Which gender are you?

[guruilla]

The more interesting question for me is what is your perceived gender of another member.

Yeah; especially when I twice mistook a future (chick) partner for a guy.

[brekin]

Dr. Evil wrote:

Some people aren't comfortable in their own bodies and want to change it. Why is that such a big issue?

Great question and one that cuts to the heart of the matter. I think it is an issue, a big one for some and many at times, because when they change their body, they force a change in their direct community. As much as we like to think we are islands unto ourselves, we really do exist for each other to a large measure. Most people don't like change at all really, when you get down to it.

Think about when someone has changed their name and what minor annoyances and problems that can cause for people. Or a restaurant changes their menu. Now scale it up ten fold to tinkering with sex and gender. People already struggle with classic gender norms and when more variables are entered in you are forcing people to do algebra who don't even like large number arithmetic.

There may even be some binary based duality paradigm it challenges in people that has been established through language.

I'm all for people being happier, though. And someone whose willing to go under the knife for it, I'd say is making a sacrifice that the very least earns them shared accommodations or their very own bathroom. But there is no getting around that people are threatened when someone goes off script.

Roll Tootsie:

[guruilla]

I would wager that almost no one in today's world is comfortable in their body and that surgical intervention is no more an answer than sex, drugs, or rock and roll are. If people aren't comfortable in their body because of trauma and psychic fragmentation, then trying to make the body fit the fragmentation is a way to stay in the fragment, and avoid embodiment.

There are people who feel that they are born with too many limbs and want to have them removed. Is Dr Evil (perfectly named) going to say this is a reasonable route to happiness and to be encouraged? Probably.

I don't personally care what people do with their genitals or limbs nor am I arguing for or against any sort of social policy. I'm arguing for sanity, that's all.

When it becomes socially unacceptable to talk about any sort of preference in terms of pathology (unless it's a crime, and even if it is, the law may change to suit the new preferences), then pathology ceases to exist as a category, that's all. As a phenomena it continues and, logically, proliferates for not being identifed.

If someone wants to come on this board and talk about why they think they would be better off with less limbs or a different set of genitalia (or black skin, or whatever), that's very different than people arguing for something out of some vague ideological notions about "freedom of choice," which, as the more sane voices have already pointed out, only leads to more and more restriction in the long run.

All forms of violence are quests for identity. That includes self-mutilation and men called horses (of which I am one: do your worst, doc!)

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Some people aren't comfortable in their own bodies and want to change it. Why is that such a big issue?

Yes, some people simply aren't comfortable in their own bodies. Some people even believe themselves to be very, very skinny people trapped in non-skinny bodies—they are called anorexics. It's one subset of a wider set of problems known generally as body dysmorphia. It's universally recognized as a mental disorder. Are you suggesting that we should give anorexics access to unlimited liposuction procedures (on the taxpayer's dime of course) so that they can better match their subjective mental image to their objective physical appearance?

Why some people treat these subjective fantasies like they aren't symptoms stemming from bad (or, more to the point, broken or simply poisoned) wiring is beyond me.

[tapitsbo]

Seems like the trans pendulum is swinging a little far in the opposite direction, in this thread. Clearly these people have always been with us in some form. Many are with us and we don't find out about it due to their talent at "passing" (which says a lot about the community's expectations as much as it does about them.)

The point about all preferences being beyond criticism is a good one, though. Although I think we can see in practice, this isn't what happens. Lots of tastes are indeed condemned even by the current arbiters of the day.

My guess is people are reacting to the sudden explosion of this issue as a paradigm for other forms of politics. (The "trans/cis" thing is irritating for sure - are these terms really referring to opposites?)

Lots of people still think Shaun King is black, btw.

[Harvey]

Next up: Trans-species rights and recognition? Not facetious, merely speculating.

[guruilla]

Seems like the trans pendulum is swinging a little far in the opposite direction, in this thread. Clearly these people have always been with us in some form.

Yes. Some of them became shamans. But for every genuine anomaly (and being a shaman was never meant to be a picnic), how many people now are simply overreacting to perfectly natural feelings of confusion and grabbing onto the first self-identifier/social role they can, signing up for surgery or whatever else they can to assuage those feelings?

The whole notion that suffering is something that needs to be alleviated by fixing the externals is what I am objecting to. We all do it. And it creates the sort of messed up culture of exploitation we are seeing, where no one wants to just sit in the distress of being poisoned, but instead rushes to cut off the offending parts, or worse, take it out on/put it into someone else.

