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No, I'm not saying we can just change ultimate reality with our minds and suddenly turn the moon to cheese or anything like that! I'm saying that truth is illusive because we rely on interpretation and models and that people fixed in their view of what it is are suspect. Reality is not to be found in the opinions of men and I don't believe there's any rules passed down from on high that say people mustn't alter their bodies or appearance to suit their identities.

If anything it's people that say it is "unnatural" or wrong to live out such desires that are in denial of reality because reality is showing us over and again that it's not particularly unusual for humans to want to do so.

But yes, it's all certainly become very politicised and I won't deny that there are difficult social issues around things like trans in sports, which public toilets trans people should use, or what advice should be given to youngsters with dysphoria, that I don't have the answers for. What I don't think is useful is othering trans people, or labelling them as an abonimation to nature, or imagining they can just magically stop being the way the are because a bunch of ultra conservatives object to their existence.

Trans people exist, that's just a fact. If you object to that you are not reinforcing reality you are fighting a losing battle against it.

david 1y ago

So maybe I didn’t change the composition of the moon. Maybe it was cheese all along. If you say I’m wrong, well that’s just your opinion. Truth is illusive.

True story: a girl convinced her doctor to provide her a note for school saying she needs 45 minutes of sunlight twice a day because she identifies as a lizard. Not because sunlight is healthy for people, but because she identifies as a lizard. What do you think about this line of reasoning?

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Carlito 1y ago

You're not understanding what I'm saying at all. Cheese and moon are conceptual frameworks we build in our minds to navigate the world and communicate with other people. They are not objective reality. Of course someone can decide to build a conceptual framework that is completely out of accordance with what everyone else is agreeing on, like the moon is made of cheese, but it's not going to help them much socially and it obviously doesn't make the thing that everyone else is calling moon become the thing that everyone else is calling cheese.

We form social concensus around how we label different patterns that we observe with our minds and through our sense organs and society is currently having a problem reaching concensus on how we classify gender, some saying it's purely biological, others saying it's more complex than that. Neither framework for viewing the world is objectively true because they are just frameworks and it's our job as humans to decide which one fits best. I choose the one that grants the most personal autonomy for individuals.