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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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Most voters, even Democratic voters, don't actually buy the bodily autonomy argument, even for abortion. If you ask if women should be able to abort a day before she's scheduled to give birth, for no reason beyond feeling like it, most will just divert the conversation ("that never happens!") instead of biting the bullet. It's something cooked up in a philosophy journal that works as a convenient one liner.

most will just divert the conversation ("that never happens!") instead of biting the bullet

Or in other words, it's just the distaff/Blue counterpart to this.

The optimal number of murdered children in any society is still not 0 (and literally everyone accepts this- abortion is just more direct about it than others); what you're fighting over if you don't accept the argument works the exact same way from "the other" side is merely a question of how high that balance is, which causes are allowed to spend that balance, and for what reason. The pro-gun side's argument is that "complete disarmament would, counterintuitively, lead to more murder"; the pro-abortion side's argument is similarly utilitarian, so is the pro-trans one.

"The optimal number of in society is not 0" is about tradeoffs; it's not supposed to indicate you make no attempt to reduce X even when there's no cost to doing so.

The "all of them" response is not saying there's a tradeoff, it's not saying the optimal number of dead kids is non-zero; it's rejecting the tradeoff entirely, saying that no number of dead children is worth any gun control. Or would, if you took it literally. What it's actually saying is more like "we reject your framing, and fuck you". Which is much the same as what Fuentes is saying, except that women as a class are more sympathetic than gun grabbers.