ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Freddie must suffer awful cognitive dissonance around this as how could you be heterodox and shun curiosity? Same goes for decoding the gurus. It's a hard time to be heteredox on the left if you already have an audience you have to structure yourself around.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes it was...
There's not sufficient evidence to justify this anecdotal opinion and while you're welcome to have your opinion, especially about yourself, I'd suggest you think about how you don't have the counterfactual, even for yourself.
P.S. I would think the ethical bar and evidence standard would need to be very high for the puberty blockers, then HRT treatment for children when we know the majority of people who don't go through their natal puberty, will be infertile. Not to mention the problems with inability to orgasm. Can a child make that decision?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Agreed irresponsible, without receipts it's just libel
It is what it is, a second hand account on the internet, and without any proof, libelous, whether or not Milo follows up on it.
It's easily possible that the account was fake. Happens all the time. Did you do forensics on it?
I don't care one iota for Milo, he could easily have done it. I'm just pointing out basic epistemics.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
It's valid in one sense I agree, but we're entering an era where it's increasingly misguided to try to 'sit this one out'. While it was fine to ignore discussions on the right tax rate or whether public transport should be subsidised, this issue is different. We are all adversely affected by the unhinged turn towards non-reality. In my view, the potential for corruption at not addressing this could take us all into the abyss. We need a shared reality for social cohesion - if we cavalierly dismiss it we are inviting all kinds of demons (admittedly a bit melodramatic but I think a sketch of this kind of argument can be plausibly made).
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I like the idea of this place, I really do, but why do people write such long posts. It strikes me as quite obnoxious. Don't you get bored of writing and reading so much text?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Replying at the tail to these comments, which I've appreciated. Obviously nothing wrong with people's preferences and of course nuanced and complex ideas take time. I mean I write out some fairly lengthy ones myself, just if most of them lengthy walls of text, then quite intimidating. Maybe sometimes less is more, might it be just a habit of the community, as alluded to?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
There seems to be a range of preferences, so I wouldn't worry. I guess I have two or three comment styles myself. 1) reactive to a particular point someone has raised - I should probably give these up as its sometimes just nitpicking and a search for connection, 2) pre-canned ideas that I've already thought about at length, I have a few pet topics and I know how to articulate them easily, 3) full rant mode, which is more stream of consciousness trying to tie multiple things together. 1) and 2) tend to be short, 3) can go on but it's usually a kind of master thesis type thing that is also informationally dense.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes I see what you mean. I've become attuned lately to the idea of attention as a sacred act, a la Iain Mcgilchrist. What is it that we are experiencing, wanting to portray, what is important? This requires more time sitting and being and noticing and less time writing, though of course intentions fade away and I easily find myself back in reactive social media scrolling and commenting.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Fair play
These are good examples of the 'we define social categories' argument so let's explore them.
Parent and national are multifaceted social categories, additionally with legal requisites based on observable characteristics. There is an element where people might disagree and a negotiation on the boundary decided politically, but there is a substantive requirement for belonging to the category, beyond just the desire to belong to it. You can't self-ID your desired nationality or declare yourself a parent because in both these cases the legal definition takes precedence. Both do have a social and self-ID component (I feel like a US citizen etc) but this does not guarantee membership as far as others are concerned.
The boundary of a legal category is a political negotiation but what we have in the current mileu is an attempt at top down enforcement without negotiation. While widening the definition of nationality does create potential conflicts, over resource allocation and who gets a say, it doesn't create a fundamental rights conflict. Existing nationals maintain all their rights. Widening the category of women does create a fundamental rights conflict because some rights are based on sex, and gender identity seeks to take primacy legally over sex.
There are philosophical distinctions as well, gender is actually parasitic definitionally on sex, whereas nationality is definitionally based on other characteristics.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I personally would accommodate trans people in their desire to live as the opposite sex if it were a thorough process - the self-ID laws, which my country already has, make accommodation much more difficult.
I would take issue with the lies implication. It's well understood what kind of categories those examples are and there's no issue with understanding, for example, that there are real and meaningful differences between different citizens.
A trans woman in my view is a kind of woman in the social category sense where we can accommodate them in the category- I am free to form my opinion as to what they can know of womanhood in comparison to a biological woman, just as an eighth generation American can contrast themselves to a recent immigrant.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
The surprise with me is not that most subreddits are bubble chambers that only let a very narrow Overton window through, but that people can find it enjoyable to be on there. So many of the same bland, sanctioned opinions, ad infinitum. The whole thing seems like it's engineered from the same gtp prompt.
Actually I would have thought chat-gtp would start to kill text social media generally, as how do we know that we're not just talking to a computer. The kicker would be if people didn't actually care that this was the case ...
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
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I had heard that the issue for MRI and herniated discs is that you can see the same indications on a control group that doesn't experience pain.
