SSCReader
4mo ago
Over a four year period beginning when he was a redshirt freshman at Indiana in 2022, Sorsby had made over $90,000 in bets, including bets involving his own team
And so the origin story of the greatest hero you've never heard of begins. Now he just has to time travel back to save Ronald Reagan.
SSCReader
4mo ago
But the outcome of some of the competing issues might have that happen.
The Womens Institute might be a good example. Some groups didn't want to include trans-women. They wanted to limit it to biological women (which would include trans men). Not unreasonable in my view at least. Others disbanded over that change.
However some groups didn't want trans-men (because they look like/act like men). So the "anti-trans" women side does have a split here. They don't want biological men in womens spaces, but alot of them also don't want anyone who looks like a man either.
If that gets carried through, neither trans men (biologically female) or trans women (biologically male), get to attend.
While most conservative commentators do want trans people to use the bathroom their biological sex would suggest. That does mean some pretty masculine looking bearded trans men in womens bathrooms and locker rooms. And we've already seen that can be a problem..
This isn't just hypothetical, given the UK supreme court ruling (and draft EHRC guidance off the back of it) says you could ban a trans-man from a mens bathroom (because they are biologically female) AND from a womens bathroom because their presentation as male may make women uncomfortable, so this outcome is legally supported.
See the problem? There are competing strands of what people want or don't want within the broad "anti-trans" tent and the intersection of those might well mean in practice some trans people can't use either bathroom.
Note: I put anti-trans in quotes as a short hand, but I don't think many of these people are necessarily what I would call anti-trans in actuality. I have high regard for many Women's Institute groups and I think both of their positions on the exclusion of biological men and women who look like/act men can both make sense depending on your criteria.
SSCReader
4mo ago
I think the key is I don't think there is a real difference you are drawing. What or why people hold these beliefs is irrelevant. They do. Whether there is some counter-factual world in which a Christian informed that their beliefs are made up would become an atheist and therefore would have allowed medical treatment for their child instead of prayer doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they were brainwashed as a child, sent to a religious school or handed a pamphlet, it doesn't matter if a trusted pastor converted them, or an online message board. It doesn't matter if their beliefs are true or not.
Either you have to treat the belief as enough or not. Once you start getting into judging whether the belief is well founded, or what tactics you can use to spread your beliefs then we're back while we started.
Guilt tripping is one of the fundamental methods of ensuring compliance to religion (cf. Catholicism) so just because Trans ideology is a religion doesn't mean they can't guilt trip or browbeat people. Likewise people have been taken into care for not being raised in the correct religious beliefs and so on. Faith healers are allowed to advertise. You are drawing (or trying to draw) a bright line between faith and medicine that is actually very blurry.
Either these are reasonable tactics for both trans ideology and religions or they are not.
Are people allowed to morally browbeat people into doing X? Clearly yes. Therefore trans activists should be allowed to as well. Most health insurance covers elective circumcisions at least partially, and even government healthcare does in the majority of states. As for separation of church and state the whole Intelligent Design issues shows that religion will certainly attempt to get their beliefs taught in schools by hook or by crook, so again Trans ideology gets the same treatment. They can try and may fail or succeed.
There is nothing to say a medical organization can't have its advice based upon its beliefs. And in fact plenty to say they can. Jehovah's Witnesses have networks of doctors who specialise in Bloodless Medicine and Surgery, which recommend not using blood products and crucially launder their beliefs by claiming this is better. (or more charitably because they really believe it is better, because their beliefs inform their medical thinking), so a trans-activist doctor can certainly tell a family transitioning their kid is better whether it is or isn't.
The below text at the bottom is from Penn Medicine for reference. Now substitute in "People who choose transition surgery often experience positive outcomes through..." Also note they don't mention anything about the downsides or risks of not using blood products. Interesting isn't it? Like the people writing it have their medical preferences informed by their beliefs and are allowed to simply just tell people that.
