ShariaHeap
5mo ago
The refusal to connect with the trans issue when it's staring you in the face is also something you see with research. Like this article looking at the rapid spread of psychiatric illnesses in teen girls on social media, that somehow fails to even mention trans.
Or the endless line graphs of rising mental illness that Jonathan Haidt and co produce, corresponding also with social media use, but not showing the one on gender dysphoria, which shows the same trend.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
What do you mean, the gender identity ('born in the wrong body') is justifying the surgery. Also the gender identity stuff is an incoherent belief system that is being taught in schools and mandated in workplaces.
The irony is that having a sex category, being an immutable fact, allows for any manner of expression. It is gender identity where the individual is forced to show social proof of membership, typically confirming to regressive sex stereotypes in order to do so.
ShariaHeap
3mo ago
Great post, much appreciate your summary which I wholeheartedly agree with. The funny thing is I originally found the Motte when I was infuriated with Freddie for one of those earlier posts, whereby I googled if anyone had commented on the web, and actually found a place I could rant where I wasn't immediately kicked off. And here we are today, with the same games being played!
I hold no particular animus or deep feelings against Freddie, but he is a fraud in my view. It's obviously fine to have whatever blog policy you want, but to block people from talking about an issue and then proceed to talk about it 'alot' is insulting to his subscribers and just plain tyrannical.
The only saving grace he might have with it is cognitive dissonance - the post you dug up in DID speaks to this as well ( I didn't know about that one) - he all but lays out the case that trans is a culture bound syndrome and now because of his tribal and familial roots is realising he can't square what he knows to be true with the orthodoxy he's supposed to subscribe to. Reading his latest made me feel like I was watching someone wet themselves in public, so poor and fumbling was the argumentation in places.
I get annoyed with the fragmentation technique which actually hides what is going on. First posit the 'trans person' and then smear categories and argue on a rights basis. In between anything will do-sand in the face. It's just like heads of a hydra - I mean, can you count all the spurious stuff that is been brought up around this shit: endless queerying of biological sex, made up ideas of third genders or historic trans people, adolescent identity badges and flags, the extreme sensitivity to... third person pronouns, gender identity theory justification, rights issues and medical treatment model at the same time, social constructivism, gender performance, gender souls/essences, etc. If you collate what people have said to justify trans you will understand that is an 'empty' term. The arguments shift over time, and different individuals use conflicting and incoherent explanations to argue for it.
But it's pretty simple what is going on. A new group of people has been created in society and activists are having the rights of this group supercede those of others, by making a nonsense category, gender identity, supercede biological sex. Activists, progressive zealots, money makers, politician, handmaid women, and a lot of (mainly male) weirdos have been setting this up behind our backs but some people have realised what is going on and have something to say about it.
It's still finely poised but I predict the trans lobby will start to lose ground. This is because there is no coherence, no meaning to be found in trans. On the other hand, if you gain a perspective, you can actually understand, and even admire, the emergent systems at play. If enough people in society value reality we will have to act in concert to defend it. Otherwise, what lies ahead after abandoning reality?
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
It's difficult because yeah, probably are some genuinely transgender kids out there
I strenuously deny this assertion. There are gender non-conforming children, gay children, those who struggle to develop a gendered identity in a social world, and ultimately those who struggle with body or gender dysphoria but there is no evidence that there are 'trans-children'.
The blind acceptance of this frame by both sides is something we need to challenge if we want medical professionals to start caring about child-safeguarding.
The idea of a trans child was unknown 20 years ago when trans(sexual) identification was the domain of adult males with autogynephilia
Who is providing the language and ideas for these children to use?
ShariaHeap
5mo ago
I didn't see it necessarily as trans ideology meeting every aspect of a cult just that there are obvious parallels.
The cult dynamics are most apparent perhaps in social media groups, where there is love-bombing, sanctioning and social games to influence vulnerable new members by the group and older figures, moderators acting as the cult leaders. These are places where teenage angst will be helpfully interpreted as a sign you're probably trans, and doubt about transitioning framed as internalised transphobia, or a need to stop listening to others or going to other places on the internet and just stay on 'trans-friendly sites'.
