Talking about Plato and his idea of sexuality and love, the Symposium[0] is worth a read. Aristophanes speech in particular is, in my personal opinion, one of the best thing ever written in this context.
Aristophanes speech is interesting because it presents preference towards either men or women as something innate an immutable in a person. This is quite different from how it was usually seen in antiquity - for example one Roman historian noted that the emperor Claudius was kind of weird because he only was attracted to women.
Yes, usually people writes about the "homosexuality" in the Greece for example, but that's a completely different view: old philosophers used to have their own young boy that gave their body in exchange of intellectual knowledge.
Platone express a completely different view (we won't never know how much the Aristophanes speech was Platone's, and viceversa), without judging.
Foucault is spot on in saying in this day of age we are obsessed with sex and its labels. Sadly I don't see much liberation in the HBQT movement. All those labels are just shackles on a heavy chain of controlling discourse.
Don't force views on deaf ears.
The gradual shifting of awareness is happening regardless and irrespective of the attempts by liberals to further the cause (which is essentially politically driven at this stage).
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable with who you are (to those close to you) is how you spread awareness and actually change people into activists for your cause (without resorting to dogma and rhetoric).
100% agreed, in fact I think that the 'change the language' approach is a net negative because it contains an element of force and force tends to breed resentment. Some people just weren't born to be part of progress and for every mind changed I suspect there are a large multitude that dig in even further.
The time is ripe, enough people are reasonable to get an actual change happening on this front in the lifetimes of almost everybody that it really matters to. Force will get you nowhere at all.
Taking Rosa Parks as a nice example: she wasn't complaining about the language used to determine her place in the bus, she took what was rightfully hers and stood by it.
Labels for gender and sexuality are so much more than simple political identifiers.
People who actually use them for themselves experience them as guideposts to finding out what's going on inside by seeking out other people's experiences. To us, the labels are no different from "nerd" or "musician." I would still find them useful even without a vast social and political movement hell-bent on making my world as sad and empty as their own.
Identity labels are fundamentally about making space to explore. "Musician" leads to all kinds of places, like grungehead, or rondo fanatic, or furry rave DJ. Why people get so up in arms about identity labels when it comes to gender and sexuality is beyond me, and I've already written too much here to start speculating.
It's worse than that. The way our minds work, labels are part of our self-image. Once we attach a label to our identity it becomes part of who we are and we often try to conform to the expectations of the label.
Human communication is set apart by its advanced facility for label-finding, which is what allows us to effectively solve problems. The term "label" has multiple levels; at a low level, just finding the "right" words to communicate something is labeling.
Labels have their downsides, but the upside is an enormous communication advantage over other species, one that brought us the ability to foster life and evolve other species with us. In effect we are now _better, more nuanced labelers_ than we were in the past, which is really the goal--eliminating labels stunts our ability to identify and solve problems, so using them better is the only way to go.
TLDR: "We label too much" itself is a label for a problem; even though it necessarily leaves out nuance, that's also the very factor that gives a labeler more leverage. To move up and away from that problem, we will need to find new labels that get us better traction in that area. The amazing thing is that there are so many billions of ways of labeling a problem, each with respective advantages/disadvantages.
I'm not saying we label too much per-se, but I think it is important to remember that our minds use labels as a shortcut for understanding the properties of the things we label. Useful, but not always accurate.
Labels are just words we use to collect and share bits of the world. A gay guy discovering he's not actually all that picky about gender should be able to start calling himself bi without fearing biphobic reactions (internal or external).
Biphobia, which is just a modern label for a collection of attitudes that predate our modern concepts of sexuality, would still be a thing if no one called themselves "gay" or "bi" (or pan), just as same-sex attracted people got lynched for going against some people's beliefs long before there were words for their attractions.
Labels aren't the problem. Dogmatic adherence to narrow concepts of gender and sexuality is the problem. It's helpful to identify the way I do so people who also identify that way can find me and compare experiences with me.
Labels for gender and sexuality are best treated as a way of finding others like yourself to increase self-knowledge and protect yourself against people who want to hurt you because of the feelings those labels represent.
I agree insofar as the problem of labels as expressed prior to you is really an extension of anti-individualism and group-think. I wouldn't sooner blame memes and facebook. Obviously, labels can be useful and in a broader sense we abstract everything around us in near binary fashion. It's a symptom of being human.
If you can't see liberation in a movement which has shifted homosexual behaviour from a perversion to be condemned and criminally punished to relationships openly celebrated through marriage in the space of half a century, it's quite likely because you're actively trying not to see it. And much of the policing of language "if you've had sex with another man then of course you're gay", "pansexual cannot be a thing and suggesting there are more than two genders is Cultural Marxist rubbish that should be resisted", "of course people born with penises cannot be addressed as female" comes from outside the movement.
"Controlling discourse" seems to be the new "states rights" argument for a form of social conservatism which held no objections whatsoever to purging public discourse of any positive reference to behaviour they believed to be immoral when they held the whip hand...
If you are worried, that the other party may leave you at any second- and nobody here in the audience wants to intervene in this contract of drugs for steady income, then i shall declare you damned and damsel, you may now kiss the divorce lawyer.
The label obsession is part of consumer-culture identity purchasing, and an extension of group mentality. Sexual labels are just one more thing absorbed into that mess. A person is their music collection, yoga class, mountain bike, glasses, political alignment, etc. No longer do you have to accomplish anything to be interesting, just buy a personality.
I disagree with you on there being no liberation coming from the movement. I only agree insofar as the label obsession is mainstream.
[Off Topic]
I absolutely LOVE Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I've been learning and reading about philosophy and this website as been a good resource.
They have it organized by people and thematic. It is very accessible in writing and structure. It doesn't resemble an encyclopedia. It's more like a structured collection of essays and summations on the themes and people.
I'd only wish we could download the pages as epub, instead of only in PDF.
An awful lot of this is most easily done with pandoc. Use wget to pull pages down, pandoc to convert to markdown, apply edits (for example, a table of contents), and then pandoc again to make it an epub.
I love it too, though I wish they had a way to look up philosophers by chronology. Their chronological ordering is based on the post date, not on the timeline of the philosopher's life.
I'm still waiting for the point in history of this planet that people abandon the concepts of sexual orientation or identity or gender completely. The only interesting thing to know is whether a person is able to give birth, biological sex that is, and that's only interesting for medical reasons.
Gender identity and sexual preference don't really matter. They are natural attributes of a person, just as natural as eyes and ears. The only thing I can do is to ignore people's attempts to appear more unique than others by treating them as regular human beings.
I haven't seen any person identifying themselves by their eyes, or their umbilicus (which is in fact unique on every single person). Because it's normal thing. If gender identity is a normal thing, then let's ignore it altogether?
Serious question: how long into the future do you think it would be before society meets the criteria you are expecting? Even if it seems bang obvious to you, it would be an irreconcilable and inconceivable shock to deep-seated cultural beliefs for billions of people, and we are a very political / status-driven type of animal that has deeply ingrained reflex to use any kind of physical characteristics as differentiators for tribes, wars, social classes, etc.
