Mississippi Passes "More Dead Kids Please" bill. Texas responds w/ "hold my beer"

[lpetrich]

Looking at our planet's biota, there are lots of departures from familiar gender stereotypes.

The biggest split is in cell architecture, between prokaryotes, cells without well-defined nuclei, and eukaryotes, cells with such nuclei. Prokaryotes are the older of the two, with eukaryotes originating from the symbiosis of some prokaryotes nearly 2 billion years ago, a sort of Frankenstein cell.

Prokaryotes all multiply by dividing, the original form of reproduction, dating back over 3.5 billion years. But they can also inject bits of genetic material into each other.

The ancestral eukaryote reproduced by that method also, sometimes called mitosis, and it also invented a sexual cycle:

Haploid - cell fusion - diploid - meiosis - haploid

Mitosis (haploid): (X) -> (XX) -> (X) (X)
Mitosis (diploid): (XX) -> (XXXX) -> (XX) (XX)
Meiosis: (XX) -> (XXXX) -> (XX) (XX) -> (X) (X) (X) (X)
Fusion: (X) (X) -> (XX)

Prokaryotes are mostly one-celled, though many of them can make colonies, and some of them differentiate, with different cells specializing in different directions, like the "heterocysts" in strands of cyanobacteria ("blue-green algae").

Eukaryotes are originally one-celled, and many of them continue to be one-celled. They invented multicellularity several times.

 

[lpetrich]

Universal or nearly universal in eukaryotedom is that cells will only fuse with cells that are different from them in some way. We are most familiar with cells from different sexes fusing, but many protists and fungi have more than two "mating types", as they are often called, and in many species, they look alike: "isogamy".

So the ancestral eukaryote was a one-celled organism with lookalike sexes.

What makes the sexes different? Multicelled organisms may reproduce asexually, by releasing single cells that grow into imitations of their parents. Many plants and fungi do that, releasing spores. But a multicellular organism may release cells that fuse with other cells: gametes. A good way of giving a gamete a head start would be to give it a good supply of food: egg yolk. But that makes a gamete slow-moving, so some other gametes specialize in being mobile at the expense of a food supply. Thus the origin of egg cells and sperm cells, something that happened several times.

Plants have an odd variation: they alternate between an asexually-reproducing phase or sporophyte, because of its making spores, and a sexually-reproducing phase or gametophyte, because of its making gametes.

Primitive plants like mosses and ferns have separate sporophytes and gametophytes, though among ferns and the like it's the sporophytes that grow above the ground, while the gametophytes are small in the ground.

In seed plants, the gametophytes live in the the sporophytes as only a few cells, a vestigial feature and convergent evolution on the animal kingdom's having only one-celled haploid phases in most cases.

 

[Jarhyn]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion. If I were to think about my daughter undergoing a mastectomy, as a treatment for cancer or as a treatment for sex dysmorphia, it would make me ache and provoke tremendous anxiety in me--because I would so much identify with the idea of losing my breasts. If my son were to consider converting to a feminine gender, it would likewise provoke tremendous anxiety as I would so much think about someone hurting my son! in such an intimate way! This is NOT because I would hate the idea of either of them being trans (I would hate the idea of cancer) so much as I am programmed by biology and by years of caring for each of them to want to protect them from hurts and injuries. The response I am describing: aching with anxiety is NOT about whether or not they were confused or wrong about what they wanted to do. And it's not about the emotional right/wrong of what they wanted to do or the societal consequences or the individual societal consequences. It's just flat out: I hate the idea of my child being injured. And surgery IS an injury, however much it is a necessary event for health and happiness and wellbeing. The surgical site is called a wound, after all. There is even a medical specialty for wound care, if wounds are complex or do not heal well.

Of course what I just described is purely emotional but it is emotional on a very deep, primal level. I think that to a certain and lesser extent, it is shared across society for individuals who aren't known to us. Part of me feels extremely upset at the idea that anyone must have themselves surgically altered in order to fit better in with themselves or society.

Which is not to say that I do not support gender affirming care, including surgery. It is, however, an attempt to explain reasons at least some people have such strong negative reactions to the idea.

Yes, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided.

Some terms however are arbitrarily attached to concrete elements of nature, some to fixed elements of mathematical metaphysics, and some to arbitrary things.

"Testosterone" is arbitrary in it's utterance of attachment, but it is not arbitrary as to what metaphysical class of physical objects it pertains to, as it is a set of chemical organizations of fixed particles that has fixed mechanical action for any given environment.

"Testicle" is likewise, as any closed shape of of organic molecules with a fixed set of functions around processes of assembling sperms and running testosterone chemistry.

It's arbitrary that we drew some particular line around the testicle but it is not arbitrary that there is a chemical testosterone doing some thing in the body, nor is it arbitrary where it comes from.

There is no one particular chemical or idea or any such thing pertaining to the concept of "woman" or "man". Instead they are vague assemblies of things that tend to have core similarities owing to tending towards a similar process, but often they don't!

