Trans - ??? Martine Rothblatt and Transhumanism *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[adultingforever]

I came across this today, and wonder what you all make of it?
uncommongroundmedia.com/martine-rothblatt-a-founding-father-of-the-transgender-empire/

The link works for me, so I hope you can read it, too. Is this just a conspiracy theory and we should not give it any time? Or is this a real concern?

Here's another!! www.the11thhourblog.com/post/the-transhumanism-in-the-middle-of-the-gender-identity-living-room

What is going on?

I'd ask for your thread title to be changed, it might get more engagement.

The articles you linked to bring together quite a few names who have been influential in pushing gender ideology. Quite frightening that one person with bonkers ideas has been so involved in developing international policy and strategy on trans rights. The ties to the pharmaceutical industry will be no surprise to anyone. Who knows if there is really a plan to create human/robot hybrids or whether the whole thing is just the insane ambitions of a small number of people with the money and power to progress the project. I'm in no doubt the trans movement is not really about trans rights and has a much more sinister agenda; is this it?

It's been apparent to me for sometime that's the world's wealthiest people are positioning themselves to have more power than elected governments but then what?

The robot wife is as creepy as fuck.

Some more mainstream links

Martina's wife bibi meets the robot built in her image:

Wiki bina48 robot

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BINA48

I mean just Google. Plenty of info.

I Googled several of the names that come up in the two articles I linked, but I am asking what people think is actually going on here? I can't quite put it all together, personally.

Martine Rothblatt is an accomplished lawyer who is also a bit of a nut.

The article wildly overstates her influence but she's certainly contributed to US thinking on trans issues. Her thoughts on bioethics are (being generous) an exercise in speculation about possible technological futures. She's spouted some total bollocks and there is certainly no grand conspiracy to create transhumans- it's just fantasy.

You need to change your title to mention Martine Rothblatt. I clicked on this by accident.

I would have laughed at those theories a few years ago, but now I have begun to understand how strong this male sexual urge is and how neatly it fits with misogyny and sexism, I'm prepared to give it credence. It's noticeable that it's mainly privileged, financially independent white men who go the Rothblatt route and torch their families and their past in pursuit of a sexual fetish.

This interview with a trans widow/ survivor of abuse on Graham Linehan's You Tube channel will give you a glimpse of the extent of it:

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/a-woman-to-look-out-for-jennifer

So many older, autogynephiliac men who live their life on-line, in a fantasy world with other men, exchanging porn and then seeking women to act it out with and validate themselves. In the past they would have been the only one like them around and it would have been a secret. Now they're an on-line community and they're organised.

The truth is that there is no apparent limit to the craziness of powerful men people when they get rich enough to pursue their fantasies. You only need to look at Elon Musk's rockets, really.

It doesn't necessarily mean they have a worldwide evil conspiracy behind them, but it does seem they can jump on a trend and influence policy and practice.

There have always been people who want to live forever - Walt Disney and cryogenics spring to mind - and this person seems to have some of those hallmarks and obsessions.

It's the damage they do to others in their wake that concerns me.

I haven't read these articles but am well aware of transhumanism and the links between this and transgenderism. There's really a great deal of overlap. It would advantage someone such as Rothblatt to encourage people to think of their bodies as a kind of 'meat lego' that they can enhance and adapt, adding and subtracting parts, as Rothblatt's business is pharmaceuticals. It sounds wacky as hell, but transhumanist thinking has a big influence on Silicon Valley and also on the younger generation. I went to a Transhumanist talk once and it was mainly young men in their teens and early twenties, who were given a very utopian vision of the future where technology is presented as solving various of the world's ills, including devices that could stop you feeling any pain. There was an almost religious fervour directed towards what was being presented, very little questioning. There is so much money to be made by selling tech implants, devices, bodily enhancements etc with these sold as freeing the individual from the limits of their own bodies. To some extent that's all well and good, but there's never any critical thinking about the implications - particularly on the more vulnerable in society - as to what these changes may lead to.

@adultingforever

I came across this today, and wonder what you all make of it? uncommongroundmedia.com/martine-rothblatt-a-founding-father-of-the-transgender-empire/

The link works for me, so I hope you can read it, too. Is this just a conspiracy theory and we should not give it any time? Or is this a real concern?

What's going on is the joining of QAnon level conspiracy and the gender critical movement. Not surprising to me as reactionary social conservative movements generally devolve to this sort of comet pizza level conspiracising. This is an anti-Semitic conspiracy as well as being completely loopy, the Jewish woman blamed for introducing "degenerate" ideas into society to damage it. Given powers and influence beyond anything resembling reality. Sad no one here has pointed that out, just immediately agreed with it!

