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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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>Child is permanently mutilated and sterilized.

Um. Sir or Madam. Your child is not dead.

I don't think that anyone is saying that transgender care for kids is not Serious Business. And I imagine that a lot of our posters would agree that it's really bad actually. But applying inaccurate labels to things just muddies the waters and drags the discussion down. Saying that your kid getting transgender care is like killing them is no better than when woke activists refer to speech they don't like as "violence". Words mean things, and it behooves people to use them correctly and not just fling them around for emotional impact.

I disagree entirely, if Mr. Normative Man's daughter was mutilated and sterilized (or raped, or paralyzed, or brain damaged, etc), I assert his normative response to "Um. Sir. Your child is not dead" would be righteous indignation directed at the speaker.

Only because it's callous and rude to say that to someone who is upset because their child was harmed. But Mr. Normative Man would be completely correct. That child would not be dead, and would in fact be a bad hyperbole to describe them as such.

Yeah, but we can recognise what is being referenced as being unhelpful hyperbole, right?

people in this thread comparing their child transitioning to death

While ‘trans child=dead child’ is definitely an exaggeration, I don’t think that exaggeration rises to the level of hyperbole- trans people are, as a rule, miserable and often sterilized and mutilated.

I would certainly agree that trans people are sterilized and mutilated. I think it's completely accurate to say that, and while I think consenting adults should be able to do what they want I think anyone who does that to a child should lose their license to practice medicine at a minimum. However, as bad as those things are they still aren't death, which was my point. Words mean things, and one shouldn't stretch words to cover things they don't mean just because they're upset.

It isn’t but it is almost as scary to a parent as death.

and to a significant portion of the population, it’s also brainwashed against you