domain:open.substack.com
Felagund
2hr ago
He likes data, and is good at stats. Here's his substack: https://www.cremieux.xyz
dovetailing
2hr ago
Surely it's less strange than all the other stuff he's done to get to this point, right? Like, a random guy in drag insisting on using the women's room, that's separately a strong signal of weirdness/sketchiness. But if he's convinced himself that he's a woman at this point, and (quite possibly, though I couldn't say for sure) been on hormones and had surgeries to get there, then surely that's the strange part, not the part where he subsequently wants to use the women's restroom.
TIRM
2hr ago
Nah. I'm rock solid correct. Some people are just terrible at judging risks. Europeans on bicycles especially.
07mk
2hr ago
I feel like the entire rest of society, particularly the woke end has decided that the rape of women is a small price to pay for feeling progressive about letting transgender women into women’s spaces — without vetting at all.
I think what's more accurate is that they've convinced themselves that it simply "doesn't happen", or that "no one transitions just so they can use women's bathrooms".
This doesn't seem more accurate, but rather the "how," to the quoted part's "what." Deciding that such a cost is worth the benefit can be very unpleasant, depending on what the costs and what the benefits are. So unpleasant, that many people might be unwilling to make such a decision if they perceive it that way. So they decide to perceive it a different way, by convincing themselves that the cost isn't actually real, which allows them to make that decision. I see this pattern repeated all the time both in culture war contexts and not.
jkf
2hr ago
if he's actually on hormones for 10 years, and made permanent changes to his body, I don't think that's very likely.
What's so unlikely about it? Implants are usually... pretty permanent as well, it's not like he's swapping them in and out.
I agree that the 'wearing' addition is an odd turn of phrase, but 'fake breasts' to me applies equally well to ones produced by hormonal as surgical intervention.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
Oh definitely. The first trans friend I had, I did not clock him, but that’s only because I assumed he was just a very unfortunate-looking and unfortunate-sounding woman. This was when trans was starting to get public attention but before it was everywhere; if I’d known then what I know now, I think my “trans alarm” would have gone off, but I agree that there are some women out there (“stone butch” lesbians, people with medical situations) who also risk setting off “trans alarms”.
We need a definition of what passing means before we can test, or even properly argue over it.
Passing is on the one hand used by TRAs to mean "polite people treat me as a woman when I obviously visibly signal that I wish to be treated as such." Which almost everyone can achieve.
On the other hand, anti trans types define passing as "absolutely no outward indication whatsoever of any physical difference from a median/modal member of the target sex." Which no one achieves.
The degree to which someone passes is also dependent on context.
If I saw a tall masculine looking middle aged woman at mass, I would assume she was an unfortunate looking tall woman. Even a slight mustache wouldn't throw me off.
I assume everyone at Pride Night at my rock climbing gym may not be what they appear. The slightest hint of GNC and I'm going to be circumspect.
It would be tough to account for all that in testing.
ETA: Two differing study designs that would likely yield different results, both of which would measure "passing" in different ways.
-
"You're going to talk to a series of 20 people. Some of them are trans. Please indicate which people are trans on your scantron sheet. The more you get correct, the more money you will receive on your way out."
-
"You're going to talk to a series of 20 people. After you finish, please write down a description of each person in order."
I posit that very few trans people will "pass" in test 1 unless it's really rigged, and that a great many CIS people would get false positives. On the other hand, under test 2, I think a good number of people would not write down "trans" or "obviously (other gender)" in the description for trans people.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
Hunter Schafer would be the one I think a lot of people would point to as the pinnacle of “passing trans”. I won’t go so far as to say that Schafer looks “obviously like a man”; rather, Schafer is in a weird sort of androgynous zone. Certainly not someone I would ever see as an attractive woman, but I can imagine not clocking Schafer if I passed him on the street.
Stellula
2hr ago
Has McBride done that?
No, but what he has done (until recently) was insisted on coming into the women's restroom, which is really strange behavior.
Any guy who is making a big deal about wanting to go into the women's restroom, or the women's locker-room, to the point where the speaker of the house has to address it, and women have to come out and fight to stop it is acting inappropriately.
dovetailing
2hr ago
The voice is, yes, usually a giveaway. But there are a lot of masculine-looking actual women out there (even some with deeper voices) due to genetics / endocrine issues, to the point where I'd be often be uncomfortable guessing --- certainly from looks alone --- whether a given person is a lucky MtF or an unlucky actual woman if encountered out of context.
jkf
2hr ago
Putin apparently now says it was an IRBM, aimed at some kind of missile factory in retaliation for Biden's long-range weapon approval:
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-fake-icbm-ukrainian-propaganda
cjet79
2hr ago
This is a problem with all life. Government is worse at this.
You still need to think about your marginal impact of getting involved. If I can do nothing about a problem whether I get involved or not then it makes no sense to worry about it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Yeah, flashing the fake titties would be inappropriate. Has McBride done that? Or posted provocative pictures, or stolen women’s luggage, or whatever?
