site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Sarah McBride passes well enough, arguably better than Nancy "manjaw" Mace. Nobody would notice or care if the Republicans weren't grandstanding about the issue. The whole point of the Congressional bathroom rule is to keep a passing transwoman who is not a threat to anyone out of the ladies' room in order to show Republican's disapproval of transgenderism.

In the absence of strong antidiscrimination laws which allow lawfare against people who don't let Jonathan Yaniv into the ladies' room, social enforcement based on presentation works a lot better than bathroom laws based on birth sex or anatomy. In the presence of strong antidiscrimination laws protecting men pretending to be women, neither social enforcement nor bathroom laws work.

  • -13

The problem with this logic is that it doesn't generalize. If you allow males into women's spaces so long as they pass well enough, who is going to be the judge of who passes well enough? What rule would you propose that allows Sarah McBride in but keeps Jessica Yaniv out?

You can have a “don't ask, don't tell” policy, which is mostly how things worked before the year 2000, but once the cat is out of the bag, you have to revert to some objective rule about who is or isn't allowed.

The whole point of the Congressional bathroom rule is to keep a passing transwoman who is not a threat to anyone out of the ladies' room in order to show Republican's disapproval of transgenderism.

I don't think that's the entire point. The point is also to keep men out of women's shelters and prisons, men out of women's sports and dressing rooms, and men out of women's spaces in general.

If Republicans cannot even keep men out of women's bathrooms in Washington DC, how can they expect to accomplish any of those other tasks? So even if the McBride issue is itself not important because McBride is likely harmless (with which I tend to agree), the case is important because it is at the fulcrum of a broader issue.

If you allow males into women's spaces so long as they pass well enough, who is going to be the judge of who passes well enough?

The non-trans public.

To the point that this is offensive to trannies, either individually or as a collective, we don't really have to care.

OK. So how many members of the public must complain before she is deemed nonpassing? Is it like a percentage of a quorum? What percentage of what quorum? Is a single complaint sufficient? In that case, how is the rule different from banning transgenders entirely, just with the caveat that you won't face penalties if you don't get caught, which is essentially how all misdemeanors work?

These are the kinds of questions that you have to answer to be fair to transgenders, not the kinds of questions you have to answer to keep the peace on the issue.

The point is also to keep men out of women's shelters and prisons, men out of women's sports and dressing rooms, and men out of women's spaces in general.

Well that's patently not the point of a rule specifically addressing the toilets in Congress. It may be political signalling conducted with those issues in mind, but this rule obviously has no impact on prisons and sports.

Mace has a woman's skeleton, McBride doesn't. Nance would be unlikely to get clocked as trans because of her gracile skeleton and small size. Meanwhile, McBride is one of the reasons being a big boned woman today makes you liable to be clocked as trans and insulted as such in a dispute.

In any case, people like McBride exist to pass strong antidiscrimination laws protecting men who want to pretend to be women.

Making them feel very unwelcome, is it mere grandstanding?

I'm pretty confident that if the average person met McBride they wouldn't think she was a trans woman, partly because there are so few of them that the thought just wouldn't cross most people's mind. They certainly wouldn't bat an eyelid if they saw her in the women's toilet.

is it mere grandstanding?

Yes. There is no way anyone in Congress actually feels threatened by McBride (and if they did that would be a sufficient display of neurosis as to be disqualifying for a legislator).