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naraburns  nihil supernum  7d ago (text post)   26649 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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That just causes the leftist to stop listening to me.

Maybe you should try cutting a deal with the Right instead?

Progressivism lost its mind in 2014, and their excesses have done significant damage to our nation and its institutions. Maybe it's time to cut the crazier fringes loose, rather than bankrolling them at every turn. And if you can't do that, why should we on the Right consider you distinct from them?

Maybe you should try cutting a deal with the Right instead?

Well I might have thought that was possible back in 2016. But the right are moving away from liberalism, not towards it. In 2016, Trump held up a rainbow flag, and now in 2024 his campaign is at least 25% about how transgenderism is destroying womens' sports. There was a brief time during G*mergate when we had a liberal backlash against wokeness, but the anti-SJW movement has long been replaced by unironic family values christian conservatism. On the other hand, it seems like more and more democrats are waking up to the flaws in the idpol system.

Trump held up a rainbow flag, and now in 2024 his campaign is at least 25% about how transgenderism is destroying womens' sports.

In what way is that against liberalism?

Well personally, I don't think MtF trans people should compete against women either, but it's not a political issue. It should be decided by individual sports leagues.

A minor criticism, even though I sympathize with your views: what stops individual sports leagues from just all agreeing to lump transwomen in with ciswomen anyways, and leading to a sort of "market failure"? These kinds of organizations are probably prone to follow-the-leader, which is something that happens in the corporate world across many specific kinds of markets, and many sports leagues are basically just corporations anyways. I happen to agree with the take that market failures may often need government correction to cut through market actors' inability and lack of motive to solve market failures.

Womens' sports leagues are an explicitly political creation, so their policies are a political issue.

There's things like college sports where a women's divisions were established by a supposedly-liberal state decree in the first place (Title IX, I think). What's illiberal about enforcing that they remain women's divisions?

I wouldn't consider sex-segregation to be liberal, I would consider it a form of identity politics. The liberal approach to sports would be to give everyone equal access to the facilities, and let everyone compete in the same division. Of course, that would only mean everyone has equal opportunities, not equal outcomes. A 5 foot male probably wouldn't be winning at basketball, and no women would probably win at any sport involving any kind of athletic ability. Sports are unfair like that. Things like sex-segregation and weight classes are a nice form of affirmative action that let more people have a chance, but they still don't make sports 'fair'. You can have a womens' division for sprinting, but the winners in that division will be the most male-like women who can qualify (Caster Semenya, for example). Deciding where to draw that cutoff is messy and there's no clear solution.

Luckily, I don't consider any of this to be an important political issue, so I don't have to form a strong opinion, except that I don't want the government spending its time on it.

What I don't get is that you brought it up as an issue that prevents you from cutting a deal with the right. By your admission it's identity politics either way, and you don't seem to be as averse to cutting deals with the left, so why does the other shade of idpol prevent you from cutting a deal?

Well I guess it's just a shift in which side I feel is closer to me, and more possible to convince. It used to be that if I tried to talk about free speech or the issues with identity politics with leftists, I would get shouted down and called a bigot. Now they seem more open to listening. Whereas the LibsOfTiktok style right-wingers seem completely unapproachable nowadays. I don't get the impression that they want to return to the good old days of pre-woke liberalism like I do.

I don't get the impression that they want to return to the good old days of pre-woke liberalism like I do.

Well, that certainly describes me accurately, but as a counterpoint I'd say I'm probably a lot more open to "I'll leave you alone, if you leave me alone"* type deals, more than the typical leftist.

*) Which, to be clear, means "go do your thing in California, or somewhere, and don't impose your rules on other jurisdictions".

To a first approximation, liberal = trans because "my body, my choice". "Bad for society, thus should be prevented" is usually the illiberal take.

Sure, you can have a liberal "my body, my choice" based argument on transgenderism, but it's about adults making their own decisions about their own bodies, not about abolishing sex-segregation in sports and all other spaces. Somehow liberals managed to go on a couple centuries without arguing for that, until like 5 minutes ago.

I think it's vibe-based. Culture doesn't have enough room for more than one bit, or more than one direction on the lever. Because trans is left and anti-trans is right, moving the lever towards trans moves it in a leftist direction (pro women), and moving the lever against trans moves it in a rightist direction (against child grooming).

From that perspective, "I am against trans participation in women's sports but for 18+ transition and cautiously in favor of puberty blockers given parental approval or a three month waiting period or idk" would simply have too many bits; no serious politician would dedicate that much cultural mindspace to the topic. "Against trans to protect women's sports" is already relatively nuanced. (Yes, the mind weeps, but that's how it is.)

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