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vorpa-glavo


				

				

				

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vorpa-glavo


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
While I believe there is a lot of truth in what you say, I think there is one other wellspring of "natural rights": social status games.


Sure, sometimes social status games are backed by violence, or the threat of violence, but consider something like accessibility laws for disabled people. There is no risk of disabled people violently uprising against the state, and the vast majority of people would not raise arms against the government if the government got rid of wheelchair ramps, etc.


So, why do we have accesibility laws in most of the developed world? It is because throwing a bone to disabled people imposes a small enough dead weight loss on the economy, and a large enough increase in the prestige of Western institutions among Western elites that the ruling party is willing to use political capital to do it. (Or the reputation and prestige lost for undoing it is too large to truly contemplate.)


Violence is important, but it isn't everything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For the same reason it's "valid" to judge anyone's media consumption habits when you become aware of them.


If you organically learned that the only media your coworker had consumed in the last year was hardcore mermaid hentai, then that might color your opinion of your coworker, even if you were totally okay with harcore mermaid hentai. Similarly, if you learned your female coworker only consumed reality television, trashy romance novels and fan fiction for series she had never read or watched, you might not look at her the same way afterwards.


If someone in your orbit decides to add a mod that turns all the characters into BIPOC they/thems, and you became aware of it, would you not immediately jump to a conclusion on why they might have done such a mod? Modifying the media you consume is theoretically morally neutral and apolitical, but once your media habits become public they are subject to public scruitiny.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


With sufficient wealth, society was free to develop feminism and shortly afterwards came the demographic transition. Our species now awaits a barren childless heat death if AI doesn't kill us first.




I'm not sure if "wealth" per se is the reason we developed feminism. I'm more of a fan of the idea that we whittled away at the traditional role of women with labor-saving technologies in the house, and separated sex from most of its consequences with birth control, contraception and antibiotics, and these two facts combined at a certain point in history to create a class of upper class women trying to fill the traditional role with almost nothing meaningful or challenging to do day after day (which was thus incredibly unsatisfying), and little friction to them experimenting with very different roles that might actually meaningfully contribute to society in the day-to-day.


Feminism wasn't inevitable after those technological and medical developments, but it does seem like the vast majority of cultures which come into contact with them end up having an expanded role for women in the public sphere and lower birth rates.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of my argument is that this is de facto the standard you're using if you use your brain's sex determination module to get information about men and women in the world. Since the evidence on humans having pheromones is mixed, and the existence of porn seems to indicate that the mere visual presence of a woman is enough to arouse a man, I think the argument that there is something like a sex determination module that leverages visual information is pretty strong.


The visual information is based on a subset of the morphology of a person being looked at.


Now, it has been a broader trend in science to move away from morphology as a primary basis for classification, as we have developed more sophisticated tools for observing "hidden" things like DNA, hormones and microscopic structures, so I understand why genetic or gametic models of sex are popular among people who want solid and fixed definitions. But part of my argument is that the "hidden" things we can now measure are less psychologically fundamental than the visual (and thus morphology-based) sex determination module in the brain.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Human beings naturally break into two groups if not fucked with by some unfortunate mutation/condition or fucked with by the various means of mimicking the other category.




The more I've thought about the concept of disease and disability, the more I've become convinced that there isn't actually a good philosophical grounding for talking about variation and difference in normative terms.


To take just one example, being left-handed is a variation that occurs in a minority of humans. Is it an "unfortunate mutation" or a "normal variation"?


Does it matter that it occurs in 10% of people? If being left-handed had instead occured only in 0.01% of people would it then be correct to say something like, "Humans are a bipedal, right-handed species"?


We can be descriptive and speak in generalities, but in a lot of cases I don't think we have a sound basis to say something like, "A human body should work this way, but yours is working wrong."


I think if we're being as pedantic as possible, the best you could say is something like, "Your body works in way X, most people's body works in way Y, but with a surgery Z we can make your body work in way Y as well."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The first point you highlighted is an example of a "trait cluster" sex model, and I think it can form one basis of accepting trans women as women.


How feminized does a male body need to be before it is "female"?


I do think you're right that some sci fi technology may come along to throw a wrench in the current form of the debate. What will people say when you can do gene therapy and grow a new set of genitals to order for a person?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think I argued anywhere that the best tie breaker for money categorization is morphology.


Different categories have different kinds of resemblance binding them together.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, I'd be okay with treating something like Bitcoin as money in some cases, since it bears enough of a resemblance to money.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So before I debate anything else you've said, you're going to have to convince me that these attempts to make nice, neat, perfect rules are necessary in the first place.




