a defense of drag show/drag queens..

[iambiguous]

If that were so: why'd I let you out?

Obviously, it's because we live in a wholly determined universe and you were never really free to opt not to.

Mebbe.

More likely though: I put you in as as annoyance and took you out as nuthin'. That is: a free will assessed you as dog crap underfoot (I scrapped you off my shoe) then, later, reassessed you less than a sparrow fart and not even worth keepin' in an imaginary box.

Note to nature:

Make him post something that might actually challenge me, okay? The last thing I need here is another Stooge.

[iambiguous]

You know the friend & foe buttons on your account page?

Press foe.

For christ sakes, henry, I didn't mean literally!

Hey, you're not bright. I assumed you didn't know.

Just out of curiosity, is this something that you are convinced is actually...clever?

[iambiguous]

That's easy to say on this side of the grave.

Yep.

Now, just out of curiosity, where have you been all these weeks? And be honest, okay?

Givin' your ma the high & hard one...honestly.

Note to others:

You tell me what this tells us about him. And in a philosophy forum of all places!!

Well, what's left of it anyway.

[henry quirk]

Note to nature:

Make him post something that might actually challenge me, okay? The last thing I need here is another Stooge.

You ought to make your appeals to me. You can start by droppin' the hackneyed script. Challenge me by being a challenge (right now, you're not). Write sumthin' original (or, at least, originally phrased), leave off with the canned rhetoric and responses. Then we can talk (instead of just tossin' the same old potato back & forth).

Till then, I'll wait for others to comment on this...

Fetishes are indefensible.

Joe likes to pretend he's Josephine. Mebbe he's industrious enough to get stage work tellin' corny jokes and actin' outrageous in his Mae West-derived persona. Good on him, I guess.

He's still a guy.

Stephen actually believes he's Stephanie. He elects to have his johnson removed, his Adam's apple shaved down, and to endure a lifetime of hormone therapies and surgeries (the wound he calls his vagina needs regular service to stay open); he presents himself as a woman and expects you to respect his pronouns. Good on him too, I guess.

He's a guy, though.

Neither guy is particularly healthy and it's a mistake to pretend they are.

We ought recognize and respect Joe and Stephen have an absolute right to do with themselves (and no one else) as they like. We don't, however, owe them our approval or understanding or patronage.

Of course, you can do as you like: throw money at Josephine, date Stephanie; makes me no never-mind. Pigs wallow with pigs.

[promethean75]

7hf1ff.jpg

[Alexis Jacobi]

He is absolutely convinced (much like Age) that he has an audience perceiving him as being on the winning end of all his exchanges. I don't think he's quite caught on that the majority of people don't care about his exchanges, and the few that are reading them definitely aren't perceiving him as on top.

Oh now hold on a cotton pickin’ moment! I — I exclaim in my defense — Oh, hold on, you’re talking about Iambiguous …

Yes, yes, so true, I agree.

Simply shameless!

[iambiguous]

Note to nature:

Make him post something that might actually challenge me, okay? The last thing I need here is another Stooge.

You ought to make your appeals to me.

Note to nature:

Please explain to him how the laws of matter work. Even for brains like his.

You can start by droppin' the hackneyed script. Challenge me by being a challenge (right now, you're not). Write sumthin' original (or, at least, originally phrased), leave off with the canned rhetoric and responses. Then we can talk (instead of just tossin' the same old potato back & forth).

Come on, henry, over and again on other threads, I challenged you to drop your own hackneyed, woefully predictable, "my way or the highway" objectivist script. And you put me on ignore, right?

Till then, I'll wait for others to comment on this...

Fetishes are indefensible.

And how exactly would you go about demonstrating that beyond noting the fetishes that "in your head" you think are indefensible.

Besides, any number of folks argue that homosexuality itself has a basis in genetic predispositions. After all, given that we live in a culture where the cues for children are overwhelmingly heterosexual, how else to explain those who instead feel more attraction for those of their own sex. And that goes back to the 1950s before the gay rights movement really took off. Consider, for example, those like Alan Turing from the film The Imitation Game.

Joe likes to pretend he's Josephine. Mebbe he's industrious enough to get stage work tellin' corny jokes and actin' outrageous in his Mae West-derived persona. Good on him, I guess.

You guess? But his own particular fetish is still "indefensible"?

Okay, then the same question I asked AJ:

In your own "best of all possible communities", in which you have the political power, which behaviors would be tolerated/permitted and which behaviors would not? Your legal agenda as opposed to someone like Satyr from your old KT haunt...and the Nazis among us who would punish this particular fetish severely.

He's still a guy.

Yes, most are born biologically as either male or female. But there is no getting around the fact that some really, really, really do think of themselves is embodying the opposite gender. Why? Well, one or another complex intertwining of genes and memes, I suppose. But since we are all a part of nature, how can those who feel this way be said to be "unnatural"? In the minority, sure, but no less sincere regarding what they do think and feel about their own bodies.

Stephen actually believes he's Stephanie. He elects to have his johnson removed, his Adam's apple shaved down, and to endure a lifetime of hormone therapies and surgeries (the wound he calls his vagina needs regular service to stay open); he presents himself as a woman and expects you to respect his pronouns. Good on him too, I guess.

He's a guy, though.

Again, since you yourself have never been like that -- you haven't have you?** -- what on earth can you possibly know about their own experiences?

** here I'm talking about the Bob Bauman Syndrome:

"On October 3, 1980, while he was running for re-election, Bauman was charged for soliciting sex from a 16-year-old male prostitute. After the charges were made public, Bauman said he was suffering from alcoholism and entered himself into a court-supervised rehabilitation program, which, upon successful completion, resulted in the charges being dropped. Bauman stated he would continue his re-election campaign, and apologized to voters for his indiscretions." wiki

In other words, those who as conservstives voiced the loudest objections to homosexuality while themselve being homosexual. That's not you, right?