It's like some naive idiot looking at a variable that is a bit field (a long set of booleans concatenated in series), assume from that from the way they see it used in code in one place that it is a boolean, and then go off on the assumption that it is true/false, and make an ass out of themselves because they capture neither state they wish to reliably and spend days trying to figure out why, or worse assuming it's reliable and that the bugs are just "random" rather than their mistake.

I would say it's a metaphor, but it's not. Both that thing I described happens, and this same thing as pertains to the discussion on gender and sex.

Biology allows more than binary forking on some structures, so the situation is much compounded, but I expect that there are multiple brain regions that can go multiple ways, creating a wide mess of states between "all this one modal way" and "all this other modal way".

Often because it's all constructed in a deformable mass of fluid, and that this can translate to the chemical functions, it can be expected that we will find many variations, of near infinite form, around more common configurations.

Furthermore development and ideation and exposure can impact this and cause physical development to vary over time.

In this way concepts of "sex" are about trend and as such stereotype, and history has been kind enough to reveal to us what happens when we go on following stereotypes.

You judge yourself closer to a trend. That's nice. Maybe you strive to follow some trend as close as you may. That's also nice enough.

But if you want to make actual judgements it has to be about concrete object of nature, something dictated by it's fundamental laws.

These concrete objects of nature make for observation of similarly fixed, though metaphysical, nature: that these relationships can relate to the power to act in bad faith in particular ways. The power to act is not arbitrary; merely the decision not to.

You have wagered a position that ultimately requires one party to have some manner of power over the other to be supported.

The penis absent balls does not rise (lol) to that occasion.

 

[lpetrich]

Multicelled organisms must have some cells that are specialized for making gametes: gonads. But what makes a gonad make big gametes -- eggs -- or small gametes -- sperms?

Some organisms are hermaphrodites, having gonads for both sexes of gamete. This is common in flowering plants, where flowers typically have both sexes: ovaries inside of pistils for making ovules (f) and anthers on top of stamens for making pollen (m). But some flowering plants have separate-sex flowers, sometimes both on the same individual (monoecious) and sometimes one sex per individual (dioecious).

In the animal kingdom, hermaphrodites are not common, an example being land snails. There are some fish that are "sequential hermaphrodites", sex changers: transgender fish. They shift their gonads from making one kind of gamete to making the other kind. Clownfish do male-to-female and most wrasses do female-to-male.  Sequential hermaphroditism

"Finding Nemo" anthropomorphized its clownfish, because on the death of Coral, Marlin would have become Marla.

• Sex Change in Clownfish: Molecular Insights from Transcriptome Analysis | Scientific Reports
• Male-to-female sex change happens first in the brain, in clownfish at least - SCUBA News
• Active feminization of the preoptic area occurs independently of the gonads in Amphiprion ocellaris - ScienceDirect

 

[Toni]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion. If I were to think about my daughter undergoing a mastectomy, as a treatment for cancer or as a treatment for sex dysmorphia, it would make me ache and provoke tremendous anxiety in me--because I would so much identify with the idea of losing my breasts. If my son were to consider converting to a feminine gender, it would likewise provoke tremendous anxiety as I would so much think about someone hurting my son! in such an intimate way! This is NOT because I would hate the idea of either of them being trans (I would hate the idea of cancer) so much as I am programmed by biology and by years of caring for each of them to want to protect them from hurts and injuries. The response I am describing: aching with anxiety is NOT about whether or not they were confused or wrong about what they wanted to do. And it's not about the emotional right/wrong of what they wanted to do or the societal consequences or the individual societal consequences. It's just flat out: I hate the idea of my child being injured. And surgery IS an injury, however much it is a necessary event for health and happiness and wellbeing. The surgical site is called a wound, after all. There is even a medical specialty for wound care, if wounds are complex or do not heal well.

Of course what I just described is purely emotional but it is emotional on a very deep, primal level. I think that to a certain and lesser extent, it is shared across society for individuals who aren't known to us. Part of me feels extremely upset at the idea that anyone must have themselves surgically altered in order to fit better in with themselves or society.

Which is not to say that I do not support gender affirming care, including surgery. It is, however, an attempt to explain reasons at least some people have such strong negative reactions to the idea.

Yes, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided.

Some terms however are arbitrarily attached to concrete elements of nature, some to fixed elements of mathematical metaphysics, and some to arbitrary things.

"Testosterone" is arbitrary in it's utterance of attachment, but it is not arbitrary as to what metaphysical class of physical objects it pertains to, as it is a set of chemical organizations of fixed particles that has fixed mechanical action for any given environment.

"Testicle" is likewise, as any closed shape of of organic molecules with a fixed set of functions around processes of assembling sperms and running testosterone chemistry.

It's arbitrary that we drew some particular line around the testicle but it is not arbitrary that there is a chemical testosterone doing some thing in the body, nor is it arbitrary where it comes from.

There is no one particular chemical or idea or any such thing pertaining to the concept of "woman" or "man". Instead they are vague assemblies of things that tend to have core similarities owing to tending towards a similar process, but often they don't!

