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Author Topic:   Where is the line between a disorder and else?
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 16 of 77 (704781)
08-16-2013 7:33 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Rahvin
08-16-2013 7:09 PM


Re: Consistent ?
Again, looking from today you can say that a human was not considered a human, but that has nothing to do with the reality.
The rule at the time was that slaves were not humans but rather property.
It was a conclusion that was repeated many times in many societies.
Rather, we should be analyzing the rules we make, and deciding whether those rules should be kept or changed, or if we're adhering to them consistently.
I have no problem with most of that; I just see no value to always insisting on consistency.

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Rahvin, posted 08-16-2013 7:09 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
yenmor
Member (Idle past 3655 days)
Posts: 145
Joined: 07-01-2013


Message 17 of 77 (704783)
08-16-2013 11:42 PM


To all, I apologize for having wrongly used the word "natural". It was the first word that came to my mind but it is not the right word to use.
Stile assumed what I meant correctly when he said
Stile writes:
I don't really care if we call it "natural" or "a disorder" or whatever.
It sounds to me like your question is more along the lines of "should I do what I can to prevent them from amputating a limb or two? Or should I accept that this is something they feel is important and necessary and not stand in their way?"
Thank you Stile for clearing it up for me.
I accept that there are plenty of things that are natural but we do our darnest to get rid of... like pimples. And I also accept that there are plenty of unnatural things that are good, like my car.
The real dilemma I've been having is where do I draw the line between tolerating something and not tolerate it? Because I'm finding that the same arguments I have against not interfering with one's desire to amputate healthy limbs can be used against my own relationship with my partner. That's what bothers me.

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by New Cat's Eye, posted 08-19-2013 11:26 AM yenmor has replied

  
yenmor
Member (Idle past 3655 days)
Posts: 145
Joined: 07-01-2013


Message 18 of 77 (704784)
08-16-2013 11:44 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Stile
08-16-2013 11:01 AM


Re: Personal Choice
Stile writes:
That's exactly what a troll would say!
Don't make me start posting nonsensical rants with lots of exclamation points and pictures of weird animals.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Stile, posted 08-16-2013 11:01 AM Stile has not replied

  
yenmor
Member (Idle past 3655 days)
Posts: 145
Joined: 07-01-2013


Message 19 of 77 (704785)
08-16-2013 11:52 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by Taq
08-16-2013 7:02 PM


Taq writes:
Our moral imperative is to prevent people from hurting themselves because of psychological issues. Amputations brush up against that moral imperative. Being gay does not. You are harming no one, and are in fact improving your life by being involved in relationships that enrich your life.
According to some people who have confronted my partner and I, we are hurting
-our families
-our society by advocating the extinction of the human race
-teenage girls because homosexuality leads to teenage pregnancy
-everyone around us because our relationship grosses them out
-ourselves because we'll never have biological children, get aids, etc.
Those reasons I listed may sound like they were made with tongue in cheek, but I assure you they were made very seriously by some very serious people.
And if you go online to some anti-gay marriage websites, they can give you many many many valid reasons why my relationship with my partner is wrong in light of our society. Who are we to say their arguments are invalid but ours are not?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by Taq, posted 08-16-2013 7:02 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 20 by ringo, posted 08-17-2013 12:36 PM yenmor has not replied
 Message 48 by Taq, posted 08-20-2013 12:52 PM yenmor has not replied

  
ringo
Member (Idle past 411 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 20 of 77 (704792)
08-17-2013 12:36 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by yenmor
08-16-2013 11:52 PM


yenmor writes:
According to some people who have confronted my partner and I, we are hurting
-our families
Everybody hurts their families. One of the most common ways is by not being what they wanted you to be. As a gay friend of mine used to say, you can only be who you are.
-our society by advocating the extinction of the human race
Extinction is not an imminent problem. Overpopulation is. You're doing all you can to prevent overpopulation.
-teenage girls because homosexuality leads to teenage pregnancy
Pigs can fly.
-everyone around us because our relationship grosses them out
Women with too much makeup gross me out. Cashews gross me out.
-ourselves because we'll never have biological children, get aids, etc.
We all hurt ourselves. Every choice we make (not that homosexuality is a choice) has an up side and a down side. We sacrifice our career for our children or we sacrifice our children for our career.
yenmor writes:
Who are we to say their arguments are invalid but ours are not?
I can make a valid argument that nobody should parachute out of a perfectly good airplane - but that doesn't give me the right to prevent people from doing it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by yenmor, posted 08-16-2013 11:52 PM yenmor has not replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 21 of 77 (704858)
08-19-2013 11:26 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by yenmor
08-16-2013 11:42 PM


