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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   24445 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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When discussing pharmaceutical and surgical interventions in the treatment of gender dysphoria, the gender-critical among us often draw parallels with bodily integrity identity disorder. This is a rare psychiatric disorder in which a person experiences profound distress because of the presence of one or more of their limbs, and requests to have these limbs amputated to alleviate said distress (or tries to amputate them themselves). Colloquially, one might say that people with this condition are able-bodied but identify as disabled.

Given that no one thinks that surgical amputation is the correct treatment for this psychiatric disorder, we gender-criticals argued, it follows that surgical intervention is the wrong approach for people with gender dysphoria. If it's wrong to amputate a mentally ill's person's arm just because they say it's causing them distress, how can it be right to do the same for a penis or breast?

Sadly, one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens, the medical establishment has noted the parallels, and it is coming to a rather different conclusion:

Sensational news from late last week, that doctors amputated two fingers for a 20-year-old patient to alleviate the young man’s mental distress over being able-bodied, contained a buried clue: “He related his condition to gender dysphoria.”

... A 2018 ethics analysis in a Cambridge University Press publication concludes that there is “no logical difference between the conceptual status of BIID and transsexualism”. It goes on to say that, “given that individuals with transsexualism are offered gender reassignment surgery it seems to us that individuals with BIID ought at least to be considered for treatment, including elective amputation in some cases.”

... But what would it mean to accept the amputee identity at scale, the way we have accepted trans rights as a universal humanitarian movement? Drawing exact parallels, we would likely see a total saturation of amputee culture, from amputee story hour to centring amputee voices in DEI training, and doctors warning parents of the very real suicide risks for amputee-identifying children whose parents refuse to accept them as surgically modified cripples or invalids. Advocates would talk of being “assigned able-bodied at birth” to persuade activist teachers and medical associations to adopt the absolutist position that any attempt to talk kids out of amputee surgery amounts to “conversion therapy”.

The journalist Mia Hughes recently asked readers to imagine a society in which amputee advocates enjoyed the same cultural and political victories as trans advocates.

“Imagine there were a sudden 4000% increase in teens identifying as amputees, but we were all forbidden from being concerned. Instead we were supposed to celebrate it,” she posted on X. “Imagine schools teaching children as young as kindergarten that some people have amputee identities, that they get to choose how many limbs they have. Posters promoting body mutilation adorned the walls of many classrooms.”

Nothing specific to add to this* beyond despair. The Anglophone medical establishment appears to be fully ideologically captured. It doesn't matter if the Tavistock is shuttered and there's a rash of lawsuits directed at youth gender clinics in the US: if you're a medic who's internalised (or been made to internalise) the gender ideology worldview, the implications of that worldview and the role of the medical establishment it affirms have far-reaching implications in medical domains unrelated to gender medicine itself. At this point I honestly can't rule out psychiatrists prescribing anorexics appetite suppressants to aid them in achieving their "bodily attainment goals".

*Other than why the fuck are Canadian doctors so keen to help their fellow citizens maim or destroy their bodies??!!

Touching on this subject, and also following on from the previous Culture War thread where I was asked how I feel about the current state of the Catholic Church, here we go - something to offend everybody!

Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity, 08.04.2024

The RadTrads are already heresy-hunting, the media will be all over the bits about abortion, surrogacy, and transgender rights, and of course the Spirit of Vatican II types are disappointed, sorely and gravely disappointed, as per usual.

  1. The dignity of the body cannot be considered inferior to that of the person as such. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly invites us to recognize that “the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’” Such a truth deserves to be remembered, especially when it comes to sex change, for humans are inseparably composed of both body and soul. In this, the body serves as the living context in which the interiority of the soul unfolds and manifests itself, as it does also through the network of human relationships. Constituting the person’s being, the soul and the body both participate in the dignity that characterizes every human. Moreover, the body participates in that dignity as it is endowed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition. It is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as generated by others, and it is through their bodies that men and women can establish a loving relationship capable of generating other persons. Teaching about the need to respect the natural order of the human person, Pope Francis affirmed that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.” It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception. This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! As someone allegedly said, the Church may be a whore, but she's my Mother 🙆‍♀️

I don’t understand the distinction between curing congenital defects and sex changes? Surely the person undergoing the procedure would consider them one and the same? If the one doesn’t affect the unique dignity of the person, why should the other? Why does the natural order of the human person exclude some chromosomal ”abnormalities” but not others?

I’m not Catholic, but I’d readily accept some argument to this end. This one feels really light on God.

There's a difference between fixing a broken car and converting your car into a boat or vis versa. Fixing the car brings it closer to the Platonic ideal of what the car is supposed to be, converting it into a boat is something different.

I think Christians have a level of innate bioconservatism, Adam was directly made by God. You're not supposed to mess with God's vision, maleness or femaleness.

Disregarding pimp my ride, it’s hard to say the platonic ideal is male or female, right? Why would going from the one to the other violate that ideal, so long as you arrive at the right spot (theoretically)? We could claim the ideal is that of a man for a man, etc, but then we are back to disagreeing about the initial state.

To my non-catholic understanding, I’d be down with someone transitioning if it is to serve God. That’s a pretty damn high bar, but who knows.

it’s hard to say the platonic ideal is male or female

The distinction between male and female both does and doesn't exist at the same time.

You're not supposed to mess with God's vision, maleness or femaleness.

Sometimes the vision comes pre-messed-with. It's not like anyone actually knows what maleness or femaleness are anyway, and fewer still are able to come up with a complimentary picture. Rather humorously, it's usually the manlier women and womanlier men that have a better understanding of how the sexes are supposed to work together, but they're also the furthest away from the vision-as-written simply due to their nature.

Why would going from the one to the other violate that ideal, so long as you arrive at the right spot (theoretically)?

Because the Bible says gayness is bad, on its face in fact (implications for transsexuality follow from that). Uniquely, it's one of the things that are said to be bad but doesn't have self-evident negative effects (gay marriages [the ones that follow "the vision" except it's 2 dudes instead] are more stable than straight ones, apparently). So then, what's that mean (figurative, literal, or both and if so under which context?), how much should we care, and should our approach be more Proverbs 3:5 or 1 Corinthians 8 when it comes to the gays (and what forms of gayness should we accept)? It'd surely be nice if we figured it out before God decides to go full Sodom and Gomorrah on us.

before God decides to go full Sodom and Gomorrah on us.

If that is your concern, perhaps you ought to focus more on the prohibitions on feeding the homeless.

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