I think the current ideology has cult like manifestation but that it's better described as a culture-bound syndrome, or egregore, though that's a more nebulous concept.
ShariaHeap
5mo ago
The gender ideology movement sort of feels out of the news cycle where I live, but remains very top of mind for me.
As I see it, the whole umbrella is actually multiple, almost unrelated strands, queerying category activists, social engineering progressives, AGPs, internet cults, all underpinned by unthinking legal activism and of course corporate profiteering. Did I mention an overtly political and enabling media environment bereft of any journalistic values?
I am fascinated by all these things but mainly I want to talk about the social mania aspect. I'm very interested in how smart people, who would inevitably class themselves as above-average in rationality and morality, are able to brush off child-safeguarding concerns, discarding the previous medical ethics consensus (first do no harm, evidence based medicine) in favour of ideas that barely existed even 15-20 years ago.
I have been looking into previous social manias such as the satanic panic and the child care workers given wrongful convictions and it's shocking how difficult it is to reverse the tide of mania once it's begun. Parents, police, the justice system, and media all fall into lockstep and condemn innocent people to terrible fates they and their families bear in almost total isolation, with only a few supporters able to parse the information in front of them and figure out what is going on.
I mean this is just human behaviour - we make movies about the Salem witch trials, we are modern people and have access to perspectives of humans across evolutionary time. Is it really true that people still don't know who we are, how we behave in herds?
I understand apathy, I understand things moving out of the news cycles, but I can't understand how people can maintain a neutral view on unnecessary surgeries on minors. When institutions such as medical bodies fail in their basic safeguarding responsibilities, suppressing dissent within their ranks, it is not hard to work out what is going on. How many manias does history need to present before people learn what we are?
A failure of courage I understand in any given context but the neutral middle doesn't even seem curious in private.
Can anybody enlighten me why people aren't more curious, why they're happy for children to be groomed into lifelong medicalisation, with their life choices pre-emptively narrowed before they even understand what consent means? The true-believers I understand, it's supposedly smart, moral people that aren't engaged that I'm confused about. Are they secretly true believers but just don't want to say?
Plain old cognitive dissonance?
ShariaHeap
11mo ago
COVID made me aware that actually you can't resolve arguments by quoting scientific articles. There has actually always been a lot of low quality evidence that you can't trust. Researcher bias is a given in this area. Opinion pieces are mere sophistry. Science used to progress by consensus, whereby shared facts would gradually accrue through the process of reproducibility and sufficient status given to integrity and actually being right. Now science is just more polarised politics. There is no loss of status for spouting shit because your tribe will back it up. Actual biologists are failing to defend the most basic facts about biological sex, deliberately muddying longstanding understandings and erecting obvious straw men in pursuit of pleasing their tribe.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
Please post some sources as I've not read anything about this.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
I think it's healthy to take breaks from social media at different points so qdos. I suspect I might be a different age from you because my expectations are very low for this kind of site (at the same time I really enjoy it).
From my perspective any sense of a 'community' in such places is already illusory, which doesn't mean there's not connection, shared perspectives etc but it's not real life and for me it's at the level of infotainment - sometimes very good infotainment, but not really anything to get hung up about.
The best thing about the motte, is the lack of censoriousness. People are free to express ideas people might find odious but that is what free speech is. I'm taken aback somewhat by the views some people have landed with but I'm not adversely affected by them.
Something that shifted for me with 'ideas' was at around age 40 i read some Jung and became intensely interested in the bodily feeling of being triggered by other peoples ideas. I started to actively lean in to this and it has helped me become more detached from various debates because I am also interested in my own thoughts, ideas and reactions and other peoples commentary is in fact fuel for this process. It also goes along with Haidt's moral tastebuds ideas. I may not agree with someones ideas but if I'm not triggered I'm actually in a better place to perhaps see where they're coming from. Perhaps it's an age thing.
Practically and without wanting to sound condescending, I scroll through a lot here without reading much. I'm not inclined to care enough about us politics, HBD paradigms or atheist argument chains. There's also stuff I don't comment on because I have no particular insight but I enjoy reading, such as law, history, economics etc. And then there's a few nuggets that resonate really well each week as well as my own culture war pet topics. I know the sense of despair that people seem so at odds but I guess that's just the world?
