As a politically concerned Biohacker and transhumanism advocate I find these #transgender laws a heinous offense to science.
I've had a few transgender friends and I called them by their preferred pronouns because they were my friends and I'll call my friends whatever they want to be called, even if it seems a bit silly.
But I'm VERY opposed to laws that mandate the opinions I can express.
In places like Canada it's now or will soon be criminalized to "misgender" people. The ostensible purpose of this is to prevent "hate speech" but in reality it will have a terrible effect retarding the advancement of biological science.
For example, a Canadian researcher at a university is working on developing a transformative new therapy protocol to treat depression.
The therapy has a hormonal mechanism. We all know there are significant hormonal difference between men and women.
Now imagine that a transgendered man who is biologically a women volunteers to participate in the study because they are depressed.
Under the new Canadian laws, the researchers would NOT be allowed "misgender" this participant in their published research. They would NOT be able to move that individual into the female cohort group of study subjects, unless they wanted to be dragged through bureaucratic hell of a "human rights tribunal", lynched in the court of public opinion by the politically correct #FakeNews media and subject to the hysteric rage of the social justice mob.
So the researcher would put the participant's data in the wrong cohort group. This would drastically alter the accuracy of the data the study produced. It would be tantamount to using the study's data as toilet paper and throwing it in the trash.
As a result scientists and researchers will avoid like the plague any biological science that could possibly have any connection to the biological essentialism of gender which is almost ALL biological science.
I spend like 10 hours a week reading research and abstracts of studies on PubMed. Studies from all over the world. At least a 3rd of those studies mention the duality of male/female gender.
The downstream effect of these laws is a damned moratorium on biological science.
And even though most transgender people don't even want these laws throughout the developed world progressive politicians and activists near you are pushing to enshrine similar "hate speech" laws. I regard these laws as a most insidious intellectual tyranny.
If we want to advance anti-aging science so we can one day cure cancer, truly unlock the power of the human mind and ultimately conquer death we NEED for biological science to be unbound by dogmatic, political laws and divisive identity politics.
People may call me a bigot for my position on this, but the truth is I'm cool with transgender folks. I don't hate them or anyone else really. Some guys like to go salsa dancing on a Saturday night and some guys may like to put on a dress and lipstick and get their groove on. I don't care what other consenting adults do in their own bedrooms.
But these draconian laws I fear may fatally injure science.
What do you think?
Is there any silver lining to this?
Or are these transgender laws something that people who really care about science should fight back against?
Edited by jroseland, 06 October 2017 - 01:23 PM.