ANOTHER TRANNY BASHING THREAD

[FlashDangerpants]

10. A man does all the above, plus magically has his DNA transformed to XX. <--- By now I am already sold anyway. But this one seems like a question to trouble Henry with. I think there should be more important uses for gene therapy, but this is not an entirely distant prospect.

I've touched on the subject here, in sibling threads, and in the Descartes's dualism thread.

Ah. A conversation about Descartes AND dualism all in one, that is the perfect place to hide things from me!

Just recoding from XY to XX isn't enough. To literally transform a man into a woman, you'll have to reconstruct him, from cell interiors on out. The whole of him would have to be rebuilt in to her.

The result of such reconstruction would indeed result in man becoming woman, but not only that: the process of reconstruction would obliterate one person and create a new one.

From my post in the Descartes's dualism thread...

My 13 year old is playin' one of the games in the Mass Effect series. In that universe, A.I. exists and is described...

...(as a) self-aware computing system capable of learning and independent decision making. Creation of a conscious AI requires adaptive code, a slow, expensive education, and a specialized quantum computer called a "blue box".

Here's the relevant part...

An AI cannot be transmitted across a communication channel or computer network. Without its blue box, an AI is no more than data files. Loading these files into a new blue box will create a new personality, as variations in the quantum hardware and runtime results create unpredictable variations.

Yeah, I have been told that one of the characters in Strar Trek refused to use the beam me up transporter for exactly the same reason. I don't know which, nor do I know if it's true.

Leavin' aside all the science fictiony goodness, the underlined bit what I'm talkin' about.

Mind states aren't just brain states.

A man isn't just matter; he's equally information.

He's a composite of, as I say, two very different things, each useless without the other.

Rebuildin' a man into a woman, by definition, creates a new person by killing the old one.

All in all, it seems like a whole helluva lot of work (and associated moral baggage) to resolve a problem probably best addressed through intensive cognitive therapy (a solution available today).

Well I suppose. If the process is to mince the patient up into all their individual cells and then strip out the chromosome and replace it in each, then squish the whole thing back together and breathe life back into it, then that would be true. Otherwise surely you have a Theseus' ship sort of situation where just he liver is made out of female DNA, and then a week later so is one of the kidneys and so on.

If we do have any dualists present, surely recreating them as a new person with the same soul would be the worst bit of what you are describing though? Would Crom get all smitey and plaguey?

[FlashDangerpants]

Women are actually being arrested for saying that 'transwomen' aren't women. This is how bad is has got.

Is that true?

yep

I mentioned this and posted at least one link in one of the relevant threads

I think veg has posted links too

hey, veg: why don't we collaborate...we can each collect some links on the subject and post them together in a new thread

if you're up for such an effort, let me know

If I can bring you two together in harmony, there is no end to my fucking majesty.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Women are actually being arrested for saying that 'transwomen' aren't women. This is how bad is has got.

Is that true?

Yes, it is.

[Immanuel Can]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I am dealing with what IS, you are retorting with an OUGHT.

The problem with having only an "is," is, of course, that it means there are no "oughts." And life without morality doesn't work out well for people trying to live together. But you've identified the problem alright...there's no way, from "is's" to justify any "oughts" over and against any others.

Social consensus is just another "is," too. It can't tell us what "ought" to be done.

One more thing most people in the world believe: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman.

Yes. If you take a global survey I imagine you find out a lot of stuff that doesn't apply at the level of a more specific community though.

You'll need to explain the principle that makes local community take precedence over global consensus. That will be criticized as mere provincialism -- tribalism, local prejudice, even.

Now there is a male candidate for the US presidency who has both a husband, and a fairly good chance of winning.

Trump's gay? I had not heard.

Concepts cannot be right or wrong, they are just useful or not, and they change as our uses for them do.

We can't even define "useful" without also defining what a thing is "useful for." In other words, what you say turns any ideas of morality into nothing more than tribal power games. And if that's all they are, then why should we respect any of them? There's no inherent reason.

Which leaves us with Nihilism. And that's bad news for everyone. Good thing nobody takes Nihilism seriously...if they did, we wouldn't last long.

Are you geuinely telling me that you have never heard of hijras, mahu, kathoeys, sakalavas and muxes?
https://sites.psu.edu/evolutionofhumans ... pt-or-old/

You're confusing gender with sexual behaviour, there. They're not the same, as the literature on sexuality insists; though normatively, they do have some relationship, obviously. Deviant sexual behaviour of all kinds exists...but it never argues against the question of how many authentic genders there are. There are always only two normative ones. And though minorities of both also sometimes exhibit aberrant sexual proclivities, it does not change physical biology.