It's like some naive idiot looking at a variable that is a bit field (a long set of booleans concatenated in series), assume from that from the way they see it used in code in one place that it is a boolean, and then go off on the assumption that it is true/false, and make an ass out of themselves because they capture neither state they wish to reliably and spend days trying to figure out why, or worse assuming it's reliable and that the bugs are just "random" rather than their mistake.

I would say it's a metaphor, but it's not. Both that thing I described happens, and this same thing as pertains to the discussion on gender and sex.

Biology allows more than binary forking on some structures, so the situation is much compounded, but I expect that there are multiple brain regions that can go multiple ways, creating a wide mess of states between "all this one modal way" and "all this other modal way".

Often because it's all constructed in a deformable mass of fluid, and that this can translate to the chemical functions, it can be expected that we will find many variations, of near infinite form, around more common configurations.

Furthermore development and ideation and exposure can impact this and cause physical development to vary over time.

In this way concepts of "sex" are about trend and as such stereotype, and history has been kind enough to reveal to us what happens when we go on following stereotypes.

You judge yourself closer to a trend. That's nice. Maybe you strive to follow some trend as close as you may. That's also nice enough.

But if you want to make actual judgements it has to be about concrete object of nature, something dictated by it's fundamental laws.

These concrete objects of nature make for observation of similarly fixed, though metaphysical, nature: that these relationships can relate to the power to act in bad faith in particular ways. The power to act is not arbitrary; merely the decision not to.

You have wagered a position that ultimately requires one party to have some manner of power over the other to be supported.

The penis absent balls does not rise (lol) to that occasion.

I think you vastly misunderstand me.

I’m not interested in ‘trends’.

Words, especially those words used in science, have meaning, specifically to describe characteristics, relationships and functions.

 

[Jarhyn]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion. If I were to think about my daughter undergoing a mastectomy, as a treatment for cancer or as a treatment for sex dysmorphia, it would make me ache and provoke tremendous anxiety in me--because I would so much identify with the idea of losing my breasts. If my son were to consider converting to a feminine gender, it would likewise provoke tremendous anxiety as I would so much think about someone hurting my son! in such an intimate way! This is NOT because I would hate the idea of either of them being trans (I would hate the idea of cancer) so much as I am programmed by biology and by years of caring for each of them to want to protect them from hurts and injuries. The response I am describing: aching with anxiety is NOT about whether or not they were confused or wrong about what they wanted to do. And it's not about the emotional right/wrong of what they wanted to do or the societal consequences or the individual societal consequences. It's just flat out: I hate the idea of my child being injured. And surgery IS an injury, however much it is a necessary event for health and happiness and wellbeing. The surgical site is called a wound, after all. There is even a medical specialty for wound care, if wounds are complex or do not heal well.

Of course what I just described is purely emotional but it is emotional on a very deep, primal level. I think that to a certain and lesser extent, it is shared across society for individuals who aren't known to us. Part of me feels extremely upset at the idea that anyone must have themselves surgically altered in order to fit better in with themselves or society.

Which is not to say that I do not support gender affirming care, including surgery. It is, however, an attempt to explain reasons at least some people have such strong negative reactions to the idea.

Yes, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided.

Some terms however are arbitrarily attached to concrete elements of nature, some to fixed elements of mathematical metaphysics, and some to arbitrary things.

"Testosterone" is arbitrary in it's utterance of attachment, but it is not arbitrary as to what metaphysical class of physical objects it pertains to, as it is a set of chemical organizations of fixed particles that has fixed mechanical action for any given environment.

"Testicle" is likewise, as any closed shape of of organic molecules with a fixed set of functions around processes of assembling sperms and running testosterone chemistry.

It's arbitrary that we drew some particular line around the testicle but it is not arbitrary that there is a chemical testosterone doing some thing in the body, nor is it arbitrary where it comes from.

There is no one particular chemical or idea or any such thing pertaining to the concept of "woman" or "man". Instead they are vague assemblies of things that tend to have core similarities owing to tending towards a similar process, but often they don't!

It's like some naive idiot looking at a variable that is a bit field (a long set of booleans concatenated in series), assume from that from the way they see it used in code in one place that it is a boolean, and then go off on the assumption that it is true/false, and make an ass out of themselves because they capture neither state they wish to reliably and spend days trying to figure out why, or worse assuming it's reliable and that the bugs are just "random" rather than their mistake.

I would say it's a metaphor, but it's not. Both that thing I described happens, and this same thing as pertains to the discussion on gender and sex.

Biology allows more than binary forking on some structures, so the situation is much compounded, but I expect that there are multiple brain regions that can go multiple ways, creating a wide mess of states between "all this one modal way" and "all this other modal way".

Often because it's all constructed in a deformable mass of fluid, and that this can translate to the chemical functions, it can be expected that we will find many variations, of near infinite form, around more common configurations.

Furthermore development and ideation and exposure can impact this and cause physical development to vary over time.

In this way concepts of "sex" are about trend and as such stereotype, and history has been kind enough to reveal to us what happens when we go on following stereotypes.

You judge yourself closer to a trend. That's nice. Maybe you strive to follow some trend as close as you may. That's also nice enough.