On comparison with Scotts community i don't actually believe 'niceness' is a value though it may coincide with one at times. I suspect there must be a lot of interesting discussion wherever he is but am guessing it would be prone to status games and idolatry. The motte is good because it's like that semi-grotty pub in the wrong part of town where you engage, or overhear, people not like you. And I'd warn against people mimicking Scotts style. I see it here often falling flat and adding unnecessary word count.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
I think a useful frame for thinking about trans identification is as a culture bound syndrome. Some conditions obviously have a plain physical aetiology but other conditions are given shape by the culture of the time. For example, hysteria was a common diagnosis of a previous era but no-one suffers from it today. Similarly while people have always starved themselves historically for various reasons, ie religious martyrs, the modern form of anorexia as self-harm among mainly female adolescents is a recent culture bound syndrome - in a sense the cultural availability of the syndrome within the medical context of the time combines with the experience of the individual to give rise to the condition. This culture bound syndrome is hen active and in the modern age can be easily exported as happened with Korea which experienced a sudden arrival of anorexia as essentially a new condition. Note this means it's still very real.
Over time the experiences and language of how people to describe their state spreads and this is what I think is happening with trans. In adolescence significant anxiety and transition to the social world from childhood create a space of confusion and sometimes extreme anxiety in the self-space. The experience of feeling different from everyone else, not fitting in, is actually really common. Additionally some people have additional challenges around sexuality or gender non-conformity, or they may have dysfunctional family or have experienced abuse. In the past, people may have experienced this as more generalised anxiety, deep depression, self-destructive behaviours etc, in more recent times it has become expressed in new modes such as anorexia and direct self-harm. Because gender has become so salient it is now being expressed as gender dysphoria - the language and experience are given to the person by the culture and this reifies their self-experience in these terms.
Combined with the social contagion of the internet and in-group cult dynamics that give short term alleviation of the sense of difference and alienation then we see how the culture bound syndrome can spread.
ShariaHeap
5mo ago
That number is likely an undercount -- even the most comprehensive data provider, Komodo, acknowledges this in their reporting-- and regardless why is the number important, or why is the fact that some people are particularly exercised by it an issue? Also your comparison is off, at least the way youve worded it -- you need to compare the number of adolescents who are already receiving puberty blockers with their baseline population, not just the annual figure of those who start puberty blockers.
Moral panic? The reality is numbers of dysphoric adolescents and those receiving blockers and hormones is rising exponentially. When something changes rapidly, some people are curious why -- there is an inherent urgency implied in understanding rapid change. And the sphere of influence, and age of influence of these ideas has gotten wider and younger, so depending on where you live and whether legislative changes occur, it will likely continue to grow. Unless individuals act to do something.
Some people have children (autistic children even) who are entering an education system where they will learn that they don't have a sex until they decide what it is, so they have actual skin in the game. We're also talking a legal, and progressive campaign to change society wholesale fundamentally, with people effective being compelled to accept unproven ideas around gender in the workplace, in medical clinics, in education. Factually inconsistent and wrong ideas about sex are spreading through medical institutions and acadme. I agree that this is just one manifestation of problems in science, academia, medicine and psychology, but it is a flagshap example and to paraphrase Blake, one where you can see the whole world-- progressive attempts at social engineering, post-modernist queerying of categories and truth, transhumanism, philosophical relativism and nihilism leading to bad ideas. Plenty of people are witness to transitioning children and adolescents and a growing number of parents are grieving there children and dealing with dissonance of being in a completely unemphatetic environment to their plight, all while kindness and inclusivity are preached.
Relative to drug addiction, gun and road deaths, yes it's small but rareness doesn't exonerate wrongness, and it's possible to care to varying degrees, or at least have an informed opinion about, many different issues at once.
This is a canary in the coalmine as part of woke progressive social engineering (along with anti-whiteness etc), so a lot of people have an interest. I would argue it's an important manifestation of where we are at as liberal societies with rising mental health issues for children and youth and a pervasive lack of meaning broadly.
