LogFAQs > #956175798

Sahuagin posted...

you're just saying "it's morally neutral so it's morally neutral". you're starting with a moral conclusion and pretending that that's the starting point.

That is the starting point. If you wish to challenge the premise that nudity is morally neutral, you're welcome to make that argument, but so far everything you've done toward such a goal has relied on bringing in other acts and intentions that are not neutral and trying to conflate nudity itself with them.

As said before, I can't prove a negative, but I have no reason not to believe it if I've never been given a reason. So give me a reason. Demonstrate how/why nudity is not inherently morally neutral.

Sahuagin posted...

that's almost all I'm looking for

It's not exactly a particularly meaningful statement on its own. Virtually everything we do with any chance of affecting other people has some degree of wrongness, since there's a chance it will somehow bother or inconvenience somebody else. From the basis of "it has a degree of wrongness," you could try arguing that making a left turn (or right turn, in LHD areas) from a non-dedicated left turn lane is morally wrong because it holds up people behind you that want to go straight, but that would just be silly.

Sahuagin posted...

no, doesn't necessarily need to go that far. maybe, justifies the intuition that we'd rather not do that if we can avoid it.

However strong the "don't do it" sentiment is, that assessment is going to rely on a cost-benefit analysis. You will always weigh the benefits of continuing the practice against how much harm is caused by it and make your decision accordingly. "Somebody objects to this" is never going to be enough to justify avoiding a practice on its own. You need to assess some measure of objective harm (bearing in mind that somebody not liking it can end up qualifying as objective harm, such as cases where that dislike is so intense as to cause psychological trauma) and compare that to what benefit it provides.

In this case, you have "I don't want to see a penis here" being weighed against the profound psychological benefit of accepting trans people as their target gender. Me, I think a 50% reduction in suicide risk is more important than the complete lack of harm anyone has been able to demonstrate as being associated with seeing a penis. This leads to the conclusion that lady needs to chill (and also punch herself for being such an abject hypocrite, but that's a separate issue). I would reevaluate this conclusion if anyone were to demonstrate some sort of harm, but that's not looking particularly likely, so on we go.

Sahuagin posted...

ok, "a situation she was not expecting and would have avoided if she had had the option and been informed about the situation"

So replace "transphobe" with "somebody that really doesn't like Spongebob." There are plenty of people out there that would see that bright yellow face and oversized eyes and be unable to stop themselves from hearing that piercing, nasal laughter ringing in their heads, filling them with rage and completely ruining their nice day at the spa. Should we not act to protect them from such a traumatic experience?

Sahuagin posted...

I don't ever recall saying anything about the person not being permitted to be there. I have repeatedly said that the woman should have been made to understand the situation.

Here's the thing: People are different. There's a near-infinite variety of unexpected physical features you can encounter when you walk into a room full of strangers (naked or otherwise), such that it's never going to be anywhere close to remotely possible to keep people informed of everything they can expect to see. The only way to achieve anything close to that here would be to have a staff member that sat in the room and listed notable physical features of every single guest that came in, displaying that list outside of the room so each new visitor would know exactly what to expect. That's just a ridiculous idea, even without considering that it ultimately wouldn't work all that well because the observer would inevitably ignore some traits that some customer or other would consider notable.

I understand that you're talking about identifying unusual people and not outright banning them, but my point is that there's ample precedent for that not being necessary or expected. What makes trans women so special that they do warrant a personal warning label, when countless other physical traits that are far more uncommon than penises get a free pass?

Sahuagin posted...

I don't think I've said anything about that. the trans person is not at fault. the presence of a trans-inclusive spa is fine. allowing a woman that is not comfortable being there to experience the situation that she experienced, when she would have chosen not to given all the information, is not ok.

Saying "I think it's great that you're so obviously different from everyone else here! We're going to publicly announce that people that are so obviously different from everyone else here are still welcome here so that anyone that does have a problem with how obviously different you are knows not to come see how obviously different you are!" is not acceptance. Accepting trans people means just letting them live their lives with no special recognition or treatment based on the fact that they're trans. Acting like you're doing them a favour by letting them in and calling attention to that fact very emphatically is not treating them like normal people.

The problem here is transphobia and archaic, pointless hangups about cross-gender nudity. Not a lack of communication, not any sort of moral failure on the part of the spa or trans people, just a lady getting uppity because she's convinced herself that seeing a lady with a dong is somehow traumatic. That's something society as a whole needs to get over, because it literally kills people (both indirectly, through suicide inspired by a lack of acceptance, and directly, through violence against trans people that enter the "wrong" spaces from people that feel justified attacking them over it).

To be clear, I have never had any reason to believe that you're a transphobic person and I'm not accusing you of transphobia. I do think, however, you need to realize that the position you're arguing (that people ought to be warned about situations where they might see trans people so they can avoid them if desired) is one that enables and encourages transphobia on a societal scale. The only way we're going to move past this as a society is to normalize the visible presence of trans people and stop normalizing and forgiving behaviour like that of this lady. You're arguing in favour of the exact opposite of that. I'm all for generally trying to keep people well-informed so they can make decisions on their terms, but sometimes, people just need to get the hell over themselves and let other people live their lives. This is one of those cases.

---

This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.