Which gender are you?

[Joao]

@82: Pretty much, yeah, except when something else happens.

Edit: Mistakenly omitted a word

[brainpanhandler]

there's the assumption that if we could all agree to embrace each other's differences we'd all get along. But embracing differences erases difference

Really?

Yeah I wondered about that too after I wrote it. All I can say is it seems that the very thing that makes something anomalous disappears once it becomes socially condoned. Everything gets assimilated by the Borg.

I don't know what the alternative is, the middle way between embracing and rejecting.

I am congenitally(!) opposed to the Group Mind, to a definite fault. I don't want to be assimilated, but nor do I want to be persecuted, obviously.

I have the sense that individuation is a journey inward that eventually disidentifies with everything but the Soul. It begins with your family, but soon it comes down to race, sex, even species. So the idea that we can be whatever we feel like being, biologically, through a mixture of sheer will power and technology, is the literalization and hence inversion of the truth, that we are infinitely more than our biology. It's the difference between trying to turn the ego into the infinite and letting it be dissolved into the infinite.

& call me old-fashioned but I think the primary human crucible where that happens is the crucible of biological opposition, also known as guy-on-chick action ~ or marriage!!. (Not enough smilies; I was looking for the burning in hell one!)

That's a thought provoking unpacking of what on first read made no literal sense. This:

I have the sense that individuation is a journey inward that eventually disidentifies with everything but the Soul.

allowed me to enter your thought stream and take what you're trying to say here seriously.

It begins with your family

One way I have thought of this in the past is as a spectrum of freedom that should naturally follow the arc of our lives. In the womb you have the least amount of freedom. Stripping away conditioning as we advance chronologically through our lives. The unnaturalness of the nuclear family virtually guarantees everyone gets forever bogged down in that drama and never even begin the process of becoming an individual nor even dimly recognize this as a first necessity. Freedom is frightening. Advancing tragically as conventional human beings do to old age, decay, and ultimately death is fraught with horror and revulsion. Rather than letting go we hold on tighter. Do we die with smiles on our faces or looks of abject sadness and horror, staring back into the nothingness of our lives?

Most of us just don't live long enough (or perhaps fully enough) to unpack our conditioning even if we manage to conceive of it as a noble goal. It's like we need to hit the ground running but most of us remain spiritual toddlers our entire lives.

I'll have to give this some more thought. I think I might put that as an epitaph on my tombstone.

[Joao]

Maybe, but I'd argue that being 'transgendered'—that is, believing that, as a man, one can become a woman (contra 82_28's excellent post above), or that it's possible for a man to be "born a woman," or believing that "a penis and a clitoris are homologous" (all SOP in the trans ideology), etc—precludes being well-adjusted, at least to a point.

Sounds like uppity negroes to me. What exactly makes "a man" and "a woman" and why is your definition the right one? if somebody wants to give the transition a shot, who are you to say it can't be done.

[coffin_dodger]

bph:

Freedom is frightening. Advancing tragically as conventional human beings do to old age, decay, and ultimately death is fraught with horror and revulsion. Rather than letting go we hold on tighter. Do we die with smiles on our faces or looks of abject sadness and horror, staring back into the nothingness of our lives?

Personally, I'm thankful that I don't hold that worldview in my head. I understand you a little better now, bph - I'm sorry to have clashed with you in the past, but I had no idea that is the world you live in.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Sounds like uppity negroes to me. What exactly makes "a man" and "a woman" and why is your definition the right one? if somebody wants to give the transition a shot, who are you to say it can't be done.

82_28 already covered that.

The XY sex-determination system is the sex-determination system found in humans, most other mammals, some insects (Drosophila), and some plants (Ginkgo). In this system, the sex of an individual is determined by a pair of sex chromosomes (gonosomes). Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), and are called the homogametic sex. Males have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY), and are called the heterogametic sex.

[Joao]

Simple-minded science fetishism. Right up there with how homosexuality obviously contravenes the "natural order."

[Agent Orange Cooper]

I'm about as far as it could possibly get from a "science-fetishist." Certain facts are immutable. Next thing you'll be telling me the earth is flat. Actually, I'd say there's a better chance of the earth being flat than a man has of becoming a woman.

[Sounder]

AOC wrote....

As an aside, the whole ideology carries with it a huge load of straight-up sexism, where "being a woman" is automatically and immediately reduced to a nebulous set of classical stereotypes and mannerisms. I can become a woman by dressing "femme," growing my hair, painting my nails, and employing vocal fry. They have literally defined the category of "female" out of existence—precisely the exact fucking opposite of what women have struggled for millennia to achieve, that is, to be seen as full, competent, capable human beings, instead of empty-headed adjuncts to the penis-in-charge. But that's patriarchy for you...

Nice 'aside'.

[Harvey]

I'm about as far as it could possibly get from a "science-fetishist." Certain facts are immutable. Next thing you'll be telling me the earth is flat. Actually, I'd say there's a better chance of the earth being flat than a man has of becoming a woman.

