The costs of trans visibility

Presumably trans people in other languages have their own standards of how to respectfully treat trans people. In English there is an overwhelming mainstream consensus on things like pronoun useage. I’d presume those standards are different in other languages and have no real prescription here beyond don’t be an *******.

I would guess that if you took a national poll, most people would consider your "consensus on things like pronoun useage" to be incorrect grammar.

it's "overwhelming consensus" not mere consensus though

Incorrect spelling for sure but all the syntax looks good.

or

Lol opps

No binarix they meant.

So I suppose it was probably a bit too much to try to ask you to imagine a culture with no conception of gender.

how does anyone know where to stick their dicks then?

in Italy they say " in carestia ogni buco è galleria"

("in famine every hole is a tunnel")

those poor italian rabbit burrows

also now wondering if that's why you guys love penne

Just like the dolphins and chipmunks they're able to figure it out.

but dolphins and chipmunks have gender

here you go again

Well no, I don’t think I necessarily agree with the framing of inclusive or supportive. I said we shouldn’t socially stigmatize it, which could mean as little as it shouldn’t be held against someone, not necessarily that we should actively support such behaviors.

There might be situations where people in certain communities might be more able to socially accommodate people voluntarily, and I completely support their desire to do so. I personally will use people’s preferred pronouns as best I can so long as it’s not something like pup/pupself. I’ll even use pronouns like xe/xer on request, fine. But let’s not pretend this is the norm of behavior and that our primary argument will be that you’re transphobic for not wanting to do that. I also think, and this is just something I’m leaning towards, that the more oxygen we give to this debate, the more ground people gain in the legal system to discriminate against binary trans people, and they are quickly becoming the minority of trans people under an inclusive definition.

I’m really worried that the nonmedical nonbinary trans people are severely undermining the legal argument for protecting trans people, because they essentially can use their agab bathroom or a nongendered bathroom, which means it’s going to be harder to distinguish those that are going to be put at risk for not being able to live stealth and use their preferred bathrooms in less inclusive context because they fear of bathroom bans and discrimination. I’m not saying this is conclusive, but I’m seeing this trend of rolling back trans rights happen across the Western world and I’m afraid of this trend continuing past what is reasonable.

In some contexts, yeah it would be essentially compelled. Not to use the right pronouns specifically but not to harass by constantly misgendering. Although that protection will probably go away soon, and probably should if it will apply to nonbinary people.

very well stated xrd, welcome to club hateful transphobic bigot

lol at equating his post to the trash posted to get admitted to club hateful transphobic bigot.

This is probably less a direct response to you, but kind of my thoughts on arguments for moderating the trans movement in general:

I'll start with a provocative example before getting bogged down in academia:

Abolitionists in the middle of the 19th century were arguing that there should be no slavery. They were NOT largely arguing that black people are LITERALLY the exact equivalent of white people, and that they should be allowed to (for example) have sex with white women. Many may have secretly harbored that belief, but it would be suicide for themselves and their movement to stray from their campaign message of "Free the slaves" and get dragged into a discussion of whether their ideal post-racial society involves black men marrying white women and making mix-race babies, etc.

For a more recent example, the gay rights movement stuck to the slogan that being gay is not a choice, which was the best sloganeering in a time when >99.9% of people saying that homosexuality is a choice were arguing that it's a sin, that gay people should choose to be straight, that social or peer influence from gay people is dangerous because it could turn your kids gay, etc. It is now decidedly unprogressive to suggest that your sexual preferences are 100% innate to you with zero social or personal influence. (The same could be said for the gay right's movement very intentional focus on same-sex marriage and painting a very traditional picture of gay people having a strong, traditional nuclear family with a lifelong, monogamous partner and kids, etc.)

How these movements generally work is that there are two parallel movements. There is a political/pragmatic approach taken up by activist elites, and there is academic/scientific/idealistic/etc discussion about what progressives ACTUALLY think is/should be true in their most idealized vision for society. The former is usually behind the latter, at least partly by design (though there are other factors).

The trans movement has 1) happened very quickly and 2) happened in the social media age where the discussion is happening as much between Tumblr tweens as with lobbyists and activists with a law degree. Without making a value statement on either of those things (I personally think quick progress and democratizing public discourse are both good things in a vacuum), what it has absolutely done in practice is collapse the entire conversation so it is all happening all at once everywhere amongst everyone.

