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How often does this happen?
No, the concern is that (1) being treated as the wrong gender is extremely unpleasant, and the sooner it ends, the better, and (2) transitioning later will make it more difficult to pass. I don't think trans people think people deciding they're cis after all is bad in any way. Some might believe it never happens, but for those who accept that it does, I don't think they consider it "trans genocide". Claims of "trans genocide" focus on alleged actual killings of trans people.
They do not. Consider a representative example, which claims that bathroom bills, laws requiring people to compete in sports corresponding to their sex and elevated risk of suicide for trans people are all part of the "trans genocide" currently ongoing in the US.
Or consider the Wikipedia page about the concept (of course it has a Wikipedia page). Opening paragraph:
By their own admission, trans activists consider the "erasure" of trans people (i.e. failing to affirm them and refer to them by the names and pronouns they wish to be addressed by; refusing to make every other character in a teen drama trans) and "discrimination" against them (i.e. demanding that they be housed in the prisons and hospitals corresponding to their sex; lesbians refusing to have sex with male people who "identify as" women) to be examples of "genocide". They also consider the elevated risk of suicide trans people face as an example of "genocide" i.e. the transgender genocide might be the world's first self-administered genocide. Sui-genocide? Geno-suicide?
Some countries make a gender recognition cert conditional on having undergone bottom surgery. This argument is sort of ridiculous because a) no one is forcing you to cut your dick off: if changing the sex on your birth cert is that important to you, that's a you problem; and b) unlike ethnicity, trans identification isn't hereditary.
You'll note that there's a bit of a Morton's fork here, as elsewhere in the article they claim that banning bottom surgery for minors constitutes "genocide". If you stop a trans person getting bottom surgery, that's genocide. If you say that a trans person can change the sex marker on their driver's license only if they get bottom surgery (in order to weed out bad actors), that's also genocide. As near as I can tell it, transgender genocide is just when you don't let trans people do exactly what they want 100% of the time.
Elsewhere in the article, there's a map of the US showing which states have banned gender-affirming care. You'll notice that this has absolutely nothing to do with "actual killings of trans people". The page argues that these laws meet certain criteria mentioned in the United Nations definition of genocide, as they "[cause] serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately [inflict] on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part". But this is assuming the conclusion: a major reason for these bans is because of researchers like Hilary Cass investigating and learning that the evidence base for the efficacy of these interventions is appallingly weak and poor quality. This whole discussion was started by you pointing out that some children's mental health worsens after they undergo gender-affirming care. If this is true in general, it implies that legalising gender-affirming care for minors constitutes "transgender genocide"!
In other words, if people stop identifying as trans, there will be no trans people left and hence trans people will have been (metaphorically) exterminated. (Note the popular slogan "death before detransition".) Again – absolutely nothing to do with "actual killings of trans people". If everyone stopped identifying as trans tomorrow, there would be no trans people left, without anyone actually having been killed. Nobody identifies as a mod or a rocker anymore, and yet it would be absurd to claim that mods or rockers have been "genocided".
There you go. When they talk about "transgender genocide", they are not talking about trans people being murdered.
I could go on and fisk the rest of the article in detail, but I think I've made my point. Only a small portion of the Wikipedia article about "transgender genocide" concerns itself with trans people actually being murdered.* The rest of it is just complaining about trans people being made to use the public facilities concordant with their sex, not being permitted to compete in opposite-sex sporting events, certain trans people no longer identifying as trans, medical bodies hitting pause on gender-affirming care for minors and so on. When you hear "transgender genocide", instead of thinking "trans people being murdered in their hundreds" you should hear "trans people being inconvenienced or failing to get exactly what they want, in any way".
Between this and Gaza, I'm starting to think the word "genocide" will need to be retired pretty soon.
*The article is 15,451 words long. "Murder" appears 15 times, "kill" 13 times, "violence" 38 times, "death" 9 times and so on.
I dislike the "trans genocide" terminology, but I'm kind of stuck on a better word that doesn't minimize the concerns. Attempts to extinguish belief systems by any means necessary up to and including forced conversion and outlawing specific rites are a well-attested historical phenomenon which seems like it'd make a better analogy, but I don't believe that idea has a more specific name than the somewhat broader umbrella of "religious persecution".
Well, at least you're acknowledging that a new religious movement is what trans is.
