Eternal Growth

As somebody who has been offered nothing, which is quite unsatisfactory indeed, I understand how you feel. It's also a technique of highly intelligent olden men, who know when something has to be learned through direct experience, rather than through argument. Hahaha, you literally just gave your entire game away and in your own words. It's over. You're a committed mystic who has consistently shown themselves in multiple domains to be a person who believes that truth is something that arises from the consciousnesses of people, not something which arises from objective reality. I knew this already from everything else you have posted (in both trans-related threads and the others - it is natural and in fact follows entirely that a man who believes in the primacy of consciousness will seek to use manipulation as their method of choice for picking up women), I just thought it was important to carry on sufficiently that other people could easily tell this as well and had no doubts. I am done here. (And this discussion taking place here was a diversion from the actual topic) -- In response to the below, and so anyone just reading this part can understand the full context: I am being told I am not showing "basic emotional concern" for a person who (on this board) has repeatedly misgendered me (a trans woman who has presented as a woman for multiple years, and my entire adult life, in the real world, and am unambiguously identified as female in the real world - i.e. he chose the opposite pronoun to the one I use in real life specifically because I was trans and to be antagonistic), has said that trans people should not be "tolerated", has called himself in his own words "anti-transgender" and "trans-non-friendly" and criticised the "trans-friendly", has called me "delusional" and has justified the abuse of gender variant children because "biological sex is objectively observed" among many other things (documented in the thread in Men's Issues, Feminism and Gender). I identified him on the board as being "abusive", and in response to this he did whatever networking was necessary to get a member of FDR staff to threaten me to "not post here" because I had not justified this claim. However, throughout his posts, he had accused trans people of "bullying" and "yelling loudly at" other people and had not substantiated these claims. i.e. this standard of "accusations of abuse should be substantiated immediately when made, or you should not be on the FDR board" was not being applied universally (for whatever reason). Given that in the 7 years that I have been listening to (and donated multiple times, including early BTC donations that grew into significant sums of money, despite being very poor) FDR I have found the message of self-knowledge, of no positive obligations, and of honesty to oneself and others as strongly affirmative of my right to exist in the world as a trans person (despite a family and childhood social context highly antagonistic towards gender variance) and I found this very helpful in developing the confidence to implement the positive developments in my life that I needed to, experiencing a strongly transphobic individual on the FDR board who was implicitly supported by a staff member brought up a lot of emotions and contributed to me changing my entire view of FDR, causing me to disavow the show and community entirely for a year. It was only when I was pointed towards a video in which Stef said something mildly trans-affirmative (his statements regarding Caitlyn Jenner in a recent call-in of a gay man having difficulty with a homophobic family) that changed my view of the "official FDR position on trans people" and made me reconsider FDR's integrity and empathy. The same man is talking now about "basic emotional concern" regarding a factually, objectively true (as far as I can still tell) identification of him supporting NAP violations against trans people / medical professionals. What can I say. (To his other point below about being "scientifically-rigorous", all I can say is: honest humans do not interact with one another with Behaviourist scientific experiments.)

Sorry if I wasn't clear in what I meant. I have offered something, you have offered nothing. You were not happy with what I offered, but it was something, and I am not going to give more to another person before the other person has given anything at all. This is basic reciprocity. Just to point it out, it is a technique of mystics, manipulators and abusive people to claim that a certain piece of knowledge incriminates a person, but to withhold this piece of knowledge. I like quoting Ayn Rand, so: "Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it." - Ayn Rand "Can't directly explain using logic and reason." - have you done this? Please point me towards the post.

I expect reciprocity with other people. I have stated something that I will do if I am wrong and you are right in the conversation. You have offered nothing if you are proven wrong and I am proven right, as though even the possibility of you being wrong does not occur to you. "But Liberalismus doesn't know" - That is correct, I don't. Would you like to state it?

Ah, the bad type of libertarian (typically those who come from the socially conservative right). Freedom for everyone, so long as you're exactly like us, otherwise you are "disordered". No, we won't persecute you, we will just identify you as disordered and exclude you from normal society and family life and then blame any psychological problems that result on you, because social ostracism is completely fi... Oh. Oh. How then do you feel then about the peer pressure put upon trans people to not be open about their internal experience, and to not live in accordance with their true selves because it isn't convenient for others to have to go through the effort of adding an extra letter "s" to the pronoun "he", or to deal with gender being more complicated than a simple binary and requiring more than a perceptual-level understanding? If peer pressure is in fact worse than force, how do you feel about a member of this board explicitly declaring himself anti-transgender and receiving support from a staff member for doing so? I don't personally think peer pressure is worse than force, but somebody who does must be pretty affected when the read study outcomes such as these: Source: The First Australian National Trans Mental Health Study Source: Trans Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Study 2012 (UK)

May I ask how many trans people or the medical professionals who treat them you have interviewed prior to making this claim? Source: http://www.gires.org.uk/assets/Medpro-Assets/trans_mh_study.pdf Source: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/research-project-files/bw0288_the-first-australian-national-trans-mental-health-study---summary-of-results.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Government guns and peer pressure are quite different things. I think we're all in agreement here that the only legitimate use of force is in self-defence against other people who have initiated force against our bodies or property. You're using the word "must", but there are no musts. These are decisions for voluntary actors in a free market to make. An airline can calculate whether it makes more profit and has happier customers from offering wider seats, and choose to act accordingly. Perhaps if it chooses not to accommodate overweight people, this will annoy a number of customers and cause them to boycott and attempt to trash the reputation of the airline. This determination by those who value the inclusion of overweight people might shift the cost/benefit analysis towards the airline providing wider seats (maybe at a higher cost), but so long as no force is being used, this is just the free market doing its magic and providing what people value. You're also using the word "society", but society is not a homogeneous collective that chooses to accept or reject things together as a whole. In any society of multiple people, people will disagree. Some will want to employ e.g. trans people on the basis of how qualified they are for the job, not on the basis of an aspect of their medical history that is irrelevant to job performance. Other free market actors might refuse applications from trans applicants. Now, I (among other people) would personally be willing to donate to an organisation that would publicly shame the latter company and encourage all individuals who care about the inclusion of trans people to boycott them, but they would be free to continue. Another group of people might form an organisation which publicly shames trans people and companies that employ or serve them, and seeks to boycott these. But trans people and their allies would be free to continue living and trading with those who wanted to trade with them, which in a world of 7b people is still going to be a huge number. Stefan Molyneux has frequently talked about the importance of us not deriving self-esteem from things which we did not choose. Under such a view, cisgender individuals should not regard themselves as of superior value just because they happened to be born cisgender. A rational understanding of one's value is based on one's volitional virtues, not one's race, sexuality, gender identity or other unchosen factor. As such, rational cisgender people are not going to regard themselves as superior to transgender people just because they happened to be born cisgender and are going to be repelled by (irrational) people who do. Which means that consistent rationalists are going to be on the side of defending the social inclusion of trans people. As for those things which are chosen, this is just going to depend on how much people value individuality and self-expression. A person who enjoys dressing up as a tiger isn't harming anyone, and there are jobs for people like that e.g. Disneyland.

