I wholeheartedly agree. I wonder if the loss of a common moral center (or the loss of at least the view that morality is objective) implies the eventual loss of the tolerable transgressive. Like if we lose our firm moral boundaries, then we can't afford to allow any playful transgression. Because any transgression can just be seen as a potentially normal lifestyle. So when we actually have firm moral boundaries in this context (such as oppressed cultures having a sacred status), transgressing that boundary is too threatening.
One of the fun things about being American (or it used to be) was our dueling ethnicities. As an old school New Yorker I had many fun conversations that started with "where were your people from." Not today. Somehow that's aggression. Anyway, as half Italian and half Scottish I leaned into the first when the topic was food and the latter when it was time to dress up for fancy parties and weddings.
Smart and thoughtful but the meta problem is this: We’re well into the era where nothing that matters will be settled by having the best arguments, much less by winning debates about the best ways to be.
It seems to me that the vast majority of us would welcome, or at least be fine with, "playfulness" around ethnicity and sex if the one doing playing wouldn't make claims to actually BE the ethnicity or sex s/he is playing at. Pretend play and suspension of disbelief is a *temporary contract* between the player and the audience; if your role is to play the President of the United States, you don't get to take your role off stage and walk straight into the Oval Office to hold a press conference. People who identify as transgender are requiring too much of everyone else: we don't want to play pretend all day with you; we have other priorities and interests, and may in fact disagree with your view of reality. It used to be that people who wanted others to go along with their opposite-sex pronouns had a circle of intimate friends who would participate/validate them and the rest of the society was off the hook and the trans-identified person would simply have to deal. That's what we need to go back to.
I find the argument that drag is often a kind of womanface comparable to blackface persuasive, and I say this as someone with a lot of personal experience with it. But many make this argument in attempt to summarily demonize both, whereas my (perhaps controversial) response is to say that we should be more comfortable with comedy and performance around race, ethnicity, and culture. I find that cries of "offense" are missing the point.
This is, of course, to say nothing of the enormously important distinction between play and performance and then navigating daily life. Rachel Dolezal cannot actually opt into being a black person capable of leading a chapter of the NAACP, nor can a male declare himself female and gain access to the experience and the world of women. The mandated blurring of this line is a problem.
Is it "play", or is it more attention seeking - seeking some kind of validation a person feels denied to them when they go about as their regular identity?
Basically is it about fun, or about compensating for some lack?
The taboo exists against trans ethnicity because our culture is neurotic about race in the same way that the Victorians were about sex. The biggest taboo applies to white people as they can be relied upon to have the most guilt - or actually want to keep on appearing to be morally superior to the rest- and it remains useful for'people of colour' to take advantage of that. What might be interesting is whether 'people of colour' can dress up as whites and take the piss - does the author suggest that anywhere?
“Humans are idiots who ruin everything, but also, we are all we have.” Paul Kingsnorth.
Sexual crisscross, but not cultural. We can’t help ourselves we get everything wrong. Why? Answer: it is the selective advantage of dominant ideas and the inability of recessive ideas to compete. We can’t select well, ever; Yup, Curtis has uncovered the mechanism that controls all human polities from the family on up. The cathedral has to be accounted for. Or so say I. This fallen world.
“Getting it wrong is an advantageous adaptation for survival in the shadow of the cathedral. If you get something right, you would be rendered unemployable.”
Philip the Icosameron
(Like a squirrel, I collect chestnuts)
Do you remember that? I said that Freddie DeBoer was preternaturally gifted at being wrong. That was your response.
It rings a bell and I am flattered that you kept it.
I am maladapted for life in the Cathedral…not even Quasimodo grade material I am afraid. DeBoer, however, is a natural. He does not even have to fake his faith in humbug.
You should be complimented, deservedly, that was a perfect formulation.
