Dionysos wrote:Right, what does progress usually mean... better? Improvement? Dare I say, more enlightenment and reason? Adaption at the very least. Change is a requirement of staying alive.
I was also curious as to what you regarded as progress, since that is a highly subjective term. Saying that things should get better is a really vague way of wording it.
Dionysos wrote:Even if the feeling of having been born into the wrong sex wasn't biological and thus just a personal "quirk" (albeit a rather big one) it's still a choice people can and should be allowed to make without it degrading them. And be honest, not taking someone seriously is a form of degrading them. Opposing or being repelled or distraught in any way only by the fact that someone might change his/her gender is irational and grounded in culture and tradition. That in itself is understandable; we can hardly escape our environment or retroactively change the cultural circumstances of our mental development. What we can do is combat ingrained irational behaviour/reflexes with reason, something we do everyday in our culture of not clubbing each other over the head (literally).
Our sex, sexual preference and loads of other elementary things about us and our (animalistic?) behaviour is governed by our body, by our biology, governed by the laws of physics. If someone (God if you like) had thrown a figurative biological switch the other way around during your development in the womb, you would be of the opposite sex, including all the inclinations that entails. Would you deny it'd still be "you"? Does sex define your "soul"? Your very essence? Or is it more akin to your eye color or shade of hair, which are also governed by biological switches? Would you not take someone seriously because science permits them to throw a switch the way they wish or feel would make their lifes fuller, for instance limit their genetic propensity to gain weight (a personality altering condition I might add, like gender)? No.
In a society or culture governed by reason, personal freedom and respect of other's freedom, this should be a given. One day science and culture might reach a point where changing your gender back and forth is possible and regarded as normal (I'm in no way saying that in a normative way). If you had grown up in that society, do you think you'd would even give such a thing a second thought?
No.
And yes, I think this is a worthwhile discussion, so thanks for that.
Why is it irrational? I wouldn't say that changing gender is rational, but anyway, it's not so much that they're changing gender, it's the fact that they aren't really changing gender that makes me unable to take it serious. It's like "wannabes".
And, as opposed to the claim made by whoever earlier in this thread that you also mentioned just now, that your body doesn't define your gender, it does. Your body defines your gender, and your gender defines your personality. Bodies of men and women have different quantities of hormones and whatever going through their systems, actively influencing what they think and how.
I don't think, in most cases, that it is biological to want to change sex, but rather a product of "nurture". And I don't believe in God, no.
btw, i also think that this is worthwhile discussion, although it is late and ima watch blade II now so apologies that my response is a little rushed
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