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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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If we viewed hormone supplementation for men as a worthy goal, presumably we'd make progress on converting manlets to Adonises while minimizing the risk of them ending up as balder manlets. SARMs seem like a promising avenue, selectively increasing muscle mass and bone density but possibly avoiding hair loss and testicular side effects of traditional anabolic steroids. I've little doubt that a fraction of the medical experimentation that has gone into converting penises into ersatz vaginas and vice versa could do wonders to advance our ability to guide natural sexual dimorphism more carefully along its natural path.

This comment is an excellent demonstration that the claims from the anti-trans side of this or that being "natural" or "unnatural", and therefore objectively right or wrong, are just an attempt to rationalize their own completely subjective aesthetic preferences. How do you not see the absurdity in claiming that giving trans people actually natural hormones – ones that actual humans actually have, in nature – is wrong and denying biology, etc., while giving people with body dysmorphia (who are, like trans people, unsatisfied with their "natural" bodies) chemicals that have never existed outside a lab, and are functionally unlike any natural substance, is just "guiding" their body "along its natural path"?

How do you not see the absurdity in claiming that giving trans people actually natural hormones – ones that actual humans actually have, in nature – is wrong and denying biology, etc.

I don't think I ever actually claimed that.

while giving people with body dysmorphia (who are, like trans people, unsatisfied with their "natural" bodies) chemicals that have never existed outside a lab, and are functionally unlike any natural substance, is just "guiding" their body "along its natural path"?

Because it is. Wanting to be a more perfectly realized version of the path that nature set you on is normal and even healthy. Wanting to be the other sex is at least severely maladaptive.

arent both behaviors maximally natural just as any behavior, because we and everything we can interact with exists within nature? how do you define natural such that taking gender transition hormones is unnatural while taking hormones as a male to become stronger and more masculine is natural?

No, I don't agree with a definition of natural in which everything that occurs in our universe qualifies equally. But no, I also don't want to go down a rabbithole arguing semantics with you.

Trans people wouldn't need to be given hormones if they were making them naturally.

The hormones they're being given at least exist naturally in humans. All humans have both estrogen and testosterone. It's just the levels of each being altered in trans people. This is apparently unnatural. But giving people synthetic chemicals that don't exist anywhere in nature is apparently "natural". This is absurd.

Both are unnatural. 'Something is natural' is a pretty shitty argument in general. Gravity is natural too, jumping off a cliff isn't healthy.

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