Whenever I see a perfect formulation, I capture it. I find all these intellectuals have bad aim. They get all muddle fucked in detail. I however have the habit of being right which is to say I have quite a narrow field of focus. I focus on what is practicable. In that way, I’m not particularly deep, but I have garnered some skill in the arts required to make things happen. Freddie is a perfect example of a Rube Goldberg and completely ineffectual.
Curtis on why crisscross sexuality is OK but not racial crisscross:
If we want to know what a darwinian system will evolve we have to look at the selective pressures on its organisms.
What is our cathedral selecting for?
The selective advantage of an idea may not be driven solely by the quality of that idea . When an idea goes arwy, becomes perverse, it must be because of the pattern of selective advantage in this marketplace of ideas.
A dominant idea is an idea that validates the use of power . There is no market for recessive ideas, recessive ideas, invalidate power or the use of power. A dominant idea is an idea that tends to benefit you and your friends.
The cathedral cannot tell us whether an idea is good or bad because it will always select for the dominant idea. Our institutions cannot hear think know learn understand or teach ANY recessive ideas : that is any ideas that would damage or delegitimate the powers that be.
Punishment and reward are different ways of getting to the same place that is human dominion.
I love this. I can't claim to be anything but British Isles extraction because it's so genetically obvious. It sounds fun. I should pretend to be Italian and give morally superior lectures to people on the differences in Italy, insinuating that perhaps their parents were mentally challenged goats because they don't already know that.
Not long ago I saw a live BBC production where Europeans played Egyptians. Judging by audience reaction this is completely fine in 2025 - even within the very beating heart of woke. However, had the same cast been representing events 3000 miles south of Cairo (roughly Namibia) it would have sent shockwaves through the elites, resulted in national soul searching ( mostly enforced) and then widespread cultural and institutional reform to ensure no repetition.
I wholeheartedly agree. I wonder if the loss of a common moral center (or the loss of at least the view that morality is objective) implies the eventual loss of the tolerable transgressive. Like if we lose our firm moral boundaries, then we can't afford to allow any playful transgression. Because any transgression can just be seen as a potentially normal lifestyle. So when we actually have firm moral boundaries in this context (such as oppressed cultures having a sacred status), transgressing that boundary is too threatening.
One of the fun things about being American (or it used to be) was our dueling ethnicities. As an old school New Yorker I had many fun conversations that started with "where were your people from." Not today. Somehow that's aggression. Anyway, as half Italian and half Scottish I leaned into the first when the topic was food and the latter when it was time to dress up for fancy parties and weddings.
Smart and thoughtful but the meta problem is this: We’re well into the era where nothing that matters will be settled by having the best arguments, much less by winning debates about the best ways to be.
It seems to me that the vast majority of us would welcome, or at least be fine with, "playfulness" around ethnicity and sex if the one doing playing wouldn't make claims to actually BE the ethnicity or sex s/he is playing at. Pretend play and suspension of disbelief is a *temporary contract* between the player and the audience; if your role is to play the President of the United States, you don't get to take your role off stage and walk straight into the Oval Office to hold a press conference. People who identify as transgender are requiring too much of everyone else: we don't want to play pretend all day with you; we have other priorities and interests, and may in fact disagree with your view of reality. It used to be that people who wanted others to go along with their opposite-sex pronouns had a circle of intimate friends who would participate/validate them and the rest of the society was off the hook and the trans-identified person would simply have to deal. That's what we need to go back to.
This guy is just another academic navel-gazer... fail...
These people need to get real jobs. Might smarten them up.
I find the argument that drag is often a kind of womanface comparable to blackface persuasive, and I say this as someone with a lot of personal experience with it. But many make this argument in attempt to summarily demonize both, whereas my (perhaps controversial) response is to say that we should be more comfortable with comedy and performance around race, ethnicity, and culture. I find that cries of "offense" are missing the point.
This is, of course, to say nothing of the enormously important distinction between play and performance and then navigating daily life. Rachel Dolezal cannot actually opt into being a black person capable of leading a chapter of the NAACP, nor can a male declare himself female and gain access to the experience and the world of women. The mandated blurring of this line is a problem.
