| KLXVER said: Yes, people are supposed to be a certain way. We are supposed to have two eyes, one nose, two arms, two legs etc... If you dont, then you have a defect. Doesnt make you less of a human, but something is indeed missing. |
Nature doesn't have a "supposed to be", in the first place. You're assigning some kind of purpose to how things are. That's the other problem with your Switch example, the supposed to be is because it was made to work a certain way. If I make a piece of furniture with the intent that it's to be a kitchen table, I might be disappointed if it's a bad kitchen table.
Nature doesn't make things with intent. It throws everything at the wall, and some things end up sticking better.
At one point, animals were not "supposed to" breathe on land in the first place. It ended up being a useful change.
| Mnementh said: Actually I think he means actual birth defect and intersex conditions, which is a separate thing from being trans. Trans people don't have to be intersexual and aren't for the most part. It is true that some people try to argue with intersex conditions as something to justify trans people. Naturally you shouldn't do that, trans people are trans people and it is much clearer if you separate sex and gender (which admittedly is not separated linguistical in many languages like it is in english). Trans people are not intersex (which would mean undefined or unclear sex), but their gender and their sex differ. |
I've been meaning to get back to you on this since last time.
>it is much clearer if you separate sex and gender
I think it is important to meet people's arguments where they're understanding it. If someone refuses to acknowledge the difference or refuses to believe that there is a difference between gender and sex, then I think it's important to talk about their underlying assumptions.
Pointing out how masculine and feminine traits aren't completely separate things in the first place, I think is a meaningful critique of a lot of transphobic arguments. Pointing out that the assumption that is made - that men and women are just wildly different creatures - is inaccurate I think is a useful starting step.
In another example, we shouldn't need to justify homosexuality in the first place. It doesn't actually hurt anyone, and it's just diversity. But people will still question why people are gay in the first place - whether there's an evolutionary reason for it. And people will argue that they we do see homosexual behaviors in animals, contradicting the claim that it's an unnatural behavior (as if that's a meaningful argument in the first place).
