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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   30532 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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The New York Times just published an article on a trans study not being published for ideological reasons (Archive)

U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says

The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.

Has anyone else noticed a clear "vibe shift" on trans issues recently? It would have been unimaginable for this article to be published in the New York Times just a few years ago, but now, it just seems like part of an overall trend away from trans ideologues.

I'm am curious where this trend continues. Is it going to go all the way? Will trans issues be seen as the weird 2010s, early 2020s political project that had ardent supporters, but eventually withered away and died like the desegregation bussing movement? Or will it just settle into a more moderate position of never using any medication on children, but allowing adults to do whatever? Or maybe it is just a temporary setback and the ideologues will eventually win out?

Also of note, trans issues are coming to SCOTUS again. The issue presented is

Issue: Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

I recommend reading Alabama's amicus curiae brief for an in depth critique of WPATH. SCOTUS is set to hear oral arguments on this case on the 4th of December, so this is lining up to be an interesting oral argument to listen to. SCOTUS usually releases the big controversial cases at the end of their term, so the opinion on this case will probably be released in the summer of '25.

Trans issues were never going to be a permanent part of the Dem ideological setup because it’s precisely the children of PMC urban Democrats (ie NYT readers, DNC and associated think tank / lobbyist staffers etc) who are at increasing risk of coming out as trans. Nice upper middle class Democrats often don’t like it when their own kids want to transition and the result is something inherently unstable. The same thing is happening to center-left parties across the West. Stuff that primarily affects poor people like crime is one thing. This is another.

Trans issues were never going to be a permanent part of the Dem ideological setup because it’s precisely the children of PMC urban Democrats (ie NYT readers, DNC and associated think tank / lobbyist staffers etc) who are at increasing risk of coming out as trans.

I'd argue that this is incorrect because, as far as I can tell based on my ideological prejudices (yeah), the children most likely to want to transition are the children, especially male children, of left-leaning single mothers (mostly stressed-out and miserable ones), and single motherhood is rather rare among the demographic you described.

Anyway, do you think this is something they're aware of themselves? If yes, when did that realization set in? There has already been ample time for that. The trans culture war has started more than a decade ago.

as far as I can tell based on my ideological prejudices (yeah), the children most likely to want to transition are the children, especially male children, of left-leaning single mothers

Your ideological prejudices are wrong, the increase in trans youth has been concentrated mostly in females:

Adolescents assigned female at birth initiate transgender care 2.5 to 7.1 times more frequently than those assigned male at birth

(...)

In October, researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine published a paper showing a 389% increase in gender-affirming chest surgeries performed nationally from 2016 to 2019 on patients under age 18. The total of 1,130 procedures during the period, nearly all of them for chest masculinization, represents a weighted estimate based on records from more than 2,000 U.S. medical facilities.

(...)

The predominance of patients assigned female at birth is a reversal from the past. For years, when very few minors sought gender care, those assigned male at birth accounted for the majority. But about 15 years ago, that began to change as care became more accessible and the overall number of patients started climbing, according to studies and interviews with gender-care specialists.

For example, at Amsterdam University Medical Center’s gender clinic, a pioneer in adolescent gender care, the proportions flipped. From 1989 to 2005, 59% of its adolescent patients were assigned male at birth, the Dutch clinic reported in a 2015 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Since 2016, about 75% of the clinic’s patients have been youths who were assigned female at birth.

Any information on whether these females are disproportionately children of divorce?

Obligatory observation that this wouldn't imply causation.

Of course not.

Yeah, I'm operating on no sleep atm and think I was stating that for myself as much as anyone else.

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