There is also this great book (available for free; there is a pdf on the site) which is primarily geared towards learning statistics and machine learning from scratch, but it uses R in its examples: http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/index.html

They engage in political lobbying and wish for more government money to be diverted towards their interests (male shelters, male healthcare), as well as for laws which violate freedom of association in favour of their group e.g.: http://equalitycanada.com/employment-discrimination-against-men-join-us-feb-5th-7pm-for-the-next-u-of-t-event/ Don't get me wrong - they are doing good work counterbalancing some of the ways in which feminist groups have shifted laws to favour women, leading to an overall greater approximation of equality under the law (the ideal of individual rights). But they're part of the same poison who only look more libertarian-friendly because 1. they are currently in the weaker position hence less able to put through laws favouring their tribe and 2. most libertarians are men, and people generally notice fewer privileges when it is they who are benefiting from them.

Replace "violated" with "expressed support for the violation of", as you are misrepresenting me here. Other than that point, that is exactly what I wish to focus on, to quote myself: "Upvoted, because you are now showing actual interest in assessing the objective truth value of the things that I have said" "The things that I have said" would include that my best-effort interpretation of something which you have said implies support for violations of the NAP (those violations of the NAP being present government initiation of violence against medical professionals if they do not conform to the requirements and dictates of the state with respect to voluntary interactions with and prescription of treatment for transgender patients - government dictates which differ between countries, but in many instances cause much harm to trans individuals, just as forcible government intervention in medicine causes harm to almost everyone and is opposed by adherents to the NAP). Perhaps my interpretation is wrong; perhaps my interpretations of the 20+ other things in your posts in that other thread are also wrong, but so far, nobody has made any effort to challenge them. If my interpretations are proven wrong, I have the commitment to intellectual integrity that I will revoke them, revoke the accusation that you have supported violations of the NAP, and revoke my previous accusation that you were abusive towards me (in the context of me being a trans person) in your posts. Otherwise my interpretation is correct, which means you have supported violations of the NAP. You would either have to admit mistake and revoke this position, or remain a person who supports violations of the NAP.

Just looking at the pdf, as it is all you have given to go by: parts of it are positive from an individualist perspective, and encourage treating people as individuals rather than the groups they happen to have been born into (e.g. not assuming a black woman isn't a scientist), as well as being more inclusive and representative of individual variation (e.g. that forms should have more options than just "Single" or "Married"). Other parts of the document implicitly promote a collectivist ideology, such as the "Myth of Meritocracy" section, and the idea that "colour blindness" is not a value, when in fact it is the most rational way to approach skin colour.

If Alice thinks that her surgery will give her "a real vagina [that is] self-lubricating, leads to a uterus, and aids in sexual reproduction", yes, she would be delusional to think that - but I do not think she thinks it, and having met dozens of trans women in real life, I have met none who have thought this about bottom surgery - instead regarding it as a process that provides a close approximation of a cisgender woman's vagina, that is different in some regards but similar in many others. And to be objective here, I will point out that many cisgender women's vaginae also vary in how much they meet your definition - not all cisgender women are fertile, for example.

Upvoted, because you are now showing actual interest in assessing the objective truth value of the things that I have said, whereas before you were portraying my experience of you as somebody who is abusive / antagonistic / supportive of NAP violations towards trans people as merely something that existed in my own mind and that was completely divorced from your objective actions.

The NAP does not apply to MMX, because he has personally rejected it as a principle, supporting violations of the NAP against trans people and/or their medical professionals:

GuzzyBone, I agree with the broad point you are making: the important of self-acceptance. The importance of fully accepting the reality of any situation before making a decision. That surgeries can be motivated by mere insecurity, and that the surgery itself will not make the insecurity go away. I think I can quote Stef in once saying in a video "There is no external cure to the problem of insecurity", and this seems congruent with my own experience and other experts I have read. However, there are really two types of things that can both be called "self-acceptance". One is the acceptance of reality as it is in a self-empathetic way; the other is complacency with and a refusal to change something about yourself, even if it could be improved and this would bring about beneficial things for you. For example, one type of self-acceptance is the acceptance of the fact that you are a procrastinator, and trying to find out what aspects of your experiences, ideas, relationships and emotions cause this. The other type is knowing you are a procrastinator, knowing methods that could potentially help you drop the habit, but being complacent with your inferior state of being and continuing to be one. Applied to this situation, the first type of self-acceptance is a transsexual accepting their body as it is and being gentle and kind to themselves, understanding that they didn't choose the nature of their body but were just born with it. This is unambiguously positive, and is the kind of self-acceptance that may serve as the bedrock from which to objectively and level-headedly evaluate whether any kind of surgery or other improvement would be beneficial. The second type of self-acceptance would be for the trans person to be able to benefit from surgery, but instead to be complacent with their state of being, either out of stasis or because other people look down upon cosmetic surgery. I believe you are promoting in your writing the first type of self-acceptance, which is a good thing, but also sliding into the second type, which is potentially unhealthy and could needlessly prolong a person's suffering where industrial civilisation has developed the technology to reduce it. Moreover, I think you are poisoning your entire argument by misusing the word "violence". A dictionary defines violence as "action which causes destruction, pain or suffering" - and it is clear that, from the perspective of trans individuals who choose surgery, it is not regarded as an act of destruction - but of creation, and they see it as relieving pain and suffering - and in fact opening room for greater enjoyment of their body. "Violence" is more typically a word used to describe harm which is involuntarily imposed upon a person against their will. Surgery in this case is both voluntary and not regarded as harm by all individuals involved. A blanket anti-cosmetic surgery position is also not a healthy one to be promoting. Should a person with a cleft palate be subject to as much therapy as is necessary for them to develop unconditional self-acceptance and desire no modification to their body? It should be clear that, if the technology is available to fix this cosmetic issue of their body, improving their quality of life, this should be an option on the table.