Also, you're always interested in responding, so it's a funny charge to make when you are just as focused on the issue.
ShariaHeap
10mo ago
This was the existing accommodation and understanding of trans-sexuals. But the progressive social engineers, legal activists (out of a job after successful gay marriage laws) and the queer activists (a golem of post-modernism and a broken academia) took over (over-reached) and now 'the machine' has taken over. Now we've got social media disembodiment and cult dynamics, an acquiescent media, rogue pharma and surgeons and a cultural fashion that morphed into winning the culture war through hegemony. Self-ID now let's weird criminal males transfer to women's prisons.
The level of philosophy is just to satisfy oneself that one is not a bigot and that gender ideology is actually incoherent. Of course no one on the peak-trans side really cares about these ideas, it's about cultural power.
ShariaHeap
11mo ago
In regards to following the official line, I knew a lady in my kids school community who was a staunch masker, pro-vaccine, whatever it takes person. Eventually covid regulations ended, her daughter got sick with a second bought of covid and she had her daughter back within a week despite symptoms... It wasn't covid she was acting against rationally but just going with the official line...
I think that truscum, while I prefer it to transtrender (trans as a human right/existential lifestyle choice), still just begs the question of whether that is the best way to treat dysphoria. Ive noticed its being talked about less in any case these days with a preference for trans rights or existential transcendence narratives.
The low regret rates apply to a different cohort, being studies on older adults, mainly MtF and we don't know the rates for the recent so-called ROGD cohort. We know from one study that most of those with gender dysphoria who do not transition, desist from having dysphoria, with most of those turning out to be gay and in a recent study it was found that 30% of those prescribed hormones were found to have stopped them within 4 years.
Clearly we don't know enough to identify 'true trans', or 'true truscum' and given that early treatment with puberty blockers followed by hormones will result in infertility we have a high ethical bar, even for research. We know rates of mental illness are increasing rapidly in this cohort also and that there is frequently overlap with other conditions such as autism, OCD, anorexia/eating disorders, self harm, generalised anxiety etc.
I don't see why dysphoria is able to claim special status when it may only be a component of the actual condition the individual is caught in. Autism could easily involve a distorted self concept at its root, as well as a fastidious compulsiveness, and gender dysphoria be just the culture-bound manifestation of this for autistic people. Similarly we could think of the desire to be something different as resulting from some underlying OCD mechanism, with the gender content available to be the focus.
As I've said before, the rationale you raise for younger transition, indicates already that attempts to appear as the opposite sex are not necessarily effective in resolving dysphoria, especially when there are any cosmetic concerns. We don't know if some degree of persistent dysphoria, or dis-ease might be apparent in later in life, even for good-passers.
After all there is something existentially fragile about the reliance on passing in the first instance and I would speculate a fear perhaps of not being authentic could always be a risk.
As I've said before, this wish for young transition starts to fall into a transhumanism paradigm, as you acknowledge with your queering of the normative of puberty in human development. It's obviously better to treat somebody while causing the least harm. This is a normative claim we could all agree on surely. The big question beg is what's to say there won't be better treatments that don't involve risks to fertility or altering body parts? Lobotomy was also justified on their being no good alternative but then they discovered antidepressants/anti-psychotics.
The transhumanist desire for transcendence through technology along with anti-natalism is part of the broader frame of understanding the culture bound syndrome we are seeing expressed. We need to understand the cultural level if we are to remedy peoples distress in this regard as it's more and more apparent to me we are all stuck in a lack of meaning.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
I don't think you understand what the CW thread is, or apparently the toggles.
It's not a broad brush "trans bad", there's content to engage with here. If you choose not to engage with it that's fine but don't do the whole 'deplorables' routine thanks
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
As someone pointed out in another thread it is stunning how much we need to be concerned, change our entire society for, less than 1% of the population, yet within that population - the irreversible infertility of an entire group of people (males who don't go through natal puberty) is not even worth mentioning.
Also, what are stats on women who don't go through their puberty having their fertility return-seems like egg preservation is recommended for women as well as men on gender clinic sites- though that could just be because it's an additional revenue stream I suppose...
