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Your responses in this thread have been better than I deserve, thank you.
You've quite perceptively picked up that we likely have vastly different filter bubbles. You're correct that I don't live in a large city (exurb of a medium size city probably most accurately describes it). My brother, sister, sister in law and her husband all live in places that would meet any definition of large multicultural cities, and I talk and visit them all fairly regularly, so I don't think I'm totally oblivious to what at least some people's lives are like in large multicultural cities.
My exposure to trans people mostly come through 2 sources.
First, when my sister got married, her husband already had an 8 year old daughter. My new niece had a variety mental health problems, many of which she might have inherited from her biological mother who also had a variety of mental health problems. At one put she started cutting herself, there were multiple episodes where she threatened to kill herself. These episodes predate her announcing that she was transgender when she was 12.
Zhe is 15 now, and has decided that zhe is non-binary now, so I'll try to switch over to those pronouns the rest of the way.
What to make of this episode? Quite frankly, I'm hesitant to make it too much about trans people.
Not sure if you've read Scott Alexander's review of Crazy Like Us https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-crazy-like-us
In the parlance of that review, zhe had a significant amount of psychic stress, it was going to find an outlet in some manner or another.
That said, I'm unimpressed with our culture that gender confusion has become the psychic stress release valve for people such as zer.
Fwiw, zhe growing up in a large multicultural city doesn't seem disconnected from this being the valve zer psychic stress went to. The large multicultural city zhe has grown up in has a political culture where identifying as trans changes how therapists and teacher treat you in relation to your parents.
Life is confusing and full of psychic distress, for all of us, we all want validation. If you give people validation for something, people desperate for validation will be attracted to it.
Second, while physically I might be a hobbit tucked away in the shire, I'm a citizen of the internet.
I realize this sounds ridiculous.
The internet is where we are all on our worst behavior, I know all sorts of seemingly normal irl people who seem nuts when they start outputting on a keyboard.
That said, in the sea of crazy that is norm of internet interactions.
It is a distinct impression that I have that the trans community interacts in a uniquely deranged manner.
I don't have any scientific cites for you, it's just an impression I have come to.
If you imagine a community as a giant bell curve, with their median members as the big middle, their most gracious members on one end of the spectrum, their least gracious members on the other end of the spectrum.
I hope we can agree, that while there might be some gracious Trump supporters online, as a giant bell curve, the fat part in the middle of their bell curve is at a different spot than Biden supporters online.
If we can imagine different communities like that, it's my impression that the trans community is distinct from nearly any other community.
Such that the assertion that your observable ratio of trans people enjoying their lives is 50-5 kind of blows my mind.
That said, that 'there are reports that the ratio of trans people enjoying their lives off the internet is 50-5', is probably a good update on my mental model of the universe.
Thank you, I appreciate your responses in this thread, they are a useful addition to my sense-making of the universe.
Thank you too.
Hmm. This is important. I don't know what to say about it yet... might be a long time before I do.
There are a few things I suppose... this is just rubber ducking that I'm showing you because... well you spent a lot of words on your comment and I feel you should see their results:
I don't know how big of an effect this is having, but I am certain it's significant.
If people becoming trans gets them a sort of validation they are not otherwise getting, then clearly we are doing something very wrong with regards to how we are allocating validation. This is a very concerning thought but also implies alternate solutions. Big if true.
It also implies that trans people being crazy is a symptom of them being filtered into the category by forces of validation. Which means shutting down these people's transition... well certainly people who think of it as mutilation will still see it as treating the most serious symptom, but the underlying cause would go untreated, and in fact be less treated... ideally you would treat the root cause and that would reduce unnecessary transition instead.
No. I don't think this sounds ridiculous. Real life experience is important. But the internet is also important.
I think the internet exaggerates the real world a lot- and does so in an unbalanced way. For instance, people without a life are more likely to be posting on the internet all the time... and... well, your model is that the trans community is attracting people who aren't getting enough validation, so that would be an example.
but it affects the world, the world affects it, so the patterns you see on the internet always mean something, even if you can't take them quite at face value.
And some people make their living through it, and we live a lot of our lives on it.
I think we should be worried about a lot more than just liberalism or the trans community when it comes to making the internet a more free and sane place.
But problems being caused by groups on the internet are still legitimate problems, and are worth discussing.
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