domain:ryandv.substack.com
sun_the_second
2hr ago
Had trans women limited themselves to peeing in peace, you might have had an occasional Karen freaking out seeing someone who looks like a man in the women's restroom, but most people wouldn't have cared. My recollection is that this wasn't an issue for many years.
Really? Before the trans debate, do you think men could just occasionally walk into the women's bathroom and pee in peace while only being freaked out at by rare Karens?
Folamh3
2hr ago
This article made me laugh probably more than anything I've ever read on Substack: https://suedonym.substack.com/p/the-real-lesbian-master-doc
(Mods, please delete if it's too culture-warry.)
Folamh3
3hr ago
If half of the rapes are committed by men in women's bathrooms who had previously invoked their gender identity as an excuse to be there, then I would agree that this was a huge fucking problem and we should restrict access to improve women's safety.
But the point habitually made by gender-critical feminists is that, once these policies are in place, a bad actor doesn't even need to invoke the concept of gender identity as an excuse to enter the ladies' room. Once you've established a precedent that certain male people are allowed to use the ladies' room, and you're not allowed to kick up a stink about it even if they have fully intact male genitalia (because not all trans women - indeed, the overwhelming majority - want to undergo bottom surgery) or if they're making zero effort to pass (because "trans women don't owe you femininity"), it is inevitable that bad actors (many of whom don't even consider themselves trans) will exploit this ostensibly well-meaning policy for their own ends.
A policy of allowing certain male people to enter the ladies' room presents obvious risks for female safeguarding even if literally 100% of people who call themselves trans women are perfectly pure angels who would never hurt a fly. (It need hardly be said that many are not.)
With the possible exception of Hogwarts, gender restrictions in bathrooms are not strictly enforced. Someone who is entering a women's bathroom to commit rape is unlikely to care that he will also break some trivial statute about not going to the women's bathroom.
Folamh3
3hr ago
They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender.
I see this asserted all the time, but would love to see some hard data backing it up. I have seen the results of one study from Sweden which found that trans people who underwent sex reassignment surgery had higher suicide rates than trans people who didn't.
sun_the_second
3hr ago
Probably not, the way I joined most of my discords is "you're on a more public platform like a subreddit and they have a link to their discord".
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4hr ago
Just an aside and nothing personal against you, but I really dislike:
- the use of embedded links as glosses of esoteric terms.
Why: I dislike the continual minimizing/maximizing of windows and the break in flow of thought
- linking to a website instead of simply explaining in words what it is you yourself have intended in your post. (You intended as the hypothetical you, not necessarily you.
Why: it seems dismissive and rude, like when someone asks where the restroom is and you just point at a sign instead of speaking. Sometimes one might intend to be dismissive and rude, and sure, maybe this is just me clinging to more traditional mores. Could be.
I realize people are sometimes short of time or impatient but damn.
Folamh3
4hr ago
Then it's an unreasonable framing because trans people are not people with a cross dressing fetish.
Some and some.
lagrangian
5hr ago
Alright, I've tried to ignore you. I've blocked you, but still see the threads you generate, which was somehow even more annoying. At this point, I'm going to burn some social capital, or take the downvotes, or eat a ban, but by god I'm gonna say it - and I'll wager I'm not alone in the sentiment:
I dislike your weird, pathetic, whiney presence on this board, and I'd dearly love if you left.
ThisIsSin
The boob tube emits harmful XXX-rays
5hr ago
We can just… not accommodate crazy delusional people.
Yes, but that raises Overton window concerns among the people first in line to accommodate this brand of crazy. If we stopped accommodating obviously crazy delusional people then it becomes more rhetorically difficult for the less-obviously crazy but still delusional people to maintain those delusions.
As far as which delusions they are... well, the modal champion of trans rights is an unmarried college-educated white woman in a education or managerial career. Surely that demographic has no delusions surrounding gender, and even if they did, surely it wouldn't threaten their socioeconomic standing if we started reconsidering our accommodation of those delusions?
