The best app is whatever you use to consume media in the target language.

The only way to acquire a language is to expose yourself to it in a natural context. You can’t acquire a language just by studying with flashcards or grammar exercises or whatever – any app that offers enhanced versions of those will at best be a minor supplement to actually using the language.

The more popular something is, the less effective it is to criticize it harshly. For example, I think eating meat regularly is, by the amount of suffering it causes, worse than murdering one human. But if I went around calling everyone who ate meat “murderers” and refused to befriend or do business with them, it would just make people think I was crazy and not want to listen to me, because eating meat is seen as normal. On the other hand, when something is seen as abnormal, like being openly racist, shunning people who do it makes others less likely to do it too.

Well, men are also most of the victims of serious crime and do most of all dangerous jobs. These are all consequences of taking more risks.

That’s true. I don’t see what it has to do with my argument, though. I’m pretty sure that testosterone increases risk-tolerance, and that’s part of why it correlates with aggression. Are you suggesting that men have elevated risk-tolerance for reasons other than testosterone, and that risk-tolerance is responsible for aggression instead of testosterone? Or are you saying that risk-taking is important so it’s worth keeping men the way they are even if it causes most serious crime?

No one? YES, there are many people thinking about this.

Most people see violent crime as a problem, but few see it as a problem with men. When people discuss crime, I never hear them frame the problem as “there’s something causing men to commit 10 times as much rape and murder as women: what is it and how do we stop it?” Even feminists who talk about male violence generally don’t frame it that way.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that, it takes a fool, because it’s not necessarily true.

No empirical data can lead us to accept something as “necessarily true,” but it stretches credulity to think that castration would reduce aggression in pretty much every kind of male mammal we try it on except humans and further that the most aggressive humans coincidentally have elevated testosterone levels. I don’t think that you actually believe that, since you said:

It may make them less aggressive, but what else would happen?

I specifically listed the other effects I could think of. If you think something else bad might happen, just say what it is. If your objection is that we should be cautious because there might be unexpected effects… well sure, that’s true, but it’s also a general-purpose objection to any suggestion to change anything ever. You can’t really have any interesting opinions if you accept that reasoning.

What about we make society less toxic first, for example?

I’m in favor of that. But I think there’s a limit to how much you can improve society via culture alone. You could probably design a culture where people would be a lot less selfish than they are today, for example. But I don’t think you could get people to never be selfish at all, because some amount of selfishness is part of human nature. I think the same is true for aggression, and that the minimum amount of aggression you could get from people is in large part of function of testosterone levels.

Furthermore, “make society less toxic” is a goal, not a policy. A policy to reduce violence by making society less toxic could be something like teaching children to play cooperative games instead of competitive ones. That would probably have a small effect in a few decades. But I think chemically castrating men would have a bigger effect in a shorter amount of time than just about any other policy you could think of, and those effects would be in addition to anything else you did.

They also won’t ever want sex

This is not true. Historically, “Many castrati lived rather promiscuous lives. Because their unions could produce no embarrassing offspring to explain, women saw them not only as beautiful, ethereal celebrities of the opera stage, but as prime candidates for affairs.”

their penises will never grow to adult size

I bottomed for a trans women with a highly atrophied penis and had a great time. Tbh I don’t know why anyone cares about penis size.

their voices will always sound like that of a little boy.

Their larynx won’t drop, but they won’t sound like little boys. Only some features of adult male voices are caused by biological puberty—there are a lot of other vocal characteristics that distinguish adults from children and men from women. I’ve known trans men who hadn’t gone on testosterone who still had masc-leaning voices. And adult women sound different from little girls even though their voices don’t drop during puberty.

Now, maybe you’re lesbian or asexual or something, and you’re fine with all that, but I imagine some women would not be pleased.

I’m bisexual, and I’d be totally down to date a guy who looked like this. As pointed out above, castrati were highly sought-after by women in the past. Obviously contraceptives negate the appeal of their infertility, but still, they must have been otherwise sexually appealing enough for women to want to sleep with them in the first place. Sure, it would be a loss for those who only like super-manly men, but that seems like an acceptable trade-off to me.

I don’t think we should castrate men against their will, although I would if I weren’t an anarchist. As it is, I think it would be a good social norm for men to take testosterone blockers.

I’m not sure what “men are inherently violent” means. I think that testosterone makes people more aggressive. Adult men with typical levels of testosterone are more likely to be violent than people with lower testosterone levels. Men with very low testosterone levels are not particularly likely to be aggressive. Aggression is not inherent to being a man, but it is caused by a chemical that’s found in larger amounts in men than in women.

I do think we should discourage toxic masculinity, and I do think it’s responsible for some of the difference in aggression in men and women. However, I think that testosterone also plays a major role.

I somehow don’t believe that [you’re an anarchist].

