[The full post is ~5300 words and way way too long for the Motte's 20k character limit but I'm posting as much as I can fit.]
If you've ever been curious about the etymology of cis and trans as prefixes, just know they're Latin for "the same side of" and "the other side of", respectively. These prefixes are widely used in organic chemistry to distinguish between molecules that have the exact same atoms with a different spatial arrangement. Notice, for example, how in the cis isomer below on the left, chlorine atoms are oriented toward the "same side" as each other, but on the "other side" of each other in the trans isomer.
[chlorine on hydrogen action too hot for the motte]
The dashed line is just me simplifying the geometric comparison plane (the E-Z convention is much more precise in this respect), but regardless, this is meant only to illustrate how talk of cis or trans is necessarily one of *relative positioning. *A single solitary point floating in space cannot be described as the same or other "side" of anything when there is nothing else to contrast it against.
Now this is just organic chemistry, not real life, but the cis/trans convention is applied consistently elsewhere. In the context relevant to this post, "sex" and "gender" are the two anchor points --- the two chlorine atoms in the dichloroethene molecule of life --- and their relative resonance/dissonance relative to each other is the very definition of cis/trans gender identity. To avoid any ambiguity, I use sex to refer to one's biological role in reproduction (strictly binary), while gender is the fuzzy spectrum of sex-based societal expectations about how one is supposed to act. If your sex and gender identity "align", then you are considered cis; if they don't, then you are trans. Same side versus other side.
But what does it mean for sex and gender identity to "align"? There is an obvious answer to this question, but it is peculiarly difficult to encounter it transparently out in the wild. For reasons outlined below, I will argue that the elusiveness is completely intentional.
More than two years ago I wrote a post that got me put on a watch list, called Do Trans People Exist?. The question mark was barely a hedge and the theory I outlined remains straightforward:
I'm starting to think that trans people do not exist. What I mean by this is that I'm finding myself drawn towards an alternative theory that when someone identifies as trans, they've fallen prey to a gender conformity system that is too rigid.
Two years on and I maintain my assertion remains trivially true. One change I would make is avoiding the "fallen prey" language because I have no idea whether the rigidity is nascent to and incubated by the trans community (for whatever reasons), or if it's just an enduring consequence of society's extant gender conformity system (no matter how much liberal society tells itself otherwise). If you disagree with my assertion, it's actually super-duper easy to refute it; all anyone needs to do is offer up a coherent description of either cis or trans gender identity void of any reference to gender stereotypes. But I'd be asking for the impossible here, because the essence of these concepts is to describe the resonance or dissonance that exists between one's biological reality (sex) and the accordant societal expectations imposed (gender). Unless you internalize or assimilate society's gender expectations, unless you accede to them and capitulate that they're worth respecting and paying attention to as a guiding lodestar, concepts like "gender dysphoria" are fundamentally moot. A single point cannot resonate or clash with itself, as these dynamics necessitate interaction between distinct elements.
The position I'm arguing is nothing new. The Oxford philosopher Rebecca Reilly-Cooper had already established the incoherencies inherent within this framework conclusively and with impeccable clarity in this lecture she gave way back in 2016 (website form). It's wild how her arguments remain perfectly relevant today, and if anyone has attempted a refutation I have not encountered it. And yet this remains a controversial position to stake, but not because it's wrong. Rather, I believe, it's because of how insulting it is to be accused of reifying any system of stereotypes nowadays.
In case it needs to be said, stereotypes can occasionally offer useful shortcuts, but their inherent overgeneralization risks flattening reality into inaccuracy. The major risk relevant to this discussion is when stereotypes crystallize into concrete expectations, suffocating individual expression with either forced conformity due to perceived group membership, or feelings of alienation due to perceived incongruence. The indignation to my position is also understandable given how the foundational ethos of the queer liberation movement was a rejection of gender normativity's constraints.
You're not obligated to take my word for this, but I do tend to feel an immense discomfort whenever I hold a position that is purportedly controversial, and yet I'm unable to steelman any plausible refutations --- a sense of "I must be missing something, it can't be this obvious" type deal. I did try to bridge the chasm of inscrutability when I wrote What Boston Can Teach Us About What a Woman Is. My plea to everyone was to jettison the ambiguous semantic topography within this topic and replace it with concrete specifics:
To the extent that woman is a cluster of traits, I struggle to contemplate a scenario where communicating the cluster is a more efficient or more thoughtful method of communication than just communicating the specific pertinent trait. Just tell me what you want me to know directly. Use other words if need be.
