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Transgenderism is religious dogma taken to its logical extreme. The fundamental thesis of the religion is complete mind body dualism. They see humans as a blank slate sould that randomly attached to a body and thereby has had many constraints and suffering imposed on it. Their goal is to liberate the free soul from the constraints of the physical world. The view can't be understood outside their theology. HBD, genetic explanations for class our sex differences, are the ultimate heresy against their religion. They invalidate the core principle and understanding of their theology. The woke ideology is built on a worldview that free souls were created, they were bound to physical constraints through evil and the march of history is toward liberating the soul.
The more tech Silicon Valley take is that this will be done through genetic engineering/AI/fusion powered utopia. The more social science approach is through "justice".
Academia has fallen into a pit because academia consists of writing commentary to other peoples work. In the social sciences the commentary is to a large extent based on philosophers and thinkers that had ideas that are invalid. Rousseau doesn't live up to scientific scrutiny. Yet the ideas that stem from his thinking aren't tossed out. There needs to be a search algorithm that can search citations iteratively and redact those papers whose fundamental principles are false. Papers built on ideas such as "Existence precedes essence" are wrong since your DNA is at least as old as your existence, since you became you at the point of conception or later.
Wokeism in Academia is theologists arguing about the number of angels on a needle. They are taking religious ideas with weak scientific basis and arguing them to their logical conclusion. Transgender issues are so explosive even though they are marginal issues since they fundamentally are a clash of theology. Theologians could spend centuries arguing about the word "Filoque", we are seeing similar debates today centering around the new religion.
Transgenderism is secular, godless materialism taken to its logical extreme. Its logical conclusion is biological essentialism and determinism. They see humans as animals with an unchangeable "gender-drive" - such that a biological man who wants to be a female must be so out of a material fact of their biology, rather than spiritual confusion or sin. Their goal is to chain humans to their base biological impulses and confusions, rather than liberate the soul to pursue individuality and God's plan. That a young girl might wear male clothing, cut their hair, wrestle, or be uncomfortable with puberty can't be an individual's contingent, flawed exploration of their self, but must be a fact of their biology to be physically treated with medicine.
... of course that isn't true either, it sounds like something a radfem would say, but it seems about as plausible as your claims? The bad parts of trans are maybe in some way analogous to mind-body dualism, but a lot of things are analogous in some ways to a lot of other things, and that doesn't make it one cause. "Liberate the soul from the constraints of the physical world"? What does that have to do with wearing dresses or doing makeup? And no trans people that I know of explicitly claim mind-body dualism, or even hint at it. "My brain is the wrong sex" is claimed to be a physical condition of development causing specific desires to be different, not something about souls. Being very wrong about philosophy and science, and getting mad at those who disagree, doesn't make something a religion, by that standard everyone is religious.
They don't. They reject any attempt to materially verify whether or not someone actually suffers from dysphoria.
I agree it isn't true, I was inverting OP's argument for effect (see first sentence of second paragraph), but it, like OP's first paragraph, mixes in a bunch of plausible statements with false statements
My point is that OP's statement is more defensible because they are against the material verification of dysphoria. Whether or not their beliefs are true or not is irrelevant to the conversation.
I continue to be presented with 'transgender people are real because brain scan studies' every few weeks in internet arguments! They're against material verification of dysphoria because it bigotedly implies someone isn't trans, not because of a principled metaphysical stance. Material verification is fine when it's wholesome and trans-positive
Ok, so tell them "no gender affirming care for you, unless the brain scan test comes back positive" and see what happens.
This statement makes no sense. Material confirmation that you only accept when it gives you the results you want is not material verification.
That may or may not be reasonable depending on the specifics of the brain scans. As an analogy, if trans peoples' heights were typical for the gender they identify as that would be material evidence, but it would be unreasonable to say "no gender-affirming care unless you're shorter than 5'6"" since the height distributions for men and women overlap significantly.
I don't follow. Why are we considering it to be evidence that the transgender identity is valid to begin with then?
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