I am sure you see my point. If you asked one of these bloodless doctors about whether you should get surgery with a transfusion or without what do you think they would tell you? If you ask a trans activist doctor whether transition is a good treatment for your dysphoric kid what would they tell you?
You're drawing a line for trans treatment that is not drawn in other places. Doctors can just tell you bloodless surgery is better, because their beliefs inform it. Even if you can find other doctors who will say the opposite. Your insurance will just pay for you to have bloodless surgery because it is part of your religious beliefs. Even though it might be riskier. and so on and so forth.
Let me be clear, I think trans treatments much like bloodless treatments are likely to be a mistake and that the children going through each will be harmed more than the alternative. I think both are stupid almost certainly false beliefs. But I think they should be treated the same way. Either activist doctors are allowed or not. Currently if there is a religion that believes blood transfusions are wrong they are allowed to have doctors that also believe this and will (literally) evangelise it. So the trans ideology should get the same treatment. People and parents get to decide which nonsense they want to believe. They remain the final arbiter. Whether they are brainwashed by a pastor, a bloodless doctor or a trans-activist doctor doesn't matter. Either they get to act on their beliefs or not.
I do certainly agree if a trans treatment results in death or the high risk of it, then the state should intervene. But as in Idaho and 33 other states, apparently the religious do not agree with me. So again "their rules fairly enforced". If belief is enough for them to allow a child to die then belief is enough for me to allow parents to transition children. It's isolated demands for rigor and hypocrisy all the way down.
Not from you to be clear, I don't imagine you have much say over Idaho laws or the extensive lobbying thereof. You seem to have a much more structurally coherent position.
"Advantages of bloodless medicine for patients and providers Blood-conservation techniques improve the management of a patient's blood and reduce strain and costs on regional and national blood supplies.
People who choose bloodless surgery often experience positive outcomes through:
Faster healing and recovery Fewer reactions from stored blood Lower chance of infections No chance of receiving the wrong blood in error Hospitals and health-care organizations benefit from reduced:
Blood storage-related issues Costs related to maintaining blood inventory Demand for blood and blood products Risk of blood transfusion errors"
SSCReader
4mo ago
Well you say that..
"Academic and journalistic reviews of these massive files confirm that alongside hate mail, Hindley routinely received fan mail, expressions of romantic infatuation, and explicit marriage proposals from male strangers."
SSCReader
4mo ago
The problem is of course the US doesn't ban people making medical decisions for their kids based on religous belief generally. You can get your kid circumcised, or choose not to treat them and use prayer instead, or increase risk by not using blood products and so on. Up until imminent death, when the state may intervene.
So in a "your rules applied fairly" sense, if Trans ideology is a religion, that indicates parents who support their kids transitioning should be allowed to make that choice for them.
Otherwise its an isolated demand for rigor. My unsubstantiated belief can inform medical care and risk the life of my child, your unsubstantiated belief cannot.
Even the social contagion issue, churches have specific super-spreader events to infect children with their social contagion.
So i'm not sure treating trans ideology as a religion helps because we give huge amounts of latitude to religion.
Which is basically my stance, while we allow parents to do all kinds of crazy nonsense to their children, drawing the line at trans stuff is an isolated demand for rigor. My preferred choice would be to ban the lot of it, but thats highly unlikely so "your rules fairly applied" it is.
If Bob gets to mutilate his kids penis, and Carol gets to mutilate her kids mind, and Shemar gets to risk his kids life when they need a blood transfusion, and Marjorie gets to risk her kids life by replacing medical treatment with prayer, then Freddie gets to transition his son to his daughter.
Many of those will turn out to be awful harmful choices and terrible for the kid. But we allow them anyway.
Either unsubstantiated beliefs get to influence medical decisions or they don't. And currently many, many of them do.
If trans is a religion then at very minimum where parents want to transition their kid they should be allowed to do so. Even if all evidence suggests its nonsense. Because evidence suggests thats for a whole host of nonsense we do allow.
"Such legal exemptions in Idaho and other states mean, for example, that if a parent withholds medical treatments for an ailing child and instead opts for spiritual treatment through prayer, the child will not be considered "neglected" under the law, even if he or she dies."
