Quack definitions department
Wow, powerful argument.
Being used to the body you’ve always been is not an idenniny, it’s just being used to what you’ve always been.
Idenniny is much more magical and profound and meaningfulish than mere being used to what you’re used to.
He’s not kidding about the shit cartoons part.
I also question the assumption that every (non-trans-identifying) man would choose to be a man and every woman would choose to be a woman.
Young me would have asked “do I get to be good looking? Because if so, I’d prefer to be a woman.” I don’t think that any more, but no doubt plenty of men would choose (perhaps foolishly, given our culture) to be women.
And I think there’s no shortage of women, especially in some countries, who would absolutely choose to be men, if only for the obvious benefits in safety and freedom.
Hmm. Maybe, but it seems to me that most people would be squicked by the idea of having to get used to a different body. It has a sort of horror movie vibe. The Fly, etc.
The point is that you can’t choose what body you have, any more than you can choose to have the body of a cat or a dog. If you want to identify as a cat or a dog though, go ahead and be a furry. Just don’t expect everyone to go along with it.
I guess it depends on the specifics of the hypothetical choice being offered.
If I’m just going to be magically changed into a different body, well, that’s going to be difficult on a lot of levels — how do I prove to friends, family, co-workers, government agencies, etc. that I’m me if I don’t look like me any more? How do I explain what happened overnight? So yeah, of course I’d choose to keep my own body (or maybe a slightly younger version of it!) But the gender isn’t really a factor there.
If this is a situation where “reincarnation is true, what would you like to be in your next life,” that doesn’t really freak me out.
No doubt I’m naive about some of the realities of living in a female body. But your comment implies that you’d be squicked out by being reborn as a male.
That cartoon is stupid. I might sincerely have picked a male body if I could pick. The point is, though, that I can’t pick. It does me no good to wish to be the opposite sex; I simply can’t be a sex other than the one my body is. Also: holy binary, Batman! The genderbrain person explicitly recognizes that there are only two kinds of sexed bodies on offer from which to “pick.” Way to shoot yourself in the hundred-gender foot, you cotton-candy-brain idiot. I don’t say that there’s no such thing as “gender identity.” I say that *I* don’t have one. Other people insist that they do. It makes no difference to me. I can’t tell them what they do or don’t think; their minds and thought processes are a black box to me. But so is mine to them. They have no right and no basis upon which to tell me that I have a “gender identity,” when I do not.
There is just SO MUCH wrong with that cartoon.
I don’t see how it’s anything but a pure non sequitur. Gender identity is supposed to be a sense/conception of the self as gendered/sexed, not a hypothetical preference for a male or female form.
Never you mind that this shit cartoon gives the game away by assuming that a man’s body is recognizably different from a woman’s body, when half the Genderist project consists of denying that difference. It’s a fundamental, insoluble contradiction.
Screechy, no, I wasn’t thinking of rebirth, just the “hey presto you’re in a different body now!” hypothetical. I agree that rebirth would be another story. One would want differences or what would be the point?!
People all the time wonder about being animals. They are human, though; that doesn’t make them have a human identity, they simply are human. People who genuinely think they are cats or dogs or whatever don’t have a “feline/canine identity”, they are simply mistaken.
If I were offered a realistic possibility of having a younger, fitter, healthier body, I’d at least think about it. That doesn’t mean I identify as being younger, fitter, and healthier, nor does it mean I identify as being the opposite. My body is the way it is.
While we’re at it, let’s deny gravity and bad weather, and mosquitoes, let’s wish them out of existence too. Etc.
There’s an argument that has done the rounds for years now:
“Hypothetically, how do you think you would feel if your mind was swapped into a body into the opposite sex? Do you think it would it feel foreign or wrong to you?”
“Yes”
“Ah HAH! gender identity is real.”
Obviously I’d find a body of the opposite sex foreign to me, because it’s not the body I’ve known all these decades. But I wouldn’t just find the sex of the new body foreign, I’d find every dimension of it foreign wherever it differs from mine – a new leg length will force me to relearn how to walk, a new thorax would force me to relearn how to talk, my face would startle me every time I see it in a mirror, and so on.
But tweak the situation just a little and it all falls apart – imagine the mind swap occurred at birth and you lived your entire life in that body up to your current age. Suddenly, it becomes obvious that it is merely a matter of being accustomed to your body because it’s the only one you’ve experienced.
Some people are confronted with the reality of suddenly being in a “new” body through catstrophic injury, disease, or illness. I can imagine it would take some time to adjust, physically and mentally, to their changed circumstances, but that has to do with the loss of familiarity, instinsive muscle memory, formerly “automatic” behaviours, damaged bodily integrity, etc. rather than any kind of “identity.” I imagine the realistic chance to regain or retain the capacities and capabilities lost or threatened would be very attractive.
It’s funny how these discussions, like a lot of science fiction, end up smuggling in mind-body duality. It’s just assumed that you can switch bodies and still be “you.”
But really, if “I” were suddenly in the body of a dog/mouse/elephant/mosquito, I would have the brain of a dog/mouse/elephant/mosquito. I wouldn’t be, well, “I,” at all, really.
Now I suppose with just changing to a different human body, I can imagine a scenario where my entire brain has been transplanted, so I have *mostly* a new body. But what would it mean for my testosterone-addicted brain to suddenly be in the skull of a woman, getting fed a miniscule dose of testosterone? Surely I would be, in some sense at least, a different person.
Good point Screechy; I’m still very much in the camp where I’d like to try it for a week or so (most humans are probably like this), but at best it’d be akin to being drunk or high in how far it altered your perceptions, with a new incarnate “you” being a more likely outcome. You are your body after all and that context informs everything about who “you” are. The prospect is actually pretty scary.
Screechy @12, you’re quite right. In fiction (Terry Pratchet’s Disc World) one of the witches was considered a master at ‘borrowing’ – placing her mind into the body of animals. The major risk was that because of the constraints of the donor brain, a human mind would rapidly dissipate and become lost, thus unable to return. In SF, such as the Culture novels, Modern humans have gained the genetic ability to change sex and to adjust their bodies to be largely what they want (mental illnesses nd disorders no longer being a thing). This implicitly that ability to retain yourself becomes acknowledging your changes and differences when you change sex. In The Commonwealth Saga novels, adapting, changing, reliving in new bodies, is all aided by physical adjuncts to the body, and memory/personality edits as required. While none of that stuff is real of course, the Commonwealth Saga handling is probably the least plausible despite its reliance on technology, just because of the obvious mind/body disconnects that will arise.
Anyway, enough of a side track. As with others, I’d love to be able to magic up a different body for myself. I’ve never especially liked mine and as I’ve got older I like it less. But you know what? It’s mine, I have to accept it. Katy’s shit is just that, shit.
Well, to be fair, the whole thing is an impossibility, so the mind-body duality thing is just more of the same. I don’t think we’re smuggling it in so much as addressing the thought experiment on its own terms. Katy’s shit cartoon’s shit thought experiment relies on mind-body dualism so we respond to that framework. I mean, we’re not actually assuming we can switch bodies at all, let alone assuming we can still be our precious selves after doing so.
I’m reminded of the old “We’re all unique and special” “I’m not!” joke.
Oh, I wasn’t criticizing anyone. I was accepting the premise of the thought experiment, too. Just noting that it really is an artificial premise in more ways than the obvious.
True, true.
Shit indeed. This looks like a poorly done rip-off xkcd.
https://xkcd.com/
Hey, if I get to keep my ‘mind’ and change bodies, I’m going for bowhead whale. Those things can live for two centuries, meaning I might actually live long enough for all this crap to die out…..