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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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I guess it’s another victim of the toxoplasma of rage? Important issues that no one disagrees with are largely ignored, whereas less important ones will get talked about if you can create a debate over them.

This happens on a micro scale as well in trans issues; the trans people that will attract the most attention will naturally be the most divisive, e.g. Dylan Mulvaney. Fewer people care about say, Rebekah Bruesehoff, the trans girl activist who plays field hockey and just looks like your typical boring blonde American girl; but everybody knows Lia Thomas because leftists look virtuous defending a male looking 6’1 broad shouldered trans woman, and most importantly, they can have a flaming debate with conservatives online about it.

I guess it’s another victim of the toxoplasma of rage? Important issues that no one disagrees with are largely ignored, whereas less important ones will get talked about if you can create a debate over them.

Sure, but especially on a debate forum this doesn't even seem like a failure mode. If you want to say the republicans focusing on it as a point in the last mid terms lead to bad outcomes for them then I'd agree with you.

Put another way, if you come in here and claim to be able to see out of the back of your head and also think that we should focus on increasing fiber rather than decreasing sugar in American school lunches the claim that objectively impacts more people is absolutely not the claim I'm more likely to want to discuss. To many of us that claim that there is an internal feeling of gender is more like the former than the latter.