Hmm. I have stayed out of this because Byrony has expressed these sentiments before and there is nothing new or very different in this reiteration. The only thing I find offensive is your calling me mentally ill. It is your opinion and I defend your right to it, but don't expect me to agree with it or ignore it. I really didn't want to throw any fuel on this fire. But I find myself in the mood to do so this morning. Maybe it's because I have been off PM for so long now.
Byrony, don't you think the issue is not a question of illness versus health but instead an issue of the normal human tendency to want to belong to a group? Almost every argument you raised is simply a way of saying "I am the same as everyone else, please accept me". You're saying if something different is seen about you that it can be fixed by taking a mood/mind altering substance to allow you to blend in better and cope better with the unalterable fact that genetic mutation is actually the norm, not an exception. That is the slippery slope that leads to the insecure powerful people choosing to decide for you what it is you need to join the group. Don't you realize you aren't in their group because they don't want us? We threaten their self-image. Byrony, you are not mentally ill. You just aren't in charge.
The issue isn't whether boys would look bad in dresses, wigs and makeup. It's very disheartening that it gets confused with the actual issues. The issue is that those who have the means to sway public opinion make their money from creating the completely unreal ideal people images and that most definitely includes the part of the image that has to do with gender, sexuality, and the expression of those things. I am saddened to a level you probably cannot understand that you feel you have to fix yourself because you feel you wouldn't "look good" clothing yourself in a way that would make you happy. I feel the same sadness for all of us. It is a far worse incrimination of our society's general lack of progress that these kinds of issues are out there and as strong as they are. For me, I am unhappy that it would incur so many negative social consequences for people that I care about that I also cannot just go around clothed in a way that would make me happy. I don't believe that means I'm ill. I don't feel a need to fix my brain as if it were broken. I am not broken.
I doubt society will change enough in my lifetime to fix what is really broken, namely the concentration of social power in the hands of so few people. If the internet can manage to stay uncontrolled for just another decade or so, then maybe humanity has a chance. But the vested interests are fighting very hard to squash it as the biggest threat to the status quo they have ever faced. I wish them all a short trip on a doomed flight.
As for reproduction being a yardstick of mental health, I hope to hell it never becomes one. Serial rapists and sultans would be the pinnacle of mental health in such a world. Monks, nuns, and others like them would be condemned for the wrong reasons.
As for the pill, I wouldn't take it unless I had a ready supply of them in multiple flavours. Wouldn't it be neat to have that and be unable to tell which pill did what until you took it? I am uninterested in having someone else tell me what I should enjoy and how I should feel in this brief time where my collective components have coalesced into the self-aware being that I am.
Byrony, don't you think the issue is not a question of illness versus health but instead an issue of the normal human tendency to want to belong to a group? Almost every argument you raised is simply a way of saying "I am the same as everyone else, please accept me". You're saying if something different is seen about you that it can be fixed by taking a mood/mind altering substance to allow you to blend in better and cope better with the unalterable fact that genetic mutation is actually the norm, not an exception. That is the slippery slope that leads to the insecure powerful people choosing to decide for you what it is you need to join the group. Don't you realize you aren't in their group because they don't want us? We threaten their self-image. Byrony, you are not mentally ill. You just aren't in charge.
The issue isn't whether boys would look bad in dresses, wigs and makeup. It's very disheartening that it gets confused with the actual issues. The issue is that those who have the means to sway public opinion make their money from creating the completely unreal ideal people images and that most definitely includes the part of the image that has to do with gender, sexuality, and the expression of those things. I am saddened to a level you probably cannot understand that you feel you have to fix yourself because you feel you wouldn't "look good" clothing yourself in a way that would make you happy. I feel the same sadness for all of us. It is a far worse incrimination of our society's general lack of progress that these kinds of issues are out there and as strong as they are. For me, I am unhappy that it would incur so many negative social consequences for people that I care about that I also cannot just go around clothed in a way that would make me happy. I don't believe that means I'm ill. I don't feel a need to fix my brain as if it were broken. I am not broken.
I doubt society will change enough in my lifetime to fix what is really broken, namely the concentration of social power in the hands of so few people. If the internet can manage to stay uncontrolled for just another decade or so, then maybe humanity has a chance. But the vested interests are fighting very hard to squash it as the biggest threat to the status quo they have ever faced. I wish them all a short trip on a doomed flight.
As for reproduction being a yardstick of mental health, I hope to hell it never becomes one. Serial rapists and sultans would be the pinnacle of mental health in such a world. Monks, nuns, and others like them would be condemned for the wrong reasons.
As for the pill, I wouldn't take it unless I had a ready supply of them in multiple flavours. Wouldn't it be neat to have that and be unable to tell which pill did what until you took it? I am uninterested in having someone else tell me what I should enjoy and how I should feel in this brief time where my collective components have coalesced into the self-aware being that I am.