Even if we granted your presumption, it still seems like something that could not possibly be pragmatic or tractable even in hundreds of years, unless there was essentially a global propaganda campaign lasting for generations, orchestrated in unison by wildly different governments and cultural institutions.
Again, I’m not making any normative claim about your viewpoint. I’m only questioning the “still waiting” part .. because surely any even optimistic estimate about when the human species would have a radically different concept of gender or identity would be hundreds and hundreds of years from now, if ever.
The vast majority of the planets population accepts and cherishes their gender identity.
I'm not sure that's the case – I get the impression that the "vast majority" of the planet's population doesn't really ever think about gender identity at all.
The vast majority of the planet's population might roll their eyes at the mere mention of the words "gender identity" if they're even familiar with the concept, but everything from simple clothing choices to complex social interactions are consciously and unconsciously influenced by [local, contemporary] behavioural norms along gender lines (including when, why and how far they're happy to deviate from them). Men don't start seriously considering wearing dresses to work or stop telling their daughters that certain actions aren't very "ladylike" just because they suspect gender studies courses are a waste of time.
Making differences irrelevant is not the same thing as eradicating them.
Sorry, using your arguments, you cannot say that the fight against discrimination of any kind is a moral thing to do. It's in fact problematic, as it eradicates differences, in your own words.
Hmm..yeah but I like the opposite gender as it is and will "naturally" evolve. What you're describing reeks of ideological agenda. If it happens fine, but for now I like to know someone is their gender because thats what I prefer. I'm not biologically interested in man-woman/woman-man hybrids. My genes and psychology agree with me.
Its and interesting concept, and one that may have already occurred in some societies in the past.
Imagine seeing someone attractive, you get to know them, and during this time you find out something that destroys their attraction. Maybe finding out they were of the opposite gender you like, maybe finding out they were an awful person who abuses pets, maybe finding out that they were much younger than you assumed. How much of the destruction of attraction is biological in nature verses social in nature? And even more complex is that idea that the origin is sociological in nature, develops to be biological.
I'd suggest looking up research on linguistic relativity. The extent of the impact of it is still being researched, and it is unknown the extent it might impact attraction (even far more mundane things like object placement and color recognition are still being researched and debated among scientist).
2018 article that has found evidence some mental processes may be impacted while others appear not to be:
Sadly basically all the research I found on it is locked behind paywalls, but I will say that while a lot of the initial concepts have been challenged and thrown out, from what I've read the idea as a whole has survived to some extent.
I'm with you on this one, and I'm surprised you've been downvoted so heavily.
Gender, sexual orientation, and the identities associated with them seem like such weird anachronisms to me. I understand the reasons behind why the exist and why society evolved in this direction, and I've got no interest in forcing anybody to abandon their self-image. But I do find it strange that people want to construct identities around what are ultimately just biological facts.
I suppose that would be things that you willingly decided to engage with. Someone identifying as an “engineer” or a “problem solver” or a “musician” or a “good listener” or a “conservative”. Those make sense to me as forms of identity; sex and sexuality far less so.
Well, that's an odd question. Sure, biological sex is an objective fact, but you can't call gender identity a fact. It's a part of a more complex identity which people unwillingly or willingly emphasize. I refuse to define my identity based on my sexual attributes, because it only concerns myself and a potential partner. For the rest of the world most of my attributes of identity are masked by other peoples' perception of my actions. People can identify my actions and my attributes as unique, and they have a shortcut label as a help to identify me - by my name. So, what if a person is not as unique as others? Do they need to emphasize some attributes to appear more unique, to be distinguishable? Why? They are unique in any way, objectively. But in their own eyes? I don't think so. So, there is a clear distinction between biological/physical attributes (facts) that are a non-disputable part of the identity of a person and subjectively perceivable attributes (perspectives). It's a fact that I'm a man, but things other than that don't really matter, because they are perceivable only subjectively.
Identity is based not only on facts. It's also based on wishes, labels, lies and social constructs.
With the English language as it currently stands you need to know a person's gender in order to talk about them in a normal, non-stilted way and without drawing attention to you not knowing their gender.
Did the use of the words "them" and "their" in the previous sentence seem natural to you? Probably it did because they referred to a generic "person". However, if I'd referred to a named individual, "Chris", say, using "them" or "their" then I think you would have immediately felt some weirdness.
It's not that unusual nowadays, I find, to meet people whose gender is not obvious so it would be good to fix this linguistic problem, but I can't imagine it getting fixed overnight.
That is almost certainly true, but there isn't yet much exposure.
For example, in the article linked to below there are a couple of instances of "they" referring to a named and identified person, and the reason for using "they" is obvious and explained in the article. Nevertheless, I noticed I needed an extra fraction of a second to process mentally the sentences in question.
Singular "they" used in that way is certainly a lot less weird than Spivak pronouns or "xe" so even if those two are, perhaps, technically superior solutions I would guess that singular "they" is what people will (continue to) use.
Humanity needs to abandon the idea of strictly binary gender and sexuality, and in particular the fallacy that heteronormativity is more correct, rather than merely being more common. However, I doubt the entire premise of identifying oneself with a particular orientation or gender is going to disappear, since sexual orientation and gender do exist.
>Humanity needs to abandon ... the fallacy that heteronormativity is more correct, rather than merely being more common.
There is good reason to suspect that heterosexual behavior is strongly correlated with the ability of a species to survive. Of course, not all members of a species may see survival as a desired goal.
Heterosexuality and homosexuality are about more than mere reproduction, though. If the arguments against homosexuality were strictly about that, they could also be applied to straight people who marry monogamously, or who choose not to have children at all, since neither a single partner or no partner is optimal for survival.
My point is that non-hetero sexuality and non-binary gender should be viewed as simply an uncommon aspect of human biology and identity, which has no moral weight in and of itself. Some people are left-handed, some people have red hair, some people are gay.
Homosexuality brings with a high level of STDs even within a "couple". They also have higher substance abuse issues. https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/substance-use-suds-... Also, when you look at the demise of countries, the acceptance of general homosexuality and transgender-ism are correlated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8BRdwgPChQ To this end, one could make the argument that homosexual behavior is a public health crisis and should be banned along with non-monogamous heterosexual relationships.
>Homosexuality brings with a high level of STDs even within a "couple".
In part, because of efforts by right wing and religious groups to ensure that gay couples cannot receive treatment without risking their personal safety, and to deny homosexuals access to the same medical rights and privileges as heterosexuals. If there were no stigma to homosexuality, and no threat to the funding or reputation of doctors or programs that treat homosexuals, then the spread of STDs amongst that community would be lower. After all, it's not as if AIDS or syphilis knows the sexual preference of the person it infects, and decides not to infect straight people, or to double-infect gays, so the contributing factors here must be external, social and political. One needs to recognize the difference between gay lifestyles (there are more than one) when considering the negative aspects of sexual promiscuity therein, and the existence of homosexuality itself. One can criticize the former without demonizing the latter.
Another factor, also related to the need for gay communities to remain isolated in many places, is the fact that there are fewer gay people than straight people, and therefore fewer potential partners, making the likelihood of infection higher.
>To this end, one could make the argument that homosexual behavior is a public health crisis and should be banned along with non-monogamous heterosexual relationships.
