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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28312 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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How do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret? I have no idea, but I hope that someone can explain a reliable strategy because this story makes no sense in its absence.

EDIT: link to the policy in question.

TL;DR: The government of Saskatchewan just enacted a new policy that affects "preferred names" and pronouns for younger students (along with some other changes, which I'll skip over). It requires that teachers obtain parental consent before using new names/pronouns for students under 16 years old. The criticism is focused on two claims: First, being "out" is important. Second, it can be unsafe if a parent learns that their child is transgender.

The first claim has already been argued to death, and there's nothing new in this story.

The second claim is just bizarre in this context. What do they expect would happen in the absence of the new policy? Everybody starts using the child's new names/pronouns in everything from casual conversations to official reports...and the parents don't notice for >2 years?

If I knew that a child had information that could be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands, I wouldn't encourage them to spread it far and wide. In fact, I'd direct them to a professional that would help them to develop a strategy that minimized the damage from its release, or else cope with maintaining the burden of secrecy.

But maybe I'm missing something, so I'll repeat my question: how do you ensure that a piece of information is simultaneously public and secret?

Ahhh the Schrödinger parents - always knows what's best for their child if they decide to transition it, have absolutely no clue what's best for their child if there is any chance to oppose transition ...

Are you aware that psychologists and doctors are involved in this process?

The #1 institution in the world for convincing people not to transition is gender care clinics. Only a tiny fraction of people who come in for an initial consultation end up medically transitioning; most are dissuaded after talking to psychologists and doctors about whether it's actually the best path for them.

  • -26

Only a tiny fraction of people who come in for an initial consultation end up medically transitioning; most are dissuaded after talking to psychologists and doctors about whether it's actually the best path for them.

Do you have a citation to back this up? I haven't found any direct numbers, but there are some damning quotes from seemingly-reasonable sources. For example, the Interim Cass Review of the Tavistock clinic includes:

1.14. Primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters

Honestly, I can't even find anecdotes of anyone and their doctor deciding that no treatment was the right course of action. I'm sure it's happened, but I'm having trouble believing "most" here.

Admittedly, this assertion is based on stuff I was reading at least a year ago and don't remember the exact providence of, and the SEO around anything trans related is so incredibly fucked by the culture war that now I can't find those sources in 3 minutes of google.

I did find numbers saying that over a 5 year period, 120k minors were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and 17k were put on puberty blockers or pills, suggesting that even among those who get a dysphoria diagnosis, the rates for going on to medical transition are very low, around 1/8th. But my claim is more that most people who go for a first consultation never get any diagnosis at all, so it's not exactly the same thing.

I remain confident that my claim is correct, but won't expect others to take my word for it if they have different intuitions. Based on my knowledge of how the diagnostic pipeline works in general it would seem very surprising to me if it weren't true just on priors, but meh.

120k minors were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and 17k were put on puberty blockers or pills, suggesting that even among those who get a dysphoria diagnosis, the rates for going on to medical transition are very low, around 1/8th

A null hypothesis for this is that puberty blockers are generally dangerous drugs and that many doctors do not want to deal with the liability.

Sure, that doesn't conflict with my central claim here.

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