site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why does it make sense to include menopausal women, people with birth defects, etc. in that category? If we're going to add a whole bunch of exceptions, why not also "Trans Women who have undergone SRS"?

Menopausal women's bodies once produced large gametes, but no longer do. That is a historical fact about their bodies. Just because someone has one of their legs amputated doesn't change the historical fact that they were bipedal from birth. Just as we consider prepubescent girls females because in most cases their bodies eventually will be capable of producing large gametes, we consider menopausal women female because their bodies once did produce large gametes: the arrow of time points both forwards and backwards.

Women with birth defects rendering them infertile have all the relevant "equipment" associated with the production of large gametes, but something went wrong in the development process and they're essentially being included as honorary members in the set, as they possess every characteristic associated with the set except for one specific thing that went wrong. (Another way of looking at it is that "X, which is broken or defective" is generally considered a subset of "X". If someone owns a car, but the engine isn't running and it's sitting on blocks, they still own a car: the owner still belongs to category "people who own at least one car". Barren women may not produce large gametes, but they still belong to the set of "people with ovaries". Trans women neither produce large gametes nor possess even defective examples of the organs which produce large gametes.)

By contrast, essentially all trans women's bodies had all of the characteristics associated with the male sex since puberty, including the key rule-in criterion (the ability to produce small gametes). SRS does nothing to change this: from the perspective of "what sex are you?", all it does is remove the ability to produce small gametes without doing anything to aid the target body in producing large gametes. Trans women who undergo SRS have not really "transitioned" from the male sex to the female sex: from the strict definition of sex outlined above, all they've done is desex (or emasculate) themselves and gone to greater or lesser lengths to approximate some of the secondary sexual characteristics associated with female people. SRS doesn't involve implanting ovaries or a womb (even defective ovaries or wombs) into the recipient's body. A male body which cannot reproduce is not functionally equivalent to a fertile (or even infertile) female body.

A memorable and evocative analogy I once encountered is that motorcyclists wear helmets that cover their entire head and leather clothes in case they have a bad fall, while cyclists wear lighter clothes for aerodynamicity and smaller helmets. But it's the vehicle you're riding (literally, what's in between your legs) which determines whether you're a motorcyclist or a cyclist, not the ancillary clothing choices incidentally associated with it: a cyclist wearing leather clothes and a helmet that covers his entire head is not "on the motorcycle spectrum" or someone who has successfully "transitioned" from cyclist to motorcyclist. All that FtM medical transition does is add the leather and removes the bicycle without replacing the bicycle with a motorcycle.

If we can create an artificial uterus in the future, does that make transition valid?

Maybe, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Seems like a real armchair hypothetical given the current (decidedly primitive) state of the art in gender reassignment surgical procedures.