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5hr ago
Thanks! That's a high compliment on a sensemaking forum.
anti_dan
5hr ago
I think people who have never been involved in criminal law, particularly sex crimes, do not understand is the difficulty of proving a case. The fact that a person is in an area they shouldn't be in is very good evidence they committed a sex crime compared to what normally is submitted.
Most sex crimes happen in private with no witnesses and no corroboration.
But a sex crime where a man is in the ladies locker room and can be seen going in or out? That can be charged. This is the difference between a rapist going free or being charged.
Sex crimes are both some of the most egregious crimes, and some of the hardest to prove crimes in our system. They are much harder than murder to prove, for example.
curious_straight_ca
5hr ago
I think the rate of self-injury from maintaining a car yourself would be quite a bit lower than the rate of self-injury from deciding on one's own medical treatment, and that's the reason for the different kinds of regulation.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
5hr ago
As much as I want to see Smolett get his, I have to agree. Outcomes like this are essentially punishing the prosecutors for not following the rules. Fair enough too.
Ioper
5hr ago
I wouldn't know in your case specifically but her keeping in contact with you is obviously a good sign.
Perhaps you could set yourself a time limit after which you start dating again? Obviously you can't keep pining after this girl endlessly but is focusing on things other than dating for a few months unreasonable?
curious_straight_ca
5hr ago
Now what part of that changes by forcing a doctor into the process
Having someone who's more intelligent than you, knows a lot more about medicine than you, and has had a lot of practice managing patients instructing you on what to do helps a lot. It makes it a lot more likely that someone will benefit from treatment. Most people aren't actively attempting to ignore the doctor's advice, they're just kinda dumb, not really actively pursuing any particular goal, so having someone competent leading the process helps a lot, and the doctor can shut down obviously stupid ideas like 'take a huge dose of estrogen every six months as a Hormone Cleanse' that'd absolutely evolve if allowed to.
Does he monitor you 24/7 so that you don't take specific different medications at the same time
You phrased this very weirdly, but ... yes? The doctor has a list of all the medications you are taking, and when they prescribe a new one they check the list to make sure there aren't any bad interactions. This is an important thing that they do. It doesn't require visiting your house.
anti_dan
5hr ago
In other words, the "they left me" meme is super true for former centrists who became "right wing".
anti_dan
5hr ago
If you think Bluesky is Twitter inverted, you are mistaken. Bluesky is just MSNBC extreme as a social media. Twitter is not right wing, it is just lacking in censorship of people right of center.
anti_dan
5hr ago
Basically what happened is they upheld his initial, corrupt, dismissal. This is not bad. The justice system is supposed to be pro-defendant. That is all that happened here.
Ecgtheow
6hr ago
The bathroom issue is simply an issue of trade-offs. Having to use a gendered bathroom which belongs to a gender one does not identify as clearly can be humiliating.
I don't think it's an issue of just humiliation. A trans woman who is on estrogen for a substantial amount of time and has developed breasts or had bottom surgery is likely to be at risk of sexual assault if she is forced to use a men's bathroom or a men's locker room. There's also the risk of regular non-sexual assault by transphobic men against someone who has had the hormone profile of a cis woman for years and has the accompanying muscle mass. I agree that bathroom assault risk is pretty low for each individual use, but a trans woman in a space where 99% of the other people are cis men has two orders of magnitude more encounters with potential assailants than a cis woman in a woman's room where 1% of the users are a trans women.
I have a trans friend, she passes pretty well now but a thing I witnessed happen a couple times when we were hanging out in bars earlier in her transition was men hitting on her without realizing she was trans, realizing she was trans as the encounter went on, and getting aggressive once they figured that out. I would fear deeply for her safety if that encounter was playing out in private in a men's room and not in a crowded bar where she had friends around. To say she's forced to use men's restrooms is to force her to take on a substantial risk of assault (sexual or otherwise) to exist in public, and frankly for some people I think that's the point, to exclude trans people from public life.
