[PaulHoule]

I should have said "interests" rather than rights, although one thing I know is that when this civilization collapses people will turn their back on everything it stood for and the idea of individualism and rights will be gone ("my carbon my choice"), the next culture will have a bill of responsibilities.

Sports is a clear example. Nobody has a 'right' to be on a sports team. Women have been working for years to build the opportunity to have a pro career. Until tests were developed (1970 or so) it was a chronic problem that men would crash women's events in the Olympics to steal gold medals.

On the other hand, there are many benefits to participation in sports. I don't want the state to decide who can play in what league. I want leagues to decide that. My school is part of club leagues where teams have a mix of men and women in them and I think there's a lot of room for innovation. Different leagues want different things: I want trans people to be able to participate in some sports, it's important.

J. K. Rowling didn't start out in the place where she ended up.

As for social media, I deleted my Twitter account in 2016, I don't hang out in places with right wing nuts, rather I am on Mastodon and Bluesky with the left wing nuts. I need lots of filters to keep out hateful content posted by trans people on both of those platforms.

'Virtue' and 'Vice' are a frame that makes all problems impossible to solve and leaves people talking past each other. See [1]

It took me 40 years to get my diagnosis; I've had numerous psych evals and today I can get enough signs and symptoms to get a diagnosis looking at the first paragraph of any of them, even if that paragraph stated it was inconclusive.

I have a small amount of the thought disorder of schizophrenia, enough that I can't win at chess because I'll screw up. I max any test of verbal intelligence I take, I write long posts like this that have bizarre typos, the harder I try to fix them the more my keyboard turns into a Ouija board. On a bad morning I have a paranoia towards objects that seem to jump out and grab me. At one point of my life I was wrapped up in a system of delusions.

I also can do detail oriented work and systems thinking. (I've compensated for my condition very well) Sometimes my work is highly valued. Yet I graduated from elementary school the same way Ender Wiggin did. The child post of this one (where I tell the story of my son's incel and trans friends) [4] got upwards of 37 votes so "my opinion does hold some weight here" (But so does yours, and one difference between me and you is that I'm not going to tell you that your opinion has no weight)

Sometimes I feel angry that I wasn't served by the mental health community and that about 5-10% of the population is similarly underserved. On the other hand I was lucky that I was only under the spell of a charlatan for about 9 months of my life and I'm glad I didn't get drugged the way they wanted to drug me in school because a friend of mine who's the same age as me and did get drugged got all his teeth pulled at the age of 40 and might suffer from osteoporosis soon [2] [3] if he lives that long.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Rights-Talk-Impoverishment-Political-...

[2] https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2016/b...

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19894-x

[4] My son's friend went through a period of near complete social isolation during the pandemic where just about the only person he talked to was an 'egg hatcher' for months. It is not a clinical study or even a case report but my son and I both have notes on our experiences of knowing this person from elementary school to the present day that we're going to consolidate and turn into a real write-up some day. I'm going to support this person as an individual to the maximum that I can because those are my 'family values', I can still think they're making a mistake.

[sunshowers]

> when this civilization collapses people will turn their back on everything it stood for and the idea of individualism and rights will be gone ("my carbon my choice"), the next culture will have a bill of responsibilities.

I agree that Americans don't think enough about their responsibilities. I fully support a bill of responsibilities paired with rights. Several countries have that kind of list already. They're not mutually exclusive.

> Nobody has a 'right' to be on a sports team. Women have been working for years to build the opportunity to have a pro career. Until tests were developed (1970 or so) it was a chronic problem that men would crash women's events in the Olympics to steal gold medals.

Yet women's sports are still second-class, outside of exceptions like tennis. Is it trans people who have caused women's sports to be second-class, or the patriarchy enforced by cisgender men?

FWIW, I think it's reasonable to require that trans women be on HRT for a while before playing professional women's sports. But categorical bans are horribly unjust—making a class of women inherently lesser. So yes, as a kind of woman, trans women ought to have the right to be on women's sports teams.

> J. K. Rowling didn't start out in the place where she ended up.

True. Her brain was cooked by constant exposure to right-wing bigotry on social media, like many others'.

I am a very firm believer that there is no free will. We are entirely the products of our genetics and our environments. Social media creates extraordinarily bad environments.

> 'Virtue' and 'Vice' are a frame that makes all problems impossible to solve and leaves people talking past each other.

Well, no, it just makes it clear that (a) morality is objective and (b) societies are better when people are more virtuous. The solution is to not make people talk to or past each other, the solution is to effect environmental changes such that people are less exposed to vice and more exposed to virtue.

