Kazaan2397

I do not wish to defend Hamas, but there is a limit to how much destruction can be excused as collateral damage when battling a terrorist organization, and the actions of the Israeli state have long since crossed that limit. They should have no need to forcibly relocate over a million people, destroy hospitals, or implement the policies of an ethnostate to prevent Palestinians from obtaining Israeli citizenship, just to fight Hamas. None of the Palestinians themselves, who arguably bear the brunt of the suffering in this conflict, would blame Hamas over Israel for it, as far as I know.

Based on my reasoning on the matter so far, either a person's gender can be established conclusively regardless of anyone's perceptions, including the person themselves, or gender is completely arbitrary. I might personally have no problem recognizing someone as the opposite gender from what they were assigned at birth, insofar as my own perception of them agrees with that, which may be flexible enough to overlook certain features they retain that are atypical of their chosen gender, whereas another person may have a narrower set of criteria which would exclude those features. Our disagreement here would amount to nothing more than a difference of opinion, unless we had a foundation for establishing the official facts of the matter, which is necessary if we were to assume that any greater societal and legal convenience constitute a legitimate interest... meaning the only way you could effectively assert your claim would be if you can say "well screw you, this is what it says on my official documents". Otherwise, gender could be changed on a whim, and you could decide that you are a man today, a woman tomorrow, and non-binary next week, using any bathroom you want irrespective of how you actually present yourself, and there'd be no grounds to label that as socially dysfunctional behavior.

You might think that a person's self-identity alone is enough to establish their official identity, but let's be honest, would you genuinely recognize as female someone who only dresses and uses makeup like a woman, with no other feminine features, just because they want you to use she/her pronouns? Even if they somehow register in your perception the way that they identify, would you really expect the rest of society to follow your example?

I'd say the only reason there is to avoid masturbation that makes it worth considering, if it can be proven conclusively, would be that partaking in the act results in suboptimal cognition compared to if one were to abstain from it. Even if that were true, it would only be a tiny minority of the human population, even of those who attempt to abstain, who ever cross the threshold from being sexually repressed to genuinely relinquishing their sexual desire. It is not worth feeling shame for what only the exceptional can accomplish in such case.

Most likely, this shame of masturbation typically stems from one's failure to maintain any fulfilling sexual or even platonic relationships, in which case it comes to be seen as a coping mechanism to put up with ideas that one has about themselves as being sexually undesirable, unskilled, or deviant. While you might say it's good that it deters you from seeking sexual relationships, chances are, what you really think is that it's good that it spares you from making the gamble with your own heart that comes from any intimate involvement with another person, because you fear that it is too fragile to withstand any turbulence that it entails even when you still desire the benefits, and so you make do with simulating the experience of those benefits without getting the full package. Unless you can disprove this to yourself, you have very little chance of consistently abstaining from masturbation, if any part of you truly considers that to be your purpose.