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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32274 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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FTR, my reaction to the idea of medically altering the identity bits is something like "Could you kill me in a less horrifying way, please?"

That said, my issues are more age than gender, and the mental aspect is a significant part of that (which only grows more ... perplexing... over time). The trouble though is that it's hard to define what fixing that would look like. If I'm imagining a magical mind-alteration solution, I like to include a daily "revert the alterations, reflect on how they work" period, because that crap is scary and I expect easier to get wrong than not. I have no idea how this could be accomplished in reallity, other than simulations. But I'm not sure much of mine could be resolved outside of simulations. Ugh. Reallity is better than not existing, but I still complain.

All of which is to say, I get the vicious reactions you get for suggesting altering it mentally rather than bodily. I'd prefer people not be so vicious about it (I'm here and not there for reasons), fwiw.

I think the “identity bits” is where, from my perspective, an alien morality gets smuggled in.

No one suggests that if you give someone suffering from eczema a lotion that they are committing “genocide” against the “eczema community”. But wave the magic identity wand around and everything becomes moralized.

If we could make gender Dysphoria disappear tomorrow, from the perspective of alleviating real suffering the answer should be a no brainer. The fact that answering this question causes any consternation is indicative of a bait and switch.

I’ve suffered and continue to suffer mental illness in my life, if I could make it go away and restore my brain to full function I wouldn’t hesitate. I’m not part of a “community”, I just have a condition. The fact that people build a wall called “identity” around their maladies is at best an understandable cope, at worse adding fuel to the fire.

I think the primary mission of medicine should be the restoration of natural function of a person. Much like “Free Speech” has a strict legal definition but also heavily implies a cultural attitude, same with the Hippocratic Oath; “First, do no harm.”

Helping people take care, love and accept their bodies should take complete priority over modifying a healthy, functioning body. If you have to modify, do so only with the goal to restore healthy, natural function.

To me that’s the expansive vision of the Hippocratic oath as regards to body modification, and I find it goes into direct conflict with the transhumanist / cyborg vision of (un?)humanity that to my mind, includes transgenderism.

Someone out there coined the term “trad-humanism” and that more or less seems accurate to describe my view on this.

If I'm suffering from eczema and you conditioned me to stop suffering while the outward symptoms are still there, am I cured?

What are the outward symptoms of gender dysphoria other than the suffering itself?

In this case, I can't name any. My point is, it's an insidious path to focus on fixing "how you feel about it" rather than the problem itself.

If "how you feel about it" is the problem itself, then I'm not sure how that's insidious.

Yeah, basically.

It’s a psychological problem. It’s generally best to address a psychological problem through… psychology. If that doesn’t work, add psychopharmacology on top, because then you know there’s a neurological element.

All of which has a goal of restoring healthy brain function.

The argument of the other side is that gender affirming care is itself an insidious way to sell a cure that does more harm than good, rather then addressing the actual problem.

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