morality

Defending our existence

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Andrea Ayres at policym1c has an essay up entitled Transgender Rights: Why they matter to everyone.

In the wake of Sweden declaring a 1972 that forced transgender people to be sterilized prior to legal gender change, there apparently is renewed interest in the unequal treatment of transgender people.

While the U.S. does not require sterilization prior to a gender reassignment surgery, some states do require that the individual be labeled as having Gender Identity Disorder (GID). At least until July of 2012. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V (DSM-V) replaced the term Gender Identity Disorder with Gender Dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria refers to emotional distress that may occur from "a marked incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender." Now the change does not eliminate all gender disorders. An individual may still be identified as suffering from Transvestic Fetishism or Transvestic Autogynephilia. The first refers to someone who becomes more sexually active when wearing the clothing incongruent with the sex they were assigned at birth. The second, championed by an evil man (Ray Blanchard), refers to a person (usually a man, in Blanchard's opinion) whose sexual impulse is connected with the thought of themselves as a member of "the opposite sex" (i.e. as a woman). That is, roughly speaking, Blanchard believes transwomen who masturbate are autogynephiles.

The reason why this highlights continuing discrimination against trans individuals is because cisgendered individuals are allowed to behave in these matters without having their intentions questions. A cisgendered person is someone who self-identifies with the gender they were both with. We would not think to question a cisgendered women's desire to wear clothes, make-up etc, because she is acting in congruency with her societal role.

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Morality and Voting for Obama

(also published at Firedoglake)

Back in September, Conor Friedersdorf put out a piece in The Atlantic titled "Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama." The basic argument is this: even though Romney is bad, the author still felt Obama's transgressions made him beyond the pale as far as his actual vote was concerned. Here is what Friedersdorf actually says to rebut the standard "Romney would be worse" objection:

What about the assertion that Romney will be even worse than Obama has been on these issues? It is quite possible, though not nearly as inevitable as Democrats seem to think. It isn't as though they accurately predicted the abysmal behavior of Obama during his first term, after all. And how do you get worse than having set a precedent for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens? By actually carrying out such a killing? Obama did that too. Would Romney? I honestly don't know. I can imagine he'd kill more Americans without trial and in secret, or that he wouldn't kill any. I can imagine that he'd kill more innocent Pakistani kids or fewer. His rhetoric suggests he would be worse. I agree with that. Then again, Romney revels in bellicosity; Obama soothes with rhetoric and kills people in secret.

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Anti-Capitalist Meetup: We need an economic Jesus by bigjacbigjacbigjac

First of all, I'm an adamant non-believer,
and I'm using the name of Jesus,
the concept of a savior,
as a metaphor,
a metaphor representing
the kind of idea we need,
the idea that could be the savior
of the economy,
the economy of the USA,
and,
potentially,
the economy of the world.

The enemy of humanity
is human nature,
the natural tendency
of some of us
to rape,
rob,
torture,
and kill
others of us.

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