Neither guy is particularly healthy and it's a mistake to pretend they are.

What, because you say so? They may feel completely healthy themselves but only you and your ilk are qualified to differentiate rational from irrational, moral from immoral, healthy from sick behavior.

And that might strike some here as odd because any number of Libertarians are just as adamant about sexual freedom as they are regarding the right to bear arms.

Then this pretzel logic:

We ought recognize and respect Joe and Stephen have an absolute right to do with themselves (and no one else) as they like. We don't, however, owe them our approval or understanding or patronage.

In other words, let these pigs wallow with other pigs if they must but that doesn't make them any less pigs?

[henry quirk]

how the laws of matter work

I'm still waitin' for an answer to...

If all the particles in the universe, including those that make up the brain and body, possess no consciousness, no understanding, no comprehension of meaning, no freedom, then how can those particles give birth to understanding and freedom?

I challenged you to drop your own hackneyed, woefully predictable, "my way or the highway" objectivist script.

Citation, please.

And you put me on ignore, right?

Yep, not becuz I was challenged, though.

how exactly would you go about demonstrating that beyond noting the fetishes that "in your head" you think are indefensible(?)

By definition: a fetishist -- like Joe dressin' to affect the appearance and persona of a woman, or Stephen surgically mutilatin' himself to affect the appearance and persona of a woman -- is abnormal. Both attempt to be what they never can be. The illness that drives them makes them pitiable, but the illness, the fetish, is as defensible as cancer.

any number of folks argue that homosexuality itself has a basis in genetic predispositions.

Who is talkin' about homosexuals? I never brought them up. I'm talkin' about that continuum of dis-eased folks startin' with a guy who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece clear on to, and endn' with, the fella who surgically mutilates himself, having bits lopped off leavin' an open wound (he calls his vagina).

You guess? But his own particular fetish is still "indefensible"?

A figure of speech. Absolutely.

In your own "best of all possible communities", in which you have the political power, which behaviors would be tolerated/permitted and which behaviors would not?

What's not clear about a person, any person, every person, has a natural, inalienable right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property?

Everyone gets to do exactly as he likes with his life, liberty, and property. No one gets to to as he likes with another's life, liberty, and property.

Satyr from your old KT haunt

I haven't been there in a coon's age. I'll have to go over and say hello.

and the Nazis among us who would punish this particular fetish severely.

Them nazis can do with themselves as they like: grow lil mustaches, goose-step, etc. They don't get to do with others as they like.

Yes, most are born biologically as either male or female.

Most?

But there is no getting around the fact that some really, really, really do think of themselves is embodying the opposite gender. Why?

Mental illness.

since we are all a part of nature, how can those who feel this way be said to be "unnatural"?

I never said the fetishist is unnatural. I said the fetishist is dis-eased.

In the minority, sure, but no less sincere regarding what they do think and feel about their own bodies.

I don't question the fetishist's sincerity or his right to self-destruct. His sincerity doesn't make him right; his right to self-destruct doesn't obligate anyone to lend a hand.

what on earth can you possibly know about their own experiences?

I never commented on the fetishist's experience of self. He may sincerely believe he is a she. That's fine by me. I'm just pointin' out he is not a she and cannot be a she.

Bauman

What does a drunken, closeted homosexual (and hoodwinked voters) have to do with the topic?

They may feel completely healthy themselves but only you and your ilk are qualified to differentiate rational from irrational, moral from immoral, healthy from sick behavior.

I'm not the one who coined and defined fetish or gender dysphoria. This isn't a moral issue.

any number of Libertarians are just as adamant about sexual freedom as they are regarding the right to bear arms

Yep. I'm one of 'em.

In other words, let these pigs wallow with other pigs if they must but that doesn't make them any less pigs?

What I posted...

We ought recognize and respect Joe and Stephen have an absolute right to do with themselves (and no one else) as they like. We don't, however, owe them our approval or understanding or patronage.

Of course, you can do as you like: throw money at Josephine, date Stephanie; makes me no never-mind. Pigs wallow with pigs.

Another figure of speech. In context: leave Stephen and his advocates be. Their cockeyed antics are no one's business but theirs.

[Peter Kropotkin]

ok, feel free to explain these idea's as they relate to the modern GOP/MAGA party....

Sure. The cost for that is $199.00

Do you have a PayPal account?

K: ok, so you have no idea what I'm talking about... just say so....
it saves time for all concerned....

Kropotkin

[phyllo]

To what degree is the GOP and/or MAGA conservative?

[Alexis Jacobi]

To what degree is the GOP and/or MAGA conservative?

It’s a good question to ask and, when pursued, it would open up into all sorts of interesting areas. Of great advantage to those of socio-political / philosophical orientation, but less advantage to political activists and those carrying political flags and torches. What I mean is something like the sense in the French expression "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" ("To understand will lead one to forgive" would be how I'd translate it in this case).

Put in the most simple terms (and keep in mind that I am ad libbing here even though I have spent a lot of time investigating the roots of conservatism, the American Right, and also the Extreme Right factions), the MAGA movement is one that deal in the notion and sentiment of ownership. That is, that the huge constituency of people (about half the country, right?) have the sense that what is their rightful possession -- their country, their heritage, even themselves at an ethnic and biological (somatic) level -- is being/or has been taken from them. I think that one must begin from defining first a sentiment and then move to the arena of defining ideas about this loss.

The reason being that, and perhaps this is true for the larger majority? they are far less involved in ideas, discussion and conversation that could result in clear self-consciousness and clear articulation, and substantially in a sort of intellectual darkness or what I might call a shadow-realm where little is clear. But this does not mean that there are not now nor have there not been clear and direct thinkers.