One could make that argument, but it would be an inhumane argument to make, which is why most people would oppose it.
The gay community is full of people that love sex. They are known to be indiscriminate. They are known to actively eschew condoms. It's part of the mystique. Sure there are subgroups that don't, but they are few in number, especially among the young. Since this behavior is so prevalent, I don't think you can meaningfully separate it from homosexuality in general.
To your ideas that funding and all that would be better and provide better outcomes all I have to do is point you to SF. Gays are loved there. No doctor since the 60s would get in trouble or lose prestige because he worked with them. Yet it has a terrible HIV/AIDS issue (http://sfaf.org/hiv-info/statistics/). Hell California dropped the federal crime of knowingly having unsafe sex since it was lobbied against by the homosexual community (probably a subset, but that's still a large enough mentality to show the problems).
As to AIDS, it really does have a preference (not volitional, but statically). It prefers homosexual men. When you see it in heterosexual populations its either due to homosexual sex and then unprotected heterosexual sex, or due to blood infusion issues (which are largely done now in the West).
I had a level 14 mage, who could make water defy the laws of physics and flow backwards up the river. He died from a ruptured artery (and a evil dungeon master) when he used his skills in close combat on a water golem.
We may be headed to a possible future in which technology makes it possible to decouple "romantic" impulses from the reproductive drive. Surrogacy at scale, artificial wombs, even gamete design and editing are all possible within this generation's lifetime. Concomitant relaxations in regulations regarding sexual work and the commodification of sexual satisfaction would be one possible outcome. The philosophic quandary then shifts from sex to the nature of love. Is it simply another innate need with primal place atop the human hierarchy? Or an evolution-tuned biochemical survival mechanism that can itself be synthesized akin to the "pregnancy substitutes" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World?
Again, back to Plato (as all inquiries lead), but this time consider The Republic and its ideal family-state. Plato envisioned a community of parents, and a dissolution of the edicts of traditional marriage. In which the entire village parented each child as if they were their own. And privileges associated with hereditary and parentage begin to disappear in deference to the needs of the state.
Another modern evolution in traditional practice is the use of Tantric and Orgasmic Meditation. Hindu philosophy usually places desire beyond prosperity, knowledge, duty and spiritual perfection. But it is fairly easy to see how cults wholly consecrated to Venus may arise.
Knowing what we know about human psychology, emotions and behavior, this proposal alone make me think that Plato did not understood much about those. You can't raise 30 children "like few of your own" not even if another 30 adults mess with that too.
> We may be headed to a possible future in which technology makes it possible to decouple "romantic" impulses from the reproductive drive.
This type of techno-hubris, which thinks it can undo millions of years of evolutionary biology, leads to the type of utopic visions that devolve into murderous chaos.
What you're proposing isn't terribly different than eugenics.
The technology nightmare that you suggest does fit neatly into the ideal in Plato's republic. Remember as well that in the Republic, it wasn't just that the city parented each child... but that the city was the parent to each child, and children were unaware of their birth parents. It doesn't work -- the idealized creche in The Republic in reality is a land of neglect and a ripe target for abusers.
While they aren't necessarily fun and are probably too inflexible, the themes and positions on sexuality that you find in many religions are rooted fundamentally in humanity.
Personally, I have always found The Republic to be offensive to human dignity. Leaders aren't philosopher kings. Guardians aren't selflessly devoted to the ideals of the state. A future of sex workers as industrialized sex toys, military dictatorship, outsourced pregnancy and genetic engineering is a dark future inded.
The child doesn't consent to a life of being outside of that social norm. One could make the argument that it's in the same ballpark as raising a child in religious extremism.
I know you were playing devil's advocate, but that argument can be said of any child. It's functionally slavery to be born in Africa since the living conditions are terrible. It's functionally slavery to conceive a black child in America since it's statistically likely to be poor. It's functionally slavery to have a child born to rich parents since there is a high likelihood of emotional abuse due to drugged out mothers and workaholic fathers.
That is an absolute cavalcade of stereotypes. Even then it has a major hole. In your vision those children will still be born into the societal norms of their larger group.
Then we shouldn't allow gays to breed with lesbians to create a timeshare child. The same is true that the US should have actively stopped the intermarriage of blacks and whites for the same reason. India needs to stop the procreation of Christians since the social norm is Hindu.
An absolute false equivalence, save the "timeshare child" thing, which sounds disastrous for the well being of the child. Nobody in their right mind would argue that a child split between two homes is a preferable state. Regardless, there was no argument of banning anything made, so you've descended into hyperbole.
Would you not want to ban slavery? Do you want to keep these scientifically created children in their chains as the OP suggested they were in? You monster!
And just to play devil's advocate against that argument in turn... the child didn't consent to being born. In fact, in most existing legal systems, children don't consent to much at all until the age of consent. And arguing that giving birth to a child without abiding by all social norms is immoral is an extremely slippery slope in and of itself. At least eugenics was (ostensibly, of course) concerned mostly with measurable traits, this is arguably worse.
This attitude is so foreign to me that you could very well be a Marsian. Rich people exploiting poor people to bare the risks and burdens of pregnancy and labor? Have you even considered the degree of desperation one would need to be in to agree to such an arrangement?
Is it really exploitation if you pay someone who is well informed 50k [0]? Are there not legitimate cases where someone has significant risk of carrying a child themselves (e.g. extremely tiny body and hips)? Modern medicine has greatly reduced the risk - if you find someone who is informed, doesn't have these same risk factors and well compensated I honestly don't see a problem with it.
There very well may be cases where the surrogate is being exploited, but I contest that the idea as a whole is fundamentally unethical.
Yes. I don't like this kind of rationalization where one lifts up edge-cases without regard to its proportionality. - "I was able to buy a really nice house after discovering Herbalife".
If you pay attention you will discover that ethics does not ever rest on the fundamental essence of an idea, but on the particular human circumstances in which it most often occurs. By stripping away those circumstances, and adopting the most optimistic view possible, you are cherry-picking: all things can be ethical when you remove them from reality and imagine they only occur under the most favorable interpretation.
There is a theory under which totalitarian dictatorship may be benevolent, but we consider it unethical for politicians or the military to establish one, because reality differs from theory.
Likewise, professors dating students or managers dating direct reports can be totally consensual and free from coercion. It is unethical nonetheless, because we recognize what happens in practice is more important than the rare counterexample.
I feel that's rather a failure of the social safety net rather than something inherently immoral about surrogacy. You could certainly say the same about joining the military, or taking a hard manual labor job.
I don't think anyone should be forced by circumstance to do any of these things; they should be a completely voluntary option for people who are kept safe from poverty through through a functioning welfare system.
Well, I live in a country that does have a socialized welfare system. So the best-case scenario isn't entirely hypothetical. Everyone who earns money pays ~50-75% of their income in various taxes, and everyone who hits economic or medical hardship gets enough help that they'll survive and keep a minimum of dignity. No one starves, no one has to be homeless, no one is forced to work a job that ruins their mental or physical health, although some do come close before they are diagnosed and get permanent (paid) medical leave.
Almost no one dies from diagnosed and treatable diseases, with a few exceptions in cases where treatment is extremely expensive and ineffective (e.g. treatment costs $1 million per year and increases life expectancy by 2 years).
