Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Obscura]

Maybe not in Argentina, but in the U.S., it's already happening. In the music world alone, bands routinely get removed from festival lineups from people claiming "musician X of band Y said something offensive a decade ago, so if you don't remove this band from the lineup, I'm boycotting you!", people attending metal, noise, or hardcore shows get beaten up by ANTIFA goons, and massive witchhunts are formed against any musician that says something that the left doesn't like (and not just "hey, this guy said something I don't like!" but "hey, let's find out this guy's real name and constantly spam calls to his employer to get him fired from his day job, and then let's look up his phone number and leave him constant death threats on his phone!" -- yes, these are things that actually happen fairly routinely within all sorts of arts circles in the U.S.)

[Mischief Maker]

What's the difference between intelligent design and Bruce Jenner being hailed as a woman?

Man, I never thought of it before, but that's a great analogy! Both involve the clash between the often counter-intuitive mechanisms of genetics and the belief that, "If I can't imagine it, it cannot be!"

I'll posit for the sake of argument that transgenderism is not a specific term but a catch-all for genetic abnormalities where the gender part of a person's mental development diverges from their physical development.

Lemme paint a picture for you. A woman and her husband come to the doctor because they can't conceive a child. The doctor does a genetic screen and finds out to everyone's shock that the wife is genetically male, even though she has a vagina. She has the rare genetic condition "Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome." You see, human embryos default to becoming female in the absence of signals from a Y chromosome (the male gene). In utero and puberty these signals are carried by hormones called androgens, the most well-known being testosterone. In complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, the receptors for androgens are defective so the signal can't "plug in" and the body and mind continue to develop in the default female setting. The result is a person completely physically and mentally female from the outside, but lacks a uterus and has undescended testicles instead of ovaries. The lack of androgen receptors also has the side effect of a complete lack of underarm or pubic hair because normal females have some androgen activity.

Not all people are lucky enough to have their bodies completely match up with their brains, there are also people with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome who end up with various half and half combinations, like Bailey Jay (possibly NSFW) who looks completely female without hormones (the boobs are implants) but has male genitalia. Then there are some people whose body completely does not match their brains and they get surgery and hormone treatment to rectify the disconnect.

Once again, androgen insensitivity is not the only genetic abnormality that can lead to being transgendered, it's just the one that came to mind right now. Genetics is a fascinating subject and it's amazing how a tiny alteration in hormone levels in embryonic development can have massive effects on the adult that results.

On the other side, you have people saying, "If I can't imagine it, it cannot be!" in the face of science, saying that you cannot have a mismatch between your brain and your body and people who go through the incredible pain and expense of putting their genitals under the knife in the name of rectifying that mismatch are just looking for attention or something. The same "Aw, c'mon!" reasoning that bolsters Intelligent Design.

Though I have to admit I suffer from a case of "If I can't imagine it, it cannot be!" myself. Any time a right-wing dude says homosexuality is a choice, I immediately assume he's a closet case. The few times I've been hit on by gay men I was civil and turned them down lightly, but internally my response wasn't, "Woah, I've got a choice to make here, let's compare the pros and the cons..." my internal response was, "EWW!"

[Ed Oscuro]

The left still needs to demonstrate that there's something wrong with wealth inequality.

Wealth inequality distorts markets and priorities terribly.

Anyway, Piketty.

There's nothing wrong with wealth inequality. It's wrong to to have miserable workers while the capitalists are filthy rich, though.

That's more or less my position, but you have to admit the two things are inextricably linked. We don't live in some magical world where wealth inequality doesn't imply underinvestment in the very people who make civilization possible (i.e. most workers). Even if you adhere to the Albert Wesker view of humanity ("only a few people really matter - everyone else is chaff") the flip side of this is that being wealthy does not imply one is doing something more meaningful for society than somebody who isn't wealthy - especially if we try to equalize on using money.

