Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Dec 30, 2023 6:25 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 30, 2023 4:56 am
Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Dec 29, 2023 10:13 pm
If it's okay to identify yourself with the construct of Christian, why is it not okay to identify yourself with some construct of gender?
Well, you and I can argue over whether Christianity is a "construct" (an invention of men) or a divine ordinance; I'll say the latter, and probably you, the former. But it entirely misses the point.
Let me make it succintly:
sex is not "constructed." It's what you have when you come to exist, in the first place. There's no choice, no "re-identifying," and nobody "constructs" it for you. Your genetics are set from day one, from your very conception-moment.
Yes, but the people in question don't mean sex by the word gender. I don't understand exactly what they do mean by it,
I do.
It's actually rather simple, at the start. It goes like this: they want you to think that "sex" means physical sexual characteristics...body features, if you like, and that "gender" means "how you identify."
But then it gets really irrational fast, and this is what is confusing. They want you to believe both that "sex" is constructed (meaning, invented and imposed by human choice) and also that it is an essential reality that cannot be denied; and they also want you to believe that "gender" is, at the same time, both a choice and an essential and necessary thing that cannot be denied. These beliefs are so obviously stupid and self-refuting that they boggle the mind: but the fault is not with you, but with their attempted propaganda of these mutually-impossible things.
So, for example, they want you to believe that if I'm a male and want to be a female, that my sex-maleness is a construct that I'm free to change; but at the same time, they want you to believe that the femaleness at which I'm aiming is a real, solid thing that I absolutely have to have -- it is, in fact, my "authentic self," they'll tell you, and they'll say that if you question it you're harming me at the very deepest level by denying me my "authentic self."
So in my case, my maleness is a construct, but my aimed-at-femaleness is not. It's an essence.
At the same time, they want you to believe that I cannot live with my maleness. It's too real, too solid, too demanding...I have to change my whole appearance and physiology in order to shed it and free myself...in other words, it's a kind of tyrannical essence. But at the same time, they want you to believe that "femaleness" does not require men to have different chromosomes...only to surgically alter my genitalia or put on lipstick and a dress, or even just "identify" that way, without changing anything at all -- so "femaleness' is so flimpsy a construct that I can obtain it completely with these changes, even the most superficial ones.
And so, in this retelling of the same story, my maleness is the essence, and the femaleness is the negotiable construct.
And they want you to believe both, at the same time, with all the fervency of the most devoted religious accolyte. Any questioning of these two contradictory narratives is simply impermissible and "transphobic"...or even "aggressive" and "violent" to the point of representing a human rights violation...and in some polities, is even backed with the force of law.
I still don't think they should be allowed into women's toilets, though.
I agree.
But, to do an
avocatus diabli move, why not? I mean, if the male-to-female conversion is a change of essence, then there's no sense in which such a person is not fully female. But if the male-to-female change is a construct, then there certainly is justification for refusing such allowance.
So what is the truth? Can you and I not honestly see exactly what it is, here?