So to illustrate an idea-set that supports my contention here I will quote Wilmot Robertson in The Dispossessed Majority (1972):

Is it not incredible that the largest American population group, the group with the deepest roots, the most orderly and most technically proficient group, the nuclear population group of American culture and of the American gene pool, should have lost its preeminence to weaker, less established, less numerous, culturally heterogeneous, and often mutually hostile minorities?

With all due allowance for minority dynamism ... this miraculous shift of power could never have taken place without a Majority "split in the ranks" - without the active assistance and participation of Majority members themselves. It has already been pointed out that race consciousness is one of mankind's greatest binding forces. From this it follows that when the racial gravitational pull slackens people tend to spin off from the group nucleus. Some drift aimlessly through life as human isolates. Others look for a substitute nucleus in an intensified religious or political life, or in an expanded class consciousness. Still others, out of idealism, romanticism, inertia, or perversity, attach themselves to another race in an attempt to find the solidarity they miss in their own.

This book, though it had a limited circulation, was very influential among those groups of people in America working *against the grain of the times*, as it were, to cobble together an intellectually-based reactive position.

However, if I were to include a more up-to-date list of titles that are influential among those of the reactive/political Right and also the more militant and extreme Right, I would start with this list:

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life [1994],
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy [1995],
The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements [1998],
Our Culture, What's Left Of It: The Mandarins And The Masses [2005],
Not with a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline [2008],
The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture [2011],
Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism [2011],
Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution [2018], and
Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class [2020].

It must be said: The thinking, the structure of ideas, that Robertson and all those titles that I have just listed, are ideas that are now forbidden. They are so contentious that they are simply not allowed into the public sphere as bona fide topics of thought and conversation. So I will suggest here that the question Why is this so? can be and should be asked. The answer to it is in no way simple.

This is why I say that to understand our present we must begin from the basic assertion that we are in the midst of an Idea War. If this assertion is true then one is in a better position to examine the mechanisms of ideological control. And if one recognizes that ideological control is a paramount activity, then one can understand why it is imperative to exclude entire ranges of ideas that are made to seem, and indeed to be labeled as, unthinkable thought. An irony here is that I got the term unthinkable thought from Noam Chomsky! (Manufacturing Consent, etc.)

It could well and fairly be said that hovering around the MAGA movement are certain conservative opinionators and even scholars -- for example Victor Davis Hanson. However, I think that to understand American Conservatism and indeed the movement that brought about a *return* to the Evangelical and the Catholic fold among demographic groups that, in the post-Sixties had fallen away, one must refer to Richard Weaver.

Weaver was a dyed-in-the-wool Platonist and did not deal on Christian themes. But he did put forth the concept of 'metaphysical dream of the world'. That is, a vision, a sense, something foundational and perhaps intuited, that our lives are moulded and ruled by our metaphysical conceptions. (Even an anti-metaphysics is, I think, a metaphysics -- if you think about it). This is why, in my own case, I can propose transcending any specific religious persuasion or conviction. And 'picture'. One must understand that what one is really dealing in iare metaphysical concepts that *stand behind* any concretized religious form and mythology.

And by considering the ideas of Richard Weaver one will, as I was, be led to reexamine the American Civil War (the War Between the States is the *politically correct* way to put it) and the intensely politicized and ideological framing of this seminal conflict by the northern political power-structure. That framing, which is part-and-parcel of America's civil religion, is in my view where the so-called Culture Wars are truly to be located. Again I'd say: that it revolves around the issue, the question & the problem, of ownership, control and power.

And without going into details here I will simply float the notion that presently, in the country, the core battles have to do with control and definition of *what America is*, who owns it, who has a right to own it and direct it, and to what ends. These are huge questions and conflictuous ones.

I have often posted the link to this illustrative and I think illuminating bit of discourse (edited from a longer talk and given a soundtrack!) by Jonathan Bowden. My sense of it, and again I focus as a starting point on 'sentiment' that is also part-and-parcel of idea structure, is that it expresses something that, in vague ways, is shared by the MAGA constituencies. But then I would double-back to my assertion that it is, ultimately, bound up with the sentiment of dispossession.

[henry quirk]

I will simply float the notion that presently, in the country, the core battles have to do with control and definition of *what America is*, who owns it, who has a right to own it and direct it, and to what ends. These are huge questions and conflictuous ones.

The question, I think, is deeper. What is a human being? Or, what is a person? More precisely: is a man ensouled or is a man just a meat machine?

The American Experiment extends directly from the notion a man, every man, any man, is ensouled, has natural rights, is a free will. The democratic process undergirding republicanism was an attempt to square a circle, to reconcile the natural tension between the imperatives of one and the desires of many, between the noble drive and the base appetite.

To the extent folks respected that structure there was order, not perfect, not stable, but order nevertheless.

To the extent folks don't respect that structure there is chaos, perfect like a hurricane.

[iambiguous]

Note to nature:

Please explain to him how the laws of matter work. Even for brains like his.

I'm still waitin' for an answer to...

If all the particles in the universe, including those that make up the brain and body, possess no consciousness, no understanding, no comprehension of meaning, no freedom, then how can those particles give birth to understanding and freedom?

That's my point, henry. Please pay attention. "Somehow" matter came into existence. "Somehow" lifeless matter became biological matter on planet Earth. "Somehow" brainless biological matter evolved in to us.

How? Why?

Well, according to you, the Deist God, "following the dictates of Reason and Nature", is the explanation. According to IC, the Christian God is the explanation. According to atheists, nature itself is the explanation.

According to brain scientists grappling to understand it experientially, empirically, experimentally? They're still working on it. But, in the interim, we should just all agree that your own rooted existentially in dasein "assessment" here is almost certainly the most rational explanation?

I challenged you to drop your own hackneyed, woefully predictable, "my way or the highway" objectivist script.

Citation, please.

