WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
WandererintheWilderness
5hr ago
Far be it from me to defend WhiningCoil, whose demeanor and positions I find deeply objectionable, but if you will tolerate my nitpicking - I think that in "(Drooling Retard Edition with words, words, words for the slow kids in the back who have hammers they can't be trusted with)", the opening slur refers to the kind of guy who would post a lengthy verbose message instead of a snappy call to violence, i.e. to the persona reluctantly adopted by WhiningCoil himself - not to the people who asked for the verbose version. Note that, although you quoted it as a plural, it's singular in his post.
Of course, this still leaves "the slow kids in the back..." as being obviously directed at the mod team. As I said, not seeking to help his case, merely indulging my inner pedant.
WandererintheWilderness
8hr ago
While I disapprove of him generally, and don't trust his Constitutional analysis as far as I could throw it, I do have to sympathize with his bemused "this is what I talked about doing" refrain. It was, and if I was in his shoes I would probably feel equally bemused and annoyed that the media flips its lid every time I implemented another point of the program I'd been very loudly advocating for years, as if I'd gotten elected under false pretenses and revealed hidden true colors. I'd wager he's less concerned with the exact wording of the law than with a sense of… fair play? "Well I said I'd do all this, and the American people elected me anyway in full knowledge of that, so it can't be as outrageous and anti-democratic as my enemies are now claiming."
WandererintheWilderness
11hr ago
I repeat, there is no viable political or legal solution
Not if you treat "politics" as a zero-sum popularity contest to determine whose side will get to steamroll over the other one in all cases and in all respects. There is an obvious solution if we introduce such concepts as negotiation and compromise.
The way I see it, the school boards are stubbornly refusing to give an inch on "stop showing sexually explicit LGBT material" because they think that giving in would lead to a slippery slope. In short order they'd face a general ban on LGBT materials in schools, and, down the line, a federal ban on homosexuality in general. While a few zealots and a few perverts might specifically want the pornography, it is not the primary concern of the school boards or the general-purpose LGBT activists.
The obvious solution here is meeting in the middle, with credible enforcement mechanisms to enforce the compromise in the long term. The Left pledges to have a zero-tolerance policy for pornographic materials in school; the Right pledges not to play any games like redefining non-explicit LGBT material as "pornography" to artificially extend that ban. Write both of these policies into law, and enforce those laws. Solved. Equilibrium.
It is the civilized solution, and the only reason it couldn't work - the very reason the school boards are refusing to be the ones who take the first step in that direction - is the very existence of rhetoric like yours on both sides. If the loudest voices on the opposite side are always ranting about how there's no point in trying to compromise and they should just exterminate the enemy, you're not going to want to play the mug's game of negotiating with these people. You'll conclude that you should just exterminate the enemy. In fact, if anyone on your side looks like they're thinking about negotiation, you might start ranting very loudly about how pointless that would be… And there you have it, vicious cycle. But I believe that vicious cycle of mutual paranoia can be broken; if it couldn't, we wouldn't have civilization in the first place. Someone's just got to be the bigger person eventually.
You should go to the theater more often. The pantomime dame of traditional British panto, for example, is a perfect example of a performance style that's quite similar to gay drag, but intended to amuse a wide audience (including young children), not to arouse in any way. You would also be hard-pressed to argue that a hyper-traditonalist production of Hamlet where Ophelia is played by a young lad in period dress, as she would have been in Shakespeare's time, is shooting for "fetish content".
I think we were implicitly talking about men dressing as women rather than women dressing as men, but you'll find an even greater wealth of 'wholesome' examples of crossdressing if you start looking at crossdressing women and girls - the archetypal Eowyn/Mulan/etc. story is hardly a bodice-ripper.
And all that is without wading into the Trans Question in anyway, as that would be tedious and probably unproductive.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
If we want to play it that way, I don't think changing "This is fine" to "This is unfortunate and you should feel sorry for them" would add too much complexity. "Sometimes people are disabled, and you should give the sympathy rather than mockery" is also something children are perfectly able to grasp. (Of course, I disagree with the premise. Many intersex conditions are perfectly harmless, in which case I see no reason why they should be taught as "afflictions" any more than, say, being left-handed.)
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
GBRK is saying that based on his martial arts experience, he's aware it would be all too easy to get killed or gravely injured in no-holds-barred hand-to-hand combat. Not that pulling out a knife in a formal martial-arts fight where both fighters follow the rules and no one is going in for a kill would ever be appropriate.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
At 13 or so, obviously you need to explain sex and how babies are made.
Thirteen strikes me as kind of silly, having grown up in the country. Anyone over six will have seen some pair of animals doing something, believe me.