Good stuff, thanks for the links.
that you can re-program yourself, that you can live in constant bliss or reach a higher level of consciousness?
Hereabouts. The more perception-related stuff like reality shifting and kasina meditation is like playing with fire. I do recall hearing that the Tibetans practice some kind of "emotional alchemy", where one emotion is changed into another, and that this is one of the most dangerous meditations on earth as if it backfires you can go insane or become a psychopathic murderer and the likes, but maybe that's hearsay. There is though a staple of Vajrayana, where you "become" the pure embodiment of some emotion or idea for a time, like a "demon of hatred", but this is just embracing a current emotion and letting it all out, which is what we all do during therapy. Pretty simple.
Living in constant bliss (which should be possible given that these mechanisms don't rely on dopamine or other neurotransmitters, but occur in the processing of sensations) probably just requires a strong concentration, then to focus on a pleasant experience in your body, and keep the focus such that a feedback-loop occurs.
This is basically the process behind all serious meditative/psychedelic states, no? Some kind of feedback loop. The dhyanas are triggered by noticing some pleasant tingles in the hands, and with your brain in a very plastic and vulnerable state, the observation of these tingles magnifies the sensation, and on repeat observations the feeling builds, up until you reach immense pleasure. And this is qualitatively different from a high state of samadhi, which is typically based on a cool feeling of the breath, and so manifests more as a profound relaxation.
But a feedback loop like that simply doesn't happen while sober, and it is evidently not something you can condition through meditation (with our current knowledge). But there is a whole bunch of crap related to kundalini awakening that seems potentially promising, but feels like digging through your weird old relative's house where everything's dirty and smells weird. Mainly I just don't have any good leads. Perhaps you do though.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6hr ago
Eye surgery is beneficial but the elation post-surgery does not stay with a person throughout their entire life. The elation, or bliss, is experienced directly after the surgery and gradually diminishes in potency until mood returns to normal, as it does with sports winners and lottery winners. Just like we are not currently in a state of a elation because we have all been seriously sick with something at some point in our past. I’m not disputing that there could be some form of meditation that, when incorporated into a routine, momentarily results in elation as someone realizes its benefit (eg it aids in their adaption to life). But once this routine is settled, the elation disappears as the benefit is habitualized, even though the routine may still be valued as part of one’s lifestyle. (I can’t reply to the SSRI example because I have too many doubts on the efficacy and evidence regarding them).
What OP appears to be suggesting is that there could be a meditative technique that reliably results in bliss in the longterm, not just results in benefit. I think this is impossible and also wouldn’t be preferred if it were possible. The problem with heroin is that it will always result in a state that is exponentially more pleasurable than your default state — the mood enhancement isn’t transient, it’s always the result, yet at the same time the “default” mood plunges lower and lower. If you found meditative strategy that always resulted in bliss, the same thing would happen. But there are probably meditative practices that just result in a benefit.
roche
6hr ago
Euphoria is the experience of an unusual amount of pleasure, and an experience which provides euphoria will eventually provide “mere pleasantness” when repeated. And if repeated long enough it will provide “mere baseline”.
Back in the day, senior monks used to spend all day in the dhyana states to the point of neglecting to instruct the younger monks. AFAIK the pleasure of the jhanas does not dimish.
Let’s suppose you could self-administer euphoria on command. This would be similar to heroin addiction. What would be your incentive to fulfill the hours of necessary daily tasks to maintain health, if you could summon euphoria at will? Once you exit that state of euphoria you would feel abysmal because now your body has to utilize so much energy and effort to, like, get groceries while in a state of displeasure.