We do still have drug addicts, homeless people, people with massive gambling debts, people with untreated psychological illnesses and prostitutes of many types.
I think it's an interesting philosophical discussion to which degree those who suffer the most on the lowest rungs of my society are victims (in the sense that society should have done more to help them). The vast majority are certainly _offered_ a large amount of help. Some seem unable or unwilling to accept help. Many do accept help, but keep making self-destructive decisions, and it is considered unethical to use force to stop them. Most receive help and live decent lives.
Interestingly, acts like surrogacy, prostitution and donating blood or plasma for money is still illegal here. Even though few better systems could be devised to ensure that on one is forced to take part in these against better judgement. "No one should be allowed to sell their body" is a mantra you'll hear a lot, but there hasn't been a very comprehensive discussion about the pros and cons of this.
I think it's important to emphasize that in this context there's an explicit mention of scale. Surrogacy as something of the future. Almost as an institution. For this scale to be possible, an exploitative relationship between the buyer and seller is required. It's a prerequisite. Otherwise there wouldn't even be a mention of it, since it would be at the negligible scale of a friend or family member donating a kidney to a loved one.
I don't think an exploitative relationship is implied or required here, but it's certainly a big danger (probably the biggest) one would have to be super alert for if this was to be performed at any scale (which exists already, by the way).
E.g., I heard that Minnesota has some sort of routine in place for voluntary surrogacy, which costs the adoptive parents on the order of $100k, of which only ~25k goes to the birthing mother. (A large part of the cost is administration and health checkups/treatment/insurance).
It doesn't sound right to me that only 25% of the proceeds should go to the star of the show, so to speak. But this doesn't imply that it is impossible to do this ethically. Regulation that's well thought-out, as well as a sound, pre-existing social welfare net, is critical.
Note: I had the same question. Below are some of the points that a bit of Googling turned up. My comments in parens.
Some issues that some seem to have with it.
1. Some are concerned with the emotional effects on the surrogate. There are strong biological factors that make a mother get strongly attached to the child they carry, so giving it up immediately could be bad for them.
(tzs: I don't see how this is different from women who give up for adoption a newborn conceived the conventional waw, so this issue seems to me to be orthogonal to surrogacy)
2. Some say it promotes the commoditization of women's bodies, especially poor women. There is actually "surrogacy tourism", similar to "sex tourism", where people from wealthier western countries go to poor countries where there is a thriving trade in rental wombs. As with the women in those countries who serve the sex tourism trade, the women proving the wombs are often coerced into the business and are not getting the rewards.
3. Some say that there are already born children who need adoptive parents. People who cannot have children the conventional way should be adopting those children.
I saw a response to that argument, pointing out that a couple that waits until their careers are going well to try to produce children might try for quite a while to conceive before suspecting something is wrong, then might spend a few years trying various fertility treatments. By the time all of that fails, they can easily be too old to be allowed to adopt.
4. Recognition of surrogacy varies quite a bit around the world. Commercial surrogacy is legal in India. Altruistic surrogacy, but not commercial surrogacy, is legal in the UK and Australia. All forms of surrogacy are prohibited in France and Germany. In the US it depends on the state, some allowing commercial surrogacy and some prohibiting it [1].
This could lead to children with questionable legal status. If you had a couple from country X, a "no surrogacy" country, acquire a surrogate child in country Y, a "fully recognized commercial surrogacy" country, it might be possible to get a situation where there is no country that recognizes the child as one of its citizens.
(tzs: overall, from what I read, it seems no one has offered any good argument that surrogacy is inherently unethical, but there is a lot of potential for abuse, and a lot of areas it can touch that you could easily overlook such as interactions with things like citizenship. It seems to be one of those areas where you should regulate it from the start, rather than letting it develop commercially freely and then try to patch up any bad aspects you discover).
I've been thinking about something like this but from a different angle for a while since the #MeToo. The war between the sexes is heating up. With 3rd wave feminism calling for the mistreatment of men, rape charges required to destroy lives without proof, courts stacked against men in divorces, schools trying to teach boys their gender is the cause of all the world's ills, and the general diva nature washing over women on social media, how long until men just say, "I'm out, but still want a family so I'm going with tech"?
The people researching these devices and techniques are largely men. Bio-hackers are largely men. In their spare time with the spare money that they have since they've sworn off the dating culture, they could build, probably in community with other like-minded men, the labs at home. Essentially you could see a male "makers" community around not involving women.
I know we're a long way from this, but I wonder if its possible. Add to this sexbots and we might get there sooner rather than later.
> With 3rd wave feminism calling for the mistreatment of men
Nobody calls for mistreating men. Well maybe Valerie Salonas. Can you really not distinguish between mainstream feminism and violent wackjobs?
> schools trying to teach boys their gender is the cause of all the world's ills
No they're not.
> general diva nature washing over women on social media
This just sounds like a "women are emotional" argument, which isn't helpful. There's plenty examples of men being outrageous on the internet. (Your comment is one of them)
> Essentially you could see a male "makers" community around not involving women.
You act like this is an original insight. You're just parroting what some incels are saying.
You really don't wanna be involved with that group. Please understand when you're talking with them, you're inside a bubble where bile and hate is normalized.
1) Manspreading and mansplaining are two light examples of calling for male harm. Add to this many of the SJW's call for safe space where white males are banded.
2) There is the war against boys. The whole thing comes down to maleness is bad: energy, competition, etc. I wish I could find the quote by the british author who sat in on a class where the boys were. https://hellogiggles.com/news/teachers-treat-boys-and-girls-...
3) Actually I'm worried about incels and the lost generation and all that. I said I was thinking about. I'm married. My wife and I sit on the sidelines hoping the whole system doesn't crash. The difference between a 1960's MGTOW and now is that these men could buy land and establish a private genetics homeland. There goes your social cohesion.
> Manspreading and mansplaining are two light examples of calling for male harm.
Asking someone not to take up extra room on the subway is not harm. It's basic courtesy. And in reality, few people actually gripe about manspreading all day. It just seems that way with social media.
Mansplaining is the same. Outside of tumblr, I don't hear it that often. And all it means is "don't be pedantic or condescending." that's just common courtesy. Both men and women can be pedantic and condescending. This is just pointing out that men often talk town to women, and there's a dimension of discrimination that often accompanies this.
> The whole thing comes down to maleness is bad: energy, competition,
There is a problem with education generally, and boys can have a tough time, I agree. But feminists aren't causing this problem. On the contrary, most feminists I know agree that the education system hurts boys and girls in different ways. Nobody thinks having children sitting still all day and listening to lectures is a good way to learn. It's just that girls mature faster, so they can do this more easily at a young age.
I'd also be careful with associating "maleness" with energy and competition. Young girls are energetic and competitive too.
> Actually I'm worried about incels and the lost generation and all that.
Me too! I'm worried that children are not being allowed to fail by overbearing parents, and become susceptible to mental issues. I'm worried that social media, video games, and online streaming are keeping kids inside all day, when they could be hanging out with eachother. I'm worried we've built an economy where poor and working class children have no chance to get ahead. I'm worried that young boys are learning bad lessons about what it means to be a man, and turn to the manosphere for advice.