Hell, virtually every exchange we've had. Only you actually do believe that your value judgments are not part of a "hackneyed, woefully predictable, 'my way or the highway' objectivist script".

On the other hand, henry, neither do any of these folks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies

But one by one, just like you, God or No God, they will all insist that their own assessment of drag queens and homosexuals is, in fact, objectively, the "real deal". The One True Path.

how exactly would you go about demonstrating that beyond noting the fetishes that "in your head" you think are indefensible(?)

Besides, any number of folks argue that homosexuality itself has a basis in genetic predispositions. After all, given that we live in a culture where the cues for children are overwhelmingly heterosexual, how else to explain those who instead feel more attraction for those of their own sex. And that goes back to the 1950s before the gay rights movement really took off. Consider, for example, those like Alan Turing from the film The Imitation Game.

By definition: a fetishist -- like Joe dressin' to affect the appearance and persona of a woman, or Stephen surgically mutilatin' himself to affect the appearance and persona of a woman -- is abnormal. Both attempt to be what they never can be. The illness that drives them makes them pitiable, but the illness, the fetish, is as defensible as cancer.

So, this part...

any number of folks argue that homosexuality itself has a basis in genetic predispositions.

...is moot?

Who is talkin' about homosexuals? I never brought them up. I'm talkin' about that continuum of dis-eased folks startin' with a guy who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece clear on to, and endn' with, the fella who surgically mutilates himself, having bits lopped off leavin' an open wound (he calls his vagina).

Come on, henry, drag queens and transgenders and homosexuals are often all lumped together in the minds of those able to convince themselves that they are all "perverts". Then it's just a matter of what to do about them.

Oh, and back again to your "this is what I believe about them in my head so that makes it true" philosophy of life. Same with abortion and bazookas. What you think about them as well makes it true because your long-gone God installed in you the capacity to follow the dictates of Reason and Nature.

And though others might construe that sort of "thinking" as, well, infantile, it still works mighty fine in comforting and consoling you.

Doesn't it?

In your own "best of all possible communities", in which you have the political power, which behaviors would be tolerated/permitted and which behaviors would not? Your legal agenda as opposed to someone like Satyr from your old KT haunt...and the Nazis among us who would punish this particular fetish severely.

What's not clear about a person, any person, every person, has a natural, inalienable right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property?

Everyone gets to do exactly as he likes with his life, liberty, and property. No one gets to to as he likes with another's life, liberty, and property.

Well, for starters, when it comes to things like human sexuality, abortion and guns, different people have different [sometimes very different] understandings regarding what "for all practical purposes" those words mean in any particular community. For example, in regard to which particular behaviors are rewarded or punished.

But it's good to know that in your own "best of all possible communities" drag queens and transgenders and homosexuals of all kinds would be free to pursue their own "dis-eased", mentally ill lifestyles without any interference from the government. Well, unless it involved the kids of course.

Satyr from your old KT haunt

I haven't been there in a coon's age. I'll have to go over and say hello.

Yeah, do that. Along with AJ, explore any possible differences between yourself and him in regard to drag queens.

and the Nazis among us who would punish this particular fetish severely.

Them nazis can do with themselves as they like: grow lil mustaches, goose-step, etc. They don't get to do with others as they like.

Well, for any drag queens here, that is no doubt good to know. You wouldn't go as far as the Nazis did.

But there is no getting around the fact that some really, really, really do think of themselves is embodying the opposite gender. Why? Well, one or another complex intertwining of genes and memes, I suppose.

Mental illness.

Oh, right, I forgot. If that's what you think it is then "following the dictates of Reason and Nature" per your long-gone God's contribution to human morality, that makes it so. Axiomatically as it were.

since we are all a part of nature, how can those who feel this way be said to be "unnatural"?

I never said the fetishist is unnatural. I said the fetishist is dis-eased.

Okay, then, how do you differentiate dis-eased from diseased here? And how can anything that is a part of nature [as we are] not be accepted as that which nature permits? Isn't that precisely why those like you and IC fall back on God and religion? So you can point to that as the explanation for your own moral and political prejudices.

In the minority, sure, but no less sincere regarding what they do think and feel about their own bodies.

I don't question the fetishist's sincerity or his right to self-destruct. His sincerity doesn't make him right; his right to self-destruct doesn't obligate anyone to lend a hand.

Only, of course, with you, your own sincerity does make it right. And if they celebrate their own natural sexuality rather than see it as destructive, their sincerity is no less dis-eased/diseased. And this is so because you believe it is. And you believe it because your long-gone God installed in your very own soul the capacity to be absolutely correct about every moral conflagration that there ever was.

On the other hand, what of those Deists out there who are themselves drag queens? Does Deism have its own equivalent of original sin and the Devil?

what on earth can you possibly know about their own experiences?

I never commented on the fetishist's experience of self. He may sincerely believe he is a she. That's fine by me. I'm just pointin' out he is not a she and cannot be a she.

Come on, henry. We all know that what we think about something can go a long, long way toward how we feel about ourselves...and regarding the behaviors that we choose. And it's our behaviors that precipitate consequences. For ourselves and others. And that includes how we think about drag queens. Fortunately, for them, unlike with Satyr and the Nazis, they'll get no problems from you. You'll think what you do about them "in your head", but grant them the freedom to think as they do as well.

Bauman

What does a drunken, closeted homosexual (and hoodwinked voters) have to do with the topic?

Everything if you are just another Bauman. Coming in here telling us about how dis-eased and mentally ill drag queens and homosexuals and transgenders are...all the while being one of them yourself.

They may feel completely healthy themselves but only you and your ilk are qualified to differentiate rational from irrational, moral from immoral, healthy from sick behavior.

I'm not the one who coined and defined fetish or gender dysphoria. This isn't a moral issue.