But if you want to make actual judgements it has to be about concrete object of nature, something dictated by it's fundamental laws.

These concrete objects of nature make for observation of similarly fixed, though metaphysical, nature: that these relationships can relate to the power to act in bad faith in particular ways. The power to act is not arbitrary; merely the decision not to.

You have wagered a position that ultimately requires one party to have some manner of power over the other to be supported.

The penis absent balls does not rise (lol) to that occasion.

I think you vastly misunderstand me.

I’m not interested in ‘trends’.

Words, especially those words used in science, have meaning, specifically to describe characteristics, relationships and functions.

Apparent characteristics, a lack of causal relationships, and merely correlated functions.

Being able to point to a mechanism of action which you are attempting to foil for instance.

What you have mentioned are trends, normals, statistical models, not actually the nature of the variable.

I repeat, the penis without balls does not rise to the occasion.

 

[Toni]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion. If I were to think about my daughter undergoing a mastectomy, as a treatment for cancer or as a treatment for sex dysmorphia, it would make me ache and provoke tremendous anxiety in me--because I would so much identify with the idea of losing my breasts. If my son were to consider converting to a feminine gender, it would likewise provoke tremendous anxiety as I would so much think about someone hurting my son! in such an intimate way! This is NOT because I would hate the idea of either of them being trans (I would hate the idea of cancer) so much as I am programmed by biology and by years of caring for each of them to want to protect them from hurts and injuries. The response I am describing: aching with anxiety is NOT about whether or not they were confused or wrong about what they wanted to do. And it's not about the emotional right/wrong of what they wanted to do or the societal consequences or the individual societal consequences. It's just flat out: I hate the idea of my child being injured. And surgery IS an injury, however much it is a necessary event for health and happiness and wellbeing. The surgical site is called a wound, after all. There is even a medical specialty for wound care, if wounds are complex or do not heal well.

Of course what I just described is purely emotional but it is emotional on a very deep, primal level. I think that to a certain and lesser extent, it is shared across society for individuals who aren't known to us. Part of me feels extremely upset at the idea that anyone must have themselves surgically altered in order to fit better in with themselves or society.

Which is not to say that I do not support gender affirming care, including surgery. It is, however, an attempt to explain reasons at least some people have such strong negative reactions to the idea.

Yes, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided.

Some terms however are arbitrarily attached to concrete elements of nature, some to fixed elements of mathematical metaphysics, and some to arbitrary things.

"Testosterone" is arbitrary in it's utterance of attachment, but it is not arbitrary as to what metaphysical class of physical objects it pertains to, as it is a set of chemical organizations of fixed particles that has fixed mechanical action for any given environment.

"Testicle" is likewise, as any closed shape of of organic molecules with a fixed set of functions around processes of assembling sperms and running testosterone chemistry.

It's arbitrary that we drew some particular line around the testicle but it is not arbitrary that there is a chemical testosterone doing some thing in the body, nor is it arbitrary where it comes from.

There is no one particular chemical or idea or any such thing pertaining to the concept of "woman" or "man". Instead they are vague assemblies of things that tend to have core similarities owing to tending towards a similar process, but often they don't!

It's like some naive idiot looking at a variable that is a bit field (a long set of booleans concatenated in series), assume from that from the way they see it used in code in one place that it is a boolean, and then go off on the assumption that it is true/false, and make an ass out of themselves because they capture neither state they wish to reliably and spend days trying to figure out why, or worse assuming it's reliable and that the bugs are just "random" rather than their mistake.

I would say it's a metaphor, but it's not. Both that thing I described happens, and this same thing as pertains to the discussion on gender and sex.

Biology allows more than binary forking on some structures, so the situation is much compounded, but I expect that there are multiple brain regions that can go multiple ways, creating a wide mess of states between "all this one modal way" and "all this other modal way".

Often because it's all constructed in a deformable mass of fluid, and that this can translate to the chemical functions, it can be expected that we will find many variations, of near infinite form, around more common configurations.

Furthermore development and ideation and exposure can impact this and cause physical development to vary over time.

In this way concepts of "sex" are about trend and as such stereotype, and history has been kind enough to reveal to us what happens when we go on following stereotypes.

You judge yourself closer to a trend. That's nice. Maybe you strive to follow some trend as close as you may. That's also nice enough.

But if you want to make actual judgements it has to be about concrete object of nature, something dictated by it's fundamental laws.

These concrete objects of nature make for observation of similarly fixed, though metaphysical, nature: that these relationships can relate to the power to act in bad faith in particular ways. The power to act is not arbitrary; merely the decision not to.

You have wagered a position that ultimately requires one party to have some manner of power over the other to be supported.

The penis absent balls does not rise (lol) to that occasion.

I think you vastly misunderstand me.

I’m not interested in ‘trends’.

Words, especially those words used in science, have meaning, specifically to describe characteristics, relationships and functions.

Apparent characteristics, a lack of causal relationships, and merely correlated functions.

Being able to point to a mechanism of action which you are attempting to foil for instance.

What you have mentioned are trends, normals, statistical models, not actually the nature of the variable.

I repeat, the penis without balls does not rise to the occasion.

