Sex and Sexuality

(Playing devil's advocate)

The child doesn't consent to a life of being outside of that social norm. One could make the argument that it's in the same ballpark as raising a child in religious extremism.

This attitude is so foreign to me that you could very well be a Marsian. Rich people exploiting poor people to bare the risks and burdens of pregnancy and labor? Have you even considered the degree of desperation one would need to be in to agree to such an arrangement?

Note: I had the same question. Below are some of the points that a bit of Googling turned up. My comments in parens.

Some issues that some seem to have with it.

1. Some are concerned with the emotional effects on the surrogate. There are strong biological factors that make a mother get strongly attached to the child they carry, so giving it up immediately could be bad for them.

(tzs: I don't see how this is different from women who give up for adoption a newborn conceived the conventional waw, so this issue seems to me to be orthogonal to surrogacy)

2. Some say it promotes the commoditization of women's bodies, especially poor women. There is actually "surrogacy tourism", similar to "sex tourism", where people from wealthier western countries go to poor countries where there is a thriving trade in rental wombs. As with the women in those countries who serve the sex tourism trade, the women proving the wombs are often coerced into the business and are not getting the rewards.

3. Some say that there are already born children who need adoptive parents. People who cannot have children the conventional way should be adopting those children.

I saw a response to that argument, pointing out that a couple that waits until their careers are going well to try to produce children might try for quite a while to conceive before suspecting something is wrong, then might spend a few years trying various fertility treatments. By the time all of that fails, they can easily be too old to be allowed to adopt.

4. Recognition of surrogacy varies quite a bit around the world. Commercial surrogacy is legal in India. Altruistic surrogacy, but not commercial surrogacy, is legal in the UK and Australia. All forms of surrogacy are prohibited in France and Germany. In the US it depends on the state, some allowing commercial surrogacy and some prohibiting it [1].

This could lead to children with questionable legal status. If you had a couple from country X, a "no surrogacy" country, acquire a surrogate child in country Y, a "fully recognized commercial surrogacy" country, it might be possible to get a situation where there is no country that recognizes the child as one of its citizens.

(tzs: overall, from what I read, it seems no one has offered any good argument that surrogacy is inherently unethical, but there is a lot of potential for abuse, and a lot of areas it can touch that you could easily overlook such as interactions with things like citizenship. It seems to be one of those areas where you should regulate it from the start, rather than letting it develop commercially freely and then try to patch up any bad aspects you discover).

[1] https://www.creativefamilyconnections.com/us-surrogacy-law-m...

Don't force views on deaf ears. The gradual shifting of awareness is happening regardless and irrespective of the attempts by liberals to further the cause (which is essentially politically driven at this stage). Allowing yourself to be vulnerable with who you are (to those close to you) is how you spread awareness and actually change people into activists for your cause (without resorting to dogma and rhetoric).

Labels for gender and sexuality are so much more than simple political identifiers.

People who actually use them for themselves experience them as guideposts to finding out what's going on inside by seeking out other people's experiences. To us, the labels are no different from "nerd" or "musician." I would still find them useful even without a vast social and political movement hell-bent on making my world as sad and empty as their own.

Identity labels are fundamentally about making space to explore. "Musician" leads to all kinds of places, like grungehead, or rondo fanatic, or furry rave DJ. Why people get so up in arms about identity labels when it comes to gender and sexuality is beyond me, and I've already written too much here to start speculating.

I'm not saying we label too much per-se, but I think it is important to remember that our minds use labels as a shortcut for understanding the properties of the things we label. Useful, but not always accurate.

Great response

I agree insofar as the problem of labels as expressed prior to you is really an extension of anti-individualism and group-think. I wouldn't sooner blame memes and facebook. Obviously, labels can be useful and in a broader sense we abstract everything around us in near binary fashion. It's a symptom of being human.

Especially if it means they get all the legal benefits reserved for legally recognized married couples!

If that was sarcasm, I can only assume you've never attended a wedding of any sort before :D

I strongly disagree. I am atheist but have no doubt that wantonly killing people (or for that matter, animals) is morally wrong. Empirically, I don't think atheists are much more likely than theists to commit crimes.

On a fundamental level I agree with your point. Truly absolute morality implies some kind of external rule of law, which implies some kind of external lawmaker.

Where I disagree is this idea - whether you intended it or not - that non-absolute morality is somehow arbitrary, or worth less than absolute morality.

I don't agree with that: I believe that torturing someone is immoral because humans dislike being tortured (if you're in that 1% who doesn't mind torture, it's not immoral - torture away). You reduce that to "most humans don't feel positive about being tortured". But that's not a choice that 99% of humans made: it's a fact of human biology. Humans don't choose to feel pain when someone rips out their fingernails. You can say "disliking pain is arbitrary". It may be arbitrary in some sense, but not in the context of humanity, and we're all humans.

If you want to say that this kind of "moral thinking" isn't "true morality" because it's not absolute, fine. That's valid stance to take. But whether you call it morality or something else doesn't make it less valid or less useful. And to suggest that humans should not take our innate likes (warmth, safety, respect) and dislikes (pain, insecurity, lack of respect) into account when we interact with each other simply because human biology isn't "absolute" is - pardon me - fucking insane.

It just means we're the arbiters of morality; it's a universalism that evolves. It's a social contract. There are some things that don't go right by people.

