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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   34051 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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I think I would defend such norms generally. There seem to me three broad considerations at play here.

1. How much harm is done by false negative determinations? That is, how much harm is done when we treat bad faith actors as being their preferred gender.

2. Much harm is done by false positive determinations? That is, how much harm is done when we treat good faith actors like bad faith actors?

3. How reliably can we differentiate good and bad faith actors?

My perception is that in the particular case of pronoun usage (1) is perceived to be quite small, (2) is comparatively larger, and (3) is highly uncertain. This leads to the development of a norm of erring on the side of caution and using people's preferred pronouns without some very compelling evidence to the contrary.

Coincidentally on X I recently ran into a GC account describing the behavior of another trans bad actor in a Facebook group for lactating mothers. This transwoman was pretending to have lived through a pregnancy and then lost the baby in a miscarriage. He sought sympathy, support, and validation from the group. This was obviously fulfilling some sort of fantasy for him, to which the women of the group were made non-consenting participants. This incident got some play on social media because some of the real women in the group did object to the presence of the transwoman and those women were kicked out. This group chat was governed by suburban nice liberal norms, which like the rationalists have completely capitulated to trans beliefs.

Do you have any links? I would be interested in reading more. To my mind the central bad thing in this incident is the "pretending to have lost a pregnancy to miscarriage," something cis women could also do. If the individual in question had been "really" trans (whatever that means to you) and had stuck strictly to relating their own experiences would that still have been bad?

More generally I think the considerations I have identified above vary contextually and will not always yield the same answer as it does for pronoun usage.

I simultaneously strongly agree with portions of this comment, and strongly disagree with others. I suspect I may not be the only one, although I cannot know that.

This highlights one of the limitations of a comment system like this: there is one up/downvote for the entirety of a comment.

People react to your behavior. The amount of harm done by bad faith actors won't stay the same once you've settled on a policy about false negatives and false positives. The bad actors will see your policy, and act in ways that the policy incentivizes.

The amount of harm done by bad faith actors won't stay the same once you've settled on a policy about false negatives and false positives.

Agreed.

The bad actors will see your policy, and act in ways that the policy incentivizes.

Ditto for good faith actors, for that matter. And "ways that the policy incentivizes" is not the same thing as "ways that the maker of the policy publicly announced that the policy would result in", nor is it the same thing as "ways that improve the outcome compared to without the policy".

If you put a policy in place that results in, oh, severe consequences for using a persons non-preferred gender, you will likely get many people to stop using said person's preferred gender, as they went through a logic chain along the lines of "I am too forgetful / do not have the memory to 100% guarantee that I always get 100% of people's preferred gender correct 100% of the time, and the consequences are severe, so I will stop using gender altogether to refer to people".

Remarkable

You know better than to post low-effort one-word sneers.

How about "it's all so tiresome."

How about actually engaging with people and articulating your disagreement, or else just letting it go?

Do you have any links? I would be interested in reading more. To my mind the central bad thing in this incident is the "pretending to have lost a pregnancy to miscarriage," something cis women could also do. If the individual in question had been "really" trans (whatever that means to you) and had stuck strictly to relating their own experiences would that still have been bad?

"Gabrielle Darone".

If a trans woman stuck to "relating their own experiences," what place would they have in a group for pregnant and lactating women?

I guess I'm confused. From the OP I had the impression Darone concealed the fact that she was trans and had posted in the group as if she had actually been pregnant and had a miscarriage. The posts linked seem like the total opposite of that. Darone was up front that she was trans and that her pregnancy was simulated rather than actual. She does in fact seem to stick strictly to her own experiences in the posts in question. The screenshots do not show other members' posts but the way Darone talks about them it seems like other commenters were broadly supportive.

What am I supposed to be mad about?

I didn't follow the story myself, I only know how it was reported second-hand on Twitter, but my understanding is that Darone:

(1) Simulated being "pregnant" in a group for pregnant and lactating women. (2) When her "'pregnancy" was supposed to come to term, roleplayed having a miscarriage, simulating her supposed grief at not having a child, and expected the women in the group to support her the way they would for someone who had actually had a miscarriage. (3) When some women (including some who had actually had miscarriages) objected to this, they were kicked out of the group.

