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Today, Jesse Singal wrote an opinion for the New York Times where he argued that Trump defunding youth gender research was a bad thing, despite the terrible research coming out of that part of science. He thinks that reform is in order, not slash-and-burn practices. In my opinion, there is definitely enough research out there by now that you can confidently release something like a Cass Report without anything new. Certainly, funding bad actors makes no sense, but to me, reform is little gain, and even a good new study must follow around minors that have gone through the unethical transgender science grinder.
It reminds me of an (unpopular) opinion Trace shared the other day on Twitter regarding the axing of funds for museums and libraries. Even if anthropology is 99% leftist, well, the institutions belong to those who show up, so right wingers just need to get in there and fix it themselves. While I appreciated that stance as it related to conservative law organizations, and as it related to Twitter when left-wingers were leaving the site en masse, I find it pretty distasteful to give up anthropology to positive feedback loops, and let our history become a mockery when it is within one's power to just raze it.
Deus Ex took a look at this perspective. Spoilers for Deus Ex:General Carter, after the UNATCO plot is exposed, decides to stay within the organization, because institutions are only as good as the people that comprise them. Later in the game, you see him in the Vandenburg compound. He has given up on his idea of reform and joined the resistance.
I'm going to guess most of this forum disagrees with Trace and Jesse on this matter in pretty much the same way that I do. Can you name any areas in government or other organizations where you do agree with them?
The CASS report predominantly based its conclusions on the lack of high-quality research, a point it reiterates often, not on high-quality affirmative evidence against treatment. There is some such evidence - for instance see this Reddit comment I wrote about puberty blockers and the indications that they both lock children onto the transgender pathway and permanently damage brain development - but like all evidence on the issue it isn't very good. In the absence of evidence that a treatment is safe and effective, the burden is traditionally on those advocating for the treatment to prove that it is. However, even aside from new studies actually providing information, "gender-affirming care" now has both established practice and a political ideology behind it, so abolishing it in any sort of permanent and widespread way seems likely to require more evidence. Without new evidence you might see some governments abolish or discourage it specifically for children, but others will continue to feed a fraction of every new generation into the trans pipeline and even places that get rid of it could easily flip back in a generation. The medical consensus turning against it would be a much more effective and stable solution, and something like a high-quality randomized control trial showing gender transition failing to outperform the control group would be a big step in that direction.
If anything "lack of high-quality research" understates the case. There is not a single randomized control study of gender transition, in either children or adults. It's incredibly easy for non-RCTs to give false results even if you do a reasonably good job, and most don't do even that. Read through something like Scott's Alcoholics Anonymous post or his ivermectin post and imagine how much worse it would be if only the non-RCT subset of the studies he looks at were available. That's why fields like nutrition, where long-term randomized control trials are impractical, are so terrible despite far more quantity and quality of research than a small field like gender dysphoria.
As an example, here's an excerpt from the Cass Report I've looked into previously:
Here is the meta-study being cited, the classification into high/moderate/low quality was not done by the Cass Report but by the meta-study. Note that many of the studies only looked at physical outcomes like "is puberty suppressed". At the time trans activists complained about the CASS report excluding a lot of studies, but among other things that includes studies that only investigated whether puberty blockers stop puberty and made no attempt to investigate whether stopping puberty provided any psychological benefit. This is the single supposed "high-quality" study. It isn't a randomized control study, it compares patients who have been given puberty blockers to ones who just started the assessment process. (It also compares to a "cisgender comparison group", such comparisons tend to be even more worthless.) Among other potential problems, this means the results are very plausibly just regression to the mean or benefits from the other mental-health care provided. If you think the parents of children with worse self-reported "internalizing, suicidality, and peer relations" are more likely to seek treatment than the parents of children who are currently doing fine, which the study itself shows, then improvement over time is the expected result even if you don't do anything. Plus they did do other things, it specifically mentions "the care provided in the present study also involved the offering of appropriate mental health care". It also mentions that the "control" group has an average age of 14.5 years and the treatment group 16.8 years. And that's the only "high-quality" study the meta-study could find on puberty blockers, here are the reasons given for why it considered the other studies to be even worse.
Great post and actually reverses my opinion. You've Singal-pilled me. I don't understand how any of those studies can be taken seriously by anyone else, but I guess it is important we get anything at all to satiate the people pushing this before axing it. Though I will point out that there are still plenty of communists, even though the communist experiment has failed several times over now.
I guess I'm Singal-pilled in that I see the utility in continuing experiments. I don't actually care if they're government funded or not. Certainly, if I was cutting research, research into something I despise would be one of the first things I cut. But, more nuanced than what I thought, I guess.
Because it's not about the science (or even The Science). We've danced this dance before with Intelligent Design. It's about "we have these pre-existing conclusions on the question, now we're just digging around for 'facts' to support it and squash our opposition".
A large part of transphobia/the trans backlash/TERF or what you want to call the reactions of ordinary people is that the question has moved very quickly from "some people suffer from dysphoria and feel absolutely convinced they are born in the wrong body, should we not help them?" and the answer to that being fought over "is this a mental illness or not, meaning should we try to treat them so they stop thinking this or should we give them drugs and surgery?", which is a whole controversy on its own, to "well what is sex and gender anyway? gender roles are socially determined, gender is a binary, now sex itself is a binary, there is no such thing as 'male' or 'female', 'man' or 'woman', let's smash cisheretonormativity, you are a woman if you feel that you are a woman" which is a much wider and deeper question and does involve undermining and overthrowing long-held traditional notions of 'this is a man' and 'this is a woman' as part of the broader revolution of attitudes around sexuality.
And then you throw six year old children into the mix of that witches' brew.
Or hey, Trust The Experts, if a two year old pulls the barrettes out of their hair, it is a very strong sign they are trans!
Ordinary people may be brought around to accept "adult person is now convinced he is she and wants to change their body to suit" with the approval of "here are serious and grave medical professionals who sign off on 'yes George is indeed Georgina'", but making it "here is Susie who hasn't changed one scrap of her appearance or behaviour except now she is claiming to be nonbinary 'they/them' and will fly off the handle into an absolute hysterical shrieking fit of rage if some poor passerby calls them 'she'" and "sure this may look like a guy, sound like a guy, and have raped two women violently as a guy, but now you must believe with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul that she is a real woman and should be put into a women's prison" is a step too far.
Except if you object to "yes but this is a guy, surely? isn't it dangerous to put a rapist in with women, you know?" then you are a wicked and violent transphobe who wants to ensure troubled trans kids commit suicide. Look at The Science! Trust The Science! and here those studies are pulled out to support the case.
Is it any wonder people eventually go "That makes me a transphobe? Okay, I'm a transphobe!" and the real suffering dysphoria people get thrown out with the bathwater?
We had a candidate for the Supreme Court dodging "what is a woman? well how can I possibly know, I'm not a biologist" and though I completely understand why she did it, as it was a 'gotcha' question, the fact remains: a woman can't dare to give an opinion on what is a woman. Had it been "what does it mean to be black (or Black, even)?" would she, as a black woman, have clammed up the same way? Would she be open to accusations of racism had she given an opinion on what it is to be black? See the difference there?
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