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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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I couldn’t agree more with @zeke5123a below, 50 experiments is always better than 1. Some state governments will be more competent than others. Some will be more ‘woke’ or ‘anti woke’ than others; they may be correlated or inversely correlated, who knows? But at least they will exist.

For the same reason, I hope some lib state enacts an NHS style healthcare system in the near future (presumably with some caveats to prevent out-of-staters from using it). Not because I want to see it fail, but because I don’t see why it shouldn’t be tried at a state level.

More controversially, I feel the same is true about mandatory ID cards and hate speech laws, by the way. If Vermont wants Euro-style hate speech laws, I really don’t care. Plenty of states will oppose them. The same is true for gun control, for civil rights, for gay marriage, for religion in government.

Let the feds handle foreign policy, defense, intelligence, some interstate policing and - at arms length via the fed - monetary policy. Nothing more.

I never understood the liberal and leftist antagonism to this. It's an obvious compromise, fits right in with their ideas of multiculturalism, Diversity Is Our Strength, etc., and if you're so sure your ideas are better than others', this arrangement will make it plainly obvious soon enough.

I can only interpret as a deep insecurity that letting the experiment run will actually disprove, rather than prove their ideas.

I don’t think kids in Alabama deserve bad education that puts them behind their peers because their parents aren’t very smart

  • -10

And I don't think kids in California deserve to be chemically castrated because they gravitated to the wrong kind of toy. Would you rather have my views applied locally or globally?

Do you have any evidence that kids in California are being chemically castrated?

  • -10

Anyone who's on puberty blockers is being chemically castrated. It's the same drug that's used for both.

Okay, well, that’s not true, but you do you.

  • -16

Do you have any evidence that it's not true? Like I said, they use the exact same drug, with the exact same purpose (sex-hormone suppression).

Also, answer my question: do you want my views applied globally or locally?

I, too, would like a source for that.

A casual search suggests that the standard for chemical castration is “MPA”, or maybe “DMPA.” At least that’s what California law specified. If I understand it right, that’s a progestin (progestogen??) similar to what’s in the combination birth control pill.

Wikipedia claims the preferred blockers are “GnRH agonists” and maybe antagonists. It mentions progestogens to say they might be cheaper, and the main source is about precocious puberty, not gender identity.

In case Wikipedia is shamelessly misrepresenting the issue, I looked at a couple other sites. Neither suggests (D)MPA or any progestogen.

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