Nope: definitely causal relationships. Science is all about establishing cause and effect and differentiating between causation and correlation. And necessary and sufficient.

 

[Jarhyn]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion. If I were to think about my daughter undergoing a mastectomy, as a treatment for cancer or as a treatment for sex dysmorphia, it would make me ache and provoke tremendous anxiety in me--because I would so much identify with the idea of losing my breasts. If my son were to consider converting to a feminine gender, it would likewise provoke tremendous anxiety as I would so much think about someone hurting my son! in such an intimate way! This is NOT because I would hate the idea of either of them being trans (I would hate the idea of cancer) so much as I am programmed by biology and by years of caring for each of them to want to protect them from hurts and injuries. The response I am describing: aching with anxiety is NOT about whether or not they were confused or wrong about what they wanted to do. And it's not about the emotional right/wrong of what they wanted to do or the societal consequences or the individual societal consequences. It's just flat out: I hate the idea of my child being injured. And surgery IS an injury, however much it is a necessary event for health and happiness and wellbeing. The surgical site is called a wound, after all. There is even a medical specialty for wound care, if wounds are complex or do not heal well.

Of course what I just described is purely emotional but it is emotional on a very deep, primal level. I think that to a certain and lesser extent, it is shared across society for individuals who aren't known to us. Part of me feels extremely upset at the idea that anyone must have themselves surgically altered in order to fit better in with themselves or society.

Which is not to say that I do not support gender affirming care, including surgery. It is, however, an attempt to explain reasons at least some people have such strong negative reactions to the idea.

Yes, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided.

Some terms however are arbitrarily attached to concrete elements of nature, some to fixed elements of mathematical metaphysics, and some to arbitrary things.

"Testosterone" is arbitrary in it's utterance of attachment, but it is not arbitrary as to what metaphysical class of physical objects it pertains to, as it is a set of chemical organizations of fixed particles that has fixed mechanical action for any given environment.

"Testicle" is likewise, as any closed shape of of organic molecules with a fixed set of functions around processes of assembling sperms and running testosterone chemistry.

It's arbitrary that we drew some particular line around the testicle but it is not arbitrary that there is a chemical testosterone doing some thing in the body, nor is it arbitrary where it comes from.

There is no one particular chemical or idea or any such thing pertaining to the concept of "woman" or "man". Instead they are vague assemblies of things that tend to have core similarities owing to tending towards a similar process, but often they don't!

It's like some naive idiot looking at a variable that is a bit field (a long set of booleans concatenated in series), assume from that from the way they see it used in code in one place that it is a boolean, and then go off on the assumption that it is true/false, and make an ass out of themselves because they capture neither state they wish to reliably and spend days trying to figure out why, or worse assuming it's reliable and that the bugs are just "random" rather than their mistake.

I would say it's a metaphor, but it's not. Both that thing I described happens, and this same thing as pertains to the discussion on gender and sex.

Biology allows more than binary forking on some structures, so the situation is much compounded, but I expect that there are multiple brain regions that can go multiple ways, creating a wide mess of states between "all this one modal way" and "all this other modal way".

Often because it's all constructed in a deformable mass of fluid, and that this can translate to the chemical functions, it can be expected that we will find many variations, of near infinite form, around more common configurations.

Furthermore development and ideation and exposure can impact this and cause physical development to vary over time.

In this way concepts of "sex" are about trend and as such stereotype, and history has been kind enough to reveal to us what happens when we go on following stereotypes.

You judge yourself closer to a trend. That's nice. Maybe you strive to follow some trend as close as you may. That's also nice enough.

But if you want to make actual judgements it has to be about concrete object of nature, something dictated by it's fundamental laws.

These concrete objects of nature make for observation of similarly fixed, though metaphysical, nature: that these relationships can relate to the power to act in bad faith in particular ways. The power to act is not arbitrary; merely the decision not to.

You have wagered a position that ultimately requires one party to have some manner of power over the other to be supported.

The penis absent balls does not rise (lol) to that occasion.

I think you vastly misunderstand me.

I’m not interested in ‘trends’.

Words, especially those words used in science, have meaning, specifically to describe characteristics, relationships and functions.

Apparent characteristics, a lack of causal relationships, and merely correlated functions.

Being able to point to a mechanism of action which you are attempting to foil for instance.

What you have mentioned are trends, normals, statistical models, not actually the nature of the variable.

I repeat, the penis without balls does not rise to the occasion.

Nope: definitely causal relationships. Science is all about establishing cause and effect and differentiating between causation and correlation. And necessary and sufficient.

The process that shapes the penis does not shape the brain. These processes are growing across the body, in chemically isolated environments.

You need to pose a position where the PENIS is both necessary and sufficient to produce a threat. It doesn't.

What you are looking for in terms of necessitation and sufficience is testosterone, and semen, which are products of the balls, not the penis.

Either way, I don't think we disagree that kids have a right to a choice on whether they get testosterone'd at puberty.

