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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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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.