[loanedempathy]

> Is it trans people who have caused women's sports to be second-class, or the patriarchy enforced by cisgender men?

Is there any possible other reason than these two things, do you think, for this state of affairs?

> making a class of women inherently lesser.

A sort of Morton's fork here would be that transwomen are lesser women because they have to assume that identity instead of starting there (to say nothing of the intuitive biological differences), or that women (and thus trans women) are lesser because they are a subset of the functionality offered by men (because they can be emulated by men choosing to do so). I don't particularly agree with either point, mind you, but both could be made. The trivial solution to avoid this is to simply acknowledge that trans women are neither men nor women (nor trans men) and are a category unto themselves worth valuing on their own merits and characteristics.

> True. Her brain was cooked by constant exposure to right-wing bigotry on social media, like many others'.

If it is reasonable to believe--as everybody seems told to--that constant exposure to right-wing media and bigotry can turn somebody into a bigot, is it really a stretch to believe that for some chunk of the trans population the same has taken place? Further, do you see why such doublethink would make the trans folks who preach it suspect to normies who see the obvious?

> We are entirely the products of our genetics and our environments.

If that's the case, it suggests something odious: there is no virtue in being trans--you're a medical and social anomaly, and if we can remove the factors that cause trans folks to occur all that suffering goes away in a generation or two and the system does better (on the metric of suffering).

And before you go off on how this is unethical or not virtuous or whatever, by your own assertion...

> I am a very firm believer that there is no free will.

...such a solution is admissible and without blame, because no moral agents would be involved in its occurrence.

(You don't get to claim there is no free will and then hold anybody accountable in any moral way. Morality does not exist unless free will does; otherwise, it's just the dull observation of iterated cost-benefit analysis and reactions to an environment.)

[sunshowers]

> The trivial solution to avoid this is to simply acknowledge that trans women are neither men nor women (nor trans men) and are a category unto themselves worth valuing on their own merits and characteristics.

The forcible third-gendering of trans women is one of the greatest crimes of the culture I grew up in, so I'd rather we move past all traditionalism entirely.

> If it is reasonable to believe--as everybody seems told to--that constant exposure to right-wing media and bigotry can turn somebody into a bigot, is it really a stretch to believe that for some chunk of the trans population the same has taken place?

Constant exposure to virtue makes you more likely to be virtuous.

> Further, do you see why such doublethink would make the trans folks who preach it suspect to normies who see the obvious?

See the obvious what? The normies are simply wrong about a lot of this.

> Morality does not exist unless free will does

This is simply false. Free will is linked to moral responsibility, not the existence of morals. How moral we are is out of our control (Thomas Nagle called this moral luck).

[skissane]

> The forcible third-gendering of trans women is one of the greatest crimes of the culture I grew up in, so I'd rather we move past all traditionalism entirely.

I think one issue is – do "man" and "woman" have some objective essence? I think most progressives would say "no" – that kind of essentialism is more associated with conservatives and traditionalists. But if "man" and "woman" don't have an objective essence, their definition is ultimately conventional – which means if different people want to define those terms differently, how can we say one definition is ultimately more right than the other?

That has a benefit for transgender people – if transgender people and their allies want to adopt trans-inclusive definitions of "man" and "woman", nobody can say they are objectively wrong to do so, if we accept these concepts are ultimately cultural constructs.

But then comes the downside – if conservatives and traditionalists (and various others, such as a significant number of radical feminists) want to adopt trans-exclusive definitions of those terms, how can we say they are wrong to do so? If these are cultural constructs and conventional definitions, as opposed to naming objective realities which exist independently of culture and language, how can one say their definition is objectively incorrect? It's just different.

Maybe the answer is a form of "live and let live": let progressive people have their spaces governed by their definitions, let conservative/traditionalist people have their spaces governed by theirs, and where the two have to overlap or intersect or coexist, try to find a way to be neutral between the competing definitions.

Of course, if you are growing up in one of those conservative/traditionalist spaces, and end up identifying as LGBT, that solution isn't exactly pleasant, at least until you become old enough to cross over to a space more welcoming to your identity. But I don't know what the alternative is. Progressives like to imagine that conservative/traditionalist viewpoints will eventually wither away and disappear, but looking at trends in the real world, it seems unlikely that dream will be fulfilled, certainly not in the lifetime of anyone currently alive. Finding a way to peacefully coexist seems preferable to interminable cultural and political conflict over the issue.