Right, henry, keep telling yourself that.

any number of Libertarians are just as adamant about sexual freedom as they are regarding the right to bear arms

Yep. I'm one of 'em.

Note to the drag queens among us:

You're still "dis-eased" though. You're still mentally ill.

In other words, let these pigs wallow with other pigs if they must but that doesn't make them any less pigs?

What I posted...

We ought recognize and respect Joe and Stephen have an absolute right to do with themselves (and no one else) as they like. We don't, however, owe them our approval or understanding or patronage.

Of course, you can do as you like: throw money at Josephine, date Stephanie; makes me no never-mind. Pigs wallow with pigs.

In other words, let these dis-eased, mentally ill pigs wallow with other dis-eased, mentally ill pigs if they must but that doesn't make them any less dis-eased, mentally ill pigs?

[henry quirk]

That's my point

I know.

How? Why?

Well, according to you, the Deist God

Yep.

"following the dictates of Reason and Nature"

No, not exactly.

According to IC, the Christian God is the explanation.

Yep.

According to atheists, nature itself is the explanation.

Yep.

According to brain scientists...They're still working on it.

Supposedly.

But, in the interim, we should just all agree that your own "assessment" here is almost certainly the most rational explanation?

Nope.

Hell, virtually every exchange we've had.

Citation, please.

Only you actually do believe that your value judgments are not part of a "hackneyed, woefully predictable, 'my way or the highway' objectivist script".

I have no truck with canned or scripted posts. Five or ten citations could prove me wrong.

But one by one, just like you, God or No God, they will all insist that their own assessment of drag queens and homosexuals is, in fact, objectively, the "real deal". The One True Path.

Citation, please. I've never said dddly about The One True Path.

So, this part...

any number of folks argue that homosexuality itself has a basis in genetic predispositions.

...is moot?

What I posted...

any number of folks argue that homosexuality itself has a basis in genetic predispositions.

Who is talkin' about homosexuals? I never brought them up. I'm talkin' about that continuum of dis-eased folks startin' with a guy who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece clear on to, and endn' with, the fella who surgically mutilates himself, having bits lopped off leavin' an open wound (he calls his vagina).

So, yes, in this conversation, it's moot.

Come on, henry, drag queens and transgenders and homosexuals are often all lumped together in the minds of those able to convince themselves that they are all "perverts".

If such conflaters wanna join the conversation, they can defend themselves. I'm not their spokesman. I won't defend them.

Then it's just a matter of what to do about them.

Easy: leave them be.

What you think about them as well makes it true because your long-gone God installed in you the capacity to follow the dictates of Reason and Nature.

Nope.

And though others might construe that sort of "thinking" as, well, infantile

As they like.

it still works mighty fine in comforting and consoling you.

Doesn't it?

Nope.

Well, for starters, when it comes to things like human sexuality, abortion and guns, different people have different [sometimes very different] understandings regarding what "for all practical purposes" those words mean in any particular community.

Can't see how. It's stark, plain, and direct: a person, any person, every person, has a natural, inalienable right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property. There's no room for interpretation. There are no loopholes. There's no middle ground. A man's life, liberty, and property are his -- full stop -- or his life, liberty, and property are not his -- full stop.

I'll be glad to review any examples where a man's life, liberty, and property are legitimately partially his, or partially
not his, or partially some one else's. Mebbe the only legitimate example is where one personally consents to relinquish control of his life, liberty, and property. Even then, though, one can withdraw consent, or ought be able to.

in regard to which particular behaviors are rewarded or punished

If a man's life, liberty, and property are his: the only behaviors warranting punishment are those violating a man's life, liberty, and property. As for rewards: if one recognizes and respects another's just claim to his own life, liberty, and property, his reward is to be left alone.

But it's good to know that in your own "best of all possible communities" drag queens and transgenders and homosexuals of all kinds would be free to pursue their own "dis-eased", mentally ill lifestyles without any interference from the government.

Well, in my best of all possible worlds, there would be no State. And, everyone -- within the broad confines of natural rights -- would be free to live in whatever cockeyed way they like.

Well, unless it involved the kids of course.

As for kids: they have natural rights too. They're persons.

explore any possible differences between yourself and him in regard to drag queens.

No need. I'm aware of his views. It's been awhile, but I'm sure he has some dim recollection of mine. There's been no rancor between us, even where we part company. That good will probably extends out from the idea of not pissin' on your host's rug when in his home. Civility. Like what I'm offerin' in this conversation.

You wouldn't go as far as the Nazis did.

Insofar as I know: no nazi (or democrat, or republican, or conservative, or progressive, or Libertarian, or etc.) gives a rat's dirty rear end about natural rights 'cept as lip service. Like almost everyone here, they have the same deep in the bone understanding of their own natural and just claim to life, liberty, and property, and -- like almost everyone here -- they choose to ignore that others (particularly others outside their particular tribe) have that same exact natural right to life, liberty, and property.

So, yeah, it's safe to say I wouldn't go as far, or in the same direction, the nazis did.

If that's what you think it is then "following the dictates of Reason and Nature" per your long-gone God's contribution to human morality, that makes it so

It's just common sense. A man, to feel less alien in his own skin, lops off body parts and then pretends he's a she. A woman, to feel less alien in her own skin, lops off body parts then pretends she's a he. It's lunacy. Really, which is more likely: the body ought be aligned to the mind (by way of irrevocable butchery) or the mind ought be re-aligned with body (by way of *offered or *requested therapy)?

*not forced or mandated

how do you differentiate dis-eased from diseased here?

Dis-eased: not at ease. Diseased: sick. The fella who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece (to support an anatomical feature he doesn't have) is dis-eased. The guy who willingly has himself surgically mutilated to (for the most) unsuccessfully affect the appearance, demeanor, persona of a woman is diseased.

