Please edit your post. Warpus did not post the text you quoted; I did.
The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXXI
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An error in a sea of quotes.
That's a result of technology, not values. Feudalism lasted for a thousand years, but almost anybody today would agree it was transitory. You can't claim that feminist secularism is inevitable because it's been trending that way for the last, oh, hundred years?
What's the real difference between hanging/burning/drowning/strangling a "witch" for helping a woman terminate her pregnancy in the year 1000 CE and making oppressive laws against women availing themselves of modern medical knowledge and techniques to decide if they want to continue a pregnancy?
Not much. It's still an oppressive government taking away her free choice. Advanced technology doesn't guarantee social progress.
EDIT: "feminist secularism"?
Gori the Grey
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How deep into his presidency will Trump still be talking about the crowd size at his inauguration?
How many more days can this go on?
What I mean is, will there come a point where he concludes that as much as can be said on both sides of the matter has been said? That people believe what they believe and that there's just no point in pursuing it any further.
So, if you want to approach it as taking odds, what is the last day that you think Trump will mention something about the crowd size at his inauguration?
How many more days can this go on?
What I mean is, will there come a point where he concludes that as much as can be said on both sides of the matter has been said? That people believe what they believe and that there's just no point in pursuing it any further.
So, if you want to approach it as taking odds, what is the last day that you think Trump will mention something about the crowd size at his inauguration?
When he's dead? Or when he's no longer aware of even his version of reality?
sophie
Break My Heart
He's STILL regularly mailing pictures of his hands to a reporter who, 25 years ago, made a comment in an article that Donald Trump's hands were small.
I imagine that 15 years down the line (should he still be alive by that point), in the foyer of his *shudder* presidential library will be an enormous - very clearly doctored - picture showing large crowds attending his inauguration, and he'll have taken a sharpie to it and written, "see? no white!"
Old Hippy
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and you will form your political views on what each party does for 'old people'
Old Hippy
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the day of the next president being sworn in he will say 'mine is still bigger than yours'
Witch hunts hardly ever took place in medieval times and were usually opposed by the Church. Abortions have been performed since the dawn of human history and (as far as I know) were not ever claimed to be a form of witchcraft.
Fun fact: it was a common practice to simply kill unwanted babies by exposure in medieval Europe, and was outright legal in parts of Germany. Yes, a much more honest era.
I didn't specifically mention abortion so I don't get why you're going on about it this much.
But it can facilitate it, is my point.
EDIT: "feminist secularism"?
I can't think of a term to describe the mish-mash of secular liberalism and anti-gender hedonism that seems popular right now.
Lexicus
Deity
This particular brand of leftism holds the human will to be the sole arbiter of right and wrong. When it conflicts with biology, therefore, the will must take priority. Abortion advocates seek to give women the same 'rights' as men by eliminating the demands of childbirth (or really, just pretending that they don't exist). The only thing they care about is what people want, and their forays into science are usually just to confirm that this is healthy and natural.
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Lexicus
Deity
Interesting, and you think people should care about, what, god's plan instead or something? We shouldn't do what we want, but what the character from Bronze Age mythology wants us to do?
I'm also curious what you think gender has to do with biology...
If those rules were not divinely inspired they have still survived thousands of years and millions of people have lived and died by them. You can't do that without having something to offer.
Not much. I'd be happy to hear criticism of the notion that gender must be rigidly tied to biological sex, but I won't accept that it has nothing at all to do with it or that humans can stamp our own identities on top of our biology. Gender dysphoria is not something produced by evolution.
Lexicus
Deity
Millions of people have spent thousands of years living and dying under slavery - does slavery, too, have "something to offer"?
LOL. Well, start by understanding that even biological sex is not a binary - I don't understand the genetics very well, but people who do are pretty clear on that. Intersex people are a thing, after all. So once you get that, maybe you will understand why it seems absurd to me that you're so hell-bent on enforcing a rigid adherence to a biological system that doesn't actually exist and in fact is just an idea. Of course, even ignoring that aspect of the issue, it's still not entirely clear to me what you mean when you say "[you] won't accept...that humans can stamp our own identities on top of our biology." Like, does this mean you think, that, say, a trans person who transition from biologically female to biologically male is still in some fundamental sense female? I mean, surely you're at least somewhat aware of the suffering that trans people, intersex people and so forth go through because society tries to force them to conform to this binary model of sex and gender that just doesn't accurately represent the world....right? Is all that suffering really worth it just so you can, I don't know, feel good about doing what the ancestors did, or what you think your god demands?
And here's where things start to get quite ominous. What, exactly do you mean by this? What are some of the implications? What does this have to do with how society should treat people?
Well, slavery did help alleviate the problems of tribalism. The success of the Ottoman empire is arguably due to its administration by a class of educated and (relatively) well-treated slaves loyal to the Sultan. Even the worse examples of slavery still had "something to offer" even they weren't ethical overall.
Genetic mistakes happen. But a fully biological male or female should not wish to be the other sex. Gender dysphoria isn't somehow different from anorexia, it's just that starving to death hasn't yet been deemed a 'lifestyle choice' by progressives.
That idea is a billion years old, so maybe there is something to it.
Yes. I don't know in what sense. Our bodies know what they are doing.
I accept that their suffering is due to mental disorders (by definition), and do not accept that 'transitioning' is the best way to deal with it.
I'm saying is that healthy humans in the ancestral environment would never develop gender dysphoria. Our needs and desires, however ill-suited for civilization, were still designed by natural selection.