[sunshowers]

> I think one issue is – do "man" and "woman" have some objective essence? I think most progressives would say "no" – that kind of essentialism is more associated with conservatives and traditionalists. But if "man" and "woman" don't have an objective essence, their definition is ultimately conventional – which means if different people want to define those terms differently, how can we say one definition is ultimately more right than the other?

So "essence" isn't the right word, but there absolutely are affinities and anti-affinities towards gender in brain wiring, as reflected in people's internal psychology. There is no better explanation for the vast majority of people being cisgender, and having gender dysphoria when misgendered. The traditionalists are somewhat correct about this!

A lot of traditionalist freaking out about gender is extrapolating their own internal experiences onto everyone. Many cis people feel quite bad when they are misgendered! This is a commonality with trans people, not a difference.

> That has a benefit for transgender people – if transgender people and their allies want to adopt trans-inclusive definitions of "man" and "woman", nobody can say they are objectively wrong to do so, if we accept these concepts are ultimately cultural constructs.

But I am saying that the traditional model of gender is objectively wrong! Gender is not just a cultural construct, there is clearly an inherent aspect to it.

"Gender is binary and immutably assigned at birth" and "gender is entirely social" are two positions that are both incorrect in their own ways. The truth, as expressed in the modern scientific model of gender, is more complex. Gender is not binary, but there is quite clearly an inherent (likely biological) component to it -- otherwise HRT wouldn't have the psychological effects it does on trans people. There is also a social component: we are a social species, and our biologies and sociologies are intertwined.

> But then comes the downside – if conservatives and traditionalists (and various others, such as a significant number of radical feminists) want to adopt trans-exclusive definitions of those terms, how can we say they are wrong to do so? If these are cultural constructs and conventional definitions, as opposed to naming objective realities which exist independently of culture and language, how can one say their definition is objectively incorrect? It's just different.

Right. This is the downside of the kind of "model relativism" that you're describing. This is very explicitly not my position, and I think the progressives who have promoted this position have done a bad job. I'm saying that the traditional definition is objectively incorrect, in the sense that the traditional model doesn't describe reality nearly as well as the modern scientific model of gender. It's as incorrect as a belief that the sun revolves around the earth.

> Maybe the answer is a form of "live and let live": let progressive people have their spaces governed by their definitions, let conservative/traditionalist people have their spaces governed by theirs, and where the two have to overlap or intersect or coexist, try to find a way to be neutral between the competing definitions.

That is fine when the two definitions are equally correct. They're not! One is more correct than the other.

> Of course, if you are growing up in one of those conservative/traditionalist spaces, and end up identifying as LGBT, that solution isn't exactly pleasant, at least until you become old enough to cross over to a space more welcoming to your identity. But I don't know what the alternative is.

The alternative is to use objective reality, as determined by evidence and study using modern methods, to determine public policy. Traditional and religious beliefs should have no role here.

edit: I want to add that at a meta level, I believe relativism destroys credibility. One of my big issues with the left has been that people intuitively feel certain things are true, and if progressives show up saying "oh neither of us really are correct, live and let live," it's easy to stay attracted to traditionalism -- or even worse, descend into far-right paranoia. I think a much more robust response is "your intuitions aren't completely incorrect, but reality is more complicated -- our views are more correct than yours, because we have modern methods of learning on our side which are better than traditional ones." But this response really implies a scientific, evidence-based mindset. Inculcating that is a generational challenge, though one that must be done for society to survive.

[skissane]

> So "essence" isn't the right word, but there absolutely are affinities and anti-affinities towards gender in brain wiring, as reflected in people's internal psychology.

I have some scepticism about all this. There is evidence for some group differences in neurobiology between men and women, but they are group differences, they don’t operate at the individual level-meaning, for some brain features, there is a statistically significant difference in the male average and the female average, but the distributions are overlapping, so there are some males with brains at or near the female average, and vice versa.

There’s also some evidence that LGBT people are more likely to belong to those “overlapping” groups (males with brains closer to the female average in certain respects, and vice versa). But, again, it is a group rather than individual difference: not every person who has such an “overlapping” brain is LGBT, and not every LGBT person has such an “overlapping” brain-and we still can’t explain why. Plus, I don’t believe we have found any reliable biological difference between different LGBT subgroups (e.g. some gay cismen have rather ‘female’ neuroanatomy, as do some transwomen, but I’m not aware of any high quality evidence for distinguishing those two groups at a neurobiological level)

For most transgender people, we can’t point to any specific neurobiological factor as an explanation for why they are transgender. And even for the minority for whom there is something specific to point to, there will be other people who share that factor yet aren’t transgender, so that factor can’t be a complete explanation-and the rest of the explanation we just don’t know. All I think we can confidently say is that biological factors are in the mix, but we can’t rule out the possibility that psychosocial/sociocultural/etc factors also have some role to play-plus, the respective contributions of the biological vs the non-biological may differ from person to person.

