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I agree with everything you're saying and only get confused when you get to:
which is culturally and personally subjective value laden language-
and
which sounds accurate, cool and based. Yes I just agree with this, and disagree with the values that seem to be getting laid onto it.
I do think the conversation has lost itself. The ultimate progression of the philosophy of morphological freedom, does not stop at trans people. It shouldn't even really start with gender. But the saturation of gender into society, the fact that it is one of the things we have made matter, has turned it into the central issue. Furthermore, the push to normalize the artistic (read, self expressive) flesh-crafting of the body has become combative. Too combative. Both in the sense that its created push-back and in the sense that it's been pushing an ideological conformity.
Still, I always feel a bit exasperated by these conversations. People are arguing whether people should be allowed to grow tits, and I'm still here in the year 3000 rolling my eyes and waiting for the public to take universal morphological freedom seriously as an ideal so I can become a velociraptor.
You're doing the thing again. I get it. You don't think their preferences should be respected. You think their identities are less legitimate than other forms of self identification.
And you don't want people to be forced to respect them, or be forced to do other things they don't want to.
That last line at least I emphasize with.
But as long as people need to eat to live and need respect to get the help of society to live fulfilling lives, people are going to keep finding ways to socially pressure one another to cooperate in building an amenable environment for them personally, nyaa.
I too, would appreciate a less coercive society. But that's not the world we live in. You can't actually live as a cat if everyone around you constantly mocks you for acting like a cat, nyaa.
But I get the impression that the crux of our disagreement here, is at the root of your value judgement, you are set on the idea that people shouldn't be respected for 'acting like a cat', nyaa. You want to be able to keep producing social pressure that reduces the number of people nyaa-ing in your vicinity.
It seems to me that some measure of culture war is inevitable here. Both sides poisoning the environment's ability to support the ideas they find harmful to their personal hopes and dreams.
This is incorrect. I absolutely respect their preferences, which is why I'm not in favor of, say delegalizing sex reassignment surgeries. They're the ones not respecting other people's preferences, since they want to impose their worldview on others.
You said they expect others to pander to their self-justified illusions.
calling them self-justified illusions is value-loaded language. When you use that language it communicates the message that their identities aren't real, that you don't think a cat-identifying person should be allowed to expect others to treat them the way they want to be treated.
I do think the culture war has become overly totaling in this regard. Not everyone should have to respect everyone.
But it's reasonable to expect those who want to be close to you to respect you. And it's reasonable to want and fight for a society that respects you enough to not disadvantage you in the competition of capitalism.
That was someone else.
I agree with that, and I believe that does not imply I'm disrespecting their preferences. Your right to believe you're a cat ends at my right to not be forced to say "heeereee kitty, kitty, kitty!" when I see you. This applies to all other identities. Muslims don't have to recognize me as a Muslim, the Japanase don't have to recognize me as a Japanaese, etc.
I think that proves too much. If society shames you for not saying hello or being polite, or calling a married woman Mrs or a Dr, Dr, they are forcing preferences upon you. There isn't any intrinsic reason this should stop any particular place. Society forces its preferences on you all the time, individuals can choose to buck the trend and then take the social consequences but most people will go along.
My right to believe I am a cat ends where I am able to persuade society it ends. Your right not to comply then ends where you don't want to take the social consequences. That's what the whole thing is about! (And of course vice versa, if you can persuade society I am not a cat then if I choose to continue acting as one, I will take the social consequences in return).
If you were able to persuade enough Japanese people to recognize you as Japanese such that they could successfully shame other Japanese people who did not, then at a societal level you ARE Japanese. You could go into Japanese only bars and so on.
It is at once a meaningful biological group and a malleable social group and it is possible to be in one or the other, both or neither.
Yes, and I'm in the process of persuading society that there should be no consequences for this particular thing, Do you mind?
Would you like to participate in the conversation, or continue making the unrelated observation about the arbitrariness of social conventions?
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