Twitter thread
Why dialectical materialism isn’t compatible with trans ideology: 🧵 First it is important to note that dia-mat is a formula that can be used to deconstruct popular beliefs & attitudes into more or less systematic doctrines. (1/13)
Marx used it to combat both German idealism & the beliefs held by the Church. Today the church has been replaced by postmodernism. Materialism seeks the conditions (material, economic, social) that make for such possibilities (systems, ideas, trends). (2/13)
I argue that trans/gender ideology is idealistic & irreconcilably opposed to materialism. Dualism is a philosophy that separates the material world from the spiritual. Descartes popularized this view in the 1600s with his first principle “I think therefore I am.” (3/13)
Trans ideology encapsulates this because it views the mind and body as separate entities; one is born male but thinks he is a woman because of how he feels. This sort of idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual. (4/13)
Materialism opposes this because it teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside & independent of the mind and that everything mental/spiritual is a product of material processes. In Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-critcism” he thoroughly rejects the idealist (5/13)
elimination of the ‘dualism of mind and body.’ Idealism implies that one should not place reliance on science and encourages us to not believe things despite having evidence. (6/13)
Trans ideology rejects observable reality, it suggests that doctors assigning sex at birth (which is based on observing genitalia) is not grounds for determining sex. They will argue that intersex condition is ’the exception that proves the rule.’ (7/13)
But disorders of sexual development do not prove that sex is neither a material concept or a social construction. If anything, DSD are indeed exceptions that prove the rule that: humanity is composed of men & women (and such anomalies prove that there is a standard). (8/13)
Calling those who critique this ideology “mechanistic materialist” is also incorrect. Mechanistic materialism reduces the understanding of things to parts, this dogmatic view rejects the processes of things. In approaching trans ideology with dia-mat, (9/13)
no one denies that social conditions (such as, but not limited to: homophobia and misogyny) have created the possibility in which people acquire postmodern identities. (10/13)
But like the dia-mat approach to evolution; which is that things develop continuously and are not static, one cannot prove that sexual organs are capable of evolving into the opposite. (11/13)
Like so with claiming we are metaphysical thinkers, when metaphysics in itself is an abstract way of thinking that disregards essential detail; such as material reality; such as biological sex. (12/13)
As a Marxist, it is important to be critical of such an ideology because it is currently being pushed by multi-billion dollar corporations that are neither interested in the health of trans individuals, children and most certainly the rights of women. (13/13)
I beg of these pseudointellectual fucks READ MODERN BIOLOGY PAPERS ON GENDER. Your high school science class from god knows how long ago does not give you the authority to tell people what is or isn't an objective biological fact.
These morons always act like there is this hard line in science that never moves and that we haven't discovered or built upon our knowledge since the 1900s. Mother fucker makes so many assumptions while pretending to be rational it makes my head spin. FUCKER QUOTES A GOD DAMN PHILOSOPHER FROM 400 YEARS AGO! Mother fucker if you put that shit as a citation in a paper you would be laughed at by the scientific community so hard that your PhD would fly off and you'd have to resort to writing self-help books to get anyone to take your mental flatulence seriously.
After the revolution, I'm opening a god damn school to teach these mother fuckers how to apply the scientific method without being a biased fuck. It's going to be call Dirt_Owls school of shut the fuck up lobster boy.
I'm drunk, fuck you, stop judging me. Shit.
Totally agree with you.
They also show a hard misunderstanding of what materialism is, what idealist mind body separation is etc.
[the mentioned] ideology encapsulates this because it views the mind and body as separate entities;
The point was that they are not separate entities, but that they are in entirely separate realms. This is not the case though, since everything that is is materialistic. Our mind (or the perception of it, our sense of self) exists precisely cause of materialism.
because of how [one] feels. This sort of idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual. (4/13)
Guess what feelings are produced by real material conditions. So :trans-specter: are actually more based than a person who thinks that there is a thing "the spiritual". Thinking there is "the spiritual" is idealist and non-materialist.
In addition saying there is a thing that is "biological XYZ" or "men" and "women" is idealist and cringe AF.
