rules.
Tanista
3mo ago
We can abandon the category. I'm just skeptical that one particular cultural preference -"liking diversity" - can explain everyone moving in one direction on this.
Even if we say there is no real "red tribe" surely some elites just don't give a fuck? If it was just ideological you'd also expect people like Johnson to exploit the anti-immigration sentiments of the populace to great acclaim and glory. Yet they start that way and either don't do anything or make it worse.
Especially since they can get more than enough people for their class while cutting down on the huge numbers.
Tanista
3mo ago
I can buy that blue tribe is driven by an ideologically motivated positive outgroup bias.
But it isn't just blue tribe or it would have ended when they lost elections. What about the Tories? What about the business owners?
Tanista
3mo ago
The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.
Do you see this "better" immigration policy on the horizon anywhere in Europe? Is anyone calling for cutting out sub-Saharan Africans or MENA migrants specifically while maintaining your hypothetical improved immigration system?
If not, why not?
Yes. That would be the fallacious version.
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