All I see is a lot of groups, including CAFE, using the word "equality" as a dishonest front for promoting their own tribal interests. Of course there are going to be conflicts between competing collectivist groups, each trying to deny the individual rights and steal tax money and special privileges through the state from the others. Ayn Rand said it best: "What are the nature and the causes of modern tribalism? Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join some group—any group—which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group—they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices—so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient power of your body chemistry." And so the men are mindlessly the "men's rights activists", the women "feminists", and the same for all of the other groups. Thinking as an individual? No, that's bad. Join the group and promote the narrow interests for what you happened to be born as. Reasonable individuals desire the universal rights of all individuals, and have no desire to join a tribe. I think that, so long as we have tribalism, it is best to have as much competition between tribes as possible. The feminists are currently dominant so more MRAs might be an improvement to counterbalance them. Middle Eastern religions used to be dominant and still are in much of the world, and so a big push from LGBT groups was/is a positive thing as it allowed/allows a greater approximation of the ideal of individual rights than if a single irrationalist tribe dominates. But ideally none of these groups would (need to) exist at all.

I can share my thoughts if the terms "force" and "accommodate", as used in the question, are clearly defined (otherwise they could mean potentially many things and I could end up answering the wrong question). Fractional slacker, I intended to skim through the entire video at 2x speed but stopped watching altogether about 50 seconds in when he defines transsexuality as something new which is the next big thing being pushed by the political left. It is as though he has done no research on the topic whatsoever, on the existence of gender variance across eras and across cultures (and that any study of such also needs to take into account ways in which various cultures historically and still today have violently, including or perhaps most importantly in childhood, suppressed gender variance). The mainstream media may have only recently developed interest in it, indeed leftist groups might be jumping on the topic to advance their ends (AGAINST the interests of trans people themselves - in the same way that leftists pretend concern for other minorities in ways that actually harm them), but it isn't some new cultural phenomenon - and it is unempirical to suggest such. In my personal opinion, the individual in this video is part of a culture which defines itself contrary to the trends and views of mainstream culture, which means they get some things right where the mainstream culture is wrong (e.g. they might be more attracted to free markets because the mainstream is anti-capitalist, and they are critical of feminism), but as a whole are not thinking rationally and empirically and are in fact being defined by popular culture as much as anyone else, just in reverse. Automatic, unthinking contrarianism is not the same as independent thought and isn't as respectable. However, something that they are missing is that the relationship between trans individuals and feminists isn't as cosy as a simplistic reactionary contrarian narrative might want it to be. Feminism has had a protracted history of transphobia, particularly against trans women but also to some extent against trans men. In other words, feminists and men's rights activists (which I believe the person in the video and much of his audience are) have finally found an issue on which they are both passionately in agreement: the opposition to trans people. My message to him and others would be that if you are going to be a contrarian, at least be a real contrarian and be pro-trans. Though ideally, don't define your thinking on the basis of either dogma or reverse dogma and have a tolerant, open perspective towards understanding the universe, to information you may not be considering, and to unexamined prejudices which are guiding your thinking.

Very well, but I don't understand why this is relevant to point out in a discussion of transgender people. It is like posting in a discussion about cancer "it is normal to not have runaway cell division", as though it contributes to the discussion - when the entire point of discussing people with cancer is that you are discussing the small minority who don't have normal cell division.

Many things in nature are more nuanced than layperson knowledge holds them to be. For most people, quantum mechanics is neither relevant to how they interact with the universe, intuitive, or at all understood - but it doesn't make it any less accurate as a description of what actually takes place in objective reality at small scales. Gender, sex and the developmental process of each are extremely complex issues - beginning with the fact that chromosome combinations aren't even as simple as XX vs XY, but also include XXX, XYY and XXY among others. Do you accept "If most people believe something, it is true" as a general philosophical principle?

But I agree with "XX is one thing and XY is another thing entirely". Well, actually not "entirely" - both of them have an X chromosome, and the Y chromosome is much smaller than the X chromosome, and so XX and XY are actually very similar. But gender is much more nuanced than XX vs XY, and you know it.

It isn't pre-labelled and to identify what it indicates requires organisation into percepts and into concepts throughout one's development, but sense data does correspond to a facts of objective reality, and as we develop and learn about sex and gender and ourselves, it is natural that we become able to identify the underlying reality using the appropriate labels of our language. I don't know enough about child development to be able to say whether a baby is capable of consciously experiencing dysphoria at their stage in life, but the evidence I have read would suggest that a baby is capable of having a brain configuration as a result of prenatal hormone levels that is going to, later in their development, cause them to experience gender dysphoria. If I had been born on a desert island, I wouldn't have survived probably more than a few days. If somehow there was food, shelter and warmth readily available on the island, that might extend to a few months or a few years. But the nature of human beings is to shrivel up and die in social isolation, and so the thought experiment really isn't that useful. Our entire developmental process has evolved to depend upon having other humans around us. If you rephrase the question to whether I, now a mostly developed adult and more capable of surviving alone on a desert island than a baby is, would feel a need to express my gender identity if I lived on a desert island with nobody else around me: the answer is emphatically yes. It isn't for other people - it is for myself. Other people can only serve as a hinderance to unrestricted, full self-expression; they are not the reason to self-express. As to the idea of desiring to be something other than what you are: Is a person who chooses to wear glasses denying reality? Are they just making an unfavourable comparison between those people around them who can see clearly, and themselves who cannot see clearly, and defying the reality of their existence by daring to use technology to grant them what they individually value and see others enjoying: clear vision? The fact is, as human beings we modify reality in response to our values. We cut down a forest and build a burgeoning city. We use modern medicine to fix malfunctioning aspects of our bodies that are not operating as we would optimally like them to be. We turn dinosaur goo deep underground into an efficient energy source. A trans person values their body being a certain way; they respond using technology to bring about their vision. And none of this is the evasion of reality - because in order to be successful at modifying reality, one has to first study it and develop the clearest, most accurate assessment as to what it is and how it works. It is true that the question remains of how we determine what we value. That seems to be a mixture of reference to objective standards and of our objective nature, as well as semi-arbitrary personal taste. But once we have identified that we would prefer something, it is completely virtuous to manipulate reality into being what we desire.