About as far as I'm willing to go is to say that investment strategy implies some one agent (like a person, but it could be a computer) makes a choice that could impact a lot of wealth, and this is similar to being wealthy (if not indeed the same thing), and that's fine. But there are lots of uses and abuses of wealth that don't make sense to tolerate.

All that said, we could argue about whether the bigger component of wealth-related problems is misuse by governments, or hoarding by the wealthy. That said, one condition being true doesn't imply the other isn't also true (and also a problem).

[Opus131]

I'll posit for the sake of argument that transgenderism is not a specific term but a catch-all for genetic abnormalities where the gender part of a person's mental development diverges from their physical development.

Which would imply transgenderism is a mental disorder plain and simple. I also like the fundamentally relativistic can of worms this type of thinking invariably leads to. See, there's nothing really aberrant about a perfectly healthy individual desiring to become an invalid, going as far as cutting their own legs or even getting a deranged psychiatric to destroy their eyesight:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life- ... er-6552282

See, it is not so much that people cannot "imagine" what science is saying. The problem is that what "science" is saying is patently absurd and quite obviously idiotic to anyone capable of actual rational thinking. Which implies that maybe, just maybe, there might actually be something wrong about the way science approaches reality, assuming the issue is with science as opposed to certain individuals using science to corroborate preconceived notions that have nothing actually "scientific" about them.

[Ed Oscuro]

Come on, don't be coy. You know that the problem isn't with science. But that doesn't just leave us with the rather poorly defined but clearly implied alternative - that anybody who opts to make a choice is becoming "invalid" or is acting out of derangement. Instead it is clear that many people do not have he effortless assumption of a given gender or sex role that conservatives would like us all to have. It would be a nice thing if the world could be that way, but it isn't.

As usual, though, this fits my reading of the narrative: Look at everybody talking about something that is almost never going to have any tangible impact on their life outside of the overblown, overwrought debates. I don't run into full face transplant survivors every day, or guys who file their teeth down into points because they are MMA fighters or think they are lizardkin. They're out there, but I really don't see why I should spend a lot of time worrying about how they choose to alter their bodies: The one thing science is predicting quite clearly is that if there is a better way to life, it will win out. If there is something of value in "trangenderism" it can be assimilated; if not, it won't. Science isn't giving any cover to people who are explicitly assuming that a given state of affairs (i.e. rigidly defined sex roles of "male" and "female") are the pinnacle of things. Neither will informed philosophy, for that matter.

[Opus131]

But that doesn't just leave us with the rather poorly defined but clearly implied alternative - that anybody who opts to make a choice is becoming "invalid" or is acting out of derangement.

I guess you can just argue that the mental development of those individuals is at odds with their perfectly abled bodies. The psychologist who blinded that woman certainly seemed to have been thinking along those lines.

The fact remains that there is no difference whatsoever between this and what "science" appears to be saying about transgenderism. If what the psychologist did is wrong, than "science" is wrong as well.

Instead it is clear that many people do not have he effortless assumption of a given gender or sex role that conservatives would like us all to have.

The reality is still what it is. That 40 years old man who abandoned wife and kids to become a 6 years old woman did so under an assumption that is quite patently nothing but a delusion.

[Jonathan Ingram]

It's wrong to to have miserable workers while the capitalists are filthy rich, though. Not only from a moral standpoint; if the working classes have money to spend the rich will benefit from that too, because workers will have money for buying their products (and will be less inclined to violent theft) and services.

Incidentally, rights and wrongs have very little to do with anything here. Having a body of destitute and unemployed of various volume and degrees of impoverishment is critical to the dynamics of supply and demand(which labor being a commodity is subject to) and to capitalism's continued reproduction. An employer needs to be able to dynamically reduce wages and make layoffs for when the economy is in recession and do the opposite for when it is in upswing. Keeping the labor employed and provided at all times would contradict the process of wealth accumulation without which there can be no capitalism.

