Liable for damages in a civil suit about a decades-old incident in a year she can't even remember. Another feather in the cap, boys.

Gender dysphoria is no act. I have no doubt it is painful and debilitating, and that those who deal with it deserve respect and compassion.

The act is in the expression, not the dysphoria. My problem is their biology betrays their claims and their desires. The fact that their gender expression is incongruous with their sex means quite simply that their feelings and expressions don't conform to the fact of their sex—or it represents some other, hidden biological fact, like neuroanatomy.

In short, the dysphoria is the problem, not the sex. All medications, surgeries, and therapy ought to be used to rectify the one and not to permanently damage the other. It's a humanitarian issue, too. Should we arrive at a cure, who are we going to blame for convincing a vulnerable people to take such drastic, and physically altering measures, from which there is no return?

I support their freedoms. I just don't support the demand that I must conform to their beliefs and act as if it they were true.

My mind is quite closed on the topic of gender and sex. The supposed fluidity of it, I think, recognizes the ease to which people can choose costumes or defy expectations in society; but the surgery aspect proves just how solid and binary it all really is. On top of that I just cannot believe that one can alter his sex with surgery and medication or by wearing clothing and applying makeup. I think it has to be admitted that, on the whole, changing gender can only go so far as engaging in acts of deception and mimicry. I think it needs to be admitted that it is all an act, of sorts.

Your calm input is always welcome in such a stormy issue. It's just a pity that so many humans are still so obsessed with fiercely conserving traditional binary sexual identity or are obsessed with fiercely declaring the 'boundaries' of their own sexual identity, as a kind of 'this far AND NO FURTHER' dictate. My personal het cis identity is NOT threatened/compromised/challenged/offended/abused etc by the non-binary sexual identity of a minority group of folks who are just trying to be who and what they are.

My identity is under threat because I am expected to concede my own eyes, conscience, and language in order to play along with a state of affairs I know not to be true. Where I live I am subject to investigation by a human rights council should I refuse to use the language they prefer, or if I refuse to treat them as the gender they are trying to express. I am forced to lie.

I appreciate the arguments. I’m going to make my case anyways.

We do worry about the future states of others, the burdens, the impositions. Life can be tough. It’s difficult to justify having a child in these interesting times, to be honest. There is loss and suffering in many conceivable future states. But someone could just as easily conceive of future states containing joy and pleasure and make the same sort of leap that birth causes pleasure. I won’t do that.

My main contention is the ethics angle. I just can’t see how refusing to have a child is anything but a self-satisfying endeavor. I can’t see that this behavior is ethical and moral insofar as it protects someone or alleviates anyone’s suffering, because one can do it alone without interacting with a single person his entire life. Just looking at this behavior is enough to prove that the suffering they are concerned with is forever their own. It all seems like a glorified justification for jerking off into a napkin. But worse, implying that parents are harming their child by conceiving him, birthing him, and nurturing him for a prolonged period of his life is unjust. I can’t abide by it.

As for the imposition of conception, looking around at the biological processes involved in it I can’t find anyone imposing anything on anyone else. Everything appears to be doing what it is willing to do. The same is true for gestation and birth. The only imposition that could arise, I think, are the ones threatening to halt this process.

Anyways, it’s probably too far off topic to go on about it.

The only way to stop birth is abortion or death of the child, which is an imposition on the child.

Being pushed out of the womb? But if he isn’t pushed out of the womb, wouldn’t suffering and death occur?

Which act is the imposition, then?

An imposition happens when we knowingly bring about a set of circumstances that affect another human being without their say in the matter.

That applies to child-having, regardless of where one stands on the ethics question.

We are knowingly bringing about a human being. For the most part the circumstances parents try hard to provide, often with great sacrifice and effort, are knowingly designed to be protecting, nurturing and life-saving, the absence of which is suffering and death. I suspect that if the child could choose between nourishment and care and none of the above, he would welcome the former before the latter.

