If inquire into why spaces are separated we get various arguments based on human behaviour: safety and hygiene are the most common arguments I hear. Stuff like modesty/embarrassment/nakedness etc. are not usually talked about as much, but - I feel - often implied. I find the comparison to saunas interesting; they seem to be often mixed without problems: but there are two important differences: while nearly everyone uses public toilets, using saunas is far more optional. And the taboo nature of excreting heightens feeling of shame, which is absent with saunas. — Dawnstorm

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys being around them while they're changing.

:up:

There are some opinions that will get you banned, and for good reason. We don't tolerate Holocaust denialism, for example. This whole thread is an embarrassing display of homo and transphobia.

A tomboy girl is a masculine girl, which is bad even if they have done nothing immoral. — Bob Ross

Jamal is being charitable. I would have banned you by now.

Okay, this is a good point. I don't follow politics too closely. I was surprised to see conservatives defending Tucker's platforming of Fuentes and I have been trying to understand it. But this is a noteworthy antecedent. — Leontiskos

Thank you.

"Well this strikes me as leftist propaganda. Most of this has been explicitly clarified or corrected."

Musk's Ai literally called itself MechaHitler.

For example, even left-leaning Politifact published a transcript that shows what Trump actually said. It is a shopworn misrepresentation to claim that Trump somehow gave an endorsement to neo-Nazis."

It wasn't just Democrats who called out Trump over Charlottesville.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-sen-cory-gardner-urges-trump-to-call-charlottesville-crash-terrorism/

None of this is happening in a vacuum. The Heritage scandal comes on the heels of
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146
"‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat"

And MAGA darling (before he turned on Trump) Elon Musk's Ai turning into "Mechahitler", and Trump's dinner with Kanye and Fuentes and Trump's use of Naziesque language (https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary) and "good people on both sides" after the Charlottesville rally, etc.

Did Kevin Roberts resign? I'm not seeing that. Tucker privately hated Trump after Tucker got caught falling for his election lies. He then explained the texts away in some interview. Publicly (and maybe privately nowadays) Tucker and Trump are bro's. And are you claiming Tucker is not influential in MAGA world? MAGA loves him.

<Here> is Vance on Fuentes.

Sure, but what are Vance and Trump saying about this latest Heritage scandal or about Tucker hosting Nick Fuentes? Nothing. And Trump runs his mouth about everything. So, if the leader of the GOP can't be bothered to talk about it, it's not a big deal. Or at least that's the message the WH is sending: much ado about nothing.

And yet the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, just resigned over his support for Tucker's interview of Fuentes. This bodes ill for your theory. Now that Republicans are learning who Fuentes is, we are seeing lots of opposition. — Leontiskos

We are seeing lots of opposition from (what MAGA would call) RINO squishes. Has Trump or Vance weighed in on this?

Why blame China? — baker

I don't blame them. In many respects they're still a developing country. Developing countries use fossil fuels. They're cheap, easy, and reliable. If I lived in a developing country and the choice was between a wind farm that would provide power to my neighbor and a coal plant that would provide power to my neighbor and me, I know which one I would be telling my government to build.

Why buy cheap Chinese stuff? Stop buying cheap Chinese stuff, and China will have no reason to burn so much coal anymore, or even none at all, for that matter. — baker

People should definitely cut down on all the crap they buy.

It's not the Chinese who need to change; it's the rest of the world, esp. Westerners, who are eager to look wealthier than they are and so they buy cheap Chinese stuff. — baker

The rich countries should be helping the poorer ones electrify responsibly with renewables, but the rich countries (e.g., America) can't even fund food assistance programs for their own people.

That meant it was able to cut fossil fuel use by 2 percent, despite a growing demand for power.

Is this supposed to be encouraging? Catastrophic warming is already baked in. By the time China makes a meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use (say half), we'll be well into uncharted territory, and they'll still be pouring GHG's into the air.

It's like asking if there is something it's like being the interaction between you and your romantic partner, say. — Pierre-Normand

Or like asking is there something it's like to be the countless interactions between billions of neurons? That, also, doesn't make any sense to me. Why should a lump of meat, if it has certain kinds of cells arranged a certain way and with a bit of electricity thrown in, have a something-it's-like-to-be-it quality to it? But it does. So is it possible there's something it's like to be the countless interactions between trillions of transistors? But if that's true, are the ai's lying?

