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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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In 2016 ISIS attackers bombed the airport in Brussels killing over a dozen people. A seventeen year old girl was present but uninjured. This May she chose to be euthanized because of her psychological trauma. She was 23 and she had no physical injuries. The news of her death was just announced recently.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/10/10/2016-brussels-attacks-victim-granted-euthanasia-after-years-of-ptsd_5999805_4.html

This seems absolutely insane to me. I don't doubt she was suffering but she was only 23. A lot could have changed over the next 70 years. She wasn't terminally ill, she didn't have cancer, she wasn't paralyzed from the neck down. She was very sad and very scared and had attempted suicide twice. But I know that at least some people who have survived suicide attempts have gone on to lead happy lives.

I used to disapprove of euthanasia but wasn't strongly in favor of making it illegal, even though it was never a choice I would make myself or approve of making for a relative. But cases like this have made me strongly opposed to it. It seems like the medical establishment can't be trusted to restrict it to only the most extreme cases. The people saying that allowing euthanasia is a slippery slope have been proven right in my opinion.

Some people are suicidal, and this is a nicer and more dignified way to commit suicide. It's easy to support this on generic libertarian or even (trans)humanist grounds; the state and society are, ideally, not entitled to deny people their exit rights.

What's more unpleasant about the situation is that this libertarianism is very skewed by what one could call «Cheems mindset» or perhaps medical ethics. We don't have a legally enshrined freedom of form and being: we have only freedom of diminution, freedom to make yourself something lesser or avoid some medically recognized pain at some cost, rather than modify arbitrarily.

You can get feminizing hormones and antiandrogens much, much easier than you can get T (unless you're an FtM trans with «dysphoria») and HGH. You can get euthanasia but not euphoretics and not any serious research into cognitive enhancement. Some claims to the pressing need to change are recognized and affirmed; others are laughed out of the room (imagine incels petitioning for state-mandated masculinization treatment).

It shows that this isn't really about freedom, but rather about some blind and selective idea of compassion. The sort that's grounded in the notion of humanity which doesn't seek to grow, only to stop suffering. It's not the sort of humanity I want to live together with; hopefully there'll be an answer superior to the euthanasia booth.

You're on an Internet message board sneering at people for posting on an Internet message board?

This is a low effort retort that contributes nothing.