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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Anything that attempts to revise the age-old definition of man and woman is going to be unacceptable to many. The words man and woman are important because mating is what so much of socializing is about, directly or indirectly, and we need words to refer to the only two divisions of mammalian life that can create a new living being. Because so much is downstream of mating, the distinction between man and woman is integrally important and obvious. There are also significant differences between the normative male and female personalities.

If an FTM claims to be a man, it comes with none of man’s significance: FTM can’t create a child with a woman, if I get into a heated altercation with them I don’t have to worry about violence, and if I make a joke about their appearance I might have to worry about someone crying or being upset for a month.

if I get into a heated altercation with them I don’t have to worry about violence

My understanding is they take enormous doses of testosterone and many are jacked. They're also shorter on average than men and have a woman's bone structure. But besides that I wouldn't be so confident that they are passive or easy to take in a fight.

fighting is like a 50/50 split between being strong/big and being good at fighting. Unless these FtM's are also taking some BJJ courses, i don't care how much testosterone rage they have- being kinda ripped but having no experience in a fight is worth almost nothing unless your opponent has also never been in a fight.

Yeah, size is half the battle. But testosterone is a wonder drug. The jacked among them might be actually strong and not easy to take in a fight.

I would be worried about violence if I got into an altercation with Buck Angel.

Is there a name for this fallacy? If not I propose the name "Appeal to Outlier Fallacy".

A 10th percentile man could beat a 90th percentile woman in a fight. This is very meaningful. But it doesn't mean that all men can defeat all women.

It's tiresome to insist that, in order to be meaningful, a statement about a group must be universally true for all members of a group. It makes it nearly impossible to talk about groups at all, which I think might be the intention of people who appeal to outliers.

"It's not true that cheetahs are faster than humans. There are some old sick cheetahs who can't run anymore and would lose to a human sprinter.".

Cherry picking

Yeah, but this is the Motte so I have to write a thousand words about it. Was hoping for some Latin to spice it up even more.

Tertium non datur maybe? From memory that means an all or nothing proposition.

They're older now, 60 years of age, and 5' 9" in height which is average height for American men. So if you're younger, taller, and maybe stronger, and/or you know how to fight, then you needn't worry about getting into a fist-fight with them.

Look at her next to men. She only passes as a huge jacked guy in staged photos.

https://www.agefotostock.fr/age/fr/Stock-Images/buck-angel.html

That picture is slightly misleading, since the left two MTFs are wearing high heels (you'd think you'd not to want to make yourself look huger when you're already well above the average height of the sex you're trying to impersonate, but I digress) while Buck isn't. According to google Laverne Cox (the black MTF on the left side of the pictures) is 5'11" while Buck Angel is 5'9" (which is the average bio-male height in the US). Assuming Buck is only doing the standard male one or two inches of lying, that's still not enough to put her firmly in the manlet realm. I wager if Buck walked past the average person who knew nothing about her and didn't say anything, nobody would pick her out as female.