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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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I've long since lost the reference, but probably 6 years ago I saw some segment on The Hill about a study done by a trans advocacy group. And basically it was a policy document pointing out that putting penises in women only spaces, especially women only spaces with minors, is about the most unpopular policy you can possibly run on. So what needs to happen is that trans friendly politicians need to lie, and then quietly do it anyways. Don't worry, trans friendly advocates in media, and trust and safety teams on social media will cover for you.

No matter what mouth sounds Democrats make, I will never trust them on this subject ever again. And unfortunately for them, until all my children are over 18, it's literally my number one priority. We already live in a world where Democrats sanctioned the state taking kids away from parents, and putting them on a path towards mutilation and sterilization. You don't just get to walk away from that and hope nobody brings up all those children you sterilized.

putting penises in women only spaces ... is about the most unpopular policy....

What if one frames it as "Outside the bedroom or the doctor's office, other peoples' genitals are none of your business, and should not be taken as an input to whether $PERSON is allowed to $VERB_PHRASE."?

That was the propaganda they lead with. A few obviously preventable rapes later, people started to see through it.

I think even if they “distance themselves” this one is going to be hard to get trust back on. They’ve already been caught several times outright lying on this issue, and worse, lying about exactly what they’re doing in schools. Millions of parents are not only aware, but angry. I know a person I’m working with who has a daughter who briefly decided she was queer. Her mother was absolutely terrified of this because she knew what would happen the minute a psychiatrist heard any sort of gender confusion from her daughter. At school, this stuff was encouraged. The girl seems to be growing out of it now, bullet dodged. But multiply that by all the parents out there knowing that the schools are teaching this and going behind their backs, who know that trans identified men can go into any locker room they want, and that books that are nearly pornographic are available to grade school kids. I don’t think you can slip one by here.

So what needs to happen is that trans friendly politicians need to lie, and then quietly do it anyways. Don't worry, trans friendly advocates in media, and trust and safety teams on social media will cover for you.

I've noticed that trans advocacy seemed to be copying along with the successful gay marriage advocacy of the past, and this looks like another possible example. Back in 2008, when presidential candidate Barack Obama came out explicitly against gay marriage, it was considered just common knowledge among my peers that he was lying in order to help the good guys gain power. Obama's stance on gay marriage hasn't been relevant in a long time, but as of the last time I talked about it with friends, they seemed to still believe that Obama had been lying at the time, rather than that his position changed at some point while he was in office.

I have no idea how many people actually believed his lie, assuming that it was a lie, but certainly telling such lies in order to sneak in more "extreme" positions wasn't disapproved of and, by my perceptions, quite lauded. So it does seem reasonable to suspect similar things going on with trans advocacy. However, this doesn't seem to be working in this case for a variety of reasons, including the fundamental physical differences between what gay marriage and trans advocacy demand. There seems to be a sort of cruel cosmic joke here with trans advocates trying to follow in the successful footsteps of the gay marriage movement but as a cargo cult just copying along the superficial aspects.

Ezra Klein actually brought up Obama's lie to the Pod Save America guys who worked for him. No one contested that it was a lie btw.

He identified a different reason the trans stuff sunk Harris: both Harris and the ACLU are fucking stupid.

That sounds harsh but that was the tone. He was as angry as Klein gets, furious that the ACLU would even send out an exam (a paper trail!) on a policy that was almost designed to be maximally offensive and that Harris was dumb enough to say she supported and actioned it on tape instead of ignoring it or simply handing it in.

In essence, they didn't lie as good or as smart as Obama did.

I think the trans thing legitimately is a heavier lift but I think he has a point.

Obama had a somewhat similar paper trail https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-rights/

In another questionnaire for Chicago LGBT newspaper Outlines, Obama says he supports same-sex marriage. In 2009, a copy of his typed responses was unearthed and printed in the Windy City Times. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” reads the questionnaire bearing his signature at the bottom. Later, Obama aides will dispute that he actually filled out the questionnaire himself.

And unfortunately for them, until all my children are over 18, it's literally my number one priority.

Agreed. This is more than people with dicks dominating women's sports. And it's more than a few perverts stealing women's underwear or using women's locker rooms.

Those stories understandably get the most engagement, but they are relatively rare.

The much bigger issue is how the spread of trans ideology has resulted in some pretty huge number of children getting placed onto the trans gender track which, if not quickly arrested, results in awful life outcomes. I think the best comparison is anorexia, which is similarly terrible for one's health and mostly the result of social contagion.

In my mind, Democrats are permanently tainted on this issue. We need more than a minor pullback in wokeness. We need investigations. We need groomers to get fired and potentially prosecuted. And we need clinics performing gender surgery on minors to be shut down, their owners sued into bankruptcy, and their practitioners delicensed.

Assuming that instead of trans advocates losing ground, it's shadow-speak, or fingers crossed in the background.

Seems like a particularly miserable way of viewing the world. It's a victory for your team. Take the W.

We already live in a world where Democrats sanctioned (...) putting them on a path towards mutilation and sterilization.

I really doubt you can find anything from a major politician that supports that claim. This isn't even "making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike", it's just plain making things up.

Some schools secretly socially transition children. Some locales will take children out of parents' custody if they fail to support transition. This is not all right wing paranoia.

They almost certainly know that. It's just mouth sounds.