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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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ETA: I'm pretty sure, given the phrasing, that we're talking MtF.

FtM, if this is anything to go by.

FtM, if this is anything to go by.

More FtM school shooters would be (with grim irony) excellent evidence in favor of the "trans people are X minds born in a Y body" framing of the trans phenomenon, as opposed to borderline personality and social contagion which is the more popular explanation here.

I'm not getting any quick google results I trust, but there must be at least 20x as many Gen Z biological males as FtMs. If the ratio of male mass shooters:FtM mass shooters ever converges with the ratio of Male:FtMs in society, that will shift my priors dramatically in favor the LGBT activist framing of the issue being the correct one.

(I'm not suggesting that this ratio will come to pass, but I am registering this in advance as evidence that would falsify my current position.)

You're forgetting the confounding factor that FtM are often prescribed testosterone. I think the more parsimonious explanation would be "Testosterone produces aggressive and violent behavior"

Which... I think is pretty well established.

What if we grant the "X minds born in a Y body" framing. Is it just my impression or is the number of self reported transgenderism spiking in recent years? Could Alex Jones have been right and we're all getting Atrazined out of our minds. The young ones being the canary in the mine as their bodies are just now entering puberty.

Why not update in favor of gender-nonconforming people being generally susceptible to mental health issues?

Shooting up a Christian school is a psychotic thing to do before it is a «male» thing to do. Just because virtually all school shooters are men doesn't mean that the defining characteristic of school shooters is their gender.

Before this, both maleness and presumably some horrible mental health issue were both necessary conditions for school shootings. It seems very telling that in this case when we finally see a woman do it, it's one who saw themselves as a man, and was possibly treated with male sex hormones.

So whether it's "more" about maleness or mental illness doesn't really matter, because empirically you need to have both.

I agree with @ThenElection. You can weight the Male:FtM mass shooting rate against the Cis:Trans mass shooting rate to isolate how much is due to their intrinsic "maleness" vs how much is FtMs just being mentally ill. The math will be complicated by the need to control for the ratio of MtFs:FtMs, but it can be done.

So, a few scenarios that match with different hypotheses assuming Males and Females + MtFs and FtMs are both equally prevalent to avoid said complicated math.

A. "FtMs are male brains in female bodies", "trans people are not mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate should be 1:1.

B. "FtMs are male brains in female bodies", "trans people are more mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate = Cis:Trans mass shooting rate.

C. "FtMs are females passing themselves as male", "trans people are not mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate = Male:Female mass shooting rate

D. "FtMs are females passing themselves as male", "trans people are more mentally ill"

Male:FtM mass shooting rate = Male:Female mass shooting rate * Cis:Trans mass shooting rate

So, a few scenarios that match with different hypotheses assuming Males and Females + MtFs and FtMs are both equally prevalent to avoid said complicated math.

Also, the data is very noisy; this is the first widely-publicized event of a transperson shooting up a school. If we buy that there are 10 events of this type of event per year in the first place and that FtMs are 1% of the population (these are both significant overestimates), then we should expect one shooter every 10 years to be trans.

Transness was (simplification) only invented 5-10 years ago, so we should one event perpetrated by an FtM every 10 years on average for #1 to be correct. This is probably going to take a while.

There was another widely publicized ftm trans identified person shooting up a school in Colorado a few years ago, sentenced to life + 38 years.

So under 4 years for FtM at least.

If for some reason FtM/ MtF disproportionately shot up schools compared to MtF/FtM, there may be some way to tease out some information there beyond the mental health connection, even if the rates for both are elevated above the general population.

Would this actually prove that point?

I feel like it could just prove that masculinizing hormones actually masculinize people, which is hardly a revelation. Plenty of transmen already report anecdotally being quicker to anger, or needing to masturbate more after HRT.

In fact, the inverse being true isn't even catastrophic to the LGBT position. If fewer FtM people are school shooters and violent criminals, then it could be evidence that socialization plays a stronger role in gendered behavior than biology, at least as concerns violent crime. FtM's who are socialized as girls through their early childhood end up less likely to commit crimes than cismen socialized as boys.

Would this actually prove that point? I feel like it could just prove that masculinizing hormones actually masculinize people, which is hardly a revelation. Plenty of transmen already report anecdotally being quicker to anger, or needing to masturbate more after HRT.

It would definitely falsify something about my current position. I understand transitioning to change people at a fairly superficial level.

In fact, the inverse being true isn't even catastrophic to the LGBT position. If fewer FtM people are school shooters and violent criminals, then it could be evidence that socialization plays a stronger role in gendered behavior than biology, at least as concerns violent crime. FtM's who are socialized as girls through their early childhood end up less likely to commit crimes than cismen socialized as boys.

That doesn't follow. Lower FtM crime fits the biological explanation and the socialization one equally well, so it shouldn't update your priors on that point one way or the other.

I stand corrected.

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