Because right now it's a complete fucking riddle to me if someone discloses that they "identify as a woman" or whatever. What, exactly, am I supposed to do with this new information? Suggesting that stereotypes are the referent is met with umbrage and steadfast denials, but if not that, then what? Over the years I've tried earnestly to learn by asking questions and seeking out resources, and what I've repeatedly experienced is a marked reluctance to offer up anything more than the vaguest of details.
The ambiguity I'm referring to isn't absolute, however, and there are two notable exceptions worth briefly addressing: body modifications and preferred pronouns.
Sex does not only determine whether an individual produces large or small gametes --- an entire armory of secondary characteristics comes along for the ride, whether you like it or not. If a female happens to be distressed by their breasts and wants them removed, you could describe this scenario in two very different ways. One is that this person "identifies as a man" and their (very obviously female) breasts serve as a distressing monument that something is "off". The other way is that this person is simply distressed by their breasts, full stop, without any of the gender-related accoutrements. [These two options are not necessarily exhaustive, and I'm open to other potential interpretations.]
Is there any difference between these two approaches? The first framework adds a multitude of vexing, unanswerable questions (Does comfort with one's secondary sex characteristics require some sort of "affirmation gene" that trans people unfortunately lack? Is the problem some sort of mind/body misalignment? If so, why address one side of that equation only? Etc.) within an already overcomplicated framework. The other concern here is if the gender identity becomes prescriptive, where an individual pursues a body modification not for whatever inherent qualities it may have, but rather because of some felt obligation to "complete the set" for what their particular identity is supposed to look like.
The second framework (the one eschewing the gender identity component) would not dismiss the individual's concerns and would be part of a panoply of well-established phenomena of individuals inconsolably distressed with their body, such as body integrity dysphoria (BID), anorexia, or muscle dysphoria. The general remedies here tend to be a combination of counseling and medication to deal with the distress directly, and only in rare circumstances is permanent alteration even considered. I imagine there is some consternation that I've compared gender dysphoria with BID, but I see no reason to believe they are qualitatively different and welcome anyone to demonstrate otherwise. Regardless, I subscribe to maximum individual autonomy on these matters, and so it's not any of my business what people choose to do with their bodies. The point here is that preferences about one's body (either aesthetic or functional) exist without a reliance on paradigm shifts of one's "internal sense of self". If someone wants to, for example, bulk up and build muscle, they can just do it; it's nonsensical to say they first need to "identify" as their chosen aspiration before any changes can occur.
The other exception to the ambiguity around what gender identity* means* is pronoun preference. Chalk it up to [whatever]-privilege, but I concede I do not understand the fixation on pronouns. The closest parallel I can think of are nickname preferences, but unlike nicknames, pronouns almost never come up in two-party conversations, so it's difficult to see why they would be any more consequential. I personally accommodate pronoun preferences out of politeness (and I suspect almost everyone else does as well), the exact same way I would accommodate nicknames out of politeness. If I happen to refer to my friend using frog/frogs pronouns, it's not because I believe they're actually a frog; I'm just trying to be nice and avoid getting yelled at. Regardless of the intent behind them, pronoun preferences are a facile and woefully incomplete account for what we're warned are suicidal levels of distress around one's incongruent gender identity, so this can't be the whole story.
So on one extreme you have potentially invasive body modifications that are at least commensurate with the seriousness of the distress expressed, and on the other side you have the equivalent of a nickname preference that is relatively facile to accommodate. In between these two pillars, however, is a conspicuous vacuum of silence. My conclusion is that this missing middle is really just gendered stereotypes, but nobody wants to admit something so laughably antiquated out loud.
Well, almost nobody.
I've had this post sitting in my drafts for months largely because of an ever-present concern that I was unfairly shining a spotlight on the craziest examples from the trans-affirming community. My perennial goal with any subject is to avoid weakmanning, but with this issue I have no idea how to draw the contours and discern what arguments are representative and thus fair game to critique.
