Oddbean

Basic things like what is a man & a woman. It's just the modern version if Orwell's 2+2=5 and a lot of people have fallen for it. You get people to deny something as fundamental as our own biology & they will believe any nonsense you feed them. I think society is being primed for total tyranny & how many already openly supported hospitals & grocery stores refusing access to the unvaxxed? What will the deluded support in the next go around? The crazier things get the more painful it is for the deluded to let go of their investment so the more they will do to protect the irrational world they have built for themselves. This is how cult behavior works.

Which is more real, consciousness or form? Is a persons identity more or less real than their physical self? A person with gender dysphoria can either deny or try to change one or the other, their identity or their body. I don't presume to know what is best for them.

Libertarians don't care what pronouns a person calls themselves or anyone else. They're not missing any point. The point of freedom of speech is that freedom of speech includes the right to say things others may consider offensive. Furthermore . . . Queer Theory = Queer Marxism Queer Marxism is more about abolishing normalcy, and indoctrinating and awakening people to a communist "critical consciousness," than it is about LGBT. "Awakening" to a communist critical consciousness is where the term "woke" came from. LGBT is not really about gay/transvestite. It's about destroying everything normal, hence the gazzillion sex categories into infinity. Pronouns sanctioned by queer Marxists offend some people, just like refusal to use the Marxist queer theory pronouns offend others. One group doesn't get to take control of the other group's speech.

If your "identity" contradicts physical reality then it is an error you have imagined. The way to be a healthy person is to integrate your identity with reality, not deny reality or take a knife to it. Some people have things seriously inverted.

Do you believe in bodily autonomy? And to be clear I'm not talking about children, I'm talking about adults. Do they have the right to do what they want with there own bodies? Also, all identity is basically imagined. Personalities are cloaks that we wear. I certainly can't deny there's a contradiction going on in that person's reality, I'm just saying it's not really my business how they go about resolving that but i wish them the best. Further, should they ask me to refer to them by some pronoun or other it's not really any skin off my nose to be polite and respect that. I suppose you think that's enabling and encouraging their delusion, to me it's just polite.

Sure, but if someone wanted you to cut off their perfectly healthy arm, or jump off a ledge, would you help them do that or would your try to talk them out of such self destructive things? Do you understand that genital mutilation doesn't change a person's biology & that the drugs & surgeries lead to serious health complications & a completely & permanently disfuctional life going forward? You should look into the horrible things that "doctors" are doing to these people to the tune of millions of dollars, and govt policy is socializing the costs... why? The crazy suicide rate among these people is really not surprising.

If somebody came to me asking for advice on their gender dysphoria and what to do about it I wouldn't be comfortable either encouraging or discouraging any action, definitely not surgery or hormones, but would more likely help them find support from communities and professionals that understand what they're going through better than I can. If someone was attempting to mutilate or kill themselves I'd obviously try to talk them out of whatever stressed state they were in. It's a different situation. I understand there can be all kinds of complications with gender reassignment, and some people even strongly regret it later. Again, it's not my business to say what's right for any individual. For some people it seems to have helped them. Good for them. That government socialises the costs isn't a problem unique to this specific kind of care, that's a problem across the board. I don't really like that I have to cover costs of people that live unhealthy lifestyles either, but it's still their own business if they want to drink, or smoke, or eat cake, or whatever.

The actual neurobiology here, how a trans person’s brain chemistry is organized, introduces a lot of nuance here. 150 years ago, the idea that there were invisible waves in the air that can carry information would get you institutionalized. Now we measure radio and use Bluetooth every day. Don’t risk the arrogance of assuming it’s black and white, just because it seems like it should be simple and because the ultraconservative “Christians” fund the message that it’s a certain way and it’s made its way into the culture war. (Quotation marks because they’re a poor example of Christian values and fail bitterly at compassion).

My beliefs have nothing to do with any sort of "Christian" influence, while I do loosely consider myself to be one now (after a decade or so of atheism) my interpretation of things is completely non-traditional, & the majority of boomer "Christians" that I interact with would call me a heretic. I don't think brain chemistry is some sort of fixed thing & people are not just their brain separate from everything else. I think the entire framing comes from a completely fallacious view of who & what we are. It's the same view that allows people to believe we will transcend our bodies & exist in computers or something, but I don't think that is how any of this works. I think this view mostly comes from people who are doing & promoting horrible things because they are afraid of their own mortality... which might actually have something to do with their rejection of spirituality or religion in some form or fashion.