I don't think even my proposal was "nice, neat and perfect", but I can touch on why I think well-made categories are important (if not "necessary.")


I think that the issue you're going to run into with poorly conceived categories is that "everyone knows what an X is" only actually gets you so far. Language is a tool for communication, and communication is harder if everyone is using different definitions, which is kind of the default if people haven't made a formal convention of some kind to get everyone on the same page.


It's obviously not a very serious example, but the argument that people sometimes have over "Is a burrito a sandwich?" can illustrate some of the problems. Everyone knows what a sandwich is. Everyone knows what a burrito is. But in spite of "everyone knowing that" there are people who seriously argue that burritos are sandwiches, and people who argue that burritos are obviously not sandwiches. If we have all this confusion with a trivial subject like sandwiches, imagine what it is like for something more important, like who you're going to spend the rest of your life with.




Finnster is not a woman. Even if he doesn't appear as a man at first glance, you being successfully deceived does not change the essential nature of an thing.




I agree - Finnster is a man. He's never denied this, and I'm not even sure he's trying to deceive anyone, since he's open about being a cross-dresser. To the extent that he "deceived" me, it was at the same subconscious level that a cloud might "deceive" me by resembling a face.


But I'm not sure your "essential nature" thing gets off the ground. If we're getting into a philosophical concept of "essence", then it should be possible to create a "nice, neat, perfect" set of rules that define an essence of manhood and womanhood. If we can't do that, where do we get off claiming we all "know" anything about these topics at all? I don't think you can claim to implicitly know someone's essence, and not also be prepared to explain what the criteria for that essential nature are.


I think a person should be prepared to put forward their metaphysical commitments. Was Casimir Pulaski, who was "observed" to be a man, lived as a man all his life, and who was only discovered after death to possibly have had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a man? You might say that all his contemporaries were deceived or mistaken, and he simply was a woman with an intersex condition, or you may say he was indeed a man - but either way you can't just wave him away as a weird edge case. Either you know what the essential nature of a man is, or you don't. A single edge case is all one needs to make the case that thinking there's an "essential essence" to something much more fuzzy, in spite of how much we might want the world to consist of nice, neat, and perfect categories.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The strongest form of the gamete definition is not gamete-focused around a cluster of traits. The strongest form only concerns gamete contribution to sexual reproduction, which is binary in mammals. Sexual reproduction is a well defined process at the core of sexual selection, which has been known since at least the publication of On the Origin of Species. Examples of a species in class 1 are male. Examples of a species in class 2 are female. Examples of a species that are in class 3 are sterile. Examples of of a species in class 4 are hermaphrodites.




I think the issue is that this biological definition is rarely relevant in a human context.


First, humans in the anglosphere (at least) tend to think sex is salient even for prepubescent children who are unable to reproduce. We presumptively use "he" and "she" for kids even though we know that 9% of men and 11% of women experience reproductive issues. Even after a person has become physically mature, we don't generally say they're "not a man/woman" just because we discover that they don't produce gametes properly, or can't reproduce for any number of other reasons.


I agree that your four classes are a categorization scheme that should exist somewhere in the English language. It's very useful to biologists, and an important idea for people to understand.


It also seems to have only a weak correlation to how we colloquially use language.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Should morphology be the tie-breaker for sexual categorization?


A common tact one sees in trans skeptical circles is to put forward gametes as the tie-breaker for sexual categorization. In some ways, I like the simplicity of this solution, even as someone who is fairly pro trans. I'm not, in principle, opposed to a categorization scheme that would occasionally split transwomen and ciswomen, since I feel there's always a basic lumpers vs. splitters problem in all categorization problems, and I'm comfortable with either tiny base categories with supercategories above them, or larger categories and smaller subcategories. It's all the same, and the choice between various models of reality seems largely to be a matter of what is useful and what traits we find salient in a given context where we seek to categorize.


But I've always had a slight discomfort with the gamete-focused definition of sex. Even if we allow that sexual categorization is based on a cluster of traits, like chromosomes, genitalia, bone density, face and body shape, etc., where we're just using gametes as the tie breaker, I think we run into some problems. First, a gamete-focused definition is not naturally a binary. There are only two types of gametes, but there are technically four possible ways those two gametes could manifest:


    

  • 

    Produces only sperm
    

    • 

  • 

    Produces only eggs
    

    • 

  • 

    Produces neither sperm nor eggs.
    