The lack of contours means I can't prove this next part conclusively, but I noticed a shift over time regarding which talking points were most common. The perennial challenge for this camp remains the logical impossibility of harmonizing the twin snakes of "trans people don't owe you passing" and "trans people will literally kill themselves if they don't pass". At least as late as 2018, there was more of an apparent comfort with leaning more toward openly reifying gendered roles and expectations. For example, in this Aeon magazine dialogue between trans philosopher Sophie Grace Chappell and gender-critical feminist Holly Lawford-Smith, Chappell uses the word script in her responses a whopping forty-one times.
But by far the most jaw-dropping example of this comfort comes from a lecture by Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, currently the head psychologist for the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals' gender clinic. When a parent asked how to know if a baby is trans, Dr. Ehrensaft literally said that a baby throwing out a barrette is a "gender signal" the baby might not really be a girl, the same way another baby opening their onesie is a signal they might be a girl. Seriously, watch this shit.
This is such a blatantly asinine thing to say that it depresses me to no end that the auditorium didn't erupt in raucous laughter at her answer. I don't even know how to respond to it. Maybe it bears repeating that babies are dumb. At any given moment, the entirety of a baby's cognitive load is already stressed over having to decide between shitting and vomiting. Dr. Ehrensaft conjures up this tale about how dumb babies are able to divinate the eternal message that "dresses are for women" out of thin air (or maybe directly from Allah), and that same dumb baby also has the ingenuity to cleverly repurpose their onesie into a jury-rigged "dress". I'm not claiming that it's impossible for young children to notice and even mirror societal expectations, including gender-related ones. Indeed, research indicates wisps of this awareness can start manifesting very early on, with children reaching "peak rigidity in their gender stereotypes at age 5 to 6" followed by a dramatic and continuing increase in flexibility. But it remains a jaw-dropping level of projection and tea leaf--reading on display here by Dr. Ehrensaft; the simple explanation that a baby might open their onesie because they're a dumb baby is apparently not worth consideration.
Dr. Ehrensaft is illustrative of the intellectual rigor that is apparently expected from the lead mental health professional in charge of the well-being of an entire clinic's worth of young patients. Matt Osborne wrote a devastating piece about her very long history of dangerous quackery. My mind was blown when I found out that Dr. Ehrensaft happened to be at the scene in 1992 desperately trying to whitewash the Daycare Satanic Panic and the unconscionable misery the "recovered memory" movement caused. In response to some highly suggestive interviews by therapists, preschool children alleged bizarre and horrific sexual abuse by staff involving drills, flying witches, underground tunnels, and hot-air balloons. The notorious McMartin case resulted in no convictions, with all charges finally dropped in 1990 after seven years of prosecutions. Two years later in an aftermath report of the similar Presidio case, Dr. Ehrensaft notes how the children's abuse narratives often contained fantasy elements, such as devilish pranks and hidden skeletons. This should normally be grounds for skepticism, but Dr. Ehrensaft stridently refuses to question the veracity of the accounts, and explains away the outlandish aspects as simply the result of trauma management --- the kids were using imaginative fears as a protective barrier for their (according to Dr. Ehrensaft) unquestionably real trauma. Given her general credulity, it's no surprise why her writing on the topic of gender identity is a murky soup of pseudo-religious nonsense about "gender ghosts" and "gender angels".
What exactly is the explanation for trans-affirming professionals like Chappell and Ehrensaft explicitly encouraging the necessity of adhering to gender scripts? Were they misled? Did they get the wrong bulletin? How? Why aren't their professional peers correcting them on such an elementary and foundational error? So many questions.
You can't keep drawing from the well of gender stereotypes so blatantly without anyone noticing. My general impression of the field is people realized how idiotic they sounded when their talking points were solidly anchored upon the veneration of (purportedly antiquated) gender roles and gender scripts. The response to this inescapable criticism has largely been to subtly pivot into the realm of empty rhetoric. But because of the necessity to cling onto strands of the initial assertions (for reasons I'll explain further), the result is a strenuous ballet of either constantly leaping between the two positions, or uncomfortably trying to straddle both.
Dr. Ehrensaft gives us an example of the vacuous. Her onesie/barrette poem of an answer above is from a video uploaded in 2018, but here's how her website explains gender nowadays, except with one particular word switched out:
This core aspect of one's identity comes from within each of us. Flibberdibber identity is an inherent aspect of a person's make-up. Individuals do not choose their flibberdibber, nor can they be made to change it. However, the words someone uses to communicate their flibberdibber identity may change over time; naming one's flibberdibber can be a complex and evolving matter. Because we are provided with limited language for flibberdibber, it may take a person quite some time to discover, or create, the language that best communicates their internal experience. Likewise, as language evolves, a person's name for their flibberdibber may also evolve. This does not mean their flibberdibber has changed, but rather that the words for it are shifting.