I have sympathies with both perspectives here. If you were to put me in a time machine and send me back to the 1850s, I would not want to do anything to hurt the movement but at the same time, ummmmmm arguing that miscegenation is bad is SUPER f***ing racist and I don't know if I could in good conscience stick to the pragmatic activists' script on that one.

I'm finally at the part of the post where I can apply this to the actual topic at hand, but I feel like I should just leave it to your imagination rather than clumsily fitting the analogy and tainting it with my own personal views on the issue which might turn people who disagree with me off. But this is the tension that goes on in myself when I hear people argue that fighting for x, y, or z will make it harder for transpeople to safely use a bathroom TODAY. I certainly don't want transpeople to have to piss and **** themselves in public, but that's not a reason to COMPLETELY dismiss x,y,z out of hand (neither logically nor politically).

I will say that because the research sciences and in particular medical intervention are involved, there's merit to taking a slow and measured approach outside of the pragmatic political reasons. Though anyone citing those reasons in good faith should a) stick to when those considerations are relevant, b) be realistic about the types and frequencies of different interventions, c) do research on how long research has been going on (not just how long it's been in the public conscious), and d) recognize the areas where there is scientific consensus (not just public consensus).

well stated

If by gender you mean sex, no such culture is ever likely to arise. And, for obvious reasons, it wouldn't last long if it did.

Hm so raise announced is telling us the slippery slope is actually real, which is why good strategists work for marginal gains to then use the slippery slope for the rest, which is why if someone dislikes any potential outcome down the line he has to fight every single step of the way.

I agree with the logic

i think i stated it in a more fun way tbh

Well no, just because some change is necessary to make more change does not mean that some change necessarily leads to whatever changes people dream up. That's confusing necessity with sufficiency, or in other words a modal fallacy: Just because you can't score a run without first being safe at first doesn't mean that being safe at first is tantamount to scoring a run.

While interracial marriage has (rightly) followed from ending slavery, not every ungodly thing that pro-slavery activists fearmongered about has come true. Things that are so ungodly, in fact, that I hesitate to type them...gorillas being allowed to run for congress or whatever the unholy f***.

Being against--oh god, I already regret this example, but hopefully how painful it is for me to type these sentences is a sign of how blunt and illustrative it is--

Okay, deep breath: Being against gorillas running for office does not require you to rally against slavery. (Ew ew ew ew ew)

Same goes for gay rights and bestiality or whatever.

Now what I will grant you is that my post DOES suggest that there is SOME degree of Trojan horsing amongst at least some activists who intend to follow-up one popular move with further steps that are currently politically unpalatable.

But two things:

1) This does not validate any and all fever dreams about the apocalyptic hellscape that anyone comes up with. (Hence the extreme example above).

2) Even if an activist has more ambitions beyond the popular incremental progress they're proposing, if you genuinely agree with the incremental step but disagree with the follow-up steps, the logical thing to do would be to...well, agree with them on the incremental step but not go with them to the next one. I get the sense the slippery slope arguments arise because people actually AREN'T too keen on the popular thing being proposed by activists, but since it's popular they don't want to argue against it directly and a slippery slope framework allows them to argue against the popular thing about calling attention to the unpopular thing.

Another caveat is that some slopes are inherently slippery, so a slippery slope argument isn't always a fallacy.

Ok. This seems mostly agreeable, but I just don't quite see it as a response to the previous thread we were talking about. You were talking about trying to "control" and "gatekeep" and apply "extra scrutiny" to people who were not "true trans". I still don't know what you practically mean by that, and it doesn't seem like this post is really a defense of that rhetoric that I was critiquing. Like maybe we don't really disagree that much, but I can't quite tell.

From this post alone, my only real source of disagreement is that I don't really think that being accepting and inclusive of non-binary people or trans people who don't receive medical interventions is going to be a contributor to rolling back trans rights. I think people move in tandem. I think people move in tandem. I don't really know that there are people out there who are fine supporting trans people if they get a medical intervention, but if they have to also support those that don't then they wouldn't take away their support for those who get medical interventions? or something? I don't really see it.