site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The state of Minnesota has passed a trans refuge bill.

Specifically, the bill would prohibit the enforcement of a court order for removal of a child or enforcement of another state’s law being applied in a pending child protection action in Minnesota when the law of another state allows the child to be removed from the parent or guardian for receiving medically necessary health care or mental health care that respects the gender-identity of the patient.

From my reading of this (not a lawyer, obvs): previously if a child ran away from home, and was found, the child would be returned to the child's parents. Now, however, if a child runs away from home, and claims a "transgender identity" the state will use its powers to keep the child from its parents.

This seems: absolutely pants-shittingly insane to me? Like I'm sortof reeling from disbelief at this and am still trying to figure out what I'm missing. This also seems to imply that if a child runs away to Minnesota, that the child will be kept in Minnesota away from his or her parents.

Can anybody help me understand this? This goes so far beyond anything that I had even considered in the realm of possibility that I'm sure I must be misunderstanding this.

As a related side note: I am reaching a point where reading things on this topic is becoming incredibly difficult. There seems to be so many seemingly double/triple/quadruple entendre words that its hard to follow.

There are a lot of people in this thread comparing their child transitioning to death.

It's one thing to think of it as a bad thing that is happening to your child. But it is hyperbolic to compare transition with death.

Um. Sir or Madam. Your child is not dead. Unless you're saying they're dead to you-

As an anology consider this statement: " Let's sterilise all the jews, it's not a crime mate honest, after all they are still alive right now yes, therefore it's not anti semitic and doesn't form part of a final solution, definetly not something a nazi would do oh no sir its just being compassionate and empathising with them, after all in the future they might be happier if we sterilise them all now you see."

Now apply it back to the level of a family and you'll see that actually encouraging someone kid to be trans is actually not quite killing them, but is worse than almost anything else.

Pretending this isn't obviously the case is itsself obviously said or written in malicious bad faith. Sorry, but this is like arguing that actually murder is good levels of insane.

"Let's sterilize all the Jews" is extremely different from "we'll let ~1% of the Jews voluntarily sterilize themselves".

voluntarily sterilize themselves

I don't want to engage with most of this analogy, but I think your view is impoverished if it doesn't account for children's questionable ability to provide informed consent, and the seeming purpose of the law in attenuating their parents' ability to act as stewards for their children's interests. The question of what is truly voluntary is the heart of the matter.

My point is less that the decision should rest with the parents, and more that it shouldn't rest with the child.

Sometimes we leave the decision with the parents... whether to attend a parochial school, whether to allow the child access to Instagram, etc.

Sometimes we decide for the family; children aren't allowed to have sex with adults, for example, regardless of what the children or their parents think about it.

What we never do (other than with this trans issue -- at least, I cannot think of any other examples) is leave decisions of momentous lifelong consequences fully up to the child, and attempt to disintermediate the parents in favor of the child's own judgment.

So arguments premised on a child's voluntary and insuperable consent in high-stakes decisionmaking seem rather anomalous.

I’m personally sympathetic simply because this is a situation (and I think trans human will be like this as well) where once you start there’s pretty much literally no going back. As such, I think there is a need to pump every break possible and really think about it before doing anything. Especially given that the person driving the entire process is a child who isn’t fully developed, doesn’t really understand how serious of a decision he’s actually making, or just how long he/she will have to live with th3 results.

There’s just simply no way that a child of ten years old being asked to consider puberty blockers has any idea what they’ll want ten years from now, let alone 30 or 40. There’s no way that a child who is too young for a PG13 movie can think about whether he will want to have sex or children. He can’t possibly understand this because he’s 10, and ten years is doubling of his entire life experience. And to basically remove any potential for someone to come alongside the kid and say “you know, in a few years you might want to be male and date girls and marry and have a family. You might want to be a father. You might want to live as a man as you grow into your body. Likewise there’s no potential that someone sits down with a child like this and says “this decision you’re making is one you’ll be dealing with forever. You’ll likely live to be 70 years old, and a decision you’re making right now, at ten years old — you’re making it for life. You’ll be living with it when you’re going off to college. When you get a job, when you turn 50, when you retire. There are lots of things you simply have no context for that you’re permanently closing off here. You cannot have sex in the normal way. You will be sterile and thus will never have biological children. If you get a neo-vagina you’re going to have to dilate it for the rest of your life. If you get a neo-penis as a girl, the muscles they take from your area won’t grow back.

I think we’re coming from different places here, and I think a big part of it is that I’m older, old enough that my mother was pregnant with me when she saw Star Wars: A new Hope. And looking back on being a kid, on making decisions even up to age 25 or so and a lot of them were bad decisions made because I didn’t think long term about them. I didn’t really think that way until much later — well into high school. They’re a moment in high school somewhere around 15 where it hits you like a ton of bricks that life is about to get serious and the decisions you’re making will impact you forever. I’m fortunate that I didn’t really fuck up too badly. But this is why I’m leery of allowing kids under 16 to make permanent changes to their bodies. It’s easy for a young kid to think they want something right now that they won’t want later. Even as adults, something you think is a good thing ends up not working for you later.

For that reason, I think I’d personally not want medical interventions before 16. Only a maturing brain can really understand the choice of “you will be sterile, you’ll have these medical conditions forever, and after you sign up, you will never again be able to go back to your old life.” Social stuff, fine. Changing hair and clothes are both easy. I think the blockers might be harder, or might permanently limit height or something. But beyond that, I think such permanent changes shouldn’t happen until the child is reall old enough to understand the decision and what it means.

More comments

I am fundamentally not comfortable with the government coming in and saying a parent who has taken their child to therapists and doctors and gone through extensive thought and counseling is engaged in child abuse and needs to have their kids taken away or be put in prison.

The horse left that barn 40 years ago with the criminalization of kids walking down the street or playing in their front yard (yes, they'll take your kids away for this too). Red states are slowly fixing this, but progress is slow, inconsistent, and not politically glamorous.

And sure, I trust that the parents, police, and social workers prosecuting these "crimes" are taking their roles seriously and not just being flippant either... but "taking one's role seriously" and "going through extensive thought and counseling" is not a guarantee that what they're doing isn't also extremely disruptive or that their conclusion is correct.

This standard of State intervention is the current room temperature; yes, strictly speaking it's worse for the people who legitimately do have this problem, but we're already comfortable enforcing worse outcomes in measures stretching far beyond the 0.01% of kids that would actually benefit from doing this because of crippling risk aversion... so why would we stop now?

More comments

The idea here is that there are some things that are outside even a parent’s right to choose (eg blood infusion and Jehovah witness cases). It might be true that transitioning (ie eliminating sexual function) are so fundamental to a person that their parent cannot consent for them to eliminate such things.

Then that needs to be the argument made.

That usually is the argument made- that medical transitioning is a form of mutilation that can’t be consented to, so it nullifies the parent’s rights to make medical decisions for their kids. Parents rights are more of an argument about social transitions.

More comments

It seems reasonable that transitioning is so extreme that at a minimum parents should need to be on board. It could be reasonable to say that even if parents consent the process is too extreme and therefore State A won’t permit it. That is, there are three potential states:

  1. Transition solely based on kids decision

  2. Kid and parent decision

  3. Not permitted for kids

These states go from most permissive to least permissive. While I favor 3, it also means I favor 2 to 1. Therefore I can object to the Minnesota law on parental rights ground not withstanding that I generally would support 3.

More comments