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Notes -
New Aella survey post on child sexual assault just dropped: https://aella.substack.com/p/a-whole-lot-of-csa-data
I think her analysis is generally unobjectionable, but do find it notable that she buries the lead on the "non-cis" sexual assault findings. I didn't dig into the crosstabs, but non-cis people are plausibly getting sexually assaulted even before they become openly non-cis. And while there's plausibly causation in the direction of abnormal pre-egg-breaking/transition behavior being more likely to attract sexually assault, the data re: non-cis people reporting more CSA still very much supports the hypothesis that either:
It might be that these hypothesis are both correct, but for different population subsets. For example, nonbinary people might be disproportionately motivated by a desire to escape a concept they associate with their assault, while transgender people are the ones afflicted by a root factor. (Or vica-versa, either explanation would be possible.)
I would personally bet on the second hypothesis predominating, though. And in particular, the associations re: social class/parental age/trauma are suggestive of some specifically anxiety-related problem. Working hypothesis: If you grow up poor or insecure or to young parents or female you become anxious and depressed, which leads you to be more likely to suffer sexual assault, more likely to interpret past events as sexual assault, more likely to start identifying yourself as non-cis (because of body image issues? Data is obviously underspecified and outside the scope of aella's post), and more likely to be negatively affected long-term by sexual assault when it does happen.
...So if you have kids, and want to maximize their chances of identifying as cisgender into adulthood, your top priority should be reducing their opportunities for anxiety. Openly worrying about drag queen story hour and queer books would be ironically counterproductive.
Ideological disclaimer: as a catholic I believe there are only two genders, fixed at birth, but as a transhumanist also I'm in favor of letting anyone, including children, do whatever they want to their own bodies. (I accept some nuance re: having to get psychologists/a judge to sign off that someone is truly acting in their own uncoerced self-interest, with increasing scrutiny in proportion to the danger posed by the modification and the mental irresponsibility of the requestor.)
Am I really the only one who sees an obvious link?
It's autism. Being on the autism spectrum is massively more common among people who are trans (particularly MTF in modern world). Likewise not understanding social cues and being generally weird exposes one to all sorts of issues (and then there's the combination of autism spectrum running in families and how that may affect the previous generation or two's behavior towards future victims...).
Also this being Aella's survey, it almost certainly has a massive self selection bias for people on the spectrum so that's a huge confounding factor.
I'm quite convinced that a lot (discalaimer: not all) of those spectrum-y people, especially the FtMs, female asexuals, and non-attention-whore they/thems, are just kinda trusting and gullible and were groomed into the identity by the LGBTQXY recruitment drive, independent of any molestation.
Even the from-an-early age trans stuff makes me slightly doubtful, just because I once knew someone dumb who thought her 18-month-old might be trans because he didn't like wearing pants.
The problem is the way any expression of gender non-conformity gets lovebombed, when it should be neither encouraged nor discouraged.
It seems impossible to imagine being groomed into any identity other than the default. Despite the feelings of the anti's out there the level of social pressure to be normal is fucking wild.
I'm not LGBT, I'm probably not even Q other than by the thinnest margin (I don't really care about my gender particularly and I don't seem to be as pathologically obsessed with getting my dick wet as the average guy) and even that is too much.
Let the level of push back/path dependent pressure to course correct the 0.5 rads I've deviated be designated as X: X < beating my woman with a closed fist BUT X > gently correcting with an open hand (This is a humorous exaggeration, please get off my back).
Shit is crazy, you have to experience it to believe it and you can only experience it by being authentically weird in some way; eg by being autistic. I'm just glad I wasn't born with a fragile ego or a limp spine, that shit could fuck you up easy if you let it/were susceptible.
I wonder how much of the pressure to conform one way or another really depends on your bubble. In a trad Cath or almost any red tribe group I've been exposed to or a part of, you're going to get pretty open social hostility. On the flip side, LGBT subcultures by definition involve make being LGBT, or whatever subset of it that particular group is of, the normal. Progressive groups IME tend to give a lot of social support verbally and signaling wise to LGBT people, but I'm unsure what the total experience of an LGBT person would be in there. I have a wife and kid now, but in college I had an addiction to gay porn that due to drunk hijinks was known by many, and some progressive friend groups tried to recruit me into their groups when previously they were uninterested. I imagine which bubbles you are exposed to, and we are all exposed to more than one, decides how much pressure you have to conform to cisheteronormativity (to use the academic phrase).
I'm less referring to personal pressure which is brownian, and more society in general.
Eg, even the most flagrant of the homos are out here fighting for ... the right to participate in the institution of marriage? Who could have predicted?
Anyone paying attention. The culture says that you are not a complete human without the picket fence and the kids, etc etc.
I think that's why the rejectionist tendency among all people is getting stronger over time; it's coming from the same place. The flaming LGBTQ types and the Incels and the Transhumanists and the fuentisimos and the revanchist communists are all reacting to social pressure to conform to a certain image or life path that for various reasons only has enough room for x = population % 10001 and everyone else can eat shit and die.
The first question I would have is: which society? This isn't a gotcha: it's fair to say that, essentially by the mid 20th century, the US did have a mainstream mono-culture which almost everyone interacted with consisting of big business, the government, mainstream media (not just news but things like Hollywood as well), and probably a few other things too. At the same time, you also had subcultures that had values opposing and/or orthogonal to that dominant culture. The Amish and gayborhoods being some examples. How much the values of the dominant culture dictate your life and community does very much depend on where you elect to wind up.
This is true to a large extent. While the modern mainstream has a more ambivalent relationship to those above groups then pure hostility, it's clear that tons of people were given expectations of what is the good life that, for varying reasons depending on the person, is out of reach for them. What makes this more dire on a personal level is really how much power the monoculture has over your life; if you're Amish, the monoculture has a limit affect on your lived experience but if you're an atomized modern, you're going to swimming against the river every time you wake up without a supportive community. When you have a bunch of people with mutually irreconcilable desires to change the monoculture, and the stakes are high for them since there is no subculture they can retreat to to compensate for any failures in the monoculture, conflict becomes nasty quickly.
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