"Every transgender person" is trying to control you? Do you mean this literally? Because it would take the identification of a single transgender person who isn't to disprove this. I am not sure I understand the trail of logic in your last paragraph here. No, I don't support initiatory force against anybody, in any situation. But I am not following how this makes me either hypocritical or ignorant, if you could elaborate further on what you mean here. I just see lots of non-sequiturs here. In what way is the external gender policing of a ten year old an inevitable fall-out of the promotion of the idea that it is immoral for people to police the gender expression and identity of children? Forcing a non-transgender child to present in a certain way against their will is in the same category as forcing a transgender child to present in a certain way against their will; neither is in the same category as an individualist approach to gender variance and individuality, that which I and most trans people I know support. Most trans people are leftists and support left-wing policies, so what? This says nothing about all trans individuals, in the same way that most people in the general culture are leftists and support left-wing policies (or are conservatives and support irrational conservative policies), but this says nothing about all human beings universally. The refusal to identify trans people as a heterogeneous group of individuals, each with their own life, identity, actions, beliefs and values, united in only a single thing - a detail of their gender identity and nothing else - is accepting the same false collectivist premise as the postmodernists. Worse, this kind of alienation of LGBT individuals from communities that subscribe to individualist, rationalist and realist philosophies is just going to draw them towards finding safety with the left in greater numbers - a self-fulfilling prophecy that is not based in reality. If we want to remove the monopoly over LGBT issues held by the left, it is only by those who think rationally being the biggest defenders of the individual rights of LGBT people that "independent thinking" and "libertarianism" won't be seen by the LGBT individuals as just a guise put on by those who actually subscribe to neoreactionary, anti-individual and mystical prejudices. Ayn Rand described homosexuality as "immoral" and "disgusting", and as a result alienated a lot of gay people and those sympathetic towards gay people from Objectivism. However, Objectivism itself says nothing negative about gay people - and combined with an accurate and up-to-date scientific understanding of biology (which Ayn Rand did not have at the time that she made her claims, mistakenly regarding heterosexuality as a universal fact of human nature), the principles of Objectivism are actually affirmative towards the morality of gay people living in accordance with their natures. In practice, the status of the right of gay people to exist under the principles of Objectivism is a settled issue and there are actually a lot of gay Objectivists. However, the question of whether it is moral for a trans individual to live in accordance with their nature is 20-30 years behind that of gay individuals, and there are doubtless many trans individuals who would be sympathetic to a reason-based, objective reality-based, individualist philosophy - but who see its adherents promoting unscientific prejudices against their individual right to exist and are repelled. LGBT people being attracted towards the left is not some automatic fact of the nature of LGBT people. It is an effect of everyone else (in particular, the individualists) failing to adequately and consistently face the facts regarding LGBT people, closely examine conservative prejudices or contrarian biases they have, and be the strongest supporters of the morality of them living in accordance with their natures. You say "And the easiest (if not only) way they do this is by claiming to be abused and waiting for others to dogpile on the accused." This is a misrepresentation of what took place. I identified you as acting abusively, and stated that I would not engage with you further. I had no expectation or desire that others would "dogpile on" you. You say "I have some empathy for the fact that you feel abused" - whether you were being abusive is not a matter of what I feel, it is a matter of objective fact. It is either true or it isn't. I have presented the evidence that you were, and it has not been disputed. What I feel is irrelevant - what matters is the facts about your behaviour. Are they true or are they false? You say "and some sadness over the fact that you've been through this your entire life." - you do not know enough about my life to make this assertion, and in fact I would regard it as false assumption you have made. In any case, it is not relevant to the topic - what was your motive in saying this? You say "I will, however, say that I've always tried to remain emotionally calm at all times, to the point where I view emotional outbursts with extreme suspicion and doubt." - A person is allowed to have emotions and to express them. In the case of an individual promoting - in the name of reason, philosophy and truth - ideas which would invalidate your right to exist, it is quite appropriate to feel emotions in response to this. Furthermore, you are claiming that in this thread all I have done is an "emotional outburst" - when in fact I have first and foremost been making logical arguments and appealing to empirical evidence for my positions, and am trying to reach the truth on the topic being discussed. In the process of doing this, I am entirely allowed to experience emotions - particularly as it is an important issue for my life, and emotions exist as subconsciously-produced calculations as to what is good for one's survival and what is bad. People promoting bad ideas in the name of reason is bad for my survival, hence it produces negative emotions. Are you promoting emotional repression, or the non-expression of emotions as an ideal? The most calm person in a discussion is not automatically the most correct; nor is the person in a conversation who becomes emotional automatically the one who is arguing from inferior reason. There is a cognitive bias that humans have to side with the more calm person, but whatever evolutionary factor makes this so has no bearing on whether calm individuals have superior ideas or emotional individuals inferior ideas or inferior psychologies. Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead was always a rather calm fellow. Contrast this with John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, who was strongly emotional throughout his speeches (his emotionality exceeded, only, by his rationality - these are not opposed). Moving on to your final paragraph: I don't understand what you are trying to say. I am not interested in whether people like me or not, nor in changing other people: I am interested in the truth. I am not really interested in you as a person - I am interested in the fact of objective reality that in the forum of "the most popular philosophy conversation in the world" (FDR), a community which I have generally found to hold very good ideas that are strongly grounded in reason and reality, the ideas that you have promoted have been promoted - and even that a staff member of the same community has sided with you. I give those ideas weight not because I care about you personally, but because I give extra thought to the opinions of those who have otherwise displayed themselves to be highly virtuous and to hold and promote good ideas - which is to say, this community. When in an (otherwise) hotbed of rationality and the affirmation of life one finds ideas that are irrational and harmful, it is important to take notice.