You can pretty much distinguish who is castrating themselves so they can get close to women for sexual reasons, and those who castrate themselves because they don't want balls or testosterone or other masculinizing influences in their life, by paying attention to the fact that people don't castrate themselves to get close to women for sexual reasons. It kind of defeats the point.

 

[lpetrich]

In the animal kingdom, a gene involved in gonad development is widely conserved: doublesex (dsx) in insects, mab-3 in nematodes, and doublesex and mab-3 related transcription factor 1 (DMRT1) in vertebrates. Doublesex's messenger RNA can be spliced in two ways, one to make female gonads, and one to make male ones.  Alternative splicing

Upstream of DMRT1 - dsx - mab-3 is an amazing amount of variation:  Sex-determination system -- Sex Determination: Why So Many Ways of Doing It? - PMC

Schematic overview of some sex determination (SD) mechanisms.

Diversity of sex determination systems for representative plant and animal clades.

• Single sex: parthenogenesis (virgin birth) - development from unfertilized eggs -- aphids, some lizards
• Hermaphroditism: both sexes of gonad
  • Simultaneous -- most flowering plants
  • Sequential: sex changing -- clownfish, wrasses, ....
• Environmental cues:
  • Temperature -- turtles, crocodilians
  • Social: female if no females are nearby, male if one is nearby -- green spoonworm
• Genetic:
  • XY - chromosomes: male different, female same -- mammals, beetles
  • ZW - chromosomes: female different, male same -- birds, snakes, butterflies
  • More complicated genetic systems -- some fish, flowering plants
  • UV - in haploid phase: U female, V male -- mosses, liverworts
  • Haplodiploidy - male haploid, female diploid -- hymenopterans (wasps, bees, ants)
  • Paternal genome elimination - knocking out the father's genome makes some insects male
  • Cytoplasmic sex determination - Wolbachia bacteria make many insects female, some plant mitochondria involved
  • Monogeny - each individual female has all female or all male offspring - some insects, crustaceans

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the Earth isn't round how can I be here? I have left home going west and returned still going west. Twice.

By that map I'm 3x dead. There isn't a plane in the world that could fly the SFO->AKL leg--nor is there even an AKL to get to. There also isn't a plane that can do BOM->HRE. (However, I won't swear there wasn't a stopover on that flight.) I also count 4 flights that would have been radically longer, as well as 7 overland legs that would have been very noticeable. An 8th involved such bad roads that a deviation in distance wouldn't be so obvious.

I guess I needed to include that emoji. But since you're taking it seriously...

... It should be obvious from the above map that there's some strange law of physics that makes objects get bigger the further they are from the North Pole. It evidently happens to continents; it must also happen to humans and airplanes and flight paths and rulers. A plane consequently goes faster near Auckland than near San Francisco, and further on a tank of avgas.

Of course it's a joke--I was taking it seriously only in playing along and showing that it wasn't adequate.

 

[Jarhyn]

If the Earth isn't round how can I be here? I have left home going west and returned still going west. Twice.

By that map I'm 3x dead. There isn't a plane in the world that could fly the SFO->AKL leg--nor is there even an AKL to get to. There also isn't a plane that can do BOM->HRE. (However, I won't swear there wasn't a stopover on that flight.) I also count 4 flights that would have been radically longer, as well as 7 overland legs that would have been very noticeable. An 8th involved such bad roads that a deviation in distance wouldn't be so obvious.

I guess I needed to include that emoji. But since you're taking it seriously...

... It should be obvious from the above map that there's some strange law of physics that makes objects get bigger the further they are from the North Pole. It evidently happens to continents; it must also happen to humans and airplanes and flight paths and rulers. A plane consequently goes faster near Auckland than near San Francisco, and further on a tank of avgas.

Of course it's a joke--I was taking it seriously only in playing along and showing that it wasn't adequate.

And the fact is, if it's wrong, those calculations I did in the IRU model in the sim we shipped the Australians would have them crashing planes, even though the sim is built around spherical earth theory.

 

[Bomb#20]

...Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The above is a fantasy on your part. I didn't say "they are a woman"; I didn't say anything was like the platonic anything; I didn't insert imagination. You made all that up out of your own careless reading. If you reread my exchange with LP again, you'll see the two categories we were discussing membership in were not "man" and "woman", but "trans" and "have any interest in transition". LP brought up those categories; he made an inference about their membership; I analyzed the logic of his inference. That is all.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will <expletive deleted> in your <nonsense snipped>

 

[lpetrich]

Producing gametes is not enough. They have to be released into the outside world, or else taken care of, as appropriate. Thus, primary sexual characteristics: genital organs. To further assist in reproducing, many organisms have secondary sexual characteristics.

Beyond XX and XY: The Extraordinary Complexity of Sex Determination - Scientific American

Bird of the Month: Gynandromorphic Birds — Audubon Society of Northern Virginia

This past February, a very unusual Northern Cardinal was spotted in Erie, Pennsylvania. Its right side is brilliantly red, while its left side is a modest brown, with both sides perfectly split down the middle. The reason for the color split is remarkable; the left side is biologically female, while the right side is biologically male. Genetically, the two halves are as closely related as brother and sister.

Then discussing this odd feature and how it originates.

