Sunday, March 31, 2019

Liberalism & the body

Below is a tweet from Teen Vogue:



The logic of liberalism is continuing to unfold. There is a strong assertion in this video from Teen Vogue that there are no male and female bodies, i.e. nothing about the body that would reasonably qualify a person as male or female.

Chase Strangio, an attorney for the ACLU, claims in the video that,
We all have characteristics that are typically male and typically female and it is really about political choices, social factors, ideological choices that we assign meaning to different parts of our body.

Katrina Karkazis says,
The body doesn't have just one place where we can sit there with a microscope or something else and say, hey wait a second, this is really who you are, this is your true sex. In fact, who you are is who you say you are.

There are people who are now claiming that their body parts are male or female depending on what they identify them to be. In other words, if someone has breasts then this is not objectively an aspect of female biology. They are a part of either male or female biology depending on what the person who has them identifies as.

One of the trans participants in the video asserts,
When I say I'm a woman I don't just mean that I identify as a woman, I mean that my biology is the biology of a woman regardless of whether or not doctors agree. 

It was almost inevitable we'd arrive at this point. In a liberal society what matters is maximising individual autonomy, which means that anything which limits our ability to determine who we are or what we do is seen as a limitation which the individual needs to be liberated from.

We do not get to determine our biological sex. Liberalism's first response to this "problem" was to say, well, we'll make a person's sex not matter in life. There will be no "sexism', meaning no sphere in life and no social role pertaining to one sex and not the other. To achieve this, it was claimed that traditional sex roles were based only on "gender" and that gender was an oppressive social construct that could be deconstructed.

But this was inevitably only a first step, as it still left people with a biological sex that they did not choose for themselves. Being a man or a woman no longer meant as much socially, but I still didn't get to choose for myself which one I would be.

And so the next step is to make the idea of biological sex itself something that is chosen by individuals. Hence the claim by Chase Strangio that there is no objective meaning to being born with certain body parts; the meanings are socially constructed, through political and ideological choices or through social forces.

Teen Vogue chose an interesting week to make all these claims as it coincided with the public release of research showing that differences between the brains of boys and girls begins in the womb, and therefore before any possible social influences. Science continues to suggest that at least some differences between the sexes are hardwired rather than being created by culture and socialisation.

Finally, it should be pointed out that Teen Vogue is not alone in pressing forward with these sorts of claims. The Tasmanian Government has just decided to put forward legislation that would make abortions legal for men:



A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

9 comments:

  1. Is there some lost reader, someone particular and anonymous, way out there on the edge of the cloud that you're convinced still does not understand what the psychosexually disordered head cases in that video are claiming?

    What is your purpose? Seriously. I have no clue what your purpose is.

    What tiny piece of this puzzle is missing? You seem to be obsessed with gaining sub-molecular knowledge of this psychosexual disorder.

    What needs this level of attention is the mass psychosis that has taken control of the minds of the rest of the world.

    The linked video is a parade of repetitive examples of mentally disordered humans who regurgitate inane nonsense and totally deny the truth. What new is to be learned by listening to them?

    If you had a son that spent months ranting and demanding that his healthy legs be amputated because he insists that if he is ever to be happy, ever to feel normal and to feel right and "in the right body", that he has to have both legs amputated so that he can live out his life legless in a wheelchair, because he's convinced that is exactly what he needs. He has given a legally informed consent and he's done talking about it.

    Is there some missing bit of information, some final twist or clue that you are convinced will set the healthy-legged world magically on some right course of action that will finally, for good and for all, rid the affected of their mental disorders and cure the rest of our world of the mass psychosis that has most of us talking crazy with the crazy?

    Do you think and believe that "human gender" exists?

    How about this "biological sex", consistently discussed here? Do you think or believe that some humans, even one, might have a non-biological sex? Would that be an abstract sex? Sounds an awful lot like yet another step in the direction of a "psychological sex", like they claim in the video.

    Just asking, again.

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    1. The linked video is a parade of repetitive examples of mentally disordered humans who regurgitate inane nonsense and totally deny the truth.

      And in a few years time the most respectable and conservative leaders of the West will be so convinced that these mentally disordered views are a high point of justice that there will be laws passed to prevent anyone from publicly disagreeing.

      And that's the point of the article. It's to explain to readers why such views fit in so well with the principles of the society we live in, even though our ancestors would have found them absurd.

