SkookumTree
2yr ago
As far as health...We were a hell of a lot sicker a hundred years ago. Why would I say that? Well...life expectancy is a fairly crude measure of population health, but you can guess that sick people die sooner and in a world without antibiotics you have things like the President's son dying of blood poisoning from an infected blister.
You would have a much better argument if you were talking about a time when cheap antibiotics and something like modern medical care were available for most people...fifty years ago, not a hundred.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
I mean. I do not believe that it is at all a good idea that 11-year-olds make life-altering decisions that they are in many ways unable to understand the consequences of. However, the reality is that if sufficiently motivated they will make such decisions, although that kind of motivation is thankfully quite rare. It's...any sufficiently determined individual can play the MAD card and get a tense but stable peace out of it. It is simply a way for a weaker player with a live grenade to force a draw from a stronger adversary.
I also think that...hmm. Getting someone to risk their damn life for an ideology is kind of a difficult thing. If Sarah sees that her friend Jane (and both her parents) are dead because of a murder-suicide that happened over trans care...and they're both 12...does Sarah have THAT much strength in her convictions to go down the MAD route? I doubt it. And some of the time, yes. People will be killed, maimed, and imprisoned because one side or the other overplayed their hand.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
I may not have been sufficiently clear earlier:
I do not endorse MAD; I am merely describing a dynamic that anyone that is determined and desperate enough can access. Even if the child wins this struggle, it is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory in many ways and may leave lifelong scars. To say nothing of the dead and maimed people that will be the result of one side or the other overplaying their hand. I've heard it said that war is a dirty, nasty business, and while this isn't Vietnam, it's still a bit nasty and ugly. I hope that most kids will realize this...and that most parents will find ways to make it clear that irreparably altering your relationship with your parents isn't worth Katy Perry tickets.
I mean. In some instances of MAD you need to have plausible deniability. What's Sarah going to do if she doesn't get Katy Perry tickets? Jump off a cliff? If you're a middle-class parent, you just reply that if she's for real, she needs psychiatric care, and she's going to go for a vacation in the grippy sock hotel. Which, coincidentally, is expensive and is going to leave them unable to afford concert tickets. That is fairly likely to work...especially if she's told about all the horrible things that sometimes happen in psych wards, or the side effects of antipsychotics. For this to work you need the credible threat of mutual annihilation.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
Come on - Basque is a language isolate!
SkookumTree
2yr ago
Till's killers just half-assed hiding the body and the killing. They reasoned - correctly - that they didn't need to do a great job at hiding what they were doing - just that they had to not taunt cops and potentially angry locals while doing it. The average White dude in that time and place was pretty willing to look the other way, but thought that this kind of thing right in front of his face was a bit distasteful.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
The Taiwanese simply need a fairly modest quantity of high explosive to destroy TSMC.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
Yep. This plan does not account for these dudes just getting fucking robbed. That's the biggest damn hole in the plan. Maybe you could have some Special Forces guys train these guys and build a fortified compound? But at that point, you're just another bushleague African warlord, this time you speak English and have great training. And don't forget that $10k, you'll need it to buy guns, ammo, food...
SkookumTree
2yr ago
A question.
How do you keep these guys from just being robbed of their $10,000 once they arrive in Africa? If you can't solve that problem, only a few fools go for this program, get robbed/killed for their money, and then everyone realizes this is a terrible idea.
Are women and racial minorities and LGBT people just going to accept their subordination this time?
I have one question for anyone that genuinely believes this:
Are you high, fool?
SkookumTree
2yr ago
Basically: Neo-Nazis and their ilk don't have their shit together. Unlike the OG Nazis, they kind of suck at being bad guys and furthering their agenda.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
What if the children just wanted their ears removed? This wouldn't render them deaf, just leave them visibly mutilated by prevailing standards. Is that irrecoverable harm? Who is to decide what constitutes harm, and what constitutes the realization of one's inner truth however aberrant by wider standards?
Existential conflict over values, and determined knife-wielding teenagers.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
What range or limit are you thinking about here? 14 and up, less or more?
In practice, about ten. As young as that sounds - and as horrible as that sounds (and is!) that is about when kids in extremis are able to satisfy the condition "Wants something badly enough to be okay being maimed or raped or killed over it - and unwilling or unable to desist. And competent enough to be able to pose a significant, sustained threat to themselves or other people.
How do you grok this with cases in which the children were groomed secretly by their teachers and they spring this up suddenly to the parents?
You might have the occasional malicious or predatory or just plain criminally ignorant teacher pulling this. I suspect that the teachers doing this are well-intentioned but basically swallowed certain kinds of bait hucked by political ax-grinders and quacks in the medical establishment. We both agree that current memes around this trans shit are fucked. If it was treated as the goddamn medical condition it is, we might not be having this problem...if it was a more intense and life-altering version of the decision on whether or not to send Johnny to the neurosurgeon because he herniated a disc playing football as a freshman in high school.