Which act in particular is the imposition? At what point are we forcing an unwelcome act upon another human being?

It can’t be conception because there as yet no human being to impose upon. It cannot be in gestation because the child is being nurtured and nourished in a life-sustaining environment, without which is suffering and death. Should the mother worry about his consent as he dines on her placenta? Is it the cutting of the umbilical cord? It goes away naturally anyways. Breast feeding? Diaper changing? Imagine the child’s well-being if we didn’t do any of the above.

Anyways, if there is any imposition, any unethical act upon the child at any point it should at least be apparent. We should be able to say “Look, that person is imposing on another”. But it is never apparent. That’s why it’s so unconvincing.

That’s right. Trans identity is interesting because though it demands the recognition and protection and rights of its own identity, it begets the blurring and obfuscation of others, to the point where men are now celebrated in spaces dedicated entirely to women. It’s the natural progression of identity politics.

The issue is not that a man wants to dress as woman, but that he expects to be treated like one, spoken about as if he was one, and be given access to things, places, and spaces designed specifically for women. Its demand for conformity and special treatment makes transgenderism an authoritarian and anti-social ideology, which is a shame because it reflects also upon the innocent and those struggling with dysphoria.

You’ve simply reasserted the claim that his argument was a retreat, so I tried to phrase it another way that might be understandable. If that itself is a retreat then so be it. It’s retreats all the way down while the interlocutor stands firm.

It seems more of a push than a retreat, is all I’m saying, like he was being bullied into being politically correct rather than correct.

But A's second statement is not just a different way of putting the first statement. If A is fully aware of the issues, they know that the word "woman" is about gender, or about both sex and gender, or is at least ambiguous and controversial; whereas the second statement is explicitly about biological sex and thus represents a retreat. The first statement is a categorical proposition that relies on an equivocation and therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny.

But as @Mikie pointed out, (A) might not in fact be aware of all that. The reason I chose the example is precisely because under a certain light it's not crystal clear who is in the wrong and why.

They probably knew that the word “woman” is defined as “an adult female person”, which is about biological sex. The meaning is probably shifting these days due to misuse, so a little leeway ought to be expected, but B was insinuating that A was doing something wrong, namely bigotry. So I think A’s natural response is to be defensive because such accusations could mean ostracism and violence, and I don’t think he’s retreating as if B had the better argument.

The second statement of A seems more of a response to the appeal to emotion of B and not necessarily a retreat of any sort. B is where the fallacy is.

I don’t think rephrasing an argument into terms that are less crippling for some brains is unwarranted.

It sounds like guesswork. I suppose we can confirm whether we were being ethical, whether we should or should not have had a child, by asking our offspring if he would have wanted to be born or not were he able to choose. I don’t know; it’s just all too confusing for me.

The child has no say because it is not born. There is no child. So how can we behave ethically towards what amounts to a thought?

In the same vein, would it not be an imposition to deny the spermatozoa and the ovum the purpose of their existence?

It's fine that you think that way, but this is obviously what is up for debate, so simply saying it is reasonable isn't really partaking in the discussion.

The argument presented seems rather slippery.

When I enjoy something and wish for others to enjoy it too, can I just impose it on them?

That doesn't seem to hold up anywhere else in ethics or life in general, biological processes or no.

It’s just difficult to believe that feeding, educating, clothing, housing, playing, and caring for someone for the better part of their life is a burden or imposition on the child, when it is the parent who is spending the time, resources, and energy to do so.

Either way, we’re assuming the initial point, which is that life is a burden and birth is an imposition. It’s just not convincing. Procreation suggests that a child is created, and not taken against his will and forced into some realm not of his choosing. It’s like saying planting an acorn is an imposition on an oak, and we shouldn’t burden it by watering it. At any rate the narrative just doesn’t square with the world as far as ethics is concerned.

So much to unpack knowing your political stance regarding non-interference and impositions...

But first off, does the outcome matter when considering whether it's permissible to violate someone's autonomy and puts someone else at risk? Let's say that you knew that the activity was going to cause some harm. It wasn't even doubtful?

