I don’t think it’s a generational thing, because I do object to the self-labeling freedom. Yes, it sounds bad to be against something called “freedom”, but it is necessary unless you want to bite the bullet in favor of things like “freedom to make up whatever beliefs you want without evidence”—which is what I think is ultimately at stake here.
I want shared maps that reflect the territory. We want people to have the freedom to modify their body and social presentation in the territory, but I don’t think this (not even the social presentation part) implies the abstract self-labeling freedom that many people seem to want, because I think labels are supposed to objectively describe something in the territory. I like words like “transfeminine”, because they point to a specific meaning with truth conditions (male people who have undergone interventions to become more female-like).
I don’t think it’s a generational thing, because I do object to the self-labeling freedom. Yes, it sounds bad to be against something called “freedom”, but it is necessary unless you want to bite the bullet in favor of things like “freedom to make up whatever beliefs you want without evidence”—which is what I think is ultimately at stake here.
I want shared maps that reflect the territory. We want people to have the freedom to modify their body and social presentation in the territory, but I don’t think this (not even the social presentation part) implies the abstract self-labeling freedom that many people seem to want, because I think labels are supposed to objectively describe something in the territory. I like words like “transfeminine”, because they point to a specific meaning with truth conditions (male people who have undergone interventions to become more female-like).