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Notes -
The WPATH To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
Things are starting to move fast in Genderland, or at least faster than I can cover them with while giving any sort of justice to the topic. I haven't even gone through the entire WPATH Files, when the Daily Caller (...News Foundation - an important distinction if you're searching for the source materials) released the WPATH Tapes. By spamming FOIAs they were able to get a hold of over 30 hours of video from the 2022 WPATH summit in Montreal. A lot of it is the same old same old that I brought while covering the Files (you can see the short clip playlist here) - there's a public face of gender specialists where the science is settled, you can either have a happy daughter or a dead son, puberty blockers are reversible, etc., etc... and a private face, where they discuss amongst each other the very same concerns they dismissed, when they were brought up by skeptics of Gender Affirming Care. What's new is that the raw amount of footage allowed me to confidently reach a conclusion about a question that's been bugging for a while - what is these people's deal? Are doctors trying to do what's best for their patients, or are they a bunch of ideologically captured fanatics, blind to the harm they are doing? The answer seems to simply be: yes.
I already remarked how a lot of these clinicians come off as quite sympathetic back when I covered the Files. When you listen to their talks you hear them openly expressing uncertainty about many aspects of Gender Affirming care, discussing the limits of their patients' (and their parents') understanding of some of the interventions, and the importance of bringing them up to speed, or you hear them bringing up known and potential side effects, and ways of mitigating them. With things like this, they almost come off as urging caution... the problem is that if you keep listening you get the distinct impression you're on a train with no breaks.
The Introduction to Trans Health talk is a good example of the good and the bad of that WPATH conference. It opens with a pull-at-your-heart-strings story, of Dr. Ren Massey's FTM transition and the struggle to find acceptance in society and from his parents. I ended up being quite moved by the story myself, and yet, in the fastest "Oh god, oh no, baby, what is you doing?" I have experienced to date, he drops this slide, where he proclaims everything from non-binaries to eunuchs is hecking valid.
I try to be honest about these things - I am biased, I pretty much already reached my conclusion on the subject, and it's going to be a hell of process to change my mind again, but no matter how certain I am of something there's always the possibility of being wrong. The thing is, "being wrong" to me means it turning out that people like Jack Turban were right, that gender dysphoria is a valid diagnosis, that doctors can reliably tell people who have it from people who don't, and they have treatments that are proven to alleviate their suffering.
Well, fuck me then, I guess. It turns out that the "medicalized narrative" may have been used in the past, but it's outdated now. Not all trans people have dysphoria, and not everyone wants to transition from one side of the binary to the other. The doctor's empashis needs to be on removing barriers, and on patient autonomy. Between several name drops of "intersectionality", "power and privilege", or "minority stress", as best as I can gather these folks are certified Queer Theorists, tirelessly working to deconstruct the idea that (cis)heterosexuality is normal. Sure, they'll take into account the consequences of gender treatments, and they'll try to make sure that patient's "transition goals" are within the realm of physical possibility, but there should be no other limits placed otherwise. It feels like they flipped the table. What I thought was a conversation about the state of medical science turns out to be a fight over who's worldview should prevail.
This seems to be the only explanation that can make sense out of the whole thing, and tie up the loose ends of the WPATH clinicians genuine concern for their patients, with wild off-the-wall stuff like the Eunuch Archive, or why they pull the knives out for Lisa Littman and the ROGD hypothesis or Blanchard's categorization of trans people, while remaining unbothered by Dianne Ehrensaft's gender angels and gender Tootsie Roll Pops.
Back when I covered the Eunuch Archive it was declared that I am a bad, bad boy, because in a forum with explicit rules about not booing the outgroup, I limited myself to providing evidence that child castration fetishists have an influential role in setting standards for transgender care, and are using it to promote their fetish, but refused to speculate on their motivation, and wouldn't declare them evil or insane. Other than it not mattering, and me not knowing, there was something unsatisfying about the two explanations that were offered. They were a too lucid to plead insanity, and haven't expressed a callous disregard for the well being of others, or a singular obsession with their own self-gratification, that people straight-forwardly associate with evil. What they do appear to be is completely ideologically captured. They view everything through the lens of Queer Theory and intersectionality, and are simply doing what is considered good in the light of that ideology, that this might involve affirming eunuchs, or transitioning schizophrenics doesn't phase them in the slightest.
