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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34961 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Been reading an article about the child "transgender" story and something really caught my attention. The quote first:

Casey expressed no discomfort with his sex as a child, but when he turned 13, he said, he discovered through friends and online that “transgenderism was a thing.” He started researching this and felt, “Holy crap! You can do that?” Soon he declared he was “gender fluid.” Casey explains, “This means that my gender changed based on the day. Then it got to the point where I was never feeling masculine or like a boy.” After about six months of being gender fluid, Casey says, “I decided that I was a fully transgender girl. Like I wanted to present as a girl and I wanted people to see me as a girl. So, I started to socially transition. I was going by a different name and using she/her pronouns.”

That lasted for a few more months until, he says, “I started to lean more kind of in-between. I didn't identify as a girl as much. But I did not see myself as a boy, so I identified as non-binary, which is what I am today.” He explains being non-binary means he is neither sex, and to go along with this he changed his name again—to something as gender neutral as “Casey”—and began using they/them pronouns.

So there I realized even though I am very far from woke, the propaganda has warped my understanding of the issue too. I was thinking what happens in such cases is some child suddenly starts very strongly feeling that they are the opposite gender, and then the system gets involved and "affirms" them in their delusion. But what is happening here is nothing of the sort. It's more like childish fascination with the unknown and unexplored and cool, which gets turned into much bigger thing that it should be by both the parents who are completely unable to provide the child the necessary structure ("just be what you are", wtf is that, that's not a kind of help the confused child lost in a confusing world needs) and the system which actively problematizes and medicalizes any case it can get the hold on.

The result is predictable - the system deploys the tactical nuke of "if you won't transition now, you child will surely kill himself and it'll be your fault", the parents fold like wet paper, child gets put on puberty blockers, develops severe mental problems, has to take five medications at the same time, becomes suicidal, the system reacts "see, we told you! if we didn't rescue them in time, them'd be dead already!" and refuses to budge. The parents finally see what a huge fuckup they did and start running around, screaming and writing articles.

The article worth a full read, but this was the part that struck me the most. It was how easy it was to get from a childish curiosity about "you can do that weird thing? really? let me try it on!" to being pulled into the machine and turned into a case and somebody whose life would forever be dependent on the medical system (and, of course, forever "oppressed"). I thought it's more like "X has a severe problem and it's hard to solve it and looks like the system doesn't always do the right thing the right way" but it's more of "X has been playing and waded too far into the woods, and the ideological ogres captured him and made his life into a problem with which he'll now have to live forever". Which is quite infuriating to me in its pure evilness.

It's worth pointing out that Blue Tribe is crowing about how this story has been debunked, because an unverified twitter account claiming to be the child in question is saying, despite all the facts in the article being correct, that they don't place the same emotional valence or cause and effect on it that the mother in the story does. They especially and annoyingly split hairs in that they admit the doctors said trans teens kill themselves without treatment, but the doctors never said they would specifically. See, totally no longer pressuring the parent! And it goes on and on with more of the same.

Of course my favorite, and typical, reaction is here at The Hill. Robby Soave, who seems to have made a career out of being insulted by irate leftist for plainly stating correct facts gets the typical reaction you'd expect when he brings up that children are being sterilized. I wish we could see the look Brie gives him when he brings that up, but the camera isn't on her. We can assume it was a helluva stink eye from how you can see her face turning before the camera turns away, and from how quickly Robby tries to ameliorate whatever offense she shows she took.

an unverified twitter account claiming to be the child in question is saying, despite all the facts in the article being correct, that they don't place the same emotional valence or cause and effect on it that the mother in the story does

First, there are no verified accounts on Twitter any more. The legacy policy required that accounts be "authentic"; the new policy requires that accounts be "non-deceptive", but in no way actually checks that.

Second, they don't claim that "all the facts in the article [are] correct". From the article:

Within a semester, Casey went from all As and Bs to a report card dotted with Ds and Fs.

From the thread:

The article mentions that my grades dropped from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s in a semester. This is a completely exaggerated statement. My grades were on a steady decline since 2020 due to unrelated mental health concerns.

From the article:

Caroline assumed counseling at the center would help Casey sort things out. But in retrospect, she says, what the psychologist at the center did was solidify the idea that Casey needed medical intervention for his gender distress.

From the thread:

I was in counseling with the Washington University transgender care center in which I was treated amazingly by my counselor. She was a friend to me and offered a great amount of support. This was taken away when my mom revoked consent for the Supprelin.

The article doesn't make any effort to determine that the effect of counseling was, if the counselor recommended or encouraged medical intervention, just repeats Caroline's opinion. It leaves an unchallenged implication; the kid denying it is meaningful.

They especially and annoyingly split hairs in that they admit the doctors said trans teens kill themselves without treatment, but the doctors never said they would specifically. See, totally no longer pressuring the parent!

Is there a way to give informed consent here that isn't pressure under this rubric? Hey, if you don't get this shot, you're much more likely to die of COVID, but we're not pressuring you, right? Doctors are supposed to explain risks and benefits to the patient for any procedure; how can they provide information without "pressuring" someone?

As nasty as it is: in order for this suicide stuff to have teeth a good number of trans kids need to die by suicide. If it's a political thing or fashion, fine, but how many teenagers are willing to blow their brains out over fashion choices?

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