ShariaHeap
5mo ago
The underlying nihilism of 4chan means that what starts as larping actually reifies the ideas in the community. They lose track of the meta, which reminds me of the quote, "The trouble with propaganda is you forget where you hid the truth".
ShariaHeap
5mo ago
You should look into the individual cases. The three I looked at via podcasts, docos all had the same characteristics: no real evidence beyond child's testimony, leading and irresponsible questioning techniques (now considered disreputable), widespread parental panic -eg active and suggestive questioning of them now considered a process of suggestion and false-memory creation, shonky experts, escalating numbers of children reporting over the period with outrageous child testimony (drinking blood, murders enacted, ritualistic abuse, macabre acts that would have entailed serious physical injury where none was present, large groups of people involved, impossible sequences of events etc.). These events were all supposed to have gone on repeatedly with multiple children over long periods of time in a public daycare with staff, parents oblivious and no reports of any concern prior to the initial satanic panic event that blew up. Sometimes unrelated people were caught up in it, in one case a policeman who happened to be there.
The police and prosecution for their part formed their view from day one and bought entirely into the thinking of the times (believe the child) in the US McMartin case completely relying on one untrained, unlicensed counselor who with puppets and leading questions would forcefully get testimony from the children.
For all the cases I looked at the defendants were ultimately exonerated, though after lengthy battles. Often children involved have recanted their evidence.
This doesn't rule out that some children were abused in a more typical sense - the Canadian CBC documentary points to one likely case. But there's little doubt that the vast majority of charges are created from a condition of social mania.
The interesting thing is that many of these children do believe they were abused even when it's most likely they weren't. It is actually possible to implant memories through suggestion. And so in a very real way these children were abused by a failed system.
ShariaHeap
11mo ago
As I've said elsewhere, I think phrases like 'anti-trans camp' are low-resolution and actually serve as a subtle ad-hominen.
To lay out my beliefs on the matter, I think we need a much deeper frame to understand this issue. For me the very phrase 'trans-person', while it can serve as a descriptor, or an identity, is actually fundamentally question-begging. I don't see empirical evidence proving a fundamental category of trans person, beyond the self defined identity. I see different groups within trans that potentially have little to do with each other, including autogynephiles, dysphoric youth, gender non-conforming people, gay people and people with a mixture of mental variation including autism, obsessive people and those with other comorbidities such as trauma, anxiety and depression. And I see evidence of social contagion.
Which is not to say there are not well adjusted trans people who are content, and I am personally willing to meet them as they wish to be met, but in my opinion, phrases like anti-trans, while they might describe a certain demographic, are also fundamentally misleading, and are potentially deliberately reducing the resolution of the issues.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, the gaslighting of parents in this is another real cost.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
This reads like hagiography to me. I'm not Australian but I've visited a few times and engages with Australians abroad and I couldn't help noticing how racist some people were. "Don't get me started on the Lebos", "Abos are just paint sniffers etc". Mind you this was from a second generation Indian migrant so perhaps assimilation in Australia is to become racist?
Perhaps in Australia racism is at a casual and non-consequential level and that's healthier than a deeper racism of other countries who have a pretence of non-racism.
Or might you be in a liberal well-off bubble where people are genuinely getting on fine racially - ignoring the ugly racism that to me seemed to occur fairly regularly throughout my travels...?
ShariaHeap
10mo ago
Yes and why people can't see this strange to me. One day about 'born in the wrong body', another day queer theory transgression. But the reality model doesn't allow both, either gender identity is an essential attribute or it's something that you can choose, that changes, you can't have both. So many contradictions, sex and gender norms need to be thrown off, yet it's sex appearance and gender stereotypes that define the desire for, and results of, transition. You can't pathologise it, yet you treat it with powerful medical interventions. Trans people are unsafe while violence towards woman occurs at womans rights events. And of course, the persistent motte and bailey. It's about all this other stuff except when people point out the flaws and then it's just extreme gender dysphoria (with no other possible solution).
But why don't more people voice their distaste with this incoherent babble? I can think of the following groups:
**General apathy.
I appreciate this stance, it's where I sit on a number of other important issues such as the environment.