There is legitimate and illegitimate authority. Parents are a legitimate authority, meaning they can justify it, whereas political and government authority cannot. So there is not much to unpack.

As a child I had no problem submitting my autonomy to their superior knowledge, strength, and experience.

Sporting and play and exploration often have some burdens to them. I remember being taken rafting, hunting, sailing, surfing, hiking, fishing, all while surrounded by many dangers, often without wanting to, and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the minor comfort of non-harm.

Though I would use different terms, and stress the difference, I think that’s a good assessment.

In the case of Clinton, his adopting of deregulation and small government was largely political triangulation rather than principle, meaning he used the rhetoric to syphon votes from his opponents as an act of opportunism. His finishing touch was to “put a human face on the economy”, I guess by continually biting his own lip.

But it’s interesting to watch the transition from the ideas of the 80’s into the ideas of the 90’s, as it was explained by the most powerful people on the earth at the time: Bill Clinton and a Tony Blair. If you ever have the time to waste, watch their Third Way conference in the below c-span video and you can witness the shift in real time between what you might call right and left-wing neoliberalism. It seems to me it was more a matter of being associated with the Old Left, than anything to do with liberal principle.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?122788-1/progressive-governance-21st-century

I probably wouldn’t connect neoliberalism to post-modernism, but only because many on the conservative side of the bench think liberalism is a 1-to-1 ratio with modernity, like in the philosophy of Alexander Dugin. He holds some ultra conservative, ethnocentric, and anti-liberal ideas, seeing the collapse of liberalism as the perfect breeding ground for a resurgent new right. Since he conflates modernism itself with liberalism, Dugin is explicitly post-modern and illiberal. He is a vociferous critic of neoliberalism and globalism because the individualism of it all dissolves his favorite collective, the “ethnos”.

If the rise of the European Right is an indication, what comes after “neoliberalism” will be anti-liberal, while all that neo-stuff remains intact.

Here’s an article by a self-proclaimed neoliberal, the American Charles Peters, who wrote “The Neo-Liberal Mafnifesto” back in 1983. He also edited “New Road for America: The Neoliberal Movement”.

I’ll just quote the few paragraphs that distill his neoliberalism.

Our primary concerns are community, democracy, and prosperity. Of them, economic growth is most important now, because it is essential to almost everything else we want to achieve. Our hero is the risk-taking entrepreneur who creates new jobs and better products. "Americans," says Bradley, "have to begin to treat risk more as an opportunity and not as a threat."

We want to encourage the entrepreneur not with Reaganite policies that simply make the rich richer, but with laws designed to help attract investors and customers. For example, Hart is proposing a "new capacity" stock, a class of stock issued "for the explicit purpose of investment in new plants and equipment." The stock would be exempt from capital gains tax on its first resale. This would give investors the incentive they now lack to target their investment on new plants and equipment instead of simply trading old issues, which is what almost all the activity on Wall Street is about today.

We also favor freeing the entrepreneur from the kind of economic regulation that discourages healthy competition. But on matters of health and safety, we know there must be vigorous regulation, because the same capitalism that can give us economic vitality can also sell us Pintos, maim employes, and pollute our skies and streams.

Our support for workers on health and safety issues does not mean support for unions that demand wage increases without regard to productivity increases. That such wage increases have been a substantial factor in this country's economic decline is beyond reasonable doubt. But -- and this is a thought much more likely to occur to neo-liberals like Lester Thurow than to neo-conservatives -- so have ridiculously high salaries for managements that show the same disregard for performance. The recently resigned president of International Harvester was being paid $1.4 million a year as he led his company to the brink of disaster.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/09/05/a-neo-liberals-manifesto/21cf41ca-e60e-404e-9a66-124592c9f70d/

He also favours the draft and makes an argument for it in the same article. His affinity is with the Democrat politicians whom he names. He rejects Reaganism.

