this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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That's not true. Imagine your friend is nonbinary. If you only believe in men and women, you won't respect them, and you'll perceive them as male or female. But if you believe in nonbinary people, you can choose to see them as their preferred gender. You want to call that a hallucination? I call it being a good person.
If my friend is nonbinary, I'm confronted with a reality that they very much exist, and it becomes ignorance to think in terms of binary gender.
From that point onwards, not believing in nonbinary people's existence is going against the objective reality, which is and always was singular.
What's wrong with my perception of nonbinary people? They do exist, and otherkin do, too.
The true debate behind "X do not exist" is not whether the people seeing themselves in this light exist (they obviously do), but whether we should take self-assessment as a valid criteria for defining those terms, or we should rely on another arbitrary framework.
So, essentially, it's not a debate on existence of such people per se, but on how we should treat them. The rest is a set of semantic tricks to convince people of a certain position.
Objectively, there are people who consider themselves nonbinary/otherkin. Rest is politics.
Personally, I do not think treating it like an illness helps anyone or is in any way constructive, and am happy to treat people the way they want to be treated.
Huh, I didn't expect you to accept otherkin. A realist who accepts otherkin, weird! You learn something new every day!
Alright, suppose my friend Saphira here is dragonkin. Now I will make my views on Saphira clear so that any counterargument of yours need not use a strawman. I believe species is a social construct, and Saphira deserves the right to interpret that construct's relation to herself as she pleases. She has a draconic body on the astral plane, and we need to destroy consensus reality so that other people will perceive her dragon body instead of this fake and bad human body other people have forced onto her.
Now I wanna know what you think, realist. Do you believe that Saphira's dragon body, her wings, and her fire breath are objectively real, and that a kinphobe who looks at her and sees a human is seeing something objectively false?
No, such person is seeing an objective reality that Saphira, in fact, does have a human body, but perceives herself as a dragon.
However, regardless of whether there is a draconic body on some astral plane or if it's her mind doing weird things, it makes no sense to get hostile about it.
She wants to be seen as an astral dragon? Alright, I can treat her as one. If I'll ever see her draconic visage, I'll confront a reality that she is, in fact, a dragon, but for now it's enough for me that she has a draconic identity, which is what actually matters in communication.
Oh, so you're of the "I respect your identity on an intellectual level, but I refuse to put in the effort to perceive you as you are" kind of """ally""". AKA putting in no effort.
Why wouldn't you actually try and do a nice thing for someone? Is it laziness, or stubborn pride?
A nice thing is that I colloquially perceive her as a dragon and address her draconic identity. I would also correct others if she'd want me to.
I do not plan on refusing a reality that she has a human body simply out of being polite though. I would not address her personally as a human, I would address her draconic identity, and I would consider that identity when I think of her, but I would not ignore evidence that she does, in fact, have a human body, and by that reject reality.
Or should she go to the veterinarian if she gets sick? Should we expect her to fly us somewhere, or kindle a fire with her mouth? Trying to turn her draconic nature into the new reality goes against objectivity, and she'll fail at both.
In a similar manner, with all respect to nonbinaries, if they face any issues on the side of systems that differ based on sex, for example, they should address a doctor based on whatever of the two very binary states their bodies have (or, if they are intersex, whichever side troubles them). Going to someone else will not yield a positive result.
But that doesn't mean we should tell your friend that her feelings are not valid. They are. Her identity does not have to be the same as her current body, and that's alright, that happens. It often does cause some level of dysphoria, but we won't make it better by ignoring the identity she grew with, which would be to ignore who she is mentally - which, in turn, is of prime importance in any social interaction.
In other words, objectively, she is physically a human who considers herself to be a dragon. That is the reality that we can always check and explore. Then, we may build social constructs on top of that, including the framework for seeing her socially as a dragon (as social interactions are entirely a construct anyway), since that corresponds to her identity and allows us to better address her needs and better communicate with her. Alternatively, we can redefine the term "dragon" to mean "any creature with a draconic identity". That would work, too, but then we simply change the meanings of words, not the reality.
And before you accuse me of anything, I'm a genderfluid person, but I am aware my body is what's considered "male". I do have a penis, even when I feel like I belong to women - and I am, socially, and would love to be treated as one when I'm in that state. But I do not ask anyone to reject the fact that my body is typical of a male, as unfortunate as it may sometimes be.
All your doomsaying about the negative consequences of perceiving someone as they want to be perceived is bullshit. I perceive otherkin properly all the time and I can still deal with their body stuff effectively. You're trying to start a panic over nothing.
I'm not doomsaying about anything. I only say that we shouldn't reject that otherkin are physically people. You can treat them differently from a social perspective - as you probably should and as you do, but it doesn't erase that they are physically human.
And honestly, it's much less of a deal than you think it is. Society operates social categories, doctors and other people for whom it is important operate physical ones. The debate we currently have is really about defining those social categories.
You say you can effectively deal the otherkin's body stuff - you do it exactly because you know they are physically human, and any body stuff they may have is directly corresponding to human anatomy and physiology.
What you essentially try to defend is the social side of it, the perception I have of these people. You want them to be socially treated differently from human - and I don't mind that in a slightest.
I'm only saying you cannot impose a new physical reality in which bodies of otherkin are not human - they are human, that is alright and it doesn't mean otherkin should be socially treated as humans. Socially, they are not.
But in that we delve further and further from the objective reality we talked about, because the entire field of social interactions is a construct, too. A useful and great one, the one I have no intention to reject - but a construct, and since you deeply care about that, I'm gonna highlight it again.
Okay, so the conservative who looks at your friend and sees a woman - is that conservative hallucinating? You said the only way to change perceived reality is physically or a hallucination. So the difference between your perceptions, are you saying it's mental illness?
First, that wasn't me.
Second, conservative doesn't change the reality of nonbinary people's existence, he's just ignorant about it. The objective reality of their existence still stands.
Ignorance, among other things, produces body of knowledge that does not reflect reality.
What's the "objective reality" of this picture? Is it a rabbit or a duck?
You said everything has an objective reality, and refused to entertain the fact that gender presentation is a social construct, so I expect you to be consistent.
The objective reality is, it is a picture that can be perceived by humans as a picture of rabbit or duck depending on the angle. A copy of a printed paper, a set of black and white pixels.
As I said in another thread talking to you, there is an objective reality that some people see themselves as nonbinary, and that's a fact. In a similar way, there are people who consider themselves "male, female, cis-, trans-". And this is reality too. The way you approach it further is a field of social constructs.
What makes it so the picture has no reality as a rabbit or a duck, but a human being has an objective gender?
The fact that gender is self-assessed and self-determined. We can't ask a picture on whether it's a rabbit or a duck being depicted, and its author deliberately made it look like both. Also, the objective reality is that it's just a picture - you are not confronted with a rabbi-duck coming at you.
We can always ask a person, though, and they do have a certain opinion in what their gender is - an opinion that is essentially a sole basis for gendering someone. So their opinion of their gender essentially defines their gender, which makes it a reality.
I dunno, sounds like you just reinvented social constructs and then pretended they were objective reality.
Also if opinion is the sole determinant, are you saying I was objectively a boy back before my egg cracked? Like that I was a boy and it was objective reality? Ewwwwww!!!!
Gender itself is entirely a social construct. The reality, however, is that this construct exists in our interactions, and that we are unable to define it based on anything but self-assessment.
Still, if we switch back to the scope of the objective reality about humans themselves, gender is entirely social.
Objective reality operates the category of sex and couldn't care less about whatever we created around it - including gender and gender roles.