Why won’t you bitches compromise?
Another “oh both sides are just so extreme.”
So…it’s extreme to say that men can be women and it’s also extreme to say that men can’t be women? It’s all just a matter of sides and not in the least a matter of what’s true and what isn’t?
Ah compromise and trade-offs again, just like Andrew Sullivan. So if people are loud and threatening and abusive enough for long enough then the people they are threatening and abusing have to compromise with them and trade some rights in order to keep others? Does that seem fair?
“WIW apps”? “What I wore”??
So if both sides are “extreme”, what is the moderate position? TWMBW? TWASW? (Transwomen might be women. Transwomen are sometimes women.) If we say “women are adult human females”, we are extreme? If we say women need safe spaces because of male violence, we are extreme?
Makes me think of the early suffragettes, who were “violently extreme” because they stood outside the White House holding signs. So extreme that the police had to treat them worse than they treated most other offenders.
Just like I am told I am “extreme” whenever a Christian friend continually harangues me about what I believe, huh, huh, huh? Whatta ya believe? When I finally say a simple “I don’t really believe in any gods”, I suddenly become extreme.
At least I used to be able to say “a woman is an adult human female” without being called extreme. Now I have to hold my breath whenever I teach human genome and human reproduction in case a student gets all huffy and tells the administration they are going to kill themselves because I taught them biology in my biology class. How extreme can I get?
Frankly, I think most people sounding the “why won’t you compromise” and “both sides are so extreme, ick!” and “I’m frankly sort of in the middle” are virtue signalling; they are better. They are also committing the fallacy of the golden mean. The right answer does not always lie between the two “extremes”. And sometimes one extreme is not extreme. Let’s put it up for a vote of the entire country. Which position is extreme?
There are two sexes, and men cannot become women.
Men are women if they say they are.
Only one of these positions even remotely resembles extreme.
(Psst, GW: that’s “WLW apps”… as in “Women who Love Women”, aka lesbians and bisexual women.)
While we are on the subject, in the “2+2” controversy, the 6 vs. 4 debate is so intensely toxic on both sides that expressing any view that is not extreme (e.g. 2+2=5), will instantly attract attacks.
Meanwhile the “Holocaust” debate seems to be totally dominated by those extremists who want to exterminate all the jews, and those crazy radicals who don’t see any need to kill any jews, while more moderate voices who acknowledge the need to kill half the jews are shut down from both sides.
This just in: In the 2+2 debate the 6 camp has changed it’s position to 2+2=8 while the 4 camp is still sticking to its guns. Hence we now embrace the original claim of the former (2+2=6) as the moderate, responsible, non-extreme position.
And now a soccer result: Real Madrid vs. Andorra: 10-0. In other words a draw.
And it looks like we have another update on the 2+2 front. The 8 camp (formerly known as the 6 camp) has once again changed its position to 2+2=12 while the extremists in the 4 camp are still stubbornly clinging to their increasingly extreme views. As good moderates we therefore update our position to 2+2=8.
Spot on, Bjarte.
[…] a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Why won’t you bitches […]
The moderate position is something close to: trans-women are socially women and have the right to be treated as such. They are not physically female and usually that won’t matter because knowing who is physically female is rarely important. There are edge cases where those two truths are in tension which need do be figured out. But they are edge cases, so they shouldn’t be attacks on the main case (that trans-women should be treated socially as women)
Bjarte, that is so right on. And while we’re at it, what about the extremes of stuffing kids in closets vs the other extreme of not stuffing kids in closets? I will be moderate; I will advocate for stuffing kids in closets half the time; the rest of the time, they will not be stuffed in closets.
Thank you so much for dedicating an entire blog entry to a one-off tweet thread. I’m flattered. I will try to live up to your high expectations of me and become worthier of your attention.
What high expectations? Making sense? Being reasonable? Answering civil questions? I don’t think those count as high expectations, I think they’re just basic. And I don’t think you mean it about living up to them. You have me blocked on Twitter.
Aaaaand that’s the extent of an English PhD’s engagement with critique. “You’re so lame for actually, like, thinking about what I wrote.”
Such an adolescent response.
Pretty pathetic, isn’t it.
Shoddy thinking is worth noting and dissecting wherever one finds it, whether it be in a “one-off tweet thread” or not.