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The gender ideology movement sort of feels out of the news cycle where I live, but remains very top of mind for me.
As I see it, the whole umbrella is actually multiple, almost unrelated strands, queerying category activists, social engineering progressives, AGPs, internet cults, all underpinned by unthinking legal activism and of course corporate profiteering. Did I mention an overtly political and enabling media environment bereft of any journalistic values?
I am fascinated by all these things but mainly I want to talk about the social mania aspect. I'm very interested in how smart people, who would inevitably class themselves as above-average in rationality and morality, are able to brush off child-safeguarding concerns, discarding the previous medical ethics consensus (first do no harm, evidence based medicine) in favour of ideas that barely existed even 15-20 years ago.
I have been looking into previous social manias such as the satanic panic and the child care workers given wrongful convictions and it's shocking how difficult it is to reverse the tide of mania once it's begun. Parents, police, the justice system, and media all fall into lockstep and condemn innocent people to terrible fates they and their families bear in almost total isolation, with only a few supporters able to parse the information in front of them and figure out what is going on.
I mean this is just human behaviour - we make movies about the Salem witch trials, we are modern people and have access to perspectives of humans across evolutionary time. Is it really true that people still don't know who we are, how we behave in herds?
I understand apathy, I understand things moving out of the news cycles, but I can't understand how people can maintain a neutral view on unnecessary surgeries on minors. When institutions such as medical bodies fail in their basic safeguarding responsibilities, suppressing dissent within their ranks, it is not hard to work out what is going on. How many manias does history need to present before people learn what we are?
A failure of courage I understand in any given context but the neutral middle doesn't even seem curious in private.
Can anybody enlighten me why people aren't more curious, why they're happy for children to be groomed into lifelong medicalisation, with their life choices pre-emptively narrowed before they even understand what consent means? The true-believers I understand, it's supposedly smart, moral people that aren't engaged that I'm confused about. Are they secretly true believers but just don't want to say?
Plain old cognitive dissonance?
If you think that minors are basically small people, and that people should largely be allowed to do things that they personally expect will make them fulfilled, it's pretty easy to keep a neutral view. Something like "I have no desire to do this to myself, but neither to I have a moral claim to prevent them from doing it to themselves". To be honest, this is pretty much where I fall on the issue. I am somewhat uncomfortable with the speed with which this went from rare to common, as it leaves people without solid information on how well it's likely to go in the marginal case rather than the average-as-of-decades ago. Still, I can't think of any interventions where the benefit of that intervention is worth the costs and the precedents it sets.
Empirically, people do not learn from history, only from things that they personally have seen, and so every group in every generation has to learn that lesson for themselves.
That would seem to somewhere marginalise the concept of child development, which we have consistently taken into account in applying other restrictions on choice as a society, alcohol, driving, joining the army.
But I can see the framing as being sufficient at a first, say libertarian, brush.
The problem of course, as you point to, is that the systems of trust advising on these matters are captured and are being grossly negligent in providing accurate information.
I kind of see myself at a privileged place in history, in that it's actually really easy to get information. 10 hours of reading on substack will get you all you need to know to have a visceral experience of concern. In the past, the systems of trust were limited. Also we understand biases and self deception much better than previous generations.
I met the parent of a three year old who told me their child gets to decide every day if she is a boy or a girl. Schools are responding to this Manchausens by proxy parental abuse by... obliging them... Surely an average person would look at this and say, hmmmm, that's not right? Are three year olds now masters of their own destiny?
That’s one thing that always got me with this issue. Any attempt to talk about trans-kids as kids, of comparing this desire of kids (which must never be questioned) with other things kids believe about themselves, or are capable of understanding about how things work is notably absent. Kids can, one one hand, be coerced into participating in things for peer pressure, family pressure, as a cope for other problems, or simply because the culture says it’s cool, and everyone understands that the adults need to be there as a backstop to keep them from going nuts. A six year old who wants to be a baseball player when he grows up is assumed to be going through a phase and chided for skipping homework to play ball in the sandlot. A six year old who wants to be a Klingon is told to not watch so much TV.
And adults likewise understand much better than kids that some decisions simply cannot be undone. Often this sort of thing is protected by law. Children are not allowed tattoos because we know that kids can’t understand that some decisions are unchangeable and therefore we don’t let them make them. We don’t allow kids to request an amputation and peg leg or eye removal. We don’t allow kids to do dangerous things that can result in life-changing injury. We limit work and other activities and force kids to go to school because those decisions are too important to be decided by a small child.
Yes exactly - I think it's a sure sign of a mania when we abandon long-established understandings about child development without any reason. If anything neuroscience has shown development (particularly frontal cortex, critical for being able to make judgements with long term consequences) goes on much longer than we had though.
This new thinking goes against known understandings and norms in child development psychology, medical ethics, education and culture broadly. Its a huge clue we're in a mania.
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There is also a ship of Theseus problem when it comes to human beings. It seems especially acute in kids. Actions a twelve year old takes can seriously impact a 30 year old being that is functionally a different being. Should we permit a 12 year old to do that? We’ve answered no in most things because we understand 12 year olds don’t have the wherewithal to make those kind of decisions. I don’t see why trans issues should go against the default; if anything it is an issue that should be more definite.