Very interesting. Is there something it's like to be the user-AI interaction? Grok and Chatgpt say no.

Going on what people report, I would say the strength of my own mental imagery is pretty average. My daughter by contrast has hyperphantasia judging by her uncanny art skills, synesthesia and richly detailed memory. — apokrisis

But it is a mental image, right? A picture, if you will. So what is this quote about?:
"Ulric Neisser argued that mental images are plans for the act of perceiving and the anticipatory phases of perception. They are not "inner pictures" that are passively viewed by an "inner man,"

My imaginings are obviously, to me, "inner pictures". Is the objection then that our imaginings are mental pictures, but they're not "passively viewed by an "inner man""?

There is wide variety in individuals from those who claim no imagery at all to those who claim photographic strength. — apokrisis

Sure, but for those who have a mind's eye, the imagination and/or memory is a lot like a picture/image in the mind. Isn't it like that for you?

Are the pictures in your mind like photographs that are stable and sustainable enough that you can examine them in detail? Are the songs in your mind rich and complete such that playing them is exactly like listening to the actual songs? — Janus

It's not exactly like listening to an actual song or seeing an actual sunset. Why do you ask? Are you not capable of playing a song in your mind or imagining a sunset?

I and others have tried to show that you have adopted a muddled approach to the topic. You appear not to have been able to see the problem with your approach.

Sex concerns biology, gender concerns social roles. But because of your religious beliefs, you wish there not to be such a distinction, so that you can maintain that biology necessarily determines ones sexual roles. You wrap all that up in a pretence of misunderstood neo- Aristotelian metaphysics in order to to kid yourself that ist has some merit.

It's all pretty tendentious. And after 15 pages, tedious. — Banno

:up:
I gave up. It's like talking to smoke.

What is it one “retrieves” from memory? An image. Or as the enactive view of cognition puts it….

Ulric Neisser argued that mental images are plans for the act of perceiving and the anticipatory phases of perception. They are not "inner pictures" that are passively viewed by an "inner man," but rather active, internal cognitive structures (schemata) that prepare the individual to seek and accept specific kinds of sensory information from the environment. — apokrisis

But they are like "inner pictures". When I imagine a sunset it's like a picture in my mind. When I have a song in my head, it's like music is playing in my mind and I'm passively hearing it. Isn't it like that for you?

Now, you bring up a good point in this example that this perpetrator is not culpable themselves for the attack (e.g., perhaps they are hallucinating and relative to their perspective they are stopping something grave from happening [although it isn’t really happening that way]); and so they are innocent intuitively. I was challenging the idea that they are to be see as innocent; but we can also go the A route and note that this ‘innocent person’ is a threat to this victim (of no fault of their own) objectively; and so the victim is justified in directly intending to neutralize the threat—even if that has a side effect of killing them.

I do think that is a really good example you gave their that challenges my idea of innocence. — Bob Ross

Then let's build on it. Let's say the person-in-the-psychotic-rage-from-the-unforeseen-drug-interaction isn't trying to kill you, they don't have any weapons, but are merely trying to drag you into their idling van. You resist, of course, and stab them with a pocket-knife you have and it kills them. Is that murder?

Now let's say the person-in-the-psychotic-rage-from-the-unforeseen-drug-interaction isn't attacking you at all, but they are screaming death threats at you, and in your personal space, and a good Samaritan comes up behind the psychotic and puts them in a chokehold, but he does it wrong and the psychotic dies. We will never know what the psychotic truly intended to do. Is that murder?

In all the back and forth, I forgot that you and Leontiskos never did answer my question about abortion and the pregnant 12 year old who was raped by her father. Should she be allowed to get an abortion? And why is this question so hard for you two to answer? Obviously, she should not be forced to carry the rapist's baby to term, right?

So a mental illness is whatever "the professionals" or "society" says it is? — Count Timothy von Icarus

To a large extent, yes. These are weighty science-based questions, and we often have to depend on medical experts. They don't always get everything right of course. But in the case of homosexuality, the medical communities and societies around the world stopped regarding it as a mental illness long ago. In the decades since, that seems to have been the right call. Do you disagree? Do you think homosexuality belongs back in the DSM?

