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U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says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

Has anyone else noticed a clear "vibe shift" on trans issues recently?

Funny you ask, I noticed something a year and a half ago.

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?

A question that intruiges me as well. My guess is that that it will be entirely forgotten the same way that the pedo rights movement of the 70's was. Sure every once in a while someone will dig out some receipts, and it will be seen as that weird thing that apparently happened in the past, but it will not be something pinnable on the progressive movement

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

According to the brief you mentioned, WPATH is sitting on like a dozen of those. I posted about it too.

Thanks for the links to your posts. I was trying to find previous discussions on this, but I must have missed this. Off topic a bit, but I'd love to be able search for something like "top level comments, in the culture war thread, with these keywords". Top level comments in the culture war thread are very similar to new posts with the discussion they generate, so there should probably be a way to search for them like you can specifically search for posts (or maybe not given the intentional rule of sort-by-new so people are forced to skim past topic they aren't normally interested in).

Thanks for the links to your posts

Thanks for making this top-level post, I have to rate-limit myself, or this place would become a TERF twitter feed!

so there should probably be a way to search for them like you can specifically search for posts

Every once in a while I promise myself I'll start helping out with the code and add a few features like that for the benefit of users and mods, but I can barely find time to work on the projects I do for fun, so...

Anyway I don't mind people coming to similar thoughts to mine (quite the contrary), just couldn't resist the opportunity to say how I was doing this before it was cool.