No one in my circle of trans friends, trans allies, people commenting on trans activism, had ever heard of Martine Rothblatt until Jennifer Bilek created this weird anti-Semitic conspiracy. Not the only one she's been involved in either. I suggest everyone here giving this bigotry credence reads this thread - twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1366489983574413317

ool0n All I just heard was 'blah blah blah, you're all a bunch of anti-semitic, thick, right-wing conservative bigots' with no engagement with what has actually been said. No one has even mentioned the fact that Rothblatt is Jewish - if, indeed they are practising, I wouldn't know and its irrelevant. What is relevant is that Transhumanism has a lot of cult-like elements which I happen to have seen first hand, which seek to separate the self from the body and treat it as a container. This way of thinking would be greatly beneficial to anyone wishing to sell surgical procedures and technological implants, as Rothblatt does. Attempting some sort of oppression Olympics to defend a poor little Jewish woman, who has in fact a billionaire male, when you are in fact talking to a poor, working-class, unemployed, left-wing woman is exactly the kind of gaslighting I've come to expect from the TRAs. Your hypocrisy really has no bounds.

@NewlyGranny

The truth is that there is no apparent limit to the craziness of powerful men people when they get rich enough to pursue their fantasies. You only need to look at Elon Musk's rockets, really.

It doesn't necessarily mean they have a worldwide evil conspiracy behind them, but it does seem they can jump on a trend and influence policy and practice.

There have always been people who want to live forever - Walt Disney and cryogenics spring to mind - and this person seems to have some of those hallmarks and obsessions.

It's the damage they do to others in their wake that concerns me.

I think that this pretty much sums up my thoughts on this.

This is next level tin-foil hat nonsense.

It's another anti-semitic conspiracy - just like QAnon - that speaks of a fictional world where a handful of Jewish people wield incredible influence to steer public policy for nefarious purposes.

That "gender critical" people buy into this garbage is pretty revealing.

@Novelusername

ool0n All I just heard was 'blah blah blah, you're all a bunch of anti-semitic, thick, right-wing conservative bigots' with no engagement with what has actually been said. No one has even mentioned the fact that Rothblatt is Jewish - if, indeed they are practising, I wouldn't know and its irrelevant. What is relevant is that Transhumanism has a lot of cult-like elements which I happen to have seen first hand, which seek to separate the self from the body and treat it as a container. This way of thinking would be greatly beneficial to anyone wishing to sell surgical procedures and technological implants, as Rothblatt does. Attempting some sort of oppression Olympics to defend a poor little Jewish woman, who has in fact a billionaire male, when you are in fact talking to a poor, working-class, unemployed, left-wing woman is exactly the kind of gaslighting I've come to expect from the TRAs. Your hypocrisy really has no bounds.

I like that you unironically talk about "cult-like" elements as a "gender critical" person. It's pretty funny.

Great debating skills, yeahbutnaw , looks like you learned them on Twitter. Again, just name-calling, no engagement with the points being made, no points being made of your own. Call me anti-semitic until you're blue in the face, it doesn't make it true.
Actually, Humanity+ was founded by people of various religious backgrounds, as you can see here:

Humanity+ (also Humanity Plus; formerly the World Transhumanist Association) is an international non-profit organization which advocates the ethical use of emerging technologies to enhance human capacities.
The Board of Directors of Humanity+ are Ben Goertzel, José Cordeiro, Amy Li, Gabriel Rothblatt, Didier Coeurnelle, Paul Spiegel, and Nell Watson. The Executive Director is Natasha Vita-More. Advisers to Humanity+ are Max More, Sonia Arrison, Aubrey de Grey, Martine Rothblatt, David Orban, David Pearce, Anders Sandberg, James Hughes, and Luke Robert Mason.[1]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity%2B

I won't interact with you further as it's making me feel grubby, tbh, and I don't like my interactions online being someone else's wank fodder, doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.

[quote Novelusername]Great debating skills, yeahbutnaw , looks like you learned them on Twitter. Again, just name-calling, no engagement with the points being made, no points being made of your own. Call me anti-semitic until you're blue in the face, it doesn't make it true.
Actually, Humanity+ was founded by people of various religious backgrounds, as you can see here:

Humanity+ (also Humanity Plus; formerly the World Transhumanist Association) is an international non-profit organization which advocates the ethical use of emerging technologies to enhance human capacities.
The Board of Directors of Humanity+ are Ben Goertzel, José Cordeiro, Amy Li, Gabriel Rothblatt, Didier Coeurnelle, Paul Spiegel, and Nell Watson. The Executive Director is Natasha Vita-More. Advisers to Humanity+ are Max More, Sonia Arrison, Aubrey de Grey, Martine Rothblatt, David Orban, David Pearce, Anders Sandberg, James Hughes, and Luke Robert Mason.[1]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity%2B[/quote]
Sure Jan.

I'm just waiting for your inevitable Soros outburst.

