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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?
Wow. Talk about assuming their conclusions. That article is miserable, partly for the reasons you note, partly for the wild lack of charity, but also because of its determination to concentrate all agency in the hands of nebulous elites. In doing so, they ignore the single most important link between transgenderism and liberalism.
There exists some small fraction of the population which feels dysphoria. They can’t prove such an internal phenomenon, and it’s quite hard for those of us who don’t feel anything similar to empathize. Liberalism answers: it’s not our problem. If they want to dismantle the gender binary, so be it. The rest of us can, in theory, go on our merry way.
This leads to obvious criticisms! Chesterton’s fence, externalities, false positives, and so on. I’m frustrated that the article doesn’t address any of them, instead blaming a cabal of autogynephilic billionaires. It just skips over any actual reasoning to argue that a potential to benefit the wealthy poisons the whole concept.
It’s particularly bizarre to see reproductive medical technology branded as the transhumanist devil. One wonders if the author has experienced our current peak of assistive reproduction, the C-section.
Then again, I’m pretty broadly transhumanist, in the aspirational sense. We aren’t there, yet, but some day, I can only hope that humans can shed our features like an old coat. Couple that philosophy with trans people’s self-described feelings about gender, and I started to find it much easier to cooperate.
"Dismantling the gender binary" is not a personal voyage of discovery, but a broad social program including significant changes to governmental policy at all levels, fairly substantial changes in pedagogy, dissolution of parental authority over their children's upbringing, development and deployment of unproven hormonal interventions, the redefinition and hijacking of ordinary language, willful deception regarding scientific research and suppression of contradictory findings, and coordinated harassment campaigns against dissenters in anything from dating (the "cotton ceiling") to workplaces and academia. It is not as simple as "live and let live."
Insofar as the "cabal of. . .billionaires" is either responsible for the intellectual development of a concept, coverage of that is basic bog-standard pop-intellectual history. Insofar as the cabal is providing a network of organizational and monetary support for activists, then that's worthwhile reportage just like pieces on the Koch or Soros networks, or "Big Tobacco's" involvement in quashing cancer research.
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Is this hypothetical "real Liberalism" or "actual liberalism we're dealing with in real life"? Cause I can see how ideological liberalism may say that. But not how the one in our world actually does. The one in our world has taken the stance - as of now, it is being rolled back in some places - is basically that the liberal state throws its immense power into coercing all of the rest of us into abandoning the gender binary.
In fact, if anything, what separates the trans movement from the transhumanist movement is that Ray Kurzeweil-disciples can't actually compel you to validate their ideology right now. That's where trans has all of the worst elements of too-early transhumanism combined with the endless moral busy-bodying of rights discourse.
Arguably it is a perverse outcome due to trans being early: if transhumanism actually was viable, there would be no need for this sort of coercion and tyranny in order to be "validated". We don't have heated debates about "validating" that people with cochlear implants can hear.
To be fair: this is a substack that has a clear and strong stance on the issue and has basically already laid out its canonical counter-arguments so I think part of it is just not retreading old ground for the choir.
Even in the trans-human future trans people would still be personality and interest wise more like their birth sex than what they transitioned into. Unless we are also changing our brains now. That is the biggest lie of the transgender movement, that trans people are psychologically more like their preferred gender on psychometric traits than their biological sex. Programmer socks are a meme for a reason.
Or, why not just preemptively use our magical transhuman technology to erase the existence of people who are transgender.
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A little of both. I think we move the ratchet as we grow in capability. Catholic/Protestant tolerance was an existential threat in 1600; by 1800 it is plausible, and by 2000 it’s normalized in the West. Debating sex changes and related culture was completely useless in the Industrial Revolution. I’d say it’s in the second stage right now.
Cthulhu's swim is powered by technological surplus. If we keep accruing more, we will grow closer to the liberal ideal.
I’m told this is actually a point of contention among the deaf! Partly generational, but those without implants sometimes view them as breaking solidarity, cultural erasure, etc. The full oppression stack that you’d see for more salient issues. Deafness is “settled” enough, in the mainstream, that there’s no political capital in the tribal lines, so we don’t get the same framework of allies and validation built on top.
That's its value: as a contrast. A "marginalized group" complained about being erased and most people don't care - hell, even know about the debate! There's no outrage, no drama in the mainstream. From a naive perspective - if we're just gonna be culture-warring over medical interventions - you'd think the older, already organized, objectively easier to define contingent of deaf people could have some say. But it's never been a live issue.
Meanwhile: the President is weighing in on "gender affirming healthcare" (puberty blockers, mastectomies and hormones) and we can't stop hearing about the on-trans violence because being a sexual deviant/sex worker in Brazil is dangerous.
Oh, I read that a different way.
People got used to making accommodations for the deaf. Subtitles and transcripts. I’d expect most Americans know of ASL, and dismiss it as a fun curiosity, rather than because it’s an imposition. This is despite that fact that it gets taught in schools and pandered in media!
The deaf have already won. They have an obvious disability, and our culture shifted to accommodate it, despite the costs. Something similar goes for the blind and the wheelchair-bound. It wasn’t without a fight, either: this was absolutely one of the culture wars.
Trans people don’t trigger the same flags, and the social and medical costs of accommodation are higher. That’s why I expect acceptance to improve with technology.
This is a different fight though. There was no question as to whether the deaf could actually hear or whether the best way to help them was to increase accessibility for people who cannot hear. These are not givens for the modern debate over gender.
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Accommodations for people with disabilities are not nearly as divisive as trans issues. Divisiveness is a key feature for something to be part of the "culture war", according to my interpretation of the term at least.
But it was! Down to the sweeping gestures in DC.
Before that there were legal battles over involuntary confinement and forced sterilizations. People were joining all sorts of inappropriately named (by today's standards) activist groups.
Or to go further back, Helen Keller is a household name. I don't think most Americans could name a trans activist.
Hellen Keller is remembered more as a deaf person than a deaf activist though. Most Americans probably couldn't name Anne Sullivan, the corresponding non-deaf activist. And if you ask Americans to just name a trans person, they'll probably know Caitlin Jenner.
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The latter is termed progressivism, not liberalism.
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You forgot the most obvious one: demanding that the rest of us go along with their claims, i.e. compelled speech. All other objections rely on values other than liberalism.
I would say that the baby with 3 parents is a more advanced technology, but that would make this jab meaningless and void.
True enough. I was bundling it under externalities, but it’s really the sine qua non for liberalism.
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