Is it "play", or is it more attention seeking - seeking some kind of validation a person feels denied to them when they go about as their regular identity?
Basically is it about fun, or about compensating for some lack?
The taboo exists against trans ethnicity because our culture is neurotic about race in the same way that the Victorians were about sex. The biggest taboo applies to white people as they can be relied upon to have the most guilt - or actually want to keep on appearing to be morally superior to the rest- and it remains useful for'people of colour' to take advantage of that. What might be interesting is whether 'people of colour' can dress up as whites and take the piss - does the author suggest that anywhere?
Fantastic, what a pleasure.
“Humans are idiots who ruin everything, but also, we are all we have.” Paul Kingsnorth.
Sexual crisscross, but not cultural. We can’t help ourselves we get everything wrong. Why? Answer: it is the selective advantage of dominant ideas and the inability of recessive ideas to compete. We can’t select well, ever; Yup, Curtis has uncovered the mechanism that controls all human polities from the family on up. The cathedral has to be accounted for. Or so say I. This fallen world.
Recessive ideas circulate discretely since they are disreputable. They are savoured like absinthe was in the golden age of decadence.
Aussie?
I wrote down a chestnut you gave me :
“Getting it wrong is an advantageous adaptation for survival in the shadow of the cathedral. If you get something right, you would be rendered unemployable.”
Philip the Icosameron
(Like a squirrel, I collect chestnuts)
Do you remember that? I said that Freddie DeBoer was preternaturally gifted at being wrong. That was your response.
It rings a bell and I am flattered that you kept it.
I am maladapted for life in the Cathedral…not even Quasimodo grade material I am afraid. DeBoer, however, is a natural. He does not even have to fake his faith in humbug.
You should be complimented, deservedly, that was a perfect formulation.
Whenever I see a perfect formulation, I capture it. I find all these intellectuals have bad aim. They get all muddle fucked in detail. I however have the habit of being right which is to say I have quite a narrow field of focus. I focus on what is practicable. In that way, I’m not particularly deep, but I have garnered some skill in the arts required to make things happen. Freddie is a perfect example of a Rube Goldberg and completely ineffectual.
Addendum this is why they don’t like Trump. They find the arts required to make things happen - including force - all rather icky.
Crisscross sexuality OK ChrisCross race is an abomination: that is perverse.
Curtis on why crisscross sexuality is OK but not racial crisscross:
If we want to know what a darwinian system will evolve we have to look at the selective pressures on its organisms.
What is our cathedral selecting for?
The selective advantage of an idea may not be driven solely by the quality of that idea . When an idea goes arwy, becomes perverse, it must be because of the pattern of selective advantage in this marketplace of ideas.
A dominant idea is an idea that validates the use of power . There is no market for recessive ideas, recessive ideas, invalidate power or the use of power. A dominant idea is an idea that tends to benefit you and your friends.
The cathedral cannot tell us whether an idea is good or bad because it will always select for the dominant idea. Our institutions cannot hear think know learn understand or teach ANY recessive ideas : that is any ideas that would damage or delegitimate the powers that be.
Punishment and reward are different ways of getting to the same place that is human dominion.
I love this. I can't claim to be anything but British Isles extraction because it's so genetically obvious. It sounds fun. I should pretend to be Italian and give morally superior lectures to people on the differences in Italy, insinuating that perhaps their parents were mentally challenged goats because they don't already know that.
Another person complaining in the first person where they are the subject not us the reader .
Gosh the 'I' gender generation sure does like the word 'I'
Not long ago I saw a live BBC production where Europeans played Egyptians. Judging by audience reaction this is completely fine in 2025 - even within the very beating heart of woke. However, had the same cast been representing events 3000 miles south of Cairo (roughly Namibia) it would have sent shockwaves through the elites, resulted in national soul searching ( mostly enforced) and then widespread cultural and institutional reform to ensure no repetition.