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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   30744 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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In principle it could be a lie if he is snickering to himself and his stream of consciousness contains the symbols "owning the libs."

A truthful self identification wouldn't look like that at all

That's how they identify themself to the court, which the court can verify because that is how they identified themself to them. Is the idea that they have a different "true" pronoun identity? In the absence of a brain-scanning machine that can determine one's "true" pronouns, I don't know how that could be demonstrated. Is the idea that they identify differently to their friends and family? Well, there's no rule that you have to identify with the same pronouns to everyone.

I dunno, I think a lawyer would not be doing anything wrong to basically cue up the decision. "With what pronouns would you like to identify yourself to the court? We could use he/him, she/her or they/them. It's your choice how to identify, although the prosecutors will likely have a slightly more difficult time establishing the elements of a hate crime charge if you use she/her or they/them. Let me know what you decide." I don't think there's a lie there, no matter how you squint.

I don't think the way you identify to court can be a lie in principle, so on that we agree.

But, I think Lauren Southern was lying here. She was kind of laughing at all this as a joke. I suppose, similar to the courts, you can say she identified to the government as a man, and you can't lie about that in principle.

What the left gets right is that a right-wing troll could lie about their identity. (Like Lauren was doing). The gunman could be, or could not be. You would get a good feel for if he is lying or not based on hearsay of private conversations he's had with friends. Or you could try guessing if you knew what his reddit posts looked like or whatever.

What the left gets right is that a right-wing troll could lie about their identity. (Like Lauren was doing). The gunman could be, or could not be.

Yeah that's true. It still opens a can of worms for the trans movement, though. Once you can construe falseness in someone's purported gender identity by ascribing an ulterior motive and looking to ulterior behavior, each being inconsistent with someone who is "actually" a woman or whatever, then you kind of open the door to (e.g.) discrediting a trans woman as pursuing an ulterior motive of indulging a sexual fetish (autogynephilia), if you can in principle substantiate it by looking to ulterior behavior (does his browser history contain some type of porn that suggests he is getting off on pretending to be a woman).

This of course raises the question, what if it's all a troll job? The entire non-binary thing, or even the entirety of Queer Theory. Given it's internal contradictions it would hardly be surprising. Maybe it's all a giant joke that got out of hand. It could be, or could not be.

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