surrogate corpse

Stylistically, it is less didactic, more playful and colorful. It is told in myths and stories, and always with a cheeky smile. Philosophically, it is both more detailed in its argumentation (there is a chapter analyzing the structure of judgment and its relation to attachment to self) and more concrete in its exposition (it looks at how Daoist ideas apply to a wide range of situations, including an entire chapter devoted to people with bodies that fall outside social norms). Politically, it is not beholden to the particular brand of primitivism that dominates the Daodejing. That is present but balanced by "yangist" (anti-participation) and "syncretist" views.

It is both. I get the sense you are concerned that, in calling "monstrous" what is monstrous, I am failing to see that it is human, and so failing to give it the sympathy that is due all humans. Not so. My sympathy is unbounded. (This is aspirational. I have my failings, my own entanglements, my own monstrousness.) Nothing less than the total liberation of all sentient beings will do. Suffering is to be removed because it is suffering, that's all. But when our all-too-human fear of suffering makes us monstrous to others (and ourselves, always also ourselves), I will call it "monstrous". The unfortunate fact is that so much of what is human is also monstrous.

Thank you, @silent thunder. I'm glad my words resonated. @liminal_luke -- You've put your finger right on it: the desire to make life simpler. The actual world is complex. This frightens us. So we construct simple false models of the world ("men are attracted to women, and women to men"; "everyone born with a penis is a man"). But the world cannot be made simple. It falsifies our models. So we torture, maim, mutilate, exile, kill everything that falls outside our comforting falsehoods. What appeals to me about Daoism—at least, Zhuangzi's Daoism—is its dogged commitment to responding to the world as it is. Zhuangzi asks for the whole world, because he knows: to ask for less is monstrous.

Depends what counts as "head-on confrontation". My experience of letting go of fear has a pretty standard form: 1. Fear appears as something more respectable, as reason, as desire, and traps me 2. I come to see behind the mask: no, that was not reason, that was not desire, that was fear 3. Seeing fear for fear, it loses its grip on me: I acknowledge it as fear and respond to it as fear. I tell the fear that I am going to do the thing it fears, but promise to take care of myself in doing so. 4. I face, not the fear, but the object of fear (divorce, transition, whatever). And, in facing it, I take care of myself. 5. Iterating this process, I come to trust myself more, and my fears come to present themselves more and more honestly. It is, really, like a scooby-doo episode: the same formula, the same mask-off reveal every time...

Yes! Fear is a proteus. Or better: a zombie fungus. It takes over and perverts everything good in you to its own ends.

Maybe. I'm not a diviner; I leave the future to sort itself. All I know is that thus far, the more I have abandoned my fear, the angrier I have gotten at the moral mediocrity that drives respectability politics. The less afraid I become of suffering—if suffering should be the consequence of my doing what I think right—the less I respect people who would rather be comfortable than good. I always understand them, in the right context I'll even be nice and patient with them. But I hope I will never be so stupid as to trust them.

My post was less about "queer" than about the rest of the post. I just used "queer" because Luke did. But it connects in this way: "queer" includes all of us, whatever it is that makes us deviant freaks. It is one struggle. Respectability politics, by contrast, divides us in two: the "good ones" who will sacrifice their brethren for table scraps, and the "bad ones" who won't. In the Haitian slave revolution, the half-black Haitians were not free, but they were put in a privileged position relative to the fully black slaves. When the revolution occurred, they largely sided with the white slaveowners. They were getting scraps; if they fought for justice they might lose even those. Every struggle is like this. Cis gays have gotten their scraps. They deserve so much better, but they also know that it can be so much worse. Just look at how things are for tranny freaks like me. If they get grouped with us, maybe they'll return to being treated like us... If trans people should be so lucky as to get the same scraps as cis gays have gotten, the same will happen to us. We too will fear to lose the too little we've gotten; we too will throw whoever replaces us to the wolves. Fear is a powerful motivator. That's why I keep returning to it. The first principle of morality is: master your fear. Everything else follows.

People say all kinds of things, what matters is what's true, as our temp-banned friend was reminding us a few pages back. (That wasn't what he was wrong about.) I think there is a fundamentally asymmetry between "we should mutilate ourselves to be appealing to normies so they'll give us crumbs of acceptance" and "I would rather be who I actually am and be hated than be accepted for what I am not". The people who say that the freaks are the barrier to acceptance are evil. I despise them. They are cowards, sell-outs, and traitors. May they fix their black and broken hearts.

How are they being excluded? By not being allowed to throw their freak brethren to the wolves for table scraps? Respectability politics is always a losing compromise. We should not have to accommodate to normie tastes and expectations to be treated with basic dignity.

I would say that the main value of "queer" and the ever-expanding acronym is that it helps separate genuine allies from the impostors who put conditions of Respectability on queer acceptance and liberation. We should make them even more ridiculous, to expose even more impostors.

one phenomenon i find rather interesting is that, even though i am quite "clocky" in appearance and don't dress high femme, homeless people asking me for money gender me correctly approaching 100% of the time gives you a perspective on the folks who find it "hard", y'know?

loved me unconditionally rather than conditionally, so that i felt safe to share with them how i was feeling when puberty hit ~~~ email signatures: empty signaling sharing pronouns at introduction: depends on context but default position is against assuming gender: ask if you're unsure. be gracious if corrected (say sorry, correct yourself, and get it right next time; don't make a big deal of it)

@Elysium If I might answer as well: fear. Many particular things held me back—things I thought or didn't think, things I knew or didn't know, things I wanted or didn't want—but underneath all of them was the same fear. The decision to transition was the decision to listen to desire rather than to fear. @Tommy If I might answer as well: yes and no. Yes, I am happy. My life is better for transitioning. I have richer friendships and relationships. I don't wake up waiting to die. I am better to the people I love. I find meaning and joy in the things I do, rather than a flat anhedonia. I laugh, loudly and often. But am I happy? I carry a tremendous sadness: the weight of 30 years of grief, long-suppressed and only now brought to the light. And I carry a tremendous anger: that grief did not just happen, it was the result of things done to me. Nor is this sadness and this anger just about me: all my friends have suffered the same; not all of them survived it. (I am lucky; I have only one dead friend.) So: am I happy? I would rather say: I am on the path to happiness. I have far to go.

yes, that's the joke ; )

you will understand me better if you read my posts as expressions of a considered, reasoned position rather than as expressions of a fettered mind in need of liberation by you : )