While I think telling people to read Marx as theory is sometimes cringe and often not necessary we have a case here which shows why reading and understanding stuff out of the German Ideology of 1846 might be beneficial. Though I will now always suggest people to get schooled in the new cool school in town:
Dirt_Owl's school of shut the fuck up lobster boy.
to add to this, one of our best explanations of how certain kinds of transness develop (not all - no explanation can possibly be total because trans people are not a monolith) is that the developing fetus is exposed to one sex hormone during primary development of the gonads, causing them to develop down one path, but the brain develops at a different time - and it consequently can grow to expect a different sex hormone than what the gonads wind up producing. the brain is much more complicated to alter than to simply give it what it expects by shutting down the gonads via blockers and exogenous sex hormones.
the brain is a physical organ and the mind arises of dialetical conflict between the brain and it's environment. it is literally only with trans biology that anyone can get away with saying something as galaxybrained as "treating developmental issues with the brain is to reaffirm mind/body dualism".
These morons always act like there is this hard line in science that never moves and that we haven’t discovered or built upon our knowledge since the 1900s.
But if they did that they'd probably be forced to renounce phrenology too!
yeah uh i thought we already figured out empirically that gender affirming care has better outcomes than trying to force people into the assigned box?
i don't really understand what gender is but other people tell me they have it and I don't see any ethical option other than believing their self-report
We're far from really understanding it, but we can do brain scans of people with dysphoria and identify certain patterns that they have that people without it don't have, so there's definitely materialist evidence for being trans (and even if there wasn't, that wouldn't mean it was fake or bad).
Similarly, there's a certain structure in the brain that's a different size on average between gay men and straight men. I think that all of the stuff that happens in our head is reflected in some way in the physical connections of our neurons, even if the patterns are more complex than we can understand.
TIL that believing in psychology is idealist and requires a mind / body split. Pazis really are the most deranged idiots out of all brands of fascists.
srs, the amount of bs this nazi shitstain keeps churning out is unbelievable. If we apply his "logic" consequentially, then Marxism itself would be idealist because it does not accept existing material conditions as immutable. Transitioning is, in itself, a revolutionary struggle to improve mismatched, unlivable material conditions to the needs of the people. Trans rights are foremost a materialist issue about accessible and free healthcare etc. Shouldn't be that hard to understand.
Not gonna call these guys PatSocs bc they don't get more socialist than "free healthcare for white American cishet dudes at the expense of the global south"
Extremely good name for them, definitely gonna use that haha
Yea that's insane. Understanding the mind in materialist terms would be studying the electrochemical wiring that makes up our nervous system, i.e. psychology
On top of that, the empirical evidence of decades of treating transgender patients clearly shows that telling us it's "all in our head" doesn't work at all. The results of conversion therapy are disastrous and cannot be described other than genocidal when you look at the incidence of suicide among untreated or not properly treated transgender patients. What does work amazingly is to simply change our material, biological reality by HRT and other medical ways of adressing our dysphoria triggers.
No trans person would argue that our material conditions do not matter or that it's only our gender identity that counts. If that were the case, i could stick to simply imagining myself as a woman and never have to bother with dysphoria ever again. After all, if i was an idealist, that would have to be fully sufficient, right? But that isn't the case. That idealist notion breaks down as soon as i look in the mirror and see the stubble underneath my makeup. My condition requires a constant effort to adjust an oppressive material reality, and to overcome the false consciousness of cisnormativity (yet another thing were our pazi "comrades" still have a long, long way to go).
I thought this was going to an anti-Marxist trans person but instead it's an anti-trans Marxist. How exciting!
Calling real things that exist "purely ideological" is fucking hilarious. Get out of your armchair and touch grass dweeb
I just wanna wear a skirt and take E, idgaf about metaphysics. Mfer high on their own farts.
Everything I don't like is idealist and to explain why I am going to use my internalized ideology of the gender binary.
Because nothing bad ever happened when people assigned babies as "straight" at birth...
God I want to go yell at them but arguing with transphobes always fucks up my mood for the rest of the day. And going on the bird site also fucks up my mood for the rest of the day tbqh.
Anyone willing to go yell at them on my behalf?