There's no news there.

It's interesting that you seem unaware of the cognitive differences between males and females, which are pretty darned obvious to me, and certainly show up in studies of brains and of general psychology as well.

I vaguely understood much of that to be somewhat overstated, but I don't follow psychology very much so I don't really know what they are up to. However some of what you describe is attributable to levels of hormones experienced in the womb and shortly after birth, which is also strongly linked to gender dysphoria so...

No. There are actually structural and operative differences between male and female brains. The research on this is quite good, though it has been strongly resisted by some interest groups, out of fear it will lead to some conception of some sort of supremacy, or something like that. For a quick look, consider https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/bl ... ale-brains.

Did you notice where I said I was not defending any form of type identitical womanhood here?

I did not say you were. I made no such implication at all.

But I said that many women think they have something unique about their perspectives, creativity, problem-solving, values and so on. A lot of this appears not merely in "male science," but in 3rd Wave Feminist literature, where they argue that what the world actually lacks is the unique contributions of a "feminine" perspective. But your rejection of fundamental cognitive differences between men and women would mean there was no such thing, of course; so the lack of it would not be any kind of worry from that perspective...I just think you're going to find many women offended by the suggestion there's nothing uniquely valuable about being a woman rather than being a man.

Gender dysmorphic men are not just any man, they are very committed and endure a lot specifically because of this.

As do suicides and jihadis. I don't think that makes a case for either, do you?

[henry quirk]

Ah. A conversation about Descartes AND dualism all in one, that is the perfect place to hide things from me!

Like most threads, it got bogged down in the weeds (my meager, and ignored, contribution is, however, glorious, cuz me)


Yeah, I have been told that one of the characters in Strar Trek refused to use the beam me up transporter for exactly the same reason. I don't know which, nor do I know if it's true.

There've been several across all the series, and each was right to avoid the deathtrap. The transporter decomplies matter. That's a nice way of sayin' it friggin' disintegrates matter. Not such a big deal if you're beamin' supplies and whatnot, but it's killin'/murder/suicide for a person.

Me: I'm takin' the shuttlecraft.


Well I suppose. If the process is to mince the patient up into all their individual cells and then strip out the chromosome and replace it in each, then squish the whole thing back together and breathe life back into it, then that would be true.

If I'm right about total reconstruction bein' the only legit way to transform man into woman (and, incidentally, kill man to birth woman), then the process wouldn't be too far from away from the way you describe it. An army of molecular machines swarming through Joe's body, recoding genes, reshaping synaptic connections, rejiggerin' organs. Mebbe not as messy as you describe, but essentially that. And when Josephine climbs outta the reconstitution chamber she recalls bein' Joe in a second-hand kinda way, but she isn't Joe cuz Joe is dead.


Otherwise surely you have a Theseus' ship sort of situation where just he liver is made out of female DNA, and then a week later so is one of the kidneys and so on.

That could work (ignoring rejection issues) as a kind of full-body transplant. It's when you get to the brain where things get sticky.


If we do have any dualists present, surely recreating them as a new person with the same soul would be the worst bit of what you are describing though?

I don't know cuz I'm not a traditional dualist (what is the label for someone who sez A man isn't just matter; he's equally information. He's a composite of, as I say, two very different things, each useless without the other.?).


Would Crom get all smitey and plaguey?

Best I can tell: Crom is on sabbatical...left up to us to make with the smitin' and plaguin'.

[henry quirk]

Is that true?

yep

I mentioned this and posted at least one link in one of the relevant threads

I think veg has posted links too

hey, veg: why don't we collaborate...we can each collect some links on the subject and post them together in a new thread

if you're up for such an effort, let me know

If I can bring you two together in harmony, there is no end to my fucking majesty.

you'd get a

[henry quirk]

Gender dysmorphic men are not just any man, they are very committed and endure a lot specifically because of this.

Crazy folks can be very persistent.

[surreptitious57]

I A man claims he feels he is a woman
2 A man also changes his pronoun to she
3 A man does I and 2 and buys a dress and heels and wears them
4 A man does the above but also takes hormones
5 A man does all the above and has his reproductive organs altered
6 A man has complete surgery all the above plus passes on the street for female
7 A man has all the available hormones and surgeries and lives as if he was always female

And were it possible :

8 A man does all the above and erases his past as a male completely
9 A man does all the above plus has his brain transplanted so it is now female
I0 A man does all the above plus magically has his DNA transformed to XX

My question was and is at which such step is the male genuinely a woman ?

