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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 19th, 2023

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  • This is an unhelpful and condescending comment. It dismisses the meaningful activities people engage in online as “not life”: self expression, creating art and community, working, socializing, enjoying entertainment, and learning new things. It proposes a false dichotomy wherein not-online is utopic with universally accessible activities and, especially, an absence of the very same people who make online spaces toxic hellholes. They are present in “real spaces” too. These are not mutually exclusive things. You are likely to find that pro-social activists online are often try to be pro-social activists in person as well.

    That being said, I agree that people get terminally online and that balancing digital and physical lives are important. Managing attention and mental health are important, especially when content about important and meaningful topics turn into viral and incessant feeds that are geared to overwhelm human brains that weren’t evolved to handle such constant cognitive/emotional stress.

    Take care out there folks.




  • Current best practice AFAIK is exactly this. Gender care includes psychiatric/mental health, and occupational (ish) therapy that leads up to surgery after a lot of care. Gender dysphoria, like many things has an internal and external layer where society sets expectations and acts on us based on our gender expression in ways that can be quite brutal. Some folks may end up enby or smth or find something acceptable without surgery, which has its downsides. However none of this should preclude surgery as an option, as evidence has shown it is a highly effective treatment in our current context.

    This is the biomedical view that focuses on dysfunction and suffering of the individual and addressing that dysfunction. There is a more philosophical/existential view worth understanding to balance the biomedical view. It is one that acknowledges that we are who we are and we develop the way we develop. If we are to flourish as humans and as a society, it must be through compassion for each others’ experiences as human subjects struggling to figure ourselves and each other out. Imposing one’s worldview on others by force is to treat humans as objects through manipulation. That’s mistaken and harmful. Compassion doesn’t mean you don’t stand up to bullies or you don’t resist injustice or you don’t fight back in self defense. It means you’re always seeking to humanize rather than dominate. This can mean supporting trans folks in accessing care or it can mean helping them to consider all their options.