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I've written an article in which I discuss a somewhat common idea regarding the idea of trans people "existing" [1]. Some trans rights activists (TRAs) refer to denying the statement "transwomen are women" as denying the existence of trans people. Another manifestation of this is when people argue that denying that transwomen are women is threatening to transwomen's existence. The same applies to transmen of course. I argue that these arguments rely on ambiguity in language about "existence." Denying the existence of transwomen seems very silly because that is an unusual way to describe rejecting that a transwoman actually is a woman. Phrasing this as a threat to existence evokes thoughts of genocide. I think this is another case of language being used in an unusual way that is misleading, although perhaps not intentionally. This description of "anti-trans" attitudes should be avoided as it is not accurate and morally charged in a misleading way.
[1] https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/do-transgender-people-exist
My first exposure to this type of argument was actually with tumblr's fat acceptance crowd, way way back in the mists of TiA. I witnessed one of them claiming that the existence of diets, and the fact that doctors, among other people, encourage fat people to go on them, and therefore become no longer fat, meant that a genocide was being perpetrated against fat people by society itself. All of society. I can't recall the date, but this has to have been more than 5 years ago at this point.
This torture of language does become very tiresome. Any good ideas on how to call out and shut down this particular dis-ingenuity, perhaps?
What I find weird is that you would think wordsmiths would be the most sympathetic to this constant abuse of language and it's cheapening, but wordsmiths are precisely the people leading us into this brave New World.
I liking it too intellectuals obviously being the most sympathetic to the idea that free expression is vital. Turns out that was way off base.
In either case, it's because words and ideas have power that they've been abused like this. Only people who understand the heft of a word like genocide can wield it to include people they are sympathetic to but for whom the term should not apply, heretofore.
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Relevant: dissolving disease.
In the face of fatness, a consequentialist might posit 2 solutions to reduce suffering:
Cure fatness.
Restructure society so fat people aren't disadvantaged.
Arguments over whether transgender, fat, autism, etc. are diseases seem like rhetorical techniques in order to enforce a preferred aesthetic on society.
Anti-memocide activists take option (2) in order to preserve cultures they like, such as the LGBTQ or autism community (what's the difference? snicker). Others, disgusted by these groups, suggest (1) we thin out those populations (without violence of course) to reduce suffering.
I imagine the disgust reaction to transgender and fatness happens first, and the designation of disease happens second. Of course, it's the same for actual diseases, like leprosy.
Yes, that is the activists' argument.
The problem they run into is the diminishing returns of the social constructionist theory. This all works well and good to explain why, for example, dreadlocks aren't unprofessional.
But it's simply a much better founded belief that being fat is unhealthy. Unfortunately, activists can't pivot from their sophomoric "it's just a lens for the dominant power structure" one-size-fits-all explanation. So they spend time pettifogging you with debates about whether Kate Moss was a healthy figure, as if that changes whether Lizzo is.
Again: this would be true if there was no fact of the matter - no link between weight and health. But there is so this is a toothless point.
Our fear reaction to snakes predates our scientific understanding of venom. But our fear is still tracking something truth-apt and evolutionarily valuable.
Similarly, I think there's an obvious common sense intuition towards "if you wish to mutilate your body because you find it fundamentally unpalatable you're probably mentally ill". It actually takes a lot of "education" - aka decades of sexual revolution/LGBT social engineering - that suppresses our natural incredulity here.
Well, an activist's argument might merely be "you call fatness a disease to enforce your preferred aesthetic on society".
My argument is that in addition, an activist calls fatness not-disease to enforce their preferred aesthetic on society: A society with fat people in it. Which is why they would argue for medical or social interventions to remove the bad things about being fat, while still keeping the diversity of body size that they inherently value.
Clearly, this is not persuasive to you, because the fatness itself is disgusting. You correctly hint at the reason for our disgust towards fat people: evolution.
Here are other examples of this double-bind:
Babies are aborted. One fix is more birth control (maybe not the best fix), but if birth control is disgusting, then you're open to a gotcha like "If conservatives are against abortion so much, why are they also against birth control?"
Blacks are oppressed. One fix is ethno-nationalism (maybe not the best fix) but if segregation is disgusting, then you're open to a gotcha like "If liberals are against racism so much, why are they do they like diversity so much?"
LGBTQ is oppressed. One fix is to memocide their community so they don't exist anymore (maybe not the best fix) but if memocide is disgusting, then you're open to a gotcha like "If the woke is against LGBTQ oppression so much, why are they grooming children to be a part of this downtrodden culture?"
In all of these cases, there has got to be a second value difference:
The right is against birth control, independent of abortion, for some reason.
Liberals like diversity, independent of being against racism, for some reason.
