Apech

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Posts posted by Apech

  1. Posted

    1 minute ago, Maddie said:

     

    This type of gaslighting is stereotypical troll behavior. 

     

    I think you need to think this through a bit more.  In any case I'm not going to post anymore in this thread so just ignore me if you want.  Best wishes to you and all.

     

     

  2. Posted

    7 minutes ago, Maddie said:

     

    In case anyone is wondering why I am claiming that Salvijus is a troll, I do so based on multiple statements of which this is just one example of many.

     

    1. First he has implied that transgenderism is something that needs to be justified. Being trans is an existence. As soon as someone challenges the validity of someone's existence there is a problem there. 

     

    2. Second he implied that "trans philosophy" (what ever that means) is not valid. First of all it is not a philosophy, again it is an existence. Secondly it is valid and to challenge that it is, is one of many reasons I believe him to be a troll. 

     

    I'm all for answering legitimate questions, but trolls do not ask legitimate questions. They make statements disguised as questions to undermine the person they are trolling's position or point.   

     

    Just holding opinions or views doesn't make you a troll.  To be a troll you have to present those arguments with a deliberate intent to cause a certain reaction or to mess with the person they are addressing.  So if he actually thinks the ideas he expressed he is not a troll, he might be wrong and confused - in which case a q&a like this would be the very place to put him right.  

     

     

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    53 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

    I see... A bit sad. But I take from your responses that you guys would rather stay on bad terms.  Okay. If you so desire have it your way. 

     

    I'm leaving this. Tcare

     

    I'm disappointed too.  Shame as I said before.  Maybe you are a troll - I don't know - because I avoid psychoanalysing posters on here that I don't know very well.  But even if you are you can ask questions and be answered.  Why not?

     

     

  7. Posted

    47 minutes ago, Maddie said:

    There's a big difference between questions and answers and trolling somebody. I think those of us that are lgbtq+ can understand the difference between sincere questions and trolling pretty quickly.


    I’m more drole than troll 🧌 

    • Haha 3

  8. Posted

    6 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

     

    Salvijus made a big show of just wanting to explore the issues but, to my ear, it was just that -- a show.  Underneath the just-asking-questions persona there was considerable hostility.  I could be wrong, of course, but this is how I read him.  I´m glad we´re done with that thread of the conversation.


    This is a q&a thread so I think that goes with the territory.

  10. Posted

    8 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

    @blue eyed snake

     

    Totally agree that people cannot choose.  If I told you that I am a transgender woman that would be a lie.  I am not and cannot become one by announcement.  In general, I trust adults who say they are transgender.  I trust you and Maddie.  But of course there are people who will lie for nefarious reasons and that´s a problem, for all of us, but especially for people who are legitimately trans.  

     

    I don´t know the emotional discomfort of feeling like I was born in the wrong body.  That´s never been a part of my experience so I can´t claim to know what it´s like.  I do know many other kinds of lonliness and alienation as those are universal human experiences.  I believe trans people when they tell me that it´s painful being in the wrong body, sometimes very painful.  I hope that trans people everywhere can feel comfortable with themselves and society at large, and if social or medical transitioning helps then I´m all for it.  We´re all just trying to be happy. 

     

    I try, in general, not to be an asshole.  A big part of that is not judging people when I don´t know anything about their circumstances.  So I try not to judge people who look different than I do or want to use alternative pronouns.  I´ll admit to a bit of discomfort around a few of the less conventional pronouns but, what can I say, I´m a work in progress.

     

    At the same time, I hope there´s room for people who think that people are (mostly) born male or female, and that physical anatomy is what makes the difference.  People ought to be able to say that without incurring moral scorn.  I can think that people remain the gender they are "assigned at birth" and still be a good person.  To me, it´s just a matter of what definitions we are choosing to use.  

     

    Question: Am I morally required to see people as they see themselves?    


    No because some people are delusional and/ or dishonest - so why would you see them as they see themselves?


    I think being kind is moral - which involves respecting others - but beyond that you have to be true to yourself.