If your beliefs can legally allow you to let your child die, its hard to argue they shouldn't also let you transition them.
Arguably trans activists pivoting to calling it a religion would entitle them to more protections, at least in the US.
SSCReader
4mo ago
Now if the press reported something that said "While Kier Starmer was..it has been reported that ...were let off with warning letters" theMotte correctly would ask questions about how the use of weaselly words like "while" and "it has been reported", don't actually say who reported it based on what information or in fact that Kier Starmer was involved at all in these letters. Just that they happened while he was DPP. See how they carefully don't say he actually was responsible? Just that it happened WHILE he was in post?
While Donald Trump was President it has been reported millions of people across the world died in car accidents! See the issue?
What they are talking about are Child Abduction Warning Notices but these are drafted by the police and the parents/guardians of a child and nothing to do with the DPP at all. They're kind of like ASBOs but for suspected child abuse/abduction. Usually issued through Multi Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH). To frame them as warning letters and being let off is disingenuous in the extreme and so is linking it to Starmer. He has no ability to decide when these are used or not as DPP.
Indeed the whole point of them is to try and move faster to protect children so that you don't need to wait for something bad to happen that you can evidence. It doesn't in any way substitute for a prosecution and indeed breaching one can be used in evidence. The Children's Society (see below) argued that Parliament should extend CAWN's as they were very useful in protecting vulnerable children.
CAWNS were designed specifically to be used in grooming or relative cases where the vulnerable child may not be willing/able to testify or go to the police and so getting evidence can be tricky. It allows the breach of the CAWN to itself be used as evidence. More use of CAWN's could have protected some of these girls. Unfortunately it wasn't until the advent of MASH's in the 2010's they started being used in numbers. Nothing to do with Starmer being DPP.
In fact it's very sneaky because the increase in the use of CAWNs as well as MASH's themselves were in part a reaction to the grooming scandals that were breaking. So they cite the evidence of the police making attempts to deal with grooming as evidence that Starmer (who has no control over police forces remember) was soft on grooming gangs! That is deliberate obfuscation. And as that tweet and yourself show, people will fall for it.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/68063/html/
"Child Abduction Warning Notices
The Policing and Crime Bill reforms police powers and specifically looks at Child Sexual Exploitation, making it the perfect opportunity to review the current lack of police powers to intervene and disrupt inappropriate contact between a vulnerable 16 and 17 year old and a person who may be grooming them for sexual or criminal purposes.
Child Abduction Warning Notices (CAWNs) are an early intervention and disruption tool used by the police as an effective way of disrupting contact between a vulnerable child and a predatory adult where there are concerns that the child may be at risk of harm, sexual exploitation, involvement in crime or there are other risks posed by an adult.
Issuing a CAWN is often part of on-going police investigations; they make it impossible for a potentially abusive adult to claim that they did not know that the person they were in contact with was a vulnerable child. This can be used as evidence in court if any later abuse or other crime takes place. This is particularly helpful in cases when a child does not recognise that they are at risk or is not prepared to disclose abuse so are unlikely to go to the police themselves.
Extending Child Abduction Warning Notices to Vulnerable 16 and 17 Year Olds Currently, a Child Abduction Warning Notice (CAWN) can be used to protect all children under 16. They can also be used to protect certain vulnerable groups of 16 and 17 year olds: those formally taken into care under section 31 of the Children Act 1989; those subject to an emergency protection order; or those in police protection. It is a common misconception, this is often a surprise to social workers and services when they first encounter it, that all children in care can be protected by a CAWN. This is not the case.
We believe that the group of 16 and 17 year olds in relation to whom CAWN can currently be used is not wide enough. This makes it very difficult for police and social services to protect vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds. Last annual statistics available shows that only 190 children aged 16-17 were taken into care by their local authorities under Section 31 (and can be protected by a CAWN). However, a further 4,320 young people of that age became looked after by their local authorities[vii] and won’t be able to receive this form of protection.