The woke likes LGBTQ, independent of being against oppression, for some reason.
And my point is that they're wrong and this isn't a symmetrical situation.
If this was just about preferring or not preferring curry or fish and chips this symmetrical framing work. But that's not the discussion.
But not the bad things I care about. The ambiguity in "bad things" is doing a lot of work here. They fight to remove social stigma. They have no answer to the unavoidable bedrock issue (health).
If they actually had a pill that made fat people as spry and healthy as thin people I would bet that our dislike would inevitably dissolve, just as it has for other situation where the downsides are purely social or we have otherwise mitigated the non-social ones (e.g. dreadlocks, unattached sex). But we aren't there.
So, in the absence of that precondition, you might as well say that I am trying to impose my aesthetic preference against smog and the corporation is trying to impose its aesthetic preference for smog.
In some sense, this can be said to be correct. But would you choose this framing? It misleads more than it enlightens.
Not in this case. Because they haven't actually cleared the first hurdle (being fat is actually tied to real problems that don't boil down to people being mean)
When they invent the fat pill and people are still against fatness then this argument would work.
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I find it kind of objectionable to call wanting people to not suffer from something that very clearly makes life less pleasant a disgust reaction. There's a way that it fits, in a "I'm disgusted by needless suffering" sense, but the word has such a connotation of being unreasoned that it makes the whole comparison feel unfair. The difference between me and fat positive activists is not that one of us is disgusted and the other isn't, it's that one of us has given up on solving the root problem.
What is the "root" of the problem? Is it that people get fat? Or is it that fat people suffer increased health risks, beauty-ism, and are a literal poor fit for clothes and spaces? I'm going to do a little bit of mind-reading and assume that in your world where the problem is solved, everyone is thin.
A fat-activist does not have any disgust to fat people, and aesthetically values diversity of size, In her world where the problem is solved, there are fat people, but they don't suffer health risks due to improved medical technology, nor beautyism or logistical issues because of social engineering.
To make another unfair comparison to your position -- would you say glasses solve the root problem of poor eyesight? Of course, nobody is disgusted by poor eyesight...
You might argue that you consistently are taking the path of least resistance:
the easiest solution to fat people probably is a world where everyone is thin (based on what the past was like)
the easiest solution to poor eyesight seems to be glasses
The question then, is what is the fat-acceptance movement doing differently? You say they've given up on solving the root problem, but (if my mind-reading was correct) you would be modeling fat-positive types as giving up on making everyone thin. I do not think they want everyone to be thin. I think they are willing to implement more difficult solutions (medicine, social engineering) to achieve their preferred aesthetics.
I suspect even, that they are so against memocide, that they would approve of societal interventions to increase fatness, because interventions to decrease it are problematic. Whether or not they can do this openly is a political question of optics. This also explains LGBTQ groomers.
If this was the belief of fat activism then its activism should either be limited until our medical technology reaches this level OR be focused on lobbying for health research and dissemination of the resulting tech.
But this is manifestly not what fat activists do. Instead they idolize fat people like Lizzo today despite the manifestly bad impact on life being fat has. They criticize anti-fat standards as imperialist, racist white strictures and muddy the waters on whether one can be healthy at any size. Fat acceptance involves a significant ambiguity (at best) on whether being fat is bad as such, whereas your hypothetical activist recognizes this and seeks to mitigate it with medical advances that change the biological (not just social) landscape.
You are defending an idea that might be viable and worth looking at in spherical cow land but the dynamics of real world movements differ significantly.
And that difference is important. Because remove that element - focus on medical advances to mitigate the known downsides of being fat- and you have a movement founded on what is fundamentally a delusion : that you can simply think your way out of a medical problem if you call the standard tied to that problem unfair.
Fair enough, you're right that actual fat-activists are not the consequentialists I described in my first post!
I still wouldn't support this hypothetical, steelmanned movement because I find fatness disgusting, but the thought-experiment was novel to me. Maybe I'm just behind.
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This one. Although it's incredible to me that of the options you put forward this one is so small and modified by "risks". I'm someone who needs to work pretty hard to not be fat. If I didn't think about food I would eat and drink to excess constantly. I have seen both sides of fat and thin plenty of times and I can say with zero doubt that it is far better to be fit. Everything you do when you're fat has this unpleasantness almost as a tax. It's unpleasant to lay down, it's unpleasant to sit up, it's unusually difficult to just move in the world, not because of society but because your body is not supposed to be this way, your heart and lungs are no supposed to support twice as much mass as they did in the ancestral environment. I'm fit at the moment and it is difficult to overstate just how much better life is when you're fit. You move through the world with an ease, you sleep better, wake up more easily, it's a genuine pleasure just to move about in the world.
