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But "people" includes me; it includes how I treat myself, and how you ought to treat me viz. what requests you make of me. Anyway, would you mind answering a couple of from me in turn?
I'm fairly bemused by this. Of course a principle on how you should treat people by default can be nullified by specific circumstances, but should still be followed in the absence of these circumstances; e.g. the general principle "it's not nice to kill people" vs the specific circumstance "you can kill in self-defense if they attacked you first". I don't see how this is any different. Hence, first question/set of questions: on what basis do you think people should in general be treated? Do you have a principle that applies in all circumstances and correctly models the ethical way to behave with any human being in any context? How and why does this principle demand that you always refer to a Homo sapiens with a penis by the word "he"?
I don't see how any of my answers could lead to that conclusion. Even if you disagree with some of the judgement calls involved, I staked a case based purely on materialist concerns, with none of the references to a magic transcendental True Gender written on the soul that less sophisticated trans advocates sometimes refer to, and which would validate a comparison to astrology. Put another way, I did not expect to convince you to support trans rights through this comment chain, but I did hope to make you see that I do not have any factually-erroneous object-level beliefs about the world on the subject of what gender is and how it works, in the way that a believer in astrology does; I merely have a value system that's fairly exotic compared to yours. So, my second question: would you in fact agree with that statement? If not, why not?
Finally: I made references to the possibility of a Singularity forcing the issue. Where would you stand if, in 30 years, we've all been converted into shapeshifting telepathic nanite clouds, only taking anthropomorphic form if we wish to? (For the sake of argument. Let's not get into whether you think a Singularity will happen within 30 years, or whether you believe it's possible for a brain-upload to have qualia.) Would you insist on only referring to people by the pronouns of their original, long-since-discarded flesh body's physical sex? Or would you say that the Earth was now exclusively populated by "it"s, and refuse to refer to anybody as "sir" or "madam" ever again?
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