I'm
supposed to begin by acknowledging that I speak about these issues from a
privileged position. As a white
hetero-normative male my lifestyle jives with historical cultural norms. I have a penis. I like my penis. I want to stick my penis in a lady's shame
hole.
Just as God
intended.
When I
start talking about transgender issues, gay / bi issues, the kneejerk reaction
is to claim that I can't *really* understand the issues, or appreciate the
struggle of these persons, because I haven't lived it, man. I'm just a normie approaching these issues
from normyville, and for some reason that renders my assessments to be skewed
or biased.
What's
entertaining to me about that critique is the degree to which it is an inversion
of the actual situation. I do not have a
personal stake in transgender issues, in gay or bi issues. I'm not arguing for or against any position
in order to justify my own desires. If I
argue that men ought to be allowed to fuck other men in the ass, I do not argue
out of a desire to fuck men's assholes.
If I argue against this I do not argue out of a desire to quash other
men's desires to fuck other men's assholes.
I'm just asking questions, and speculating about the nature of humanity,
because I like to do that sort of thing.
I don't
have a personal stake in the debate, which seems like the sort of thing that
would foster objectivity rather than irrelevance.
That's my
introduction.
Robert
Kosilek was born with a penis. Over
time, Robert Kosilek began to experience discomfort with his penis. He felt feminine, uncomfortable with his male
body. Eventually, Robert Kosilek began
to identify as Michelle Kosilek. (S)he
began hormone therapy and sought a surgical procedure to cut off her cock and
replace it with a vagina. The
acquisition of said surgery was complicated due to Robeter Kosilek's having
murdered his wife, and so landing in prison without the possibility of release.
As
I posted the other day, a judge ruled that the state has to buy Michelle
Kosilek a shiny new vagina, because a bunch of soft scientists decided that
cutting off Michelle's wang was the best solution to Michelle's gender
consternation.
This
situation once again raised the transgender issue, the question of how to deal
with persons like Kosilek who feel uncomfortable in their bodies. The judge's ruling reinforced the idea that
the best solution is surgery, so acting in accord with the transgender person's
desires.
My
question is why we do that.
The
situation is that Player A is uncomfortable with Player A's body. Player A was born with a penis, but desires a
vagina. This situation manifests a great
deal of consternation and suffering on the part of Player A. To me, it seems reasonable to alleviate this
suffering. However, there seem to be two
ways to do this:
1: We cut off Player A's penis, and replace it
with a vagina.
2: We remove Player A's desire for a vagina, and
manifest acceptance of Player A's bepenised birth body.
Common
sentiment seems to privilege 1.
I'm
wondering why we don't go with 2.
I
should probably admit that these sorts of questions have been used against
homosexual persons. Either we permit
homosexuals to fuck persons of the same sex/gender, or we remove that desire. The persons who want to permit fucking are
praised as upstanding, understanding liberals while those who seek to quash the
desire are labeled as Levitican asshats.
But
why is that?
In
each of these situations, we have an option.
We can either privilege the mental or the physical. In the case of homosexuality it gets a bit
complicated, given that our interpretations of the "purpose" of a
particular physical organ is beholden to historical cultural norms. So, sure, that gay issue gets messy.
With
transgender persons, though, we have no such difficulty. The person was born with a particular bodily
appendage. The problem is the discomfort
one feels with that appendage. The
person self-reports a discomfort, and so most people acquiesce to that person's
desire and maintain a favorable view for lopping off the person's penis or
giving the person a penis, because heaven forfend that we critique the desire,
itself.
I'd
like to suggest that we critique the desire, itself. Or, I'd like to ask why we don't.
Here's
a hypothesis: Perhaps the problem with a
transgender person is that their desires are fucked up. Perhaps the actual problem is their
mentality, rather than their body.
Perhaps their self-conception is skewed, their attitude is skewed, their
preferences are skewed, their mind is skewed.
Perhaps their true self is their body, rather than their mentality. Wangs evidence masculinity, pussies evidence
femininity, and attitudinal desires need to fucking fall in line.
Or,
at least, that's what you should be arguing.
As
products of the history of Western Metaphysics, we tend to privilege mind over
body. Even though most of us have
abandoned these metaphysical schemas and embraced non-Cartesian
self-conceptions we still maintain the metaphysical baggage of distinguishing
mind from body, privileging the incorporeal mental over the physical body. If Robert Kosilek "feels like" a woman,
then Robert Kosilek "is" a woman, since Michelle Kosilek's mind is
her true self, and the penis is simply an accidental property of his/her
physical body.
Let
me say that again.
The
judicial ruling, and the psychological reports upon which it was based,
privilege Michelle Kosilek's mental self-conception over Robert Kosilek's physical
body.
Just
like Descartes would do.
Just
like Augustine would do.
Just
like Plotinus would do.
Just
like every dead Western Philosopher you argued against in undergrad would do.
Now,
to be honest, I'm fine with this. But
that's because I'm mostly a Cartesian Dualist who privileges incorporeal mental
souls over physical bodies. I discern
that one's true self is mentality, and the bodily machine within which the
ghost resides is mostly an accidental result of estrangement from our True
Nature. Our actual, True selves are
those immaterial self-conceptions while this moist fleshy shit within which
we're stuck is a prison from which we eventually escape in order to enter the
realm of Eternal Truths.
But
you don't fucking believe that.
You're
in a post-Darwinian mindset wherein you're actually an organism dwelling within
an organic eco-system. In your story,
you were born an encultured physical entity that constructed the logical
fiction of a mental "I". You
privilege the body, physicality, and secondarily to that is this mental emotive
attitudinal malarkey that can be reduced to bio-physical processes of the
brain. In your world view, you, and
every other human being, is just a very elaborate moist toaster.
Except
for when we start to talk about transgender issues.
My
suggestion is that persons adopt a coherent narrative, and embrace their
primary assumptions of reality. If you
actually consider human beings to be bio-physical organisms that can be
reductively explained in terms of chemical processes of the brain, then fucking
argue for that, and maintain that Robert Kosilek doesn't need a penis so much
as he needs more serotonin injections.
If,
however, you maintain that Robert Kosilek needs a vagina in order to manifest
coherence between Kosilek's mental and physical selves, then that's fine, too.
Provided
that you articulate your position as, "Speaking as a Cartesian Dualist, I
must privilege Player A's immaterial mental conception over Player A's physical
self. Player A's immaterial soul is
female, while Player A's body is male.
So, we need to modify the physical body to compliment the immaterial
soul."
Because
that's your fucking argument.
