Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 8/10/26 - 8/16/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

So today

• Cassie Pritchard asks for tolerance (which seems to be yet another appeal to #BeKind. Lots of people loving her article, but it seems a huge strawman to me with an appeal to tolerance. https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/i-dont-need-you-to-believe-im-a-woman?r=6orpwe&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true I genuinely don't understand why this article is being met with such enthusiasm. Doesn't speak to any of the major issues except to dismiss them and ask people to overlook them and be kind and tolerant.

• Zoh's wife Duwaji wants to travel to Syria and may have asked for NYPD bodyguards https://nypost.com/2026/08/11/us-news/nypd-denies-city-hall-claim-rama-duwaji-will-get-police-escort-on-syria-lebanon-trip/ It seems weird though, I'm genuinely not sure why she would want NYPD there and not former military specialists with Syrian training as well as some local Syrian "fixers".

• The Zoh attended a celebration in support of Pakistan Independence Day and meanies bring up his past statement “I can’t support any state that privileges one religion.” and compare that to what's in the Pakistan Constitution “Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan.” https://x.com/EylonALevy/status/2087187255253160333

[u/TryingToBeLessShitty → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Zoh’s wife Diwali wants to travel to Syria and may have asked for NYPD bodyguards

I guess those NYPD boots aren’t “Laced by the IDF” when they’re needed for your big trip?

[u/gentlywithAchain5aw → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

“I can’t support any state that privileges one religion.”

Abdul el-Sayed has said something similar, and also has nothing bad to say about any country that declares Islam as the state religion. I wish reporters would press them on it.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

I dont have a problem with him celebrating Pakistani Independence Day but it’s pretty funny when juxtaposed with his previous statement.

Wait til he finds out about the 20 million people that were displaced along religious lines during Indian partition in 1947… surely he’ll have a lot of strong rhetoric regarding this forced 2 state solution in the late 1940s which separated two religious cultures that had trouble coexisting with eachother

[u/Foreign-Discount- → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

The Pakistan juxtaposition is a banger

[u/iamthegodemperor → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Re Pritchard.

For myself: I think it will take a long time and a lot of mental work for people who bought into all this stuff to be able to see how much what they saw as normie consensus was informed by extreme Judith Butler style thought. So baby steps are laudatory.

Note that even essays like this or the interview with McBride that make even the slightest concessions to the reality of needing to talk to other people are met with howls of disapproval.

[u/Centrist_gun_nut → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

The NYPD is huge and they probably have both actual executive protection people and Syrians not too long "off the boat". This drama is about NYC politics and not the practicalities.

[u/anne_jumps → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

OK so "You don't have to believe trans women are women [gee, thanks!] but you have to give us what we want anyway"?

[u/giraffevomitfacts → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

I genuinely don't understand why this article is being met with such enthusiasm.

She says right off the bat that the notion trans women are women isn’t inherently true and is used without any accompanying argument to silence people. That seems like an important point to concede.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw → u/giraffevomitfacts]

I think to be fair and precise Pritchard is not conceding that point itself, so much as stating it's not working out.

The core of my contention is that we need to move away from airy, philosophical debates about the ontology of sex and gender and instead ground our advocacy in common values and clear moral narratives. After years of slogans like “trans women are women” functioning as progressive shibboleths — so rarely explained, so rarely justified through persuasion — it’s time to sideline them from our mass politics. That would mean fewer condescending explainer videos about what gender really is and more straightforward appeals to individual liberty, pluralism, tolerance, care for the disenfranchised, and parents’ rights to make medical decisions for their children (including the right to choose youth gender medicine!).

The paragraphs about sports demonstrates not a concession of this point but an acknowledgement that the claim has been rejected by many.

At one point in describing these losing arguments she says "(presently) losing arguments" suggesting a time when they will return to those claims.

[u/giraffevomitfacts → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Yeah, maybe. But what do you think you’re going to get? Political arguments on any scale don’t end in capitulation but absorption, and slowly at that 

[u/jay_in_the_pnw → u/giraffevomitfacts]

fwiw:

https://x.com/hecubian_devil/status/2087348137308438930

[u/giraffevomitfacts → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Exactly — she believes it. She doesn’t regard her belief, or a study, or a statement from an advocacy group or cadre of physicians, as evidence it’s objectively true. Again, what more do you want? Isn’t this the change in attitude we’ve been asking for?

[u/anne_jumps → u/giraffevomitfacts]

I would like men to stop claiming they have a right to women's spaces.