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As a youth interested in sci-fi and fantasy, Transhumanism always sounded so cool. I can't help but feel that now that it is actually happening, people have made it so lame.
Some of it must be a definition problem. The "trans" part can mean two things: Transition or Transcend. The modern lexicon seems to always have it meaning Transition. You transition from one standard human role to another standard human role. This to me is the lame form of transhumanism. The cool form of transhumanism would have that baby being born in a medical pod. You are railing against role players, actors, fakes. Hollywood seems to have permeated all of society, where the best thing people can do is just play a different role. So boring. I wish you had the real transhumanism to be angry about.
Pod babies, semi-immortal brains in vats, machine enhanced human bodies (more than just a couple of medically necessary interventions like pace-makers), nervous systems transfers, rampant human cloning, etc. None of it exists, none of it is even that close to existing. Transcendent humanism seems deader than ever. Where I once had a hope for it to come about, I'm now more certain than ever that the future belongs to the machines. Not even machines simulating human brains, or building an afterlife for biologically dead humans. Just boring machines running algorithms.
Unless AI turns out to be a real bust, none of this will matter, because biology is just too slow. I tell you this as someone who doesn't see some versions of the "borg" as a bad outcome: the borg ain't happening. There are a couple larpers out there, but they'll all either be dead or swept into the zoo exhibit with the rest of us before any cool Transhumanism comes to pass.
If they did, would there not be countless cries of outrage about what a disgusting affront to God and Nature each of those things are, too?
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There's another meaning of trans that you are missing: transgress.
I had a thought recently which clarified my views on the trans issue. "What if there were no trans people because everyone was born with their correct gender. Would this be a good thing?". According to standard trans ideology, this would be ideal since people only transition to match their perceived gender. They are girls trapped in a boy's body (or vice versa). If Eliot Page were born a male there would be no need to transition. Right?
I believe that a trans activist would bristle at this suggestion. Changing one's gender is not the goal. The transition itself, and the struggle attached to it, is the goal.
In fact, if transition were perfect, the politics would change. Imagine again a magic wand which perfectly changed your gender with no side effects. If that existed, many people would change their gender. It wouldn't even be controversial. And in any ways, it'd be impossible to tell. I'd probably change my gender (temporarily) just to see what it's like to be a woman.
But that would defeat the point. Trans ideology derives its value from the extreme cost and sacrifice needed to change genders. You can't be stunning and brave when it's easy. And the uncanny appearance of many trans people also serves to highlight the immensity of their decision. In this way, I think trans people are similar to Christian or Indian ascetics whose emaciated appearance horrifies and awes the public. A person who believes in something so strongly that they are willing to mutilate their body is certainly worthy of some form of respect.
So what is gender transition if not the ultimate transgression against nature, your parents, and society at large? Like Christianity before it, post-modern ideology celebrates weakness, victimhood, and transgression. Trans people are the modern ascetics, whose extreme commitment to the cause cannot be questioned.
The goal isn't to change one's gender. The goal is to change one's body to match perceived gender.
I would like to see evidence of this view by activists. It's strong and uncharitable enough to require it.
Sure. The question is still how prevalent Chu's view is among trans activists.
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Uh, what? I'm aware that Chu once defined femaleness as having the barest essentials of "an open mouth, an expectant asshole", but I'm not aware of any view of hers that would validate the view that struggle is itself the goal.
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This is an important insight about Queer Theory and the Critical tradition more broadly: permanent revolution is the primary, central goal of the entire intellectual framework. As soon as something has achieved any degree of stable cultural acceptance, it becomes conservative by definition and needs to be transgressed and sublated in turn. What is today’s radical fringe will be tomorrow’s normie cringe. Trans people who get “bottom surgery” might be on the cutting edge of transformation today, but if the Queer Theorists get their way, 100 years from now the same people will be seen as utterly reactionary for reifying the very idea that the physical body has any necessary relationship to identity at all.
No, that doesn't follow. The goal of many of these people is socialism for a reason, the idea of a stateless society where everyone voluntarily works for authentic happiness without coercion is the utopia at the end of the road. It necessarily follows that they would not go the route of "actually, we need monarchy cause statelessness is now so traditional".
Indeed, the entire point of permanent revolution was about socialist/communist political parties not settling for democratic reforms, but to agitate for socialism or communism. They aren't revolutionary inherently, they're revolutionary because no one was giving them what they actually wanted. If I notice that you are hungry and give you one slice of an apple and you still insist you are hungry, it is insane for me to call you a thief who was never motivated by hunger at all.
You're out of touch with progressive rhetoric. This is already happening and has been a standard argument made for a while now.
I think that you are the one who is out of touch with progressive rhetoric, given that you’re still assuming that these people are operating in a Marxist materialist frame, whereas I think the evidence is substantial that in a post-Gramscian, post-Marcusian paradigm, things have moved past the simple drive toward establishing an anarcho-communist society free of material coercion of labor, and has instead allowed the Gnostic/Hermetic theological elements - present in Marxism from the beginning via Hegel - to transcend the materialist elements of Marxism. I’m drawing mostly from James Lindsay’s analysis of Critical Theory or post-Marxism as a religious/Gnostic faith centered around the Hegelian dialectic, which seeks to totally transcend humanity and rebuild God.
Again, it just doesn't follow. By and large, progressive intellectuals and activists are not interested in being permanent rebels, they want to be the people making decisions at the end of the day. It is true that they are more prone to infighting, but all of those groups have a utopia in mind, even if they don't crystallize it. Even your point about them wanting to rebuild God implies a religious utopia filled with moral people.
Moreover, you're dead wrong about my being out of touch on the trans point, or are you just conceding that? Because the entire premise of progressive gender ideology is that gender is innate and not determined by body at all. You don't have to transition physically to be trans in the trans activist camp, not one bit.