    • Like 3
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  11. Posted

    18 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

     

     

    interesting questions

     

    when you super oversimplify Neigong you could say that getting the lower dantien up and running is hard for guys as they tend to run after their dicks. For women it's a lot easier to get the LDT in working order.

     

    But for women it's hard to get the middle dantien "working' ( for want of a better word) as they tend to run after their feelings.

     

    So when you're cultivating in a group you'll see the ladies outperforming the men at first and then when the guys have picked up they see the ladies struggling with something that's easy for them, more or less.

     

    I've always suspected that these things are strongly correlated to hormones

     

     


    I’d never thought of it that way round 

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    1 hour ago, Maddie said:

     

    I feel like any sincere question is reasonable here for the most part since that was the whole point of this thread. 

     

    The Buddha actually said that one of the things that determines the gender that someone is born as is the type of identification that they clung to in their past life. He said there was a male identifying mind and a female identifying mind. It's interesting that he always spoke of it as the mind and not the body. He said at some point a male identifying mind can change to a female identifying mind and that a female identifying mind can change to a male identifying mind.

     

    As far as energy goes if we're using energy to describe psychological traits I can say I've definitely become more gentle and sensitive and compassionate since I started transitioning and taking female hormones.


    Do you remember which sutra that is from?

  15. Posted

    17 minutes ago, S:C said:

    That more how I understood it, @Apech Language (in that view) constitutes reality. Claiming an observation via language seems to constitute a different layer of reality (for lack of better words), in that view. To rely on feelings, wishes and personal needs and preference is therefore deemed ‚valid enough’, just as well as empirical sense data (both faulty, but necessary nonetheless). 
    A claim that is backed up, constitutes reality. Language is reality, then, not a map thereof. 
    Please correct me if I am wrong here.


    I am being thick - I really can’t follow what you are saying.

    • Sad 1

  16. Posted

    @Maddie

     

    Given this is a forum dedicated to energy arts (for want of a better term) isn't it a reasonable question to ask what happens energetically when you transition - and in particular how changes in the physical body produce a change in the subtle body?

     

    Also from the point of view of rebirth/reincarnation - doesn't this contextualise the instance of being born in the wrong body in one particular incarnation.

     

    Do you have any thoughts on this?

     

     

  18. Posted · Edited by Apech

    5 hours ago, S:C said:

    Judith Butler is the name I associate with your question. It might be, that there has been someone before, who proposed that conceptual change and also the linguistic turn, but she made the most noise. So it seems to rely on the concept of a performative model of gender, e.g. it relies on language theory (‚performative‘), which originated in the wake of Austin, Searle etc. An act of speaking is conceptually separated into several sub acts, where one of them is ‚illocutionary‘, e.g. creates a reality of itself through speaking, as empirical sense data is frowned upon as a reliable source for observation, language instead is used as the source. Or so I understood it.

     

     

    Yes the name Judith Butler came to my mind too - I once tried to read some of 'Gender Trouble' or maybe it was an essay about it - but I got nowhere - the language was far too dense for me.

     

    If gender is performative - thus something you act out - then it would be quite fair to suggest that what is normative behaviour for a gender is socially determined.  History is full of people who refused to conform - George Sand comes to mind but I am sure there are lots of examples.  But even here there is a difference between some one who says for instance ' I am a woman but I refuse to act in the way that others (society) demands' and being trans-  Or at least i suppose there is a difference.

     

    I worked in fairly 'normal' environments through the 70's, 80's, 90's etc and can remember the general discomfort among some when women gradually began to take on new work roles.  In the long run people accepted it but initially a woman being anything other than a typist was quite rare - and professions were quite male orientated.  (not that this is particularly relevant except from the vantage of the old man's bench :) ).

     

     

    • Like 2

  19. Posted

    22 minutes ago, Maddie said:

     

    Hey I obviously can't answer this for you but to me you sound trans. Have you ever considered transitioning? I hope you don't mind the question. 


    which bit of wanting a penis, a beard , a low voice and no boobs led you to this conclusion?