So our sexual features develop in a cascade:

• Genes (chromosomal gender)
• Gonads
• Genitalia, secondary sexual characteristics (somatic gender)
• Psychological gender identity

Most of the time, all three genders are in agreement. But sometimes there are mismatches, like a Y chromosome's SRY gene being broken or absent, a SRY gene stuck onto an X chromosome, etc., making chromosomal-somatic mismatches. Transgenderism is a mismatch between somatic and psychological genders.

 

[Jarhyn]

...Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The above is a fantasy on your part. I didn't say "they are a woman"; I didn't say anything was like the platonic anything; I didn't insert imagination. You made all that up out of your own careless reading. If you reread my exchange with LP again, you'll see the two categories we were discussing membership in were not "man" and "woman", but "trans" and "have any interest in transition". LP brought up those categories; he made an inference about their membership; I analyzed the logic of his inference. That is all.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will <expletive deleted> in your <nonsense snipped>

My point here is that generally, there is and has always been a variety of interests as regards hormonal change.

In some respects, I find the whole cultural construct around sex as regards binary viewpoints and transition between them ill informed at best.

I don't really think that our language is actually structured well to reflect reality here, and the conflict is created by the fact that people are trying to use culture to explore the reality in a way our language is badly formed for.

My stance is simply that most people want to experience the puberty that their gonads will give them. We should allow this.

Some people wish to experience a puberty mediated by hormones produced by their near relatives within some number of generations (almost exactly "1": a father; sometimes 0 a brother, sometimes in strange ways, both parents or neither) but not by them. We should allow this.

As it is more difficult and causes effects that we recognize can be consented to only given the time to mentally mature, we should do this following some period of delay.

And, believe it or not, some people wish to have neither hormone ever touch them. We should allow this too, under the same conditions.

I don't see why that's controversial.

Plastic surgery and body mods should be 21+, and there's no excuse beyond pre-existing local ignorance of the options at appropriate ages for needing any of the surgeries imaged in this thread by people far more crass than I.

Medications make the results people want happen without ever needing a knife, and as you note, I addressed the whole topic of consent agnostic to whether someone thinks they are "trans" or not.

I don't think hormones should necessarily be about that.

I think they should be about enabling people to achieve the body and mental state they seek. I see no problem with people using steroids to make their body very large and muscly at the expense of needing to do more work to on being kind and empathetic with others in the presence of a drug known to have effects against that outcome.

I don't think that has anything to do with judging people as "man" or "woman".

At some point, a lot of people who don't want testosterone decide that it's easier to take one medication or less rather than one or two, and yeet the twins or triplets, or the lonely fruit as the case may be.

Again, no judgement on whether people are changing in any way other than hormones and their direct effects needed to be made to say that.

Finally, I think there are valid concerns as can be stated about separating people for the reasons of physical security without invoking any prejudiced mechanisms, and these can all be summarized around the clear good faith of whoever it is in taking actual steps to change their hormonal balance in some formulaic way.

The clearest aspect of this is deciding whether they want to openly communicate, through choice of bathroom use, whether they are castrating themselves.

Personally, I don't like to be public about that, but some people would rather be private about the existence of a penis despite their lack of balls, or temporary situation on the way there.

I'm not really sure I support switching rooms before hormonal intervention starts; I'm more conservative than .ost in that I think adults thinking of changing hormones should have to shift one step at a time: from testosterone to nothing, from nothing to estrogen.

Call me crazy but I think the correct path is blockers, then hormones, then living some way if you feel like it, and then doing with your nuts whatever is most convenient. At least for people who want estrogen or androgyny and have a hard time getting it otherwise.

At that point, this philosophy enables the power to make the statement that you aren't making sperms or on masculinizing steroids of some kind, without being out and public about having a penis, nor having any ethical obligation to mention it short of "definitely some time after 'wanna go get a coffee?' and before 'lets get a room'".

We can at least have the oft-disappointed expectation that people will be mature adults about it if you explain to them that this is how to accomplish it.

As noted, this too can be done without letting people play stupid games around terminologies that were always bad anyway, no matter how good an idea they seemed at the time, or how well they have served.

None of that requires any political discussion on whether "women" can ever become "men", especially when nobody anywhere ever has been "woman" or "man" by their definition except by arbitrary declaration for building of arbitrary groups from objective individuals for the sake of hiding the fact that they are still. Fucking. Arbitrary.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion.

But does it really? This outrage on transgender is pretty new. And the word outrage is accurate. It makes me wonder where it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. The alt-right weren't pro-transgender, but this rage, it feels so manufactured and fake.

 

[Jarhyn]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion.

But does it really? This outrage on transgender is pretty new. And the word outrage is accurate. It makes me wonder where it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. The alt-right weren't pro-transgender, but this rage, it feels so manufactured and fake.

I dunno where you were 10 years ago, but it was here when I first joined the forums, in fact they were already beating war drums indicating that fever pitch against the trans community was coming in the form of sports and prisons arguments.

Even back then, the discussion was always a DARVO when it came to cutting.