That depends : if you are transgender then the answer is I and if you are a biological essentialist then the answer is I0
This is as simple an answer as you will get to this question at this point in time as you cannot break it down anymore

Neither will accept the definition of the other and there is zero chance of this changing anytime soon if ever at all
So this is going to be one of the longest battles ever in the culture wars because no one is prepared to compromise

[surreptitious57]

Something to remember : postmodernists reject the rigidity of definition
So if they say x is y then x is y with no need to justify or explain why it is

They are reading from an entirely different rulebook to the traditionalists hence the incompatibility between them
For any word can be re evaluated and given a completely different description but still remains subject to revision

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I A man claims he feels he is a woman
2 A man also changes his pronoun to she
3 A man does I and 2 and buys a dress and heels and wears them
4 A man does the above but also takes hormones
5 A man does all the above and has his reproductive organs altered
6 A man has complete surgery all the above plus passes on the street for female
7 A man has all the available hormones and surgeries and lives as if he was always female

And were it possible :

8 A man does all the above and erases his past as a male completely
9 A man does all the above plus has his brain transplanted so it is now female
I0 A man does all the above plus magically has his DNA transformed to XX

My question was and is at which such step is the male genuinely a woman ?

That depends : if you are transgender then the answer is I and if you are a biological essentialist then the answer is I0
This is as simple an answer as you will get to this question at this point in time as you cannot break it down anymore

Neither will accept the definition of the other and there is zero chance of this changing anytime soon if ever at all
So this is going to be one of the longest battles ever in the culture wars because no one is prepared to compromise

That has nothing to do with science. Who gives a flying fuck what 'post-modernists' have to say about it?

[FlashDangerpants]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I am dealing with what IS, you are retorting with an OUGHT.

The problem with having only an "is," is, of course, that it means there are no "oughts." And life without morality doesn't work out well for people trying to live together. But you've identified the problem alright...there's no way, from "is's" to justify any "oughts" over and against any others.

Social consensus is just another "is," too. It can't tell us what "ought" to be done.

Not a valid objection. I am simply discussing how we as humans DO order the world around us into categories. That is all. Objecting because it is not to your moral tastes is simply irrelevant. Nothing you prefer because it tallies with your desires is made true by being good. That is the is/ought thing in a nutshell.

One more thing most people in the world believe: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman.

Yes. If you take a global survey I imagine you find out a lot of stuff that doesn't apply at the level of a more specific community though.

You'll need to explain the principle that makes local community take precedence over global consensus. That will be criticized as mere provincialism -- tribalism, local prejudice, even.

Only by people who can't understand the is/ought thing. It just is a fact that we have societies more specific than the global and there is conceptual variance between those societies. This is not a normative statement about who is right or wrong, just an observation which is true about how the world does actually work.

Now there is a male candidate for the US presidency who has both a husband, and a fairly good chance of winning.

Trump's gay? I had not heard.

I made a valid point that other public concepts such as marriage can change in ways that seem to be conceptually difficult before the event. It is relevant to the matter at hand and you should consider it properly.

Concepts cannot be right or wrong, they are just useful or not, and they change as our uses for them do.

We can't even define "useful" without also defining what a thing is "useful for." In other words, what you say turns any ideas of morality into nothing more than tribal power games. And if that's all they are, then why should we respect any of them? There's no inherent reason.

Which leaves us with Nihilism. And that's bad news for everyone. Good thing nobody takes Nihilism seriously...if they did, we wouldn't last long.

We don't have to define useful beyond 'is used'. If people find a use for a concept they use it, and if they don't it is forgotten. This is normal and many old concepts have fallen out of use. There is no need to go on some Cartesian hunt for an indubitable concept from which all language and meaning must emerge.

Aso, is/ought again. I am talking about the IS and describing how our concepts of arrangement into category operate in use, as used. A valid objection would be to show that they actually work differently. An invalid objection would be to say that this process fails your moral testing regime.

Are you geuinely telling me that you have never heard of hijras, mahu, kathoeys, sakalavas and muxes?
https://sites.psu.edu/evolutionofhumans ... pt-or-old/

You're confusing gender with sexual behaviour, there. They're not the same, as the literature on sexuality insists; though normatively, they do have some relationship, obviously. Deviant sexual behaviour of all kinds exists...but it never argues against the question of how many authentic genders there are. There are always only two normative ones. And though minorities of both also sometimes exhibit aberrant sexual proclivities, it does not change physical biology.

