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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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They have superficial similarities. Both sides are usually less than pleased with their current bodies and wish to remedy that.

I get that you don't care for all the talk about identities and validity, but I don't think the similarity is superficial, and I think transhumanism tends to go far beyond remedying the lack of satisfaction one has with one's body. With the examples you gave, you've expanded transhumanism to include all humans, and at this point I have to ask what's so "trans" about it? I mean, hell, arguably you even included several non-human species. Are crows fashioning a wire into a hook to get to a snack trapped in a bottle transcrowists? Are beavers building dams transbeaverists, and ants building anthills transantists?

If we insist that all these things are trans*ism, what do we call people who are ok with using tools and body modification to restore original function, but are against modifications that go beyond that? That seems to be the major similarity between between transhumanists and transgenderists. Are you just trying to redefine the word that describes you, so that it includes everyone, in order to claim that this means everyone must agree with you? (That might be another similarity to the transgender movement)

My examples like brushing teeth or wearing clothes were intended as a reductio ad absurdum against the knee jerk reaction that any modification or augmentation of the "natural" human state is inherently suspect or falls under some grand, unified theory of "trans*ism". If we define transhumanism simply as "using technology to overcome a limitation," then yes, by that absurdly broad definition, a crow with a wire hook is a transcrowist, and anyone who wears shoes is a transhumanist. That wasn't my serious definition, but rather a way to point out that the boundary between "natural human" and "technologically augmented human" is not some bright, sacred line. Humans have always used tools and modified their environment and even their bodies.

If you are able to note that entirely normal behaviors that most humans, and even some smarter non-human animals engage in can be distinguished from transhumanism despite lying on a clear continuum, then please consider the obvious differences between it and transgenderism.

After all, I'm not the one who asked:

Tell me again how transgenderism is a totally different thing from transhumanism

If you can't appreciate the rather minimal and nuanced differences between getting a haircut and uploading a brain into a computer, then I suppose that's a reasonable question to ask.

There's no bright line between "fixing issues" and "making things better than they were, and on average, are". If you went to an ophthalmologist for LASIK when you developed myopia, you wouldn't get a refund if your complaint was that he'd ended up giving you better than 20/20 vision.

The fact that I don't go about saying how desperately I wish to be the opposite sex and how I could achieve that with modern technology makes me rather different from the average trans ideologue.

That seems to be the major similarity between between transhumanists and transgenderists

There you go. Majority similarities aren't the same as equivalence, and implies major differences. Communism isn't Fascism even if they're both authoritarian in practice. White ethnonationalism isn't the Nation of Islam.

The majority of trans advocates believe that the changes we can make at present, through makeup, surgery, hormones and asking other people nicely, are enough to justify treating a transperson just like a natal individual of the same identified sex. This has next to nothing to do with transhumanism.