And how can anything that is a part of nature [as we are] not be accepted as that which nature permits?

Cancer is natural: no one suggests accepting it.

Disease, and disease processes, physical and non-physical, are utterly natural, but they aren't biologically or psychologically normal.

Isn't that precisely why those like you and IC fall back on God and religion?

In this conversation: I'm not the one bringin' up God. I've had no call to.

So you can point to that as the explanation for your own moral and political prejudices.

As I say: I'm not the one bringin' up God. I've had no call to.

Only, of course, with you, your own sincerity does make it right.

My sincerity doesn't figure in. It's commonsensical. A person who'll lop off a natural body part (an arm, an ear, a penis, breasts) for no other reason than the part feels wrong or alien is a nutjob.

they celebrate their own natural sexuality rather than see it as destructive

First, in droves trans folks experience buyer's remorse; there's little celebration.

Second: among those trans folks who don't experience buyer's remorse, there's a whole bunch of anger. They claimed they wanted to align body to mind, they did so, but it's not enough. The world, according to them, is obligated to agree with choice. Not much celebratin' going on there either.

My point: if validation is required (rather than merely desired) the whole I am a woman! movement is hollow.

And you believe it because your long-gone God installed in your very own soul the capacity to be absolutely correct about every moral conflagration that there ever was.

First, this trans thing is hardly a conflagration. Second, no.

On the other hand, what of those Deists out there who are themselves drag queens?

What of them?

Does Deism have its own equivalent of original sin and the Devil?

Nope. More accurately,: no strain of deism I'm aware of has dogma or doctrine about or defining original sin or satan.

We all know that what we think about something can go a long, long way toward how we feel about ourselves...and regarding the behaviors that we choose.

Sure. We all have our prejudices, our idiosyncrasies. Ir's not a given, though, such things determine behavior.

grant them the freedom to think as they do as well.

I grant them nuthin'. I simply recognize they, as individuals, have the right to do to themselves any damned thing they like, as long as they don't deprive or violate the natural rights of others.

Everything if you are just another Bauman. Coming in here telling us about how dis-eased and mentally ill drag queens and homosexuals and transgenders are...all the while being one of them yourself.

I've not commented on gays, or conflated homosexuality with transvestism. I won't be goaded into conflating them.

Right, henry, keep telling yourself that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_fetishism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria

I'm on safe ground here. I use the accepted terms, as defined.

As I reckon it, it can't be a moral issue. Stephen opts to surgically mutilate himself. He's violated no one else's life, liberty, or property. He's acted self-destructively but not immorally. Later, Stephen, profoundly unhappy with what he's done to himself, eats Drano. He's off'd himself: dumb, but as he is his, not immoral.

Now, let's say that instead of offing himself in one of the worst ways possible, Stephsn goes out and shoots up a school. There, he's acted immorally. He's deprived others of life, liberty, and property. Or, in a world where the anti-gunners win, Stephen walks out on the playground with a machete and goes to town on the kids. He's acted immorally.

His self-mutilation, his fetish, his lunacy, as long as he confines them and their consequences to himself, are not immoral (not a moral issue).

Note to the drag queens among us:

You're still "dis-eased" though. You're still mentally ill.

Most of them would probably agree. Sadly, the cure far too many seek is irrevocable and disfiguring.

In other words, let these dis-eased, mentally ill pigs wallow with other dis-eased, mentally ill pigs if they must but that doesn't make them any less dis-eased, mentally ill pigs?

More like: leave the whackadoodles be.

[iambiguous]

That's my point. Please pay attention. "Somehow" matter came into existence. "Somehow" lifeless matter became biological matter on planet Earth. "Somehow" brainless biological matter evolved in to us.

I know.

Okay, how is it not applicable to you then? Like all the rest of us, you don't know how these things happened. You just shrug and say "God". So, you are left with just "thinking up" something to explain how the human brain functions here knowing that you have no way in which to actually demonstrate it.

How? Why?

Well, according to you, the Deist God

Yep.

Same thing. You bring it all back to a God that you have absolutely no capacity whatsoever to demonstrate the actual existence of beyond the fact that you believe He exists "in your head". In my view, just another rendition of your own arrogant "the fact that I believe it is what makes it true" philosophy.

And what intrigues me most about beliefs of this sort is not what you believe but pinning down the experience or relationship you had that, in the absence of, you would not believe in Deism at all. Instead, you might be a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist.

In other words, what is your own take on how the Benjamin Button Syndrome -- https://youtu.be/mTDs0lvFuMc -- functions in creating value judgments in your life? All those variables in your life you had/have little or no control over that still had or can have an enormous impact on how your life unfolds.

According to IC, the Christian God is the explanation.

Yep.

Only along with free will and designating homosexuality as a sin, many of IC's Christians are quick to point out that you are on the road to eternal damnation in Hell. Or, as IC himself might put it if asked about it: "Yep".

According to atheists, nature itself is the explanation.

Yep.

Again, though, what all of us share in common is the fact that none of us are able to actually demonstrate any of what we believe about either God or drag queens much beyond our own subjective assumptions/prejuduces rooted existentially in the lives we've lived.

According to brain scientists...They're still working on it.

Supposedly.

Supposedly? How about definitely: https://www.google.com/search?q=neurosc ... s-wiz-serp

Only nothing in the way of a definitive consensus yet. Though, unlike most of us here, they are not just sitting around at home "thinking up" ways to understand it.

Only you actually do believe that your value judgments are not part of a "hackneyed, woefully predictable, 'my way or the highway' objectivist script".

I have no truck with canned or scripted posts. Five or ten citations could prove me wrong.

Do you or do you not believe that your views regarding drag queens reflects the most rational manner in which to think about them given your capacity [re God] to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature"? How "for all practical purposes" does that work for you?

That, in other words, they are in fact dis-eased and mentally ill.

