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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.
No forms of self identification are legitimate. Zero. None at all.
If someone argues that they're a genius, but has a below-average IQ, little to no reasoning ability, and frequently makes obvious mistakes, we don't validate their self-perception of their intellectual abilities. We reject it.
Someone can profess to belong to a subculture, and other members of that subculture can call them a poser with whatever reasoning they wish, and not include them. Wearing a band shirt without knowing any of their songs, for example. Their identity as a Beatles fan does not trump the fact that they can't name a single song. The rest of the subculture rejects it.
No identity is solely the discretion of the individual; every single one needs to be validated by others. Even trans people understand this on some level, because they are constantly trying to cajole, solicit and force validation from others, from pronoun use all the way up to sexual acts.
It's like a nickname. You can't give yourself a nickname, it has to be bestowed upon you. To try to do so is considered the height of cringe. Similarly, you can't declare yourself cool, or attractive, or any number of other things -- only other people can grant you that status.
This is a bit of a frame shift.
If I perceive myself as a guy who built the tallest possible building in minecraft (given the current height limit), other people aren't necessary to that particular identification. It's just a fact.
If I say I am a Beatles fan, I might not actually be a Beatles fan, but I am definitely someone who says they are a Beatles fan.
If I want to be a lizard, then I want to be a lizard.
Validation doesn't always mean I need other people to think I'm a lizard. Plenty of validation is on the level of needing other people to accept that I want to be a lizard and not then be cruel about it.
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