The real dilemma I've been having is where do I draw the line between tolerating something and not tolerate it? Because I'm finding that the same arguments I have against not interfering with one's desire to amputate healthy limbs can be used against my own relationship with my partner.
I don't have a problem with being an inconsistent jerk and saying that if you want to cut your arm off then there is something seriously wrong with your head. But if you want to be consistent and tolerant, then you're going to have to support medical amputation for people with BIID when they can't be treated otherwise.
At what point should we stop calling it natural and begin calling it a disorder?
Unless you're using medical definitions, a disorder is just another way of saying disease, and disease is just a lack of ease. Pretty much anything abnormal that makes your life more difficult can count as one.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by yenmor, posted 08-16-2013 11:42 PM yenmor has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 11:53 AM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
yenmor
Member (Idle past 3655 days)
Posts: 145
Joined: 07-01-2013


(1)
Message 22 of 77 (704861)
08-19-2013 11:53 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by New Cat's Eye
08-19-2013 11:26 AM


Catholic Scientist writes:
I don't have a problem with being an inconsistent jerk and saying that if you want to cut your arm off then there is something seriously wrong with your head. But if you want to be consistent and tolerant, then you're going to have to support medical amputation for people with BIID when they can't be treated otherwise.
And there are plenty of people who say there is something seriously wrong with my head for not wanting to be with a woman.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by New Cat's Eye, posted 08-19-2013 11:26 AM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by New Cat's Eye, posted 08-19-2013 11:59 AM yenmor has replied
 Message 24 by Theodoric, posted 08-19-2013 12:33 PM yenmor has not replied
 Message 65 by Taq, posted 08-20-2013 8:09 PM yenmor has not replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 23 of 77 (704862)
08-19-2013 11:59 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by yenmor
08-19-2013 11:53 AM


And there are plenty of people who say there is something seriously wrong with my head for not wanting to be with a woman.
So?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 11:53 AM yenmor has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 3:05 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 24 of 77 (704863)
08-19-2013 12:33 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by yenmor
08-19-2013 11:53 AM


Fuck 'em.
They can mind their own damn business.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 11:53 AM yenmor has not replied

  
yenmor
Member (Idle past 3655 days)
Posts: 145
Joined: 07-01-2013


Message 25 of 77 (704868)
08-19-2013 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by New Cat's Eye
08-19-2013 11:59 AM


Logically, I can't find a reason to tell someone who wants to amputate a healthy limb because they "feel like it" without that reason coming back to bite me in the ass. But my common sense is screaming at me telling me there's something seriously wrong with that picture.
Do you understand me?
I don't want to be like black folks. After generations of struggle to gain their rights and place in mainstream society, they are now the most homophobic group of people. They continue to lag behind everyone else when it comes to percentage of acceptance of gay people. I don't want to be like that.
But at the same time, my common sense is screaming at me telling me otherwise with regard to people who want to amputate healthy limbs for no reason other than they feel like it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by New Cat's Eye, posted 08-19-2013 11:59 AM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by Rahvin, posted 08-19-2013 3:58 PM yenmor has not replied
 Message 27 by New Cat's Eye, posted 08-19-2013 4:39 PM yenmor has not replied
 Message 28 by nwr, posted 08-19-2013 4:51 PM yenmor has not replied
 Message 29 by NoNukes, posted 08-19-2013 5:46 PM yenmor has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 26 of 77 (704870)
08-19-2013 3:58 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by yenmor
08-19-2013 3:05 PM


Logically, I can't find a reason to tell someone who wants to amputate a healthy limb because they "feel like it" without that reason coming back to bite me in the ass. But my common sense is screaming at me telling me there's something seriously wrong with that picture.
Your "common sense" is driven by your sense of empathy - you're placing yourself in the shoes of another, and trying to understand how they'd feel. The problem is that your internal goals are different - you each prioritize personal body integrity differently. When you try to empathize, your brain says "but I don't want to cut off my arm, and neither can I think of a situation where I would." This mismatch is essentially what causes us to think others are "crazy" - attempting to understand a personally incomprehensible position held by another.
When we empathize, we're basically trying to simulate what another person feels using our own brains. When I empathize with an angry person, I trigger the "anger" circuitry in my own brain, and whatever I feel is what I simulate the angry person to be feeling. That usually serves us pretty well - human brains are very similar. But if I try to simulate a desire that I'd be extremely unlikely to ever hold under just about any circumstance, it doesn't work.
So try empathizing based on a different trigger. Stop thinking about the specific action the person wants to take with their own body, and start thinking about the person's ability to decide for him/herself what happens to his/her body. You and I can make decisions on whether to accept medical treatment, or to seek it, and our personal body integrity is protected by law - you cannot legally force someone to have a medical procedure.
Instead of trying to empathize based on the trigger of limb removal, imagine how you would feel if someone told you you couldn't get a tattoo or piercing, or that you had to undergo a medical procedure you don't consent to.
I find it much easier to empathize from that angle, and the decision becomes more clear. I'd still advise a requirement that a person who desires amputation receive counseling to ensure they have fully thought through what they want to happen and all of the consequences...but I don't see it as particularly different from the plight of a transgendered person.
I think it's interesting that a large number of people seem to be responding without actually explaining the reasoning behind their positions. Some are even saying "I have no problem making an arbitrary or inconsistent decision in this case," meaning they know that they're using some different criteria in this case from other decisions in similar cases, but they don't seem to know what those criteria are. It reeks of arguing from the gut - making an argument that one doesn't even understand oneself for reasons one cannot identify. So far as I can tell, nobody in this thread has identified a reason that a person who wants a limb removed is "crazy" other than that the individual responder says so.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995...
"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
Nihil supernum

