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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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My point about trans people experiencing passing is that there's no difference between the two for a trans person going about their day.

This seems fair enough, and I'd characterize it as that a trans person's experience of passing is indistinguishable from not passing within certain environments and contexts, particularly ones where everyone around them decides to treat them as if they pass. It's the difference between passing a test because you legitimately got 70% of the questions correct and because the professor decided that you deserved a free 50 points on top of the 20% you got correct. You can argue that, technically, the latter fits the definition of "passing," but I don't think that's a very useful definition for the way people normally use the term. For one, it implies that one viable strategy for passing tests is to manipulate every professor you have into giving you a free 50 points, which would subvert the entire purpose of what "passing" a test is meant to signify. I don't think when people say things like "if the transwoman passes, I'm okay calling her a 'she' and having her go into the women's bathroom," they mean that they'd be okay with it as long as they've been bullied, coerced, or otherwise manipulated into treating the transwoman as if they're female regardless of their own subjective perception of the transwoman. Rather, I think they mean something about how an ignorant stranger would perceive the transwoman.