I wonder why I never hear of this version of neoliberalism, both the nominal and actual kind, but am told of the kind of neoliberalism of Nixon and Milton Friedman, both of whom abolished the draft.

It seems more an ideology concerned with how to pull a people from of the successive failures of the centrally-planned and mercantilist past, the ruins in which we are still living.

Some trade in cryptocurrency, gold, or other contraband, I’m sure. Either way, government is not a necessary component to any space or system where goods and services are exchanged.

I mean from my perspective there's no such thing as a market without state intervention. Markets are instantiated by states.

Like the grey or black market? They arise not because of state intervention, but in spite of it. Markets are considered spontaneous just as much as they are considered planned.

Of course, I would never actually use the phrase “Neosocialism” or “neoliberalism”, unless it was a term of abuse.

Philosophically, Michel Foucault’s idea of Biopolitics and “Left Governmentality” are worth checking out. Some say he was flirting with neoliberalism in those lectures.

As far as I know hardly anyone uses the phrase to describe their own politics or ideology, which is telling, so often it is little more than a term of opprobrium.

To me the theory of neoliberalism’s global ascendancy is overblown. I have trouble believing Reaganomics and Thatcherism extended beyond Reagan and Thatcher. The author of the so-called "Washington Consensus", for example, which is often panned as a neoliberal manifesto, consciously excluded neoliberal ideology like capital account liberalization, monetarism, supply-side economics, or a minimal state.

The background of neoliberalism's supposed rise, I think, is important. It comes at a time when we were witnessing the spectacular collapse of socialist countries on the world stage, the spectacular failure of Keynesian economics, while Thatcher and Reagan were seemingly pulling their countries out of the ruins of statist ideology.

This presented a problem for disaffected socialists after the collapse of the Soviet Union, both ideologically and politically. They could no longer deny that central planning was a failure, and that their popularity was waning. This led critics of the "neoliberalism" of Reagan and Thatcher, and newly disaffected socialists and social democrats like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerd Schröder, to re-brand as free market progressives. They tried to push it as a global movement. It's odd; though they were explicitly critical of the supply-side economics of Reagan and Thatcher, they are somehow considered in the same pantheon as Reagan and Thatcher, with neoliberalism flowing through them.

Personally, I take a different approach. I would call their agenda and the period since Thatcher and Reagan (and perhaps Bush Sr.) "neosocialism", because it better represents the spirit of its architects and reflects their turn away from the Old Left socialism into what Bill Clinton called the New Democrats, or what Blair called New Labour. This political triangulation flows right into "compassionate conservatism" of Bush Jr. and David Cameron. Tony Blair stood in front of the International Socialist Congress in ‘97 and pleaded for a "modernized social democracy", and this modernized social democracy prevails.

One carrier would destroy the entire Royal Navy at the height of the empire. Anyways, it was besides the point.

The idea that a politician can represent me is an obsequious one, especially if they’ve never met me or considered my concerns. So I don’t look at it as someone representing me as if he was carrying out my will.

Here the leader of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen cannot even face a reporter’s questions without a cheat sheet and a public relations team. It’s all a scripted show. I prefer reality television.

Bernie-bro extra salty. His new man needs his questions curated for him.

Don Lemon, do you like that your president needs instructions on how to enter a room and say hello?

Biden carries with him “cheat sheets” that provide advance knowledge of a reporter’s question, whom to call upon, etc.

One hilarious example shows Biden needs guidance for even the most basic of tasks.

“YOU enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants,” the note read, then immediately directed the oldest-ever president, “YOU take YOUR seat.”

Just like his last campaign the whole presidency is a complete sham. The man is not under control.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/26/biden-cheat-sheet-shows-he-had-advance-knowledge-of-journalists-question/amp/

If citizens do not choose to support the state, but only do so out of coercion, it is on shakey ground. And certainly, with the advent of Trump, I would say that the Republican party has embraced a new vision of freedom that is defined overwhelmingly as negative freedom, i.e., freedom from constraint, particularly government constraint. This view of freedom is, at its core, philosophically anathema to a successful state, though thankfully not all traces of a consideration of reflexive or social freedom has been purged from the GOP, just the "Trumpist" component.

