25 thoughts on “Trouble With The Concept”

  1. I’m on “her” side.

    I pretty much have to be, because I now self-identify as a senior citizen (social security checks!) and a 17 year old (can’t be tried as an adult for the aforementioned social security fraud!). I also self-identify as short (I got tired of hitting my head on stuff) and as tall (I got tired of not being able to change lightbulbs without a ladder).

    I’ve also decided to be the other big new thing, “fluid”, like the gender fluid. In my case, I’m choosing gravitationally fluid, because 32 feet per second ^2 just ain’t my thing!

  2. I am transitioning and so are a lot of other well-fed guys my age — if you have seen Vice President Mike Pence in a polo shirt you probably know what I am talking about.

    My Momma counseled me, “Don’t worry so much, have you seen Arnold Schwarzenegger? What you have are pectoral muscles.”

    Pecs, yeah, Ma, but have you seen what Arnold looks like with his shirt off, lately? Ewwww!

  3. You can get some us to pretend along with you that you’re a guy, but we’re going to draw the line when it comes to…

    I won’t address where you should draw the line when it comes to sex, but for run-of-the-mill non-sexual conversation, why pretend?

    Imagine a now-standard science fiction scenario: a man’s personality is uploaded into a computer with great fidelity. He acknowledges that he no longer has a human body, but he still feels like he is a male. I wouldn’t say that he was pretending to be male – I would say he is still male. Sure, his mental programming no longer matches his physical equipment, but his outlook is male.

    I view transgendered people as being in a similar situation to an uploaded personality, except that the situation with them is that their mental programming *never* matched their physical equipment.

    So, no need to pretend about it. Unless you have a reason to focus on the physical equipment, such as being the person’s doctor, or their potential sexual partner, why not give precedence to the mental programming?

    1. I guess you missed the point of my post, which is that it would be polite to pretend along with them that they’re male, until they try to get you into bed, at which point, they become completely nuts if they imagine you won’t have a problem with the equipment.

      1. I think you have the sexes reversed. This person is not pretending to be male, he is male and is pretending, or is at least deluded that, he is female. Your sentence makes sense to say, “You can get some of us to pretend along with you that you’re a *girl*, but we’re going to draw the line when it comes to having sex with a dude.”

        1. Don’t be too hard on Rand for getting confused. The whole thing is nuts and hard to keep straight.

    2. The question you’re asking Bob is, is reality just a point of view?

      So if a guy asks you to help him get all the ants off his body and there are no ants, do you start brushing them off?

      Are you helping or harming? Or do you think the ants are real in some alternate reality?

    3. I won’t address where you should draw the line when it comes to sex, but for run-of-the-mill non-sexual conversation, why pretend?

      So if I believe someone is male, then I should go out of my way to use male pronouns and such? No, instead you’re asking for something ludicrous, that I should change my beliefs about what I think is male and female simply because someone wants to be referred to as a difference sex than I think they are. Suppose they want to be thought of as an otherkin dragon. Am I supposed to change my beliefs so that I believe that as well?

      Instead, why don’t you simply change your beliefs so that they don’t offend me anymore?

    4. except that the situation with them is that their mental programming *never* matched their physical equipment.

      Ahh. So you reject completely any concept of “fluidity” then. How tolerant of you.

    5. You do realize, don’t you, that this leads to the inevitable situation where the top-ranking Women’s sports teams are all full of men who ‘think’ they’re women?

      Or the recent case of a girl winning girl’s sports because she’s allowed to take testosterone because she ‘thinks’ she’s a boy.

      Why do you hate women?

      1. In the bad old days of the Olympics and Warsaw pact athletes, that would be called doping. Today we call it tolerance (at least some of us). Cheers –

  4. A lot of folks who view homosexuality as a psychological disorder are feeling themselves vindicated by transgenders, given the following logical progression:

    1. A psychological orientation that is disproportionately accompanied by a certain irrational belief is inherently disordered.

    2. Mainline gay activism is representative of the general homosexual population.

    3. Mainline gay activism overwhelmingly believes that gender is a social construct not related to chromosomes.

    4. The belief described in 3 is barking insane. (Not to mention scientifically unfalsifiable.)

    1. Mainline gay activism overwhelmingly believes that gender is a social construct not related to chromosomes.

      Born that way right up until you choose differently. The whole movement is wrapped up in so many contradictions.

  5. Sure sounds like a hate crime to me! How long until we get legislation to prevent rejecting trans-advances? (/sarc, of course. Damn, the world is getting crazier every day.)

    1. Yes, exactly. The left are rapidly moving from ‘sex without explicit consent is the worst thing evah!’ to ‘refusing to consent to sex is the worst thing evah!’

  6. “You can get some of us [straight men]to pretend along with you that you’re a guy, but we’re going to draw the line when it comes to having sex with a dude.”

    True. Unless he’s Zac Efron. I’m as straight as straight can be, but Zac is HOT!!!

      1. It’s Heinlein’s world, we only live in it. Welcome to the Crazy Years. Paging Nehemiah Scudder…

  7. Feminist doctrine, to the extent there is such a unified whole, seems to insist “trans women are women“, period, in essentia.

    Thus by dogfooding that assumption*, we end up with confusion like this; since she “is a woman”, how can a man who is attracted to women reject her “because she’s not a woman”? It’s logically impossible!

    That this indicates a flawed assumption somewhere is obvious to everyone else, and indeed many of the people who go along with the assumption do so with rather large caveats.

    (* In the software sense, “eat your own dogfood”.)

  8. It’s not that complicated. Someone who “identifies” as the opposite sex suffers from body confusion the same way anorexics do. The latter actually see themselves as hopeless fatties who must take radical action to lose weight. To rephrase what Ken said, do we help the anorexic lose weight, or do we treat them so they have a more accurate (i.e. corresponding to the real world) view of themselves?

    No one advocates helping anorexics binge & purge, but it’s become common wisdom that transgender “identification” is both healthy & normal.

    Rand’s point about manners stands. I don’t make a habit of arguing with people about their delusions, but asking me to have sex with a “girl” with boy bits is way over the top… :-/ Sorry, kids, but twigs & berries causes an automatic wave-off…

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