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 -
That's probably true, but I'm not sure that looks much different to trans activists from the social conservative perspective just winning, and perhaps more critically I think you're still going to have a million+ trans or post-trans people going around, and unless they're sold against the concept, they're going to have alternative means for bringing matters forward socially. Whatever they do might still be such that the next generation of trans people is smaller, and maybe that loops back on itself, but you're looking at decades if not the better part of a century.
My relevant underlying axiom is that it is there must be limits to what governments can do to protect people from themselves, so probably closer to self-expression or right-to-modify, though the principle applies far broader than just body modification -- it's why I'm very skeptical of vape bans, soft drink size controls, or of the Australian arguments for gun control, with the extreme being matters like 'the FDA oppressed Stalking Cat'. Many of these things might be stupid things to do (especially for Stalking Cat and the vapers), but that's their choice to make.
This principal isn't unlimited, in the sense that we reasonably restrict selling cigarettes to children or advertising ethylene glycol as a low-calorie sweetener, and there are some edges cases with trans stuff. But even to the extent I can be persuaded on the edge cases that were parallels, it's hard to present a fair or honest engagement. Bringing up false-advertising-like claims inevitably invites discussion about what extent any given procedure or policy has benefits. I've even been persuaded on a few matters! While the data for damage from short-term use of puberty blockers on bone density isn't anywhere near as strong as trans skeptics think, early-initiated long-term use of those blockers probably has some harms for sexual development in adulthood for both continuing trans and desisters that is neither being disclosed nor documented properly, for example, and in ways I'd honestly expected to have been better hammered out and wasn't.
But short of convincing evidence that adult trans people are going to keel over by the cartloads with the equivalent of the asbestos-to-mesothelioma pipeline, though, any debate on this pretty quickly turns to "sucks to be them, gotta update that documentation" or "okay, guess we should wait mid-to-late teens". Which is going to seem like a really weird goalpost-moving to someone holding this position, rather than an update-on-evidence, in addition to just coming across ghoulish when someone's just finishing talking up how a victim is now horribly dysphoric/has had their entire romantic life upended/couldn't trust that bungee jumping service.
That said, I don't think my principles are common, here. Not only are the average trans activist likely motivated by something different, in many circumstances they're actively drive toward widespread government controls (not just on this topic, such as with bans on stupid talk-only conversion therapy, but also on a wide variety of others). But if principles only mattered when they helped people you agreed with, or agreed with them, they're not principles at all.
I think that dysphoria and gender identity are more useful frameworks for understanding what motivations trans groups, rather than what would change the minds or arguments of trans activists or the median person. Indeed, I don't think they are, or should be, particularly persuasive to other people even presuming that they were true: in addition to the self-hostage-taking that social conservatives often bring up, we pretty clearly don't recognize mass suicides of other groups as cause for actions along the beliefs of those groups. But they're neither what makes the policy for within the view of trans people, nor are they what would need to be different for their advocates and activists to change their minds rather than their arguments.
Thanks for the elaborate response, I feel a bit bad now since I don't seem to have too much to say about it. It does make me wonder why you think your view is so rare here, because I don't see much of anything that I'd disagree with here. There might be something around the validity of dysphoria - I'll be the first to confess I don't grok it at all, be it personally or in the abstract - but it doesn't seem to be the cornerstone for your views on the matter, nor is it for mine. I can understand (though it frustrates me) how people immediately jump to "do you want to ban adults from making medical decisions for themselves?" upon seeing my vehement disagreement with trans activists, but I don't think this is what the disagreement is about. Everything you said the limits of the government to protect people from themselves is, in my case, preaching to the choir.
This does seem to hit the nail on the head as to why we're in such a pickle. I don't even care about alternative means of bringing the matters forward socially, as long as they're not underhanded (using the public school system to sell the concept to kids, behind the parents' back being one extreme example). But if what I consider to be setting up some basic rules of engagement is already defined to be a lose condition by the pro-trans side, well... where can we go from there?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link