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  20. Posted

    22 minutes ago, Maddie said:

     

    in the past I have experienced so many side effects. Since it digs up bad karma usually what happened was every unpleasant emotion and memory that I was trying to deny came rushing to the surface. If someone has never purged their karma before all I can say is that its not for the faint of heart and probably relates to what some people describe as the dark night of the soul. Also I would have to go to the bathroom constantly, and the more I did the mantra the more constant it was. It got to a point when I was doing a 2 week long Zhunti retreat (nothing but Zhunti mantra all day every day) that I literally had to sit on the toilet and do the mantra because it was a not stop thing. I have also experienced weird skin blisters on the ends of my heart and lung meridians. I also become extremely sensitive to other peoples emotions and intentions. I also start having really odd "memories" of events that never happened in my life time. Also I would have a long string of bad luck when doing it in the past. 


    heck!

     

    when I do sitting and forgetting I have ‘memories’ which are not my own.  Quite vivid and elaborate scenes and people which I realize I have never known or seen before. It’s quite weird.

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  22. Posted

    18 minutes ago, Nungali said:

     

    Well, in my experience ,, gender is a line with male one end female the other , VERY few people are on the extreme points. But in some cultures and societies , they seem obsessed with extremes ; you are  either one or the other , on many levels .   So if your 'natural state ' is in conflict with supposed ideologies then those that hold to those ideologies, or have been brain washed by them , may feel threatened .  Or they might feel threatened by  you ..... upsetting the apple cart , so to speak .

     

    Then, there is all this .... I am sorry .... BULLSHIT  about 'being a man '   and what that means to some  and how that is threatened in a similar process .

     

    " You say I aint been a man ! ?  ...   thems duelin' words !

     

    and I will add that concept  is really suffering and failing  ! I went to a men's workshop and after listening dumbfounded for half an hour I had to ask ' Who thinks they have been through a process or even that  made them  a man , or some transition in life where you thought now I am a man - purely under your own definitions' .  Less than half the hands of the group went up . I asked the others 'do you know what it means or what the term is describing 'to be man ' , again, less than half .  So near 1/4 of the men present did not even have a definition of what it means . ... even to them !


    man up nungali 

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  24. Posted

    2 hours ago, Taomeow said:

     

    I read about it a while ago, and I think I even mentioned it here on TDB at the time.  The article I recall was about Native American tribes where trans folks were thought of as special, sometimes became shamans because they were thought of as naturally talented toward  "straddling both worlds," and so on, and not discriminated against in the least.

     

    The difference from the modern approach being, they didn't resort to surgical and hormonal sex change, they just accepted the fact of this dichotomy (body and mind of different "worlds" in the same person), much the way people accept other things about their own and other people's bodies that may not correspond to the ideal body they would prefer -- shorter or taller than average, thinner or fatter, asthenic type or hypersthenic type, boobs of all sizes and shapes with no particular size or shape fetishized, and so on.  There was no inner conflict and no outer bias, pressure to conform, activism to promote, or any social disadvantages to just feeling a particular way inside one's body and making those feelings known to others.  And above all, no money changing hands as a "side effect" (or as some cats would suspect, as the root cause of an exponential growth in the number of such occurrences.)  


    Reminds me of a book you recommended years ago ‘The Shaman and the Heresiarch’ 

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    9 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

     

    I so rarely find myself vibing with any of your opinions on social issues, but reading the post above I feel like sitting next to you on a park bench and being old foggies together. Lets get Apech.  I´ll buy birdseed to feed the pigeons.

     

    (To be honest, I enjoy sexually themed shows.  I liked Transparent.  Back in the day, my best friend used to throw weekly Queer as Folk parties; we´d all huddle around the TV, eager to watch a sexy soap featuring gays like us.  That was fun. But I do wonder if as a culture we´re overdoing the identity thing; are we a bit too quick to put ourselves and others into various ideologically bogged-down boxes?  Let´s have (consensual, ethical) sex with who we want to have sex with.  Let´s dress up in gowns or jeans or leather panties.  Whatever.  But do we have to make such a big deal about the name we give ourselves?  Maybe our labels aren´t so important.)

     

     

    Hang on ... there's something about the formula 'old foggy = Apech' which I don't warm to. lol.

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