Not as experienced as we think we are. Not intended as a slight in any way, an impartial observation which inevitably sounds condescending, but really, not meant as such. I prick myself with the same barb every day.

[coffin_dodger]

Simple-minded science fetishism. Right up there with how homosexuality obviously contravenes the "natural order."

Is anyone else beginning to see a faint outline of a connection between personal assumption of intellectual superiority and the general worldview of that intellectually superior individual?

In the above instance, it's a two-stage process:

1) By inference, " you are 'simple-minded' "

followed by:

2) the tarnishing of the character of the 'simple-minded' individual with an semi-related, self-evident anti-truism

I could probably word it better, but hey ho.

[seemslikeadream]

bph:

Freedom is frightening. Advancing tragically as conventional human beings do to old age, decay, and ultimately death is fraught with horror and revulsion. Rather than letting go we hold on tighter. Do we die with smiles on our faces or looks of abject sadness and horror, staring back into the nothingness of our lives?

Personally, I'm thankful that I don't hold that worldview in my head. I understand you a little better now, bph - I'm sorry to have clashed with you in the past, but I had no idea that is the world you live in.

sorry I can't agree...still the most vicious person here...or we have a high school teenage girl posting at RI

so interesting to find out the cruelest thing ever said to me here in 11 years was from a woman

Yah, I let my sig line speak for me these days.

I imagine some day you'll be laying on your death bed, your family and friends gathered about, and from your half conscious delirium you'll be muttering about Brainpanhandler and JackRiddler and you'll rouse from your slumber and begin to call loudly for your laptop.... "My laptop! Bring me my laptop! There's mean people wrong on the internet! My laptop! Someone bring me my...." And your family will quietly, soothingly whisper to you that you have to let all that go now and have the doctor sedate you after you become even more incensed.

and BTW I am the reason she started this thread

because most women can't/won't put up with the bullshit that goes on here

Like what? Bullshit that is misogynist? Or just bullshit in general?

I don't think there is any more general bullshit here than elsewhere. Generally speaking, I'd say less. But I'm a woman, so what do I know?

Tue Nov 17, 2015 11:48 am I wrote this and at Tue Nov 17, 2015 12:00 pm she started this thread

bullshit in general

oh WOW I had no idea you were a woman....I thought all that hate could have only come from a man ...but thinking back when I was in high school girls were way more hateful than guys


so interesting to find out the cruelest thing ever said to me here in 11 years was from a woman

and BPH I just plain don't like bullies here...never have never will..I will not be laying on my deathbed thinking of you and Jack...are you fucking kidding me? OF course not and you know that but that will never stop you from an inflated view of yourself....I just plain don't like bullies and I leave my thoughts of you here... they never enter my RL

For the record: I definitely directed that at you. I don't have to be a psychoanalyst to see that. Canadian Watcher was another example of a deeply neurotic type. Paranoid, persecution complex, probably ptsd, character disorder riddled, nut job. Pin that on your chest.

so you are calling me Paranoid, persecution complex, probably ptsd, character disorder riddled, nut job. ?

Yep. And deeply neurotic. and while we're at it, passive aggressive and OCD. You're a veritable catalog of neuroses. You can put that one in your files seemslikeJEdgarHoover.

nice....that's a keeper

Like I said, you can pin that one on your chest and wear it like a badge of honor as you say.

And btw... I'll report my own posts to the mods. I'd could give a flying fuck if I'm suspended for a few days or weeks or forever for that matter.

edit: reported. weeeeeee.....

[divideandconquer]

I'm very tall but deep down inside I've always felt like a short person. I need a lower center of gravity...I need to feel inconspicuous to be who I really am. Yet I'm told height is an immutable characteristic, an immutable truth. So even if I cut off my legs, it won't change my genes. That is, if my genes are passed to my children, they will be tall.

Similarly, cutting off a man's penis doesn't make a man a woman. Doesn't that person needs to take hormones for life? Stop that and she turns back into a he, right? What's really changed?

But I want to be short!

[Luther Blissett]

I would advise anyone who is against transgender people to talk to some of them.

We cannot compare Rachel Dolezal to Chelsea Manning. Transracialism and other deceptions are exploitative imposterism while transgenderism is an identity that permanently marks one as a non-binary person forever at risk of violence and persecution. This isn't a Romany Rye. You cannot cross the DNA floor, as Katharine Quarmby says.

I am fully anti-transhumanist but supportive of rights for trans people. I don't see or understand the connection.

[brekin]

Little surprised at the traditionalism in the thread. Kind of falling between "if grandpappy's pecker was good enough for him so mine will be just fine" to "who will teach the trannies feminism?". Seems like someone wanting to transition from Ickian lizard to human would have an easier hearing.