Can anyone reading this tell me what flibberdibber is beyond that it's something inexplicably very important?
It's probably too much to expect philosophy to throw us a lifeline here, but even with those low standards, the response from the trans-inclusionary philosophers has been a complete fucking mess and followed a similarly strenuous pivot. For example, in the 2018 paper Real Talk on the Metaphysics of Gender, Yale philosopher Robin Dembroff argues for a more "inclusive" understanding of gender. But in doing so, Dembroff explicitly acknowledges the glaring contradiction between decrying a category as oppressively exclusionary while simultaneously petitioning to be included within it. The apparent solution on page 44 to this conundrum is rather. . . something:
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
One post I've always puzzled over: Ozy's Cis By Default.
I've never felt like I'm a man, nor have I ever felt like I'm a woman. Some would have it that since I don't identify as a man or a woman, that must mean I identify as agender! But that sounds just as silly to me as identifying as either a man or woman: I don't identify as anything. The only time I think of it is probably in the context of trans discussions, and I always come to the same conclusion: a shrug. Perhaps gender agnosticism? Of course, if a medical professional asks my sex, I say a man, but that's about communicating a constellation of physical traits to others to make interfacing with the world more convenient, not how I identify my self in my inner monologue. If tomorrow I woke up as a woman, I am pretty confident that my primary reaction would only be "damn, this is going to be a lot of obnoxious paperwork to deal with."
And so I'm Ozy's "cis by default." And if someone (cis or trans) wants to say they identify as something, my reaction is... okay, sure, I guess that's neat. I'd file away in my head that that person likes to be labeled as a Woman or Man or whatever, politely humor that label, and get on with my life. It's no different than someone saying that they're a proud Catalonian or a brony or a Yankees fan.
What I struggle with is that I get the sense that that's something many trans activists aren't okay with: there's a demand that gender be recognized as having some deep metaphysical reality (trans women are women!). And so when Ozy says
I say... yes, please do. Because as far as I can tell, it's either completely undefinable or the desire to act out the opposite gender role, with the same person switching between those two options depending on what's rhetorically convenient at the moment.
And it makes me sad, because I've always wanted to see gender roles become less rigid, not more. What I fear is that people who deviate from increasingly narrow gender roles are going to be funneled into an increasingly narrow gender role of the opposite sex, which is every bit as much oppressive as a father who berates his son for playing with dolls.
I’ve always found myself puzzled by “feeling like a woman” and I am one. What does a gender feel like? None of my identities feel like anything. I just exist and do things. I just get on with living. I don’t spend all day thinking about gender or race or anything else. I just am.
More options
Context Copy link
Hm. That post really explained things for me, and made it much easier for me to support friends who were coming down with a sudden case of estrogen.
I read it as two axes: preference for masculine or feminine roles vs. strength of that preference. High-masc, high-strength, born a woman? Trans man. High-strength, but people already treat you as the role you prefer? “Cis.” The regions with low strength, then, would be “cis by default.”
@ymeskhout, under this reading, “agender” would be strong preference for, uh, neither gender role. I don’t think that’s a contradiction. It is foreign to my experience, sure. But so are lots of things. People get really excited about sports, and by God, I feel nothing. Does that mean they’re faking for attention, social signaling, adopting a rhetorical motte-and-bailey? Or does it mean they just feel something I…don’t?
I’m in that region. Gender politics are stupid, and gender feels made-up. People shouldn’t be treated differently by their sex, so there shouldn’t be a need for “gender” as social role. I’d be a “gender abolitionist” if TERFs hadn’t made the term a political marker.
Rationally, I prefer being a man, but I really lack a visceral response to the thought of inhabiting a female body. I’d do it if I could switch back. Some people report, no, that sounds awful, and they have zero interest in switching. I don’t get it, but okay.
Same for this phenomenon of gender “euphoria.” Not something I was familiar with. Then I started to get more into firearms. They’re loud, fun, dangerous machinery. They’re also male-coded as hell, and most of the women in my life wanted nothing to do with them. But when I was engaged in this stereotypical, pointless, masculine hobby…I understood.