That's where next generation of rebels come in. You can't have a permanent revolution changing things toward the ideal society if you let one generation think it got it exactly right.
It's the struggle that matters - that's the only thing.
Can you define "permanent revolution" for me? Because I think you and the people in question have very different understandings of what those are.
Secondly, they're not creating a generation of rebels. They only become rebels insofar as the current system is undesirable. Progressives do not raise children with the terminal goal of fighting without respect to what is being fought for. Their terminal values are things that, if implemented, they would 100% not tolerate deviation from.
The idea marxists have - that by being extremely critical and active against injustices you feel exist in the world you can usher in a better world. That criticism while having no clear idea or plan on what to do is still the right thing to do. etc.
That's the beauty of it. Adolescent rebellion along with the right memes is enough.
Hasn't it worked out ? Didn't Marcuse get a heart attack confronting radical left students? Aren't the radical leftists who so infuriated Marcuse now entrenched in academia and being replaced by far more progressives ? Etc..
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Then why in God’s name are children, let alone adults, being given “trans-affirming healthcare”? What are all the puberty blockers, top and bottom surgeries, etc. for, if gender identity has no connection to the body? I’m fully aware that there is a gender-abolitionist and/or “gender-fucking” faction within the Queer activist vanguard, but it is very obvious to me that the actual Overton window is still centered on costly biomedical engineering of bodies in order to produce consonance between the physical and the psychological/spiritual elements of gender identity. Are you arguing that this is already the stale and passé approach of people who are not on the, ahem, cutting edge? Even though it is ramping up and expanding by the month and appears to be gaining more steam than ever?
Trans activists are consistently clear that some trans people want to transition and others don't, but both are equally the gender they say they are. This was a major point about the Attack Helicopter poem that was rejected for transphobia, people afterwards went around reminding others that the trans experience varies from person to person. Some want to physically alter their bodies, others don't.
The reason for gender-affirming care for children is that they're on a timer - if you wait until they are adults to see if the dysphoria goes away, you get some people whose bodies have been permanently altered via puberty and this causes significant distress. The idea behind the blockers is that delaying puberty doesn't cause any harm (the accuracy of this idea is irrelevant, we're asking why they do something).
As for why we talk about those who physically transition, that should be obvious. The ones who don't want to never get media attention on them. Action naturally attracts attention in a way that inaction doesn't.
Trans activists are fighting for all trans people, regardless of whether they transition physically or not. This has never been in contention.
Well, they sometimes do, in the context of specifically transwomen being allowed in female/women's spaces. The idea that any random male could declare herself a woman and expect to walk into a female locker room or bathroom is something that's caused some controversy. But it's the kind of thing that has happened rarely enough that it hasn't attracted as much attention as kids transitioning (beyond just the fact that controversies involving kids automatically tend to punch above their weight).
I think this is in contention. Perhaps I'm just being pedantic, but who trans activists are fighting for are trans people of any stripe who also happen to agree with the activists' ideology. I believe it's an open question as to whether this constitutes all trans people or enough to round up to all or even most trans people - trans people are so few and dispersed that I'm not sure it's even possible to do a credible random sampling of them to get some accurate view of what they tend to believe.
There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue in this as well, in that there's indications of a social contagion, especially among girls, where there's actual causality - people who were led to being trans from their ideology.
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Your proposition is bristled at because they assume you're saying "what if" and sneaking in "it is". I assume that's a large part of it.
Some of it, of course, is bristling at an existential attack on one's community. Unfortunately, that tends to be counterproductive when a community is supposed to be transient (ha!) or transitive in the first place.
Yes, my point exactly. If perfect transition and acceptance were possible it would defeat the point entirely. There would be no trans people, only men and women.
The community claims to want to be erased, "trans women are women", but they don't actually want to be erased. It is the transition, the journey, that is the point. The actual destination is not just man or woman, but a trans man or woman. And to the progressive community there is great value in a "trans" identify which is separate from a gender identity. Because the presence of these people serves as evidence of the huge sacrifices people are willing to endure for the cause.
I think you're seriously underestimating the number of people who would still be opposed to the use of this gender-swapping magic wand because it is an affront to God or something to that effect.
There is some selection bias here: you generally only hear from the trans people who want people to hear from them, and you only identify ("clock") as trans those trans people who don't pass well (plus the occasional false positive). Trans people who just want to be seen as their gender and not as trans-their-gender, and who pass reasonably well, certainly do exist, but they are by their nature invisible.
Bruh, I really want to have the people who claimed those two women were trans subject themselves to a visual acuity test. They're so evidently not it's painful to me haha
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I think this vision of the future suffers from the fact that we humans are very squeamish when it comes to experimenting on humans, especially children. The idea of "decanting" children is both itself rather dystopian (literally Brave New World) in how it rends the family, but the development of the technology itself seems likely to leave a trail of miserable, short lives for children born with severe birth defects when the technology is less than perfect. Like self-driving cars, I think the technology would need to be much safer than natural human reproduction to convince people to switch, but unlike cars, there isn't really a viable simulacrum or small-scale ethical model that could be tested. I suppose you could decant monkeys or something, but how would you know if they end up the equivalent of 15 IQ points lower than naturally-born specimens? I can't see how you'd convince your IRB, nay, the public at large, that you're not going to be remembered as the second coming of Josef Mengele for bringing a bunch of broken humans into the world.
There have been a number of papers showing heightened rates of certain conditions with IVF ranging from certain childhood cancers to long-term general health (admittedly, no better than the rest of medical scientific research, aka trash), and it's a topic that's very hard to broach publicly without seeming to Hate Babies.
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