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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35960 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I think for most others, sound public policy about incarceration is indivisible from sound public policy about crime,

Maybe, but I would be more convinced if a single person had made an argument that doing what Folamh3 advocates would help us to understand and/or fight crime. I might have missed it, but I don't believe there was one.

In either case I don’t think you are arguing against @Folamh3’s case as much as you are participating in a different argument, one contained within the OP, that Folamh3 didn’t actually intend to participate in (he was explicitly focused on issues of incarceration, I think, unlike the OP)? In that case I would only take issue with that you involved them in the entire thing, since I don’t think they made any comment on the actual crime bit

Well, yes, that was my original point. I said that Folamh3's position only makes sense if you only care about the culture war, not about crime policy.

So, even entirely separate from real transwomen, formulation of public policy requires the rejection of trans activist policy, because to formulate sensible public policy regarding crime, we would need to be able to identify perpetrators in a way that is at odds with self-ID, even if we don’t care about trans activist policy one way or the other. In other words, wouldn’t trans activist ideology and policy regarding self-ID simply be at odds with policy about crime, simply because it hinders sound thinking and legislation about the issue?

I really do appreciate your taking the time to engage thoughtfully, but I have to confess that I find this quite frustrating, because this is exactly what I have been arguing all along. You are 100% agreeing with me.

In contrast, it is the opposite of what Folamh3 said in the comment I replied to. He doesn't believe in self-ID, but he nevertheless said: "Now you have to accept the bad actors as members of your own group. You made this bed, now you have to lie in it," which is an endorsement of self-ID (well, not an endorsement of self-ID, but rather an insistence on using it in this instance) even though it hinders "formulat[ing] sensible policy regarding crime." Worse yet, he seems to be motivated solely by a desire to "own" trans activists (because I can't think of an alternative explanation for the "you made your bed" statement, esp given his general hostility to self-ID.

So, according to you: we can acknowledge that there are fake transwomen in female prisons. And more importantly, we can note that the crimes that those people committed were not committed by transwomen. But that is already a denial of self-ID,

Please note that not once have I endorsed self-ID, certainly not as a general concept. Again, this is rather frustrating. This entire string has been me wanting to talk about the methodology of crime policy (starting with the initial post), and everyone else insisting on talking about trans activist rhetoric, a topic which I find tedious in the extreme, on both sides.

I understand that you don’t endorse self-ID; I interpreted you as saying all along that you thought there wasn’t much of a point in focusing on the trans issue because it doesn’t have an impact on crime policy, whereas it is directly important to incarceration policy, as here:

Sound public policy about prison housing might require trans activism to be vanquished, but sound public policy about crime does not, unless possibly transwomen are actually the source of a lot of crime

And

No, my comment was meant to indicate that there are other issues at play other than what gains and losses might accrue to trans people. I.e.: our ability to get closer to understanding the causes of crime, which is compromised if we intentionally miscategorize those who commit crimes.

And more, I think.

Whereas I would argue that sound public policy about crime relies on a heuristic that people can lie about gender identity (and thus e.g. inflate statistics re:trans women being sex offenders, for instance) in informing crime rates, and thus rejecting the trans activist idea of self-ID. In particular, yes our ability to get closer to understanding the causes of crimes is compromised if we intentionally miscategorise criminals, but trans activist self-ID policy requires us to miscategorise criminals or violate its precepts.

Which sounds awfully like “sound public policy [regarding crime] does in fact require trans activism to be vanquished”, because under trans activist policy we can’t have a sane conversation about it, even if it isn’t as directly related as the incarceration issue.

"Now you have to accept the bad actors as members of your own group. You made this bed, now you have to lie in it," which is an endorsement of self-ID (well, not an endorsement of self-ID, but rather an insistence on using it in this instance) even though it hinders "formulat[ing] sensible policy regarding crime." Worse yet, he seems to be motivated solely by a desire to "own" trans activists (because I can't think of an alternative explanation for the "you made your bed" statement, esp given his general hostility to self-ID.

Here I think we interpret this differently. I thought it was clear that it meant “Progressive-pushed policy has created predictable and predicted incentives for bad actors. Now progressives should own this and admit that they did an oopsie, and that the bad actors were in fact supported and empowered by them (and that they are conceived to be a progressive in-group), and reap the related societal censure from it.”

Or something to that effect.

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