    • 

  • 

    Produces sperm and eggs.
    

    • 



The last situation has never been observed in humans, though it is theoretically possible for a human chimera formed from a male and female zygote to fuse into a single embryo and result in a human with functional gonadal tissue of both types. We do observe ovotesticular syndome in humanity, but 50% of such cases ovulate, and only two such people have been found to produce sperm. Maybe the reason sperm and egg producing intersex conditions haven't happened is for some complex set of issues that result from such a chimera, and so it is effectively impossible.


But even ignoring that, it leaves us with three categories, not two. Now, there isn't actually an a priori reason to expect there to be exactly two sexes in humans, especially when we observe fungi like Coprinellus disseminatus, which has 143 different mating types that can each mate with any of the other mating types besides its own, but most people's intuition before they do any fancy book learning is that there are two sexes, so it seems unsatisfying to have a tie breaker that seems to naturally produce three categories.


Now, it's possible someone will object here that I have framed the problem wrong. Maybe the true proposal for sex categorization is not to use gametes as a tie breaker at all. Given that there seems to be an impulse in some trans skeptics to say that, for example, a trans women who has had her testes removed is still a man, one might conclude that, while gametes are (one of) the most important factor(s) in sex categorization, it is not actually the tie breaker. Maybe they will say that it is a much more fuzzy, amorphous categorization scheme based on a a wide variety of traits, and even lacking the ability to produce gametes altogether doesn't result in a sexless/third-sex categorization if a person has enough other traits common to either of the two (only two) sexes.


Or, they might put forward that it is actually some abstraction like "natural tendency to produce gametes" that is the true tie breaker, and not a person's current ability to produce gametes at all. A eunuch is not sexless, or some third sex - they are always a man, albeit a maimed man. This might still leave us with some problems in classifying people who are naturally infertile and don't produce gametes as mature adults (especially in the case of intersex conditions like ovotesticular syndrome where infertility is common and sex characteristics are mixed), but if that abstraction is truly a tie breaker and not the entirety of sex it would still rescue the idea of there being two sexes in humans.


I grant that either of these approaches could, in theory, rescue a truly two sex humanity.


But there is another misgiving that I have with such a framing, and it applies to all three of these models.


If gametes or some abstraction of them are an important component in sex categorization, then we get an entire class of epistemological problems surrounding sex categorization. I do not have the time or means to sequence the DNA, collect the gametes or see the genitals of every human being I interact with. And yet, my intuition is that I'm reasonably certain about the sex of most of the people I interact with in everyday situations. Here one might be able to make some arguments from evolutionary psychology, or the likelihood that there is some sort of sex categorizing module innate to humans that needed to be fairly accurate in order for humans to successfully mate with compatible mates. Maybe the bias towards thinking there are only two sexes goes fairly deep into human biology and psychology.


But such a "sex categorizing module" doesn't really solve the epistemological issue. Evolution is "lazy" and frequently does a hack job with its solutions. I find women attractive, I love boobs and cute feminine faces and the like. But I still find f1nnst5r, a male crossdresser, attractive in many of his photos. It turns out, it's much harder to code a computationally light sex categorizer when your only lever is whether the genes for your sex categorizer get passed on to the next generation. As long as guys who are attracted to femboys tend to also have sex with fertile women, the mesaoptimzer within you doesn't need to be perfect - just good enough.


All this to say, we can do better than the sex categorizing module in our brain. But if we try this route, we are forced to conclude that we don't know the sexes of most of the people we interact with. Sure, we can go the Bayesian route, and say based on base rates of the sex categorization module in our brain, checked against population-wide data, we can be 98% sure of a person's sex, regardless of definition being used. It might even be an isolated demand for rigor to expect more than 98% certainty. After all, humans also have a "face recognition module" that sometimes sees faces in tree bark and clouds, and yet we trust it to see human faces all of the time.


But I think if we do go the Bayesian route of trying to justify using the "sex categorization module" in the brain, we have actually conceded that the most important thing is actually how a person looks, their sexual morphology. Now obviously, a person could want biological children, and so, for reasons separate from their sex categorization module, care about about whether a particular person they are with is able to carry children, or produce sperm, but that would be something that only matters for potential romantic partners. For ordinary shop keepers and people you pass on the street, the only thing that really matters is the "sex categorization module."