Something I don't think I elaborated on enough in the above argument is what is meant by "sense data" indicating that a person is trans. In the most general sense, a "sense" is any source of data received by the nervous system (i.e. through one or more nerves) that represents a fact of objective reality in some way ("in some way" because our senses have their own identity, and so the form taken by their data is a consequence of the nature of this identity). This data may then be differentiated and integrated, i.e. organised into concepts by consciousness. A religious person may sense the existence of what they proceed to conceptualise as "God", perhaps seeing God or God talking to them. Whether this data about reality can be accepted as true ought to be tested: Using the evidence of all of the other senses and the scientific method, are we able to prove that a god exists? We are not - hence we can conclude that the sensation is an incorrect portrayal of reality (i.e. delusion, hallucination). A trans person may sense incongruence between their gender identity and physical body. Whether this data ought to be taken as a representation of a fact of objective reality may also be tested: Are there observable physical differences between the brains of trans individuals and cisgender individuals (of the same assigned at birth sex)? There are. Are trans individuals who transition their physical body less bothered by the sensation of incongruence afterwards? Yes, they are. "Stage of transition had a substantial impact upon life satisfaction within the sample. 70% of the participants stated that they were more satisfied with their lives since transition, compared to 2% who were less satisfied (N=671)." (Though any high quality study of this ought to control for the social context a person is in; that negative effects of a negative social context are not taken as evidence that transition itself was an incorrect choice. If there were such control, we might find this percentage even higher.) Should every individual trans person mandatorily have their brain tested and give a copy of the results before anyone else accepts that they are trans, rather than relying merely upon a person honestly reporting their experience? Firstly, no - because the means of testing these is far from economical enough to be worth doing in all cases, and all economical medical tests have false positives and false negatives. And secondly, no - because of self-ownership, all individuals are individually responsible for determining whether transition is right for them - and are likewise individually responsible for the negative effects of making the wrong choice. A cisgender person who transitions will end up with the same gender dysphoria that transgender individuals experience pre-transition, which isn't pretty. As to whether others should "conform" to their assessment of their identity, the problem you are going to run into is that in most cases you aren't even going to know that a person is trans - most trans people pass i.e. are externally indistinguishable from a cisgender person and don't readily give out details of their medical history in irrelevant contexts.

If gender is just an arbitrary socially constructed identity and race is just an arbitrary socially constructed identity, then surely a person claiming to be a different gender is identical to a person claiming to be a different race, right? Except this is a mischaracterisation of the situation, because gender and race actually correspond to physical phenomena in objective reality - and the objective natures of gender and race are very different. Viewed in this way, it is a false equivocation to say that something which is true of one must be true of the other. To elaborate on what this means, let us define both gender and race: Gender is a property that develops in an individual human being in responds to a complex and highly nuanced combination of chromosomal factors and hormonal factors, in process that spans from conception to the end of puberty. Race, to the extent that it is a meaningful categorisation of human beings, is only relevant when you are looking at multiple human beings and attempting to group them on the basis of similar DNA. "Transgender" is a phenomenon that arises in response to some departure within the process of gender development from the standard gender binary, i.e. a person fails development to develop into either a person who is fully a male masculine man or fully a female feminine woman. Because no biological system is perfect, this may be understood as just a consequence of the complexity of the process of gender development - in a very small number of cases, it isn't going to go exactly as according to plan (in the same way that birth defects and variation exist that affect all aspects of the body). "Transrace" - I don't even understand what this word could even refer to. A person's DNA is their DNA.