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 3:05 PM yenmor has not replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 27 of 77 (704872)
08-19-2013 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by yenmor
08-19-2013 3:05 PM


Logically, I can't find a reason to tell someone who wants to amputate a healthy limb because they "feel like it" without that reason coming back to bite me in the ass. But my common sense is screaming at me telling me there's something seriously wrong with that picture.
Do you understand me?
I think so. It looks like you forgot to include what you'd be telling them, but I assume its that they shouldn't amputate the limb.
You're gonna have to look past your common sense. My common sense tells me that the last thing a man would want in his mouth is a dick, but I'm not going to tell you not to suck one.
But at the same time, my common sense is screaming at me telling me otherwise with regard to people who want to amputate healthy limbs for no reason other than they feel like it.
If you really think they have no other reason than feeling like it, then you haven't looked into it enough. Their brain is telling them that they should not have that limb. And amputation becomes an option after other treatment methods have failed.
Its not just someone going: "Man, I kinda want to chop off my leg", they actually think that they're not supposed to be having the limb.
Imagine an ear growing out of your forehead, or something like that. Or better yet, the pimple you mentioned earlier. Are you really going to let it sit in the spotlight because you only "feel like it" shouldn't be there? Or do you have a more deep-seeded desire to get rid of it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 3:05 PM yenmor has not replied

  
nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 28 of 77 (704875)
08-19-2013 4:51 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by yenmor
08-19-2013 3:05 PM


I don't want to be like black folks. After generations of struggle to gain their rights and place in mainstream society, they are now the most homophobic group of people. They continue to lag behind everyone else when it comes to percentage of acceptance of gay people. I don't want to be like that.
I'll say a word for the black folk.
Their homophobic attitudes come from their churches. Their churches are particularly important, because for many years they were their community. As racism reduces, we will likely see a corresponding reduction in the importance of the black churches, and a consequent reduction in homophobia. But we cannot expect that to happen all at once, especially since the racism didn't end all at once.

Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 3:05 PM yenmor has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 29 of 77 (704881)
08-19-2013 5:46 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by yenmor
08-19-2013 3:05 PM


I don't want to be like black folks. After generations of struggle to gain their rights and place in mainstream society, they are now the most homophobic group of people.
It sounds to me as if you fear that you are already just like black folks and you want us to talk you out of feeling guilty about your feelings.
Being gay is not a disorder, does not harm the gay person, and accordingly does not require treatment. It is, in fact, cruel to inflict faux treatment on gay people in an attempt to "convert" them.
As best as I can understand it, BIID is a disorder and amputation does harm the person. Perhaps one day that supposition will turn out to be wrong, and it is important that we keep questioning that finding. But given that, I find it easy to make the distinction.
If you cannot make the distinction, then you are indeed the hypocrite you believe black people are.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
Richard P. Feynman
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 3:05 PM yenmor has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Rahvin, posted 08-19-2013 6:16 PM NoNukes has replied
 Message 43 by yenmor, posted 08-19-2013 11:44 PM NoNukes has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 30 of 77 (704883)
08-19-2013 6:16 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by NoNukes
08-19-2013 5:46 PM


As best as I can understand it, BIID is a disorder and amputation does harm the person.
Define "harm."
If one were to ask a person with BIID what he/she thought, I doubt they would agree that removing the limb would "harm" them. In fact, I expect that they'd argue that the limb itself is "harming" them. Certainly their quality of life with the limb is lower than what they expect from a life without the limb.
Let's be more pointed: explain the difference between a person who identifies as female and wants to alter her body so that it matches her internal identity, even though that means hormones and surgery and tissue removal, and another person who feels "wrong" about their left arm, feels oppressed and ill and just not right every hour of every day, and in order to remove that feeling is willing to remove their left arm, even though that means surgery and the removal of tissue and the ability to hold two items at once and so on.
How are these two people substantially different? Please be specific. Is surgery "harm" in one case, both cases, or neither case? Why? Please be specific. Is one, both, or neither individual "crazy?" Why? Please be specific.
Is it any business of yours what another person wants to do with their own body, being fully cognizant of the consequences of their actions? If so, why? Please be specific.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995...
"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
Nihil supernum

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by NoNukes, posted 08-19-2013 5:46 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 31 by jar, posted 08-19-2013 6:19 PM Rahvin has replied
 Message 38 by NoNukes, posted 08-19-2013 8:07 PM Rahvin has replied

  
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