This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I wonder about this myself. I know a transman who is likely autistic, and from what I have gathered talking with him, it really seems like part of the motivation for transitioning was his difficulty fitting into the female social role as an autistic person. He was raised a conservative Christian, went to a Baptist college, and was married to an emotionally abusive man for 10 years, so I wonder if he didn't experience the female role as rather more restrictive than most women experience it?
I would be curious to find out whether trans people are more likely to come from communities which emphasize hard-to-navigate social rules (for either sex) in the modern day. I could easily imagine a pipeline that looks something like: born autistic in a community with strong gender norms > doesn't fit in to natal sex role due to autism > labels that difficulty "gender dysphoria" and questions if they might be the opposite sex > transitions and enough people give them a bit more leeway for them to learn the rules of their new sex role > they're much happier in their new role as a result.
That's possible, but then one would like mainstream society to be sending a message like: it's perfectly alright to be a nerdy masculine woman or an effeminate man!!! You definitely do not need to go on hormones and cut off your breasts or other parts to deal with this! Go find yourself a supportive community in a big city, they totally exist!
Mainstream society should definitely not be sending a message that medical procedures and messing with puberty are a good way to deal with the situation, or at least not until they've tried other things like finding a supportive subculture, finding their own preferred aesthetic, etc.
That's the tack that society has been taking since at least the 80s or so. Obviously there's no blinded experiment or anything and lots of different overlapping trends, but it seems pretty clear to me that downplaying gender roles led to an increase in people desiring to transition rather than forestalling transitions.
It used to be. Then a certain kind of angry, selfish person started problematizing masculinity and proclaimed that "nerdy/masculine woman" (masculinity as action) and "effeminate man" (masculinity as identity) were all bad.
That started around 2010 or so and has done nothing but get worse. It seems that the trans stuff is just responding to that worldview.
More options
Context Copy link
Hypothesis: Downplaying the traditional norms effectively removed the training wheels from the kids who would have really needed them. It may be difficult to adapt to unsaid social norms if the well-meaning adults are too drunk on their utopian koolaid and insist there being no norms. If a task is difficult, some people do not succeed.
If you complain, the well-meaning adults may say that you've got it all wrong, it is how it is meant to be: the kids (later grown-ups) who take non-standard paths have been liberated from oppressive structures and are finally able to find/express their non-standard identity.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There isn't any other kind.
I feel like that's a bit presumptuous though, unless you mean it in some trivial sense like, "All communities emphasize hard-to-navigate social rules (for either sex), therefore all trans people come from such communities."
I would tend to think that so-called "autogynephillic transexuality" would be a kind of transness that only requires that men and women wear different kinds of clothes and look physically different, which isn't a "hard-to-navigate social rule" in my book. Heck, even so-called "homosexual transsexuals" don't require the existence of hard-to-navigate social role for either sex, just for a "gay" person to realize on some level that they'll have more of the sexual options they prefer if they transition.
I'm inclined to give my hypothesis a label more like "pseudo-dysphoric autistic transsexuality", and would tend to consider it distinct from either of Blanchard's two categories (though I'm sure there's comorbidities.) I actually wonder if most transmen in the modern rise of transness don't belong to this category. Though I could also see an argument for something like "pseudo-dysphoric cluster B transsexuality" or a more general supercategory of "pseudo-dysphoric 'weird outcast' transsexuality" (which I suspect would often line up with neurodivergence of some kind, though it might never be diagnosed.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link