      The point being that it is not enough to reject the views being put in the video, as that will be ineffective in the long run. More important to reject the state ideology that gives justification to such views and others like them.

      Sorry if the article did not make this sufficiently clear.

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    2. I wrote a much longer response. There's no point.

      You're impenetrable.

      I've asked you a dozen times. Why in this hell do you refer to a human being's sex as "biological sex"?

      Why do you continue to refer to the "gender" of a human being?

      I'm laughing. But I don't know what at.

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    3. Why in this hell do you refer to a human being's sex as "biological sex"?

      Because it makes sense to. Our sex, in its physical aspect (if that phraseology makes you happier), is something that we don't control at all. We are born distinctly male or female.

      However, our understanding of what our sex means, is influenced by our bodies but also to some extent by our culture. Liberals call this "gender". We on the right try to avoid the sex/gender distinction because it is used by liberals to sever sexual embodiment and sex roles/sex identity. Liberals used to claim, in other words, that our sexual embodiment had nothing to do with whatever gender roles/identity we chose for ourselves. Traditionalists believe that the two are strongly connected.

      So when I engage with liberal concepts I need to make clear what I mean when I am talking about a person's sex. For instance, in this post I noted a shift in liberalism from claiming that our sex roles/identity can be freely self-chosen and are socially constructed to our biological sex/embodied sex/sex in its physical aspect.

      Buck, if you think there is a more skilful way to make the necessary distinctions, I am always open to suggestion. But you should then write a comment along the lines of "I know what you are trying to say, but you could have made the same point this way" - rephrasing the key part of the post as you think works better.

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    4. "Buck O" go away.

      You have no conception of how boring you are.

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  2. Interestingly this particular idea, that men and women are the same, may be the one that breaks the craziness. For me, I don't think that that men and women are the same is much dumber than the other beliefs. Lesbians for Hezbollah, global warming and the end of the planet or believe all women but with the man/woman one I see the first rumblings. It's great, my friends on the left haven't wavered an inch in their beliefs but just now three of them are shaking their heads. Two older ones, watching their male grandchild being dressed as a girl and their granddaughter being given toy trucks and chainsaws foolishly objected. They were pilloried for hate crimes. Another leftwing friend is a bricklayer who was informed of how dangerous his views were when he suggested bricklaying mightn't perfectly suit women. My son, yes, spent International Women's Day listening to how toxic men are and how there's no difference between men and women and it actually woke him up too. So, that's 4 people on the left who've just now said to me that this men and women are the same business is nuts. They're the first ones I've seen changing their minds and may they not be the last.

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    1. David, that's interesting. I do think that as liberalism pushes itself to its ultimate positions that it is going to "leave behind" an increasing number of people.

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  3. Mark, I probably tried a dozen times to explain what you are doing wrong, and you simply ignore me. How can I even suspect that you might be thinking about what I say, much less to understand it, if you don't respond? You consistently ignore my comments unless I'm paying you a complement. "Buck, thanks!"

    Once, long ago, I suggested that you use "man" and "woman" properly, in their proper context. You half-hearted said that you would try. But that never happened. Now it's the most egregious "gender" and "biological sex".

    You don't "bother" to explain that you don't understand or disagree with my views, you simply ignore them and keep repeating the same contradictory oxymoronic terms.

    Not long ago an "anon" quietly agreed with a comment that I made about your consistent contradictory use of "biological sex", saying something along the lines that we need to be more conscious of that. You said nothing, not to him or to me. You simply ignored as usual.

    It's insulting. Clearly all you want to hear from your small cadre of "yes-men" is compliments and agreement. That's what you respond to.

    I'm torn between having to believe that someone as smart as you actually doesn't understand what I'm saying and that you disagree but have no interest or respect for me and for what I've long been saying. You're too smart not to get it, so I'm left with you being coldly dismissive and calculating.

    Your dry writing style intentionally conveys no sentiment. Pure abstraction. That's fine, except you then gush with thanks! over compliments.

    Then, my comments don't post. I suggest that you post them all, except for the profane, or post none. You can't disingenuously invite comments then pick only the ones that favor or compliment you. That is intellectually dishonest.

    "Thanks!", Buck.

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    1. Buck, the problem is that the exchange on this issue is going nowhere and is now getting tiresome. Neither of us is going to be influenced by the other, no matter what we say. I'm therefore not going to publish any more comments you submit on this issue. You are welcome to submit comments dealing with other matters.

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