"Genocide" is obviously the wrong word because genocide means targeting an ethnic group for extermination, and trans people aren't an ethnic group. Over time, a religious order can become a distinct ethnic group provided they only marry each other (you'd be amazed how often I have to explain to people that the Holocaust was not an example of religious persecution, as the Nazis targeted anyone of the Jewish ethnicity, regardless of whether they were practising or were even aware of their heritage), but I don't get the impression that this description is likely to apply to trans people any time soon. Sure, members of the Blue Tribe tend to endorse gender ideology and tend to intermarry, but most people who endorse gender ideology are not themselves trans. And as a result of the medical interventions they've undergone, trans people are disproportionately likely to be unable to have children anyway.
If (as you more or less concede) taking HRT and puberty blockers is more akin to a holy sacrament than anything we think of as medical care in the ordinary sense of the term, and if top/bottom surgery are more similar to elective surgical procedures done as part of induction into a tribe (analogous to circumcision or FGM), then in my eyes this strengthens rather than weakens the case for banning these interventions for children. If communion wafers wreaked the changes on children's bodies that HRT does, I'd be in favour of banning them too. Many jurisdictions already ban FGM for teenage girls. I'm aware that this practice is closely affiliated with certain strands of the Islamic faith and hence trying to prevent it could be thought of as "religious persecution": I just don't care. Religion or no, you shouldn't cut off bits of teenage girls' genitals when not medically indicated, and a pluralistic society has to drawn the line somewhere. I haven't been circumcised, but if circumcision were to be banned outright in all Western countries I'd be delighted. I'm sure there would be much waiting and gnashing of teeth from these countries' Muslim and Jewish communities, but this is one case where even an outspoken philosemite such as myself would say "tough".
The problem is of course the US doesn't ban people making medical decisions for their kids based on religous belief generally. You can get your kid circumcised, or choose not to treat them and use prayer instead, or increase risk by not using blood products and so on. Up until imminent death, when the state may intervene.
So in a "your rules applied fairly" sense, if Trans ideology is a religion, that indicates parents who support their kids transitioning should be allowed to make that choice for them.
Otherwise its an isolated demand for rigor. My unsubstantiated belief can inform medical care and risk the life of my child, your unsubstantiated belief cannot.
Even the social contagion issue, churches have specific super-spreader events to infect children with their social contagion.
So i'm not sure treating trans ideology as a religion helps because we give huge amounts of latitude to religion.
Which is basically my stance, while we allow parents to do all kinds of crazy nonsense to their children, drawing the line at trans stuff is an isolated demand for rigor. My preferred choice would be to ban the lot of it, but thats highly unlikely so "your rules fairly applied" it is.
If Bob gets to mutilate his kids penis, and Carol gets to mutilate her kids mind, and Shemar gets to risk his kids life when they need a blood transfusion, and Marjorie gets to risk her kids life by replacing medical treatment with prayer, then Freddie gets to transition his son to his daughter.
Many of those will turn out to be awful harmful choices and terrible for the kid. But we allow them anyway.
Either unsubstantiated beliefs get to influence medical decisions or they don't. And currently many, many of them do.
If trans is a religion then at very minimum where parents want to transition their kid they should be allowed to do so. Even if all evidence suggests its nonsense. Because evidence suggests thats for a whole host of nonsense we do allow.
"Such legal exemptions in Idaho and other states mean, for example, that if a parent withholds medical treatments for an ailing child and instead opts for spiritual treatment through prayer, the child will not be considered "neglected" under the law, even if he or she dies."
If your beliefs can legally allow you to let your child die, its hard to argue they shouldn't also let you transition them.
Arguably trans activists pivoting to calling it a religion would entitle them to more protections, at least in the US.
Well this is basically my stance. If trans is just a weird progressive sect (a modern skoptsy), whose sacraments are puberty blockers and HRT and whose initiation rituals are top and bottom surgery, that would be one thing.
But that means dropping the pretense that these things are anything other than sacraments and initiation rituals. When a surgeon conducts a circumcision on a man suffering from phimosis, that is a necessary medical intervention. But when a rabbi or imam circumcises a male infant, no one claims that this procedure is being conducted out of medical necessity, and so should it be here. That means:
It also means that, just as the children of Jehovah's Witnesses can be taken into care if their life is in jeopardy as a consequence of their parents' religious beliefs (at least in some jurisdictions; apparently not Idaho), the state can take trans children into care if their welfare is in serious jeopardy as a consequence of their parents' beliefs.