I have been studying epistemology lately, and had some new thoughts about the ideas that have been promoted in this thread. MMX seems to be approaching the concept "transgender" in the same way that atheists approach "god", or that skeptics approach "supernatural dimension", or that libertarians approach the word "state", or that individualists approach "the will of the people", or that voluntaryists approach "obligation", or that FDR approaches "family" (as some non-existent entity that creates moral demands). He can describe himself as "anti-transgender" because what he means by this is that he is against "transgender" as a Platonist / Idealist concept which is promoted as a justification for an unlimited, unquestionable, unrelated to any evidence of reality, and not to be subject to rational analysis, demand upon everyone to conform to any arbitrary, whimsical demands made by self-identified "transgender" people. MMX is interpreting "transgender" as a concept which derives from the philosophical premise of the primacy of consciousness: that reality is that which is created by consciousness. That "transgender" is a concept that was just invented by people, and corresponds to nothing in objective reality. More specificially (because philosophies that hold the primacy of consciousness typically do so as a mechanism of controlling other people, listen to FDR's 96th podcast "Concepts part 2"), that "transgender" is a construction that was created in order to control people. Because as independent thinkers we shouldn't allow ourselves to be controlled by non-realities that other people have invented - indeed, this is much of what the content of FDR gets us to become better at doing, it is therefore logical that - viewing "transgender" in this way - he responds by refusing to allow it to control his behaviour and hence refers to those trans people who are just conspiring to control him with incorrect pronouns. In contrast, I approach the concept "transgender" from an Aristotelian or Objectivist epistemology. In such an epistemology, existence is primary: something exists in objective reality first, and is identified by consciousness second. As a trans individual, the evidence of my senses indicated to me that I was trans first, through the persistent sensation of incongruence between my psychological experience of gender and my the sex I had been assigned at birth - and although I could have described it in words earlier, I was able to conceptualise this as "transgender" upon learning this terminology and what it refers to from others. Following from this identification of reality, I could proceed to take appropriate actions - medical, in terms of personal expression, and social. My experience of being trans, and my identification of it, is the same as an individual who is born colour blind, who throughout their childhood experiences sense data which indicates colour blindness, but who only upon hearing about the concept "colour blindness" and finding that their experience is congruent with it identifies their experience of reality using this concept, and maybe then goes around telling other people that they are colour blind. Reality exists first: A person is colour blind first, and a person is trans first. The concepts "colour blind" and "transgender" is then created as mental representations of phenomena of objective reality. A colour blind individual might conceivably respond to the predicament of their existence by requesting that people express things to them using a restricted colour palette, so that they are able to see everything clearly. This is analogous to transgender individuals responding to the predicament of their existence by requesting that other people treat them in an appropriate manner - e.g. by using the correct pronouns. No reasonable person would demand that every colour blind person carry with them at all times a medical test confirming that they are colour blind before anyone should be willing to give them the colour blind friendly version of a leaflet, simply because it is reasonable in most social encounters to just trust a person on matters of their own existence. Likewise for personal pronouns - it is effortless to use a certain set of pronouns, and about another person's internal gender identity, you always know less than they do and so it is best to recognise their responsibility for determining those pronouns which are appropriate. They aren't "controlling you" - even if they are being dishonest about their existence, only they will suffer as a result of this. Having identified the situation, here are my thoughts: 1. I will give that "transgender" is actually used by individuals who subscribe to anti-rational philosophies in order to control other people - and the words "gay", "woman", "black" and "working class" are misused by the same individuals in the same way. These are the Postmodernists, Marxists and so forth that you can find in an academic Sociology department or on Tumblr. However, these do not change the fact that Aristotelian equivalents of the same concepts exist - because gay people, women, black people and working class people do actually exist in reality, hence it is valid to form concepts which describe them. Transgender people do actually exist in reality, hence "transgender" is a valid concept - to declare yourself "anti-transgender" (in the sense of denying its existence) is to declare yourself anti-reality. 2. In addition to the lives of trans people being coopted by irrationalists, there is one more reason why we may have the phenomon of an "anti-transgender" person in the FDR community but not an "anti-colour blind" person: gender, unlike colour perception, is a topic about which people have a lot of very strong emotional views (this is a whole topic in itself, but seems to stem primarily from the way gender is experienced in childhood). 3. The evidence, for me, of the existence of transgenderness is my own sense data - which, given my metaphysical inclinations, I trust. For non-transgender people, you'll either have to trust the millions of trans people who exist in all cultures (though, understandably, in visibly smaller numbers in cultures that will murder them being honest about the evidence of their senses) that we are accurately reporting our experience, or depend upon physical evidence of the phenomenon reported in peer reviewed scientific papers (e.g. on comparative brain structure or prenatal hormone levels). 4. My political demands as a libertarian trans person are quite easy: Don't use guns against me. This has implications in our medical care: don't insert your guns between me and my doctor. It also has implications in identity documents: if you are a coercive authority which demands identification documents in order to not infringe upon a person's basic rights (e.g. requiring a passport to move between countries), do not deny me access to accurate identity documents. No subscriber to the NAP can disagree with these. 5. It is silly that the English language even elevates gender to the level of importance that it does, where it is mandatorily stated whenever talking about a person. Many of the world's languages do not do this (e.g. Finnish uses "hän" which means he/she/they). Given, however, that this is the language that we're using, it is reasonable to have the social expectation as a trans person that another person will not intentionally use the incorrect pronoun for your gender identity when referring to you - that the person you are talking to is not antagonistic towards you and reality. This can be "policed" simply by freedom of association - if in a voluntaryist society some group of neoreactionaries want to form a socially exclusionary enclave where they refuse to use the correct pronouns for the gender identities of trans individuals, I'll let them - the areas of highest productivity will be elsewhere. 6. I cannot tell whether MMX has his particular views on this issue, and expresses them with such passion, because of either 1. an overresponse to neo-Marxists, who genuinely have hijacked the issue of trans individuals (as well as many other groups) to use them towards their destructive ends, misdirecting the negativity that the is appropriately directed towards these individuals instead towards rational trans individuals or 2. psychological issues of his own related to gender that would best be explored with a good therapist. But I cannot imagine any possible cause beyond these two. On another point, I don't like the complete blank out that followed my posting of 20-30 pieces of evidence of MMX being abusive towards myself and trans people. Is the evidence I have provided valid and proves the case, or is it not? If it is not, state why. Nor was there any defence - or retraction - by JamesP of his threat that I should "not post here" merely for making the accurate identification that MMX was being abusive.