[Bananamatic]

Donald "Holocauster Tycoon" Trump
Donald "One Man Klan" Trump
Donald "The Racial Pain Hurricane" Trump
Donald "Let's Get this Shoah on the Road" Trump
Donald "Brace for my Race War" Trump
Donald "Unloading my Nine at the Welfare Line" Trump
Donald "Aryan Vs. Predator" Trump

[Ed Oscuro]

Donald Duck

Keeping the labor employed and provided at all times would contradict the process of wealth accumulation without which there can be no capitalism.

Indeed - even for an avowed capitalist, this is eating one's own children.

Unless the wealthy think that their wealth is just going to achieve all their wishes by themselves, and they otherwise have no need for common folk (see also: John Galt can't make a sandwich)

Opus13, all I'm seeing in your post is "I have my own special standard, why can't everybody else agree I'm right?" If you're dismissing science, you're also apparently dismissing evolution, and it seems to me that evolution already says that if an adaptation has merit for survival, it can persist. So that's the standard science puts forward, and I don't see how this can be "wrong." Now, if you want to make an argument that transgender people aren't well adapted via evolution, I'd suggest that you consider that evolution concerns genes, not so much individual expression. Individual creatures, either by misfortune or design, can always fail to be adaptive, and this isn't really news.

But it seems to me that a big part of the anti-transgender crowd is just about throwing up yet another, in my view wholly unnecessary, roadblock for those people to have some simple level of social accommodation, which costs society basically nothing and costs nothing in terms of the evolutionary adaptiveness of the human race. Indeed, it's actually a good thing that it's an opportunity for people to think consciously about the direction the species will take.

[Opus131]

Opus13, all I'm seeing in your post is "I have my own special standard, why can't everybody else agree I'm right?" If you're dismissing science, you're also apparently dismissing evolution, and it seems to me that evolution already says that if an adaptation has merit for survival, it can persist.

And i think the inherent relativism of this type of thinking is what dismisses evolution, or at least this specific application of the principle (for the record, i'm not a proponent of any "intelligent design" since the "facts" contradict such a view, but that in itself also doesn't mean evolution is right. To wit: the facts observed by science are perfectly concordant with Platonic or Hindu emanationism. This dichotomy between science and Christian fundamentalist dogma is a false one, but generally speaking one is automatically assumed to be correct purely because the other fails to provide sufficient or convincing arguments as if those two are the only possible alternatives).

Either way, i believe you can even excuse the holocaust if you follow that argument through, and i don't mean this in an hyperbolic sense. Racism as well makes perfect sense from such a purely mechanistic understanding of evolutionary biology. Human races can be seen as something akin to biological "technologies" and there was nothing "wrong" with the Nazis believing their genetic "tech" was superior to that of other races, and certainly nothing "unscientific". Likewise, Darwinism was essentially the leading cause of "scientific" racism between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Racism is the logical conclusion of Darwinism when applied to the human sphere. Therefore, what happened in the early 20th century was a product of "science". Much like global warming is, seeing as it was "science" who gave us our technologies and the industrial apparatus needed to produce it.

As for having my own "standards", do you believe what the Nazis did was wrong? If i believe that Beethoven was a greater genius than Britney Spears, is this nothing but mere "opinion"? I'm sure you would probably disagree with the first, while not necessarily disagree with the second, and yet, there doesn't appear to be any way to draw any distinction between those two statements if you follow the logic of the argument to the end. If everything is "opinion", than there was nothing wrong with the holocaust.

And so on and so forth. And ultimately, this is precisely the pitfall leftism appears to be falling through half of the time. The only thing that stops people from going "all the way" is precisely that most appear to have "standards" that contradicts the "logic" of those ideas.

[Opus131]

But it seems to me that a big part of the anti-transgender crowd is just about throwing up yet another, in my view wholly unnecessary, roadblock for those people to have some simple level of social accommodation, which costs society basically nothing and costs nothing in terms of the evolutionary adaptiveness of the human race. Indeed, it's actually a good thing that it's an opportunity for people to think consciously about the direction the species will take.