Also interesting is the weird homogenization that occurs with the supposed "celebration of difference." It seems as tho everyone wants to exercise their right to be proud of whatever makes them anomalous within the tribe, but only so they can get all the perks and the status of the tribe, and so be absorbed into it.

Brekin pointed out (if i read the cryptic phrases right) how the white male can end up being scapegoated if he speaks too frankly about his feelings in such discussions; there's the assumption that if we could all agree to embrace each other's differences we'd all get along. But embracing differences erases difference, and when there's all a sameness to a community, as Girard writes, mimetic violence spreads like wildfire. Maybe Europe now is an illustration of that?

Also, if we're being conditioned to accept differences without ever understanding them, the acceptance is entirely bogus, and breeds resentment and rage on both sides of what may be a quite necessary and natural divide (like that of the sexes).

Next up: Trans-species rights and recognition? Not facetious, merely speculating.

It's a new thing now; I forget what they are called, people who think they were born as the wrong species. They are getting surgery too.

The Day the World Jumped the Shark and No One Noticed...

[Joao]

It's universally recognized as a mental disorder.

I'd be careful about that criterion. A brief list of some others that have also been "universally recognized":

• Homosexuality
• Hysteria
• Penis envy
• Uppity negroes "schizophrenia"
• Oppositional defiant disorder

The list of odious diagnoses could probably be expanded tenfold without much effort. Your bigger point may (or may not) stand, but psychiatric "disorders" have always been a tool of oppression.

[brainpanhandler]

there's the assumption that if we could all agree to embrace each other's differences we'd all get along. But embracing differences erases difference

Really?

[guruilla]

there's the assumption that if we could all agree to embrace each other's differences we'd all get along. But embracing differences erases difference

Really?

Yeah I wondered about that too after I wrote it. All I can say is it seems that the very thing that makes something anomalous disappears once it becomes socially condoned. Everything gets assimilated by the Borg.

I don't know what the alternative is, the middle way between embracing and rejecting.

I am congenitally(!) opposed to the Group Mind, to a definite fault. I don't want to be assimilated, but nor do I want to be persecuted, obviously.

I have the sense that individuation is a journey inward that eventually disidentifies with everything but the Soul. It begins with your family, but soon it comes down to race, sex, even species. So the idea that we can be whatever we feel like being, biologically, through a mixture of sheer will power and technology, is the literalization and hence inversion of the truth, that we are infinitely more than our biology. It's the difference between trying to turn the ego into the infinite and letting it be dissolved into the infinite.

& call me old-fashioned but I think the primary human crucible where that happens is the crucible of biological opposition, also known as guy-on-chick action ~ or marriage!!. (Not enough smilies; I was looking for the burning in hell one!)

[tapitsbo]

Seems like the trans pendulum is swinging a little far in the opposite direction, in this thread. Clearly these people have always been with us in some form.

Yes. Some of them became shamans. But for every genuine anomaly (and being a shaman was never meant to be a picnic), how many people now are simply overreacting to perfectly natural feelings of confusion and grabbing onto the first self-identifier/social role they can, signing up for surgery or whatever else they can to assuage those feelings?

Yes some were shamans, others were much closer to what we think of as trans people. I agree that this has become a magnetic process for all sorts of people questioning their identity.

The whole notion that suffering is something that needs to be alleviated by fixing the externals is what I am objecting to. We all do it. And it creates the sort of messed up culture of exploitation we are seeing, where no one wants to just sit in the distress of being poisoned, but instead rushes to cut off the offending parts, or worse, take it out on/put it into someone else.

The language of inner/outer and poisoning is itself treacherous territory. I think there are other posters here who have done a good job unpacking the language of contamination.

Also interesting is the weird homogenization that occurs with the supposed "celebration of difference." It seems as tho everyone wants to exercise their right to be proud of whatever makes them anomalous within the tribe, but only so they can get all the perks and the status of the tribe, and so be absorbed into it.

I think Wendy Brown and others have developed this train of thought a bit.

Brekin pointed out (if i read the cryptic phrases right) how the white male can end up being scapegoated if he speaks too frankly about his feelings in such discussions; there's the assumption that if we could all agree to embrace each other's differences we'd all get along. But embracing differences erases difference, and when there's all a sameness to a community, as Girard writes, mimetic violence spreads like wildfire. Maybe Europe now is an illustration of that?