It’s true, I believe. On the whole of it, the liberal tradition of negative freedom has hardly made any inroads into the public domain until relatively recently.

Rather, it was the republican tradition of freedom as a mix of the rule of law and the independence from arbitrary will that has always been the core of it, from Madison and Jefferson and Adams on downward. This view makes the state central to the achievement of individual freedom, perhaps ironically.

It doesn’t help that most of the tenets were pure wind. Class consciousness, class struggle, historicism, dictatorship of the proletariat, the withering of the state, the labor theory of value…all of it was snake oil sold to a weary public, who mostly had little choice in the matter anyways. Had Marx argued the phrase “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as a normative principle rather than some teleological end-game, we might be well into communist living right now. But the normative principles were revolution and violence, leading to murder and theft and oppression on a mass scale.

Communism was a kind of ideological colonialism that has lad some countries, like China or Russia, to sever its own history and adopt a European myth in its place. If it had tried to be normative rather than scientific, had led by example rather than violence, it might have become a sort of religion, like the Amish, where it’s adherents are looked upon fondly as they go around working together and sharing the fruits of their labor.

For me it goes to “sourcehood”. Basically, the source of the action is that which willed it, decided it, governed it, chose it etc. Until anyone can show that an action is not self-generated, but begins at some other place and time, so-called libertarian free will is the only good answer to the question of free will.

A bunch of lawyers and politicians may be of secret societies, but no society I’m a part of. Truth is you and I do not make any laws, and since we are a part of society, society does not make laws.

So? It is not in our nature to agree on everything. That’s why I afford them the right to disagree.

Where do these 'natural rights' of human beings come from? What is 'justice'? In nature, the best adapted genetic material survives in offspring; some organisms find mutual protection in societies and evolve social orders. I do not believe 'justice' exists as anything but a social concept elaborated by humans. How else can it exist? As soon as a concept is defined in human terms, it ceases to be natural. Yet how can undefined concepts be secured?

They come from men. The idea is that given the evidence human nature provides, such is enough for a reasonable man to conclude what rights ought to be conferred on him. One needn’t examine a law to discover that man ought to have a right to life, for example. He can do that by considering his own nature and that of others.

As for justice, I’m not sure what it is, but I do know what it isn’t. Justice is the absence of injustice, which is discoverable wherever it is found and with the same evidence and reasoning. One doesn’t need a law or declaration of human rights to conclude that it is wrong to punish someone for something they didn’t do, for example. Children recognize unfairness at a very young age. And so on.

One of the oddest trends in the history of politics is the idea that man must create an institution which then confers rights and privileges upon man. I think it’s clear that those who have rejected the divine right of kings in name have adopted it in practice, affording the same sovereignty as the king to the government, allowing it any number of positive interventions in the lives and affairs of others as if it wasn’t run by men. It’s no wonder that beneath its self-aggrandizement the government is simply a mechanism for taking money from one person’s pockets and putting it in another.

In rejection of this, the state should be concerned with securing the natural rights of human beings and making justice accessible. Beyond that it should not go.

But one cannot say that the government should disappear. Where man has evolved for millennia to depend on himself and his fellows, he is now waist deep in the process of domestication, whereby he is trained to respond favorably to the government, even in its most evil capacities. By now people have become so dependant on the state, that there is a class of primates who were never weaned and are unprepared to live without the zookeepers embrace. I don’t think there is any turning back.

Though businessman is highly represented in the former occupations of reps and senators, so are lawyers, veterans, and professional politicians. So it isn’t quite the party of business that Chomsky claims.

https://www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/vital-statistics-on-congress/amp/#datatables

It’s a two-party system, the Ins and the Outs. Those who are in and want to stay in; those who are out but want to get in. Bipartisanship is the problem.