Give me a fucking break with your faux innocence. Calling an entire class of people mentally ill couldn't be more bigoted. Try applying that to any other group.
— hypericin

Isn't that definitionally true of any designation for any mental illness? Alcoholics are a class of people. Pyromaniacs as well. Pedophiles are a class of people who are classed according to sexual desire, as are zoophiles, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Except gays aren't mentally ill. That went out of style 50 years ago. So lumping them in with pedophiles and alcoholics and pyromaniacs does indeed seem like rank bigotry.

Now RogueAI, instead of dealing with my response, is trying to paint me as a Nazi now (apparently). — Bob Ross

I'm not saying you're a Nazi, I'm saying you're going down an intellectual path of dehumanizing that the Nazi intelegentsia went down to rationalize their actions and support of the regime. If a group of people is naturally defective and deviant, that's just a stone's throw away from subhuman, and once they're subhuman...

I am allowed to remove tubes that were put into me without my consent

At any cost? With any means? — Bob Ross

I'm a consequentialist, so if the fate of the world was at stake and we all die if I unhook myself, then I'm not going to unhook myself, I think it would be immoral to unhook myself, and I would force someone to stay hooked up and compensate them later, if possible. I would also pull the switch in trolley car. Sometimes the innocent person gets fucked over for the needs of the many.

Within the confines of the thought experiment, where there's nothing at stake except a violinist, the kidnapped person is allowed to remove the tubes that were inserted into them without their consent. It would be nice and charitable if they agreed to stay hooked up, but you can't force them. If you force them to stay hooked up, you're setting a hell of a precedent: that it's OK to kidnap people and hook them up to others. You're excusing a gross violation of autonomy. Is that a society you would want to live in? Autonomy rights are incredibly important.

That’s a good question. I would say that it would be indirectly intentional because their death would be a (bad) side effect of the means (of closing the wound); and the principle of double effect has to be used to determine its permissibility or impermissibility. This is important because this is disanalogous to abortion: an abortion is where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed (analogous to shooting the violinist in the head).

I think, in this case, it would be permissible because it is:

1. A good end;
2. There is no other means to facilitate that end;
3. The means is not bad; and
4. The good end outweighs the bad effect.

In the case of abortion, #3 is necessarily false. — Bob Ross

But we're getting closer to abortion. Closing the wound that's keeping the violinist alive is an action, correct? It's an action that results in his death, right? But it's morally permissible. So, if closing a wound that's keeping the violinist alive is morally permissible, how could it be impermissible to remove the tubes from my body that are keeping him alive?

Regarding abortion, suppose the mother's life is at risk, and the doctor can either save the mother or the fetus, and the mother makes it clear she's the one who should be saved. The only way to save the mother is to kill the fetus in an abortion. Ah, but this violates (3). But your position cannot be that abortion is impermissible if the life of the mother is at stake. So it seems your position falls prey to a reductio absurdum.

I would say they are innocent in the sense you mean of ‘not intending to do you harm’ but they are not innocent in the relevant sense of ‘being unworthy of being killed’. — Bob Ross

Unworthy of being killed? What the hell does that mean? An innocent person in a psychotic rage from an unforeseen drug interaction is certainly "unworthy to be killed", but it's not murder if they get killed in self defense. The fetus that is putting a mother's life at risk if she give birth to it is also unworthy to be killed, but the mother has the right to have it killed to save herself.

But, then, you are advocating that murder is permissible in some cases. Wouldn’t you agree that killing them by putting a bullet in their head is murder? — Bob Ross

No. Suppose you've been kidnapped and while you're locked in the dungeon, you've rigged up a booby trap to kill the kidnapper. A heavy weight will fall on him. So you have one chance to activate your booby trap and the kidnapper comes into the dungeon carrying his sleeping infant son who you know will almost certainly die if you trigger your trap. But this is your one chance to escape. The kidnapper has told you he's going to kill you soon. You trigger the trap and kill the kidnapper and his infant son and you escape. Did you murder anyone?

Also, what about the 12 year old girl raped by her father and pregnant. Do you force her to give birth?

So, that's double the percent of alleged transgender persons so far. — Outlander

Alleged?

Because you keep changing the subject to avoid answering difficult questions. For example, you didn't even manage to "pussyfoot" around <my last response to you>. You just ignored it altogether. It is not philosophically upright to ignore every response that is difficult and insist that that your interlocutor must now address some new topic that you've thought of. — Leontiskos

I didn't want to spend an hour writing a response to it. I'm backing out of the homosexuals-are-deviants arguments you and Bob are making. You two sound like you're trying to justify treating them as subhuman. We've all seen where that can go. I've said my piece.