That's hardly the issue here. The problem with "transgenderism" is that we are being forced to accept such a thing as being "normal" (when it is anything but). All progressive dogma is inherently subversive in that sense. The supposed "rights" of this or that marginalized group are just a red herring. The underlying object is to push a fundamentally nominalistic view of reality by brainwashing the majority into accepting that 2+2=5 by means of psychological and emotional manipulation and appeals to "science" when all else fails.

[brokenhalo]

I've stayed out of this mostly for my own sanity. But let's see if I can make transgenderism make sense to you.

Have you ever talked to a man and thought "wow, that dudes gay"? What was the outward signal that made you think that? Did he talk funny? Was it his mannerisms? Same thing with a woman. Did you ever meet a woman and think "Wow, She's a lesbian". Was it because she had a manly voice, or looked manly, or dressed manly?

Now, think about how life is conceived. A person starts off as a single cell. This cell divides and divides. Some cells go on to become an arm or a nose or a part of the brain. Sometimes things go wrong and a baby forms abnormally. Wires get crossed and suddenly you've got a hideous thing instead of a baby. It isn't always a perfect process.

Now just imagine what happens if some of those wires get crossed in relation to gender identity. Ignoring outward physical characteristics, let's concentrate on the brain. What part of the brain makes a person feel like a man or a woman? We still don't know. But there has been research into this very subject. But it's a fairly rational theory that when a baby is developing some wires get crossed and instead of a male body with a wholly male brain, you could have a brain that develops in some % female. Or the inverse. That person would be outwardly male, but feel in some ways like a woman, because some part of their brain is a womans brain. To take this to an extreme, think about how many hermaphrodites are born. Using a low end estimation, approximately 1 in 1000 babies are born with ambiguous genitals. I would imagine that the number of people born with ambiguous brains would be at least that number, probably higher due to the sheer complexity of the brain. I mean, if a simple choice of dick or vagina can get so messed up, imagine all the stuff that could get messed up in the brain.

So yeah. Transgenderism isn't an invention of the left wing to force pc bullshit down your throat. And I agree that it isn't a "normal" thing, it's very much an abnormality, insofar as it effects a very small percentage of people. But should we accept those people, or ostracize them? I feel that they aren't hurting anyone, so let them be.

[Hagane]

Who cares if transgenderism is a choice, an illness or whatever? The discussion is irrelevant. I don't have a positive view on homosexuality in general, but who am I to screw their lives and make them miserable? People should have the freedom to do whatever they want when it comes to their body.

[trap15]

lmao, you just fucked up. you played the "the nazis were ok" card, I'm instantly disregarding future posts.

[ED-057]

True enough, but they're the ones controlling the narrative and have been for at least a decade.

So the corporate media is the left. Got it.

They censor non-PC speech to promote the narrative that everyone is being oppressed by the government in some way, shape or form.

Pop quiz time. Who said this? "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

"Government is the problem" is the Repub's motto.

Okay, seriously? We're not even at book burning yet. This isn't fascism or anything close to it lol.

So far we only have:
1) calls for censorship of offensive speech, "terrorist" material, etc.
2) scapegoating of minorities (eg. Muslims, Syrian refugees)
3) consolidated corporate media that reports government propaganda as news
4) imperial foreign policy
5) legislative body that is supposed to represent the people has single-digit approval rating
6) "corporations are people"
7) unconstitutional mass surveillance
government agents falsifying evidence in court to hide their sources per #7
9) two-tiered, pay-to-play legal system
10) rigged economy, where rent seekers, cronies, and speculators rule, and workers race to the bottom

Gotta save those books for later. Might need them for fuel.

Gitmo is a necessary stronghold for our national interests

Total cop-out from the poster who was just complaining about BS non-answers to questions.

the detainees we have there (who are often times not as innocent as you'd like to believe, anyways).

Their innocence has yet to be determined by any legitimate process.

I'm using terms we presumably all understand as meaning exactly what you're saying they are. If we want to expand to the full-scale political axis of including authoritarianism and libertarianism, then we can, but that's covering a whole spectrum of interests that are not even beginning to be adequately represented in the US.