Not just white males - this happens to all groups. I think a lot of the current angst of white males relates to their decaying status as "default" in the overarching system, and the lasting taboo on their individuation away from the overstretched Western universalist framework. This decay and differentiation process has been and will be felt by other groups as well.

There is a long history of assimilation of different groups as well as pluralist co-existence. There are different kinds of accepting difference too, usually the differences get subordinated to some mediating system. It's tough to generalize about this. I think Europe now is the culmination of a lot of different processes. Western Europe certainly has some intrinsic, indigenous poisons that are unrelated to the presence of newer, different groups there.

Also, if we're being conditioned to accept differences without ever understanding them, the acceptance is entirely bogus, and breeds resentment and rage on both sides of what may be a quite necessary and natural divide (like that of the sexes).

Although there is a forced acceptance and denial of difference in some of these situations.

Next up: Trans-species rights and recognition? Not facetious, merely speculating.

It's a new thing now; I forget what they are called, people who think they were born as the wrong species. They are getting surgery too.
The Day the World Jumped the Shark and No One Noticed...

Groups like otherkin are fascinating examples of audience cults, that's for sure

[Agent Orange Cooper]

I'd be careful about that criterion. A brief list of some others that have also been "universally recognized"

I get your point, but really, do a google image search for "severe anorexia." Is what you see even remotely comparable to any of the items on your list? I think not. This has nothing in common with homosexuality or "uppity negroes," their 'disorderly' behavior isn't a reaction to oppression; it's because they are in tremendous pain and psychic distress.

The fact that many, many transwomen simultaneously suffer from bipolar, manic depression, suicidal behavior, classical narcissism, and (very often) autogynephilia, etc, does not seem to me to be coincidental. On another forum I visit where there are quite a few transwomen, one once made a series of posts announcing that she had bought a hacksaw and anesthetic and was going to castrate herself the next day because she just couldn't take it anymore. Several members of the forum were actually encouraging her to do so. Cutting off body parts does not seem to me to be a decision made by someone of sound mind.

Also, don't take my word for it: there are many blogs out there written by actual transwomen and transmen who have made the full transition, only to regret it and "de-transition," and who are now speaking out against the conventional wisdom.

[82_28]

No matter what you do there is still no getting around this -- which is self apparent.

The XY sex-determination system is the sex-determination system found in humans, most other mammals, some insects (Drosophila), and some plants (Ginkgo). In this system, the sex of an individual is determined by a pair of sex chromosomes (gonosomes). Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), and are called the homogametic sex. Males have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY), and are called the heterogametic sex.

This system is in contrast with the ZW sex-determination system found in birds, some insects, many reptiles, and other animals, in which the heterogametic sex is female.

A temperature-dependent sex determination system is found in some reptiles.

I could chop whatever off but my genes will still be XY in every other part of my body no matter what. Sure I have a brand new vagina, but genetics still say you're a male. No choice. Male and female with the very rare exception. That's it. Male/Female.

[Joao]

The fact that many, many transwomen simultaneously suffer from bipolar, manic depression, suicidal behavior, classical narcissism, and (very often) autogynephilia, etc, does not seem to me to be coincidental.

Well that's the crux of it, though. Interesting post but wouldn't just one competent, well adjusted transgendered person prove otherwise?

Sure, troubled and confused people can have extreme issues with their bodies and genders. But that doesn't makes trans tendencies a "disorder" of their own.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Well that's the crux of it, though. Interesting post but wouldn't just one competent, well adjusted transgendered person prove otherwise?

Maybe, but I'd argue that being 'transgendered'—that is, believing that, as a man, one can become a woman (contra 82_28's excellent post above), or that it's possible for a man to be "born a woman," or believing that "a penis and a clitoris are homologous" (all SOP in the trans ideology), etc—precludes being well-adjusted, at least to a point.

As an aside, the whole ideology carries with it a huge load of straight-up sexism, where "being a woman" is automatically and immediately reduced to a nebulous set of classical stereotypes and mannerisms. I can become a woman by dressing "femme," growing my hair, painting my nails, and employing vocal fry. They have literally defined the category of "female" out of existence—precisely the exact fucking opposite of what women have struggled for millennia to achieve, that is, to be seen as full, competent, capable human beings, instead of empty-headed adjuncts to the penis-in-charge. But that's patriarchy for you...