Beyond that, you are engaged in emotive jumps. The proper tangent is not, "Is abortion permissible in cases of rape," but rather, "Does Thomson's analogy succeed in defending abortion in cases of rape?" Certainly Thomson's analogy is analogous to cases of rape such that my "coercion" objection fails in the case of rape. If I wanted to assess the analogy-argument with respect to the case of rape, I would need to see the actual text of Thomson's argument. Do you have that? — Leontiskos

https://media.lanecc.edu/users/borrowdalej/phl205_s17/violinist.html

Okay, supposing for the sake of argument that that is true, then the analogy is only analogous to 2-3% of abortions. My point is that an analogy that is only analogous to 2-3% of abortions cannot be a valid analogy with respect to abortion (generally). Why is an analogy that is only analogous to 2-3% of abortions continually trotted out as a good analogy vis-a-vis abortion? — Leontiskos

Because it establishes a moral principle: even if we concede the fetus is a person, abortion can still be permissible.

Why are you pussyfooting around my example of the 12 year old raped girl? You and Bob love to extol manly virtues. Stop being a coward and answer my question about whether she should be allowed an abortion or not.

Let's stay on topic for a moment in a thread that seems to move quickly from topic to topic.* Is an analogy valid if it is disanalogous in 95% of the cases it is meant to address? — Leontiskos

Thomson's violinist analogy was specifically about abortion in cases of rape, so it's not disanalogous to the 95% of abortions. It wasn't meant to address those.

But Bob and I have been going back and forth on it for awhile now, and it's his thread, so obviously he sees it as "on topic". So, what say you about the 12 year old pregnant raped girl?

The reason the purported analogy is disanalogous is because it depends on coercion, which is not present in pregnancy (except in cases of rape, which are relatively rare). — Leontiskos

But in cases of rape, what say you about abortion? Would you force the 12 year old raped girl to have the rapists baby? Even if it's her dad or older brother or uncle who raped her?

Same question to you, Bob.

You are acting by pulling the plug: that’s an action. — Bob Ross

It's an action, but it's not an action taken against them. I am allowed to remove tubes that were put into me without my consent. Suppose instead of tubes connected to me, the violinist was being kept alive from blood running from an open wound on my side into him. Closing my wound would be an action but is your position that closing my own wound would be morally impermissible if it results in the violinist's death?

You might argue that this action is justified, but then you are committed to the view that directly intentionally killing an innocent person is not always murder. — Bob Ross

I'm OK with that. If a psychotic innocent person is trying to kill me, and I directly intentionally kill them in self defense, it's not murder, right?

Let’s make it even more explicit what I am arguing. Imagine to pull the plug you had to walk over to the other person and put a bullet in their head to kill them off before pulling it. — Bob Ross

I would prefer to unplug them and let them die naturally of whatever was killing them before they were hooked up to me, but if shooting them is the only way to do it, it's morally permissible.

Homosexuality is defective: it can be defective biologically and/or socio-psychologically. Heterosexuality is defective sometimes socio-psychologically.

Homosexuality is always defective because, at a minimum, it involves an unnatural attraction to the same sex which is a privation of their human nature (and usually of no real fault of their own); whereas heterosexuality is not per se because, at a minimum, it involves the natural attraction to the opposite sex.

Now, heterosexuality can be defective if the person is engaging in opposite-sex attraction and/or actions that are sexually degenerate; but this will always be the result of environmental or/and psychological (self) conditioning. The underlying attraction is not bad: it's the lack of disciple, lack of habit towards using that attraction properly, and (usually) uncontrollable urges towards depriving sexual acts. — Bob Ross

This sounds like the kind of thinking that "smart" and "learned" Germans engaged in to rationalize going along with the Holocaust: Jews and queers are just naturally defective. They're a bunch of deviants, abominations of nature. At the very least, they should be removed from the normies of society, lest their deviancy spread.

With all due respect, my friend, I think you are not appreciating what I am saying: I already addressed and anticipated this rejoinder. Even if the consequences of not murdering the violinist were the most grave and insufferable that a human can conceive of, it is still immoral to murder; so it is immoral to do so. — Bob Ross

It's not murder. Innocent people sometimes can be justifiably killed. In the violinist analogy, if you remove the tubes from yourself that are keeping the violinist alive, you are not actively killing him, you are failing to render aid. You do not have a moral duty to render aid to people that are hooked up to you without your consent.

