Transgender Issues · 6:12am Mar 9th, 2021
Do I have your attention now? I must, you're reading this. So, recently there was a bit of a hubbub over transgendered ponies (and people too!). I have some thoughts on it and I hope you'll follow with me on them.
First off, biology is weird. It is a fantastically complicated game of throwing chemicals at the wall and seeing what sticks. We have only begun to start understanding the intricacies of how life functions at a molecular level. You know the program Folding at Home? That is, perhaps, the single most powerful computing project ever and it is dedicated solely to figuring out how biological chemicals behave. And when they behave, it is all a rough "best guess" by the the body producing them. Your genome doesn't code for specific numbers of molecules to be produced at exact times to interact with specific cells or processes. It codes for rough guesses triggered by sets of general conditions. You want an easy to see example? Plants. Take two plant seeds with identical genomes and grow them in as close to identical conditions as possible. You will end up with two similar, but never identical plants. Your body does the same thing. No matter how closely related people are, there will still be differences, and those differences will grow with time. So, yes, it is possible to have identical twins who are different heights, have different flavor pallets, or even different sexual identities.
Branching off of that, biology messes up. A LOT. Most of those in humans end up as miscarriages. Depending on the mother's age, as much as 45% of fertilizations in humans end in miscarriage. But what of the ones that manage to survive? For the sake of this blog, I'm going to bring up just one very specific physical aberration. Intersex (hermaphrodism) is absolutely a thing. And it comes ins all kinds of forms. Anyone who wants to claim there are only two genders can go soak their head in a bucket of used toilet water. Keep in mind, also, that intersex is only the physically expressed side. It's dangerously close to having simply ended in miscarriage. There's another side: mental and emotional sexual identity and preference. These are MUCH more common because they don't push the line of failure to develop and often only start to express themselves as the body matures. Intersex existing means that gay/lesbian/bi/trans/asexual/pan/etc. ABSOLUTELY exist.
So now we get into personal identity. Transgender people exist. They are real. They are people. There is no compelling reason to deny these people the mental, emotional and physical support they deserve. If you are uncomfortable with this, that is your problem, not theirs. If you do not like the truth, the truth does not care. People are allowed to have their own identity, to be their own person. If someone claims to be transsexual, they deserve to have that claim respected. They are just as much a person as anyone else and attacking them for how they identify is just morally and philosophically wrong.
And that brings us to The Fight to Exist. If you're not familiar with the Stonewall Riots, you SHOULD BE. It is the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ movement. Until that point, in the US, the gay community was actively persecuted and marginalized. If you were anything other than a cisgendered straight person, you did not exist in any meaningful way. And because you did not exist, it did not matter if bad things happened to you. Before you can secure rights for yourself, you must first exist. This is the reason for Gay Pride marches. This is the reason so many LGBT feel an almost pathological need to rub their orientation in other peoples faces. They are fighting just to be acknowledged as existing. Keep in mind that the Stonewall Riots took place in 1969. The same year we landed on the moon. It was only 52 years ago. There are a very large number of people alive today to were not only old enough to remember it, but old enough to have been an active participant. Oppression like that does not disappear that quickly and so the fight to exist continues, often in a very literal sense.
This gets into the use of violence as a tool. I must first state that I do not like violence, but it is absolutely capable of being used as a means to an end. Communication can only happen when both parties are willing to do so. In the best case scenario, both parties are already willing to communicate. In worse situations, one or more of the parties must first be convinced to do so. In the most extreme situations, communication is impossible. Most often this is because one or more of the participants refuse to even acknowledge the other's position. Communication can't happen because they're just not listening. I have seen many MANY arguments, particularly in today's political climate, where at least one party absolutely refuses to recognize their opponent's position. They will deflect questions, derail arguments, nitpick wording, throw out red herrings, project accusations, anything to avoid actually having the argument. You will never change these people's minds or even come to some kind of compromise because they aren't even acknowledging the opposition. This is where violence as a tool starts to show up. Violence is a terrible tool. It is blunt. It is ugly. It clearly states that attempts at communication have ended. Be absolutely sure, violence is a last resort. You must first exhaust all other options because using violence will remove your ability to use them later. It will also not convince someone of the legitimacy of their opponent's argument. If anything, it is likely to cement them in their own. It does, however, have one advantage that talking doesn't. It is capable of forcing the opponent to recognize your position. They will be physically forced to admit you exist.
On a more macro scale, violence as a tool is the entire reason behind any military in the world. They exist to enact violence on behalf of their government. This also very clearly demonstrates that like all tools, violence can be very easily wielded for less-than-noble reasons.
Pretty sure that's bitcoin actually. It has affected national power grids.
Yes, to all of that. I think that the reason the "genteel" racists and bigots anger me the most is because their attitude is the epitome of erasure. In their minds, there is no prejudice on their part, and any appearance of such is just the natural reaction of a right-thinking person toward aberrations that refuse to think and act correctly. They don't consider themselves bigoted and will calmly explain to anyone patient enough to listen that they have nothing against anyone—as long as they behave like good, white, straight, conservative Christians.
5471257
I had honestly forgotten about bitcoin. The current computing power of Folding At Home is around 470 PetaFLOPS, and the current hash rate for bitcoin is around 157 million hashes per second. But I can't find how those numbers compare to each other.
*shakes cane* You durn kids an' yur electronic fake money! Why when I was yur age we used real fake money that you could actually hold!
5471312
That is a classic example of an active refusal to communicate. Someone can't have a meaningful discussion with people like this because they don't even recognize a position other than their own as even existing.
Fuck cops be gay do crime arm trans comrades
5471312
Precisely. It's the polite bigots that are the most angering to me, by far. The ones so adept at hiding prejudice behind "worry" and "concern". Oh they have every reason to object to minority rights, because they're just so worried about possible overreach and harm.