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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36584 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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  1. C, 2) D 3) C, 4) D (think this is a poor question) 5) A, but I'd say it's more 70% social 30% biological. 6) D 7) I don't even understand this question. 8) A

Puberty blockers? Terrible and unsafe. We should ban them.

Physical capacity? Totally different. Shouldn't even be a question imo.

Passing is related to whether people think they're one gender vs another.

How much should we expect people to game gender affirming policies and what if anything should be done to prevent this

Again, don't really understand this question.

Please feel free to compare and contrast how different sets of answers to these questions have different implications for these examples or new scenarios you find interesting or propose new relevant questions. I'm most interested in kind of mapping out how different 'factions' in the general debate might answer these questions.

Asking to have people figure out all 8 questions for different factions is a lot. I'd recommend you condense them.

I generally get the sense that you're anti-trans from these questions. I'd describe myself as someone who is fine with trans but not cool with it given our current level of technological advancement. Maybe these questions don't target me specifically.

I think the more important questions can be boiled down to 1) Should someone be able to choose their own gender/sex? 2) Does our current technology mean we should accept this in all cases? 3) Should children/non-mature adults be able to change their gender/sex?

So I see you take a pretty unstructured stance on gender. What most confuses me with people that take your view is how 8A interacts with some of your other answers like 2D and 6D. It really feels like you're trying to shove two very different concepts into the same framework. You have this kind of infinite soul of expression where each person's inner being fractures out to an exactly unique point that can never be fully expressed. And you have the societal scale general attitudes that arise as a consequence of the biological differences between males and females. These two ideas do probably interact with each other in some ways that could be interesting to explore but we can't really meaningfully talk through either of them if we have to use the same words to describe both.

I see the social scale attitudes as ultimately flexible and think they will get more and more loose as technology removes us from their biological origin. I don’t really have a problem with that.

In terms of each unique person's meaning, sure everyone is unique. I don’t know what you mean about souls fracturing out to a unique point though.

Do we just disagree on my first point here?

I find the instinct you have that gender is the appropriate word to use here confusing. If your belief is that technology and social progress is going to make traditional concepts of gender no longer have power then it seems to me like gender abolition is the more obvious path than gender essentialism and expansion. Males can be women and also gender is important and also gender is actually an expansive nearly undefinable characteristic seem like strange bedfellows. Is it not more simple to just say gender is outdated nonsense and people should be able to express themselves however they'd like? That seems to me the most obvious path of transhumanism.

If someone eventually wants and is able to take on the form of a jackal, as might tempt one of our mutual acquaintances, is it not more clean to say that he was a man, as in to say male human, and decide he'd fancy at least some time in the form of a jackal so he is currently a(likely anthropomorphic) jackal without all the weird metaphysics of claiming he was actually always the abstract gender of male jackal. What is this gender framework actually buying you besides confusion?

If your belief is that technology and social progress is going to make traditional concepts of gender no longer have power then it seems to me like gender abolition is the more obvious path than gender essentialism and expansion.

I think we'll have to go through a phase of gender expansion before it no longer matters. We can't just swap from modern day notions to anything goes.

is it not more clean to say that he was a man, as in to say male human

Uhh, no? He's a jackal-man! I mean again I don't know if I'm following you down some of these rabbit holes. When it comes to intense trans / gender / sex language or whatever I just don't think it's worth defining every little thing.

gender is important and also gender is actually an expansive nearly undefinable characteristic seem like strange bedfellows

I never said gender was important! It may be important in the here and now due to things tied to it like fertility, but I don't think it's important in itself.

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