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Notes -
It's also wrong to say that people who don't experience X the way other people do are non-functional.
I can be perfectly functional doing my job where I have to take needs and wants into account, without having the desire to fuck the clients (in this particular job, that would be Extremely Problematic if I did, given the age-ranges involved).
"People who don't experience sexual desire are non-functional" is not the smackdown argument you present it as, given the steaming mess that sexual desire leads a lot of "normal, functional, non-cripple" people into. Maybe dialling down the instinct to "me horny me gotta fuck" might, in fact, be a benefit for society? If it stops teachers sexually assaulting eleven year olds, for one instance?
Merriam Webster definition of Cripple (Noun):
Let's just keep that in mind.
Sure. And a guy in a wheelchair can be perfectly functional doing working a desk job as an insurance salesman, and a guy born without fingers can probably with a bit of adaptation deliver for DoorDash, and a blind guy can live on his own with the right tools and education given to him. Those are pretty much central examples of Cripples, they are missing important parts of human life, and that they can live productively within limits doesn't obviate the existence of those limits and missing experiences.
Nor does it make sense to point to those limits and say they must be better people as a result: very few people in wheelchairs commit assault in bars, a man without hands is unlikely to strangle a woman, the blind are very rarely petty thieves. They are all, nonetheless, central examples of Cripples.
But more to the point, you're not beating the allegations when your understanding of human sexuality in this conversation is exemplified by:
And a series of allusions to pedophiles and criminals.
That inability to empathize with the basic human erotic drive, one that has been identified by artists and philosophers and psychologists as the basis for so much of art and culture and human behavior, that is a crippling loss. The inability to fulfill, willingly, the duties of marriage; that is a crippling loss. The obvious difficulty in reproduction, that is a crippling loss.
A guy in a wheelchair might say, hey I'm still the top boat insurance salesman in Central New Jersey, and what's the big deal about "running" anyway amirightguys? But if he were offered a surgery that would allow him to walk and he said no I prefer the chair, we'd call that disordered thinking, we'd call it strange. We'd say he has an insane view of human life if he would prefer to be in the chair. And we'd certainly seek to censure, if not censor, him if he started advocating for healthy people to hop into wheelchairs and refuse to or prevent themselves from walking.
Channeling https://www.2arms1head.com/, are we?
I haven't advocated that anyone put a steak knife in their stomach.
I didn't meant to imply that you did.
Just saw an opportunity to put the link out there in case anyone missed that text so far.
Cheers, honestly one of the best works of modern philosophy.
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