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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Thanks to @gattsuru for important context. Given that I've made such a fuss about defining what was actually said, I should probably also give a response on the subject! Apologies if it's not quite what you were looking for, however.

I don't personally like this, as a general definition of transphobia. One response I've seen to the complaint that we're "not allowed to distinguish between trans women and other women" is that of course you can make that distinction. There's even an adjective for it: trans women. This is ... fair, but in my view it entails certain things. One of these is that people should be allowed to decide that they are not romantically or sexually attracted to trans women as a class, if that's really how they feel. This is a really personal topic, and asking people to rearrange their innermost feelings is a much stronger request than just asking them to rearrange their language and/or manners. Give people some space, and if they're not going out of their way to be hurtful to you, then don't threaten them on a subject that's as personal as this.

With that said, I don't think your particular complaint has much weight, here. If "there are in fact zero transwomen who are indistinguishable from women with a womb," then a person could simply respond that, well, feminine phenotypes are really important to me, and if I meet a trans woman who reaches my standards on that point, then, sure, I might be open to dating her if other aspects were in alignment, hooray, congratulations to me on my non-transphobia, problem solved.

I will also say that, on a subreddit, it's highly likely that the subject of "Would you date a trans woman?" doesn't come up in the practical sense. People aren't actually meeting partners there. Instead, the subject is much more likely to only be mentioned in conjunction with statements that are transphobic like "trans women are ugly" or "trans women are likely to be predatory." I can see this being a useful place to draw the line, for discussion purposes. I still don't think it's a good rule, because it will bleed out into situations that do involve actual dating, and that's not good for respecting people's preferences. But I can understand why, on a subreddit, the immediate concerns of the community might lead people to draw lines that are optimized for the specific online context.