Since everyone seems to have focused on the thing I said I would believe if I weren’t an anarchist (mandatory castration), I guess I should clarify what the anarchist version of this belief is. When I say “most males should be castrated,” I mean it in the same way as “most children should go to school.” I don’t think that parents or any other authority should force children to go to school if they really don’t want to. However, I think it’s good for children to go to school, I would personally encourage them to, and I think it should be a social norm. I feel the same way about men taking T-blockers. If I got to design society, I would make the norm that when boys reach the age where they get the talk about puberty, they would be given T-blockers and told that taking them will make them less likely to want to hurt people. They wouldn’t be forced to take them, but I think many would choose to if it were seen as a normal and safe way to be a man.

I don’t think there’s any conceivable way we could make this a social norm, so this is just a pipe dream of mine. Nevertheless, it’s a good fit for a “really unpopular opinion” thread.

And [rounding up and exiling immigrants] would still be an insane reaction to [immigrants committing 90% of serious crimes] even if it was true, which no self-identified anarchist should support. Rehabilitation must still be the goal of any justice system.

I agree. My point was to show that there is a double standard in how mainstream society treats men committing a lot of crime compared with any other group committing a lot of crime. I was not trying to say that attitudes towards immigrants, etc. committing crime are correct.

There’s a feminist movement. One of the major theses of the feminist movement is the rape and murder overwhelmingly committed by men.

Point taken, although I’d say that only a small proportion of feminists take male violence as seriously as you would expect people to if it were any other group committing almost all crime.

There are wildly more creative and practical ways to go about [preventing violence by men].

That’s true. I don’t think this idea is practical at all, although I don’t think any practical idea would be as effective in preventing violence as this one.

Spicy hot take: we shouldn’t be castrating bulls.

I actually agree. Humans should not use animals for food or labor, so really the only place we should interact with cattle is in zoos, and I think trained professionals should be able to handle uncastrated bulls.

Correlation [between criminal behavior and high testosterone] ≠ causation!

True, but come on. When we remove the source of testosterone in other mammals, they become less aggressive. About half of all humans have high T levels starting in adolescence, and it’s exactly at that age when their crime rates shoot way up. And some of the most violent people in society also have the highest T levels. Do you really think that’s all just a coincidence? Can you think of a another non-tortured explanation for these observations?

The other effect is that men will have their bodily autonomy violated.

Right, I don’t think we should violate people’s bodily autonomy to prevent crime, which is why I think castrating men should be a norm, not a mandate. However, a lot of people are fine with violating people’s bodily autonomy if it stops serious crimes. They want the state to crack down on people putting heroin in their bodies and becoming violent as a result. Well, I don’t see why they logically shouldn’t also want the state to crack down on people having testosterone in their bodies and becoming violent as a result.

But you wrote a really detailed paragraph defending sex-based eugenics. The thing about eugenics is that it never really went away.

I proposed two methods of reproduction in a world where most men were chemically castrated: (1) men would go off T-blockers while trying for a baby, or (2) people would rely on a small number of uncastrated sperm donors. Of those, (1) is not eugenics, but (2) could be, depending on how the donors were selected. Obviously eugenics is not compatible with anarchism, but as you said, there are a lot of people who still believe in eugenics. My argument is that people who think that the state should limit who gets to reproduce to make society safer should also want it to limit the number of people with high testosterone to make society safer.

It is especially irritating to see someone who claims to be a comrade express views like this. It makes me less confident to call myself an anarchist when my views are associated with eugenics. We already have a tremendous amount of ill will generated by “anarcho”-capitalists and “anarcho”-primitivists; we really do not need more bad takes.

This is the type of take I give when people ask for “really unpopular opinions.” It’s not something that I talk about when I’m trying to advocate for anarchism. And I mean… I don’t think you have much to worry about people associating anarchism with this idea. The only person other than me I’ve ever heard expressing an opinion like it was a weird blogger 10 years ago who was definitely not an anarchist.

I’m a trans woman, so I would be castrated under this policy but would have wanted to be anyway.

Most human males should be castrated.

Men commit almost all rape and murder, but no one seems to think this is a problem we need to do anything about. If any other group committed 90% of serious crimes – let’s say immigrants – people would be calling for them to be rounded up and exiled. But when it’s men, that’s just the way things are, nothing to be done about it.

But we know exactly what to do about it when we’re talking about other species. We castrate male cattle because bulls are dangerous and steer aren’t. Violent criminals typically have elevated testosterone levels. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that putting men on testosterone-blockers is going to make them less dangerous.

What will be the other effects?

1. Men will be be weaker—Meh, physical strength is less useful now than it was in the past.
2. They’ll have less hair on their bodies and more on their heads—Awesome.
3. They’ll won’t be able to get hard—That’s what viagra is for.
4. They’ll lose fertility—They can go off blockers while they’re trying to have a child. Or you could just have a small number of uncastrated sperm donors.

I’m an anarchist, so I don’t want to force this on anyone. But if I believed in prisons or police, I would also believe in mandatory castration.