This is a complicated issue, and I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but by the same token I think it's important to not understate or dismiss certain concerns or problems. Two wrongs don't make a right, etc.
In the linked article, Doris Lessing recounts an anecdote where a teacher said something offensive about men. That teacher was clearly wrong. It also does not demonstrate that "schools trying to teach boys their gender is the cause of all the world's ills." I am aware of no curriculum in the US or the UK where it's ok to teach that men are inherently violent. Hence, I said "no it's not." It's not a widespread problem, as far as I can tell.
We all agree the idea that men can be harmed by our society isn't a fringe position.
But the idea that men need to separate from women, and replace them with sex bots or genetic engineering...that's absolutely fringe incel stuff. That's what the above commenter is touching on. I'm sure you would agree we should not encourage this.
I think the discussion in the article of how to define perversion is interesting. Nowadays it is difficult to say that certain consensual sexual practices are morally wrong without being condemned as a bigot.
Nope. There is no such thing as morality apart from God. The universe doesn't care (it can't). All morality then is man made. To say something is morally wrong is to create an absolute. No one has the power to do so. The best you can say is that you think it's wrong, which means you don't feel something as positive.
I strongly disagree. I am atheist but have no doubt that wantonly killing people (or for that matter, animals) is morally wrong. Empirically, I don't think atheists are much more likely than theists to commit crimes.
Why do you say it's wrong? Wantonly killing a rapist is wrong? Wantonly killing a person in direct competition to resources is wrong? How are you proving any of this? Nature doesn't show that. There are many species that survive using that exact technique.
You need to analyze your basis. It's probably something like, "I don't want to be killed, so I don't". That's fine, but why is that a good idea? Why is life good? Look around at the suffering. It could all be over tomorrow if everyone died. Honestly, atheists assume a moral view from theists. Stalin was right: kill your enemies is fine. You can't prove a moral absolute. You can only prove a feeling set that achieves an end you declare is right.
As to committing more crimes, of course not. Why would an atheist put themselves in harms way of the masses? They know that the masses will quickly end their lives for certain crimes. For other crimes, their lives are functionally ended due to incarceration. According to the rational atheist worldview, living is good. Living as free as possible is better. Therefore only commit the crimes you know you can probably get away with.
Ultimately, an atheist can no more say, in an absolute sense, that Joker is worse than Batman.
Yes. Ethics is nothing more than an arbitrary complex of rules which seek an arbitrary end. The degree to which the individual approximates the system defines how ethical they are.
On a fundamental level I agree with your point. Truly absolute morality implies some kind of external rule of law, which implies some kind of external lawmaker.
Where I disagree is this idea - whether you intended it or not - that non-absolute morality is somehow arbitrary, or worth less than absolute morality.
I don't agree with that: I believe that torturing someone is immoral because humans dislike being tortured (if you're in that 1% who doesn't mind torture, it's not immoral - torture away). You reduce that to "most humans don't feel positive about being tortured". But that's not a choice that 99% of humans made: it's a fact of human biology. Humans don't choose to feel pain when someone rips out their fingernails. You can say "disliking pain is arbitrary". It may be arbitrary in some sense, but not in the context of humanity, and we're all humans.
If you want to say that this kind of "moral thinking" isn't "true morality" because it's not absolute, fine. That's valid stance to take. But whether you call it morality or something else doesn't make it less valid or less useful. And to suggest that humans should not take our innate likes (warmth, safety, respect) and dislikes (pain, insecurity, lack of respect) into account when we interact with each other simply because human biology isn't "absolute" is - pardon me - fucking insane.
My issue is that people make absolutist arguments. They get high and mighty about something they think is True. They then attempt by force of law or culture to make others act within their world view.
It just means we're the arbiters of morality; it's a universalism that evolves. It's a social contract. There are some things that don't go right by people.
I'm not sure I follow, though it seems we might agree?
You say something is wrong, I can say you saying that something is wrong is, in itself wrong. Ultimately, it either doesn't matter at all (we're all just talking), or enough other people agree with us that there is some social consequence.
Morality is nature-made, not God-made. All you need is empathy, and it turns out that mammals have empathy, and so do birds and others. The golden rule follows from empathy.
Natural Law is NOT a new idea, really. Nor is it foreign to religion! St. Thomas of Aquinas is the father of Natural Law -- almost a millenium ago now -- and a big deal in Christianity. Natural Law is a big deal in the Catholic Church, for example. One might say that St. Augustine vs. St. Aquinas is just a religious expression of the Plato vs. Aristotle.
You'll find plenty of well-read, well-educated, very religious people who take a Natural Law approach to morality and who would agree that what happens in private between consenting adults is almost entirely moral (with some limits, such as perhaps that giving one's life up consensually is not moral). (I myself am agnostic, but still, I take a Natural Law approach to morality.)
Of course, there are schools of thought that reject Natural Law, but you must at least acknowledge Natural Law as a concept. And you should at least accept that Natural Law works for others even if not for you. You have to co-exist with the rest of us.
(Us noticing that other animals have empathy is fairly new though, I think.)
Is that for using a personal moral definition of consent (even if it is quite a popular one) or using a scientific definition? I find most people will find scientifically consensual cases morally wrong when considering the edge cases (since the scientific tests for consent are not based on age and instead based on measuring ability, they are mostly developed for studying mentally disabled adults, but the finding apply regardless).
I suppose that gets more into agency? I would assume, barring a good reason, that in most conversations 'consent' would imply that the persons involved in fact had agency to give consent.
Nowadays it is difficult to say that certain consensual sexual practices are morally wrong without being condemned as a bigot.
That's probably good, because I'm finding it difficult to think of any consensual sexual practices that could feasibly be defined as "morally wrong" without the accuser being fairly described as a "bigot". I'd be interested to hear examples though.
According to many religions, there are many kinds of consensual sex that are morally wrong. Is every person who believes in the teachings of such a religion a bigot?
Here's an interesting thing I've seen from people making such claims. Yes they are bigots even if they say, "What you're doing is wrong, but I'll let you be (aside from denouncing the behavior)". This is actually not really bigoted by the definition "a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions." That's were this discourse is. If someone doesn't AGREE, they are bigots. Hell, tolerance just means putting up with their view. You can tolerate and still try to teach another path. Unfortunately for many on the Left, disagreeing and arguing against without seeking any force of law is the same as being a bigot.
Keep in mind that, outside of some contrived examples, beliefs themselves are rarely bigoted -- it's the reason why that belief is held that makes the determination.
For example, a coworker of mine is extremely against illegal immigration. Most people that don't know them assume that this belief stems from a hatred toward immigrants from certain 'undesirable' countries. But once you get to know them it turns out that it actually stems from a belief that the law should always be followed to a t -- they don't actually care one way or another about the issue itself, if the law said we had open borders then it would be no problem.
But we sort of run into a problem when people proxy their beliefs -- for my coworker it's the law, and for the religious it's their doctrine. Are people who subscribe to a belief system responsible for any or all of the intolerance that underpins it? Do people have a moral responsibility to audit their beliefs systems and look for intolerance? Do people have a moral responsibility to not follow an unjust law? Where you fall on these questions probably determines the answer to your question.