But: how many of these kids who are essentially following a fashion trend are willing to look terrible suffering and even death right in the goddamn face and say "Yes. I would rather this, than desist. Here I stand; I can do no other." and then actually fucking follow through with it? Like. For MAD to work, you have to have a credible threat of mutual annihilation. I suppose that certain kinds of peer pressure and belonging might get people to do that - but that IMHO usually happens to teenagers, not middle-schoolers.
No. I am of the opinion that when it comes to individual issues children can be surprisingly capable, although they often fail to consider the big picture. When they examine long-term consequences the analysis often lacks nuance and depth, and may miss certain important issues entirely. However, it is often surprising what children - what people in general - achieve when [they believe] their life or bodily sovereignty is at stake.
I know a couple of children who more or less invoked MAD when they were quite young - ten or eleven. In one case this was extremely deliberate and carefully planned. The kid called a family meeting and discussed the terms of their conflict about a week after it started. In both cases it left them with lifelong side effects that they weren't able to predict at the time but which most mature adults would be able to foresee. That being said. They were fairly impressive in their resourcefulness, determination, and resolve; that is to be admired. This is a sort of power that is not given but taken by the simple and desperate expedient of being willing to suffer terribly, or even to die, for the strength of your personal or philosophical convictions. Only the very determined, or the very scared, or the very maladjusted will go this far in attempting this, and make no mistake about it - it is a terrible thing, sometimes. It alters relationships and changes people for life.
To say nothing of the kids that invoke MAD and wind up with one side overplaying their hand. This being said: I still believe that it takes an exceptional level of willpower or determination to risk the abyss. It turns what might have been bullshit power struggles of a generation ago about wearing your hair short or even dating the same sex into genuine straight-up goddamn existential battles that are far likelier to have deleterious lifelong consequences. But in the end it is ultimately a battle of human will against human will, and I've seen some damned strong-willed kids...at that point it is very much a naked power struggle, everything else be damned. Who has the power? Who is genuinely okay with being buried, rather than not getting what they are after?
I may be rambling. But I am of the opinion that if your child is old enough and wants something badly enough to be okay being maimed or raped or killed over it - and they're unwilling or unable to desist - that needs to be respected even if you deeply disagree with it, perhaps especially if you deeply disagree with it. It's kind of...invoking a state of war or at least some kind of extraordinary circumstance where the usual rules do not apply in the same way, or apply only in the sense that they are part of the power struggle.
Game theory is a motherfucker. Anyone who wants can pull out a live hand grenade, though this takes a lot of willpower and is almost always inadvisable.
The way to deal with this is long before your 14-year-old has decided that they are trans, that they will pursue medical treatment by any means necessary, and that they consider it a straight up life and death struggle. You may be able to win that battle by force or threat of force, to be honest. But if they don't get the memes that if they're gender-nonconforming, they're trans...or if they're not good at performing gender roles, they're trans...they are a hell of a lot less likely to wind up playing Mutually Assured Destruction: Trans Edition.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
That is a hell of a bad thing. However, if kids have a realistic view of how likely something like that is...and they decide that winding up there in the pursuit of their desired life choices is preferable to not being able to pursue something like transition...
I mean, it's a kind of mutually assured destruction. Someone that sits down and decides that they would rather wind up in this kind of hellhole than not transition is one hell of a determined motherfucker and as such deserves respect.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
That is interesting. I suppose that it boils down to "can you essentially emancipate yourself" which is kind of admirable in practice. There are some that have extremely strong convictions that they're straight up willing to die over. I am not sure how many trans kids have that strong of convictions; if they do, that is to be respected.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
I don't think it is quite as bad as being lobotomized. The upthread comparison - sterility plus type 1 diabetes - is more in the ballpark.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, sterile individuals can provide a hell of a lot more care to their siblings and extended family than dead ones.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
They didn't tell me that they settled; that being said...I only know one short dude that's with a partner that's sane and not morbidly obese. The charismatic future neurosurgeon.
What the hell would cause an autistic med student to live in a strange bubble like this? Like...what would somehow repel successful short guys from his orbit...while allowing taller successful guys to pass through? Shit's weird.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
The SF colonel could get dates. He just wound up making a terrible choice of wife. I don't know if he settled or not; I honestly think that the colonel got fooled by her when he was just a first lieutenant. The short docs? Yeah - they are "focused on their careers". Some are kind of quiet. One is an outdoorsy Asian guy that loves hiking and kayaking.
What does "setting his sights realistically" look like for a 5'4" doctor, if not being OK with someone who's morbidly obese...but still able to fit in seats, drive a car, hold a job and all that? Like...a BMI of 42, not 75. 75 is a sprained ankle from being bedbound or being in a nursing home. 42 is not. I'll give you that one of these docs turned down a single mom who was pretty attractive (and also sane); maybe that is genuinely having standards that are unrealistically high.
For what it's worth, only like three or four of the short dudes are doctors. Two, I shit you not, look like Greek godlets. They could compete in physique bodybuilding competitions, and one of them did. These godlets are with morbidly obese women. One's a personal trainer, another works as a lab tech. Another two short dudes are strong like bulls and built like fire hydrants. 5'5", around a buck seventy. I don't want to give out too much identifying information, but let's just say these guys are excellent powerlifters, deadlifting more than 500 pounds. I've seen video footage of their lifts. They do quite well for themselves at powerlifting meets. The bull-strong little guys work in IT; didn't go to college. Make OK money.
