i mean, i agree there’s a bunch of flaws in the idea, but it was *really* a leading, socratic question i don’t have to demonstrate the special pleading built into their identity to *you*
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Replying to @averykimball
It seems probable that it would be considered a mental illness even if the underlying gender materialism/essentialism were proven beyond any doubt, simply because mental illness is a construct that preceded materialism and comes mostly from social observations and such.
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Replying to @Alephwyr @averykimball
Here's a riddle for you: given what we're able to define about the construct of mental illness in general, were political dissidents who supported capitalism and were diagnosed with mental illness under communist regimes actually mentally ill?
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Replying to @Alephwyr @averykimball
Special pleading is ubiquitous in psychology. A Masai warrior who hears voices but is socially functional in their tribe is not considered schizoaffective or psychotic, while identical presentation that results in social dysfunction in the west, is.
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Replying to @Alephwyr
i agree with some of foucault’s historical criticisms of the institution of “mental illness”, and many of the ideas of thomas szasz (both of whom i assume you agree with) my problem with self-asserted identity doesn’t actually intersect those ideas
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Replying to @averykimball
I don't consider transsexualism or even gender to be an identity or a reasonable component of identity and think that's a bewildering confusion.
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Replying to @Alephwyr @averykimball
I haven't read either of those authors honestly.
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Replying to @Alephwyr
some of their ideas (maybe only their goodish ones?) have leaked out into the zeitgeist
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Replying to @averykimball
All ideas worth anything tend to come in and out of fashion perennially even without any exposure to them. But really, let's say you have two legs. Then you say "I identify as a two-legged person". What have you done here? Have you even made a statement that engages with fact?
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Replying to @Alephwyr @averykimball
It seems to me that the statement doesn't engage with fact, because identification doesn't make any truth claims. But then what is identification? Is it some sort of phenomenological striving, like Sartre thought? That's the only analysis I've encountered that even broaches it
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But what's the point of striving to become what you already are? The only way transsexualism makes sense is if you assume that self-identification is generated by some underlying fact which is sufficient to cause the identification but insufficient to provide satisfaction for it.
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Replying to @Alephwyr @averykimball
That is, a transsexual is not a man or a woman but carries some fragment of neurological manhood or womanhood that causes them to want to ground a reflexive identity (I identity as a woman because women identify as women and I am one) in something else, like secondary sex traits
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Replying to @Alephwyr @averykimball
To be transsexual and to transition is to admit there is some kernel of manhood or womanhood in you that is not yet manhood or womanhood (but may yet become so).
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