Last I checked, most women have their breasts even when they aren’t nursing a baby. This doesn’t lead you to assume they are sexual deviants. Unless, I suppose, you take the fundamentalist view. Would you feel better if McBride wore a burqa?
There is a whole world of impractical signals out there. I think you’re picking one to back up a mistaken intuition.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
Putin says it's an "Oreshnik" missile and claims Western defense capabilities are useless against it.
dovetailing
2hr ago
Have you never heard of gynecomastia? Estrogens produce breast growth in men, too, sometimes quite a bit of it. There are boys who have to get mastectomies because of endocrine issues, even! McBride seems to have been "trans" ever since his early 20s more than 10 years ago, so while that amount of growth would be unusual, it's not unheard of.
It's relevant because your point seems to be that McBride is just acting out a fetish in which he expects the whole world to be involved, as evidenced by his "wear[ing] fake breasts" (I assumed you meant prosthetics, though maybe you mean implants?), and if he's actually on hormones for 10 years, and made permanent changes to his body, I don't think that's very likely.
I don't think you need to insist that every MtF transsexual is just acting out a fetish in order to have a good argument against blanket letting any man who claims to be a woman into women's bathrooms. I actually agree with you on the conclusion! Bathrooms are vulnerable places and women are uncomfortable when men are in the bathroom with them, and that's a good enough reason to forbid it. You don't need to assume the worst about people in order to make the point.
(FWIW, on priors I wouldn't bet against McBride being AGP, but that's not always the same thing as just a fetish, and I would not expect someone who just has a crossdressing fetish to commit literally his whole life to the bit.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
I'm only needed physically at work between 3 and 4 days a week at present, which helps considerably, and I have a workout plan that puts me in the gym 3 days/wk on a shifting schedule.
ABigGuy4U
3hr ago
Yes, there is video footage of multiple MIRVs hitting the ground. There do not appear to be any interceptions. It looks like the MIRVs were targeted at an empty area and not any particular target, although I have heard chatter that it may have been a Ukrainian military facility. Given the apparent lack of conventional or nuclear explosives in the MIRVs, I don’t think there was any significant damage.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
I suppose not.
Not sure how I can effectively challenge their assumption, though.
07mk
3hr ago
I would kill to see some high quality studies using blinded (I'm not sure double blinding is possible, since presumably a trans person would know they're trans) trials of test subjects interacting with both trans and cis people to see just how common it is to truly "pass." Sadly, the academic political environment makes it so that basically no one who would be positioned to do the research would be interested in having an answer. And even if that were not the case, the number of trans people is so small that getting sufficiently random or representative members of that group seem likely to be impossible.
The way I think of it is that, given how incentivized the current "progressive" trans movement is to present MTF as being exactly the same as females in every way that matters, if there were some fairly significant population of MTF trans people who "pass," there would be quite a few such people who are either held up as examples or who become mini-celebs as activists for the cause. There's certainly no shortage of MTF trans people who obviously don't "pass" that you can find both online and in-person (at least in my neck of the woods around Boston) despite the fact that, again, the number of such people is very small relative to the population. The only person like that who comes to my mind is Blaire White, whom I don't follow, but who I believe isn't on the side of the "progressives" in this.
Stellula
3hr ago
Are you arguing that he had a mastectomy or is post-menopausal?
And in those cases, yes I agree with you that there is a sexual attraction component to it. This seems like an example that supports my point, not detracts from it.
Let's take your example to a similar place: suppose a woman got large fake breasts implanted, and then insisted on wearing revealing clothing to a children's birthday party, or insisted on brushing them up against married men at her workplace. Would you agree that this was inappropriate?
If somebody wants to wear...whatever they want, in their own private home, then by all means they should and nobody should interfere with them. Even if they want to wear just about whatever they want out in public, that's fine too (to an extent).
The problem here is that there are women who are clearly requesting not to be involved in the bathroom part of the fantasy, and there are people want to force them to. That's not okay.
jeroboam
3hr ago
Yeah, the Romans were pretty misogynistic, but where did all the "protect women" stuff come from if not evolution?
MartianNight
3hr ago
They, at least figuratively and sometimes very literally, cut off the part of their body that makes them capable of being a sexual threat- they're no different than a 3 year old boy
Bizarre and patently false claim.
All evidence suggests trans-identified males have the same level of criminality as other males, i.e., much higher than females and much higher than 3 year old boys (the main source is a paper by Dhejne et al, though generally gender activists taboo this kind of research for showing undesirable results).
And besides, over 90% of trans-identified males opt to keep their penis and testicles. So unlike their female counterparts, trans males are almost always physically intact. They are very much capable of raping women and have done so on many occasions.
mrvanillasky
3hr ago
1mg is a good dose, you cannot come off it ever btw, once you start. You can also use dutasteride if fin isnt good enough. I don't know the dosage for that though.
Is that supposed to be surprising? Russia has been conducting missile strikes for years with nuclear-capable missiles (not least because most of their modern missiles are nuclear-capable).
Russia using an ICBM is just a symbolic tit-for-tat for the US ATACMs range release. It's not a particularly cost-efficient delivery platform, but is intended to play into the recent implicit saber-ratling as a demonstration of capability.
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