I don't think anyone is demanding you be mad about it. But if you find nothing unobjectionable in this behavior, I question your "confusion."

I think what Darone did was weird but as long as she was up front about it and other group members seem broadly ok with it then I don't see the issue. As to (3) I would be interested in seeing the objections. I can imagine them taking forms for which I would have a problem with their being kicked out and forms for which I would think it was fine.

  • -15

Maybe the offensiveness of what Darone did becomes more obvious if you remove the trans issue from the topic.

Imagine you have a support group for parents whose children have a terminal form of cancer. These really exist and are important to the people involved. One day a member posts a sad story about how his kid has died recently, obviously getting lots of expressions of support and sympathy from the group, because that's what support groups do. Then later it turns out that his kid is alive and well, wasn't even sick, or maybe doesn't even exist.

Could you then imagine some of the people who were in the process of actually losing their children to cancer would find the behavior of the imposter deeply offensive? Wouldn't it be more than a little “weird” if the group administrators responded to the controversy by kicking out the offended parents with actual dying children (i.e. the target demographic of the group!), to kowtow to an imposter that wants sympathy for his imaginary grief?

And I know you might say: well, maybe the imposter cannot help it! Münchhausen syndrome is a thing! Let's be empathic and inclusive! But even if I agree that Münchhausen syndrome is real and that people with this condition deserve help, it's not clear that that help must come in the form of being admitted to a support group they do not qualify for. I think it's reasonable to keep the support group for actual parents of actual dying children, and give the imposter support in the form of psychiatric treatment separately.

Similarly, I cannot understand why a group specifically for pregnant women would prioritize the needs of a male imposter over the safety and comfort of actual pregnant women in the group.

Note that none of this depends on proving that the male acts out of malice or indulging a sexual fetish. It's perfectly plausible that some transwomen are legitimately sad that they can never become pregnant, and perhaps they need support to deal with that grief, and maybe that support involves LARPing out a miscarriage, but that still doesn't imply they should be entitled to join support groups for pregnant women, on the simple basis that they are not, and never will be, pregnant women.

I think what Darone did was weird but as long as she was up front about it and other group members seem broadly ok with it then I don't see the issue.

I think the group members that did the kicking-out accepted the behaviour, because they believed in a moral obligation to do so. In an emotional/personal preference sense, I dont think they were ok with it.

If they said "Speaking as a woman who has actually had a miscarriage and found the experience intensely traumatic, your predilection for roleplaying as someone who has experienced a miscarriage in order to fulfil a perverse sexual fantasy is shockingly tasteless and disgusting, and has no place in a space like this - take it to a fetish site"?

I find it pretty hard to imagine any other "form" the objection might take.

I would probably remove such a person, if I intended my group to be trans-friendly. Though I am inclined to extend some grace to someone dealing with that kind of trauma.

  • -18

I find it very disconcerting that the line between "trans-friendly policies" and "policies which enable perverts to roleplay their creepy fantasies to their heart's content" is so razor-thin, if not indeed nonexistent. I mean, you say that what Darone did was "weird" - do you dispute that he was doing it to fulfil a sexual fantasy?

Yes. I am very skeptical Darone experienced sexual arousal as part of their role play.

  • -11
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And if they said "you're not a woman and this is in bad taste"?

I could go either way. I see how it can be in bad taste but I also see why a trans positive space wouldn't permit members to misgender people.

  • -10

Why on earth does a group for mothers discussing the biological parts of pregnancy and early childhood need to be trans friendly? If a transwoman requests a hysterectomy they should be sent to a psychiatrist, not an obstetric surgeon.

Some trans fantasias are so blatantly retarded that humoring them seems a bit insulting to everyone involved, including the trans"women" themselves.

Why should a lactation support group be "trans positive" in the sense that they can't tell a trans woman that she cannot lactate or miscarry?

Trans woman (and cis men) can lactate, though. I think if people want a group that didn't allow people like Darone they should be free to start one. Not every group has to have to the same rules about posts.

  • -12
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