Now, I'll concede that if this is accepted, non-passing trans people would have to be classed as their assigned sex at birth. That's almost exactly what it means to be non-passing in the first place - most people's sex categorization modules see you as the sex you were assigned at birth. But in the case of passing trans people, it would tend to mean that we can lean in to our wonky evolution-addled brains, and accept what we see at first glance. Of course, when we're going to interact with people frequently in our social circle, we could accept nicknames and nickpronouns, and allow these to override our brain's sex categorization modules, but that is a separate discussion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
OP was asking for steelmanning of the current necessity of Pride. I can only speculate about the future of the holiday.


I'm sure that Pride has a very different feel and purpose post-Obergefell and post-Bostock, than it did in, say, the 70's or 80's. Like many holidays and traditions, if it sticks around, I'm sure there will be many different reasons given for its celebration over its lifetime.


I think it's entirely possible that attitudes towards LGBT people go the way of attitudes towards left-handed people. Is it possible that there are people in the United States today who suffer greatly because of their left-handedness? Sure. Is it widespread enough that anyone feels the need to start left-handed support groups? Surely not.


I think if LGBT acceptance/tolerance/intolerance/hate in a hypothetical society goes from something like 40/30/25/5 to 50/35/14.9/0.1, and if more things like Trump Pride 2020 happen, resulting in a bipartisan consensus around all LGBT issues, Pride might lose relevance and purpose with no out group to rally against. I think you're already seeing a certain kind of LGBT hipster who hates that police officers and Fortune 500 companies are at Pride.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Homosexuality is, conjecturally, naturally disgusting for the heterosexual. This doesn’t seem learned — no one taught me that two guys kissing is gross, it was just gross to consider until the normalization propaganda reduced the innate “disgust” alarm.




I think it is similar to training cats to be okay with being picked up. Most cats' natural disposition is to not like being picked up by a large primate, but with the right training you can use steps to make them more okay with first having your hands on them, then getting their paws on you shoulder, then picking them up all the way.


My guess is that cats might still have slight discomfort with being picked up, but they can be trained to accept that it is safe enough that the discomfort is dialed down to the absolute minimum.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can someone steelman why “pride” is still necessary? Seems that you can be gay, bi or trans and it’s more than accepted - there’s a huge increase in kids claiming lgbt status so if there’s stigma it’s not apparent anymore. At what point does it make sense to call a moratorium for social movements that have lost their purpose? What are the “victory conditions” for what homophobia is considered no longer a major issue?




Because no country is a monoculture. Even if there's many places where gay, bi or trans people can live lives free of judgement or condemnation, there's still households or towns that have homophobic or transphobic cultures.


Put another way. It doesn't matter if, say, 70% of people in your country of 330 million are at least tolerant of LGBT people, if the people you live with or around happen to belong to the 30% that were intolerant. My friend group has several LGBT people who grew up in conservative Christian families and are now the black sheep of their extended family. They still deal with a lot of baggage because of it, even if they've found a loving community who accepts them for who they are.


There's also the fact that tolerance might only be surface level. I've heard trans people talk about trying to get jobs, and in many cases employers will just laugh in the face of a "boy with makeup and a dress" and refuse employment even in unskilled labor, regardless of whether that is blatantly illegal at the state level. It's not a universal experience, but I think there's many reasons why there's a stereotype of computer science having a lot of trans women, aside from the well-known autism connection to being trans. I think computer science is a "disembodied" enough profession that already probably has a higher tolerance for weirdos, and also happens to make large amounts of money that make expensive surgeries that might not be covered by insurance possible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll actually admit I don't quite know what they should be apologizing for. Anheuser-Busch tried to make a targeted ad that advertised to a Dylan Mulvaney-adjacent segment of the market, and didn't think other parts of their market would ever see it, let alone care about it. They were wrong.


I don't think the mere inclusion of a trans influencer in an advertising campaign is some grave offense they should have to apologize for.


Just off the top of my head, Cardi B has partnered recently with Walmart for a bunch of a commercials, and she drugged and robbed men who wanted to have sex with her in the past. This is not to say that I think people shouldn't get second chances, but what Cardi B did was way worse than any of the reasons people are angry at Dylan Mulvaney, and I doubt that anyone could meaningfully cancel Cardi B or Walmart at this point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There are tens of millions of Americans who can directly trace their descent to families who lived in this country 400 years ago. I am one of them! Those people were settlers and invaders who displaced the indigenous population that had previously occupied that land; that is also true of nearly every human population group on earth.