Evidence: [*]Calling trans people "delusional". [*]Multiple instances of intentionally using the wrong pronoun to refer to me. This alone constitutes "abusive", given that 1. it is rejecting the core identity of the target. 2. it is participation in the marginalisation of a vulnerable group in society. 3. the intention is to exert dominance, remove the target's presence in the conversation and ridicule that they would have an identity. 4. this was done by a person claiming knowledge about these issues exceeding that of most trans people, and so is far removed from the possibility of being able to claim ignorance. [*]Continued use of "transgendered", an incorrect and mildly offensive term for trans people (similar to, say, a white person using "negros" in a discussion about the black people), even after this was pointed out to him. [*]Talking negatively not only about "transgendered" people, but also repeatedly about "trans-friendly" people - as though not only are trans people bad, but anyone who doesn't automatically reject all of them is too. This is full-scale alienation of trans people by MMX. [*]Describing "transgender" as "a random social construct that's designed to control other people's behaviour" - not pointing out any ways in which trans people attempt to control other people's behaviour. It is infact the demonisation of trans people that is intended to control trans people's behaviour and make them repressed and non-self-expressive. Moreover, "random social construct" is an insult with no substance: many things are random social constructs, and yet don't really matter. And in any case, the accusation is wrong because biological evidence for the phenomena of transgenderism exists. [*]MMX says "I don't like the word "transgender" because: (1) the people who most strongly use the word, a.k.a. transgendered-people, have conclusions that fly in the face of scientific truth" - as though simply by existing trans people are flying in the face of "scientific truth". [*]MMX says "only trans-non-friendly and trans-skeptical people with to deeply explore whether "transgender" is a cultural-fiction. " - to understand just how reading a word like "trans-non-friendly" feels as a trans person, imagine being gay or black and reading "gay-non-friendly" or "black-non-friendly". People explicitly stating themselves as nonfriendly towards you in a conversation isn't nice. [*]MMX says "being transgender does nothing to challenge any gender-falsehoods. A person who is born as a man and then decides to become transgender is STILL paying homage to gender-falsehoods, such as "Women are naturally more empathetic than men."" - a completely unsubstantiated claim which by the very definitions of the words being used can only be wrong. A trans person is by definition somebody who is violating gender norms and expectations. The average trans person does more in one day of living their life questioning gender falsehoods than the average non-trans person might in a lifetime. [*]Repeated usage of phrases such as "born as a man", the use of language implying a refusal to empathise with or even acknowledge the internal experiences and inner lives of trans people. It is like saying that gay men are "born as straight men". [*]"Nobody's discomfort proves anything; not even yours. Saying that you experienced extensive discomfort about your gender provides zero evidence that "Gender is an involuntarily assigned, heavily enforced classification system." " - this was on page one of this thread, and already has MMX talking in a very antagonistic tone towards me which continues throughout that post. Beyond the "not even yours" comment, the very topic of this thread is transgender people. The discomfort that they feel in response to social expectations especially as children that they conform to gender rules that adults around them have chosen is very relevant, and the discomfort would not be there if the involuntary heavily enforced classification system were not. [*]"If you have a penis, which is objectively observed, you're required to go by the name of those who have a penis. EXCEPT, you're not really "required" to do this, in any sense of the word, because your parents are free to give you an androgynous name like "Alex" or "Morgan"." - denying the right of a person to go by a name they have chosen or would be comfortable with. [*]"(1) "Being required conform to the classification's dress code." (There are no laws which say, "Thou must wear these clothes, if thou art male." Some schools have school-uniforms, but that's not nearly universally true in the U.S.)" - there is extreme social pressure, especially upon those who appear male, to adhere to a certain dresscode as a result of that being-seen-as-male. Legitimate concerns about actual negative social consequences experienced by those who stray from gender norms are being dismissed by MMX because there is no "thou must" law, as though laws are the only ways in which children can be treated badly. [*]"What you call "legal-obstacles", everyone else calls "Are you SURE?!?" Moreover, people face more "legal obstacles" when they want to donate a kidney to an absolute stranger than when they seek hormonally-induced sex-changes." - support for the state's introduction of violence into the mutually voluntary interactions between trans people and medical professionals. [*]"Once people claim that their feelings-alone are evidence of deeper "truths", they inevitably try to bully and impose those "truths" on others." - an accusation that trans people bully and impose truths on others that was not substatiated. Given that I am providing evidence for my claim of MMX being "abusive" towards myself and trans people, I would actually want to see the evidence for MMX's claim that trans people "bully". [*]Lots and lots of conflation of "biological sex is objectively observed" with the enforcement of socially-expected gender roles through social ostracism (which isn't a violation of the NAP, but very often for gender nonconformity is done by caregiver adults to children, which we would recognise as immoral) and in a couple of instances state violence being justified. [*]Nor, especially, should people who disagree with transgendered people be attacked with the same words like "bigoted" and "transphobic". - What even does MMX mean by "disagree with transgendered people"? "Disagree" implies the acceptance of a certain set of ideas. The only idea that trans people have universally accepted is that they're allowed to exist despite not conforming to societal expectations of a perfect gender binary. MMX is creating a form of original sin for trans people, where simply existing as a trans person is grounds for other people to "disagree" with you. Disagreeing with what - my existence? Would somebody say "I disagree with black people"? Unless they were referring to a specific idea believed by "black people", which would be logically fallacious anyway because such a numerous group would not all believe the same ideas, the only thing that "disagreeing with black people" can mean is that they are flawed for existing and should kindly just disappear in some unspecified way. [*]"Transgender-itself would be biological (a.k.a. "not a social construct") if it emerges at roughly the same percentages in each culture, regardless of the amount of pro-transgender and anti-transgender forces against it." - Has MMX ever tried to exist in society with a personality characteristic (like, for example, being trans) where there are extremely vocal forces against that characteristic? His audacity in stating that such negative forces, which in parts of the world include murder for trans people, would have zero effect on the visibility of that characteristic in the culture, shows zero acknowledgement of the basic desire that trans people might have to hide from predatory and dangerous individuals, who would in many cases be reduced to doing that through concealing their gender identity. [*]"But, to be fair, there are also parallels between "feeling that you're not your gender", and between "feeling that your race is superior", "feeling that your gender is superior", "feeling that a specific God is real"" - leaving aside that "feeling that you're not your gender" is not an accurate use of language / description in reference to trans people, a matter of defining one's own identity is being portrayed as being in the same category as blanket/incorrect statements about objective reality. Saying "blue is my favourite colour" is not in the same category as saying "an omniscient omnipotent being exists in the sky who is blue". Stating that they are is to deny the ability of trans people to have an identity. [*]"So, I ask you, has any study of transgendered-people followed this procedure: (1) collect 100 people who are blended as follows: transgendered-people declaring themselves transgender, non-transgendered-people pretending to be transgender, and transgendered-people pretending to be non-transgendered. (2) challenge scientists to separate the transgendered people from the non-transgendered people. If no such study exists, (and I suspect it doesn't), then literally every scientific study of transgendered-people has been performed by a scientist who: (1) was told to accept / believe that a person is transgender, in (2) an environment wherein everyone is loudly yelled at to be tolerant of transgendered people." - Many recognised