Lexicus
Deity
Well I guess I know how seriously to take your judgments moving forward. Not that I didn't know already, but....anyway...I'm not going to bother point by point to your post because it's a formula for this thing rapidly becoming unmanageably long.
I will say that referring to people as 'genetic mistakes' is not only offensive and frankly, fudged up, it is a form of circular reasoning in which you assert "this system works this way, absolutely", someone says "well actually there are all these exceptions" and then you define those exceptions as aberrant because they don't fit the system. This isn't how someone who's basing their ideas on reality reasons.
Gender dyphoria is nothing at all like anorexia. I've really got no idea why you would say it is; the assertion seems patently ridiculous to me.
As for transitioning being the best way to deal with gender dysphoria....I'm pretty sure that, like, all available medical evidence is that it is indeed the best way to deal with it. I'm not sure about that though, and would be happy to have my understanding improved by someone who knows more than I do about this stuff.
And finally...of course 'healthy' humans do not develop gender dysphoria...gender dysphoria is by definition a health problem, that can be addressed through a procedure that, I guess, you don't want people to undergo (you still haven't really made it clear to me why you don't want people transitioning or what that means in practical terms - all these appeals to evolution and biology aren't really cutting it for me).
Of course, even if you were meaningfully correct about the 'ancestral environment' and the implications you seem to draw from it (which you certainly aren't - the idea that all human societies have followed a strict gender binary is simply incorrect) what the hell does that have to do with how societies today should structure themselves - or, to put it a bit differently, with how people should be treated today?
EDIT: Actually, thinking about the whole gender-dysphoria as disorder thing made me think, in societies that lacked the strict gender binary that appears to have developed as a byproduct of civilization, rather than 'biology', I don't think gender dysphoria would even necessarily be conceived of as abnormal, let alone a 'health disorder.' Ima have to do some reading on this now - thanks a lot, Obama
. At any rate I think you're drastically overstating the degree to which the strict categories your argument relies upon even exist, and certainly your idea that the gender binary comes to us directly from biology is pretty much laughable. Anyway, tl;dr my ignorance prevents me from theorizing this stuff properly so my attitude is pretty much "you do you." Whatever gender or sex-related stuff people want to do for themselves is fine by me. What's not fine by me is people causing suffering and restricting what other people can do based on dumb millennia-old ideologies that they wrongly believe are isomorphic with 'biology'.
Humans aren't biologically meant to be hermaphrodites. Hence, genetic mistake.
Both of them involve desires to be something at odds with a biological reality.
Psychology/psychiatry is not science. If the current zeitgeist says that beating children is the best way to raise them I assure you that 'evidence' that this is indeed the case would quickly pile up. Look at what they were saying fifty, a hundred years ago.
Humans are organisms, not brains in jars. The biological purpose of a male human body is to be a male human body. Evolution doesn't allow for mistakes as huge as 'being born in the wrong body'.
I'm sorry that they aren't convincing you. Here's a quick demonstration of why I believe biology is generally in the right:
1. Learn to play the piano.
2. Cut off your arms.
3. Get prosthetics.
4. See how well you play compared to before.
I didn't claim that. I said that genetically normal humans follow a strict *sexual* binary, i.e. male will not desire to be female.
Evolution has a lot to do with how people are treated today. Example: restaurants do not serve tree bark because we did not evolve to digest it.
So no women were ever executed for practicing what we would nowadays consider herbalism or in some cases, medicine, because that was something considered fit for men to do, but not women? I guess my history books were wrong, then.
I'm aware that abortions have been performed for a very long time. See above.
Fun fact: It was common a long time before then. There was an area of Rome where unwanted newborns were just dropped on the ground and left to die.
It's one of the prevalent issues that women have to be concerned with these days, particularly when Catholic-run hospitals seem to think they have the moral right to tell women what to do with their own bodies, and there are many parts of the U.S. where everyone - particularly male politicians - seems to think they have that moral right.
And why should humans not determine what is right and wrong for ourselves? BTW, I can't think of anyone who is pro-choice who runs around telling women to get abortions. Okay, in the case where the pregnancy would kill the woman or the fetus has too much wrong with it to be born alive, or if it would have basically no chance at a normal life, I would suggest abortion as an option. But ultimately, it's up to the pregnant woman to decide.
O-kay... what did kidnapping people from their homes, raping the females, working them to death (or beating them), etc. have to "offer" that was beneficial?
Anorexia isn't a "lifestyle". It's a mental illness.
Then I should sue whoever educated mine, because it's certainly given me more than enough trouble in my life.
There are plenty of things served in restaurants that we did not evolve to digest. But we eat them anyway because they taste good.
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sophie
Break My Heart
They saw a sharp rise in the Early Modern period though. Particularly in the 16th century in Lorraine and Franconia, and to a lesser extent in the Spanish Netherlands. They were by no means common, and the characterization of an omniprevalent plague of them, as the common historical narrative would have you believe is certainly overstated. That doesn't mean they didn't happen though, or that they were historically negligible.
For example:
3,000 trials were conducted in Lorraine between 1580 and 1630, with a conviction rate of around 90 percent.
In Bamberg there were an estimated 300 trials in the period 1624-31
However,
the Parlement in Paris executed scarcely 100 witches in roughly the same period, with a further 350 cases in more local trials.
Geneva tried 477 cases, but convicted "only" 141 witches from 1518- for a conviction rate of less than 30 percent.
This also, of course, ignores the local unofficial "trials" and lynchings
Interestingly enough the Spanish Inquisition rejected them out-of-hand because their testing methodology was deemed too unscientific. They were an outlier, however.
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