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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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A policy of "If Alice and Barbara are equally female-presenting, both identify as female, and both have stated a preference for she/her, you do not refer to Alice as he/him, or as they/them while referring to Barbara as she/her, merely because Alice happened to be born with a dangly bit" is not oppression, because it is not oppression for Alice's genitals to be none of your business.

Says you. If I disagree about how female-presenting Alice is, or if actually I think that the biological sex of the person is relevant, we're going to have to have a fight about it. This is what I'm getting at. In practice, everyone wants to force their values on (oppress) other people some of the time. You can say it shouldn't be like that, but it is like that.

Bumping that up a layer of abstraction to force your system of conflict resolution on everyone doesn't actually help, it just obscures, because in practice it means some win and some lose on the concrete level but now you aren't allow to fight on the concrete level any more.

Also, I would like to point out that my deep cynicism on this subject stems, like @HonoriaWinchester, @SteveAgain and I suspect many others, from having done my best to live up to that poem and then having people I'd stuck up for turn on me the moment they had the chance. I am not inclined to try it again.