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Notes -
Yet Another Part Of the WPATH Saga
Unsealed Court Documents Show That Admiral Rachel Levine Pressured WPATH To Remove Age Guidelines From The Latest Standards Of Care
You may have heard about the controversy around the latest Standards Of Care removing the age minimums for various transgender care procedures. What I didn't make clear in that post was this wasn't about the difference between SOC7 and SOC8, the removal took place between different versions of the SOC8 itself. Shortly after the original guidelines were published, a correction notice was issued, and WPATH republished the SOC with the minimum ages removed (among other changes). Curiously the current version of the notice says the original version was published by mistake, and contains no details about the text that was changed.
The now unsealed documents show that this was the result of pressure from none other than Admiral Rachel Levine:
Another quote from the article says that "we have made changes as to how the minimal ages are presented in the documents", but this wasn't just a simple change in presentation, all age limits, other than for phalloplasty, are gone, and replaced with procedural steps the patient should go through. They claim this makes the standards more restrictive, but in my opinion that's contradicted by the statements from admiral Levine.
Jesse Singal also points out standards were supposed to be determined by the "Delphi process":
This process was violated according to SOC contributors themselves:
So between the "correction notice" shenanigans, and outright admission that rules were broken to push through that particular change, it seems like a pretty slam-dunk case for the Biden administration putting political pressure to loosen criteria for transgender care for minors.
This all just feels like moving deck chairs on the titanic. If being trans is real and we can indeed reliably detect it then all of this is pointless. If it's not then deciding what age to do the surgeries is the least of our issues. I don't see how there can be some middle road where we are confident it's real and detectable and yet should move cautiously.
There's a few problems here. For one, I don't think people at he forefront of the trans movement are even using the same framework as you are, where it's a diagnosable disorder that should be treated - see my previous WPATH post. Secondly, they're not really making any claims about detectability, because that would allow us to resolve the matter in a simple blinded test, and I don't think it would come out well for the pro-trans side.
Now, I believe (and think I have enough examples to back it up) this "medicalized narrative" has absolutely been used to persuade the broader public. Even as they were avoiding making specific claims about detectability, they were speaking with enough confidence that the detectability felt implied, and this is why this conversation is not pointless. Most people know children are developing, go through phases, and are generally more malleable, so recommending irreversible treatments will at the very least give people pause. This is why this is such a big part of the conversation, it highlits the tensions and contradictions in the discourse.
Another thing is that I don't think the story is so much about the state of Trans Science, as it is about the political pressure on science. The pro-trans side claims the anti-trans are playing dirty by passing bills limiting transgender care for children, they claim this should be left to the doctors. As it turns out, they're putting substantial political pressure themselves to force "the science" to say what they want it to say, except they do it covertly.
Yeah, I think there's a pretty critical underlying value disagreement. Even were a choir of angels to descend from heaven with a device that could guarantee not only whether a specific person was trans, but even whether they'd be happier to transition or not, I don't think social conservatives and the pro-trans side would be able to agree even in the most convenient world.
And in the world we're in, it's looking increasingly like that magical device might change from 'yes' to 'no' for a single person over time in some cases, which is pretty far from convenient. Social conservatives reject the framework that this change reflects internalization of transphobia or the harsher limits of later transition (usually, I think, in favor of seeing it as 'puberty naturally solving the discomfort'), but even accepting it doesn't actually change the value conflict: social conservatives absolutely will bit the bullet in favor of distress for a couple years to avoid sizable surgical interventions, even well outside of the trans sphere.
Yeah, half of the transhumanists balk when I point it out, but transhumanism really is at the core of the issue.
But even then I think I disagree there's no compromise to be had. I think even a decent chunk of conservatives could tolerate people going full-cyborg when they're adults, it's insisting that it's necessary for children that crosses the line.
And then it doesn't help that this is combined with all sorts of demands to rearrenge the social order.
I think the more critical part is the extent that social conservative (and other non-progressive) interests are being cordoned off, even in red states or outside of state interests. I don't yet agree with FCFromSSC's thesis that multiculturalist approaches are fundamentally doomed, but they're very clearly not something anyone with serious power is willing to accept.
It's demonstrably possible make the argument for people's right to make medical decisions or talk up the right to freedom in education, while wanting to ban homeschooling or require medical procedures, because that's become The Accepted Position, but it's little more than multi-culturalism-for-me.
On the silver lining side, the broader movement is in the process of eating itself alive over other contradictions, so the lack of interest in accepting more minimal takes has its costs. Hell, I don't think the transhumanist part will survive, because no small portion of the pro-trans not-actually-trans-themselves world hates transhumanism-as-practiced; cfe the various reactions to VR or weight loss drugs or AI or yada yada.
But that's a pretty shitty silver lining, and the movement can be incoherent longer than you can stay solvent.
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