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Regarding looksmaxxing and body modifications, I would like to present a case of someone who does not indentify as a looksmaxxer, but nevertheless has made a career out of making sweeping, permanent modifications to his looks. Specifically, I would like to talk about f1nn5ter, a Youtuber and Twitch streamer who started out making Minecraft videos, but quickly transitioned (figuratively at first) into just-chatting light fetish content, eventually culminating in a femboy focused only fans account.
You see, f1nn5ter, was incredibly good at passing as a woman. He could do his makeup, put on fake breasts, and do his hair. Once he was done, especially in the right lighting, you would be hard pressed to tell the he was actually a man until you heard his voice. He quickly gained a following that absolutely loved this. A solid mixture of LGBT, trans-folk, people not quite sure if they were trans or not, and several who gained some amount of sexual pleasure from seeing him dress up as a woman and act all bratty and submissive on stream. It turned out that some of his fans were willing to pay a lot of money to keep him that way, and so the crossdressing became an increasingly permanent feature of the stream. Over time, the streamer became increasingly involved with trans advocacy, gained a trans girl(?)friend, started microdosing estrogen, and eventually fully transitioned (literally this time) to genderfluid(?), meaning that his/her/their pronouns are subject to change constantly.
Recently, F1nn took a step up by undergoing face feminization surgery. Essentially shaving off some of his bones in the face in order to appear more feminine. As a reminder, he already passed quite well. Here is a tweet he made 3 years ago (without the fake breasts), before officially starting hormones and transitioning.
The culture war angle is two-fold: First, it seems weird that people go so hard on clavicular when stuff like this is accepted (at least by the online left). Prior to transitioning, the guy experimented with estrogen with no guidance from a doctor just to try and look more androgynous. Now, he underwent surgery, risking complications and a long recovery period just to appear slightly more female. But this is apparently okay because trans. I am split on this. On the one hand, I think this promotes a dangerous lifestyle. A slippery slope of increasingly significant medical procedures just to make yourself look slightly closer to your ideal. Never accepting yourself as you are, always chasing perfection. He apparently considered straight up getting bones removed, although the surgeon talked him out of it for the time being. On the other hand, I think the transhumanist angle here is quite cool and that surgeries like this are a good thing if they dramatically improve your life.
My second issue is with the pronouns. Reading the subreddit, people don't just use his pronouns interchangeably. They use them interchangeably within the same sentences. "She uses he/him pronouns!" is an actual serious quote from there. While I find it impressive from a writing perspective (and interesting as a kind of performance art) that you can still sort of follow along if you know what they are doing, I think this is kind of insane. Like, a frequent talking point from trans activists is that the pronoun thing is easy. But once you start throwing nonbinaries, questioners, and genderfluids into the mix this stops being the case. Having three or more sets of pronouns that you swap between at your leisure and just expect others to adhere to strikes me as sadistic. A kind of dominance play in which you take pleasure in observing others put all their effort into following your rules.
Of course, F1nn is not a good trans representative, being a pornstar and all, but I do think he represents a good part of why the online trans communities seem so weird. This kind of rhetoric and advocacy is not exactly uncommon on the internet, and it is hard to look at it and not see some kind of social contagion or slippery slope when all people do is encourage it.
I mean as a transhumanist but also as a liberalist, tbh I'm all for this. People can do anything they want with their pronouns inside the bubble that they created, maintain and advertise. There is a case to be made for the corrosive influence of media fame, but I don't see the pronoun thing here. If you follow f1, I can only assume you know what they're about. At any rate, nobody forces you to be there, it's not a public space, and no benefit is even accrued from your presence so that you may be pushed into obligation.
I'd slightly rephrase the saying: As it harm none against their intent, without their knowledge, or out of coercion, do what you will. Intentionally and knowingly allowing yourself to be harmed should not bar others from action, and I assume this clarification was only left out of the law because the thought of people harming themselves intentionally as a moral argument was considered too absurd.
I agree, and Clavicular. The problems are 1) being promoted to people, especially kids, over more "normal" celebrities; and 2) being motivated to push beyond where they'd naturally stop, in ways they end up regretting. Both mainly caused by social media.
What is normal? What is the ideal path for each individual? I don't think either of these influencers are normal, but neither do I think the ideas of anyone I've seen promote censorship. Even good-intentioned censors: determining what is best for others is hard, hence why I think softer methods are better (for starters, not promoting these influencers to children against the wishes of their own parents; censoring them from children is OK, but shouldn't be necessary).
I would caveat, only when it is beyond reasonable doubt against your sane interests, because what defines harm? For example, suicide treatment that someone may enter initially voluntarily is OK, because the people who it saved believe so, but people who diligently consistently want to die should be entitled to MAID. Or in this case, both trans and looksmaxxing adults should be allowed gender-affirming care, with a bit of friction to ensure it's what they really want (unless obvious); because it's their choice, and there's a not-insignificant chance they won't regret it.
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