121–130 of 196 posts
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That may be so, but religion seems to go out of its way to embed itself in the psyche of its subjects to the point that they experience severe identity crisis when trying to break free of it. There are other groups that employ the same mechanisms.
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If someone wants to take estrogen and call themselves Jessica, why should I give a shit any more than when some gym rat (therefore on artificial testosterone) wants me to call him Jake instead of Jacob?
I don’t think there’s any religion in this, just good ol fashioned icky feelings about things that aren’t really a problem, they’re just icky feeling.
The Wendy Carlos Total Eclipse Page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096161 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)
Wendy Carlos on Bob Moog (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26553486 - March 2021 (57 comments)
Wendy Carlos, the reclusive synth genius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25061260 - Nov 2020 (2 comments)
Where is Wendy Carlos? (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394457 - June 2020 (2 comments)
Wendy Carlos – Electronic Music Pioneer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18662642 - Dec 2018 (1 comment)
How Wendy Carlos Changed Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16077589 - Jan 2018 (43 comments)
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It's quite strange that someone clearly nuts like that pastor can be considered sane, wise, and morally authoritative. While in the same circles a trans person like Carlos is considered inherently deviant and somehow immensely threatening - even though all they have to offer is a life-long list of creative achievements, and absolutely no evidence of harm to anyone.
My conversations with my deeply religious grandmother left me with the impression that religion is a very dirty game: it inserts itself into your psyche in a way that it can become nearly impossible to distance yourself from it without massively breaking open what you consider to be your identity. This makes what the OP did all that much stronger, to be able to overcome that conditioning. My grandmother never managed…
Ideology comes to mind as a pretty clean analog.
But looming in my mind is culture. Terminally, it seems indistinguishable from religion: it’s arbitrary, self-perpetuating, operates by getting deep psychological hooks into people and relies on (often blunt) communal enforcement.
And further, it seems “culture” has been elevated to the exalted, sacred status religion once commanded in society. In my view, this shift happened over the latter half of the 20th… cemented by 2010.
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Lynn Conway is another woman I look up to. The trans women who lived between 1950 and 1980 and still managed to advance their careers impress me, and I do my best to emulate them.
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> Upon completing her transition in 1968, Conway took a new name and identity, and restarted her career in what she called "stealth-mode". (From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway)
She managed to have groundbreaking impact in two disconnected careers after restarting from scratch!
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Idk what maladaptive from an evolutionary basis means, dude. We’re not beholden to survival of the fittest anymore. We got glasses, bro. We do shit like microdosing, keto, and cryo therapy. If someone wants to take estrogen and call themselves Jessica, why should I give a shit any more than when some gym rat (therefore on artificial testosterone) wants me to call him Jake instead of Jacob? I don’t think there’s any r…
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That may be so, but religion seems to go out of its way to embed itself in the psyche of its subjects to the point that they experience severe identity crisis when trying to break free of it. There are other groups that employ the same mechanisms.
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Idk what maladaptive from an evolutionary basis means, dude. We’re not beholden to survival of the fittest anymore. We got glasses, bro. We do shit like microdosing, keto, and cryo therapy. If someone wants to take estrogen and call themselves Jessica, why should I give a shit any more than when some gym rat (therefore on artificial testosterone) wants me to call him Jake instead of Jacob? I don’t think there’s any r…
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That may be so, but religion seems to go out of its way to embed itself in the psyche of its subjects to the point that they experience severe identity crisis when trying to break free of it. There are other groups that employ the same mechanisms.
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Merely having to look in the mirror and think constantly “this is not who I should be” is damaging. That’s why people deserve sympathy and aid from society.
When people say it’s maladaptive and characterize it as psychological disorder they are falling into the trap of believing that mental anguish must always have a mental solution. Thus they would prescribe therapy, drugs, and asylums.
On the converse, it is much easier in reality to change physical gender than it is to change one’s mind.
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My conversations with my deeply religious grandmother left me with the impression that religion is a very dirty game: it inserts itself into your psyche in a way that it can become nearly impossible to distance yourself from it without massively breaking open what you consider to be your identity. This makes what the OP did all that much stronger, to be able to overcome that conditioning. My grandmother never managed…
I agree with your observation, but I don’t think religion is uniquely notable along those lines. Ideology comes to mind as a pretty clean analog. But looming in my mind is culture. Terminally, it seems indistinguishable from religion: it’s arbitrary, self-perpetuating, operates by getting deep psychological hooks into people and relies on (often blunt) communal enforcement. And further, it seems “culture” has been el…