Does that mean women who get a kick out of shooting guns are experiencing gender dysphoria at that moment?
More options
Context Copy link
The problem with Ozy's argument is that it's pure question begging. It boils down to flatly asserting that some people absolutely 100% experience this super deep "internal gender feeling" and if you don't well then that just means you're "cis by default" and you'll never understand what this (absolutely not made up!) experience feels like. It's completely unfalsifiable; the argument defines refutation as literally impossible. And even within this rubric, Ozy runs into other problems once they realize that "not having internal gender feeling" applies to cis people and also to this other (absolutely not made up) class of people called agender. Does this mean that cis people are just agender? No, absolutely not, because Ozy asserts "of course agender people are not cis." How do we know that's true? It just is! Agender people will tell you as much!
How do any of these flat-out assertions help convey any insight or information? It's indistinguishable from religious awakening stories about how you can believe in god if only you'd open your heart and pray.
I've said before that my response to "what if you woke up as a woman?" would be "am I hot?" because that would be far far more consequential on whether I would enjoy the experience or not. If yes, then goddamn that would be such an enlightening scenario to experience. I have no interest in dicks now but hell I might even fuck a dude just to see what the hype is all about.
I too feel absolutely nothing about sports, but there's nothing inscrutable about a sports fan experience to me. I can understand "excitement" and "emotional investment" and "suspense" and then draw parallels from there, and crucially I can make predictions (Bob will be sad if his team loses). There are no equivalent parallels available to describe the alleged "gender identity incongruence" (or as I argued in the OP, there are no ways to describe it that don't sound idiotic and regressive) but Ozy uses this inability to convey this experience to double down on the entire enterprise by claiming that some people are just incapable of understanding.
Interestingly enough, I don't know if you noticed the contradiction in your post about "gender euphoria". I too share a love for firearms and yes, that hobby is indeed male-coded as hell. You know what else is male-coded as hell? Sports! If firearm enthusiasm can give you gender euphoria, would it not follow that the absence of sports enthusiasm would give you gender dysphoria? The lack of consistency there indicates that the euphoria might not necessarily be predicated on how congruent your enthusiasm is with accepted gender conventions.
(funny enough, transwomen have been a ridiculously disproportionate portion of my shooting range partners)
More options
Context Copy link
Why shouldn't they? Isn't the fact that one half of the population can impregnate the other a germane fact to relations between the sexes? Isn't the fact that the average member of one sex is physically stronger than 99% of members of the other sex also a germane fact?
I know a person who (I think last year) came out as a trans woman. She's privately admitted to a closer friend than me that she has never experienced anything resembling gender dysphoria. However, she claims to experience "gender euphoria" when wearing women's clothes. In the past, if a male person experienced great pleasure wearing women's clothes, but did not experience gender dysphoria and had no desire to medically transition, we would just call them a crossdresser or transvestite. (Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that.)
Alternatively, "gender euphoria" might be a euphemism for the sexual arousal experienced by autogynephiliacs.
Either way, I think this person has mistakenly come to believe that these things are a package deal: if you're male and you enjoy (or derive sexual excitement from) wearing women's clothes, ipso facto you're a trans woman. But you could always just be a male crossdresser, there's really nothing wrong with that, it doesn't make you any less "valid" a person.
More options
Context Copy link
My complaint, though, isn't related to people being different or having psychological states that are alien to me: of course they do. It's the insistence that it's some kind of inherent part of "identity," whatever that is, even if it's conceded that some people are lacking in this part of it.
Going with my Yankee example, suppose someone existed (let's call him Jim) who insisted it was his fundamental identity, and he felt that he should always be referred to as Yankee Jim and wouldn't feel secure in his body until he got the Yankee emblem tattooed all over his body. My response would be... Well, sure. Yankee Jim he is. I'd support funding the tattoos with public funds, if studies showed that that intervention was the most effective intervention to prevent suicide or resolve mental issues. I accord the same exact sympathy and respect to him that I do to trans people (the sympathy and respect any human being suffering should receive).
But my sense is that at least some trans advocates would take offense to this analogy, because gender identity is more "real" than Yankee identity.
