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Notes -
The state of Minnesota has passed a trans refuge bill.
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.
If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.
Forget trans, every cultural standard that removes agency from children is up for review for exclusion from the eschaton.
Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure, at best it's a benevolent dictatorship and at worst its tyranny.
Precisely. If children can consent to change their gender, they should also be allowed to have sex with adults. Gender, such as the concept was invented, has a very close relationship with intercourse, like a car has a close relationship with the engine. If you were sold a car without an engine, you might well throw your hands up in the air and swear in indignation.
I take the position that children can't meaningfully consent to change gender and shouldn't be having sex with adults. Yet I sense that's where we're headed next.
But they can meaningfully consent to having one?
You must have interesting trolley problem outputs.
Listen. Sex with kids is bad because it traumatizes and wrecks them. It's not that complicated. Bad things are bad.
We care about consent in adults so much because we've seen the consequences of people not using it. It's the same thing, those people are traumatized and wrecked. Bad things are bad. It's not that complicated.
If you want to argue that early transition traumatizes and wrecks people-
I can appreciate that argument. I might not agree but I recognize it as an argument rooted in a sensible definition of the Good and the Bad.
Though, there are also people who swear by the early transition they went through and became FAANG programmers or whatever. (namely my in-group). And I am always going to be on the side of those people being able to have done what they did. Because everything turned out great for them and they were clearly not traumatized and wrecked by transition. The only thing they tend to be working through is the time their parents sent them to gay deconversion camp, or some other mistreatment by anti-trans normative society. Which I will fight against because it is traumatizing and wrecking people.
Consent is about locus of control. If you think parents can rob teenagers of that locus and not risk doing the same sort of damage...
I don't think you understand why rape is bad.
Surely throughout human history there are some child-adult sexual relationships which went well for both parties? Say they did have a respectful, gentle, loving relationship.
But generally, sex between adults and children is harmful to the child, they don't really know what they're getting into, don't understand the long-term consequences. It might go well or it might go very badly. Because we can't judge beforehand whether the parties are mature, sensible and so on, we blanket-ban a huge swathe of child-adult sexual relationships on the basis that the vast majority are predatory and bad. That there might be some such relationships that end well is not a sufficient argument for them to be legal.
Tattoos are illegal for children to get in many jurisdictions - yet nobody goes full Event Horizon and says children can't consent to having skin. Many consider that the increased autonomy isn't worth the danger of making choices that will be later regretted.
And what about Chesterton's Fence - not changing complex biological equilibria we don't really understand.
Chesterton's Fence is a fine heuristic but at the same time, your species will never learn to fight bulls if it always respects fences.
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