I genuinely believe a huge proportion of children in the Anglosphere who have received these interventions over the past twenty years would not have done so if their status as sacraments and initiation rituals had been more clearly communicated to their parents. I think "HRT, elective mastectomies, vaginoplasties etc. are still available for true believers who really want them – but no medical organisation is claiming they are medically necessary interventions, and caveat emptor if you decide to pay for them out of pocket" is a compromise that would suit most people. I imagine a lot of medical bodies might eventually hit on this solution via convergent evolution if the pace of detransitioner lawsuits keeps up. A recurrent complaint in said lawsuits is that patients and their parents felt their physicians had knowingly misled them about the efficacy or medical necessity of these interventions. It'll be much harder to win a malpractice suit if the defendant can prove that they offered the patient these interventions, but made perfectly clear to them that these are elective procedures and made absolutely no affirmative claims as to their efficacy in ameliorating mental distress.
I think the key is I don't think there is a real difference you are drawing. What or why people hold these beliefs is irrelevant. They do. Whether there is some counter-factual world in which a Christian informed that their beliefs are made up would become an atheist and therefore would have allowed medical treatment for their child instead of prayer doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they were brainwashed as a child, sent to a religious school or handed a pamphlet, it doesn't matter if a trusted pastor converted them, or an online message board. It doesn't matter if their beliefs are true or not.
Either you have to treat the belief as enough or not. Once you start getting into judging whether the belief is well founded, or what tactics you can use to spread your beliefs then we're back while we started.
Guilt tripping is one of the fundamental methods of ensuring compliance to religion (cf. Catholicism) so just because Trans ideology is a religion doesn't mean they can't guilt trip or browbeat people. Likewise people have been taken into care for not being raised in the correct religious beliefs and so on. Faith healers are allowed to advertise. You are drawing (or trying to draw) a bright line between faith and medicine that is actually very blurry.
Either these are reasonable tactics for both trans ideology and religions or they are not.
Are people allowed to morally browbeat people into doing X? Clearly yes. Therefore trans activists should be allowed to as well. Most health insurance covers elective circumcisions at least partially, and even government healthcare does in the majority of states. As for separation of church and state the whole Intelligent Design issues shows that religion will certainly attempt to get their beliefs taught in schools by hook or by crook, so again Trans ideology gets the same treatment. They can try and may fail or succeed.
There is nothing to say a medical organization can't have its advice based upon its beliefs. And in fact plenty to say they can. Jehovah's Witnesses have networks of doctors who specialise in Bloodless Medicine and Surgery, which recommend not using blood products and crucially launder their beliefs by claiming this is better. (or more charitably because they really believe it is better, because their beliefs inform their medical thinking), so a trans-activist doctor can certainly tell a family transitioning their kid is better whether it is or isn't.
The below text at the bottom is from Penn Medicine for reference. Now substitute in "People who choose transition surgery often experience positive outcomes through..." Also note they don't mention anything about the downsides or risks of not using blood products. Interesting isn't it? Like the people writing it have their medical preferences informed by their beliefs and are allowed to simply just tell people that.
I am sure you see my point. If you asked one of these bloodless doctors about whether you should get surgery with a transfusion or without what do you think they would tell you? If you ask a trans activist doctor whether transition is a good treatment for your dysphoric kid what would they tell you?
You're drawing a line for trans treatment that is not drawn in other places. Doctors can just tell you bloodless surgery is better, because their beliefs inform it. Even if you can find other doctors who will say the opposite. Your insurance will just pay for you to have bloodless surgery because it is part of your religious beliefs. Even though it might be riskier. and so on and so forth.
Let me be clear, I think trans treatments much like bloodless treatments are likely to be a mistake and that the children going through each will be harmed more than the alternative. I think both are stupid almost certainly false beliefs. But I think they should be treated the same way. Either activist doctors are allowed or not. Currently if there is a religion that believes blood transfusions are wrong they are allowed to have doctors that also believe this and will (literally) evangelise it. So the trans ideology should get the same treatment. People and parents get to decide which nonsense they want to believe. They remain the final arbiter. Whether they are brainwashed by a pastor, a bloodless doctor or a trans-activist doctor doesn't matter. Either they get to act on their beliefs or not.
I do certainly agree if a trans treatment results in death or the high risk of it, then the state should intervene. But as in Idaho and 33 other states, apparently the religious do not agree with me. So again "their rules fairly enforced". If belief is enough for them to allow a child to die then belief is enough for me to allow parents to transition children. It's isolated demands for rigor and hypocrisy all the way down.
Not from you to be clear, I don't imagine you have much say over Idaho laws or the extensive lobbying thereof. You seem to have a much more structurally coherent position.
"Advantages of bloodless medicine for patients and providers Blood-conservation techniques improve the management of a patient's blood and reduce strain and costs on regional and national blood supplies.
