From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reprodictiveness
Date: 18 Dec 92 16:19:14 GMT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Dec18.023243.3435@netcom.com> 
robj@netcom.com (Rob Jellinghaus) writes:

>In article <1992Dec17.123506.18613@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>From the standpoint concerned with the essential nature (admittedly
>>neither legal, nor social), as represented by the genotype, your
>>protagonist would be male, appearances and phenotype notwithstanding.

RJ:
>Ah.  So you admit that your philosophical standpoint is disconnected
>from the legal, social, visual, and physical (phenotypic) standpoints.
>And moreover it took you years to convince yourself it was correct.
>What we have here is a viewpoint which you have clearly spent an
>inordinate amount of time developing, moving further away from the
>real world at each stage.  It is a wonder people believe what you are
>saying is relevant in any way to the real world.

Is it bothering you that someone can appear as a woman without being
one?  Surely it is not a task of moral philosophy to validate every
commonplace moral judgment.  Female phenotype corresponding to the XX
genotype is the prevalent norm; and furthermore, if femininity is a
natural kind, there is no option for its essence but the genotype.  Of
course, you may be more comfortable with defining gender in accordance
with social conventions; then you just might ask yourself what makes
you feel that way.  By contrast, I believe that right inheres in the
necessary laws of nature, rather than the passing conventions of
society.  To each his own.

RJ:
>Fortunately, here on USENET, you have found a community which delights
>in wasting time attempting to refute eccentric theories such as yours.
>This gives you an audience and gives thousands of others a chance to
>decide for themselves whether your theory has merit.  Not that it 
>matters what any of them think--you know yourself to be correct....
>
>Thankfully, networks such as this seem to be better at exposing
>bogosities and irrelevancies than many other forms of discourse.
>There is room for you in your self-created mental niche, but I suspect
>the vast majority of people here are seeing ever more clearly exactly
>how suspect your "arguments" are.  And those of us who are concerned
>with the real world are very happy to see those people making up their
>own minds... perhaps they will help in trying to make the real world a
>safer place for people of all sexual orientations.

Nothing here to rebut, except by noting that if you think that my
arguments are meant to prevent people from "making up their own
minds", or lessen the safety of "people of all sexual orientations",
you are suffering from paranoid delusions.

>-- 
>Rob Jellinghaus    |  "Next time you see a lie being spread or a bad 
>robj@netcom.com    |   decision being made out of sheer ignorance,
>robj@xanadu.com    |   pause, and think of hypertext."
>uunet!netcom!robj  |       -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Xref: sparky talk.philosophy.misc:3028 rec.arts.books:22759 alt.politics.homosexuality:8153