**Both sides
It's too complicated to understand and is just another culture war issue so the truth is somewhere halfway between but I can't be bothered finding out where it sits.
**Progress junkies
I must have socially liberal progress, even if I have push it out to some trans-human utopia. I don't care about the details. Trans woman are woman!
**Resigned
Yes it's nonsense but it's just the way the world is moving. Nothing stands still.
**Eugenicists
Well less people can't hurt the environment really. If some people want to opt-out of reproduction all the power to them.
**Third wave feminists
Social engineering is coming for you, ah ha ha....
**Religious fanatics
All kneel for the sacred caste
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
Yes, happy to. I think 'trans' is an umbrella term that covers a lot of interrelated issues, so I also don't believe in the 'trans' adult as a distinct thing either. I think the best frame is that of a culture bound syndrome (Helen Joyce's position), as I've outlined previously.
https://www.themotte.org/post/587/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/120789?context=8#context
To inquires into trans means we need to differentiate the different component parts - applying a label trans child/trans adult is already question begging. It locks us into a particular metaphysical frame where it's very easy to assume, 'people are born like that'.
I don't preclude biological or genetic aspects or some mechanism like hormones in natal development on the brain for some portion of trans identification, but even then I don't jump to 'trans person' as a response but 'person who may find difficulties with the assumed gender roles and presentation that is normative for their sex', ie gender dysphoria and gender non-conforming. Mental illness is a broad, unhelpful term but there a host of psychological conditions that could impact someones social identity formation and self-concept that don't have any need for the creation of a 'trans person'. OCD, autism, body dysmorphia.
For children the assumption (by adults on the child's behalf) is even more egregious. Part of gender is obviously socially constructed and we learn in development language, customs around gender. To answer my earlier question, this means it is adults supplying the children with concepts and language to talk about gender. The current iteration of ideas in my view is clearly a social contagion drawing from all sorts of problematic and contingent elements such as queer theory and an ideological fervour from progressives.
While children learn early about sex categories our awareness of our sexed nature's and social identity doesn't really take off until early adolescence and in particular puberty. Society, through child development, is shaping ideas around gender expression and what it is to be a self. Why are we shaping it in such a way that we are allowing some children to take drugs with serious side-effects and surgeries as well as foregoing puberty without a strong evidence base, is shocking. For many children we are foreclosing the rite of passage to adulthood, surely limiting their integration as a social being.
It's because of activists, and a big blob of people that aren't treating this as a public health issue, so are complicit in unethical medical harms.
ShariaHeap
10mo ago
You don't see the cultural element of trans different from getting a knee arthroscopy? Which by the way were overdone for a period, perhaps still are, leading to increased risk of osteo-arthritis, showing the flaws of medical science. There's a long list of procedures that probably don't pass muster that are still routinely done. It takes time for standard wisdom to be overturned, think of the generations subjected to unnecessary tonsillectomies.
In fact in my experience GPs, while very good at studying aren't always particularly smart, and because of the nature of their role, high status with expectations to 'know' and 'heal', lose touch with the limits of their knowledge. They are not scientists and even medical researchers often have pretty low levels of stats knowledge relative to the state of the art. Medical specialists are generally better, but in this new phenomenon of trans, the self declared specialists are actually part of an activist intent, the science and research hasn't sufficiently developed and their isn't sufficient curiosity for an evidence-based system to develop. WPATH had a chapter on eunuchs as a gender identity, which speaks to this reality.
While obviously the right-wing machinery has activated the response, I think it's a mistake to view it solely as right-wing. I may be optimistically overestimating my demographic, but there's a growing tranche of people whom the left has left, who would gladly take an opportunity to picket against the cultural hegemony of the woke liberal left.
Also, the trans issue is not just another culture war issue. It's a strange and dark turn towards Orwellianism. Gender ideology asks people to assert things that aren't actually true and to accept this untruth promulgated through public institutions, including education of their children. While other excesses are also concerning, you can't get much more fundamental than 'queering' the truth that sex is binary. Beyond this just lies nihilism and complete post-capitalist decay.
More options
Context Copy link