Obviously if we were just seeking to replicate heroin or MDMA the whole idea would be stupid. The point here is that drugs like heroin and MDMA operate within a certain paradigm, they work by throwing a giant monkey wrench in the face of your sobriety, and so the way to healthy unique experiences is not by fucking with your sobriety through a medley of strange chemicals, but by changing the nature of your sobriety through meditation and other practices, which is already done in a number of ways by monks and tantrikas.
I don’t think you are treating these eastern spiritual claims with enough skepticism. The idea that a human can experience an eternally preferable state (a bliss) without the experience of a negative emotional state to refer back to is illogical.
It's an incredible claim, and for now I don't believe it either. However, there are two facts which make me hesitate here:
-
Meditative states can produce virtually any emotion or experience, with enough effort and time. Imagine it, and it will happen.
-
Effects from meditative states can and often do carry into sober existence.
Now, the logical link between these two facts and "You can achieve a lasting state of bliss in sobriety" does not exist. But the logical link of "Meditation (and psychedelic experiences in general) leave lasting impacts on your sobriety, and we don't know how" does. The anecdotes are endless. So I'm not pursuing something ridiculous like a state of meditative bliss out the gate, but rather inquiring where the line is drawn, to see on paper the maximum benefit we can derive from these practices, and hopefully to find the origin of their negative aspects like psychosis and the Long Dark Night of the Soul. This is important because current meditation traditions have no interest in that. They're dogmatists as I've mentioned, and their approach is to wait until a disaster happens and only then clean up the mess. Personally, I'm not confident a lasting bliss-like state may be achieved, because the nature of lasting meditative effects tend to be more perceptive like floaters, fuzzy borders, and high-visual clarity as opposed to concrete feelings. And yet, those absolutely do happen -- particularly from 'metta'.
There’s some higher order part of ourself that finds this repulsive and actually demands the necessity of pain in order to adapt to biological, external, and social reality.
Do you think about all that stuff in the 5~ seconds after you orgasm? Personally, I bask in the waves of bliss. I think you ought to read up on some of the meditative stuff ITT to see just how far out these states can get.
roche
7hr ago
A special kind of relativism, yeah. But...
If you think about anything long enough, you will find that there's no one true answer, no matter if the subject is morality, meaning, philosophy, or mathematics (incompleteness theorems).
Careful here. This train of logic contradicts relativism, because you're saying if anyone thinks long enough they'll arrive at the relativist position, whereas a true relativist knows this only applies to himself and the others "destined" for relativism, and it's wholly natural for Muslims and Christians to collide with the same ideas as you and bounce off into becoming even more fervent Muslims and Christians. For them there is no "choosing" in the process. It's simply the truth.
Would it? Most of the time, when industry advocates are here arguing this sort of point, they're implicitly assuming that the use of medical professionals will drop to zero (or be banned). Thus, they're imagining the least knowledgeable person deciding on their own medical treatment. But when we look at the car maintenance world, we see the vast vast majority of low-knowledge folks still using automotive professionals. The rate of self-injury is, indeed, low, but someone needs a bit more than arguments from bad imagination if they're going to rest on a claim that the rate of self-injury would surely be "quite a bit" higher.
You hear this same shit from the realtor cartel, and frankly, any cartel that wants to maintain its market power. "Oh real estate transactions are so complicated; can you imagine how the sky would fall if we didn't get our 3% cut of every transaction?! PEOPLE WOULD BE HARMED!" You know what really would happen if you lost some of the sketchier tools to maintain your market control? First, you'd probably have to clean up your act, but second, lots and lots of people would still use you, but for your actual expertise, rather than because they think they're basically forced into it. Sure, will there be some harm that didn't occur before? Probably. But there's some harm now that wouldn't occur then, too. You need an actual argument about magnitudes rather than just imagination.
EDIT: Remember when it was every state, rather than just two states, who banned you from pumping your own gas into your car? Surely there were folks saying how risky and dangerous it would be (gasoline is flammable, don'cha'kno?) to let ignoramus individuals do it. How's that argument looking for those two states that have held on to it?
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