You are conflating gender with sexual physiology. Our conceptual schema is capable of differentiating them though. Many languages apply genders to objects that have no sex characteristics at all such as chairs and ships. Many societies already have gender concepts for persons which are not strictly realted to their sexual biology at all. Therefore this can happen. Whether it should is an OUGHT question, whether it can is an IS question. Arguing from mere incredulity isn't a viable strategy though because I have already explained one circumstance in which such incredulity already had no real effect on a major shift in how we define marriage in the West.

It's interesting that you seem unaware of the cognitive differences between males and females, which are pretty darned obvious to me, and certainly show up in studies of brains and of general psychology as well.

I vaguely understood much of that to be somewhat overstated, but I don't follow psychology very much so I don't really know what they are up to. However some of what you describe is attributable to levels of hormones experienced in the womb and shortly after birth, which is also strongly linked to gender dysphoria so...

No. There are actually structural and operative differences between male and female brains. The research on this is quite good, though it has been strongly resisted by some interest groups, out of fear it will lead to some conception of some sort of supremacy, or something like that. For a quick look, consider https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/bl ... ale-brains.

Uh-huh. But if reansgender identity can be predicted with any accuracy at all (I'm sure Logik would love to define the statistical parameters for this) based on factors such as levels of testosterone in the amniotic fluids in which the developing baby is bathed (which it seems it can) then there are what can reasonably be described as differences between the transgender brain and the male brain too. So I am quesitoning the wisdom for you of pursuing this line of argument. I predict the results will annoy you.

Did you notice where I said I was not defending any form of type identitical womanhood here?

I did not say you were. I made no such implication at all.

Well if I am not saying that those trannies who we recognise as women are identical to other women, then I am not magicing away any special unique perspective of women who were born as women and never had any gender conflicts within themselves. And that disarms the obection to which I was responding with that line. This is why I don't care if we qualify a trans woman's woman status with things like [trans] or whatever. It's why I also don't care if we codify them as always slightly incomplete women. There are other people to argue about that stuff with. They aren't me and I'm not defending their argument, which I dont' understand but likely wouldn't agree with.

But I said that many women think they have something unique about their perspectives, creativity, problem-solving, values and so on. A lot of this appears not merely in "male science," but in 3rd Wave Feminist literature, where they argue that what the world actually lacks is the unique contributions of a "feminine" perspective. But your rejection of fundamental cognitive differences between men and women would mean there was no such thing, of course; so the lack of it would not be any kind of worry from that perspective...I just think you're going to find many women offended by the suggestion there's nothing uniquely valuable about being a woman rather than being a man.

3rd wave feminists almost certainly don't care what I think. You are reading a hell of a lot into the phrase "somewhat overstated". Here's a quote from an article on the matter, link below as before...
"The history of sex-difference research is rife with innumeracy, misinterpretation, publication bias, weak statistical power, inadequate controls and worse."

Gender dysmorphic men are not just any man, they are very committed and endure a lot specifically because of this.

As do suicides and jihadis. I don't think that makes a case for either, do you?

Are you positing a physiological cause for jihadism, or are you making an irrelevant analogy? I wrote that in response to something, specifically an occurence of your use of the phrase "any man" in a point predicated on physiological differences between men and women - specifically of the brain. When I wrote "Gender dysmorphic men are not just any man" I was referencing a similar type of physiological difference between them and other males. Cheap shots with no reference to the context are not helpful in this sort of discussion.

Linkage: I didn't make up this overstated brain thing

[Immanuel Can]

Social consensus is just another "is," too. It can't tell us what "ought" to be done.

Not a valid objection. I am simply discussing how we as humans DO order the world around us into categories. That is all. Objecting because it is not to your moral tastes is simply irrelevant. Nothing you prefer because it tallies with your desires is made true by being good. That is the is/ought thing in a nutshell.

You've only understood one side of it.

The other side, the side that troubles moral philosophers, is that IF true, Hume's Guillotine cuts off any possibility of legitimate, morally-binding or real morality. And that's a hugely relevant objection: because if true, it means that whatever "morals" society picks are simply fictions, and nobody is wrong to violate them, and no consensus will ever make them right.

In other words, as I said before, Nihilism. Good thing nobody's able to be a real Nihilist. And that should tell us something...

Yes. If you take a global survey I imagine you find out a lot of stuff that doesn't apply at the level of a more specific community though.