Well, what exactly do you hope to accomplish by confining the discussion to the same terms of the current, broken political system, other than more of the same?

[ED-057]

That said, loads of non-rich people still vote conservative; the only possible causes for this are 1) They don't know enough about the subject (i.e. can be led to believe that upper-end tax cuts magically make revenue appear from thin air), or 2) Don't believe that those are the truly important issues to determine one's vote (i.e. "The SJWs are going to force us to say that Bruce Jenner's a woman!").

So you know that people may vote Repub for reasons that are unrelated to their financial interests, but then you use something that we both agree is dumb as an example of such an issue. Seriously, if you want conseratives to come to your side on economic issues, you might want to look more closely at these other issues that cause them to vote against you. They might not all be dumb.

On a somewhat-related topic, I wonder if democracy could work better with some reorganization of powers among elected officials. Currently, we vote for a president, who then chooses his/her own advisors specializing in particular subjects. Energy, defense, treasury, the surgeon general, and so on. Likewise, the president makes appointments to federal agencies, each with a defined scope.

The presidential race tends to be dominated by wedge issues.

We vote for representatives in congress, who then organize themselves into committees that specialize in certain areas of law.

A man who believes the earth is 6,000 years old ends up on the science and technology committee.

What if people could vote for a separate official for each area of policy? Environment, public health, communications, foreign policy, law enforcement, education, transportation, culture, trade, etc. Then a person who is pro-life doesn't have to vote for a climate change denier, or a person who is pro-choice doesn't have to vote for gun control, and so on. These issues could cease to be grouped together arbitrarily among two parties...

[BulletMagnet]

Seriously, if you want conseratives to come to your side on economic issues, you might want to look more closely at these other issues that cause them to vote against you. They might not all be dumb.

I can certainly get behind that to at least some extent, as I'm definitely not in the "I wish all the conservatives would just fall off the planet" camp. Can government overreach and stifle free speech, etc.? Of course it can, and has, and does, at times. Does government screw up? Of course it does, and always will, on occasion. Is it always good to abandon tradition and embrace the latest trend? Of course not. And yes, we will always need people who will look at these things with a more critical eye than others and will be willing to speak up about it.

That being said, at this particular point in time both official policy and the national discourse (or what remains of it) has been moving almost entirely rightward for several decades now; as such, Big Bad Uncle Sam has been catering almost exclusively to the demands of the very wealthy and very powerful, who now control more resources and have a more disproportionate voice in government than at most any time in the country's history, while pretty much everyone else, especially in purely economic terms, has stagnated or regressed. Does this mean we should suddenly rally behind whatever populist drivel we hear and start ransacking mansions? Of course not, but at the same time when people insist that "out-of-control political correctness" is their defining issue and howl that the Communists are taking over because gay marriage and Obamacare happened (not to mention moan about how "radical" the President supposedly is when conservatives, often very hardcore ones, control the other two branches and absolutely dominate at the local level) I find it difficult to assume that most of them are speaking out of both sound logic and good faith.

I certainly won't completely dismiss the concerns of conservative voters, but at the same time we're still a long way off from making trafficking in proven falsehoods and bad math serve as disqualifiers for those seeking high office, so when push comes to shove methinks hard numbers need to take precedence, especially when they've both been marginalized for so long and thus failed to blunt so much damage done to voters of all political stripes.

What if people could vote for a separate official for each area of policy? Environment, public health, communications, foreign policy, law enforcement, education, transportation, culture, trade, etc.

For that to work we'd need the populace to be both informed and empowered enough to vote responsibly on each individual issue rather than attempting to find the one person who hopefully embodies more of them than the other (assuming many are even that involved); it would be nice if that were the case, but again, for years now the prevailing narrative has been "it really doesn't matter, who cares, the whole thing's a sham", not to mention "screw the eggheads, just follow your gut". Not to mention "government is always the problem".