This has nothing to do with anything I’ve written in this thread. Perhaps you’re asking the wrong person. — T Clark

You quoted the ACLU, specifically,

We’re working to make sure trans people get the health care

So then, what are your thoughts on the kind of health care trans children can/should get?

I'd prefer to let the people in the situation to decide with their doctor, and if a bad decision is made then the person can pursue legal recourse. Like in your story. — Moliere

I would generally agree, but a lawsuit won't get your breasts reattached. Some harms can't be undone through legal recourse. So then, what do we as a society decide to do about trans children desiring mastectomies? Should doctors be allowed to do it at all or should it be off limits until the person is an adult? This seems like a human rights issue that's unique to trans individuals, no?

I was arguing that inserting a penis in an anus violates the natural ends of both organs. — Bob Ross

Why were you arguing that? It seemed that you were implying gay people are defective or need to be "cured" because they like anal sex, which is why I replied that plenty of straight people like it too. What was your point?

↪RogueAI No, I don't think so.

I think the story you linked is a tragedy.

I don't think this is unique to trans individuals, though. Healthcare decisions are not easy in any other situation that might call for mastectomy. If she wins that's fine by me: I understand wanting recompense for being mistreated.

I don't think her case the usual, though. — Moliere

But we can make it unique to trans individuals in that: should trans children have their breasts removed? A 17 year old? Maybe I can see that. A 14 year old? No.

What you are failing to understand is that the violinist is not the one violating this person’s bodily autonomy: it is the person who hooked them up to them that committed the violation and consequently the immoral act. Now, the violinist and the other victim are stuck in a predicament: how do they go about resolving it? Can they do something immoral to resolve it? No, but you are arguing “yes”: you are saying this victim can murder the violinist to resolve the situation. That’s wrong: two wrongs don’t make a right. Wouldn’t you agree? — Bob Ross

Take the thought experiment to its logical conclusion: instead of the violinist being hooked up to you for 9 months, he's hooked up to you for 45 years and during that time, you're in total physical agony. And also, he's not just hooked up to you, he's hooked up to a thousand other people, all necessary to keep him alive. But why stop at a thousand? Let's say it's a million people. A billion. Is your position still that it's immoral for any one of those people to unhook themselves and end all the suffering? After all, two wrongs don't make a right. At some point, you must realize your position becomes untenable.

↪T Clark I don't think it's a good idea to do mastectomies on 14 year olds. Do you?
— RogueAI

RogueAI, can we say on topic please? What do you think about the OP's claims on the trans gender rights listed? — Philosophim

We’re working to make sure trans people get the health care

Isn't it a human right for a child to not have her breasts cut off? Isn't that a uniquely trans gender issue?

We’re working to make sure trans people get the health care

I don't think it's a good idea to do mastectomies on 14 year olds. Do you?

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/ucla-student-sues-california-doctors-says-was-fast-tracked-transgender-rcna183815

Well, would you concede that coitus is more reproductively advantageous than anal sex, and therefore better insofar as the reproduction of the species is concerned? — Leontiskos

Yes, but just because something is more reproductively advantageous does not mean it's moral, or the people doing the reproductively advantageous acts are "better" in any way. You and Bob seem to be implying gays are inferior or need to be "cured" because they are not maximizing reproductive efficiency. And if anal sex is reproductively disadvantageous, what about contraception? Abortion? Masturbation? Oral sex? Vasectomies?

When posed with a question, models such as ChatGPT merely predict the most probable next word, whereas a human truly comprehends the meaning of what she is saying. — Showmee

Is mind a necessary condition for meaning?

You didn't even try to answer the question, because you know I am right that the sex organs are not designed to be put in the anus (irregardless if you think men will tend to do it or tend to like to do it). — Bob Ross

My point is that gay men aren't the only ones with the desire to put their sex organs into questionable orifices. The fact that they desire anal sex with other men cannot be held against them (as you obviously intended it to be) since straight men also have the same desire.

https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/05/03/kansas-man-arrested-for-attempted-sex-with-car/12322358007/

I don't know if the guy in the story was straight or not, but it really makes no difference, since it's equally plausible that a gay or straight man would try and fuck a car.