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Notes -
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.
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.
We've bumped into each other about this a few times but it's difficult to articulate the problem I have this this position, possibly because it sounds like a reasonable take but it is jarring unrelated to the actual question at issue. Trans people and the trans movement are not reasonable transhumanists that think it'd be neat if they could grow breasts/penises or satisfy whatever aesthetic/explorative impulse they have. These people are making actual claims based on a worldview that is very different to the one you've expressed here. You don't agree with the trans movement at all, to put it in another peculiar view you have, it's like if when debating whether a teleporter kills you or not there was a faction claiming that people who want to use teleporters are actually already at the destination not just that they'd be better off if they were able to get there.
I recall making a similar statement in the recent past, but I honestly don't recall if it was with you, or whether you said:
If you mean that they want to become the opposite sex of what they were born as, while asking for the same treatment as said sex before they "perfectly" transition, then my stance is that their aim to change their sex is perfectly fine in my eyes, and I only have mild resentment at being asked to treat them like that before they finish that (difficult) task.
What exact aspect of their worldview are you referring to?
My understanding of the "mainstream" trans view is that the claim is they are the sex (well, gender, but they also claim any distinction there is meaningless, so...) they claim at any given moment. Any biological reality that contradicts this claim is considered irrelevant to their essential gender identity, which is all that matters. Any claim they made yesterday that contradicts today's claim is considered irrelevant.
Obviously, there are lots of different views in "the community" about this, many of which contradict the others. Sometimes, you get multiple, contradicting views from the same person. What I'm describing is my understanding of the concept of trans embodied by Twitter/Tik Tok/Corporate Approved Trans, which seems poised to be the ideology that defines the community under it's singular umbrella. Or at least the main Cathedral, opposition to which will define the heretics.
From that point of view, there is no process of becoming the opposite gender; your assertion that such (once possible) will earn them the regard they want in your eyes inherently invalidates their belief that there is no process other than their own profession of belief.
Thanks for elaborating, I certainly don't agree with that view, IMO, mere self-identification is insufficient for actually becoming something, you have to put in the work to become it first.
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