This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Instead of just looking at passing, there's also the factor of hormones. Due to this, they start to actually have attributes of the other sex in ways that they previously did not, and that are not just makeup and outward aesthetic changes. Of course, that's still limited, and so they remain hard to categorize.
But imagine we had some perfect technology that could fully and perfectly, change someone's sex, down to a cellular level, etc. In that case, we should recognize them as being the opposite sex than they had, I would think. Current treatments are currently very far short of that, while still being something in that direction, which is one reason why there's all this disagreement over what we should do.
If technology is that sufficiently advanced we could presume there'd be a 'cure' for this population to allow them to be happy with their natal bodies.
Some trans people would argue that such a “cure” would fundamentally change who they are as a person, as opposed to say, plopping the same brain in a new body of the opposite sex. It would be akin to having a pill to cure homosexuality when you could instead just accept people for who they are.
I’m somewhat ambivalent about it because going from one sex hormone to the other also changes who you are as a person (I’ve experienced this as someone who went on HRT), and there’s reports of dysphoric biological female teenagers going on testosterone blockers and that significantly reducing their dysphoria to the point they no longer need to transition.
But, given the two options, I would probably go with the perfect transition, because it’s a lot more interesting.
In terms of fundamental change, happy as I am, seems a lesser / smaller change than the alternative.
I would think a pill to cure homosexuals would be popular. Though I can imagine there would be opposition. There's opposition by some in the deaf community to cochlear implants.
I’m much more averse to altering my brain than altering my body. To me a perfect sex change would be plopping my existing brain into a body of the opposite sex, while a dysphoria cure would involve fundamentally altering my existing brain structure.
Me with a different set of genitals is still me; me after a treatment that changes my self-perception and my sexuality… seems like a much bigger change.
To me the gender swap is the cochlear implants, whereas the curing gender dysphoria is like making you OK with being deaf and having you live in an idyllic deaf community. Sure, some of those people are very happy, and it’s better than being miserable because you don’t know what everyone around you is saying, but I would much prefer to be able to actually hear.
Hormones literally alter your brain structure, almost certainly more than altering whatever is causing dysphoria would. I can understand someone who has been trans for a while and has built up an identity around it, but once we have a pill that just removes the dysphoria that should be the last generation of trans people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So would cochlear implants. It hasn't posed a significant moral problem for us I think.
It is only a problem if you buy into the idea that an illness or deficiency has the same value as the natural functioning of the body. But that is putting the cart before the horse.
Given that transpeople are claiming that their dysphoria makes them suffer so significantly that care is mandated and most of their gains have been based on a mostly pragmatic desire to avoid this suffering they have less room here than many - e.g. homosexuals - to complain.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If such a technology existed, it would radically change how people conceptualize gender. I think it would be de-emphasized to meaninglessness. It would be akin to categorizing people by what color clothes they wear.
You'd still have whatever mental issues made them want to transition.
Is curiosity really such a mental issue? If you can change your sex more or less at will, I don't know why most people wouldn't jump at the chance for the experience: it's reversible after all, in the hypothetical. It seems no weirder than wanting to see what being a bird is like for a couple hours.
If you can change your sex more or less at will our conception of gender and sex norms would be completely different. It's possible a lot of what drives MTF/FTM to want to transition wouldn't exist in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The first point you highlighted is an example of a "trait cluster" sex model, and I think it can form one basis of accepting trans women as women.
How feminized does a male body need to be before it is "female"?
I do think you're right that some sci fi technology may come along to throw a wrench in the current form of the debate. What will people say when you can do gene therapy and grow a new set of genitals to order for a person?
Orders of magnitude more than we can currently accomplish.
More options
Context Copy link
This is kind of a problem that paradoxes of identity have in general—it's hard to draw a clear line, since at every point the change is practically negligible. I don't know that I'm comfortable with handing out a bunch of criteria, since edge-cases are hard.
I think it might often be good to think about it, in those weird edge cases as "basically male in these ways, basically female in these ways, kind of in the middle in these ways, like nothing else in these ways," etc. But that doesn't distill things into a concise summary, and so isn't always useful.
I do wish that it wasn't praised in some subsets of society to try to push yourself into the messy middle.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link