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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28521 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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You simply ban plastic surgery that could be reasonably expected to worsen the patient. Which includes worsening their aesthetics to a substantial enough degree. And then you revoke the licenses of doctors doing this. Of course you apply this to the trans issue too. This should apply in general. With sufficiently harmful procedures, you also criminally prosecute the people undertaking them for harming their patients.

So, if you are a rich guy, and even if not, and want to spend your money on hair transpant, trt, plastic surgery, you should be able to, provided that the operation will actually improve you. Or at least, not harm you. Although public funds should prioritize medical needs. With TRT the health side effects are such that it should be restricted until you reach people of sufficiently old age and low testosterone where it might be good for them.

So it should be allowed if it improves the patient and if rich people spend more on it, then that is fine.

If it worsens the patient, to an understandable degree, then it doesn't matter if they want it, and there is someone willing to provide it. It should not be allowed. Including restricting harmful drugs. Allowing some room for subjectivity and gray areas, and lack of knowledge though. Also, to take into consideration risk before surgery and whether if things go wrong is because it was foreseeable, or statistically it would happen over a large enough tries.

I replied that it would make sense to ban plastic surgery for minors, and that Tennessee would certainly have the power to do so, and that I'd support a total ban except in cases of extreme deformities. How would you define extreme deformity, she shot back. Well, I guess you'd need a doctor to certify it. Gotcha, she said, that wouldn't stop Kylie or her parents for a second, they'd have crooked Armenian doctors on tap anywhere they needed them.

I mostly agree.

The "it can't be stopped" is defeatist cope that can be applied on anything. The reality is that enforcement gains or loses ground and an attitude like this gives ground. It is the pro criminal fallacy that "if I don't do it, someone else will" of a corrupt society. In this case "If they don't do it, others will". The more people buy into this, the more you find your society captured by crooks.

Armenian doctors might be less likely to do such procedures than American doctors and if American doctors were unwilling to do this, then it is more likely that it might not have happened, or happened less.

Who's going to be the beauty police?

It isn't hard to see various plastic surgery transformations and to conclude that both the patient and plastic surgeons completely ruined the appearance of the patient.

There are also plenty examples that don't fit into this.

Some level of subjectivity is part and parcel of everything important that can be dictated by the law. There really isn't a way to escape from the necessity of having people make correct judgements in all such cases, which includes not interfering where they shouldn't.

Which if bad examples are used as deterrent, can be most of the time, including in cases where it is simply too subjective. Absent any control, you get a system with abuses. So there should be skepticism and accountability towards regulatory authorities, and opposition and demand to replace them if they get things wrong but this idea that no judgement is a good principle and letting plastic surgeons do as they please, won't work.

The most notorious case where this perspective breaks down is with mentally ill people who want surgical procedures which harm their bodies such as self mutilation. Like the people among others who think their actual limbs aren't there, and they should remove them.

I would trust plastic surgeons to use their professional judgment and follow the hippocratic oath to not do any surgery that makes a woman less hot!

Yeah, but some women actually do need breast reductions if they happen to be so large they interfere with being able to walk properly.

If that worked, you'd think that this would be the case today, but there seem to be fairly obvious counterexamples.

Fine, we'll appoint a board of supervisors. Harvey Weinstein can be its first head, with Joss Whedon as deputy.

Mastectomies probably don't need a subjective standard.

IIRC that one Oriental vizier-themed blog considers any breast reduction surgery a crime if it brings you below E cup, the ideal male preference.

A good Schelling fence is it ain't none of the government's business what's "good aesthetics". Looking back at history, would you really trust them with that? I don't.

I wonder if he's aware that his preference aligns with back problems and doesn't care, or if he's just never actually dated a skinny girl with E cups.

I do think there's a regulatory role for plastic surgery for minors, I think we can define major deformity pretty well. Something that would make shopping at Walmart difficult, though that's hardly a scientific test.

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