I feel like my entire membership here has been, year in and year out, one thread about trans panic after another, building, with a half-life on posts, interspersed with discussions panicking about the gays.

It was always going to be trans people after they lost their grip on the false projection they perpetrated on gays. We all knew this, more than a decade ago. I would say as far back as late 00's with the Jessica Manning incident?

It feels manufactured, but the sort of manufacturing that you know is happening, like in Brand New Cherry Flavor, the producer manufactures ways and excuses to steal control over the film project, when it's really because she took his hand off her leg in the car. There was never any question about it, just about whether she could get that slimy piece of shit to actually admit it.

It's the most disgusting kind of "manufactured", the kind there's no excuse for or hiding the fact it happened.

Early stories suggested a later tone and plan of attack, and then some decade or more later they pick up pitch, as the public was primed to hear the spinning and the lies some decade ago.

Maybe dry-run/dress rehearsal/execution fits better?

 

[Toni]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion.

But does it really? This outrage on transgender is pretty new. And the word outrage is accurate. It makes me wonder where it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. The alt-right weren't pro-transgender, but this rage, it feels so manufactured and fake.

It’s in the news much more than it was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago.

 

[bilby]

According to Google Trends, it was a minor issue in the US until the beginning of 2014, since when it's been an issue.

 

[Oleg]

According to Google Trends, it was a minor issue in the US until the beginning of 2014, since when it's been an issue.

But don't call it a social contagen.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So what? I didn't say anyone was harmed. Are we supposed to just automatically accept all claims as true unless they've been shown to be harmful? Does "My pet Spot is a cat; therefore all animals named Spot are cats." become a valid argument if the guy who points out "But my dog is named Spot too." isn't showing anyone would actually be harmed by his dog being a cat?

The problem here, and it keeps getting pointed out, is that "cat" is an invented category here. The boundaries of cat are arbitrary, even if the circumstances to allow the arbitration to shift are mountainous.

The problem is the fact that we are using "woman" and "man" and the categories aren't actually closed here, so when you say "they are a woman" what you are really doing is using figurative language.

What you are actually doing is replacing simile with a metaphor, ie "that person is LIKE the platonic woman, moreso than they are LIKE the platonic man", never mind that these platonics are created from... You guessed it, an arbitrary population selection.

It's a failure to preserve figurative language, and failing likewise to understand that you are inserting imagination where only mechanism belongs.

The problem is that given how obsessive and absolutist and essentialist people are, especially over gender and sex, people will tend to take offense if you point out something they wish to see as binary all-or-nothing is actually shades of gray; they will shit in your mouth and call you a liar despite the fact that the categories they know they see are as illusory as race.

By your reasoning, all terms and definitions are arbitrarily decided. The 'classic' definition of male and of female is based on easily observed physical characteristics as well as functions. The fact that not all individuals fit neatly into one category or the other does not change this. This holds true even when describing plants and....tools and implements which are sometimes described as having a male end or a female end, depending on which fits into the other. Or at least that was how certain tools and implements were referred to by my father's generation. Not all plants fit into male or female, either. A lot are hermaphrodite, having reproductive structures of both male and female plant.

At the same time, it has been known for millennia that not all individuals fit neatly into male or female. Indeed, as has been mentioned several times in this thread, some cultures had and some still have words to describe such individuals. Those cultures are more wise than western based cultures today, in that respect.

Given the emotional response expressed when say, women must choose whether or not to undergo mastectomy and then whether or not to have 'reconstructive' surgery and the absolute venom with which such topics as circumcision are discussed and debated, it is not surprising that discussing gender reassignment surgery evokes so much emotion.

But does it really? This outrage on transgender is pretty new. And the word outrage is accurate. It makes me wonder where it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. The alt-right weren't pro-transgender, but this rage, it feels so manufactured and fake.

I dunno where you were 10 years ago, but it was here when I first joined the forums, in fact they were already beating war drums indicating that fever pitch against the trans community was coming in the form of sports and prisons arguments.

Even back then, the discussion was always a DARVO when it came to cutting.

I feel like my entire membership here has been, year in and year out, one thread about trans panic after another, building, with a half-life on posts, interspersed with discussions panicking about the gays.

It was always going to be trans people after they lost their grip on the false projection they perpetrated on gays. We all knew this, more than a decade ago. I would say as far back as late 00's with the Jessica Manning incident?

It feels manufactured, but the sort of manufacturing that you know is happening, like in Brand New Cherry Flavor, the producer manufactures ways and excuses to steal control over the film project, when it's really because she took his hand off her leg in the car. There was never any question about it, just about whether she could get that slimy piece of shit to actually admit it.

It's the most disgusting kind of "manufactured", the kind there's no excuse for or hiding the fact it happened.

Early stories suggested a later tone and plan of attack, and then some decade or more later they pick up pitch, as the public was primed to hear the spinning and the lies some decade ago.

Maybe dry-run/dress rehearsal/execution fits better?

It's been a thing, but it is close to being a centralized discussion point of the alt-right / GOP. The alt-right and their media are obsessing over it. Naming names, putting targets on people.

People were against it, now they are raging over it. It wasn't a smooth transition.