This means that, with the way CAWNs are currently implemented, only a very small minority of children in care – an exceptionally vulnerable group – can be properly protected and thus creates a two-tier system of protection within the care system. The provision as it currently stands protects only a tiny minority of vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds."
I think you're typical minding here. We celebrate sports very noisily in lots of almost entirely white countries.
Your thesis does not pass the smell test. Maybe for very reserved WASPs or similar but those are far from the only white people.
I have friends I made by randomly hugging and screaming at a rugby match and they've been my best buddies for 25 years.
Watching any European football match from Milan, to Paris, to London, will show you a lot of white people screaming and celebrating.
SSCReader
4mo ago
most of them tend to have a visceral hatred of English people.
I just don't think that's true. I am an Ulster Scots Northern Irishman and we have many English relatives. Half my extended family moved to England and married English people. Maybe a very mild dislike of Southern posh English people but we get on very well with Northerners.
I've never even met a Protestant Ulsterman who mentioned hating the English. Certainly not a visceral hatred.
The real (Norn) Irony here is that many Northern Irish Catholics call my people immigrants/colonizers/invaders and condemn us for the violent actions of say Lenny Murphy and the like (or Britain in general) while leaning left and thus being more lenient towards the more recent Sudanese immigrant. While my people who are in fact themselves literal violent invaders/colonizers are harsher to the Sudanese, but don't see the same logic also applies to us. If this Sudanese murderer means we should treat Sudanese people differently then Lenny Murphy and the like indicate that Catholics are in fact correct to want us gone/out of power as well. You either have collective guilt/treatment or you don't. Nothing here is driven by logic or rationality.
It's an Ulster-Scots kettle calling the Sudanese pot black (so to speak). While likewise the Catholics are more tolerant of this chap and similar immigrants than of my type and similar immigrants. It's topsy-turvy, all built around tribal lines.
Still this chap is likely to get knifed in prison or have boiling sugar water thrown over him by a wee fella from Antrim sooner or later.
So I think we're quite close in ideals maybe. I agree that I would prefer a world with doctors as you describe.
I just don't think its possible. A doctor may earnestly believe that a trans surgery will save the life of a child, just as a Jehovahs Witness doctor believes giving the child blood is worse for them medically because they've both rationalized their belief set through their medical training.
For many medical decisions the outcomes are grey. As you point out fundamentally your medical ethos is buttressed by your belief set. You may not even know you are biased. So how do you ban that?
You see the same with dentists in much less culture war ways. I have a really old NHS filling in a tooth. My last US dentist said it was old but ok and if it started crumbling he would crown it. My new dentist says I must remove it and replace it with a crown because he expects it to start crumbling and that will make crowning it harder and more painful for me.
Presumably this difference is to do with their risk tolerances or experiences with fillings or because they read it in a book. Or maybe my new dentist is a sadist or wants the extra money from my insurance company. I heavily suspect though its not a conscious choice. They are different people, one a shy, almost reserved Indian chap, while the new dentist is a mile a minute talker with shoulders like a prop forward from Iowa. I have no idea which one is objectively right. They may well both believe they are right.
As for bloodless doctors..wait until you find out about Doctors of Osteopathy (D.O.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Osteopathic_Medicine
"One notable difference between DO and MD training is that D.O.s spend an additional 300–500 hours to study pseudoscientific hands-on manipulation of the human musculoskeletal system (osteopathic manipulative technique) alongside conventional evidence-based medicine and surgery like their MD peers"
Currently about 1/3 of student doctors in the US are D.O., not M.D. in theory they have to study the same conventional medicine. But being taught a whole non-scientific process seems like its likely to influence your decision making. Or maybe just being the kind of person who would choose that route does. There are practices and programs that don't hire D.O.s but they are fully licensed physicians.
Anyway, the US at least has no grounds to complain about activist doctors pushing treatments with little or no scientific backing. They've been accepting that for a long time. Maybe make a Doctor of Trans (D.T.) school so you can tell them apart and call it a day.
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