Bespoke: supporting bottom surgery AND aesthetic alterations because aesthetics are culturally driven, and we would have to abolish culture to get rid of the concept of aesthetics or beauty all together, BUT rebelling and creating alternatives to the unfair aspects of beauty and aesthetics that punch down and harm those unable to conform to them.
There is an argument that you can't necessarily do both.
You either normalize the aesthetic and establish a kind-of taboo about not following the herd, or you upend the rigid regressive standard of masculinity/femininity and relegate these surgeries to luxury rather than necessity.
I think the conversation can go a bit off the rails in a country that doesn't treat fucking insulin or emergency room care as a necessity. In the end, it feels like debating the merits of raising the minimum wage versus abolishing money in a society that refuses to consider either.
But there is a point at which you have to address whether the problem is "I feel like a woman who doesn't have a vagina" or "I won't be accepted as a woman until I have a vagina". And that's the distinction I think Liz was aiming for.
are you saying we should abolish the concept of… attraction or appearance preference?
I'm saying these are cultural constructs, just like gender, and normalizing an invasive surgical procedure is maybe not the best way to address the problem of appearance bias.
are you saying i’m transphobic because I think people should be allowed to like different appearances?
I'm saying there's more to addressing the problem than just manually adjusting everyone's genitals to a default uniform appearance.
well, wouldn’t abolishing all instances of that involve abolishing sexual and even romantic attraction?
Not unless you believe sexual/romantic attraction is predicated on a strict uniform appearance standard. Like, do you believe you can't simultaneously be attracted to a tall person and a short person because their heights are different?
possible even self-expression?
If anything, it would broaden self-expression by reducing the alienation one suffers based on one's appearance.
Like sure I could put on whatever I want but no one would care, including me, why bother?
It's the difference between change for the sake of self-discovery or self-actualization, and change for the sake of conformity.
I legitimately don’t get the point you’re trying to make.
Consider Michael Jackson. A man who subjected himself to all sorts of medical treatments in order to fix his problem of not having a uniform skin tone. The guy had so many nose enhancements that the damned thing wouldn't stay on his face. He went through a complete physical transformation in pursuit of the western ideal of white male beauty and it destroyed him.
Imagine if every black man was just kinda expected to go through what Michael Jackson went through in order to appear acceptable to the general public. That's not a problem solved by dumping billions of dollars into medically altering a population's skin, hair, and face. That's a problem of bigotry facilitated by consumerism.
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One day comrade, one day :sicko-wistful:
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:sicko-luna: all art shall be replaced with chapo.chat emojis, literature included
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:bern-disgust:
YOU'RE a kind of art
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There is an argument that you can't necessarily do both.
You either normalize the aesthetic and establish a kind-of taboo about not following the herd, or you upend the rigid regressive standard of masculinity/femininity and relegate these surgeries to luxury rather than necessity.
I think the conversation can go a bit off the rails in a country that doesn't treat fucking insulin or emergency room care as a necessity. In the end, it feels like debating the merits of raising the minimum wage versus abolishing money in a society that refuses to consider either.
But there is a point at which you have to address whether the problem is "I feel like a woman who doesn't have a vagina" or "I won't be accepted as a woman until I have a vagina". And that's the distinction I think Liz was aiming for.
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Isn't that the same thing?
I don't think you're exiting your lane by saying "Wow, we should really do something about that dysphoria we're instilling in people."
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I'm saying these are cultural constructs, just like gender, and normalizing an invasive surgical procedure is maybe not the best way to address the problem of appearance bias.
I'm saying there's more to addressing the problem than just manually adjusting everyone's genitals to a default uniform appearance.
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I mean bias for or against an individual based on their physical appearance.
Just altering people to fit the normalcy bias creates its own set of problems.
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Not unless you believe sexual/romantic attraction is predicated on a strict uniform appearance standard. Like, do you believe you can't simultaneously be attracted to a tall person and a short person because their heights are different?
If anything, it would broaden self-expression by reducing the alienation one suffers based on one's appearance.
It's the difference between change for the sake of self-discovery or self-actualization, and change for the sake of conformity.
Consider Michael Jackson. A man who subjected himself to all sorts of medical treatments in order to fix his problem of not having a uniform skin tone. The guy had so many nose enhancements that the damned thing wouldn't stay on his face. He went through a complete physical transformation in pursuit of the western ideal of white male beauty and it destroyed him.
Imagine if every black man was just kinda expected to go through what Michael Jackson went through in order to appear acceptable to the general public. That's not a problem solved by dumping billions of dollars into medically altering a population's skin, hair, and face. That's a problem of bigotry facilitated by consumerism.
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Saul Goodman.
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