I am not shitting you. I have seen these dudes with my own eyes.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
Shit's like a riot in slow motion. These guys are running amok, American-style. Malay dudes did it with swords, we do it with guns.
I do not believe you that you know a bunch of 5'4" doctors who can't get dates. Maybe they can't get dates with the hottest, tallest nurses in the hospital.
I know them personally. I live with one. They can't get dates with anyone that is not morbidly obese. Now. These are residents, not attendings; maybe that changes something.
Fat women often find partners, I'll agree. Short guys? My sample size is...eight or nine. Only one guy was with someone that was sane and not morbidly obese. The SF colonel and ER resident wasn't part of that group Only the future neurosurgeon with politician tier charisma pulled it off at 5'4". You need to be able to do something as demanding and lucrative as brain surgery AND have top 1 percent charisma...just being hardworking and determined enough to learn four languages and become a Green Beret and colonel in the Army ain't enough. You need that million a year or at least to be on track to it.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
I mean...the problem is kind of a lack of meaning. Keeping some poor short bastard grasping for a brass ring he cannot reach is also not the best thing, when he comes to believe - rightly or not - that it was all just bullshit.
Become remarkable, or decide where you want the ambulances - if you want a partner at all.
How is this pint-size family remarkable? It is unusual as hell that these people are so small (I am slightly curious about their ethnicity, and where they are currently living). It is also unusual that they have found average partners. Like...are they all cultivating exceptional personalities starting in elementary school, mentored by their unusually charismatic pint-size parents? Who knows - maybe if these people were magically a foot taller they ought to start running for office and being a political family...honestly. I wonder if any of them are making a living off of being charismatic and really goddamn good at networking.
I would also honestly not be surprised if there was a no-bullshit genetic disorder - a mild one - running in their family. Hypochondroplasia or growth hormone deficiency or something like that.
I also wonder if there are some pint-sized guys in your extended family that are always single, and "focusing on their careers" or something like that...guys that weren't quite able to gain a politician's charisma and skill at networking. Maybe some mediocre-but-competent guys inherited their fathers' or uncles' networks and were able to find partners that way...guys who without that would've been single for life or nurses and purses.
SkookumTree
2yr ago
Hmm. Poor health IS a form of unattractiveness, more or less. There are forms of unattractiveness that are mostly cosmetic (short stature if male, burn victim, unfortunate facial appearance) and there are ways to be unattractive through poor health (such as schizophrenia, other disability, morbid obesity). All of these make people less desirable for partners.
I also believe that there is a small but significant chunk of the population that is extremely unattractive, often for reasons beyond their control, that we do not see much after high school. The disabled. The mentally retarded. Whatever you call the population of people that are frequent flyers in psych ERs or regular ERs for overdoses or suicide attempts. The institutionalized, more or less. Those people are out of sight and hidden from public view. It's not just me that's saying this...Fussell was saying it in the 80s, talking about the "bottom out-of-sight" class.
I feel as if I am extremely unattractive due to autism and subpar physical appearance; while I have friends, dating has been almost impossible for me. While I have solid career prospects as a medical student, I believe that it is very unlikely that I will ever have an average partner. I do not think that any remotely "good" outcome is remotely realistic; at this point, it is about picking the least bad option, rather than a nonexistent and fundamentally unrealistic "good" option...at the end of the day, it has become abundantly clear to me that it is about deciding where I want the ambulances, or the lights and sirens: what institution will my partner be in and out of?
Given this: is there any set of skills that I might benefit from learning in order to be not only a good father and husband but nurse and caretaker for a partner? I know that my medical education will give me the technical skills to handle it, but medical school does not teach how to merge the roles of partner and caregiver. She might be 400 pounds and a sprained ankle away from immobility - and that is honestly one of the better things that could happen. It beats things like looking the other way at alcoholism or drug addiction. Yes, I am aware that there is "a hell of a lot of 'average' out there between prom queen and obese drug addict" but average is deeply unrealistic for me. That ain't happening any more than I'm going to discover some hidden, great athletic talent and start playing baseball for the Yankees, or compete in the Olympics.
How might I plan for things like 'my wife needs home health aides at age 45 because she can't take care of herself' or how to deal with my kids' (justifiable) disappointment at or anger at their mom because she literally ate up their college fund, or because there were a lot of experiences that they simply could not have because of their mother's size? It'd be the same way with anything else...if it was drug addiction, you've got the same problems plus or minus issues with law enforcement. If it was something like mental illness that manifested itself through terrible life choices and abuse, that'd be even worse.
In addition: how might I advertise that I am willing to go on this journey with someone: to sit by their side in the hospital because they've had a pulmonary embolism at 29. To look at wheelchairs and walkers with them in their thirties. To be their nurse and caretaker - or to work hard at medicine to earn enough to pay home health aides. How might I signal that I am not only able but willing to be that kind of caretaker?
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