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Is the future trans? The Gay Rights Movement Has Been Hijacked by a Radical Transhumanist Agenda
I don't think the average person in support of transgenderism thinks of themselves as a transhumanist or reads transhumanist literature, they seem to have come to it by way of a strange version of liberalism; not just that you're free to act as you like but are free to be whatever you say, even against the veto of biology, society and basic sense. Combined with a runaway social constructionist impulse and Rousseau-like mindset where the individual is always prior and it's society that corrupts them and you get to the situation where a tiny fraction of people can overthrow the most basic assumptions of a society. Transhumanism by way of rampant individualism .
I also think it's..dubious to frame transgenderism as-such as merely autogynephilic men. Even Blanchard has a two-part typology with homosexual males and autogynephilic males. Even if we want to reduce transgenderism to a mental illness or fetish in men, the article -by playing the traditional leftist game of trying to "solve"' problems by insisting they're caused by male issues - ignores the fastest growing "'transgender" population: young girls.
This would fit well with the trans-as-transhumanism position: girls who would usually go through puberty (a messy time) and the difficult adult life are instead offered a solution to their life's problems via transhumanist surgeries and procedures. Don't like your life? Go be anyone else you want. Never mind that we aren't actually the Culture and you can't mold yourself at will.
Interestingly: this argument actually makes me less anti-trans. I personally see no reason to validate any of the attempts to problematize the sex binary and plenty of reason not to. But clearly the march of progress won't be stopped by me or anyone. Medical technology will improve and people will have the ability to mold themselves more and more.
So really, is the only sin of "transpeople" being early?
I wonder this myself sometimes. For trans adults, much of my antipathy comes from people who are clearly (visibly) not women forcing people to deny the reality they see in order to validate them. And you can lose your job if you don’t. If surgery were at the point where they all passed perfectly and they had all female parts and not facsimiles, this issue would probably be sidestepped.
Of course, none of this applies to children transitioning. The number of people doing irreversible damage to their bodies without knowing the true risks based on social pressure has exploded, and I don’t want to get too into it because others already have done it much better here. I don’t think it’s a good thing nor do I want it to continue.
And then the natural question is, does tolerating the first thing lead to the second? It seems like it to me. In its current state trans ideology seems to allow for no opinion besides a maximalist one. And despite their small numbers, as an influence group they are incredibly influential in tech and online discourse due to the demographics of most people who transition to women tending to be people who are very online and in tech. See the deplatformings of the Kiwi Farms spearheaded by several trans activists for a recent example.
So futurist medical procedures would sidestep a big issue of mine with transgenderism, but it is far from the only one.
Quick edit: I forgot to mention the people that will want to be considered their chosen gender without doing the work to physically pass, which is a thing now and will most likely still be even in this hypothetical future. The question of how we respond to those people is important. Is it, yes you are your chosen gender? Or will we say l: I’ll call you a woman once you don’t have to tell me you’re one. I’d be okay with the latter option, not the former, but I can’t see it going that way culturally.
For some. I think there are probably 95% of trans people who just want to transition and be treated as the sex they identify with, and don't want to rock any boats.
But there's the 1-5% who are narcissistic attention-seekers and want to be both "I'm trans, I'm special, I demand you validate me" and "how dare you notice I'm trans, I'm a real woman, you should be punished!" They are the ones who make a fetish of it. Demand that lesbians have sex with them because "a female penis is not the same as a male penis". Range from the mildly creepy to the psycho.
If they got perfect magical SF transition, it wouldn't suit them because that would be too normal and boring, how could they stand out and demand attention and special treatment?
Of course, lesbians see nothing wrong with demanding access to the output of the penis (ie, sperm) without having deal with the penis itself or the person attached to it. I have trouble bringing myself to care that they are being criticized for not wanting sex with trans women with penises while feeling entitled to subsidized procreation without sex with people with penises.
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What's your stance on hirsutism? Does a woman with a beard count as not a woman? less of a woman?
I understand the idea of defining a woman as an "adult human female", but using looks as your metric makes me curious.
That one is interesting, because Wikipedia is claiming it affects "5-15% of women of all ethnic backgrounds," which is less than the number of women I've seen with facial hair. I'm guessing it's fairly easily managed with a razor, and in any case facial hair is far from the only physical tell of sex, so that doesn't seem to pose an issue to what I'm saying.
To be more charitable we can go with whatever rare genetic condition may cause a woman to appear extremely mannish. In which case I would probably assume she is male unless corrected. That would be very unfortunate and I feel sympathy for her having to go around life that way, but she is by definition a rare genetic outlier. We can openly say that this is not the way it normally biologically works and don't feel the need to collapse biological gender categories over it.
If it was a political issue where people were identifying with this disorder or trying to medically induce it, demanding at risk of job loss you accept it, trying to normalize and give it to children, etc. and this was all surging at once within the last 10 years? At that point it leaves the category of weird genetic outlier and I start to ask what's going on here.
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For me personally (not the person you are replying to), I don't define a woman by looks, but looks are a heuristic. It's obviously unacceptable to go "ok, let's see if you have a penis or a vagina in those pants", so you make an inference based on the overall appearance.
Ironically, I can envision a scenario where the trans movement will have made things harder for people you mention, such as a woman who has a beard. At no point would such a woman have been considered normal and unremarkable (see: every circus with a "bearded lady" exhibit), but I think time was that nobody would've questioned if they were actually women. If you saw a really butch looking woman one may have assumed she was a man, but when corrected one would accept that she's a woman.
Now, though, I can envision that same scenario happening but with people refusing to accept the woman as actually being a woman. Because from their point of view there are lots of people falsely labeling men as women, so now it's not as simple as "she says she's a woman, then she is". Now that person probably has to resort to using looks, and being suspicious of anyone who doesn't appear to be a woman but claims to be one.
I don't actually know if this is happening, so this isn't really meant to be an argument against the trans movement. But it seems very plausible to me, and I can't help but wonder if there have been unintended consequences in a vein like I describe.
From 2016: Connecticut woman says she was harassed in Walmart bathroom after customer mistook her as transgender (archive link because the website is unavailable in the EU). However, it seems in this case there is no evidence beyond the woman's claim.
Also from 2016, this time with a video of the incident: Man follows woman into restroom after mistaking her for a man (archived). This was apparently a simple misunderstanding that was resolved amicably.
While searching, I also found this article from 2008 (!): Woman mistaken for a man settles NY lawsuit.
This Twitter thread discusses another example.
So it does seem to happen. And I would assume that not every such incident makes the news.
But blaming trans people for this is ridiculous. How is it their fault that people prejudiced against them sometimes accidentally target insufficiently feminine-looking cis women? In fact, I've always considered these false-positive incidents a strong argument in favour of letting trans people use the toilet corresponding to their identified gender.
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