The human race isn’t in an immediate danger of dying out for lack of babies. People are allowed to and do take many actions with a risk of sterilization. For goodness sake’s people get vasectomies and their tubes tied. This can’t be about fertility or else you should be out campaigning against the pill, condoms, and just plain old normal drinking. Also do you imagine grafting electronics, really progress of any kind to be free of risks? Honestly, I’m sort of anti cyberpunk, because that sort of body modification is on a whole different level of risk
Ok, so are you also against birth control and or opt in sterilization, otherwise your position is inconsistent and I don’t claim morals are logic, but they should at least be consistent.
Oh also since we’re on a technicality forum. Trans hormones don’t necessarily cause permanent sterilization. Plenty of trans people have children
Parenthood doesn't imply fertility. From that link:
> Trans parents may form their families in a range of ways, including through biological parenthood, step-parenthood, adoption, fostering, and assisted reproduction, with an increasing number of options available to trans people wishing to become parents.
So what? Human societies have always and everywhere included multiple modes of parenthood. I don't understand this obsession with personal biological reproduction. That's not how human societies work. Adoption, fostering, etc are an important part of social sustainability and always have been.
> Trans hormones don’t necessarily cause permanent sterilization. Plenty of trans people have children
I was just pointing out that the evidence provided with the 25% number doesn't really speak to fertility, but rather all the possible ways of having children.
Me too, but I suppose being trans doesn't eliminate all the other aspects of human behaviour and psychology, including the desire to have or care for children.
I don’t think there is great science on this but here’s a paper focusing on tactics to preserve fertility https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626312/. It gives rates as high as 100% for mtf fertility (and as low as 25). And I may have missed it, but doesn’t seem to for trans men. Stories of trans men pausing hormones to have a kid are anecdotally pretty common though
Population collapse is likely not going to come from too many people becoming steralized (I mean what percentages are we talk g about here, there would have to be a massive growth to even make a measurable dent into populations). Typical population collapse in biological systems comes from overpopulation that cannot be sustained by the ecosystem, which results in the sudden collapse. When we talk about the survival of the human race people not having children are likely a net positive, but somehow I get the impression that's not really what your opposition to gender conversion is about
>"But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life."
There are no self-grounding values. You cannot objectively justify why fertility is the overriding value here, rather than, say, fairness, liberty or anything else. So yes, you are absolutely espousing your values. If you want to make an argument, make it, don't pretend it's self-evident.
Humans are a communal species, our cultures and psychology include behaviour that sacrifices our own personal reproductive chances in favour of the survival of the group, or simply deprecates personal reproduction as a priority. It’s genetic propagation by proxy, and it’s called kin selection or genetic altruism in the literature. A member of society can contribute to the survival and propagation of that society in many ways, propagating the group genome, and that doesn’t have to include through personal reproduction.
We have all benefited from the contributions made by members of past generations that didn’t reproduce, but their genes live on through their relatives that did reproduce. If all we care about is survival of the species, the best thing for all of us is that trans people get the help and support they need to leave the healthiest and most fulfilling lives possible, so that they can maximally contribute to society. I think that’s an overly reductive attitude, but that’s one way of thinking about it.
This argument is disingenuous: not only your direct ancestors contributed to your existence. You are also dependent on all of the aunties and uncles, and other members of the community around your direct line that contributed to their survival.
Every one of them also had kidneys, but that's not an objective argument for the pre-eminent moral value of kidneys.
There is an inescapable choice in choosing the grounds from which to reason out to an ethical conclusion - there is no self-evident starting point, hence the riotous confusion of moral philosophy over the last two millennia.
There are lots of conditions of the possibility of life - biological, physical, chemical - but the real point is that there is no incontestable reason to think that the conditions of the possibility of life are the pre-eminent source of moral value. Kant argued from the conditions of the possibility of understanding to moral conclusions. Sarte reasons from the conditions of the possibility of existential personality to morality. Rawls reasons from the conditions of the possibility of morality to morality. My point is, lots of people make this move, in a much more sophisticated way than you, and none is obviously better than the other - or indeed any other form of moral argument. There is no self-grounding foundation from which to reason about morality. What incontrovertible reason can you give for starting from the conditions of the possibility of life, or indeed one particular condition, rather than any other place? You can't.
What of people who were fertile but didn’t have children, through choice, medical reasons, death etc? Surely a person who is fertile but doesn’t have a child for any reason has the same net impact on the growth of population as an unfertile person (trans or not)?
Sure, but some causes of infertility are correlated and persistent.
If I'm exposed to poisons in the air or water, it's likely to happen to others as well - especially if it's at levels where it's not immediately noticed.
Many other causes of effective infertility are unlikely to impact entire groups of people across long periods of time.
who cares though? species have come and gone, and will continue too
if you died and then a millisecond after a chicxulub scale asteroid obliterated all mammalian life (again), who would be there to care about fucking fertility or propagation of the species??
the point is we don't have to be limited to biological mandates -- that's what transhumanism is about. moralizing it is just wasted and you clearly don't understand what it's about.
instead you decide to whinge about trans people being mentally ill. please
> The transgender community needs to stop pushing the notion that it's healthy and desirable; it's not - it's a devastating hormonal/fertility disorder.
what exactly is your word for unhealthy and undesirable? you are clearly referring to dysphoria. i don't know if you realized, but the DSM has changed in recent years.
The classical consumerist hedonist mentality : if they are happy then who can say anything about that ?
Well it seems you're the one trolling here.
If you deny the right to people to have opinions and judgments based on their beliefs about anything they wish, you're doing worse than you complain about.
He's actually putting words in my mouth again; I really have no problem with people having a sex change.
Acceptance was a vital social step, but promotion crosses a line for me - and there are severe deleterious consequences are ignored and dismissed by the community.
I think in general the answer is to let kids be themselves and not to judge them for it; give them a say in their clothes and toys - and do not punish them for their selection.
i am not denying any right, i have neither authority nor power. we all have equal right to comment and disagree.
though you are right, i am kinda a hedonist. do you mourn for me, or lament the condition I would bring upon civilization, right before chicxulub blows us up? haha.
If you stopped acting in bad faith, looking for some gotcha, for one single second, you'd realize that by "unhealthly" they were referring to the effects of hormone treatments, which clearly have significant effects and side effects on the physical body.
People literally do hormone treatments to solve things like pattern baldness. If you're concerned about unhealthy hormone treatments you should probably start with the stuff that's far more common. Finasteride is used for both hair loss as well as hormone therapy for transgender people.
Sure thing.
But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life.
Values that have been around for thousands of millions of years.
Perhaps there's the potential for this to change, but it'll just be fertility in another form.