The Dread Slender Gnome on Nostr: Birdy Rose has a video out about men who not only claim to be women, but also claim ...
Birdy Rose has a video out about men who not only claim to be women, but also claim to have PCOS and endometriosis.
Her stance is that they all are trolling and taking the piss, that there is no single man out there that actually believes he is a woman. And she says that saying otherwise is a copout.
I don't agree.
First, because the line between actual belief, lying to oneself and lying to others is a very wobbly one indeed. In fact I might argue that a delusion is merely a lie which one has come to believe in. I also think the difference between a true believer, an auto-liar (if I'm permitted the coinage) and a troll is a question a continuum, rather than an either-or matter. And since we can't see into the heads of other people, definite conclusions on where a given person is on this continuum are very difficult to come by.
Second, because writing off any large phenomenon with a single explanation is simplistic, and rarely an accurate representation of reality.
Thirdly, because I don't think it's a copout at all. If anything, I'd say the stance that they're all just trolling is more of a copout, because it, in my view, is the lesser problem. If they're all just pretending and trolling, and none are actually convinced by their own lies, all we have to do is essentially put a stop to the lying. Whereas if some actually are drinking their own snakeoil and believing it makes them better, that's a lot harder problem to deal with.
Her stance is that they all are trolling and taking the piss, that there is no single man out there that actually believes he is a woman. And she says that saying otherwise is a copout.
I don't agree.
First, because the line between actual belief, lying to oneself and lying to others is a very wobbly one indeed. In fact I might argue that a delusion is merely a lie which one has come to believe in. I also think the difference between a true believer, an auto-liar (if I'm permitted the coinage) and a troll is a question a continuum, rather than an either-or matter. And since we can't see into the heads of other people, definite conclusions on where a given person is on this continuum are very difficult to come by.
Second, because writing off any large phenomenon with a single explanation is simplistic, and rarely an accurate representation of reality.
Thirdly, because I don't think it's a copout at all. If anything, I'd say the stance that they're all just trolling is more of a copout, because it, in my view, is the lesser problem. If they're all just pretending and trolling, and none are actually convinced by their own lies, all we have to do is essentially put a stop to the lying. Whereas if some actually are drinking their own snakeoil and believing it makes them better, that's a lot harder problem to deal with.