And then the more medical health risks as you've mentioned. Sure, of course, lets get medicine to alleviate what we can of them. I'd celebrate a side effect free pill that would solve these issues. I've seen enough loved ones die decades too early because of these "risks" and I'd cherish those extra decades. But we don't have that medicine. And activism is not going to bring us that medicine. Fat acceptance is not going to bring us that medicine.
My eyesight is starting to go a bit, I'll be thirty soon and this is around when other people in my family moved to needing glasses. A solution? No. And I'd eat more carrots if that would fix the issue even though I despise that particular vegetable. But we don't have the equivalent solution for eye sight that we do for being fat.
I would not phrase it like this no, I'm trying to take the best paths taking resistance into account. I'm aiming for optimal and will take the carrot or kale path if they are worth the expense.
They are taking the greased path into a pit of despair and human suffering.
I will oppose them so long as there remains breath in my lungs.
You'd welcome medicine to fix those health problems but will it fix the unpleasantness that you spent a paragraph detailing? I think more medicine is good but I'd still prefer a world where everyone is thin. It's less disgusting in my opinion.
My point is that a philosopher of perfect emptiness couldn't choose between these two:
making fat people no longer exist
making it healthy to be fat
It takes an additional axiom like:
most efficient solution
fatness is disgusting
fatness is beautiful and diverse
In order to really care for one over the other.
I'm normally quite good at decoupling but the whole point is that we don't have this choice. It's not just a matter of efficiency, it's make fat people no longer exist or just be worse off for every marginal increase in obesity. We, at the moment, cannot mitigate the totally natural impacts of obesity. My disgust is totally irrelevant to diabetes and heart disease. The choice in the world that exists is not difficult.
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Honestly, it's the opposite. It is a disgust reaction in a sense - because there isn't any specific form to 'disgust', it's a broad term, and because disgust reactions are often correct and useful. Okay, so i'm disgusted at the mold in my floorboards, viscerally unpleasant stringy foam - but it's disgusting because the mycotoxins will make my life worse. So in a sense, you are 'disgusted', or maybe not, but it doesn't matter either way, because - the issue is the root problem.
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I've seen something very similar in offline spaces and certain "deaf community" people. It's disturbing. Further they would argue if a procedure to completely "fix" (whatever that means) deafness would be available that would be the "end" of them.
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Don't forget the people who are against deafness and autism cures for similar reasons. That one absolutely infuriates me. I don't care what people say, being deaf (or autistic) is objectively something broken about your body and worse than getting it fixed. One can personally decide that they would rather stay that way, and that's their right. But people who want to deny that choice even being available to others? They aren't just wrong about what constitutes genocide, they're complete assholes because they're trying to stop sick people from getting better.
In the case of Autism, it can be subjective. Plenty of Autistic people can pass as nt. the definition of Autism has become so broad that a 'cure for Autism' may well remove all future programmers from the population, which would be inconvenient.
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In the case of deafness, I understand it a little. The fewer people who speak a language, the less likely someone is to be understood. The technology doesn't exist yet to cure everyone of deafness, there will always be someone left behind. Unless we can convince more people to learn ASL, healing deaf people will be removing people from their community.
The thing that gets me, or is at least really tricky, is when people feel that they could not be the same person if their mental health problem is cured. People often feel like it would be the same as killing them. I can understand how someone could feel that way under their current mental model of personality, self, sentience. I also don't believe anyone is the same person over the course of 70 years and I don't feel like I've died yet. There is something about our philosophy of self that is broken. It doesn't lead to the best outcomes and it does not match with people's experiences.
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I think it's worth trying to empathize with these people. Consider this previous discussion on some comments by Matthew Cortland, where he vociferously argues against the concept of QALYs, because as a disabled person, QALYs value his life less than that of someone who isn't disabled.
On the one hand, it is devastating to be told that you're not an entire person, even in an accounting sense.
On the other, when you're doing a utilitarianism, either you're going to count disabled people less than non-disabled ones, or you're going to see nothing wrong with deafening someone, or blinding them, and so on.
The silliest part of the anti-QALY argument also means that its not worth spending money to help disabled people, since we can't count their health as being less. The QALY is mostly an attempt to quantify health for resource prioritisation, but most critics don't believe there should be prioritisation at all. Either the societal health budget should be infinite, or they don't consider it at all.
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I think your argument makes sense, but you're also talking about something very different from me. You seem to be addressing the position "a person should not be counted as worth less because they're deaf (autistic, etc)". I have no quarrel with that position at all (I agree with it). My beef is with the position "a person should not be cured of being deaf (autistic, etc) because that is destroying the person they were". That position is something I find morally abhorrent, because it is in effect preventing others from getting better (even if the intentions are pure).
