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I got into an argument on JK Rowling recently. That was mildly annoying, but then it shifted to transgender stuff in general, and the puberty blocker discussion in particular was very vexing to me. I just genuinely don't know how anyone can be okay with the idea, especially now that we know way more about it than we did 10 years ago. The dismissal of the Cass Review on the part of the pro-trans side has increasingly looked like the stereotypical right winger doing mental somersaults to any science they dislike. But I have some questions on it, there were some things I didn't have great answers to.
What are the actual requirements for getting prescribed puberty blockers? The pro-trans tribe insists that it is a very rigorous process involving thorough checking of gender dysphoria, and it's not commonly done, despite being a readily available tool in the toolbox of clinical practice. I do not believe this after examples I have seen, but I have nothing to cite.
Is there any actual scientific evidence in favor of social contagion playing any part in transgenderism? The pro-trans tribe claims that social contagion plays no role, and to me, it's trivially true that social contagion plays an astounding part, as well as fetishism and abuse, and autism. I have no idea how many kids genuinely become gender dysphoric due to genetics, if there are any at all. And if there are any, I certainly don't think that it's a given that they need puberty blockers. How the hell did that become the default? But anyway, has The Science turned up anything on social contagion?
Are there any actually valid critiques of the Cass Review? Pro-trans tribe will cite the Yale Law retort, then when I point out the responses to it, either holes are poked in them or they just go back to their priors that the Cass Review was methodologically bad, done by a transphobe, misinterpreted studies, and went against the scientific consensus and ruined its own credibility. Actually, they say the same about the recent HHS Report. Please show me if there are any published valid critiques of the Cass Review besides the Yale thing.
What are the probabilities of serious consequences from puberty blockers? I brought up infertility, and the pro-trans tribe claimed that it's actually a very low chance and that it's not anyone's business anyway because not everyone wants to have kids. The latter half of that is completely inane when we're talking about life changing decisions for a demographic that cannot consent, but the former, I don't know. Do puberty blockers cause the infertility, the loss of ability to orgasm, and the complete lack of penis tissue with which to create a neovagina, or is it the ensuing hormones that do this?
Sadly, none of this will do anything to convince anyone on either side anyway. There's really no way out of this hole that has been created. Sometimes, I kind of hate this world. I really thought "don't give minors seriously debilitating life changing pills to solve a solely mental disorder" was an easy hill to stand on, but the fighting was just as vicious as anything else with the gender issue.
Edited to be slightly less angry.
I think the most important parts of a social contagion are that it's self-replicating, and that it contains some form of error correction to prevent its core payload from mutating beyond all recognition. In my opinion there is one obvious existing social contagion, Christianity. The primary function of Christianity is to perpetuate itself through evangelism. It also has error-checking capability to prevent its core payload (the holy trinity, etc) from mutating too much, but beyond that it adapts to fit in every culture and every corner of the world. Note that this isn't true of most other religions - many don't even want to perpetuate themselves beyond their own original culture. I think it's also reasonable to argue that wokeness a social contagion, since conversion through guilt-tripping seems to be a major component of the woke doctrine. However, the woke doctrine itself is not very well-preserved as wokeness reproduces itself, since wokeness is not a formal religion. Different woke people can have radically different beliefs, much more so than different sects of christianity, which still agree on 99% of their doctrine. I would argue that JK Rowling herself is part of woke culture - she is a radical feminist who believes in male privilege, and votes left on basically every issue other than transgenderism. Most of her criticisms of transgenderism are based on woke identity politics (women need safe spaces, men are evil raping oppressors, blah blah)
But I think transgenderism itself is fairly inert. People do decide to transition by witnessing other people transitioning, true. But there isn't always an ideological component. Some people just want to change their physiological sex characteristics to the extent possible. Imagine the counterfactual, that nobody wanted to change their biological sex. That would be pretty weird if everyone just happened to be totally satisfied with the results of a coinflip at their conception. People want to change all kinds of things about themselves, why not sex as well? I think a world where everyone was fine with their biological sex would actually require a mental gender identity. Somehow the brain would have to be adapted to prefer being in a body with the correct biological sex characteristics.
So the question is whether our observations of approximately 1% of people choosing to mess around with their physiological sex characteristics is more consistent with a social contagion containing that goal, or with some people just inherently wanting to do that, and social restrictions being lifted in the last few decades.
It’s not ideological for the kids involved. But it is a way for ostracized kids to find some measure of acceptance and even celebration as they decide to transition. Which would feel better to a boy who doesn’t fit in at all with the other boys? Grow up to be a lonely male incel hikkimori, doomed for life, or be trans female and find some measure of acceptance by wider society, a new, somewhat trendy identity. People choose all kinds of identities that don’t fit them perfectly for the purpose of fitting in. Goths, various fandoms, music scenes, sports, you name it. Humans are social animals that naturally want to be high in the social hierarchy. It’s not really that weird to think that if there’s social capital in being trans there would be kids willing to at least socially transition. The alternative is being an outcast.
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