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naraburns  nihil supernum  8d ago (text post)   26689 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.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

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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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