I'm not sure how a concrete biological basis for trans-ness would affect my viewpoint. I don't think it should: a biological basis could result in a greater likelihood to have dysphoria without indicating the reality of gender identity, and in itself it's not enough. E.g. it's possible for Yankee dysphoria to also have some biological factors that increases its likelihood. But I imagine I would change my opinion depending on the strength of the evidence for a biological basis and its mechanism.
I am totally game for this pro Yankee Jim world.
For me that's... sorta the whole point. Every identity is aspirationally valid. Trans rights are just a stepping stone for getting to the point where people will accept a friend who wants to be a hippopotamus when they grow up.
I don't know... I'm sure some Trans advocates would take offense to this analogy but.
I don't respect them? I dunno. There are always some people with bad takes. But in my experience trans people are at least more likely to be friend to all weirdos, what with being transgressive weirdos themselves.
I agree more trans people than cis straight people would embrace this world, which speaks well of them in my book.
Trans-advocates, however, are a wider group than trans people, and the majority of trans-advocates are cis and straight. Particularly, I know that if I posted this opinion on social media, it would absolutely be a bunch of cis, straight people jumping down my throat calling it out as trans-phobic instead of engaging in the argument. It's not how individual trans people respond to thought experiments, but more how the broader culture takes trans people and uses them to enforce existing gender roles.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I never understood why anyone finds Ozy's post in any way illuminating:
Ozy doesn't break stride when coming across this apparent contradiction. If you're not ok with the hypothetical, you're "plain old cis". If you are, you are "cis by default". Or maybe you are agender? Who knows let's move on. This is what I meant by "argument by assertion".
Agree. Put it in the same category as everything else I've ever read by her (them?).
More options
Context Copy link
I agree, that seems nonsensical to me. I am very happy being a man. If I woke up in the body of a woman, I highly doubt that I would transition, it seems like a bum deal. I'd probably be sad about some things, in the same way I'd imagine I would be sad if I got into a traumatic car accident, or in the way I am factually sad that I can't do things I once did when I was younger. But I'd much prefer having a functional female body to a malformed male one.
Of course, my assumption above is that I would wake up as a woman approximately equivalent to myself in fitness/attractiveness/etc plus/minus gender bonuses/penalties. Perhaps my intuition would be different if I woke up a as a radically different kind of woman. Which is my intuition overall, I'm less attached to my gender than I am to status. I would trade male status for female status, but I would not trade male status for female inferiority, or vice versa.
Yeah, ditto. Given the current state of technology, I'd make for an extremely ugly transwoman given my current male body and bald head. That combined with the complete lack of articulable benefits (see OP) are more than enough to make this an obvious decision. But if I somehow hypothetically woke up as a female with near-equivalent status/benefits to what I currently enjoy now as a male, part of me would be thrilled at the unique perspective on the human condition I'd have access to. For the same reasons as before, I'd like make for an ugly transman in that hypothetical scenario (testosterone makes it much much easier to pass) and I wouldn't be able to articulate any reasons for the transition.
Phalloplasty is an absolute horror show. Deformed donor sites, high potential for infection and even gangrene, the need for erectile appliances. And certainly no sexual sensation. Even reading about phalloplasty is revolting to me.
I'm a man, and if by some unfortunate circumstance I found myself dickless, I would certainly not attempt phalloplasty. It would just be making a bad situation far, far worse.
I cannot fathom the state of mind of the people that have a desire for phalloplasty. I have to wonder if it's ever been attempted on a man who lost his penis.
Yeah, I completely do not understand it. It seems like if anything, even a high-quality phalloplasty "penis" would just be a constant reminder of all the other things you can never have, no matter how much cash you sink into it. I once attended a queer-friendly amateur porn festival and one of the entries involved a transman with a hormonally-enlarged clitoris "fucking" a tiny fleshlight all while saying things like "yeah take that big dick yeah". I was deeply disturbed by the delusion on display (and also by the tiny fleshlight).
Is there a story behind how you ended up at a queer amateur porn festival? And what was disturbing about the tiny fleshlight? Normally the packaging on those is the sketchy part, at least if it's in japanese...
Humpfest is always a damn good time and it's not so much a porn festival rather than a collection of sketch comedy skits with nudity. The part I found disturbing was likely not noticed by others, but a tiny fleshlight necessarily implies mimicking tiny genitals which...do I need to complete that?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This reminds me of the old athiest argument of, "you are a [Christian]/[Muslim]/[Bhuddist] primarily because of where or to whom you were born." I would suspect however, that most religious people are not convinced by this line of argument because they are, to use your verbiage, "real [Christians]." A "[Christian] by default" is someone who just hasn't encountered that argument, and upon realizing he is just conforming, would immediately renounce his religion.