Here's one: partaking in a pedo or Lolita fantasy. Doesn't sit right with most people, though that on its own doesn't make it immoral. One could argue that exploration of, say, violent or depraved acts as mere fantasy is apologist, increases risk of partakers trying to up the ante with non-consensual participants to get their rocks off, and is plainly psychologically unhealthy. Fantasizing about what is deemed "evil" is not immoral (we all have fantasized about inflicting violence) but what of habitually doing so to the point where it transforms us? May it be socially considered immoral to genuinely want to commit ill-will even if it isn't performed? Obviously actions are the only "actionable" thing as far as repercussions go, but our thinking changes us perpetually: it is in a sense an action, to choose ourselves. I believe we can choose to be exceptionally deviant, and can choose otherwise, and that the former could have negative consequences both for the self and society. In some capacity, this touches morality...
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadCan you elaborate on what you mean by controlling discourse?
Now, real change is precursed by a change in attitude and a change in attitude can be in turn precursed by a change in terminology.
But a change in terminology does not always lead to a change in attitude and a change in attitude does not always lead to real change.
It's confusing cause and effect.
The time is ripe, enough people are reasonable to get an actual change happening on this front in the lifetimes of almost everybody that it really matters to. Force will get you nowhere at all.
Taking Rosa Parks as a nice example: she wasn't complaining about the language used to determine her place in the bus, she took what was rightfully hers and stood by it.
People who actually use them for themselves experience them as guideposts to finding out what's going on inside by seeking out other people's experiences. To us, the labels are no different from "nerd" or "musician." I would still find them useful even without a vast social and political movement hell-bent on making my world as sad and empty as their own.
Identity labels are fundamentally about making space to explore. "Musician" leads to all kinds of places, like grungehead, or rondo fanatic, or furry rave DJ. Why people get so up in arms about identity labels when it comes to gender and sexuality is beyond me, and I've already written too much here to start speculating.
Labels have their downsides, but the upside is an enormous communication advantage over other species, one that brought us the ability to foster life and evolve other species with us. In effect we are now _better, more nuanced labelers_ than we were in the past, which is really the goal--eliminating labels stunts our ability to identify and solve problems, so using them better is the only way to go.
TLDR: "We label too much" itself is a label for a problem; even though it necessarily leaves out nuance, that's also the very factor that gives a labeler more leverage. To move up and away from that problem, we will need to find new labels that get us better traction in that area. The amazing thing is that there are so many billions of ways of labeling a problem, each with respective advantages/disadvantages.
Biphobia, which is just a modern label for a collection of attitudes that predate our modern concepts of sexuality, would still be a thing if no one called themselves "gay" or "bi" (or pan), just as same-sex attracted people got lynched for going against some people's beliefs long before there were words for their attractions.
Labels aren't the problem. Dogmatic adherence to narrow concepts of gender and sexuality is the problem. It's helpful to identify the way I do so people who also identify that way can find me and compare experiences with me.
Labels for gender and sexuality are best treated as a way of finding others like yourself to increase self-knowledge and protect yourself against people who want to hurt you because of the feelings those labels represent.
"Controlling discourse" seems to be the new "states rights" argument for a form of social conservatism which held no objections whatsoever to purging public discourse of any positive reference to behaviour they believed to be immoral when they held the whip hand...
Nothing spells celebration like the approval of the State and the Law does
I disagree with you on there being no liberation coming from the movement. I only agree insofar as the label obsession is mainstream.
They have it organized by people and thematic. It is very accessible in writing and structure. It doesn't resemble an encyclopedia. It's more like a structured collection of essays and summations on the themes and people.
I'd only wish we could download the pages as epub, instead of only in PDF.
I find calibre great for converting formats
I haven't seen any person identifying themselves by their eyes, or their umbilicus (which is in fact unique on every single person). Because it's normal thing. If gender identity is a normal thing, then let's ignore it altogether?
Even if we granted your presumption, it still seems like something that could not possibly be pragmatic or tractable even in hundreds of years, unless there was essentially a global propaganda campaign lasting for generations, orchestrated in unison by wildly different governments and cultural institutions.
Again, I’m not making any normative claim about your viewpoint. I’m only questioning the “still waiting” part .. because surely any even optimistic estimate about when the human species would have a radically different concept of gender or identity would be hundreds and hundreds of years from now, if ever.
The attempt to force any kind of ideology that makes everybody exactly the same and eradicates differences is , in my view, problematic.
I'm not sure that's the case – I get the impression that the "vast majority" of the planet's population doesn't really ever think about gender identity at all.
Sorry, using your arguments, you cannot say that the fight against discrimination of any kind is a moral thing to do. It's in fact problematic, as it eradicates differences, in your own words.
Imagine seeing someone attractive, you get to know them, and during this time you find out something that destroys their attraction. Maybe finding out they were of the opposite gender you like, maybe finding out they were an awful person who abuses pets, maybe finding out that they were much younger than you assumed. How much of the destruction of attraction is biological in nature verses social in nature? And even more complex is that idea that the origin is sociological in nature, develops to be biological.
I'd suggest looking up research on linguistic relativity. The extent of the impact of it is still being researched, and it is unknown the extent it might impact attraction (even far more mundane things like object placement and color recognition are still being researched and debated among scientist).
2018 article that has found evidence some mental processes may be impacted while others appear not to be:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002438411...
Sadly basically all the research I found on it is locked behind paywalls, but I will say that while a lot of the initial concepts have been challenged and thrown out, from what I've read the idea as a whole has survived to some extent.
Gender, sexual orientation, and the identities associated with them seem like such weird anachronisms to me. I understand the reasons behind why the exist and why society evolved in this direction, and I've got no interest in forcing anybody to abandon their self-image. But I do find it strange that people want to construct identities around what are ultimately just biological facts.
That's an odd perspective to me, because from my point of view what other than facts would I base my identity on?
Identity is based not only on facts. It's also based on wishes, labels, lies and social constructs.
Did the use of the words "them" and "their" in the previous sentence seem natural to you? Probably it did because they referred to a generic "person". However, if I'd referred to a named individual, "Chris", say, using "them" or "their" then I think you would have immediately felt some weirdness.
It's not that unusual nowadays, I find, to meet people whose gender is not obvious so it would be good to fix this linguistic problem, but I can't imagine it getting fixed overnight.
For example, in the article linked to below there are a couple of instances of "they" referring to a named and identified person, and the reason for using "they" is obvious and explained in the article. Nevertheless, I noticed I needed an extra fraction of a second to process mentally the sentences in question.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44575229
Singular "they" used in that way is certainly a lot less weird than Spivak pronouns or "xe" so even if those two are, perhaps, technically superior solutions I would guess that singular "they" is what people will (continue to) use.
There is good reason to suspect that heterosexual behavior is strongly correlated with the ability of a species to survive. Of course, not all members of a species may see survival as a desired goal.
My point is that non-hetero sexuality and non-binary gender should be viewed as simply an uncommon aspect of human biology and identity, which has no moral weight in and of itself. Some people are left-handed, some people have red hair, some people are gay.