Back again to the point I noted in regard to guns and abortions. Have you ever engaged in an exchange with someone regarding these things in which you acknowledged that their own frame of mind was more reasonable? Most objectivist will say no. Why? Because once they admit that they were wrong about something pertaining to the morality of human sexuality in the past they are acknowledging that they may well be wrong about something now.

How about it then? Are you acknowledging that your frame of mind here and now regarding these things may well not be the most rational assessment of them? And are you willing to agree that given a new experience and relationship or given access to new information and knowledge you may well change your mind?

But one by one, just like you, God or No God, they will all insist that their own assessment of drag queens and homosexuals is, in fact, objectively, the "real deal". The One True Path.

Citation, please. I've never said dddly about The One True Path.

Okay, so back again to what I just noted above about your own value judgments "here and now" just being "personal opinions", ever subject to change given new experiences. Given that, you may well become a drag queen yourself, right? And denounce the 2nd Amendment. How are your current views regarding drag queens not deemed by you to be the equivalent of One True Path to common sense and rationality?

Come on, henry, drag queens and transgenders and homosexuals are often all lumped together in the minds of those able to convince themselves that they are all "perverts".

If such conflaters wanna join the conversation, they can defend themselves. I'm not their spokesman. I won't defend them.

Okay, okay. As far as our exchange goes, it is your contention that drag queens are dis-eased and mentally ill. But that homosexuals and transgender folks may well not be at all? That's for another thread?

Then it's just a matter of what to do about them.

Easy: leave them be.

Dis-eased and mentally ill as they are.

Well, for starters, when it comes to things like human sexuality, abortion and guns, different people have different [sometimes very different] understandings regarding what "for all practical purposes" those words mean in any particular community.

Can't see how. It's stark, plain, and direct: a person, any person, every person, has a natural, inalienable right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property. There's no room for interpretation. There are no loopholes. There's no middle ground. A man's life, liberty, and property are his -- full stop -- or his life, liberty, and property are not his -- full stop.

Come on, henry, get real. In community after community after community in regard to sexuality and guns and abortions there is nothing but strife regarding how to translate "life, liberty and property" into actual rules of behavior. The drag queen's right to live his life freely vs. the right of others to live in a community where dis-eased, mentally ill people are either "cured" or locked up in mental institutions.

Or this: https://time.com/6260421/tennessee-limi ... bills-u-s/

Nope. Instead, it's straight back up into "general description intellectual contraption" clouds for you:

I'll be glad to review any examples where a man's life, liberty, and property are legitimately partially his, or partially not his, or partially some one else's. Mebbe the only legitimate example is where one personally consents to relinquish control of his life, liberty, and property. Even then, though, one can withdraw consent, or ought be able to.

If a man's life, liberty, and property are his: the only behaviors warranting punishment are those violating a man's life, liberty, and property. As for rewards: if one recognizes and respects another's just claim to his own life, liberty, and property, his reward is to be left alone.

Philosophically, as it were.

But for the drag queens among us, it's good to know that in your own "best of all possible communities" they would be free to pursue their own "dis-eased", mentally ill lifestyles without any interference from the government.

Well, in my best of all possible worlds, there would be no State. And, everyone -- within the broad confines of natural rights -- would be free to live in whatever cockeyed way they like.

Of course, no state and no government and there is always the possibility that, in regard to "life, liberty and property", "might makes right" prevails. Or the state and the government itself embodies "right makes might". On the other hand, in regard to nations that embrace one or another rendition of democracy and the rule of law there are always going to be conflicts regarding what those words actually mean given a particular set of circumstances.

Well, unless it involved the kids of course.

As for kids: they have natural rights too. They're persons.

Indeed, and nature itself has seen fit to turn them on sexually as young as age 8 for girls and 9 for boys. So let them?

explore any possible differences between yourself and him in regard to drag queens.

No need. I'm aware of his views. It's been awhile, but I'm sure he has some dim recollection of mine. There's been no rancor between us, even where we part company. That good will probably extends out from the idea of not pissin' on your host's rug when in his home. Civility. Like what I'm offerin' in this conversation.

Besides, you readily admit that he might be right and you wrong here. Given that a new experience in your life might bring you around to his way of thinking. Right? Whereas one suspects that this could never be the case with him. Or with the Nazis among us. Not with the fulminating fanatic objectivists. Drag queens are never, ever to be tolerated in their own best of all possible communities. Let alone homosexuals.

As for civility...there? Piss on his rug [civilly or not[ and you are gone.

You wouldn't go as far as the Nazis did.

Insofar as I know: no nazi (or democrat, or republican, or conservative, or progressive, or Libertarian, or etc.) gives a rat's dirty rear end about natural rights 'cept as lip service.

See, there you go. You talk about "natural rights" as though only you get to say what they are in regard to sex and guns and abortions. And, as far as I know, lots and lots and lots of those folks you mention firmly believe in their own rendition of them...just as you do. Only, to them, you're the fool.

Note to the Nazis among us:

What is "naturally right" to you in regard to drag queens? That being one is "naturally wrong", right?

Then back up into the clouds of abstraction:

Like almost everyone here, they have the same deep in the bone understanding of their own natural and just claim to life, liberty, and property, and -- like almost everyone here -- they choose to ignore that others (particularly others outside their particular tribe) have that same exact natural right to life, liberty, and property.

If that's what you think it is then "following the dictates of Reason and Nature" per your long-gone God's contribution to human morality, that makes it so

It's just common sense. A man, to feel less alien in his own skin, lops off body parts and then pretends he's a she. A woman, to feel less alien in her own skin, lops off body parts then pretends she's a he. It's lunacy.

Not to them it's not. In fact to go that far it must be very, very important to them. Regarding how they think and feel about themselves. Only they are lunatics because you say so. Their own bodies may be their property to do with as they please, but that doesn't make them any less mentally ill. And they must be because you believe that they are.

how do you differentiate dis-eased from diseased here?