(This doesn't mean children will know, or need to know, the ins and outs of sex. I can't remember a time when I didn't know that pregnancy happens when the male puts its thingie in the female's thingie; but it took me until puberty to realize that thrusting is a necessary part of the process. The basics of "where babies come from", though - come on. In no pre-19th century society were children ever spared the basic knowledge that it has something to do with touching naughty bits together.)
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
As to why the "introducing little children to drags" thing exists, see my thoughts here — my best guess is that it's a bizarrely misjudged attempt to counteract the anti-trans argument that goes "trans women are functionally drag queens, drag is a sexual practice that shouldn't be allowed in public, therefore trans women shouldn't be allowed in public" by denying the 'drag is inherently sexual' step of the reasoning, instead of the 'drag queens and trans women are the same thing' step.
Regarding this particular school board, though, I don't think they looked too closely at the material in the first place. They saw a generally-pro-LGBT book and rubber-stamped it without even trying to judge its specific merits.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
The comparison strikes me as a strawman. Degenerative diseases and sexual abuse are inherently upsetting topics. Being intersex is a minor, harmless anatomical deviation from the norm. I cannot imagine a child of any age being upset at being told it exists. They might, at most, giggle a bit.
I mean, it's pretty straightforward. You can argue it's rare and not worth bringing up unless you have an intersex kid actually there in the classroom at risk of being bullied for it. But "too complex"? "Normally girls' bodies look one way and boys' bodies look another way. Very rarely, people are born a little different, with a mix and match. This is fine." Pretty straightforward. Hell, bearded women used to be sideshow attractions and remain one of the Stock Circus Characters that children might very well be exposed to in a comic book or cartoon. They'll mostly just think it's funny. They certainly won't think it's complex.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
I think, if you want to be more charitable than "activists doggedly and automatically want to normalize anything which scandalizes prudes without stopping to think if maybe, sometimes, the prudes have a point", it's a response to anti-trans attempts to equate trans women presenting female in public with drag. The right-wing firebrands say "so-called trans women are doing drag, a sex thing, in *public", and the activists maladaptively decide to respond with "uh, actually, drag isn't inherently sexual" instead of sticking with "yeah, well trans women aren't the same thing drag queens".
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
This is all a pretty silly thought experiment, but Scott seemed to suggest making outlaw status exclusively the Supreme Court's last line of defense against tyranny when its dictates are ignored by the über-powerful and the Court cannot get any other branch of government to enforce its will in the matter. (As opposed to bringing it back as a standard punishment for random criminals.) It would pretty much only get deployed against politicians and billionaires - against people the entirety of a corrupt executive branch is refusing to touch. Were Donald Trump declared an outlaw tomorrow morning, I find it hard to believe that anyone would shoot a random suburban grandpa by mistake.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
Regarding the listed contents, I do think it is inappropriate to be teaching four-year-olds about "leather" - in a sexual context - or even "drag queens", the attempted desexualization of which I find more than a little bemusing. I don't believe crossdressing itself is inherently sexualized, but drag as a subcultural tradition has always had a strong erotic element, and it's kind of bizarre to teach children about it when they quite possibly haven't even properly done the birds and the bees yet.
"Intersex flag" I would, however, strongly defend. Being intersex is an anatomical trait, not a sexual behavior. Four-year-olds can very well be intersex themselves. Teaching them to be at peace with it, and teaching their classmates that it would be wrong to bully people for being intersex, seems perfectly defensible. Indeed, viewed in this context, the intersex flag is just about the only pride flag which could apply to a four-year-old.
Again, I'm just not sure how his friends could take the mainstream left-wing view of e.g. race and remain his friends. The mainstream left-wing view of race demands that you cut off anyone who gives the time of day to race science. And defines anyone who does as right-leaning by definition. Anyone who goes to parties with Scott is either not paying attention, or a very heterodox leftist indeed. I think accepting the premise in the original Red Tribe Vs Blue Tribe post that the Grey Tribe is a third, neutral entity is the only real way to describe what Scott's friends are like. He might very well be living in a tighter bubble than before, but it's not a left-wing bubble, because no actual left-wing bubble would tolerate his presence within itself.
(It's not just race, either, though that's the most prominent Schelling point. A mainstream leftist does not tolerate a friend who is outspokenly well-disposed toward capitalism - or indeed, one who casually, openly criticizes "wokeness", by that name. As an actual heterodox. This isn't to say all leftists are actively anti-capitalist and pro-cancel-culture, but nevertheless they treat it as a point of etiquette that the reverse opinions should not be embraced in public, for fear of looking like Those People. Scott, as a good Grey Triber, happily takes potshots at wokeness's illiberalism while taking it as a given that Capitalism is Good.)