To me it seems pretty clear. Humans are going to follow their bent to be what they want to be regardless of any boundaries. Why? Well it kind of like why dogs lick their balls- because they can. Science? Nature? Fuck them, they work for us now. (Sure they like to rebel from time to time and we are out of touch with them and don't completely understand them, but that's just how management works)

Anyone here born with some anomaly from a genetic quirk wouldn't hesitate to modify or correct it if it would improve their health or well being. For some people, their junk is like a club foot. That might seem strange or unnatural, but to that person they know (or think they know) what they need to be complete. All of us have been there with something or someone who we thought we needed to be complete. I don't think there was any convincing you that it or him or her wouldn't really make you complete, and honestly it probably would have or did for a short or long while.

So I salute the new sexual revolutionaries and explorers even I don't fully understand them. I only hope that whatever they become is hotter than what they were before. I look at it like music (which incidentally has been a big popular gender chemistry kit) those on the margins, mixing and fusing styles are what keep things innovative and worth listening to.

[guruilla]

As an aside, the whole ideology carries with it a huge load of straight-up sexism, where "being a woman" is automatically and immediately reduced to a nebulous set of classical stereotypes and mannerisms. I can become a woman by dressing "femme," growing my hair, painting my nails, and employing vocal fry. They have literally defined the category of "female" out of existence—precisely the exact fucking opposite of what women have struggled for millennia to achieve, that is, to be seen as full, competent, capable human beings, instead of empty-headed adjuncts to the penis-in-charge. But that's patriarchy for you...

This is a key point and one that keeps getting overlooked, IMO. Ditto with Dr. Evil saying I can be black if I want. I doubt he'd say that so casually if he was black (or whatever the correct term is now). To erase the biological difference of the other is to eradicate the other's identity while claiming it for one's own. It's psychic cuckoo-land.

On the other hand, I do think we ought to be careful about throwing words like well-adjusted out there, because in an exploitative culture, adjustment isn't itself necessarily such a great sign. But on the other other hand, when someone shows a desire to mutilate (if that's not too weighted a term here, I am trying to be clinical) their body as a literalized bid for transformation, it ought to at least be allowed that this may be an unconscious cry for help, and that simply providing them with the justification and means to act on those desires may not be the most compassionate response.

The notion that people know what they need and ought to be allowed to have it is really a major basis for the capitalist mosh-pit of human exploitation which we generally agree, here, is less than a desirable set of affairs. People don't know what they need: they, we, have been cultured and conditioned to want all the wrong things and to turn to the ruling structures to get them, rather than moving inward, where what is of true value (i.e., what's eternal) is found.

The whole notion that suffering is something that needs to be alleviated by fixing the externals is what I am objecting to. We all do it. And it creates the sort of messed up culture of exploitation we are seeing, where no one wants to just sit in the distress of being poisoned, but instead rushes to cut off the offending parts, or worse, take it out on/put it into someone else.

The language of inner/outer and poisoning is itself treacherous territory. I think there are other posters here who have done a good job unpacking the language of contamination.

That's not really a response, except to say, "There are post-ers here who would object to those terms." Can you say why you do?

One way I have thought of this in the past is as a spectrum of freedom that should naturally follow the arc of our lives. In the womb you have the least amount of freedom. Stripping away conditioning as we advance chronologically through our lives. The unnaturalness of the nuclear family virtually guarantees everyone gets forever bogged down in that drama and never even begin the process of becoming an individual nor even dimly recognize this as a first necessity. Freedom is frightening. Advancing tragically as conventional human beings do to old age, decay, and ultimately death is fraught with horror and revulsion. Rather than letting go we hold on tighter. Do we die with smiles on our faces or looks of abject sadness and horror, staring back into the nothingness of our lives?

Most of us just don't live long enough (or perhaps fully enough) to unpack our conditioning even if we manage to conceive of it as a noble goal. It's like we need to hit the ground running but most of us remain spiritual toddlers our entire lives.

I'll have to give this some more thought. I think I might put that as an epitaph on my tombstone.

Just to say, unlike coffindodger (perfect nomme!), I don't find this worldview tragic or morose, simply realistic.

Anyone here born with some anomaly from a genetic quirk wouldn't hesitate to modify or correct it if it would improve their health or well being.

That's a major assumption and one I can tentatively refute, being borderline Jehovah's witness when it comes mod. med.

I would advise anyone who is against transgender people to talk to some of them.

I have, and even been semi-courted by one. I certainly didn't tell him-her s/he was delusional. I am not against transgender people either, nor do I think other post-ers here are just because they are pointing out biological facts and saying that they are still relevant. (& Luther B seems to be being disingenuous by saying s/he doesn't see the overlap with transhumanism.) The idea that one can't point out ways in which a life choice might be misguided or self-sabotaging doesn't make one against it. That's drawing far too brutal a line: "He who is not with me is against me" is the basis for tyranny.

& again, unless I missed a sign at the door, we're not discussing right or wrong social policies here; this is not the board of directors for the Ministry of Health. We're discussing our own sense of what's real and true, and what isn't.