@Novelusername let me help make it simpler, the conspiracies involving shadowy "powerful people", funding the [gay|trans|leftwing] lobby to "undermine our western civilisation" are 99% of the time anti-Semitic. I've seen lots of people pick out Soros as the one "funding trans ideology", that's anti-Semitic. Bill and Melinda Gates fund far more LGBT charities than Soros, but the old Jewish guy has way more conspiracies about his charitable funding. Right? Bilek attacks Soros, Rothblatt, Pritzker, all Jewish. This is classic anti-Semitism.
www.adl.org/blog/the-antisemitism-lurking-behind-george-soros-conspiracy-theories

[quote Novelusername]Great debating skills, yeahbutnaw , looks like you learned them on Twitter. Again, just name-calling, no engagement with the points being made, no points being made of your own. Call me anti-semitic until you're blue in the face, it doesn't make it true.
Actually, Humanity+ was founded by people of various religious backgrounds, as you can see here:

Humanity+ (also Humanity Plus; formerly the World Transhumanist Association) is an international non-profit organization which advocates the ethical use of emerging technologies to enhance human capacities.
The Board of Directors of Humanity+ are Ben Goertzel, José Cordeiro, Amy Li, Gabriel Rothblatt, Didier Coeurnelle, Paul Spiegel, and Nell Watson. The Executive Director is Natasha Vita-More. Advisers to Humanity+ are Max More, Sonia Arrison, Aubrey de Grey, Martine Rothblatt, David Orban, David Pearce, Anders Sandberg, James Hughes, and Luke Robert Mason.[1]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity%2B[/quote]
How can you point out it's founded, and run by people other than Jewish people, in fact not ran by Martine Rothblatt she's just a member. Then wonder why it's not anti-Semitic to pick out the Jewish woman as the evil genius behind it all. To big up the scary nature of what they're doing, corrupting our precious bodily fluids. When all said and done its a rich people with daft ideas forum, fantasising about living forever in some Elisium like future. Completely divorced from trans people's lives, so transphobic too, so much so the misgendering of Martine Rothblatt is barely noticeable.

The Trump school of debate. Everything is fake apart from what I think

@Shedbuilder

You need to change your title to mention Martine Rothblatt. I clicked on this by accident.

I would have laughed at those theories a few years ago, but now I have begun to understand how strong this male sexual urge is and how neatly it fits with misogyny and sexism, I'm prepared to give it credence. It's noticeable that it's mainly privileged, financially independent white men who go the Rothblatt route and torch their families and their past in pursuit of a sexual fetish.

This interview with a trans widow/ survivor of abuse on Graham Linehan's You Tube channel will give you a glimpse of the extent of it:

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/a-woman-to-look-out-for-jennifer

So many older, autogynephiliac men who live their life on-line, in a fantasy world with other men, exchanging porn and then seeking women to act it out with and validate themselves. In the past they would have been the only one like them around and it would have been a secret. Now they're an on-line community and they're organised.

@Shedbuilder

"I would have laughed at those theories a few years ago, but now I have begun to understand how strong this male sexual urge is and how neatly it fits with misogyny and sexism, I'm prepared to give it credence."

I like your perspective.

I believe that one should proceed through life on the assumption that "conspiracy theories" are nonsense... whilst simultaneously acknowledging that some might be true and making some effort to work out which ones. You definitely don't want to go down conspiracy theory rabbit hole, but neither should you assume that there's not some big conspiracy just because it seems so insane.

I’ve been reading about Ray Kurzweil and other Silicon Valley rich dudes who have been transhumanists, singularity believers, or immortality believers for decades - they want to live forever, and stay rich and young forever:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/silicon-valleys-quest-to-live-forever

qz.com/1123164/seeking-eternal-life-silicon-valley-is-solving-for-death/

qz.com/1578796/why-silicon-valley-titans-are-obsessed-with-immortality/

It’s like traditional religions in that it’s a quest for eternal life but in their case it’s not after death, it’s instead of death. It’s a popular theme in science fiction too - billionaires living forever and controlling the rest of us short-lived workers (see novels by Greg Egan, Richard Morgan, Neal Asher) - I see that type of future as a very Ayn Randian dystopia but these rich men obviously see it as an attractive idea. Some of them have a reality that’s very divorced from the real world.

@yeahbutnaw

This is next level tin-foil hat nonsense.

It's another anti-semitic conspiracy - just like QAnon - that speaks of a fictional world where a handful of Jewish people wield incredible influence to steer public policy for nefarious purposes.

That "gender critical" people buy into this garbage is pretty revealing.

Bit rich from someone who just tried to liken GC feminism to Nazi Germany on another thread. You quite clearly don't give a shit about anti-semitism, you just pick up any stick to beat women with. We see you.

I have no idea who Jennifer bilek is.

I have heard of rothblatt and their bizarre ideas.

There are plenty of interviews online to hear rothblatts thoughts and ideas.

The wife thing is super creepy.

This is all in the public domain, no conspiracy theories required.

What's going on is the joining of QAnon level conspiracy and the gender critical movement. Not surprising to me as reactionary social conservative movements generally devolve to this sort of comet pizza level conspiracising.

That seems a bit of a reach. This is the first post on here I've ever seen about this on MN, it has very little response and non of those outline any conspiracy theory. OP is not a MN feminism regular. It seems a bit of a wild conspiracy theory to think GC feminists are all involved in this thing we've never heard of.

Jennifer Bilek created this weird anti-Semitic conspiracy.

No idea if that's true but I'm happy to agree that JB is not credible.