All this seems to show the limits of analyzing motivations, and has implications on what it means to "boo the outgroup". That the road to hell is paved with good intentions is not a new lesson, but it seems that it's rarely understood as something more than "sometimes people get carried away trying to do good, and go too far", when some cases are probably better understood as "sometimes ideologies can make you commit obviously grievous harm, with a smile on your face". Perhaps the evil/insane dichotomy was the real Boo Outgroup all along?
Yes, despite deep skepticism of the trans worldview I've always modeled it as more confused than evil or anything. The people behind it clearly think they're making the world a better place and that there are tons of kids that are suffering immensely worse lives for not being found and allowed to be "who they really are". They don't seem to adequately grapple with the possibility that someone could be deluded into believing strange and untrue things about themselves especially when those things are packaged into appealing memes that contain soothing explanation for why they don't fit in or are confused at puberty. They genuinely believe that if someone say they're trans there is a special sense that definitely have in their head that is providing them total proof and that it can't possibly be imagined.
Evil vs incompetent is, at this level, a false dichotomy. These doctors are lying to cover up their ideologically-driven confusion. That’s both those things.
Communism is bad at managing agricultural production. That’s not because it intends to cause famine, that’s because its prescriptions are retarded. But that doesn’t make it blameless. Likewise doctors confidently mouthing off ideologically-driven answers to questions that the available evidence indicates a different answer two.
Yeah, that's been a bit of a sticking point for me too. I think they're aware of not being perfectly honest, but if you see your opponents as even worse, what's a little white lie to ensure the ultimate victory of the cause? I think they can plausibly call themselves well-intentioned, but I also agree with your "both" answer. Is a mass-suiciding cult not-evil just because they really honestly believe that this is the road to paradise?
What does "evil" mean to you here, even? It's hard to see it as anything other than an "opposed to my values", paired with a certain claim to license to transgress normal boundaries in order to bring the evil person or action in line with what your values are. The former is okay, but the latter surely is out of place in this forum, being somewhere in the space between "shaming" and recruiting for a cause (even if that cause is just to stand by and do nothing to interfere as you proceed to smite evil). At least I don't think you can argue that calling something evil is merely the former - I expect that if I started calling your preferred views on sexuality evil, it would rain downvotes and possibly reports if I am obstinate enough about it, which surely would make no sense if I were just communicating my values.
Telling a knowable lie when you have a professional responsibility to speak truthfully is evil.
The problem with the way you've phrased it is, well, who defines responsibilities? Police states always say everyone has a responsibility to report dissent; is lying to cover dissidents or the persecuted evil? But if the responsibilities set in law and by dominant organisations can be void, then who decides? You? But then your statement reduces to "[I think] telling a knowable lie when I think you were morally obliged to tell the truth is evil". Well, no shit doing the opposite of what's morally obligatory is evil. That's practically vacuous.
In this particular case there are enough hypocrisies and contradictions that the issues with the full version of this statement don't really engage, but come on, man, that was a soundbite extraordinaire.
That sounds like a more convoluted way of saying "have a professional responsibility to speak truthfully", otherwise where are you getting the idea anyone should avoid being hypocritical and contradictory?
My point here is that these are basically the same people promulgating and violating the responsibility, so they're in a sense estopped from raising the defence of "that responsibility is fake and void"; they could have chosen not to define that responsibility in that way.
To more directly answer your question, though, I think there's at least an imperfect Kantian duty to do so and plausibly a perfect one (if everyone's a hypocrite about the same thing, the denunciations can be said to cease to have meaning).
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