[Obscura]

For that to work we'd need the populace to be both informed and empowered enough to vote responsibly on each individual issue rather than attempting to find the one person who hopefully embodies more of them than the other (assuming many are even that involved); it would be nice if that were the case, but again, for years now the prevailing narrative has been "it really doesn't matter, who cares, the whole thing's a sham", not to mention "screw the eggheads, just follow your gut".

Actually, provided that people could choose to vote for officials in one policy area and abstain in another area, that's a good reason to go with a "separate officials" policy -- people could vote solely on the areas that they know something about.

[Opus131]

Who cares if transgenderism is a choice, an illness or whatever?

Right. The issue is whether it is "normal" or not. Which it isn't.

Mind you, in the grand scheme of things, transgenderism is not the problem, certainly not in and of itself. It is this general trend to brainwash society into accepting that 2+2=5. Stuff like "fat is beautiful" (when it isn't) falls along the same lines. The aberrations of modern art also stem from the same malady. Anybody who is caught arguing about the "rights" of transgenders is falling for a blatant red herring.

[Mischief Maker]

Mind you, in the grand scheme of things, transgenderism is not the problem, certainly not in and of itself. It is this general trend to brainwash society into accepting that 2+2=5. Stuff like "fat is beautiful" (when it isn't) falls along the same lines. The aberrations of modern art also stem from the same malady. Anybody who is caught arguing about the "rights" of transgenders is falling for a blatant red herring.

I see! And what is the end goal of this vast liberal conspiracy?

[BryanM]

Mind you, in the grand scheme of things, transgenderism is not the problem, certainly not in and of itself. It is this general trend to brainwash society into accepting that 2+2=5. Stuff like "fat is beautiful" (when it isn't) falls along the same lines. The aberrations of modern art also stem from the same malady. Anybody who is caught arguing about the "rights" of transgenders is falling for a blatant red herring.

I see! And what is the end goal of this vast liberal conspiracy?

It's to brainwash us into only loving dickgirls, thereby creating a soft genocide upon the under-mensch so those liberal fat cats can keep all the real women for themselves.

Like, duh.

[Hagane]

Right. The issue is whether it is "normal" or not. Which it isn't.

Who cares, though? What difference would it make, other than making them miserable and justify attempts to deny them control over their own bodies?

Keep in mind that I have a similar view to you on the matter. The difference being that I don't give a fuck what they do or say, it's their lives and I have no right to meddle with them. Just like I think that SJWs can go fuck themselves if they think they can decide what I can or cannot find interesting in a game.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Right. The issue is whether it is "normal" or not. Which it isn't.

This exact argument was used to argue that homosexuality was an aberration for a long time, when it was often observed in nature.

The same logic applies to transsexuality and transgenderism. You might think it's weird, but it's observed in nature in animals. Biological Exuberance is a very interesting read; it mainly focuses on homosexuality and bisexuality, but also goes into transsexuality and transgenderism (most of the book is taken up by a giant catalogue of animals showing what species have been observed, what behaviours, etc).

If it makes someone happy to identify as a gender they weren't born as, it's not like it presents a huge, undue hardship for the rest of us to honour that request.

[Mischief Maker]

That 40 years old man who abandoned wife and kids to become a 6 years old woman did so under an assumption that is quite patently nothing but a delusion.

Nobody is saying being transgendered absolves you of responsibility, or that some people claiming to be transgendered aren't full of shit. I already brought up just one genetic cause that is not a delusion. You can't fantasize your androgen receptors into being misshaped from early childhood on. The fact that you found a reprehensible individual who's transgendered does not mean every other transgendered person in the world is just as much of an asshole.

And if you want to use slippery slope arguments, we can go the other way, too!

Not too long ago a child attempting to write with their left hand would get a hard rap on the knuckles for such horrible aberrant behavior. The etymology of the word "sinister" is left-handed. All the awful things that word means were once attributed to all those who favored their left hand over the just hand; the right hand. Why should I be forced to live in a world with left-handed tools and treat the sinister as if they're "normal?"

