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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31913 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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https://unherd.com/2023/04/is-trans-the-new-anorexia/

I’m not sure exactly how culture war-like this idea is, but I’ve never actually heard anyone else compare Anorexia with trans people before. I can see the social contagion factor in both especially for women who are much more conforming than men tend to, and because women have higher neuroticism than men. What I’m not sure about is some of the other ideas, that being trans is about self-negation and a sort of renouncing of their body.

The 'social contagion' theory isn't implausible, although I think no small number of pro-trans people would frame it instead as people who were already trans but now realized that they were and that it was possible to do something about it. And they're not exactly wrong : it's rude to make guesses about people before/unless they come out, but the transhumanist philosophy (and even transhumanist aestheticists) has had no small number of people who have had decades-long fascinations with body transformation as a form of self-improvement who weren't exactly a surprise when they turned out to be trans.

((FTM examples exist, but are small-crowd enough that I'm not hugely comfortable linking them.))

There's some important philosophical and pragmatic arguments about this even within the pro-trans framework -- not everyone who thinks those thoughts actually wants them, some who want something end up in some non-binary variant, and there are a variety of tradeoffs and physical limitations of existing technology such that even people who want to transition might be better-served by using some things and not others in a way that's getting obfuscated by a lot of mainstream discourse.

However, even outside of that, both perspectives have missed that they're looking at a metric, not a measure. You don't have a magical "this many people are trans" marker any more than you have a good definition of what being "trans" even is, but under that you don't really have good measures on even specific events. "How many people are using Tavestock" isn't the same thing as even "how many people are injecting sex hormones", as anyone who's noticed bodybuilders can guess. There already was a small industry of XX-chromosone'd people injecting testosterone, going butch as hell, and wanting to be called "sir" in the late-90s; there's some fun discussions about whether they're more trans now that they've been able to get hysterectomies easier, but it's not exactly the most practical of questions.

And there's been a lot of moving these to be higher-visibility, both in the general sense (trans pride) and in the seeing-like-a-state one (required coverage for insurance providers, changing rules for various government IDs). I don't think it's enough to explain the entire change, but it makes any attempt to use the metrics without acknowledging their limitations more than a little frustrating.

And they're not exactly wrong : it's rude to make guesses about people before/unless they come out, but the transhumanist philosophy (and even transhumanist aestheticists) has had no small number of people who have had decades-long fascinations with body transformation as a form of self-improvement who weren't exactly a surprise when they turned out to be trans.

I'm a transhumanist, and my position on the whole trans issue is that I sympathize with their goals, but simply disagree that they can be realistically achieved with the current science and engineering of the time. The day when it's possible to turn a natal male or female into the other gender while being biologically indistinguishable on the metrics I care about, we have no room for disagreement at all.

I'm certainly not trans, for what that's worth.

metrics I care about

Which metrics are those? I might have differing metrics for different cases. In a partner I'd likely want a woman who didn't feel the need to transition to be a woman.

Do they smell female, look female, have a working vagina and can reproduce, whether sleeping with them is indistinguishable from a natal female.

Behave like women? Move like women?

Have the lived experience of a natal woman?

I don't particularly care about those myself. I'm pretty sure a lot of dudes have an ideal image of the first woman in their head as someone who has the body of a woman but the interests or behavior of one of the bros. A noble goal indeed, albeit they're rarer than hens teeth.

A noble goal indeed, albeit they're rarer than hens teeth.

I have known several. They are rather unusual, disagreeable people.

Smell is the one thing that’s pretty much guaranteed with HRT. Trans women smell like women and trans men definitely smell like men, even “down there”. Skin texture also dramatically changes.

Looking female will depend on this early the transition is and the individual’s baseline. Some will pass as female to the average person but remain “clockable” to people who know what to look for. Some trans women who started off hormones young enough will be indistinguishable, some are lucky to pass after a few surgeries. But we definitely can’t take any random biological adult male and making him fully look like a woman.

Reproduction isn’t there yet, but some results of sexual reassignment surgery are quite visually impressive, others less so (Thai surgeons for instance are known to have better results and use a different technique). For some, it has been enough to fool unsuspecting men before (plenty of reports of trans women going stealth) and it certainly is enough to reduce dysphoria and function as a sexual organ in most cases. However, it is a gamble.

I’d say current technology is good enough to alleviate dysphoria and at the very least there’s no point of delaying taking HRT in the hopes of a better transhumanist future. But if you’re just curious and want a magic gender swap to experience life as the opposite sex for whatever reason, obviously we’re not there yet and the current treatments should absolutely not be taken lightly as some changes are irreversible.

Some trans women who started off hormones young enough will be indistinguishable,

There are however reports that trans who were put onto cross-sex hormones before going through puberty are not going to ever have an orgasm, barring some medical miracle.

Yeah, I'm increasingly skeptical of current uses of puberty blockers as the scale and scope of their use has escalated. Some of the discussion seems to get taken out of context when repeated in socon circles -- afaict, Maria Bower's concerns and claims are specifically about Tanner Stage 2-3 vs 3-5, rather than all uses of puberty blockers, which is especially annoying since Tanner 4 and 5 are those which tend to be what trans people point to as particularly dysphoric -- but the rather blaise response by WPATH et all isn't encouraging.

Trans men are certainly far more likely to be able to pass, at the very least as a rather short man. Testosterone is a helluva drug! Sadly that same fact makes undoing its effects on natal males exceedingly difficult, unlikely to happen before the Singularity, which ought to fix that issue if it doesn't kill us along the way.

I for one wish to overthrow the shackles of my flesh, and to the extent that Trans people seek to do the same, albeit for slightly different reasons, I can make my peace with them with hardly any issue.

Are you using "trans women" in opposite ways?

That was a brain fart on my part, I'll fix it!

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