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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22726 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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 dislike the phrase "social contagion", which assumes that being trans is a negative and it's bad for it to spread. This negative connotation is, I think, what causes people to deny the obvious when they might not if the question were phrased differently. Is dyeing your hair a "social contagion"? Tattoos? The latest slang, the latest fashion? People will trivially be more likely adopt all these things if they know they're on the table, and even more so if they're popular. "People will be more likely to develop a desire to change genders if they know it's a commonly-done thing" is common sense, and I don't think "the pro-trans tribe" would deny it if the name people used for it wasn't something which implies it's a nefarious process that needs to be halted.

(Mind you, I do think we use puberty blockers on minors too cavalierly. But Rowling is not a good champion for that narrow, sensible point when she is clearly against social transition, and all forms of adult transition, as well.)

I dislike the phrase "social contagion", which assumes that being trans is a negative and it's bad for it to spread.

I think the phrase came into being due to the recent increase in female-to-male identification, where up till then it had been majority male-to-female transition:

Earlier this year, a team of NHS researchers was asked to investigate why there has been such a huge rise in the number of adolescent biological girls seeking referrals to gender clinics.

The figures alone do seem remarkable.

According to a study commissioned by NHS England, 10 years ago there were just under 250 referrals, most of them boys, to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London.

Last year, there were more than 5,000, which was twice the number in the previous year. And the largest group, about two-thirds, now consisted of “birth-registered females first presenting in adolescence with gender-related distress”, the report said.

And increasingly younger women, and teenage girls being vulnerable to precisely this sort of social contagion (see conversion disorders and examples of mass hysteria spreading amongst teen girl populations in enclosed or tightly knit social circles). The Loudun possessions is perhaps the most well-known example of such an outbreak, in a convent in the 17th century.

An article about a movie from 2015 about a fictional incident quotes the film-maker as inspired thusly:

The idea for the film, documentary maker Morley explains, "came to me over a decade ago, when a friend and I ended up in bursts of hysterical laughter on the phone.

"I ended up making a short film, called The Madness of the Dance, about mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, as it's now known.

"It's documented in medieval times and there was an outbreak in Salem, New England, which helped lead to the famous witch trials of the 17th Century.

"They are usually confined to same-sex institutions such as convents, schools or army barracks - and it is overwhelmingly a female phenomenon.

"Most recently they seem to break out in schools, and there have been cases all over the world - from Mexico to Sri Lanka to the West Bank.

"That idea of female collectivity, of what can happen amongst a close-knit group of girls or women, is fascinating to me.

"I found that while there are set patterns that are used to identify a mass psychogenic outbreak, medics can't yet entirely understand the physical symptoms. It's steeped in mystery.

"There's a theory that they are to do with unconsciously admiring another person with symptoms and this is how the disorder spreads, or that it's triggered by a stressful event.

"That gave me the whole idea for The Falling."

I think you misunderstood my post. I do not deny that there is a social spread of transgender. That's obvious. I object to the phrase "social contagion" because it implies that this spread is a bad thing we ought to stop, as opposed to a value-neutral - or even beneficial! - social trend like any other. I object to it for the same reason I might have objected, decades ago, to "there is a satanic plot to corrupt children into playing Dungeons & Dragons". Doubtless there were indeed marketing experts working very hard to convince more children to play Dungeons & Dragons! That is not in doubt! But playing Dungeons & Dragons isn't witchcraft and being transgender isn't a horrible disease, therefore the one is not satanic corruption and the other is not contagion. They're just neat activities propagating through populations that find them to be fun ways to spend their lives.

Are we really going to pretend that the lifetime outcome changes of taking drugs that massively and irreversibly alter your body and playing a tabletop RPG are anywhere near the same?

What's next, you're going to argue that methheads are just trying to have fun?

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