Dis-eased: not at ease. Diseased: sick. The fella who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece (to support an anatomical feature he doesn't have) is dis-eased. The guy who willingly has himself surgically mutilated to (for the most) unsuccessfully affect the appearance, demeanor, persona of a woman is diseased.

Why? Again, because you think so. What actual hard evidence do you have to demonstrate it such that all rational men and women -- scientists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists etc., -- are obligated to believe the same?

Not necessary? It's all just "common sense"?

And how can anything that is a part of nature [as we are] not be accepted as that which nature permits?

Cancer is natural: no one suggests accepting it.

Disease, and disease processes, physical and non-physical, are utterly natural, but they aren't biologically or psychologically normal.

Few choose to have cancer. But nature [given free will] allows men and women to choose the gender that they feel most in sync with. And since millions and millions have chosen to become drag queens or transvestites or have sex change operations how "unnatural" can it be. Then back to the part where we still don't know the extent to which this might all be derived genetically by way of biological imperatives. The normal biologically and psychologically does not entail that behaviors chosen that are not normal are unnatural. Let alone a sign of mental illness. That's just your own "common sense" political prejudices which you refuse to acknowledge may well be rooted in dasein.

Isn't that precisely why those like you and IC fall back on God and religion?

In this conversation: I'm not the one bringin' up God. I've had no call to.

That, in my opinion, is ridiculous. God created you. God installed in you the capacity to think something like drag queens through rationally and naturally. He has everything to do with the human condition. The big difference between you and IC basically being that any number of Christians will insist that drag queens and other sexual deviants are going straight to Hell. Unless, perhaps, on Judgment Day they can convince God that they are mentally ill?

Only, of course, with you, your own sincerity does make it right.

My sincerity doesn't figure in. It's commonsensical. A person who'll lop off a natural body part (an arm, an ear, a penis, breasts) for no other reason than the part feels wrong or alien is a nutjob.

Back to that again. Take any issue, from abortion and drag queens to life, liberty and the pursuit of property and ask all the folks on this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies

...list what encompasses "common sense". And then watch as right down the line they will all insist it's what they say it is. What...we are actually expected to believe that you really do know what it is? That drag queens are dis-eased and those who obtain a sex change operation are diseased. Both are mentally ill and if you don't buy that you're not a rational human being?

Something like that?

if they celebrate their own natural sexuality rather than see it as destructive their sincerity is no less dis-eased/diseased

First, in droves trans folks experience buyer's remorse; there's little celebration.

Second: among those trans folks who don't experience buyer's remorse, there's a whole bunch of anger. They claimed they wanted to align body to mind, they did so, but it's not enough. The world, according to them, is obligated to agree with choice. Not much celebratin' going on there either.

On the other hand, Google that -- https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... gle+Search -- and as one might suspect the reality is always more complicated. If only, like you, they were all in possession of common sense.

And you believe it because your long-gone God installed in your very own soul the capacity to be absolutely correct about every moral conflagration that there ever was.

First, this trans thing is hardly a conflagration. Second, no.

It is if you are attacked by those who think you are mentally ill and should not be tolerated in a rational, civilized community. And that can be before we get to the Satyrs and the Evangelicals and the MAGA crowd and the Nazis.

On the other hand, what of those Deists out there who are themselves drag queens?

What of them?

Well, as with Kantians and their deontological agenda, doesn't it strike some as odd that all Kantians are not on the same page regarding moral issues. They predicate good and bad on rationality, don't they? So how come they can't all agree on the optimal moral agenda. Same with Deists. Their God installed in them a Divine capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature". And, as it turns out, common sense. So how can they be all up and down the political spectrum as well? Even within your own ranks things like common sense seem considerably more subjective than one might anticipate. Derived more perhaps existentially from dasein than essentially from God.

We all know that what we think about something can go a long, long way toward how we feel about ourselves...and regarding the behaviors that we choose. And it's our behaviors that precipitate consequences. For ourselves and others. And that includes how we think about drag queens. Fortunately, for them, unlike with Satyr and the Nazis, they'll get no problems from you. You'll think what you do about them "in your head", but grant them the freedom to think as they do as well.

Sure. We all have our prejudices, our idiosyncrasies. Ir's not a given, though, such things determine behavior.

Not in the manner in which cause and effect works in the either/or world. I prefer to use the world "predisposed". That given the historical and cultural and experiential contexts in which you are indoctrinated as a child and given in turn your own uniquely personal experiences as adults you are more likely to choose one set of behaviors over another.

What does a drunken, closeted homosexual (and hoodwinked voters) have to do with the topic?

Everything if you are just another Bauman. Coming in here telling us about how dis-eased and mentally ill drag queens and homosexuals and transgenders are...all the while being one of them yourself.

I've not commented on gays, or conflated homosexuality with transvestism. I won't be goaded into conflating them.

Or, perhaps, goaded into going even further?

Now, let's say that instead of offing himself in one of the worst ways possible, Stephsn goes out and shoots up a school. There, he's acted immorally. He's deprived others of life, liberty, and property. Or, in a world where the anti-gunners win, Stephen walks out on the playground with a machete and goes to town on the kids. He's acted immorally.

His self-mutilation, his fetish, his lunacy, as long as he confines them and their consequences to himself, are not immoral (not a moral issue).

Okay, fine, that's how you see it. You're not like Satyr or the Nazis who might be much more draconian regarding sexual perverts in their community. So, again, for the drag queens or those who have had sex-change operations among us, up to a point, that would be good to know. They might disagree regarding your "common sense" assumption about them being diseased or mentally ill or lunatics, but at least you wouldn't be after the state to make their behaviors actually illegal.

Or worse.