I have ancestors who were on the Mayflower, and mostly-indigenous ancestors from Mexico, and I work with a bunch of guys from India. Even if we acknowledge the "realities of biology and heredity", my intuition is that there's plenty of "good stock" from the rest of the world that we can import into the United States to our own and their benefit. Every culture has its elites, and even "backwards" cultures like Ireland have been able to overcome low IQ's and become functional societies with an influx of resources.


It's a big 'if', but if we were able to screen every immigrant for either high-IQ or high-Conscientiousness, and remove those with violent criminal histories, I wouldn't have any issue letting in massive numbers of people into the country, up to what we could safely educate into American culture and values. America would definitely change, but that would inevitably happen even with closed borders, and an America built of either the smartest or hardest working people in the world seems like one that I would be proud to pass on to my children, even if wasn't 100% identical to the America I grew up in.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) is on strike as of May 2nd, after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down. While most of their demands deal with the way pay and compensation in the streaming era is structured, on the second page towards the bottom is:




ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE






    

  • WGA PROPOSAL: Regulate use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects: AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and MBA-covered material can’t be used to train AI.
    • 







    

  • AMPTP OFFER: Rejected our proposal. Countered by offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.
    • 





I think this is an interesting first salvo in the fight over AI in creative professions. While this is just where both parties are starting for strike negotiations, and either could shift towards a compromise, I still can't help but see a hint that AMPTP isn't super interested in foregoing the use of AI in the future.


In 2007, when the WGA went on strike for 3 months, it had a huge effect on television at the time. There was a shift to unscripted programming, like reality television, and some shows with completed scripts that had been on the back burner got fast tracked to production. Part of me doubts that generative AI is really at the point where this could happen, but it would be fascinating if the AMPTP companies didn't just use traditional scabs during this strike, but supplemented them with generative AI in some way. Maybe instead of a shift to reality television, we'll look back on this as the first time AI became a significant factor in the production of scripted television and movies. Imagine seeing a "prompt engineer" credit at the end of every show you watch in the future.


It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My "excuse" is that I'm vegetarian. I'm okay with doing 70% of the good of a vegan diet, while having far more options at restaurants and for cooking.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But the statement "people had it better off in time and place X" doesn't mean "I will be better off in time and place X."


Even if I agree that the general social situation of some era is better off than the general social situation of the present day, the biggest issue with going to the past is the lack of family and connection there. I'll be coming in as an isolated individual without much in the way of useful resources and skills to that era, so I think the modal outcome of me showing up in most eras is going to be miserable.


Again, if the question was different, say, "What historical era would you like to live as a member of the highest class, in a tightly-knit community with strong family support?" then my answer would change. But the base question of what historical era I want to live out the rest of my life in is going to be close to "almost no where and no when."


It doesn't hurt that I feel pretty well off in the modern era. To me, one of the only advantages of living as a stranger in the past is that I would be guaranteed that an AI apocalypse/nuclear armageddon/etc. wouldn't happen within my life time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".




I'd have to answer the same way as a man. If the question was, "In which historical epoch would you like to take a month long vacation?", I have a lot of options I would pick, but that question is a bit like "In which third world country would you like to live?" except worse, because I wouldn't even be able to leverage the favorable currency exchange rate I enjoy as an American, and I wouldn't have any access to modern conveniences.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fair enough, but even that 1.02% is just measuring the likelihood of a gender dysphoria diagnosis. I doubt that all 1.02% of people in that group are getting the full suite of medical transition. Unfortunately, we don't have good numbers on minors getting surgeries, HRT or puberty blockers.


I still stand by my original statement. 1.5% of an opioid overdose death is a much scarier possibility than the apparently 1.02% chance your child gets a gender dysphoria diagnosis. Especially with how many gender-non-conforming children desist by the end of puberty, I actually find it fairly likely that the 1.02% is still something you should weigh less than other ways your child's life might end up being screwed up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There are 17 states that have passed anti-trans healthcare laws for minors. You could consider moving to one of those places, if this is really a big concern for you.


That said, I think this kind of worrying and paranoia is a bit overblown. Even with a double-digit percentage of Gen Z fashionably adopting non-binary identities, the number of minors actually receiving HRT, puberty blockers and surgeries is still pretty small. This Reuter's article says that there were 42,000 gender dysphoria diagnoses in 2021, and a quick search shows there were 26.2 million children in the US in the same year. Even if you assume that every child diagnosed with gender dysphoria gets the full suite of trans healthcare including surgery and sterilizing hormones, that's a 0.1% chance you kid will actually end up medically transitioning.


