LINK You can't be born in the wrong body
One can often read or hear the phrase "He or she was born in the wrong body".
Antonio Damasio is quoted as saying that “a mind is so shaped by the body and so destined to serve it that only one mind could possibly arise in it”.
In other words, you are your body, and the idea of being born in the “wrong” one is a logical and scientific impossibility
Or does anyone still believe in independent , free-floating souls, and these souls are "sexed", and then at birth a soul is joined to a body, and if the angel whose job this is is not careful enough, there is a mismatch?
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7 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.To say that only one mind can arise given whatever set of circumstances isn't hard for someone who recognizes that everything is a result of cause and effect. It's basically a non-statement.
It should also be attainable knowledge for someone who can grasp that, that there are millions of things that can influence or change the mind and body that would cause the feelings of "wrongness" in one's own perceptions of themselves and the outside world.
To arrogantly claim the first and ignore or plain fail to realize the second is the mark of an ignorant person.
ChestRockfield
Level 8
May 12, 2023
3
The article, your interpretation of Damasio's quote, and the question of mythical beings are all very loose arguments against transgenderism, particularly sourced from an article that discounts the brain's influence as pseudoscience. Granted, we do not have all of the science figured out concerning transgenderism, but discounting people who have clearly existed as long as humans have with an expression that exists solely because of our inability to understand it reeks of prejudice.
Lauren
Level 8
May 12, 2023
4
Horsefeathers!!!!!! when i see a 4-year old who already KNOWS he is a female, i know that this is a thing (case in point, the winner of this year's RuPaul's Drag Race, born in a male body but now female...Google "Sasha Colby" ).
Cultures around the world have acknowledged this for centuries, just not this bigoted one.
And WTF do ''angels'' have to do with anything, or ''souls''?????
AnneWimsey
Level 9
May 12, 2023
4
PS. to my last. Bodies and minds are not "destined" for anything, nor are they made by angels, not even metaphorically, they are a series of accidental expressions of DNA, roughly filtered, (Very roughly.) by natural selection. To speak of them as having a destiny or having a purpose to serve, is stupid in the extreme, if Antonio Damasio is not quoted out of context, then he would be an idiot of the first water, but I checked the quote, and that certainly is not what he meant.
Fernapple
Level 9
May 12, 2023
4
You again, quibbling about words. How tiresome.
If you dislike the word "destined", replace it by "made for". A heart is made for pumping blood and a "mind" is made for helping the body to survive, and so on.
What Damasio claims - and I totally agree - is that the "mind" is an aspect, a kind of function of the body; the mind is totally embodied; it's wrong to treat them as separate. My body can never be "wrong".
[I'm off]
@Thibaud70 No I am not "quibbling about words". You can replace destined with "made for" you would still be misquoting and misusing Antonio Damasio's real meaning and intent in this context.
I never quibble about words, since I am one of those people who believe that words do not have meanings, but only usages anyway, and I therefore have zero respect for linguistic sophistry.
I am sorry you feel the need to run away from any challenge to any statement you make, but a least it must make for an easy life.
Born in the wrong body is simply an expression. A soul only exists in the fact that you are a soul. At birth you became a living soul. Back to the body again, I once had the body of Charles Atlas. Later it was Jack LaLanne but those days are gone now and so are they.
DenoPenno
Level 9
May 12, 2023
2
The "born in the wrong body" statement, is a metaphorical expression of the idea that the body, desired by the mind, does not match the physical body. Since it is only metaphorically intended, taking it literally, is a wonderful example of a straw-man fallacy.
Fernapple
Level 9
May 12, 2023
3
Often enough this phrase is used in a way that it makes only sense if taken more or less literally. Which means: there are two "entities": the person X (the true identity) AND the (wrong) body.
Example: "Karen was born in the wrong body, a man's body. In this body she then marries a woman. Since Karen has always been female, the woman she married must have been a lesbian." This is the beginning of a story I read this morning and it makes only sense if the person "Karen" and the male body she was born into are two different entities.
You obviously do not know what 'trans' means. Certainly not "a body desired by the mind". Nobody who has always been fat and who desires to be slim would say "I was born in a wrong (fat) body. My true identity is to be slim".
@Thibaud70 I think I know exactly what "trans" means and a very young girl might be a tomboy but she is too young to think she really is a boy and in a wrong body. If I am wrong then why is trans a thing now in this day and time? The sexes did not suddenly change or wake up, etc. We have always had these people but they do not know at age 7 or 8. At that age they do not have the wisdom to transition from one sex to another as this is a complicated thing. I blame social media for a lot of this nonsense.
@Thibaud70 Indeed I do think, that a fat person would be quite correct to say that they were, "born in a fat body", and wished for a slim one, since some bodies are much better at acquiring weight than others. And I have no doubt that some of those who would like to be fat, (There are such people.) could wish they had a body which put on fat more easily. While I wish that I, for one, had a body that did not grow such a big sensitive nose so easily. ( Cyrano de Bergerac look alike.) If my mind was made to serve my body, why was I not given a taste for sneezing ?
"If my mind was made to serve my body, why was I not given a taste for sneezing?"
I imagine this is as succinct a brutal takedown that exists of that idiotic article.
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