In part, because of efforts by right wing and religious groups to ensure that gay couples cannot receive treatment without risking their personal safety, and to deny homosexuals access to the same medical rights and privileges as heterosexuals. If there were no stigma to homosexuality, and no threat to the funding or reputation of doctors or programs that treat homosexuals, then the spread of STDs amongst that community would be lower. After all, it's not as if AIDS or syphilis knows the sexual preference of the person it infects, and decides not to infect straight people, or to double-infect gays, so the contributing factors here must be external, social and political. One needs to recognize the difference between gay lifestyles (there are more than one) when considering the negative aspects of sexual promiscuity therein, and the existence of homosexuality itself. One can criticize the former without demonizing the latter.
Another factor, also related to the need for gay communities to remain isolated in many places, is the fact that there are fewer gay people than straight people, and therefore fewer potential partners, making the likelihood of infection higher.
>To this end, one could make the argument that homosexual behavior is a public health crisis and should be banned along with non-monogamous heterosexual relationships.
One could make that argument, but it would be an inhumane argument to make, which is why most people would oppose it.
To your ideas that funding and all that would be better and provide better outcomes all I have to do is point you to SF. Gays are loved there. No doctor since the 60s would get in trouble or lose prestige because he worked with them. Yet it has a terrible HIV/AIDS issue (http://sfaf.org/hiv-info/statistics/). Hell California dropped the federal crime of knowingly having unsafe sex since it was lobbied against by the homosexual community (probably a subset, but that's still a large enough mentality to show the problems).
As to AIDS, it really does have a preference (not volitional, but statically). It prefers homosexual men. When you see it in heterosexual populations its either due to homosexual sex and then unprotected heterosexual sex, or due to blood infusion issues (which are largely done now in the West).
This is fundamentally different. I'm pretty sure if the entire population of a species was left handed or had red hair it would still survive.
> since neither a single partner or no partner is optimal for survival.
Single partner may be more optimal for survival when offspring don't mature in a matter of weeks, months or even years.
Again, back to Plato (as all inquiries lead), but this time consider The Republic and its ideal family-state. Plato envisioned a community of parents, and a dissolution of the edicts of traditional marriage. In which the entire village parented each child as if they were their own. And privileges associated with hereditary and parentage begin to disappear in deference to the needs of the state.
Another modern evolution in traditional practice is the use of Tantric and Orgasmic Meditation. Hindu philosophy usually places desire beyond prosperity, knowledge, duty and spiritual perfection. But it is fairly easy to see how cults wholly consecrated to Venus may arise.
This type of techno-hubris, which thinks it can undo millions of years of evolutionary biology, leads to the type of utopic visions that devolve into murderous chaos.
What you're proposing isn't terribly different than eugenics.
While they aren't necessarily fun and are probably too inflexible, the themes and positions on sexuality that you find in many religions are rooted fundamentally in humanity.
Personally, I have always found The Republic to be offensive to human dignity. Leaders aren't philosopher kings. Guardians aren't selflessly devoted to the ideals of the state. A future of sex workers as industrialized sex toys, military dictatorship, outsourced pregnancy and genetic engineering is a dark future inded.
No, they aren't. Moreover, surrogacy is just as unethical as slavery, expect it to be banned worldwide soon.
The child doesn't consent to a life of being outside of that social norm. One could make the argument that it's in the same ballpark as raising a child in religious extremism.
There very well may be cases where the surrogate is being exploited, but I contest that the idea as a whole is fundamentally unethical.
[0] - https://www.westcoastsurrogacy.com/surrogate-program-for-int...
There is a theory under which totalitarian dictatorship may be benevolent, but we consider it unethical for politicians or the military to establish one, because reality differs from theory.
Likewise, professors dating students or managers dating direct reports can be totally consensual and free from coercion. It is unethical nonetheless, because we recognize what happens in practice is more important than the rare counterexample.
Do not confuse ethics with moral absolutism!
I don't think anyone should be forced by circumstance to do any of these things; they should be a completely voluntary option for people who are kept safe from poverty through through a functioning welfare system.
Almost no one dies from diagnosed and treatable diseases, with a few exceptions in cases where treatment is extremely expensive and ineffective (e.g. treatment costs $1 million per year and increases life expectancy by 2 years).
We do still have drug addicts, homeless people, people with massive gambling debts, people with untreated psychological illnesses and prostitutes of many types.
I think it's an interesting philosophical discussion to which degree those who suffer the most on the lowest rungs of my society are victims (in the sense that society should have done more to help them). The vast majority are certainly _offered_ a large amount of help. Some seem unable or unwilling to accept help. Many do accept help, but keep making self-destructive decisions, and it is considered unethical to use force to stop them. Most receive help and live decent lives.
Interestingly, acts like surrogacy, prostitution and donating blood or plasma for money is still illegal here. Even though few better systems could be devised to ensure that on one is forced to take part in these against better judgement. "No one should be allowed to sell their body" is a mantra you'll hear a lot, but there hasn't been a very comprehensive discussion about the pros and cons of this.
E.g., I heard that Minnesota has some sort of routine in place for voluntary surrogacy, which costs the adoptive parents on the order of $100k, of which only ~25k goes to the birthing mother. (A large part of the cost is administration and health checkups/treatment/insurance).
It doesn't sound right to me that only 25% of the proceeds should go to the star of the show, so to speak. But this doesn't imply that it is impossible to do this ethically. Regulation that's well thought-out, as well as a sound, pre-existing social welfare net, is critical.
Some issues that some seem to have with it.
1. Some are concerned with the emotional effects on the surrogate. There are strong biological factors that make a mother get strongly attached to the child they carry, so giving it up immediately could be bad for them.
(tzs: I don't see how this is different from women who give up for adoption a newborn conceived the conventional waw, so this issue seems to me to be orthogonal to surrogacy)
2. Some say it promotes the commoditization of women's bodies, especially poor women. There is actually "surrogacy tourism", similar to "sex tourism", where people from wealthier western countries go to poor countries where there is a thriving trade in rental wombs. As with the women in those countries who serve the sex tourism trade, the women proving the wombs are often coerced into the business and are not getting the rewards.
3. Some say that there are already born children who need adoptive parents. People who cannot have children the conventional way should be adopting those children.
I saw a response to that argument, pointing out that a couple that waits until their careers are going well to try to produce children might try for quite a while to conceive before suspecting something is wrong, then might spend a few years trying various fertility treatments. By the time all of that fails, they can easily be too old to be allowed to adopt.
4. Recognition of surrogacy varies quite a bit around the world. Commercial surrogacy is legal in India. Altruistic surrogacy, but not commercial surrogacy, is legal in the UK and Australia. All forms of surrogacy are prohibited in France and Germany. In the US it depends on the state, some allowing commercial surrogacy and some prohibiting it [1].
This could lead to children with questionable legal status. If you had a couple from country X, a "no surrogacy" country, acquire a surrogate child in country Y, a "fully recognized commercial surrogacy" country, it might be possible to get a situation where there is no country that recognizes the child as one of its citizens.
