This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I said two months ago I would reply to a comment about this study on the mental health effects of gender transition. I have only now managed to find the time, so I'm going to post my reply as a top-level comment lest it get buried. You can find the previous discussion here.
To be honest, some of the statistical manipulation seems dubious, but that's above my pay grade, so I'm going to assume the study was conducted in good faith with no shenanigans.
In short, the study finds that, contrary to assumptions that transitioning should improve mental health, the share of people needing mental health treatment rises drastically after transition. Anti-trans people conclude that this means transition actually worsens mental health, and, hence, people should not be allowed to transition.
There's some nitpicking to be done here, for example, maybe the patients already needed mental health treatment and just found out they needed it at the same time as they found out they're transgender, or that just seeing a mental health professional regularly doesn't necessarily mean that your mental health is worse than it used to be.
But my fundamental objection is to the conclusion that no one should be allowed to transition. Suppose the anti-trans side is completely correct on the facts, that transitioning did, in fact, directly worsen the mental health of many or even most patients. There are still some patients who are better off. There are countless anecdotal reports online of people who are happier after transitioning. The most you can conclude is that the criteria for who should transition need to be changed. (If I'm interpreting the data right, the likelihood of needing mental health treatment after transitioning was higher in those born later, consistent with the rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)/social contagion hypothesis.) But if you care about people's happiness, some people should still be supported in transitioning.
Obviously if you believe all trans people are delusional and object to transition and treating people as their stated gender regardless of the effect on their mental health, this does not apply to you. But in that case the study isn't an argument you can use.
Speaking of ROGD, its rhetorical use by anti-trans people is a peculiar example of a self-contradictory motte-and-bailey: usually the bailey is a stronger version of the motte, and thus necessarily consistent with it, but here the bailey ("all trans people are delusional and none of them are their stated gender") contradicts the motte ("some trans people with a specific presentation – primarily adolescent girls – are not actually their stated gender") because the latter presupposes that some trans people are, in fact, their stated gender. If you believe all trans people are delusional, why do you care about the specific etiology of the transness of a specific subgroup of trans people? The treatment, whichever you prefer, should be the same.
I consider myself pro-trans, but I believe ROGD/social contagion may well be a real thing. If you agree about the possibility of social contagion, you should try to minimize the attention trans people receive, yet anti-trans activists have been the main publicists of transness for about a decade now – trans people really entered the mainstream with the North Carolina "bathroom bill". It used to be that you would only find information about transness if you went looking for it because you were questioning your gender, but now that trans people are everywhere (thanks to anti-trans activists), you get impressionable young people who were not predisposed to questioning their gender hearing about it and joining in for the standard reasons impressionable young people join trends. (Cf. media coverage of school shootings encouraging more school shootings – a common argument among anti-gun-control people.)
I take the opposite stance, regardless of mental health outcomes banning people from transitioning is wrong. The discussion isn't just about trans people, but the underlying thought processes involving the role of government and restrictions to "save people from themselves". And those thought processes have real consequences.
The FDA is already really bad for this, the US government takes an approach that everything is basically banned until "proven" safe. Our default is that you are a moron who can't be trusted to take any risk. And this means small stuff like why you can't buy good sunscreen, to more serious issues like why it's difficult for terminally ill patients to try new risky procedures, or as this ACX post has gone over before, why your child might have died because they couldn't get European fish oil.
And it delays medical and scientific advances a lot! Look at this estimate putting the COVID vaccine by 2033. Thank god for operation warp speed allowing us to bypass tedious bullshit (or at least do them simultaneously) and get it out in less than a year. Imagine if other medicine could come out so quickly like the GLP1s! Imagine how many lives could be saved or improved if not for the nanny state "protecting" us.
The we must protect morons from themselves stance inevitably means treating you as a moron too. You must be kept safe from the sunscreen that is widely used in Asia and Europe. You must be kept safe from experimental treatments before you die. You must be kept safe from saving your kid. You must be kept safe from deciding that you're happier with cross sex hormones. You must be kept safe from scientific advancements. You are a moron, you do not get to make your own choices, the central bureaucrats simply know better.
We don't stop this by engaging in more banning. We have to throw away the entire concept in the trash, and accept that yes morons will sometimes make moronic decisions that hurt themselves but restrictive government just means treating everyone as a moron. I don't see myself as a moron. Does anyone here think differently of themselves?
A fine stance to have, but it runs into difficulties with children and minors and the question of whether they can, or should be allowed to, provide consent.
That's a similar issue of how much more controlling we have gotten about children as well. My parents are old enough that as children they would go out biking around the neighborhoods miles away without supervision, without cell phones, and without much worry from my grandparents. In fact it was expected that you would go out and play for the most of the day and come home for dinner. This was the norm.
I wasn't allowed very far, but I could bike around the neighborhood some, go to neighbors houses to hang with the kids there, go down to the local pool. Maybe get dropped off at the mall as a teen and hang out there or whatever.
Now, 11 year olds aren't trusted to go to a different aisle in the grocery store. A different aisle in the same store.
We have decided that modern kids are morons in ways that they weren't for the entire rest of history. And we've culturally decided that too, where parents who don't engage in hysteria get CPS called on them constantly and some parents have ended up arrested. Which means even I have to be cautious in the freedoms I give my own kids, not even the same ones I had growing up yet alone those of my parents. Not by choice, but because government enforcers decided my kids are apparently too stupid to walk down to a nearby store or something.
Modern society coddles our children and trains them to be immature and incapable in their teens. But not too long ago, a good bit of those teenagers would have been off from their families working jobs as squires or farmhands or "youngsters" midshipmen or something else speaking of ships, a cabin boy or an apprenticeship for the local blacksmith/tailor/etc or whatever else. The world wasn't rich enough to coddle older children and teens from serious work and serious decisions, so the teens were capable. They had to be.
Which is another important point. Coddling makes us weaker. When government treats us like morons, we slowly become morons even when we are capable of more. We are lobotomized by paternalist attitudes.
I think we're all negotiating on price. Like, to give the obvious example, do you think kids should be allowed to kill themselves? Hell, do you think they should be allowed to apply for euthanasia if they get depression? I'd say no, and I'd say that on the grounds that most kids disallowed from killing themselves will, on reflection (and usually not that long a reflection!) be glad that they were stopped; their coherent extrapolated volition is to be disallowed from something that stupid. Hell, I've attempted suicide three times and am glad I was stopped the latter two (the first one I wasn't actually stopped; I just failed by myself).
Medical transition is not as serious as literal suicide. It's also far more serious than essentially everything else on the list of things the fun police don't want to let kids do with maybe the exception of some drugs. Kids playing by themselves without supervision are very unlikely to be maimed for life. Kids medically transitioning will with near-certainty. So one can consistently support free range kids and still oppose transitioning kids, at least as long as one doesn't take "free range kids" to the psychotic extreme of "deliberately let the kids jump off cliffs!".
It's not illegal for a kid to try to kill themselves. Most kids don't commit suicide for the simple reason that they don't want to kill themselves and of those kids who do, it is not the law that serves to prevent their deaths. No suicidal child says "I was gonna jump off the roof but 5(b) makes it a criminal charge with a two year probation if caught".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link