I'm not sure I follow, though it seems we might agree?

You say something is wrong, I can say you saying that something is wrong is, in itself wrong. Ultimately, it either doesn't matter at all (we're all just talking), or enough other people agree with us that there is some social consequence.

Morality is nature-made, not God-made. All you need is empathy, and it turns out that mammals have empathy, and so do birds and others. The golden rule follows from empathy.

Natural Law is NOT a new idea, really. Nor is it foreign to religion! St. Thomas of Aquinas is the father of Natural Law -- almost a millenium ago now -- and a big deal in Christianity. Natural Law is a big deal in the Catholic Church, for example. One might say that St. Augustine vs. St. Aquinas is just a religious expression of the Plato vs. Aristotle.

You'll find plenty of well-read, well-educated, very religious people who take a Natural Law approach to morality and who would agree that what happens in private between consenting adults is almost entirely moral (with some limits, such as perhaps that giving one's life up consensually is not moral). (I myself am agnostic, but still, I take a Natural Law approach to morality.)

Of course, there are schools of thought that reject Natural Law, but you must at least acknowledge Natural Law as a concept. And you should at least accept that Natural Law works for others even if not for you. You have to co-exist with the rest of us.

(Us noticing that other animals have empathy is fairly new though, I think.)

I suppose that gets more into agency? I would assume, barring a good reason, that in most conversations 'consent' would imply that the persons involved in fact had agency to give consent.

Why wouldn't it be?

Here's an interesting thing I've seen from people making such claims. Yes they are bigots even if they say, "What you're doing is wrong, but I'll let you be (aside from denouncing the behavior)". This is actually not really bigoted by the definition "a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions." That's were this discourse is. If someone doesn't AGREE, they are bigots. Hell, tolerance just means putting up with their view. You can tolerate and still try to teach another path. Unfortunately for many on the Left, disagreeing and arguing against without seeking any force of law is the same as being a bigot.

Keep in mind that, outside of some contrived examples, beliefs themselves are rarely bigoted -- it's the reason why that belief is held that makes the determination.

For example, a coworker of mine is extremely against illegal immigration. Most people that don't know them assume that this belief stems from a hatred toward immigrants from certain 'undesirable' countries. But once you get to know them it turns out that it actually stems from a belief that the law should always be followed to a t -- they don't actually care one way or another about the issue itself, if the law said we had open borders then it would be no problem.

But we sort of run into a problem when people proxy their beliefs -- for my coworker it's the law, and for the religious it's their doctrine. Are people who subscribe to a belief system responsible for any or all of the intolerance that underpins it? Do people have a moral responsibility to audit their beliefs systems and look for intolerance? Do people have a moral responsibility to not follow an unjust law? Where you fall on these questions probably determines the answer to your question.

The vast majority of the planet's population might roll their eyes at the mere mention of the words "gender identity" if they're even familiar with the concept, but everything from simple clothing choices to complex social interactions are consciously and unconsciously influenced by [local, contemporary] behavioural norms along gender lines (including when, why and how far they're happy to deviate from them). Men don't start seriously considering wearing dresses to work or stop telling their daughters that certain actions aren't very "ladylike" just because they suspect gender studies courses are a waste of time.

I suppose that would be things that you willingly decided to engage with. Someone identifying as an “engineer” or a “problem solver” or a “musician” or a “good listener” or a “conservative”. Those make sense to me as forms of identity; sex and sexuality far less so.

Well, that's an odd question. Sure, biological sex is an objective fact, but you can't call gender identity a fact. It's a part of a more complex identity which people unwillingly or willingly emphasize. I refuse to define my identity based on my sexual attributes, because it only concerns myself and a potential partner. For the rest of the world most of my attributes of identity are masked by other peoples' perception of my actions. People can identify my actions and my attributes as unique, and they have a shortcut label as a help to identify me - by my name. So, what if a person is not as unique as others? Do they need to emphasize some attributes to appear more unique, to be distinguishable? Why? They are unique in any way, objectively. But in their own eyes? I don't think so. So, there is a clear distinction between biological/physical attributes (facts) that are a non-disputable part of the identity of a person and subjectively perceivable attributes (perspectives). It's a fact that I'm a man, but things other than that don't really matter, because they are perceivable only subjectively.

Identity is based not only on facts. It's also based on wishes, labels, lies and social constructs.

That is almost certainly true, but there isn't yet much exposure.

For example, in the article linked to below there are a couple of instances of "they" referring to a named and identified person, and the reason for using "they" is obvious and explained in the article. Nevertheless, I noticed I needed an extra fraction of a second to process mentally the sentences in question.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44575229

Singular "they" used in that way is certainly a lot less weird than Spivak pronouns or "xe" so even if those two are, perhaps, technically superior solutions I would guess that singular "they" is what people will (continue to) use.

Heterosexuality and homosexuality are about more than mere reproduction, though. If the arguments against homosexuality were strictly about that, they could also be applied to straight people who marry monogamously, or who choose not to have children at all, since neither a single partner or no partner is optimal for survival.

My point is that non-hetero sexuality and non-binary gender should be viewed as simply an uncommon aspect of human biology and identity, which has no moral weight in and of itself. Some people are left-handed, some people have red hair, some people are gay.