I agree. Eugenics is about harming the rights of the would-be parents. It means telling them, “You have traits we consider undesirable, so we will forcibly prevent you from having any child whatsoever.”

To me, that’s different from parents choosing to avoid having a child with certain traits. Or not having children at all.

If parents decide to cure a disorder in their future child, or decide to abort a pregnancy, nobody is stopping those parents from trying again. The parents themselves have not been deemed undesirable and unworthy to pass on their genes.

I agree. I despise Trump. But removing a lawn and putting in hardscape, in a spot where people often gather for events, is not an insult to heritage or anything like that.

If a president that I otherwise liked did this, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

It’s not as if a lawn is super environmentally valuable. And I doubt people spread picnic blankets and play Frisbee on this lawn - they put chairs on it and walk on it with heels and hold events and stuff. A hard surface is the right thing for that type of use.

And if a future president decides to put lawn back in, they can! It’s not as blades of grass and sandy growing medium are irreplaceable.

“Welcome! What brings you to the homeless shelter today?”

“Well, it’s that bench. You see, I was choosing the unhoused lifestyle, and I was fine with all the other stigma and physical discomforts, until I realized that the city wants to discourage my presence in public spaces. Fuck these armrests, I decided I’d just come to this shelter, get treatment for my addiction, get counseling for my traumatic past that fed the addiction, get an education, get a job, rent a house, save money, then buy a home instead. It’s just not worth trying to get comfy on that bench.”

It’s a shame, because classic Ghibli movies are not shallow or inhumane at all. They were not based on trends. Miyazaki could not have made such beautiful films if he had not had real life experiences.

“The dragon is supposed to fall from down the air vent, but, being a dragon, it doesn’t land on the ground,” Miyazaki says. “It attaches itself to the wall, like a gecko. And then—ow!—it falls—thud!—it should fall like a serpent. Have you ever seen a snake fall out of a tree?” He explains that it “doesn’t slither, but holds its position.” He looks around at the animators, most of whom appear to be in their twenties and early thirties. They are taking notes, looking grave: nobody has seen a snake fall out of a tree.

Miyazaki goes on to describe how the dragon—a protean creature named Haku, who sometimes takes this form—struggles when he is pinned down. “This will be tricky,” Miyazaki says, smiling. “If you want to get an idea, go to an eel restaurant and see how an eel is gutted.” The director wriggles around in his seat, imitating the action of a recalcitrant eel. “Have you ever seen an eel resisting?” Miyazaki asks.

“No, actually,” admits a young man with hipster glasses, an orange sweatshirt, and an indoor pallor.

Miyazaki groans. “Japanese culture is doomed!” he says.

Even if we accept that the AI-using guy is correct - that he takes two minutes to formulate the perfect query, and gets a successful response based on that - he had to read books in order to know how to do that.

The people currently using AI were alive before it existed. They gained an education in a more traditional way, which perhaps allows them to take shortcuts using AI.

In the future, if nobody reads books, they will be even less able to prompt AI or to evaluate its responses.

Good points, and I think we generally agree. I definitely didn’t mean to exclude anyone in those real or hypothetical situations you mentioned. To me, those examples are more about showing how gender is, or can be, biologically fluid. There are many “odd” situations that aren’t binary. So amongst the many unusual ways that sex can occur biologically, “male brain in a female body” or “I reject the concept of gender entirely” are valid and believable.

I agree with your last point as well, but in the context of this post, would you tell Rachel Dolezal that she says she’s Black, so she’s Black? I guess I was trying to find some sort of difference between gender and race identity, the way the question was posed.

I’m definitely not claiming to have an unassailable argument, so thanks for responding with good points.

I’m no expert on either topic. But I believe humans basically start off as female in the womb, and either become male or don’t. And there are many intersex conditions. The body responds to hormones typically associated with either sex. So gender is fluid in a biological sense. If someone transitions to male, female or nonbinary, they already kind of contained that potential.

However, race is a social construct, usually based on heritage as well as biological appearance. So it’s hard to say how much biology is really involved. Does the human body contain the ability to be any race? Or to cultivate an appearance that prompts other humans to socially categorize you as one race or the other?

Maybe for people who are mixed race, there is a sort of spectrum available to them. They likely know how to present themselves in a way that gets them categorized as one race or the other.

But otherwise, not really. If you’re White, and you say, “I identify as Black,” the question might be: do you have Black heritage? If you don’t, you can’t really create it out of thin air. There wasn’t a situation while you were in the womb where various hormones could have influenced you to appear more Black than you do. If your parents are both White, they were going to have a White baby, no matter what. Race is a social construct, but it’s based on appearance and heritage. It’s about belonging to a group, not about being an individual, the way gender is.

If you’re assigned female at birth, and you say, “I identify as male,” then cool! Your body already has the capability to become hormonally male. You can socially identify as male. Any human, of any race, has this potential. Any two parents could have a baby that is any sex or gender, depending on various factors.

“oh, Trump wouldn’t do that, it’s illegal”

Phew, what a relief!

Also, when Trump does illegal stuff, people tend to allow it and obey him. If they try to shut him down using the legal system, he goes ahead and does it anyway.

I kind of just roll my eyes when someone says, “Aha, it’s illegal! He can’t do that!” We don’t really live in that world anymore.