Re: New Arvorec words

Christophe Grandsire sikayal:

> The problem with those kinds of explanations (brain damage, as if something was
> wrong in being left-handed... Knowing that the proportion of left-handed people
> is higher with gifted people and people with long education curriculi, it's
> quite hard to believe) is that they pose right-handedness (or heterosexuality)
> is the norm, and that something "wrong" happened which transformed the person
> into left-handed (or homosexual).
There is nothing inherently wrong with such explanations, especially if
they're true.  It may very well be that all people are naturally
right-handed or heterosexual, and that minor external disturbances cause
them to be the opposite.  The fact that there are far more righties and
straights than lefties and gays gives at least a little credence to this
idea.  But the fact that one state is "natural" and the other is not
doesn't really say anything about morality, and it seems to me that you're
objecting to a possible moral argument based on this.  All fetuses (feti,
fetora?) are inherently female and must be forcefully turned into males,
yet this doesn't say anything about the merits of femininity versus
masculinity.  So I think your objection to this reasoning is poorly
thought out and based on a fear that isn't (in this context) justified.

> An explanation on how someone
> becomes either righthanded, or lefthanded, or ambidextrous, *from scratch*,
> without stating that one of those states is more normal than another (more
> frequent is OK, but it says nothing about normality), and without stating that
> one state was there before, and was changed for one reason or another, would be
> more than valuable. Any other kind of explanation is much too likely to be
> biased for wrong reasons.
Here you go.  Saying that one orientation precedes another or is the
"default" doesn't necessarily imply anything about merits, and rejecting
that possibility because it might be abused is foolish.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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