Also, tbh I think your post is as much a strong argument against utilitarianism as anything else. I think utilitarianism has its place, but I think that it is actually pretty horrifying and immoral when applied at any sort of scale. Give me deontology or virtue ethics any day of the week!
Yeah, but by saying those things should be cured you are implying (not deliberately) that being deaf or autistic is lesser than. People who argue those things have usually made being deaf or autistic part of their identity, they have communities they have built their lives around that would cease to exist without their disability - and (this is a bit harsh but I can't find other words atm) those communities make their disability a strength, something special and unique to them that the rest of the world can't share. Learning that your child will never be a part of your world - worse, will become yet another normal who looks down on you for it - would be soul crushing. I'm not saying you are wrong, I don't think you are, but I do wish there was another way.
Edit: clarity
Well yes, of course it's less than (ideal). It's an illness. People aren't lesser for having the illness, of course. And if they want to keep it, that's certainly their prerogative. But to say "we shouldn't cure these conditions because that implies having them is lesser" is like saying "we shouldn't cure polio because that implies having polio is lesser". I wouldn't accept the latter argument and I don't accept the former, either.
I don't think that was the argument grendel was making, and it wasn't the argument I was making. I was just explaining why they take it so hard, and why I don't view them as morally abhorrent for taking that position - even though, absent their situation, I probably would.
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Autism cures are a weird subject in my view, since it depends where exactly you sit on the spectrum.
Which of the following needs a cure?
Somebody with severe life-impacting autism who is happy day-to-day as a result of simply not comprehending their condition and having relatively simple needs & wants. Their perceived quality of life might actually drop if 'cured' from a POV of pure day-to-day happiness.
Somebody with largely high-functioning autism who's prone to depressive episodes due to their social difficulties but can nonetheless fundamentally function in society. Probably most people in the Motte with a diagnosis.
Somebody who's a borderline genius savant, who's accomplished great feats in their preferred discipline, but who is nonetheless incapable of functioning in broader society. Your Paul Erdos or whatever.
Especially acknowledging the spectrum is broad and that there's tons of points between these three. My experience of most 'cure autism' groups is that they're focused expressly on reducing the incidence of the first group of people who are totally unfit for society. Meanwhile as somebody in the second group, who comes from a lineage of other people in the second group, it does feel like a peculiar form of erasure. I've been able to parlay the trade-offs from being high-functioning autistic into professional and personal success, and whilst I'd love some sort of 'everything remains the exact same in terms of intellect and skills but suddenly my brain parses social cues intuitively' trade-off, I suspect that wouldn't be the case. Without even getting into the societal level trade-offs of 'alright we've cured autism, but suddenly we're running low on iconoclastic disagreeable genius inventors'.
I can't really remark on Deafness, and I'm sure there'd be similar arguments to be made that whilst Deafness is clearly a disability, there's a certain attachment to the culture of Deafness that exists, but I feel that Autism is fundamentally different since there's more of an associated trade-off than with most conditions.
The answer to that is "utilitarianism sucks". This is not the first time utilitarianism has produced bizarre results because it can't handle blissful ignorance.
The simple solution is to consider the downsides to his caretakers.
Which layer of caretakers? The immediate family are the chief 'victims' from that POV, though it does raise a question of whether paid assistants can be considered to have downsides.
They're doing an ostensibly unpleasant job, but they're getting paid etc.
True, but this just takes the analysis a layer further. Someone is paying those caretakers - whether it be the immediate family or the State. If it's the former, the same applies, if it's the latter, there's diffusion of a downside across everyone who pays taxes.
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Isn't that essentially the same as the one meme X-Men argument?
"We don't need a cure!" said the lady who could make snowclouds, to the teenager who killed anything she touched.
What ratio of snowclouds to touch-killing is acceptable, though?
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I think even acknowledging that the illness exists on a spectrum, there still is no reasonable case to say "no, don't cure autism". If one feels that their situation is within what they will accept, there's no need to get a cure. We shouldn't force people to get cured if they don't feel they are sick, of course. But neither is it acceptable to deny a cure to those who may want one for themselves. Even the person who is just barely on the spectrum deserves the right to make that choice for themselves, after all.
The real life cures we're going to see are going to be embryo selection, so it's unlikely that any individual will be able to choose cure or no cure for themselves.
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Yes, win on everything else and gain control of the media and the discourse.
Saying "it's tiresome that people twist language to call people evil" is like saying "it's tiresome that people beat me up". It's not false, but it misses the point.
How to do the former is left as an exercise to the reader I assume?
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This argument is also made against genetic enhancement and cochlear implants. From my article:
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