The few Christians I've discussed this kind of reasoning with, have all asserted that even in alternate realities, they would have come to follow Christ anyways. This was enough to convince me that they were "real," and satisfied my curiosity.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think that the way you feel may be a normal response to the world you were raised in, but I suspect it is an indication that that world is pretty unhealthy. It seems like a symptom of a profound alienation. Historically, male or female would be a genuinely meaningful category that placed certain rights and obligations on you. I'm not sure that the elimination of that has been psychologically good.
I can relate. I don't feel an automatic urge to identify as a Citizen of my country. It's just something I happened to be born with and while I appreciate the huge benefits it provides me with, I don't feel responsible for the actions of my native country or a strong sense of association with other nominal Citizens. But that's probably a really bad thing. Citizens of a healthy nations automatically partake in the daily plebiscite. I should feel a strong alliance with my nations and my fellows. And most of all, it would be great if my country applied some meaningful obligations on me.
Why though? How has the reduction of the strictness of roles that modernity has brought on improved things for people?
I think the nuance here is drawing the meaning more from the specific relevant traits rather than assuming the entire category. I've been involved in fairly tepid scenarios where an amount of physical violence was about to become very necessary and the people you'd want to step up (read: those physically capable of doling out the violence) generally meet their obligation.
You can observe this even in an ideal citizenship scenario. We're not going to expect equal obligations from everyone just because they're a citizen. Rather, we do indeed take into account each citizen's capabilities for what they can contribute (e.g. only men are drafted into military service, but even within the broad 'men' category, we make exceptions for the very young and the very old).
So the distinction I would offer would be "I am stepping up to potentially dole out violence, because I have the physical traits capable of doling out violence" rather than "...because I am a man."
More options
Context Copy link
It allows people to choose how they want to live their lives. Many will make bad choices, many will be less happy than they otherwise would be, but one of my basic values is liberty/self determination. You may not value this as highly, in which case you would prefer stricter gender roles.
Women's lives used to be extremely constrained, with no opportunity to explore their potential. That's no way to treat half the world's humans.
Totally fair.
I don't, and so yes, I do.
But there's more to said about it. I, like everyone born in America, was raised to believe that freedom and self-actualization were great things to have. My default starting point agreed with you exactly. It's only over time that I've come to question it. I said:
I think that my question already kind of accepts that we have more freedom to determine the course of our lives. I just question how much that is actually worth. I live in a wealthy blue bubble. The people I have known in my life have more freedom and ability to self determine than almost anyone on the planet, and yet most of them are not very happy. Happy isn't the be all end all, but I'm not sure they are very fulfilled either, and that is the end all.
Now I think that the good life would be to live in a small village, raised by a shoemaker to make shoes, and to make shoes for people who need those shoes. That sounds more fulfilling. I know that comes from a place of incredible privilege to be able to want that, but I do.
A yearning for the meaning provided by being someone raised to make shoes for a town that needs shoes is probably behind the obsession to make and purchase expensive artisanal good that all of the hipsters in my circles have. But it can't be the same because the artisanal shoes aren't needed the same way, and also you have to be essentially independently wealthy to afford the lifestyle of making shoes for hipsters or of buying those shoes.
But putting away the shoe fantasy. The reality is that suicide is up, sadness is up. The people I know don't seem to enjoy their freedom all that much. With all of this freedom and actualization around me, why do I end up spending so much time with people who complain about everything? Everyone seems to know the answer. It sucks living in an atomized, commercialized society. We want to be part of something. Or, from a more leftist perspective "late capitalism is bad". Fair enough that seems to be true.
I'm not sure that end result can be avoided if liberty/self determination are put as highest goals. I recognize this is probable well mined already on the motte.
What are your thoughts? If liberty/self determination are making you feel really fulfilled and happy and super interested to hear about it. I don't feel like I hear that very often here, or in my real life, honestly.
Do you believe the small village shoemakers never whinge, gripe and complain or never have any causes to?
Fair. I'm sure they did. But they didn't kill themselves very often and generally succeeded in reproducing their lifestyle to the next generation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link