Also, I don’t know if everyone actually has a “gender identity”. I mean, I don’t think I do. Yes, I have XY chromosomes with a typical male phenotype, a male-coded given name, my legal documents all say M, I’m married to a woman and father of two children with her, and I suppose “male” describes a social role I play. But, I don’t have some internal “identity” as “male”. Maybe this is an autistic trait, but deep down inside I don’t identify as anything at all. Well, maybe as pure consciousness, and everything else about me (including my sex/gender) is just a contingent chance accident of what that consciousness happens to experience.

> There is no better explanation for the vast majority of people being cisgender, and having gender dysphoria when misgendered.

Do non-trans people have gender dysphoria when they are misgendered? Some of them don’t really care. And even if a person reacts negatively, is that due to gender dysphoria? Or could it be they feel upset because you’ve got a fact about them wrong, and they might be just as upset if you’d got any other fact wrong instead? And even if they experience some special upset at being misgendered, how do we know that isn’t just due to cultural conditioning, as opposed to an innate psychological factor?

I’ve personally experienced being misgendered more than once, and my reactions have varied from amusement to irritation to equanimity, depending on how I was feeling at the time. But I don’t think those varied reactions convey any deep fact about “who I am”, and I’m not convinced any of those reactions had anything to do with gender dysphoria

> I think a much more robust response is "your intuitions aren't completely incorrect, but reality is more complicated -- our views are more correct than yours, because we have modern methods of learning on our side which are better than traditional ones." But this response really implies a scientific, evidence-based mindset.

The problem I see: I think there’s often a substantial gap between what the science actually says, and what people claim the science says (including even many scientists themselves, especially when addressing a lay audience.) I think when you look at the actual research, it is obvious that there are still massive gaps in our knowledge, along with widespread problems with replication, methodology, sample sizes, etc. It is obvious that biology has a significant role to play in issues of gender and sexuality-but saying much more than that involves rather high epistemic uncertainty. Yet a lot of the public discourse on this topic makes the scientific picture sound a lot firmer than it actually is. And I think many scientists think it is more important to publicly present the science as clearly supporting a progressive social agenda, than be completely open and honest about just how much we still don’t know, and how patchy the evidence actually is for some of the conclusions they endorse

[PaulHoule]

Women's sports just took time. I do sports photography for a lot of events which gives me some input for an opinion.

When it comes to soccer at Ithaca College the men play a very physical but kinda stupid game which has a lot of hard running and kicking and headers but very little sense of space. The women play much smarter soccer that looks more like good pro soccer, where, ideally everybody knows where their team mates are supposed to be and what to do to confound the opposition. More people turn up for a women's game in the rain than turn up for a men's game in the shine. They're both entertaining in their own way.

At Cornell I think the men play better than the women categorically but that's not about men or women, it's about the coaching staff, the recruiting, the priorities of the schools, etc.

Last Friday I went to a double header of women's and men's basketball at IC. The women's game was unequal but I was focused on getting good shots of the players and not thinking about the quality of the play. One of the men from the away team promised me that if I stuck around I'd see a much more entertaining game, I said I wouldn't miss it. It was 12-0 for Ithaca at the beginning so I was getting worried they wouldn't come but Hobart did and it was like 63-60 at the end. Side by side the men were so much bigger, so much faster, so much more intense. Still I like the competition and teamwork of women's ball and would rather show up in person at any college game of either gender and watch the NBA on TV.

I think time will tell what's right about fair competition, in the meantime women's soccer and basketball at the pro level is becoming a big business in the US.

In my mind 'patriarchy' is a thought stopping word. We picture the Hebrew god as an old man on a throne with a beard. One take on it is that it's got nothing to do with woman at all except as tokens, it's really a game of status where young men and poor men are dominated by rich men and old men. It's particularly harmful when it comes to discussing the 'incel' phenomenon which mainly affects straight men (slightly more likely to be black or asian!) but also affects women and gay men.

People like J K Rowling don't have a choice but to get cooked by right wing social media because there isn't a sensible discourse from the left.

I do believe in free will. If you think moral agency matters, you have to believe we have a choice. I think genes and epigenetics matter more than people want to admit and hell yeah there are bad environments. But in the end you've got a choice. The 'bad' thing I see is not so much virtue or vice but more like inflammation, as in the medical condition.