I was raised Buddhist and I want to learn more about Lord Buddha's teachings but I don't believe in anything supernatural at all. I don't believe in any God, afterlife, reincarnation, supernatural karma, luck, nothing. So I call myself an atheist but I'm still very interested in knowing how suffering works and gaining enlightenment. So I don't know.
I'm about to turn 16 and I honestly want T so bad. I live in the UK but I'm from South Asia. My parents are a bit transphobic but they are very understanding and know that I'm trans. I think I can somehow convince them to let me go on T if it's an option although it'll be hard. We've talked to professionals about this and it's going to be very difficult to go down the normal path (the waiting list is years and it's going to be harder for me because of my suspected neurodivergence and mental health issues apparently.) I know GenderGP is an option but I don't really know much about it. Do you know what the price for T is? I've been thinking about T since 14, it'll help me pass alot because I look like way younger than my age if i pass and if i don't, I don't.
I'm about to turn 16 and I honestly want T so bad. I live in the UK but I'm from South Asia. My parents are a bit transphobic but they are very understanding and know that I'm trans. I think I can somehow convince them to let me go on T if it's an option although it'll be hard. We've talked to professionals about this and it's going to be very difficult to go down the normal path (the waiting list is years and it's going to be harder for me because of my suspected neurodivergence and mental health issues apparently.) I know GenderGP is an option but I don't really know much about it. Do you know what the price for T is? I've been thinking about T since 14, it'll help me pass alot because I look like way younger than my age if i pass and if i don't, I don't.
I think suffering overweighs this but what do I even say to people who thinks that it's ok to bring someone to this world of suffering without their consent because 'life is always worth living because pain in temporary and life gives happiness too'
I've done some research about abortion but I'm not too educated about it. I know reddit isn't the best place to get information on something like this but most other sources are also biased anyway. I am pro-choice but I honestly don't think that it's moral to take any life (I'm vegan, against the death penalty, etc) so I feel kind of like a hypocrite for holding a prochoice stance. I would never think that abortion is murder because it's not comparable to something as extreme as that at all. But I'm starting to question whether its right or wrong, not whether its murder or not, if that makes sense. I know a fetus doesn't even know its alive and is unconscious in the first few weeks but I can now see a lot of flaws in this reasoning because it wouldn't be ok to painlessly take the life of an unconscious person or a person who's asleep. So, I'm starting to have some conflicting feelings over this. Overall, I would always care more about the person having the abortion than the fetus because I understand that people get raped, children get pregnant, people have horrible mental health and forcing them to give birth can make it much worse and can even ruin their life. But I just want to understand this more deeply. I don't know much about the procedures and what they're like. Are there any unbiased resources out there to look at that are scientific and medically acceptable?
TW! I used to play with a 10 year old girl when I was six and she would tell me to take my underwear off and then touch my private part and make me touch hers. This happened multiple times. I liked it but I was also scared and my heart was beating fast while it was happening. A 15-year-old boy rubbed his boy part on my private parts and I didn't want him to do that but I still liked the feeling. This also happened when I was 6. When I was 9,10,11 these things happened: I knew someone who watched porn and he removed my clothes without my permission and almost touched my private parts. Someone came into the bathroom I was in and grabbed the cover away and stared at my body. My toxic friends kept grabbing my butt and lifting my skirt up. They also spied on me changing clothes and bodyshamed me, commenting about my body. I was also exposed and addicted to porn at 11. I don't have any flashbacks or trauma but I hate myself for letting those things happened to me when I was little and I let it happen and didn't resist at all and also liked it, so is it valid?
I am very sensitive. I often break down crying in public, get hurt from the smallest things and take almost everything personally. I care a lot. I've cried after watching movies about FGM, vegan documentaries, clips of people being affected by war, etc. I'm a forgiving person and I even forgave the people who SA'd me. I think about people like homeless people and trafficking victims and feel very guilty for not being able to help. I feel deep empathy towards people. But at the same time I'm the exact opposite of this. I've laughed after seeing a clip of something horrible I hate everyone and think everyone is evil . I fantasize horrible, unimaginable things and feel nothing at all. I had a dream about the same thing I fantasized about and in that dream I felt incredibly angry and disgusted but in real life when I fantasize about those things, I feel nothing. I hate this world and I feel completely heartless sometimes and I want people to get as hurt as I got hurt so they'd know how it feels like. Sometimes I don't care at all. I feel like doing whatever I want. But I can't get myself to do those things and be cruel. I don't know what's wrong with me.
Theists say that the reason evil exists in this world is because God gave us free will. But this argument makes no sense. How does God giving us 'free will' have anything to do with children dying from cancer, tsunamis and earthquakes wiping out thousands of people, and the existence of natural suffering? If this is God's creation, why is it created in such a way that allows this form of suffering? Although the free will argument can explain someone hurting another person, it still looks bad on God. If I saw someone trying to hurt someone else, I wouldn't choose to respect their free will and mind my own business; I will try my best to prevent any harm from happening. So, why can't God intervene the same way a human can and prevent harm? Or by any other measure? If they are incapable of intervening, wouldn't this prove that they are not 'all powerful' or 'beyond' human because they can't even do what a human can?
God also allows us to do the most evil acts. Why would God give us the freedom to murder for instance? Why can't they limit our free will not to the point we have no free will at all- but to the point we aren't allowed to do acts like this. You don't have to allow murder to give people freedom. God doesn't give us the free will to do many things like the free will to fly but allows us to kill for the sake of our 'free will'. You will not be a 'mindless robot' just because your ability to do brutal acts are limited by God, so God has no reason to allow these acts and yet still does which makes them evil.
God didn't give us free will either way. If free will truly existed God wouldn't put us in infinite hellfire for using the very free will they literally gave us. What God is doing is like giving someone who has homicidal tendencies a knife (the ability to act on their thoughts) and then telling them 'if you use the knife I gave you then I will punish you and put you in jail.' Why give them the knife in the first place? Free will also feels like an illusion because if God is 'all knowing' wouldn't they already know what happens to us, so are we really making our own independent choices if God already knows what we will decide in the future and that is fixed in the eyes of God?
But people still defend God even though it's pretty clear they are inherently evil. I often hear a dentist argument. 'Saying God doesn't exist because there is suffering is like saying dentists don't exist because cavities exist' First of all dentists don't create cavities or create the things that make cavities. But this world according to your logic is 'God's creation'. There are many faults in God's creation that allows suffering, for example, God forces carnivores animals to kill other animals to survive instead making them herbivores or granting them the ability to do photosynthesis. People go to dentists,and they will do the job but there are people who beg, cry and pray to God and still get no response. If God is truly loving they would not pick and choose which human to help and who to not. Another thing I hear 'It's part of God's plan' So if someone killed themselves- that was God's plan and it was meant to happen, really?
I label myself as a libertarian socialist and I'm into ideologies like democratic confederalism, communalism and council communism. I'm turning 16 in a month and just recently started reading Marx and researching about socialism. I'm confused if I'm a communist or not because even though I agree with the end goal of a classless, stateless, moneyless society in which workers own the means of production, I don't like how most communists plan to transition into it. I prefer ideologies like democratic confederalism because it does not have a central government and is a direct democracy where people vote for the policies instead of policies being decided by one person on behalf of the people. But the main reason I prefer it is because I think when communism is actually 'practiced' it usually fails and becomes too authoritarian or leads into totalitarianism or a dictatorship. Since Rojava is a huge success whereas in most places in which communism has been tried has ended up failing, communism doesn't appeal to me as much but I still have the same end goal. So by definition, would I still be a communist?