You'll need to explain the principle that makes local community take precedence over global consensus. That will be criticized as mere provincialism -- tribalism, local prejudice, even.

Only by people who can't understand the is/ought thing.

No. The is-ought thing makes it permanently true. Nobody has a duty to follow anybody's consensus, then.

Concepts cannot be right or wrong, they are just useful or not, and they change as our uses for them do.

We can't even define "useful" without also defining what a thing is "useful for." In other words, what you say turns any ideas of morality into nothing more than tribal power games. And if that's all they are, then why should we respect any of them? There's no inherent reason.

Which leaves us with Nihilism. And that's bad news for everyone. Good thing nobody takes Nihilism seriously...if they did, we wouldn't last long.

We don't have to define useful beyond 'is used'.

Of course we do. A gutting hook is "used" for torturing prisoners. A guillotine is "used" for executing them. The secret police is "used" for subduing the masses. A missile is "used" for destroying human beings...all these things have their uses, alright.

"Use" has nothing to do with morality. Many "uses" are profoundly immoral, in fact.

An invalid objection would be to say that this process fails your moral testing regime.

Not merely "mine." Any possibility of any moral structure. Nihilism, again.

You are conflating gender with sexual physiology.

No, I'm separating them.

It was you who needed an example of a middle gender, and used descriptions of aberrant sexual practices to suggest a gender existed. I just pointed out the amphiboly error there.

Did you notice where I said I was not defending any form of type identitical womanhood here?

I did not say you were. I made no such implication at all.

Well if I am not saying that those trannies who we recognise as women are identical to other women, then I am not magicing away any special unique perspective of women who were born as women and never had any gender conflicts within themselves. [/quote]
No. But you're certainly creating a third category, comprised of males who have become female. Actual womanhood remains distinct by just so much distinction as you make there.

Gender dysmorphic men are not just any man, they are very committed and endure a lot specifically because of this.

As do suicides and jihadis. I don't think that makes a case for either, do you?

Are you positing a physiological cause for jihadism, or are you making an irrelevant analogy?

A relevant one.

It was you who said, above, that being "very committed and enduring[ing] a lot specifically because of X" had some value. I just pointed out that it did not.

[Immanuel Can]

Something to remember : postmodernists reject the rigidity of definition
So if they say x is y then x is y with no need to justify or explain why it is

They are reading from an entirely different rulebook to the traditionalists hence the incompatibility between them
For any word can be re evaluated and given a completely different description but still remains subject to revision

Well, that's true. And it's one of the deep incoherencies of postmodern theory, because it's a cynical "acid" that, if used consistently, would dissolve postmodernism along with all other theories.

To practice "incredulity toward metanarratives" (Lyotard's famous phrase) consistently would mean to be incredulous toward postmodern claims that everything was subject to incredulity. In point of fact, Lyotard et al want us to be "incredulous" only toward other metanarratives, and highly credulous toward postmodernism itself.

[Immanuel Can]

Neither will accept the definition of the other and there is zero chance of this changing anytime soon if ever at all
So this is going to be one of the longest battles ever in the culture wars because no one is prepared to compromise

It's not really a question of "compromise," surreptitious -- as if truth could only ever happen in the middle of any opposition of views. It's quite possible that either #1 or #10, or something not on the list is the true point. I would maintain that even #10 is insufficient, since it fails to solve problems of women's history and cognition, and also of the inherent givenness of identity. But let that be.

The best one can do in a situation of refusal to compromise is to trouble the view of the other such that he/she can no longer deceive himself/herself as to its tenability, and becomes aware of his/her irrationality. That may not produce a change of mind, but it may, in the cases of rational and epistemologically humble people.

It's kind of the best we get. That's human nature.

[henry quirk]

You are conflating gender with sexual physiology.

No, I'm separating them.


It's not conflation, and it's a mistake to separate gender from sexual physiology.

It's also a mistake to isolate sexual physiology from the person, who is surely more than a collection of organ systems.

Gender extends from sexual physiology, which is part of the person, who exists within the very broad parameters of male or female, which extends from sexual physiology, which is part of the person, who exists within the very broad parameters of male or female, which...

It's a perfect circle which can be shorthanded thusly...

Jack is a guy cuz he's a guy; Jill is a gal cuz she's a gal.

If Jack gets to thinkin' that mebbe he ain't a guy, the sensible path is to figure out why his head is askew, not to sanction self-mutilation. We ought to encourage realignin' the thinkin' with what is, not reshapin' the flesh in keepin' with a delusion.