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Notes -
Wesley Yang (coined "Successor Ideology") interviews Corinna Cohn, former trans activist, now regretting his (born male, now prefers male pronouns) transition as a teenager in the early 1990s.
I seem to recall the name from maybe 5-10 years ago, with some annoyance, like maybe pushing ultrawoke Code of Conduct mandates on open source projects. Might be wrong, haven't yet checked.
Now Cohn acknowledges being male and rejects his transition, but for health reasons remains on estrogen treatment. I suppose there is some question of what it means to be a detransitioner. Wesley Yang is well equipped to tear into this lamb, and does so, as far as I can tell. This is gonna hurt.
I have only read the posted transcripts, a tiny sliver. An excerpt:
Corinna is no lamb at all. This is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner.
Trans is an unusually high profile example of, perhaps the most high profile example of, American society’s peculiar loathing for saying ‘no’ to adolescents and for people who do so, but it is very definitely not the only one. Everything from choice of college major to choice of gender to even table stakes things like choice of fashion- parents are told over and over again that their job is to affirm whatever their adolescents want to do even if it’s obviously stupid.
And trans is downstream of that! Obviously parenting of 12-21 year olds involves lots of saying ‘no, quit being stupid’. But when parents already think they’re doing screwing up by it, the narrative of ‘you’re killing your kid!’ Just takes better.
Americans have never liked the idea of saying no. I’ve often thought of it as a sort of Achilles heel for our version of western civilization. We aren’t the people of “you have to earn it”, and “work hard” or even really delaying gratification. It’s something I tend to admire a bit more in older societies and often East Asian societies. You are not simply handed things. If you don’t earn it or aren’t good enough to have it, you don’t. And they generally don’t see themselves as exceptions to the rules. You aren’t allowed to bring a dog or food into a building, you don’t. You don’t try to argue about how the rules don’t apply to you.
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