[BryanM]

I think we're getting a bit off track humoring that the OCD SJW/Muslim/Etc compulsion fetish of a tiny minority of our population is worth any amount of consideration. I spend 0% of my day worrying about how ISIS is going to make me a gay fatty and then explode me with a nuclear bomb, you should too. Do you know how much a nuclear bomb costs? And how poor these guys are? If they had that much money they'd be spending it on more tangible goal acquisitions. Altogether delusional paranoid silly nonsense. Might as well be



Now, the serious issues that effect all of us.

JEB recently gave a buddy the nickname "Hurricane Katrina". Discuss.

[Xyga]

I think we're getting a bit off track humoring that the OCD SJW/Muslim/Etc compulsion fetish of a tiny minority of our population is worth any amount of consideration.

Don't say that. People will start debating things like business, trade ragulations, taxes, worker's rights, finance, environment, school, etc. Things that actually matter in their everyday lives.
Please think of the poor candidates, they're not prepared for that.

[GaijinPunch]

Right. The issue is whether it is "normal" or not. Which it isn't.

glad someone finally defined that.

[Opus131]

Pointing out the obvious is a revolutionary act in this day and age.

[Squire Grooktook]

If it makes someone happy to identify as a gender they weren't born as, it's not like it presents a huge, undue hardship for the rest of us to honour that request.

"Oh no, I have to refer to someone as a she that I'd normally think of as a he when they're nearby, the horror. The outrage."

My advice to anyone who thinks the above would be "try not being a selfish asshole".

[Ed Oscuro]

We can say an awful lot more than just "it won't hurt anybody," which is the very simple and obvious thing to say. So, I guess I have to repeat myself, hopefully more clearly this time:

From an evolutionary perspective, there is little chance of transgenderism becoming a new normal - in terms of reproductive strategy intersexed individuals have never been able to overturn the normal male/female model of sex roles. So we're not in some kind of relativistic "anything goes" world if we take the science seriously; there's literally billions of years of fossil evidence saying that this model is persistent.

On the flip side the arguments about what is "normal" are totally relative. There are insects where it's the females that have the dick-like-thing, and they use it to gather sperm from the males. Also, harsh spike-based copulation mechanisms, ow. It sounds atrocious to us, but as it turns out, those insects don't operate in anything like our set of physiological and social constraints - it is an evolutionary shift (apparently due to the males offering too many gifts to the females!) which one expects would not be tolerated by any mammals, let alone humans.

Opus13's rants against the tiny minority of the population that did not fit into these sex roles are a part of the social construct that ultimately leads to gender and even sex roles, but they are also insignificant outbursts. Bashing transgender people will not do much of anything for protecting sex roles. Denying women fair pay for equal work, and demanding women pay higher prices for the same products as men, will also not do much constructive for protecting sex roles. This is due in part to the "tradeoffs" (for men, in this later case) being very small, but it's also due to the fact that there are strong mechanisms in place to protect traditional sex and gender roles.

I would finally note that "relativism" is sometimes just another name for having perspective: When you remember that human reproduction is not like bedbug reproduction, which is basically like if insemination required medieval warfare, we are doing quite well. If anything, I think that what we have to look forward to is an even more clinical, productive, hopefully more safe, and certainly more cybernetic future. It might sound scary and indeed it is (it would certainly shake up the male/female dichotomy, along with a bunch of other notions we have like: What does it mean to be an individual, anyway?), but I also think that humans are at an evolutionary dead end - and even hybridization / cyborg technology might not really help. Arguments about intersexed people / transgenderism are basically worrying about rare things from yesterday's species. People are playing checkers...while robots will be creating pockets of new realities.

[Seriously, if you want conseratives to come to your side on economic issues, you might want to look more closely at these other issues that cause them to vote against you. They might not all be dumb.

"We don’t have the gold standard. It’s not because we don’t know about the gold standard, it’s because we do." - economist Allan Meltzer