Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 3:56 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 3:02 pm
Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 2:53 pm
...you are wrong about my feelings; they are not momentary.
Well, of course, you don't know that.
I wasn't meaning to suggest that I know more about my feelings than you do.
Hey, you have a new feeling everytime somebody sends you a message. That's how transient feelings are.
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:Are they morally wrong for experiencing feelings that cause them emotional distress, then?
No, they're not morally wrong...just factually wrong. They're men who imagine they can be women, and women who imagine they can be men. And they all find out the same thing: that they cannot.
Of course men can't be women, and women can't be men, but if it is possible to make them feel more like the gender they feel they should have been,
"Should" have been? "Should have been?"
Wow. You're implying a lot, there. You're implying there's a way things "should have been" that they are not. But how do you know what "should have been"?
But who "intended" that things "should have been" anything?
Are we not mere products, according to your worldview, of accidental forces that didn't "want" anything to happen at all. Heck, natural laws are not even capable of "wanting" anything, or "intending" that anything "should" happen. They just make stuff go as it does. Thus, there's no way things "should have" been...there's only what is, what exists, what's here, right?
Or shall we anthropomorphize? Shall we say there's a "Mother Nature," who thinks that body-dysphoric people "should" be other than they are? But how do we know that this "Mother Nature," this source of "shouldness" you're imagining, "intended" some people to struggle with gender dysphoria, overcome it, and become better people for that? Detransitioners certainly say that's how the story runs.
The problem is this: not whether body-dysphoric people deserve compassion, understanding and help, but rather what compassion, understanding and help actually look like. You say that telling them they're fine, and encouraging their delusion is "acceptance" and compassion. I'm saying that helping them overcome their delusion is compassion. And you'll find that a lot of those who have undergone the relevant transitions, and have discovered the results, are on my side, not yours.
So we can both be thinking compassionately, but coming up with opposite expressions of compassion. One of us will turn out to be right, and the other will turn out to be wrong. But my money's on the person who respects reality, biology, and scientific facts.
Feelings and emotions are not delusions, they are very real to those experiencing them.
That they
exist is real. What they
refer to is not. That's what a "delusion" means.
You will not find an unhappier group than the transers:
Statistics, please. It is true because IC says so isn't good enough.
Keep reading.
...their suicide rate, both before and after transing, and regardless of whether they can 'pass' or not, is equally high, and higher than the rate of anybody else except for Jews during the Holocaust.
That suggests it is the condition that drives them to it, and not the treatment that is responsible. [/quote]
It doesn't actually tell us what's "driving them" to it. What it does tell us, though, is that whatever we're doing, it's not working. And right now, what we're providing is that euphemistically-named "gender-affirming care," which really means encouraging them to ignore their biology, be restentful of their lot in life, and refuse to accept themselves as God made them. Not a very loving thing to do, ultimately.
That, if nothing else, should tell you we're not dealing with anything normal, but with very serious mental illness...which any good society should treat, not encourage. Why would a society be good for encouraging suicidal ideation in some part of its populace?
What grounds do you have for saying that the only thing that is capable of depressing someone to the point of suicide is mental illness.[/quote]
I did not say that, so I will provide you no such "grounds." What I'm pointing out is that body dysphoric people, both before and after transition, are the most self-loathing, suicidal kinds of people on the planet. And that, it seems to me, argues they need mental health care, not an indulgent and ultimately uncaring society to drive them deeper into their mental illness.
If you woke up tomorrow and found your body had turned female, how cheerfully would you go about your day?
I would no doubt struggle. ButI hope I would thank God for what He had made me, accept the challenge of it, and become a better person through overcoming my confusion and learning to live gratefully for the things I have been given.
IC wrote:Harbal wrote:Yes, the worse case scenario you have painted is certainly a moral issue,...
Objectively moral? Or just subjectively?
It would be an issue that falls withing the category of morality. [/quote]
Objective? You say there is no such thing. So if it's merely subjective, you're just saying, "Harbal likes the idea of transitioners, for now."
Because if it's only subjective, then so long as I am subjectively content with any particular position, what have you to say about that?
I could condemn or approve of your position, just as you could with mine.
Not with any reasons. Your own viewpoint would undermine your credibility in the condemnation.
When somebody comes along and says morally-judgmental things that their own reasoning says are purely "subjective" anyway, no more than their personal feeling-of-the-moment, should you listen to them? It's hard to see why you would.