The odds of your kid dying in a car crash in their lifetime is ~1%. The odds of someone in the US dying of an opioid overdose is 1.5%. The odds of dying of cancer are about 14%.


I'm sure as a father, you've thought a lot about the many possible risks your child may face. But my overall advice is worry more about other more likely risks your child may face, and don't spend so much time on something that is exceedingly unlikely. I'm not even sure that trans ideology is the most likely way that your son will end up "sterilized" - environmentalist doomerism, feminism, etc. all seem like much more likely ideologies to capture a young mind, and even if you try to raise your son in a socially conservative environment, you'll never be able to keep the world entirely out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is a similar logic that leads me to oppose laws that mandate reporting to parents when a child expresses the possibility they have an LGBT identity. The foremost concern is the health and well being of the child in question and how disclosure of that information will impact them.




I don't know about legal mandates, but I feel like there should be a strong societal presumption in favor of telling a parent what's going on with their child, especially something massive like using new pronouns and nicknames while at school.


To me, it just seems like such a strange and unsustainable status quo to try and maintain. Are we really trying to keep major aspects of kids' lives secret from their parents, just so we can deceive the parents until they turn 18 and are able to fend for themselves? I can understand the idea of putting the needs of the child above those of the parents, but I don't get how we arrive at this as the most natural solution to the problem of, "If we tell the parents that their kid identifies as trans, the parent might freak out and do something drastic that isn't in the best interest of the child."


In fact, I think that "tearing the band-aid off" and just telling parents about trans children is the "safer" option for LGBT people on the whole. Anti-LGBT parents who might abandon or abuse their LGBT children are a tough problem to solve by government mandate, but I think a mildly anti-LGBT parent is much more likely to have a massive overreaction if they come in 6 months into their child's social transition, which has all happened behind their backs, than they would have if a teacher had reached out to them and said, "Hey, John goes by Jenny now, and prefers she/her, I thought you ought to know."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Alright, then they make it "Lucas Film'sTM Star Wars", and people would know the genuine article is Lucas Film's until the franchise got off the ground.


And a lot of this is solved by actor contracts with a  clause that says, "You agree to give us first choice for sequels involving you playing this character for the next 10 years", or whatever the closest legally enforceable version of that is.


There would still be possible loopholes, I'm sure. Like Mark Hamill playing an unnamed character who is suspiciously like Luke Skywalker in every detail, but that would have been possible in our world with current copyright laws, and that didn't happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eh, Lucas Films would still be the only ones with the Star Wars trademark - and thus the only ones with a movie called "Star Wars", and if they had the right contracts with their actors they would be the only ones with Luke Skywalker played by Mark Hamill, Han Solo played by Harrison Ford, etc. While my proposed copyright regime would allow for unauthorized sequels, I think they would tend to do about as well as those cheap knock offs like "The Little Panda Fighter" and "Ratatoing" do already, or all the Star Wars knock offs of the 70's and 80's. Do you think any of those would have magically been better if they had been able to use the name "Luke Skywalker" for their characters?


Plus, I think people are naturally snobby enough that people would look down on knock-offs. Look at what happened with Pokemon and Digimon in the 90's and 2000's. They're actually very different franchises with different origins (Pokemon started as a video game, Digimon started as a tamagotchi-like virtual pet), but kids on playgrounds got into endless arguments about whether Pokemon or Digimon was better, with many sticking up their noses because Digimon was supposedly a cheap Pokemon rip off. The same would happen with Columbia's Star Wars knock off, which couldn't even be called "Star Wars" due to trademark issues.


I just don't think the risk of a rival studio "scooping" a rival studio's block buster movie is a very big risk of my proposed copyright regime. I think the bigger risk would be how my proposed regime affects the "little people" of the entertainment world. Imagine a big movie studio learning about popular web fiction like Worm or Unsong, and deciding to make their own unauthorized movie version of these works. While I do think social disapproval can be a slight salve for this kind of anti-social behavior - as it is in our copyright regime with cases like the creators of Superman being given good will "royalties" by DC decades after they had sold the rights for pennies, because DC wanted to maintain the good will of the fans - and it might be the case that some companies will cut deals with small creators even when they're not strictly, legally required to. There's also the possibility that an unauthorized Worm or Unsong movie would give the authors of those works the ability to leverage the copyright they do have, and make money from the original product. However, I think it's not unlikely that at least some of the time under my proposed regime small creators would put a ton of work into something only for the big players to use their idea without any payment, and they'd never be compensated by any other means.