Titanic feelings

"Why is it so difficult to recognize that every person has the right to choose a life and body in which he can feel at home?" 'Presumably, because we care about the future of kids, and not just their present; we recognise that childhood and adolescence is a formative time for the human personality, and that in our weird western societies adolescents are particularly prone to mental illness as a result of the pressures they face. This does not mean that all gender dysphoric kids will "grow out" of their condition; but it warrants a degree of caution in prescribing irreversible, costly or potentially harmful treatments, without a proper understanding of the condition and a scientific diagnosis based on individual cases rather than the "one size fits all" approach of the libertarians.' The concern for these children and adolescents is quite understandable. So it's a good thing that children with such wishes have to go through a whole circuit before their wishes can be met. But the right time is not easy to determine, because it will be somewhere else for every child. Too early can lead to a lot of pain and sorrow if it later turns out that a wrong choice has been made. But waiting a long time can also be very problematic. The woman, who had the feeling all her life that she was born in the wrong body, could convince herself to just continue as a woman. She married and had a child. It didn't help; She continued to feel that she was a man in a woman's body. And so she had herself converted and is now much happier. But her daughter says to me: "why did she have to give birth to me first; Why did she wait so long? Now I have to say daddy to my mother..." I am inclined to say that conversion should not be done too late. What is wisdom? "One size fits all" of course makes no sense at all. There are limits to be drawn, but those boundaries must remain flexible. 'For despite the mystifications of atomism and voluntarism, we are not in fact atomic individuals making "free", voluntaristic choices, but a product of the various social and cultural forces to which we are subjected, a cultural matrix that should be challenged rather than accepted as a given.' Sorry, but I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. Perhaps lack of intelligence on my part. 'I once knew a very nice 14 year old boy. The local drug pushers definitely agreed with you that he had the right to choose the life that he wanted. Two years later, he was dead. The "right to choose" that ignores the social and cultural framework may have very ambiguous results, and it is results that we should care about, isn't it?' Definitely true. But we don't know what would have happened to him if he had chosen another path. An 18-year-old boy I tutored was irrepressibly looking for the why of everything, and especially for his own. Extreme gymnastics, cold water experiments, breathing exercises and various drugs, he tried everything in vain. A beautiful boy, who is now under the grass: died after an overdose. 'The libertarians here want free choice but have either given up on changing the culture or are in favour of it as it is. But it is the culture that is against us; it is the culture that leads people to view their childhood sexual experiences as abuse; it is the culture that teaches every child that any adult who shows the slightest erotic interest in them must be viewed with horror and immediately reported to authority.' I agree, but there is so much more wrong in society right and left. It feels like we're cruising around on a titanic and no longer know whether to run right or left to save ourselves. 'This is perhaps connected with another difference. The libertarians here look to America as the country that will embrace pederasty in some sort of massive sexual revolution, with the rest of the world following obediently behind. When challenged about the plausibility of this scenario they have been characteristically silent, which is no doubt wise on their part.' I think you overestimate the US. Acceptance of pederasty can only come from the bottom up and even that doesn't seem likely to me. I fear that it will take a gigantic disaster first. Just as HIV has helped gay society, for example. Sad, but pity can bring solutions. 'Those on the other side are more critical of western capitalist culture and rather think that America will be the last country in the world to embrace pederasty. More likely, it will never tolerate pederasty at all. The libertarians cannot accept this, because this would conflict with their progressivist "everything's getting better" view of history, which cannot contemplate the idea that history is just a patchwork of societies and cultures that has no inner reason or logic, with here and there a toleration of pederasty breaking out, but always liable to eclipse by opposing forces.' Again, I don't think the acceptance from the US is to be expected. 'But it does seem to me that toleration of pederasty, if only implicit, is much more likely to come about as the tentacles of the US loosen their grip and withdraw into their homeland, leaving the rest of the world to pursue their own cultural trajectories rather than yank monoculture. Admittedly this will not happen before the second half of the century, but then it is hardly likely that the child sex revolution will happen in America by mid century either.' We don't know if and when the titanic will break. But the signs are grim. 'The upshot is that, whichever of us is right, most of us won't be around to witness a more tolerant society anyway.' Then I will move with a silver spoon to another planet ;)