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A thread about two movements, transgender and transhumanism. Similar ideas, similar issues. In today's @nytimes Jeffrey Epstein (accused of sex trafficking) is revealed as a huge supporter of transhumanism, a philosophy I've come across a lot while making science docs.
Many brilliant scientists are attracted to its core idea that one day human beings will liberate themselves from the limitations of our biology, becoming a mix of cyborg and flesh, capable of mental and physical feats that would astonish mere ordinary humans now. If it sounds ...
like science fiction, then advocates point out that's not a problem since lots of our modern technology was inspired by sci fi from MP3s to the mobile phone. That said, there's a distinctly religious-style faith among supporters as I came across when I interviewed ...
Nick Bostrom, an iconic figure, for BBC Horizon where he discussed how in the future technology may even be able to overcome Einstein's proscription on time travel. Mad? Maybe. But when I made a film with Stephen Hawking (sorry for the name drops) he too suggested we may have ..
...to leave our biology behind if we're to escape climate disaster. It doesn't take much to see why all this would also appeal to the transgender movement, which in many ways defines itself as defying biology, and in its case perhaps the biggest, most ..
..most inescapable biological limitation on human beings- other than death- which is sex. The idea that one's real sex is located not in one's physical body but in some free-floating mind or consciousness is also not so very...
...different from the transhumanist dream that our consciouness will one day be able to flit from one cyborg form to another. The two movements have drawn inspiration from each other. The advance of elective gender surgery has inspired transhumanist thinkers to imagine ...
...free markets may help drive new technological ways of 'improving' our bodies. Equally the idea that science or even virtual reality might make biological sex and sexuality anachronistic is part of the landscape of Queer Theory imaginings. Donna Harraway's brilliant
...and fabulously bonkers 'Simians, Cyborgs & Women' from 1991 became a key text for many transactivists because it conjured up (or seems to) a post-gender future in which technology takes control of biology in service of utopian socialistic ideals (good luck with that). So...
..how does Epstein fit into this story? The problem with both transgenderism and transhumanism is that their wide-eyed optimism and almost religious belief that they represent the salvation of humanity makes them often wilfully naive or worse about the world as it is now.
The people who build that utopian future are the messy, deeply flawed people who live around us, including the Epsteins. So as Epstein was feted by physicists who dreamed of zipping around at Warp Factor 9 he was allegedly indulging in the ancient abuse of...
...sex trafficking women. None of the scientists seemed to have clocked that his hot dream he described of seeding the universe with his sperm collected in stud farms in Mexico might be a clue to something not quite right about his version of transhumanism. Even the saintly..
Stephen Hawking, whom I much admired otherwise, loved visiting strip clubs! And just as transhumanism can't escape the real biology of its supporters neither can transgenderism. So while trangender activists bemoan a supposed ...
..obsession of their critics with the potential threat of rape or assault of women by male-bodied transwomen the activists themselves appear to have a wilful blindspot about actual misogyny and actual violence. Forget if you can the sexism ...
...of abusive activists posting images of themselves with knives or threatening to kill so-called terfs. Maybe that's not surprising given the contempt for women in a movement that celebrates a man wearing a dress one day a week winning an award as a 'women achiever' ..
...or for that matter that same contempt embodied in the fact that someone can be a narcissistic young gay man one day and then...within months be representing women in a major political party in a women's committee set up to promote women precisely because there is a crying lack
of representation of women. You see like transhumanism ...transgenderism seems to operate on the assumption that when a person believes in the bright new future they have magically given up the engrained prejudices or flaws they might have had before.
The blind spot extends to darker territory than online abuse. Epstein territory you might say. Take the case of Aimee Challoner. Big hit in the Lib Dems now and billed as a Diversity Officer in the Coventry Party. This is the transwoman who failed to tell the Green Party..
..when she was their candidate that her father, her official election agent, (& pro trans activist) was up on a charge of child rape. The Greens didn't throw Aimee out of the party. Heaven forbid. She left citing a transphobic lack of support. You'd think trans activists might ..
..learn. But as of now @PinkNews is still defending Jessica Yaniv, whose desire to have his male genitals waxed by minority women isn't as we might assume straight out perv or predator behaviour; like it would be if it was an old fashioned bioligical man doing it. No instead..
it's an important legal precedent. Sheesh. There IS one difference between these two similar biology-defying movements. Transhumanism is talking about a distant future that may be science fiction for all we know. The other right here and now is funded by our taxes..
..to promote its ideas in schools, among important institutions like police and hospitals. It's the one that has inserted its key ideas into policy in all the major political parties. It is the one that now considers itself beyond criticism. Transgenderism like transhumanism
may prove to be a part of some brilliant new future. But in the here and now it has to get its house in order. You can play around as much as you like with biological categories in your mind and in the future. But some people are pervs, and some are predators. Don't defend them.
@threadreaderapp unroll this thread please
