The Republican War on Transgender People, Drag Queens, and Queerness in General

[Mr. Tea]

People of a 'third sex', or men who take women's roles and vice-versa, are known from societies around the world from ancient times. For example in the Kama Sutra, which is about 2,000 years old.

Hijra (South Asia) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So you're only advertising your own ignorance here if you think trans people were invented a couple of decades ago.

 

[malelesbian]

If you want to philosophize about gender, you'd best prepare yourself for my response!

A philosophical thought: the disorderliness of gender dysphoria is the mismatch between mind and body. For some reason this has generally elicited an old-fashioned philosophical perspective. Firstly, the mind and body are considered to be significantly independent of each other; secondly, in dualist fashion, the body is then considered also to be subservient to, and of lower status than, the mind. Following this premise, solutions then focus on bringing the body to heel to match the mind. The body is considered unhealthy. The mind is considered healthy, and the integrity of the mind's products should be preserved.

Judith Butler avoids dualism. She follows Merleau-Ponty's view that mind and body are intimately intertwined. Thus she grants equal status to each: the body and mind need each other, and neither is inferior or superior to the other. For her, bodily behaviors express our gender identities. She focuses on public activities accepted by local communities. Now, she still accepts that we have a desired self-image, a mental representation of our desired body, and this desired self-image differs from the person's actual body in cases of gender dysphoria. Pre-op people with gender dysphoria identify authentically with a body different from the one they have before gender reassignment surgery. But I don't see where she claims that the mind is superior to the body. She would just say that people with gender dysphoria want bodies that accurately express their authentic identity. And mind constitutes personal identity as much as the body does.

The more modern perspective is that there is no separation, with the mind being as much the body as the body is.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Butler agrees with this view.

This would then mean that one isn't obliged to follow the mind's dictates or preserve its current state any more than one was obliged to preserve the body's state in the typical transitioning process.

I deny that what you call the modern materialist perspective entails that we don't need to trust the empirical reports of people with gender dysphoria. You claim that, if we affirm the equal status of the body and mind, then we don't need to listen to the mind any more than we need to listen to the body. But remember: what you describe as the "mind", Butler and I redescribe as a person's representation of the body that best expresses who they really are. When an AMAB person says they identify as a woman and have gender dysphoria and that gender reassignment surgery would allow them to have the body that authentically expresses their identity, I believe them, not because I value their mind over their body and consider their mind a truer expression of who they are than their body but rather because I respect them. Because I respect others, I accept that only one person can know my gender and that is me. The same goes for everyone else. I trust a person's reports that they have gender dysphoria and that their authentic identity is a man, for example, because I know no one can get their own gender wrong. The issue is normative and epistemological, not metaphysical. Other have said this, but it bears repeating: TERFs and GC feminists make the mistake of assuming that they can know another person's gender better than the other person does. But this is why I emphasize that we trust the other to express their authentic gender identity: for my authentic identity is the identity truest to myself. And only I can know what's truest to me.

One is at liberty to hack at the mind (which is the body) as much as at the rest of the body with the sole aim of eliciting a stable coherence in the indivisible whole.

Isn't this just conversion therapy though? It seems like you want to change the minds of transfolk so that they don't think they're trans anymore. Why else would you want to change the mind of a person with gender dysphoria about their authentic gender, the identity only they can know about?

 

[thirdform]

We were referring to the idea that you can change sex, you beef-witted Klingon.

is that why eunuchs are mentioned in the bible? Fucks sake, stop beating your knob to Holly Willoughby and open the scripture you are using to justify your perspective:

deuteronomy 23:2
'No one whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off may come into the assembly of the LORD.'

Even here the bible acknowledges sex change,or to be more precise, it acknowledges that one cannot simply deny gender and affirm sex, which seems to be your solopsistic position, which was already outdated some 3000 years ago...

23:2] Exclusion of an emasculated male may have had to do with association of emasculation with the practices of other peoples, or it may have been rejection of someone with a significant blemish who was thus not suitable for participation in the sacral assembly.

Further more, we know that in persian and babylonian societies, eunuchs would take on tasks ascribed to both men and women, even if the castration, as it were, is forced, this is still a kind of inter(sex)

Of course the bible does not accept gnc people, but it acknowledges their existence, in the same way quran does not accept sodomites, but acknowledges the temptation to sodomy within everyone...

Why are you focused on progressives, anyway? seems that like benny you got dumped by a progressive girlfriend. Because unless you're a fundamentalist christian secular anti-progressivism is a position that inherently indicates its defeat from the outset...

 

[thirdform]

more acknowledgements in the bible about gender deviations lmfao

Psalms 139:13-14

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Loki was at it a thousand years and more years ago, you ignoramus.

Loki didn't exist

 

[Clinamenic]

"Loki didn't exist"

The lost Baudrillard essay, huh?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

If you want to philosophize about gender, you'd best prepare yourself for my response!

Judith Butler avoids dualism. She follows Merleau-Ponty's view that mind and body are intimately intertwined. Thus she grants equal status to each: the body and mind need each other, and neither is inferior or superior to the other. For her, bodily behaviors express our gender identities. She focuses on public activities accepted by local communities. Now, she still accepts that we have a desired self-image, a mental representation of our desired body, and this desired self-image differs from the person's actual body in cases of gender dysphoria. Pre-op people with gender dysphoria identify authentically with a body different from the one they have before gender reassignment surgery. But I don't see where she claims that the mind is superior to the body. She would just say that people with gender dysphoria want bodies that accurately express their authentic identity. And mind constitutes personal identity as much as the body does.


Let's assume for the sake of argument that Butler agrees with this view.



