site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26483 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I also find it hard to square Freddie’s claim that “no one” is trying to obliterate the distinction between male and female altogether with his apparent belief that trans women competing in female sporting events is entirely fair and legitimate. How can such a policy possibly be justified without ignoring the indisputable biological reality, consistent across time and space, that the average male person is stronger, faster and more resilient than 99% of female people?

I think there are gender-heavy assumptions that could square that particular circle. At the trivial level, there's a bit of a motte-and-bailey where sometimes we're talking about simply having XY chromosomes, having gone through a male puberty, and having fully reached male adulthood before transition, which can have significantly different effects; there are also difference traits needed for different sports.

Some of them are wronger (eg, comparing the height of someone who transitioned at 22 to someone who started transition at 12) than others (eg, Olympic-level shooting sports strongly suggests women have comparable or better attributes for some trials), but even the wrong ones are questions of fact, rather than incoherent positions. Some of them are facts that I don't even know -- how does the average strength or resilience of someone with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome compare, or someone who never went through male puberty?

Now, there's a stronger criticism that this is a motte-and-bailey -- your link goes to an ACLU page that links to an NCAA page that is broken, but it's supposed to be based around this policy, which says transfem players "may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment", citing this study. But the study only finds that :

... The effects of cross-sex hormones in the dosages commonly used have reached their maximum effects after 1 year of administration. In spite of a large difference in testosterone exposure between men and women, there is a large overlap of muscle area between them. Androgen deprivation of men induces a loss of muscle area, further increasing this overlap with women. Therefore, depending on the levels of arbitrariness one wants to accept, it is justifiable that reassigned M –F compete with other women.

Even this is still compatible with a gender binary, if one different than what you'd accept of understand. (Arguably, it demands it; there's actually a lot of internal conflict between the transmedical side and the enby-heavy sides of the trans movement, but it's hard to find that discussed in external-facing communication.) It's just really misleading.

Why are these concerns legitimate to express, and not: the unintended consequences of abolishing single-sex bathrooms and changing rooms; male rapists with intact genitalia being incarcerated in female prisons; convicted sex offenders coming out as trans and changing their names in order to evade child safeguarding policies - or any other of the litany of reasonable-sounding objections gender-critical people have raised over the last decade or so? No idea.

Largely, because the acceptable concerns have either (or both) solutions that are acceptable to the public mores of the progressive movement and especially deBoer's place in it, and because the things that those solutions demand don't crush the goals of the transgender movement. The former is definitely a larger controlling aspect -- there are definitely places where uncertainty about a specific procedure's efficacy is unacceptable, as Trace has found out -- but it's not like this is new or specific to this particular movement.

Bathrooms and changing rooms can't be discussed because the only solution that would solve the proposed threats would cut off access to much of the public sphere; trans rapists and sex offenders because 'everybody' knows that it's really about the Chinese Cardiology over the specific policy questions.

As noted by Wesley Yang, there are 39 separate days3 in the American political calendar specifically dedicated to celebrating trans people

To be fair, naming days for stupid things is what people offer instead of policy behaviors; this is a funny factoid rather than a meaningful counter.

It’s fascinating contrasting the passage above with an article Freddie published in 2022 about the recent phenomenon of social media-addicted teenagers suddenly “discovering” that they suffer from dissociative identity disorder (“DID” for short, popularly known as “multiple personality disorder”), an exceptionally rare condition in which a person has multiple distinct personalities (called “alters”).

That's true, but it's probably a better argument against deBoer's writing qualities in general (I will again bring up that time he had a psychotic break and fasely accused someone of sexual assault). I've probably gotten a sanewashed version of multiplicity compared to the TikTok variant, but compared SSC. Which isn't to say that the DID fandom is right or useful, just that deBoer's critic doesn't even make sense within its own framework (eg, TikTok DID revolves around everyone having had intense childhood trauma, also that was controversial as a claim for even classic-DID, beyond the extent classic-DID was controversial itself).

If you think I’m exaggerating, consider this bill in the state of California which would make a parent’s decision to “affirm” their child’s gender identity (or not) a factor in custody disputes (at the time of writing, it has passed both houses but not yet been signed into law).

Specifically, the bill would require judges to consider it, and has been vetoed. Judges may still do so as a matter of policy.

A “detransitioner” has not simply pressed Ctrl-Z and reverted their body to factory settings - the changes they have made to their body are generally irreversible and will completely change the course of their life. Michael Neary’s victims were furious upon realising that they were denied the ability to have further children for no good reason at all - the idea that medical professionals would downplay the magnitude of the decision to transition is unconscionable.

I get that this isn't a space with a lot of good parallels, but Neary's behavior was a lot worse in terms of informed consent. Neary's victims not only did not know they'd be sterilized before they went into the surgical rooms, but in at least a couple cases the man didn't even tell them what parts he'd removed (or told them incorrectly). We don't have too much detail about how his process worked given all the magically disappearing records, but looking through the patient interviews in the Lourdes report point toward bringing patients in for normal processes or minor surgery and then performing a hysterectomy as an 'emergency' due to complications, only discovering that they've had a supposed life-threatening experience after they've had the surgery completed.

Even if we are to presume that medical professionals are downplaying both the decision and overstating the ramifications for refusal/detransition, these are things happening in daylight; both adult and teenage patients can and should examine statements from medical professionals. I expect that this doesn't have a huge impact on the perspectives of detransitioners, and it doesn't cleave away regulation as an acceptable case, but it really does have an impact on what policy recommendations are available.

I agree that I was being a bit hyperbolic comparing detransitioners to Neary's victims, and obviously there's a world of difference between "agreeing to be sterilised (perhaps when you don't really appreciate the magnitude of this decision) and later coming to regret it" and "being involuntarily sterilised without your consent or knowledge".

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats