What you call standards is a daily reminder for some people of their suffering. Why are your “standards” so great that other people may be bullied, fired, and driven to suicide? If that’s what’s happening, then fuck standards.
Each time someone argues that we should not change the status quo, the argument can be tossed back in their face. WHEN the army and society in general accepts things that you don’t like such as gay or transgender rights, I fully expect that you’ll hold to your “standards” of upholding the status quo. When such things become the norm, then YOU are the one who is out of touch with your archaic notions of masculinity. After all, you say you can change because others motivated you to do so? Then change, accept transgender people and accept that they are real and deserve to be able to go through their lives unmolested
Hey Chihuahua if you want to have some fun, ask people what they think about first cousins marrying, or a leather-clad man leading around a leather-clad woman on a leash, or a 60 year old man dating an 18 year old girl.
While I do have a low standard for fun, I’m sure you’ll be surprised that some people actually think first cousins marrying, men leading women around on a leash, and 60 year olds dating 18 year olds are “icky” or “sick” and should not be permitted. I can reference the relevant threads if you like.
Male and female views, as you view them, were defined at an arbitrary place by an arbitrary group of people, for arbitrary reasons.
At the same time, they may have arbitrarily decided (as in most of history) that you should have your spouse chosen for you by your extended family. Did you choose your wife? Yes, well bummer. You can’t do that any more.
They may have chosen for you (as in Ancient Greece) that you should seduce tween boys and give them your “essence” to help man them up, before you go and take a wife to procreate with. They may have chosen that you should fight any other man to the death (as they did in the 1600s) if he says anything less than completely wholesome about you and your family. They may have chosen for you to be property of other humans, to do with as they will. They may have chosen for you to be burned as a baby, in a sacrifice to the gods. They may have chosen for you to stone your wife to death if she was ever raped by another man.
And all of this is arbitrary. None of it has anything to do with any known law of the universe. And a lot of it, we look back on and think, “Gee, that was stupid and evil.”
Slowly, we’ve been breaking out of this cycle of stupidity and evil by using science. Humans are fallible. Science gives us a tool to try and be less fallible. We try to not do things unless we can demonstrate that they have real world benefit.
And one thing we’ve discovered, over time, is that the world isn’t as simple as our ancestors tried to force it to be.
Because your dad was a great and noble guy, earning a title of Nobility, that doesn’t have any bearing on how great you are. Class systems drive down the economy, filling the top roles with people who aren’t interested or capable of the needs of their role. Well bummer, that means we have to go out and find individuals anew each generation to fill these rolls, and spend half their life climbing the ladder to prove themselves out. It’s a pain and a hassle, but in the end, society works better in a meritocratic economy.
Men who give themselves over to serving God and charity aren’t implicitly trustworthy with your children. Even parents abuse and molest their own children. These aren’t new things, they’re just things that we’re actually honest about now because we believe in truth and reality. And because we accept truth and reality, we can try and do something about it instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. It makes the world a more complex place, but it saves kids.
Science is not arbitrary. A binary gender system may be the one that proves out in the end, but we won’t know that unless we actually test different things. And whatever solution we end up with in a hundred years won’t be arbitrary. In the meanwhile, we may do it wrong and that will suck. But it’s not like life has been a wondrous thing all of the way from the start of humanity to today. And in all cases, life has been at its best in modern day.
You may be happy with one traditional aspect of life, but going back and looking at all the traditional ways of life that we’ve had over time, you’d probably wretch to see them actually implemented, slavery, mutilation, human sacrifices, murder, classism, sham medicine, etc. With that record of success, do you really want to put all of your money down on binary genderism with those exact definitions that you described as being the correct answer for all of society, now and forever? Can you state for certain that there isn’t a better solution, that works for more people and society as a whole?
Chihuahua: what do you think your ‘standards’ for manliness say about women?
You are basing your norms on the idea that for a male to be associated with anything female is bad.
What should the ‘standards’ for women be, in your world?
You hate criminals. Should Jean Valjean go to prison for 19 years for stealing a load of bread? Should women who appear in public without a male guardian be given 40 lashes? Should people who sexually abuse children never even face trial because it might embarass the family?
Your ‘standards’ are arbitrary. They don’t have a real, independent existence (or truth, if you prefer).
Social norms have and always will change. Humans are social creatures, not a hive mind.
Most of us here can differentiate between sex, gender identity, sexual attraction, and sexual behaviour. We can have different ideas of propriety in regards to each of these, especially in regard to public displays.
But thank you for showing they are all equivalent to you.
Fair enough, if you want to go with strict interpretations, I can do that. Although I suspect DrFidelius has differing views on what consenting adults can do, I will await a firm explicitly stated stance either way.
It seems pretty clear to me that he has differing views on the propriety of what consenting adults can do with regards to sex, gender identity, sexual attraction, and sexual behavior.
Whereas, I only have one view - consenting adults can do what they want as long as they are not hurting anyone.
Or maybe he just believes that it’s reasonable and not hypocritical to have different ideas of propriety in regards to sex, gender identity, sexual attraction, and sexual behaviour, especially in regard to public displays.
I think it’s worth exploring the idea that nonconformists should be shunned, treated as nonentities, violently suppressed, etc.
What benefit is society getting from suppressing nonconformists? What benefit is society getting from forcing more conformism? What benefit is society getting from excising those who fail to conform?
Is be interested in seeing the OP dig much deeper into this instinct and exploring its sources and implications.
First cousins marrying? Look, my long-term proposal is to let any consenting adults marry (with that word lacking legal power) and any two consenting adults get a civil union (with all the legal power vested in that institution). I’d be okay with identical twins marrying or getting a civil union. What do I care?
60-year-olds dating 18-year-olds? Yeah, that’s kind of icky, but none of my goddamn business.
Men leading women around on a leash? This is the only questionable one. If it’s done as part of sex play, and if doing it in public is a part of that sex play, that means it’s involving other people in their sex play as unwilling witnesses. Suddenly not everyone involved in the situation consents to it. And while consent is important in a lot of areas of life, it’s critical in areas of involving people in sex play. I’m not saying it should be illegal, but it starts to go into a gray area, and I’m comfortable calling people out for not doing it.
Moreover, your assertion is disingenuously mixing up opinions which consider certain behavior to be “icky” with ones which hold that the behavior should be legally banned. Adults of any age may legally date any other consenting adults of any age, and I don’t see anyone around here saying different.
The “leading around on a leash” bit is further obfuscation on your part, because nobody’s proposing any kind of legal restrictions on what consenting sub/dom kinksters choose to get up to in private.
When it comes to sex play that publicly simulates abuse or endangerment of one party by another, though, the law is entitled to require the consenting parties to go get a room, if the simulation might provoke a public disturbance or mistaken calls to emergency services.
Trying to frame any of this as any kind of anti-freedom conformist repression (except perhaps for some states’ first-cousin-marriage bans, which as I noted liberals are not generally responsible for) is a ridiculous false equivalence.