I deny that what you call the modern materialist perspective entails that we don't need to trust the empirical reports of people with gender dysphoria. You claim that, if we affirm the equal status of the body and mind, then we don't need to listen to the mind any more than we need to listen to the body. But remember: what you describe as the "mind", Butler and I redescribe as a person's representation of the body that best expresses who they really are. When an AMAB person says they identify as a woman and have gender dysphoria and that gender reassignment surgery would allow them to have the body that authentically expresses their identity, I believe them, not because I value their mind over their body and consider their mind a truer expression of who they are than their body but rather because I respect them. Because I respect others, I accept that only one person can know my gender and that is me. The same goes for everyone else. I trust a person's reports that they have gender dysphoria and that their authentic identity is a man, for example, because I know no one can get their own gender wrong. The issue is normative and epistemological, not metaphysical. Other have said this, but it bears repeating: TERFs and GC feminists make the mistake of assuming that they can know another person's gender better than the other person does. But this is why I emphasize that we trust the other to express their authentic gender identity: for my authentic identity is the identity truest to myself. And only I can know what's truest to me.


Isn't this just conversion therapy though? It seems like you want to change the minds of transfolk so that they don't think they're trans anymore. Why else would you want to change the mind of a person with gender dysphoria about their authentic gender, the identity only they can know about?

What I mean by not believing the mind any more than the body is that the person in possession of the mind shouldn't assume that it's always correct - it's not a question of you not believing their mind, it's a question of them not feeling obliged to believe their mind - and so I deny what you say Butler's idea of the authentic self is.

It is trivial to come up with myriad situations in which the mind is leading one astray, and it's presumably because of this real possibility that gender dysphoria is/has been generally classed as a mental disorder. In many cases it's a bad idea to change the body following the dictates of the mind e.g. anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating, self-harming, cosmetic surgery due to body dysmorphia, giving puberty blockers to children who don't like puberty etc.

Furthermore, the mind's operation can be affected by the state of your body e.g. stimulants, depressants, trauma, gut health (the latest fad), the way the body is developed e.g. in the womb or later. I don't know how Butler can put the mind on a pedestal, with its productions unquestioned, having said that it and the body are inextricable - and being aware of its fallibility.

Any kind of material change entailed by leaning in or leaning away from possible 'sex change' is a conversion. The opposite to conversion therapy is to do nothing, just as the opposite to conversion therapy for homosexuality is just to leave the person be.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

is that why eunuchs are mentioned in the bible? Fucks sake, stop beating your knob to Holly Willoughby and open the scripture you are using to justify your perspective:

deuteronomy 23:2
'No one whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off may come into the assembly of the LORD.'

Even here the bible acknowledges sex change,or to be more precise, it acknowledges that one cannot simply deny gender and affirm sex, which seems to be your solopsistic position, which was already outdated some 3000 years ago...

23:2] Exclusion of an emasculated male may have had to do with association of emasculation with the practices of other peoples, or it may have been rejection of someone with a significant blemish who was thus not suitable for participation in the sacral assembly.

Further more, we know that in persian and babylonian societies, eunuchs would take on tasks ascribed to both men and women, even if the castration, as it were, is forced, this is still a kind of inter(sex)

Of course the bible does not accept gnc people, but it acknowledges their existence, in the same way quran does not accept sodomites, but acknowledges the temptation to sodomy within everyone...

Why are you focused on progressives, anyway? seems that like benny you got dumped by a progressive girlfriend. Because unless you're a fundamentalist christian secular anti-progressivism is a position that inherently indicates its defeat from the outset...

Those examples are not sex changes, or even claim to be so. Progressive girls are often quite bookish and intelligent but they've got lost in a morass of stuff that only partly makes sense and they appreciate firm correction.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

more acknowledgements in the bible about gender deviations lmfao

Psalms 139:13-14

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

I don't get it. Is this the existence of a soul that was previously female idea(?), which I accept from the relevant evidence but no progressive seems to want to spell out.

 

[luka]

mixed biscuits, like literally everyone that has ever posted on dissensus, is not terribly good looking. im not sure i buy the idea that the right are better looking. but the right wing women have very strong, desperate dan jaws. so if you like that then obviously, you like that. and mental rigid hair.

 

[luka]

fox news presenters. very masculine women. i would say, as a generalisation, the right have stronger jaws than the left. the left have infinitely better eyes. the right have cold, fish eyes. it's like they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[luka]

biscuits is not actually right. he just finds the left gross. this is a common and understandable reaction. but he is unusually short and very soft in the body. so not like the right wing ubermencsh ideal. im 6 ft tall and very powerfully built. but i have quite fucked up teeth.

 

[luka]

also biscuits is jewish and he says, like craner, (correctly) that the right have a better record on defending israel. but he's not right wing by birth or temprement.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Loki didn't exist

The point is that the concept of changing gender, or of gender being in some way mutable, is very ancient. As evidenced by the link I then posted.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The point is that the concept of changing gender, or of gender being in some way mutable, is very ancient. As evidenced by the link I then posted.

No, not the same. They're not considered men who are actually women or vice versa.

 

[luka]

the right in a way shot themselves in the foot. they could of flooded the country with nazi east europeans. the left have to get used to the idea of right wing immigrants. the chinese, the indians, small buisness people who are naturally conservative, the jews like biscuits, very often far right.

 

[luka]

 

[luka]

 

[luka]

hugely powerful jaws maybe from eating a lot of steak?

 

[luka]

the right prize conformity so you get a lot of cookie cutter people. they look like characters in metal gear solid. again beauty is in the eye of the beholder.