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I'd make a case that Crohn's/IBS-like conditions are simply a set of symptoms. Perhaps there is true-Chrohn's within this. IBS doesn't have a set aetiology in my view though IBS treatments may help the symptoms.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, cult dynamics happen so easily in online spaces
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
The thing thing to note about gender identity theory is that it is actually a mish-mash of different ideas that are inconsistent with each other. There's the traditional transexual 'born in the wrong body' narrative (really conceived as a Cartesian soul), but increasingly layers of queer theory where sex/gender is a performance which you can transgress, in which people can create or choose their gender. This has seamlessly merged into the modern liberal idea of 'lifestyle option', where you can explore your gender, try out being another gender.
When you unpack all this you realise it's actually an incoherent mess. It's actually one of the biggest signs that this is a social contagion.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I don't agree with censorship and if you're gay, faggot seems pretty normal as a greeting for another gay in the era Im from. Like black people can use the n word.
But I was interested in the origin of faggot, which according to the podcast or article I was listening or reading, I forget which, actually derives from the gays being the first on the fire before the witches were burnt in mediaeval times. The literal meaning is of course 'bundle of sticks', ie kindling.
This would seem to make it a particularly nasty term to use on people outside your in-group, though of course people don't necessarily know the origins of words when they use them...
Thanks for your skepticism- beware the folk etymology!
Found this on the topic (amongst mostly junk search results, as is the norm)
Some commentators believe that the term "faggot" as applied to homosexuals is derived from the bundles of sticks or "faggots" that were used to burn the heretics. The heretics were easily identified with the fuel used to burn them, for symbolic faggots were in fact embroidered on the garments of those who refused to recant: hence the phrase "to fry a faggot." However, this etymology is probably not correct, because "faggot" as a slang term for a homosexual only occurs in English, and in England homosexuals were never burned at the stake, but hanged, so it is difficult to see how the metaphorical meaning could have arisen.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I think the point about 'useful and accurate' is underappreciated- there's just less information in a broad label and no one should insist on someone ceding their valid empirical view of reality.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I think I agree with you but I'm not entirely following your thread and would like to. I agree something entirely subjective can't provide a stable social category and will lead to contradictions- I view this as gender ideology necessarily being dependent on sex to obtain meaning but also undermining sex at the same time. (Ie a parasitic relationship)
Is this the equivalent to what you're pointing to?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, the gaslighting of parents in this is another real cost.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
The idea that we all have special seeds within us that need to be expressed in the world is decadent romanticism. This belief system is one of the current failure modes of society because it fundamentally misunderstands what a self is. We participate in our ongoing development in embodied relation with the world and others.
In terms of human development it doesn't make sense to posit someone born into one family system and culture as if they were born into another.
This doesn't preclude development that honor's the child's unique characteristics and preferences to give them sovereignty and agency. Or for cultures to adapt and change.
Any parent with any sense knows that while they have a special unique child, they are also responsible for shaping that child's development while their brain is forming. This duty of development means a parent often needs to overrule the childs own view of the world, ie in limiting this or that food, technology, being wary of strangers, trying to advocate options that don't limit in education etc.
Unfortunately people, families and cultures come with a lot of baggage, but there is no utopian shortcut. Transhuman ideas and decadent romanticism have fed into the current trans contagion and are causing irreversible harms.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
As someone pointed out in another thread it is stunning how much we need to be concerned, change our entire society for, less than 1% of the population, yet within that population - the irreversible infertility of an entire group of people (males who don't go through natal puberty) is not even worth mentioning.
Also, what are stats on women who don't go through their puberty having their fertility return-seems like egg preservation is recommended for women as well as men on gender clinic sites- though that could just be because it's an additional revenue stream I suppose...
Thanks so much for the thread. I suffered the sadness of reading Freddie's last stack-i had unsubscribed in umbrage at his attempts to allow himself to talk about things but control any attempts for others to bring up contrasting views, but there he was on the recommended tab and speaking about the same issue, with the comments turned off of course...
But really honestly sad. The full nothing to see here routine and didn't mention a single relevant point about child safeguarding that is available for anyone to find out about. Oh yeah, why would I want to question a researcher or a doctor, they know best- in complete contrast to the free wheeling heterodox attitude he has to every other issue he talks about. I mean it must be more than laziness, I doubt his own arguments gave any satisfaction, not really going beyond 'diversity and inclusion' rah, rah. So it must be he's guarding his position on the left, too fearful to see a way through, perhaps he has a close friend he wouldn't want to betray or some personal story. It's beyond credible that he somehow hasn't read that eunuch identity is in the latest wpath guidelines and that surgery options are included for non-binary people (nullification anyone?), oh and they removed any age limits. But yes Freddie, kindness and diversity and what would I know about all that other stuff, I'm just a writer...
Thanks, that was therapeutic...
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