medical conditions for which treatment is prescribed and that treatment works do not (yet) have a perfect physical test to determine their presence. This is setting an unrealistically high standard for the acceptance of trans people, although even in the realm of physical tests there are the studies showing the brain differences between trans and cis individuals, meaning it may actually be possible. Are we in an environment where "everyone is loudly yelled at to be tolerant of transgendered people"? This is portraying aggression coming from trans people without any evidence being given. Moreover, "tolerant" is a word that really doesn't mean much - in a reasonable society all of those who don't violate the NAP should be able to expect to live with "tolerance" by other people. If I as a trans peson am not to be tolerated, what is to happen to me? [*]"Thus, if religious/spiritual people cannot prove that their Gods/spiritual feelings are natural despite comprising over 75% of the human race, then neither can transgender people prove that their transgendered-feelings are natural." - Religious people are making a claim about objective, external, testable reality that is false. Trans people are making a claim about their internal exprience, feelings and emotions, over which they have sovereighty and so are entirely justified in doing so. The portrayal of these as being the same is to have the effect of denying the right of trans people to have an experience and feelings, or to express them. [*]"Statements that would qualify as "an individual making a claim about one's internal sense of self" are, "For the longest time, I've felt confused about my gender. Please don't assume that you owe me any sympathy because of this. Please don't assume that you're at all a bad person if you don't offer me any sympathy. Heck, feel free to be weirded out, confused, or annoyed by my feeling - if that's what you feel; that's what you feel."" - MMX is setting the standard that a trans person isn't allowed to make a claim about their internal sense of self unless they provide a disclaimer that the person listening should "feel free to be weirded out, confused, or annoyed by my feeling". Where else would this be said to any other person who was making a claim about their internal sense of self? [*]"But if transgender is a biological-reality, rather than a socially-constructed myth, then transgendered people who would never sign up for hormone therapy because they don't think it'll work, or because they think it's "wrong for them" should: (a) be involuntarily placed on hormone therapy, and (b) report identical-satisfaction with it, as do transgendered people who voluntarily accept hormone therapy. Now, if you say it's unethical to force transgendered people to undergo hormone therapy, I'd agree with you. However, because the study you cited focused only on those who both voluntarily-accepted the treatment and expected it to work, it is flawed-scientifically." - he states (correctly) himself that a study where trans people are held down at gunpoint and injected with medication they don't want would be unethical, but then says that without making such violations of the NAP, any study is "flawed-scientifically". MMX has set the standard that without forcibly medicating trans people against their will, any studies performed about trans people are scientifically flawed. Against which other group would such a standard be set? [*]"Because of the above explanations, and because transgendered-people have never exposed themselves to extreme scientific skepticism, the statement "I'm a transgendered person" doesn't currently acquire the status of philosophically true. It's, at best, a sincere belief. " - This is petty bullying. [*]"Hence, FROM BIRTH female-caregivers discriminate against the fussy behavior of male infants. And Liberalismus noted this as a (what seemed to me) highly-influential reason that he became transgendered." - misgendering + misrepresentation of my story for dogmatic purposes + saying I "became transgendered", incorrectly implying I hadn't been previously. [*]"Homosexuality and transgender are completely different. They're, in fact, so different that they're mostly dissimilar. "MMX2010 is a homosexual." involves observing his actions with other people. Because I'm not a homosexual, it's impossible for me to pretend to be homosexual for an extended period of time. "MMX2010 is a transgendered person" involves exactly zero interactions with other people." - Being homosexual doesn't require any interactions with anyone: some homosexuals are virgins. Moreover, being trans can and usually does involve interactions with other people, because trans people express their identity in the company of others, seek out community, interact with therapists and medical personnel, etc. This is using extremely flawed grounds to attempt to alienate T from LGB (in a community which is now very accepting of gay people), when in fact LGB spaces have historically and continue to serve as safe spaces for T individuals because both groups face similar issues, both being around having identities and living their lives in ways that don't conform to standard societal gender expectations. [*]"My guess? The more a trans-person believes that his/her life-misery is due to "discrimination against trans people", the less-capable the trans-person is of achieving success pre-transition." - More antagonism. Even the best "my guess" is irrelevant to intellectual discourse, and the intention here was very clearly to simply to demean trans people. [*]"If a trans-person is "in the closet", then they're declaring to themselves and others that "being transgendered" isn't really that important to them. Nor is acquiring any validation or respect-from-others based on being transgendered. Instead, they're declaring that "being transgendered" is much less important on their hierarchy of needs than, say, getting a good job, going to college, making their friends and family feel comfortable, and fitting in to normal society." - MMX is doing an enormous amount in these few sentences, and it is all abusive towards trans individuals. Rather than questioning why a trans individual must hide that element of their identity in order to get a good job, go to college, make their friends and family feel comfortable and fit into normal society (which, as it turns out, many actually do succeed at doing in societies where they aren't automatically excluded by prejudiced others), he opts to attempt to use the adaptation behaviour of trans people in response to the dangers they could experience AGAINST the trans people themselves! [*]"People who have studied sex use the following terms: "natural selection", "sexual selection", "runaway sexual selection", "r-selection", "K-selection", "r-selective environment", and "K-selective environment". No transgendered person in this thread has used any of those terms in this thread." - Here, MMX not only reveals his scientific illiteracy (the r/K selection theory was not only never used by scientists to explain human behaviour, it is regarded as superseded by better theories even for the populations for which it was once regarded relevant), but is specifically targetting trans people in the thread, of which I am one of two, as having not studied sex because I haven't used any of his lexicon of words that range from irrelevant to the topic to pseuoscientific. [*]"BEAR IN MIND, please, that I've drawn no conclusions about transgendered-people. I've strongly-felt suspicions based on speculations and hunches - but I don't use those suspicions, speculations, and hunches to look down on transgendered people." - replace "transgendered-people" with any other group you might care about in order to connect to what a disclaimer like this sounds like, It is petty, it is bullying, is a school playground style of debating and nobody could read your posts and come to the conclusion that you do not look down on trans people. Dismissing legitimate and contained backlash to your very clear antagonism towards trans people as "bleak irony" is to say that throughout this thread you've just been having a laugh and don't actually believe anything, and that making people emotionally charged through implying they have no right to exist is amusing for you. I will not post here any longer. I love the ideas and methodologies I have found through FDR, but I do not feel comfortable participating in a community where a staff member is extremely quick to threaten "I would request you do not post here" to the victim in situation where I (as one of two trans people posting, with much vulnerability in parts, in a thread about transgenderism) have been targetted by an individual who has not stated any connection to, reason to be so interested in, or instance of being negatively affected by any member of the very small and mostly keep-to-oneself group that is the trans community (outside of being called transphobic for quite literally being transphobic), who has through his actions shown a very strong emotional involvement in the topic despite providing no substantive reason why and yet in order to absolve himself of the consequences of his posting has added that he actually has "no conclusions" about trans people and is just talking on "hunches" and "suspicions", and doesn't actually "look down on transgendered people", with consistent antagonism, alienation and bullying.