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
I'm not sure what follow-up to Radicalizing the Romanceless you're talking about, but from the summary I don't see the inconsistency. Recognizing that a problem is real, but disagreeing with its strongest activists' proposed solution and throwing your hands up helplessly, is a very common and coherent position on all sorts of controversial issues. (For example, I agree the plight of the Palestinians is worthy of sympathy, but have some pretty unsolvable disagreements with Hamas on what ought to be done about it. Surely I can express these two points even if I have no alternative miracle-solution to put forward?)
general political polarisation has continued to the extent that I doubt he ever meets any right wingers any more, even the weird kind.
I mean from where I'm standing the opposite has happened - he has been pretty resoundingly cancelled (mostly for the lukewarm HBD support) and is pretty permanently persona non grata in actual leftist spaces. I don't know what sort of people make up his social circles these days - other techie libertarians, probably - but it's very unlikely to be anyone actual leftists, let alone wokes, would recognize as allies they'd give the time of day to.
WandererintheWilderness
6d ago
My post was intended to be agnostic on the question of whether some people abstractly 'deserve' to be tortured. What I am sayng, what feel in my gut, is that the act of torturing is wrong. Not just "a power we shouldn't give to the state" - wrong. Torture is depraved, an act which stains anyone who commits it. "This sinner deserves Hell", even if it's true, is no excuse to become the Devil yourself.
(I am also against the death penalty for the same reason. But my moral sentiment that killing is wrong is nothing next to my burning certainty than torture is wrong, wrong, WRONG.)
If trans women would be segregated in either case, why then is it important for them to be housed in a women's prison?
I wouldn't necessarily call it important, within that hypothetical. It's a matter of optics. But it's preferable, because all else being equal, I think it is morally preferable for trans women to be treated as women by society unless there are compelling practical reasons otherwise. Putting the segregated section in the women's prison sends the message of "we recognize trans women as a special category of women, although there are caveats and sometimes we won't treat them exactly like biological women". Which is about right for how the state should treat trans women in general. In contrast, making the "trans women's prison" a section of men's prison sends the message that trans women are to be regarded as a special category of men.
I will argue that being (and presenting) as a woman is a choice for trans women
It's not exactly one they can walk back if they've already had breast implants, though, is it? So at the very least this wouldn't apply to post-op trans women. But I'm also skeptical that the average trans inmate could feasibly go stealth. A biological male who's been living in a female persona for years is going to have a very hard time passing for a macho man again. (This is, of course, the primary joke of The Birdcage.) She might stop broadcasting that she's a trans woman, but odds are the nearest rapist will still identify her as Some Sort Of Queer - assuming the wardens don't simply share that fact with him on purpose, see Wikipedia link in the previous message - and avail himself to her backside anyway. I guess this would dissolve the resulting rapes into the general male-on-male rape statistics, but I think that's pretty cold comfort.
And all of this is without going into the question of whether incentivizing a trans person to detrans against their will via a structural risk of rape would be a grossly unethical thing for the system to do, which I think it would be.
WandererintheWilderness
7d ago
"Worse" is a confusing term in this context. There is a sense in which being killed is "a worse fate" than being tortured - but torturing someone is a worse thing to do, and a worse thing for a society to condone. I can respect someone who's killed a man, even if I didn't approve of his actions. I couldn't really, fundamentally respect a torturer even if he'd committed torture as part of some trolley-problem with a terrorist and a ticking time-bomb with which I could find no logical fault. By the same logic, I do not want to be part of a society, or indeed, if at all possible, species, which condones torture as punishment, ever, for any reason.
WandererintheWilderness
7d ago
Your first point isn't terribly persuasive to me, because I don't think most male prison rapists were put behind bars as sex-offenders. Relatedly, my answer to the second point is that male-on-male prison rape is still widespread to the point of being a punchline. And indeed, Wikipedia links to studies claiming to show that 70% of transfem inmates reported having been raped, with 60% claiming violent assault rather than "mere" coercion. Going by those numbers, even assuming all transfem sex offenders will attempt rape in prison, the average transfem prisoner is still more likely to be raped than to commit rape.
(I have no doubt the numbers are somewhat inflated, but you don't get this much smoke without a fair bit of fire.)
If we're talking about a violent trans offender that ended up in a high security prison, I'm less inclined to give a damn to begin with.
I can't condone that perspective - IMO rape is simply not acceptable; it's not appropriate karma for any crime no matter how depraved; it simply has no place in a civilized society. But if we grant the premise, then presumably a violent trans offender who gets sent to women's prison would only be able to prey on biologically-female violent offenders, too. If you don't care whether violent offenders get raped, then you have no reason to care which prison trans offenders go to either way, at least as far as the rape angle is concerned.
that trans activists consider the feelings and safety of men to always be more important than those of women.
