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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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So, sure, maybe a few years ago, there were a few people saying 'I'm really worried that as many as eighteen 16-17 year olds per year might be getting genital reassignment surgeries, I wish they'd wait another year or two', and the correct reply to that would have been some measured response like 'Well the data is kind of ambiguous and I'm not sure it actually tells us that's happening at all, and since you're allowed to get married and have kids at that age I'm not sure it's hugely important to deny them this one life-altering decision while allowing so many others, and if the numbers are that small I'm not sure it makes sense to have the larger debate about the trans issue generally hinge so crucially on this tiny and ambiguous group of people, but sure, maybe a few people are making questionable decisions and should wait a year or two to be sure, maybe we send around a memo to doctors about that or something.'

I was thinking of making another top level post on this, but to not spam the top with trans issues, I'll just leave a note here.

The issue with your portrayal isn't so much that it's accusing the other side of motte-and-bailey, as it's that it's portraying the motte as conceding the validity of the transgender care framework. The "reasonable motte" isn't "I wish they waited a few years to be sure", it's "there are serious questions about the scientific and ethical validity of both the theory and practice behind transgender healthcare", and the bailey was something to the effect of "this is all absolute pseudoscientific garbage". The issue that is coming up now is that the bailey looks more and more defensible.

I'm not particularly interested in debating the history of the discourse with you, but if you want to explicitly reject either the motte or they bailey now, that could be helpful in the future.