site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

First of all, your mask is slipping - your original claim...

Dunno who you think I am, but this is the first comment I've made in the thread and I don't do masks.

you were worried

I'm not worried about any of it -- I'm a man and don't care who goes in the men's room. I do know IRL women who are worried about who goes in the women's room though.

about cis men pretending to be trans in order to access women's spaces

My guess would be that a given Peeping Tom or piss perv is extremely likely to be a non-transgender heterosexual man? Who (in the case of the Peeping Toms) are known to go through schemes much more elaborate than "walk into a washroom and claim to be trans if challenged" in the course of their fetish.

you have immediately moved your rhetoric to 'women putting up with trans people'

You're the one bringing up Buck Angel -- it's a different failure mode, but still pretty valid. Not all women want to 'put up with' sharing a bathroom with trans males, is this under dispute?

Buck Angel and people who look like him go to the men's room

If the bathrooms are gender neutral, Buck Angel can go in whichever one he chooses, no?

You were also the one who brought up the idea that Buck being in the ladies room would be some sort of problem under the traditional bathroom management policies -- or that's how I took "If your worry is that seeing male-looking people go into the women's room will make life more dangerous for women" anyways. If not, what did you mean by that?

If not, what did you mean by that?

So it's totally fine if you have a different position than the one I was responding to, it just means that my comment naturally wouldn't be a coherent reply to your position since it was responding to a different one.

The position I was responding to, as I understand OP to hold it, was: If trans women are allowed in women's restrooms, that will normalize malelooking people being in women's restrooms. That will make is easier for cis men who are perverts to fake their way into women's restrooms for nefarious purposes.

My point in bringing up Buck Angel is, if that is your model of the danger at play here, then Buck Angel using the women's room is an equally large problem. That would also normalize male-looking people going into the women's restroom in exactly the same way.

So, if your position is that the problem is male-looking people in women's restroom, bathroom bills do not actually solve that problem. They probably make it worse.