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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35514 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Gender is a social construct and feeling that is often deeply ingrained in our consciousness.

Do people really feel this that strongly? Every time this comes up it pings as very alien to me. I don't "identify as" anything, rather I have simply ascertained what I am. I don't feel "like a man", I just look down, see penis and think "oh okay then guess I'm a man."

All this gender talk thus comes off to me as a terminal amount of navel-gazing. It seems to me that people are getting wrapped up and lost inside their own heads. Agonising over something that, to me, pretty objectively doesn't matter and very probably doesn't exist.

In many ways, gender can be viewed as a type of religion

I did ask a friend who decided to suddenly start transitioning in his mid-30s what prompted this decision, and a lot of what I got back was pseudo-religious sounding in nature. That it "defies logic" and that unless I "open myself to feeling these things" I will never understand it, that it's a "type of knowing beyond logic and intellectuality" -- which sounded a lot like when heavily religious people say that the only way you can receive proof of God is by accepting him into your heart totally and completely. In other words, it only makes sense when you're already indoctrinated.

Well yes, but just because something isn't real doesn't mean it can't affect real things.

"Freedom" isn't real, but people kill and die for it. See also: "God", "Rights", "Countries"

Human psychological weirdness has a way of making itself everyone's problem.

If freedom isn’t real, then neither is slavery or incarceration. I’m sure the millions of men living in prison will be happy to hear that they aren’t actually prisoners.

got 'em!

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