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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   32563 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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As one tanshumanist to another, my problem with this is that it seems like a very limited view of transhumanism. What I'm rooting for here is a future where I get to be some sort of shapeshifting consciousness which only occasionally reverts to humanoid form for old time's sake; not just "a 6'9" muscular 420 IQ uber-mensch". And if we get that, surely, surely you see that only joyless luddites would keep objecting to calling someone who's manifesting as a clearly-feminine angelic metaverse hologram "she", just because she doesn't have any biological female characteristics. (Because, you know, she wouldn't have any biological characteristics anymore.) Gendered language would only be based on presentation. And if Utopia involves calling people "she" even if they have no XX chromosomes if that's how they present themselves, it seems clearly morally correct to me that we should call a female-presenting person "she" even stuck as we are in flesh bodies that occasionally have spurious XY chromosomes.

I only used the example of a 6'9 genius for illustrative purposes (and it's an upgrade over my current build), I want to be a posthuman information entity running on a Matrioshka brain as much as you do. I'm pretty sure I've already said that.

And if we get that, surely, surely you see that only joyless luddites would keep objecting to calling someone who's manifesting as a clearly-feminine angelic metaverse hologram "she", just because she doesn't have any biological female characteristics. (Because, you know, she wouldn't have any biological characteristics anymore.) Gendered language would only be based on presentation. And if Utopia involves calling people "she" even if they have no XX chromosomes if that's how they present themselves, it seems clearly morally correct to me that we should call a female-presenting person "she" even stuck as we are in flesh bodies that occasionally have spurious XY chromosomes.

We're not yet at that posthuman state. People currently have certain physical and biological traits that they're unable to change even if they desperately want to change them. That's the whole thrust of my argument. Will I call someone "she" even they're not biologically female? Why not, it's not a big deal for me. Will I say that they're indistinguishable from a normal woman? No, because that's not true.

A large fraction of trans advocates make demands far more significant than merely calling people by different names or different pronouns. I personally don't care at all what toilets they use, or if they want to enter women's sports, but plenty of people do, and that's a far bigger ask.

Ah, all fair then. I think we're basically on the same page.

Trans women want to be called "she" because they would like to be biological women and forcing people to call them "she" is as close to that as they can get, barring operations. Your hypothetical hologram person doesn't want to be called "she" for this reason (because if they did, they would actually transform into a biological woman).

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