Or several analogies tbh. You see, even if advanced medicine could totally transfigure the male body into a female one, down to the very chromosomes, it would still not be a women because the resulting creature would lack authenticity.
Today we have printing devices that can produce copies of famous paintings in such a detailed way that the human eye is not able to spot the difference. But for some reason those copies are traded only for a tiny fraction of the worth of the original pieces. Why is that? It totally looks the same, doesn’t it?
The difference is the lack of authenticity. The copies have not been painstakingly created by a dedicated and creative artist in his study sometimes in the 18th century in plague/war ridden France or Italy. There was no creative spark or sacrifice (of time and emotions) involved in the process. It was just a soulless replication that took 5 minutes and 100 ml of RGB-ink.
It is this authenticity that gives value to something.
Another example:
Imagine you have a child that you love very much. Now there is an accident and the child dies. You are very sad. However, your futuristic insurance company offers you to create a perfect clone of the child complete with all its memories prior to the accident. It also offers you to remove your own memories of the accident.
Would you agree to it? If you are hesitating even for a moment, it is because you know that something is deeply wrong about this offer… your new situation would not be authentic. You would be a deluded amnesiac who believes that this cloned flesh-puppet would be your own real son, and this scenario, viewed from the outside, is highly disturbing.
A final example, to come back to the Trans-question:
Do you know the movie “Tusk” (2014)? In this body horror flick, we see a normal guy surgically altered into the crude form of a walrus. He is even conditioned to act and think like walrus. Let’s assume that he completely accepted his new role (the question remains open in the movie), would he be a real walrus?
Or would he just be a physically and mentally destroyed abomination?
A real walrus?
A real woman?
The only reason we, as a society, say that Trans women are women is because of pity and (recently) social pressure.
Today we have printing devices that can produce copies of famous paintings in such a detailed way that the human eye is not able to spot the difference. But for some reason those copies are traded only for a tiny fraction of the worth of the original pieces. Why is that? It totally looks the same, doesn’t it?
The difference is the lack of authenticity. The copies have not been painstakingly created by a dedicated and creative artist in his study sometimes in the 18th century in plague/war ridden France or Italy. There was no creative spark or sacrifice (of time and emotions) involved in the process. It was just a soulless replication that took 5 minutes and 100 ml of RGB-ink.
It is this authenticity that gives value to something.
Another example:
Imagine you have a child that you love very much. Now there is an accident and the child dies. You are very sad. However, your futuristic insurance company offers you to create a perfect clone of the child complete with all its memories prior to the accident. It also offers you to remove your own memories of the accident.
Would you agree to it? If you are hesitating even for a moment, it is because you know that something is deeply wrong about this offer… your new situation would not be authentic. You would be a deluded amnesiac who believes that this cloned flesh-puppet would be your own real son, and this scenario, viewed from the outside, is highly disturbing.
A final example, to come back to the Trans-question:
Do you know the movie “Tusk” (2014)? In this body horror flick, we see a normal guy surgically altered into the crude form of a walrus. He is even conditioned to act and think like walrus. Let’s assume that he completely accepted his new role (the question remains open in the movie), would he be a real walrus?
Or would he just be a physically and mentally destroyed abomination?
A real walrus?
A real woman?
The only reason we, as a society, say that Trans women are women is because of pity and (recently) social pressure.