People who choose bloodless surgery often experience positive outcomes through:
Faster healing and recovery Fewer reactions from stored blood Lower chance of infections No chance of receiving the wrong blood in error Hospitals and health-care organizations benefit from reduced:
Blood storage-related issues Costs related to maintaining blood inventory Demand for blood and blood products Risk of blood transfusion errors"
I wrote a very long comment comparing a rabbi urging a Jewish couple to circumcise their son for religious reasons (without presenting himself as a qualified physician) vs. a doctor urging a couple to circumcise their son to treat his phimosis vs. a doctor using his platform as a physician to urge a couple to circumcise their son for religious reasons. I said that, while the first two are fine in my eyes, the third one is not. But that was before I read the rest of your comment, in which you point out that there are qualified doctors who advocate for subpar treatments clearly informed by their religious beliefs. To me, this strikes me as a massive derelection of duty, and I'm surprised they haven't been struck off the register, but evidently the medical occupational licensing boards don't agree with me.
In my ideal world, doctors' sole duty of care would be to their patients, and they would be professionally obliged to leave their personal beliefs at the door. They would keep up to date with the latest standard of medical evidence and dispassionately advise the patient of whatever they thought the best course of action was, irrespective of whether it clashed with their personal religious/political beliefs. A doctor can't just decline to treat a gay man, a racist or a drug addict just because he disapproves of his lifestyle.
But of course, it's more complicated than that. No doctor has the time to read every single journal article that gets published (not even just those in their narrow specialty), and their choice about which articles to read and which not will inevitably be informed (to a greater or lesser extent) by their personal beliefs, which will in turn inform the types of medical interventions he recommends. If an expectant mother is experiencing complications which might require her to terminate the pregnancy to protect her life, of course a pro-abortion doctor will suggest this intervention earlier than an anti-abortion would, even if both doctors are exactly as qualified, experienced and concerned for their respective patients' welfare. While there are many medical interventions with no political or religious valence, and some interventions that no medic could ever professionally recommend without fear of a malpractice suit or losing his license, in the middle there's a whole mess of grey, and it's impossible to draw a bright line in the sand.
In a society where elective circumcision of infants is legal, probably there's no way to outright ban elective mastectomies and vaginoplasties. But I want doctors to be a lot more upfront than they currently are that these are elective procedures and that the evidence base for their efficacy is mixed. That thing of "you have to cut your son's dick off or he will definitely kill himself" has to stop, immediately.
So I think we're quite close in ideals maybe. I agree that I would prefer a world with doctors as you describe.
I just don't think its possible. A doctor may earnestly believe that a trans surgery will save the life of a child, just as a Jehovahs Witness doctor believes giving the child blood is worse for them medically because they've both rationalized their belief set through their medical training.
For many medical decisions the outcomes are grey. As you point out fundamentally your medical ethos is buttressed by your belief set. You may not even know you are biased. So how do you ban that?
You see the same with dentists in much less culture war ways. I have a really old NHS filling in a tooth. My last US dentist said it was old but ok and if it started crumbling he would crown it. My new dentist says I must remove it and replace it with a crown because he expects it to start crumbling and that will make crowning it harder and more painful for me.
Presumably this difference is to do with their risk tolerances or experiences with fillings or because they read it in a book. Or maybe my new dentist is a sadist or wants the extra money from my insurance company. I heavily suspect though its not a conscious choice. They are different people, one a shy, almost reserved Indian chap, while the new dentist is a mile a minute talker with shoulders like a prop forward from Iowa. I have no idea which one is objectively right. They may well both believe they are right.
As for bloodless doctors..wait until you find out about Doctors of Osteopathy (D.O.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Osteopathic_Medicine
"One notable difference between DO and MD training is that D.O.s spend an additional 300–500 hours to study pseudoscientific hands-on manipulation of the human musculoskeletal system (osteopathic manipulative technique) alongside conventional evidence-based medicine and surgery like their MD peers"
Currently about 1/3 of student doctors in the US are D.O., not M.D. in theory they have to study the same conventional medicine. But being taught a whole non-scientific process seems like its likely to influence your decision making. Or maybe just being the kind of person who would choose that route does. There are practices and programs that don't hire D.O.s but they are fully licensed physicians.
Anyway, the US at least has no grounds to complain about activist doctors pushing treatments with little or no scientific backing. They've been accepting that for a long time. Maybe make a Doctor of Trans (D.T.) school so you can tell them apart and call it a day.
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