12th June 2009, 4:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 25th October 2013, 7:24 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
ABF, you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about rights or their mental state. For the purposes of "is this an amazing medical event", that is irrelevent. The person, has a womb, that was never removed. The person has fully functioning ovaries. The person is now pregnant. In terms of a medical discovery, this isn't incredible at all. THAT IS ALL I'M SAYING! I am not in any way denigrating the person's rights. It's just a fact that someone with a womb and ovaries is capable of getting pregnant regardless of how they mentally see themselves. The only thing of medical note is that a c-section will be required. This is not a scientific breakthrough of any sort.
It would be identical to shouting "cat gives birth to human" because someone who mentally views themselves as a cat got pregnant and gave birth. More power to them, they have the right to mentally see themselves as a cat, even if they're wrong, and they have the right to get superficial surgery. I'm not even kidding here, there's people who get surgery to look more like cats. It's not something I would do, especially since it's just the brutal nature of our basic cosmetic surgery with all the side effects that brings. I would in fact call it foolish. However they're still human beings deserving all the rights to live their life as they choose that brings. However, medically nothing about someone physically sorta having a cat face having a human kid is impressive at all.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo...man16.html
Here's a link to the guy, and some social commentary. Whatever you think of his choice and his views is irrelevent to whether this is an impressive thing medically.
At any rate, can we get back to the topic at hand? I never really wanted to talk about transsexuals. They're out there, they deserve the rights to live as they do, current medical technology is incapable of actually realizing what they actually want, and that's really all there is to say about that. Aside from violent crimes against them, at least there aren't laws going around affecting them.
ASM, could you stop posting completely random pictures and throwing every single thread you take part in into some random direction?
Labels do not change reality ABF. Words are merely tools.
Also, you're the one showing bias if you say "he's not a woman any more". Why not say "he's always been a man"? That's more accurate. After all, this surgery was entirely cosmetic. It didn't change his/her mental view of themself. Further, what does it matter waht someone else calls him? If someone calls him a her, that just means they have a different definition of what constitutes gender. It's just as valid, and at worst is merely being rude to the one that wants to be called something else.
It's just like that pluto thing. Defining "planet" is downright impossible in any absolute sense. Different people are going to have different exceptions where it gets fuzzy. Reality is not so kind as to conform to our mental demands. No matter what definition of planet we use, the variety of rocky bodies in space is surely going to have things at the fuzzy edges that challenge that word's validity. Someone can define gender in terms of outside physical similarity irregardless of function, as you have implicitly sorta said when you said "he's not a man any more" as in, not a man since the surgery. One can define it as how one mentally pictures themselves, under that definition the person was a man the moment they viewed themselves as such. One can define it genetically, but the flaw is those who have hormone imbalances that override the genetic coding during development. One can define it in terms of functional genetalia, but this line is blurred in those who have "undistinct" development where the genetalia partially resembles both, much of the time totally nonfunctional. In those cases, heck is the person a boy, a girl, neither, both, or do you use a gradiant scale and say 40% male and 60% female?
Words are tools but we must never forget that's all they are, and words don't determine reality, they are tools meant to DESCRIBE reality.
Calling someone a female when they prefer to be called a male is certainly rude. But, it's far different than a word that is clearly intended as hate speech. Call them "freaks" and then you have a point.
Heck, in a sense grouping the entire spectrum together is partly offensive. (For the record, socially, it's best just to go with how someone presents themselves socially unless they request otherwise, then it's polite to just go with that request.)
I'm saying don't let the hazy nature of words in and of itself create fights where none need exist. Reality already has a proper enemy for us, the people who actually do hate them, pick on them, beat them, and so on.
It would be identical to shouting "cat gives birth to human" because someone who mentally views themselves as a cat got pregnant and gave birth. More power to them, they have the right to mentally see themselves as a cat, even if they're wrong, and they have the right to get superficial surgery. I'm not even kidding here, there's people who get surgery to look more like cats. It's not something I would do, especially since it's just the brutal nature of our basic cosmetic surgery with all the side effects that brings. I would in fact call it foolish. However they're still human beings deserving all the rights to live their life as they choose that brings. However, medically nothing about someone physically sorta having a cat face having a human kid is impressive at all.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo...man16.html
Here's a link to the guy, and some social commentary. Whatever you think of his choice and his views is irrelevent to whether this is an impressive thing medically.
At any rate, can we get back to the topic at hand? I never really wanted to talk about transsexuals. They're out there, they deserve the rights to live as they do, current medical technology is incapable of actually realizing what they actually want, and that's really all there is to say about that. Aside from violent crimes against them, at least there aren't laws going around affecting them.
ASM, could you stop posting completely random pictures and throwing every single thread you take part in into some random direction?
Labels do not change reality ABF. Words are merely tools.
Also, you're the one showing bias if you say "he's not a woman any more". Why not say "he's always been a man"? That's more accurate. After all, this surgery was entirely cosmetic. It didn't change his/her mental view of themself. Further, what does it matter waht someone else calls him? If someone calls him a her, that just means they have a different definition of what constitutes gender. It's just as valid, and at worst is merely being rude to the one that wants to be called something else.
It's just like that pluto thing. Defining "planet" is downright impossible in any absolute sense. Different people are going to have different exceptions where it gets fuzzy. Reality is not so kind as to conform to our mental demands. No matter what definition of planet we use, the variety of rocky bodies in space is surely going to have things at the fuzzy edges that challenge that word's validity. Someone can define gender in terms of outside physical similarity irregardless of function, as you have implicitly sorta said when you said "he's not a man any more" as in, not a man since the surgery. One can define it as how one mentally pictures themselves, under that definition the person was a man the moment they viewed themselves as such. One can define it genetically, but the flaw is those who have hormone imbalances that override the genetic coding during development. One can define it in terms of functional genetalia, but this line is blurred in those who have "undistinct" development where the genetalia partially resembles both, much of the time totally nonfunctional. In those cases, heck is the person a boy, a girl, neither, both, or do you use a gradiant scale and say 40% male and 60% female?
Words are tools but we must never forget that's all they are, and words don't determine reality, they are tools meant to DESCRIBE reality.
Calling someone a female when they prefer to be called a male is certainly rude. But, it's far different than a word that is clearly intended as hate speech. Call them "freaks" and then you have a point.
Heck, in a sense grouping the entire spectrum together is partly offensive. (For the record, socially, it's best just to go with how someone presents themselves socially unless they request otherwise, then it's polite to just go with that request.)
I'm saying don't let the hazy nature of words in and of itself create fights where none need exist. Reality already has a proper enemy for us, the people who actually do hate them, pick on them, beat them, and so on.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)