With due respect, that's a caricature of my argument and I do not agree that I'm "practically" making it. I care equally about the feelings and safety of all human beings regardless of sex or gender. My concern here is based exclusively on the probability that more rapes would result from one policy over the other. It isn't remotely the same thing as saying I think a cis woman being raped is any better than a trans woman being raped.
Trans women can be put in protective segregation in a men's prison.
I agree this would solve the problem, but nobody seems keen to make it happen. As you say at the end of your post, however, this is ludicrously far from the Overton window. So long as this is a thing, I don't think you're going to get anywhere advocating for that. Hell, if we agree with the principle of putting trans inmates in a special segregated section for safety, couldn't you do the exact same thing at a women's prison? I have greater confidence that the wardens at a women's prison would keep a close eye on transfem inmates to make sure they aren't raping anyone, than I have that the wardens at a men's prison would look out to make sure that the trans woman inmate isn't being raped.
(But fundamentally, again as per the end of your post, any rape-mitigating policy on trans inmates is a flimsy bandaid on a huge festering gash. We simply need to end prison rape in general, which I wholly believe to be achievable, and then… well, and then progressives can say trans women should be sent to women's prison for normal dignity reasons, and conservatives can say trans women should be sent to men's prison for normal insisting-on-the-primacy-of-biological-sex reasons, without rape coming into it. Which will be a step in the right direction.)
WandererintheWilderness
7d ago
Well, yes. I am a queer theorist. (Not in the sense that I do it for a living, but this is what I was referring to as the coherent, morally-correct, but unacceptably-radical-if-you're-a-mainstream-politician position.)
WandererintheWilderness
7d ago
Regarding the trans-women-in-prison thing, I came up with a counterargument the last time this came up. Curious how you'd answer it. Some trans woman prisoners may try to rape biologically female inmates if put in women's prisons; but won't male inmates be even likelier to try to rape the trans woman if she's sent to the men's prison? If we assume that not all trans women are rapists, but all male prisons contain at least one rapist willing to rape a trans woman, it seems like sending trans women to female prisons will prevent more rapes than it will enable.
(By the way, this is unrelated, but AI could allow us to cut the Gordian knot on constant surveillance pretty soon. A 'dumb' AI can be constantly monitoring prisoners on video feeds human wardens can't access, and if it observes what appears to be rape, it rings an alarm. Slightly ahead of current technology, but IMO clearly achievable using the kind of tech that goes into self-driving cars. It wouldn't need to be foolproof, either, few positives have minimal cost.)
WandererintheWilderness
7d ago
The definition has done no such thing. People who refuse to give a straight answer to the question are trying to avoid political backlash for endorsing the radical ideas which are the necessary bedrock of a coherent and non-evil definition of "woman" (perhaps because they don't believe it themselves and are trying to have it both ways); not because no such answer exists.
I agree, but this sort of disingenuous behavior seems to me like another manifestation of the same lack of trust. It's game theory all the way down. You don't feel you can ask for what you really want up-front without triggering all-out war, so you go for salami tactics and artificially shifting the Overton window. There are other dynamics and incentives at play, like the unrealistic but alluring hope of total victory which means the respective sides pursue dangerous gambits which they dream might give them the edge once and for all, instead of working towards a stable compromise as the expected end-state.
Related still, but distinct, is the endless fool's-quest for the appearance of a total consensus. We as a nation and indeed as a civilization need to be more comfortable with overt compromise. We need politicians who openly say things like "I know 45% of you really want [A] and aren't going to budge. And personally I'm with you, but another 45% desperately want [B], and they aren't gonna change anytime soon, either. Here's what my administration and I are proposing to do to try and keep the peace", instead of pretending they've invented a magic solution that will make everybody happy except for a few meanies on the fringes. I truly think, to an unbiased observer, it would look nuts that so few political issues are phrased in those terms in speeches and think-pieces. Even when they don't actually believe in it, let alone advocate it, almost everyone writes as though the 170 million guys on the other side of the fence are just a temporary inconvenience who can be safely ignored, perhaps reeducated. And yet, this. Never. Works.
If it were easier for opposing sides to negotiate with all cards on the table, we could skip all that tedious, damaging business and skip to the begrudging compromise.
Oh, I agree with that, too. The dynamic I outlined was symmetrical for a reason. Alas, I'm not in charge of the Blue Tribe. FWIW, if I somehow was the Blue Tribe Czar, and had a Red counterpart at the negotiating table, there are a number of guarantees I would be prepared to give that differ from my ideal world-state (up to and including "it's the parent's choice whether their child gets to transition before their legal majority, and we will codify into federal law that refusing to aid transition will not, in and of itself, be considered parental abuse").
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