(tzs: overall, from what I read, it seems no one has offered any good argument that surrogacy is inherently unethical, but there is a lot of potential for abuse, and a lot of areas it can touch that you could easily overlook such as interactions with things like citizenship. It seems to be one of those areas where you should regulate it from the start, rather than letting it develop commercially freely and then try to patch up any bad aspects you discover).
[1] https://www.creativefamilyconnections.com/us-surrogacy-law-m...
The people researching these devices and techniques are largely men. Bio-hackers are largely men. In their spare time with the spare money that they have since they've sworn off the dating culture, they could build, probably in community with other like-minded men, the labs at home. Essentially you could see a male "makers" community around not involving women.
I know we're a long way from this, but I wonder if its possible. Add to this sexbots and we might get there sooner rather than later.
Nobody calls for mistreating men. Well maybe Valerie Salonas. Can you really not distinguish between mainstream feminism and violent wackjobs?
> schools trying to teach boys their gender is the cause of all the world's ills
No they're not.
> general diva nature washing over women on social media
This just sounds like a "women are emotional" argument, which isn't helpful. There's plenty examples of men being outrageous on the internet. (Your comment is one of them)
> Essentially you could see a male "makers" community around not involving women.
You act like this is an original insight. You're just parroting what some incels are saying.
You really don't wanna be involved with that group. Please understand when you're talking with them, you're inside a bubble where bile and hate is normalized.
2) There is the war against boys. The whole thing comes down to maleness is bad: energy, competition, etc. I wish I could find the quote by the british author who sat in on a class where the boys were. https://hellogiggles.com/news/teachers-treat-boys-and-girls-...
3) Actually I'm worried about incels and the lost generation and all that. I said I was thinking about. I'm married. My wife and I sit on the sidelines hoping the whole system doesn't crash. The difference between a 1960's MGTOW and now is that these men could buy land and establish a private genetics homeland. There goes your social cohesion.
Asking someone not to take up extra room on the subway is not harm. It's basic courtesy. And in reality, few people actually gripe about manspreading all day. It just seems that way with social media.
Mansplaining is the same. Outside of tumblr, I don't hear it that often. And all it means is "don't be pedantic or condescending." that's just common courtesy. Both men and women can be pedantic and condescending. This is just pointing out that men often talk town to women, and there's a dimension of discrimination that often accompanies this.
> The whole thing comes down to maleness is bad: energy, competition,
There is a problem with education generally, and boys can have a tough time, I agree. But feminists aren't causing this problem. On the contrary, most feminists I know agree that the education system hurts boys and girls in different ways. Nobody thinks having children sitting still all day and listening to lectures is a good way to learn. It's just that girls mature faster, so they can do this more easily at a young age.
I'd also be careful with associating "maleness" with energy and competition. Young girls are energetic and competitive too.
> Actually I'm worried about incels and the lost generation and all that.
Me too! I'm worried that children are not being allowed to fail by overbearing parents, and become susceptible to mental issues. I'm worried that social media, video games, and online streaming are keeping kids inside all day, when they could be hanging out with eachother. I'm worried we've built an economy where poor and working class children have no chance to get ahead. I'm worried that young boys are learning bad lessons about what it means to be a man, and turn to the manosphere for advice.
But I'm not worried at all about feminism.
For example, Doris Lessing--yes, that Doris Lessing--is expressing concerns about treatment of men:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/14/edinburghfestival...
This is a complicated issue, and I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but by the same token I think it's important to not understate or dismiss certain concerns or problems. Two wrongs don't make a right, etc.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/07/05/metoo-please-...
We all agree the idea that men can be harmed by our society isn't a fringe position.
But the idea that men need to separate from women, and replace them with sex bots or genetic engineering...that's absolutely fringe incel stuff. That's what the above commenter is touching on. I'm sure you would agree we should not encourage this.
Actually, they can adopt children even now, so even that one is possible without lab.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
As to committing more crimes, of course not. Why would an atheist put themselves in harms way of the masses? They know that the masses will quickly end their lives for certain crimes. For other crimes, their lives are functionally ended due to incarceration. According to the rational atheist worldview, living is good. Living as free as possible is better. Therefore only commit the crimes you know you can probably get away with.
Ultimately, an atheist can no more say, in an absolute sense, that Joker is worse than Batman.
The Joker is worse than Batman. ;) Denied.
Let me ask this - do you think an atheist can be ethical?
Where I disagree is this idea - whether you intended it or not - that non-absolute morality is somehow arbitrary, or worth less than absolute morality.
I don't agree with that: I believe that torturing someone is immoral because humans dislike being tortured (if you're in that 1% who doesn't mind torture, it's not immoral - torture away). You reduce that to "most humans don't feel positive about being tortured". But that's not a choice that 99% of humans made: it's a fact of human biology. Humans don't choose to feel pain when someone rips out their fingernails. You can say "disliking pain is arbitrary". It may be arbitrary in some sense, but not in the context of humanity, and we're all humans.
If you want to say that this kind of "moral thinking" isn't "true morality" because it's not absolute, fine. That's valid stance to take. But whether you call it morality or something else doesn't make it less valid or less useful. And to suggest that humans should not take our innate likes (warmth, safety, respect) and dislikes (pain, insecurity, lack of respect) into account when we interact with each other simply because human biology isn't "absolute" is - pardon me - fucking insane.
You say something is wrong, I can say you saying that something is wrong is, in itself wrong. Ultimately, it either doesn't matter at all (we're all just talking), or enough other people agree with us that there is some social consequence.
Natural Law is NOT a new idea, really. Nor is it foreign to religion! St. Thomas of Aquinas is the father of Natural Law -- almost a millenium ago now -- and a big deal in Christianity. Natural Law is a big deal in the Catholic Church, for example. One might say that St. Augustine vs. St. Aquinas is just a religious expression of the Plato vs. Aristotle.
You'll find plenty of well-read, well-educated, very religious people who take a Natural Law approach to morality and who would agree that what happens in private between consenting adults is almost entirely moral (with some limits, such as perhaps that giving one's life up consensually is not moral). (I myself am agnostic, but still, I take a Natural Law approach to morality.)
Of course, there are schools of thought that reject Natural Law, but you must at least acknowledge Natural Law as a concept. And you should at least accept that Natural Law works for others even if not for you. You have to co-exist with the rest of us.
(Us noticing that other animals have empathy is fairly new though, I think.)
That's probably good, because I'm finding it difficult to think of any consensual sexual practices that could feasibly be defined as "morally wrong" without the accuser being fairly described as a "bigot". I'd be interested to hear examples though.
For example, a coworker of mine is extremely against illegal immigration. Most people that don't know them assume that this belief stems from a hatred toward immigrants from certain 'undesirable' countries. But once you get to know them it turns out that it actually stems from a belief that the law should always be followed to a t -- they don't actually care one way or another about the issue itself, if the law said we had open borders then it would be no problem.
But we sort of run into a problem when people proxy their beliefs -- for my coworker it's the law, and for the religious it's their doctrine. Are people who subscribe to a belief system responsible for any or all of the intolerance that underpins it? Do people have a moral responsibility to audit their beliefs systems and look for intolerance? Do people have a moral responsibility to not follow an unjust law? Where you fall on these questions probably determines the answer to your question.
How is that not a form of bigotry?