I mean there’s a good deal of scientific research on how the human brain develops from infancy to adulthood, while it’s not perfect as it could be because of individual differences in development, we can roughly understand just how much freedom a twelve year old can actually handle on his own.
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Sorry for the spam, but here's another one if you don't like bans. This actually got implemented in some states: insurance that covers transition, has to cover costs of detransition. Another one is that doctors that diagnose you with dysphoria can be held liable if the diagnosis turns out to be wrong.
Did you mean to say “detransition” the second time there?
Yes, thanks!
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What's wrong with "ban until they're 18"? What precedent is it setting? It's not like we're living in an ancap utopia, the establishment even cracked down on the use of prescribed ivermectin.
I would prefer that we live in an Ancap Utopia actually, with no arbitrary age gating at all.
In principle, I see nothing wrong with anybody of any age changing their sex, it's just that medical science today is unable to cash the cheques that trans activitists write in that regard. No amount of modern surgery or hormones will make you more than a pale facsimile of of the opposite sex, but I don't expect that to last indefinitely, and I dislike age gating anyway.
Well, there's the rub. If you talk to the pioneers of gender medicine they were pretty explicit that this is just for people feeling massive amounts of distress, that no matter what you do, it will only be a facsimile, that it has serious health consequences, but overall it might be worth it if the distress is so great.
The whole point of age gating is that with kids, all this goes out the window. They don't understand the facsimile thing, and you try explaining the side effects to them, they shrug them off as it all blurs into these quickly-spoken disclaimers at the end of medicine ads.
Yes, I also wish that we were honest about this not ending with transgenderism, so people screaming at me for opposing it can know what they're signing up for. Right now anyone pointing out the transhumanism connection gets treated as a conspiracy theorist.
You're dealing with exceptionally stupid kids if they can't look at existing examples of MTF or even FTM trans people and thinking "oh shit I don't want to turn out like that". They do so despite the evidence to the contrary, because of social indoctrination, but in that regard they're not qualitatively different from adults who transition, who usually end up even more fucked at least in terms of ability to pass if not further health issues.
I wish. Despite surface similarities, the modal transgender activist has little in common with transhumanists, especially in terms of ontology and goals. You might as well lump us in with body builders because we want to improve on the body we were born with, or say Communists and Ancaps are the same because they both seek the dissolution of a capitalist state. I don't even see them as allies of convenience, they're already fucking inconvenient to say the least..
If they even manage to advance enough to consider that question, the quick 'n easy answer is "oh no sweetie, that's just the toupee fallacy -- actually there's lots 'n lots of trans people out there that you don't even notice because they pass so well. OBTW that means you need to do this as early as possible!"
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That's not what they're seeing, though. They're being given the rainbows and unicorns farting sparkles version of it. And drag queens coming in to school to read to them since they're blinkin' two years old, being told by Teacher that this is lovely and wonderful and you! must! approve! Oh, and they're having books like this read to them:
If you got a solid ten years of conditioning like that, and you were any way feeling like you weren't popular enough, smart enough, sociable enough, and what the hell is this puberty changing my body like a Japanese body-horror movie, of course you're going to fall for "if I'm trans, that's the reason why I don't feel comfortable in my own skin and that's the solution to making everything better".
The "my kid was trans and knew it age two" set of parents, in my view, are mostly the ones who are doing the Stage Mother bit (such as Rose Hovick who put her infant daughter on stage to earn a living):
Yeah, you've convinced me your 10 year old kid walking the runways knew they were trans when they were 2 (not):
Then completely coincidentally, at 7 'she' was put out to work:
The parents who aren't Stage Mothers and living by proxy through their kids are being steered into it by the 'experts' telling them that if their toddler pulls the hairclips out of their hair, that means they're trans, and if they don't support them to transition, then they'll end up with a dead child because of the trans suicide rate.
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No, because their information environment is largely controlled by adults who will be feeding them the opposite. Sure, nowadays, it's likely they can break out to some degree, but what would you call a child who believed stuff from randos on the Internet over their teachers?
Depends on what kind of randos. I might potentially call him a promising young man. If the kid is spending his time online absorbing "aliens built the pyramids"-type stuff then maybe a teacher would be better. But if the kid is reading a variety of sources, even if he's just reading Wikipedia, then I'd say that has a high chance of being better for his education than the average teacher.
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No, you're dealing with completely average kids, but it just so happens that in many ways kids are exceptionally stupid, hence age gating (which also includes things like driving, drinking, ability to sign contracts, etc., etc., etc.)
Looking up existing examples of MTFs or FTMs is easy, but the thought has to occur to you to search for it, and it does not occur even to an average adult (and this is a common behavior on all issues, not just this one). All the kids see is TikToks glamorizing the whole thing, parents don't know what the fuck is even going on, and even if they figure it out, and they'll show it to the kids, they'll be promptly ignored because "you just don't get it mooom", and medical professionals are either ideologically captured, or see the whole situation through green-colored glasses with $$$ signs on them, so they'll also undermine the parents who manage to figure things out.
But if it's a social contagion and/or discomfort with puberty and/or with atypical sexuality, they'll get over it, and will not want to transition as adults. Before ideological capture, something like 80% dysphoric kids were desisters.
Also, if you end up changing your mind, your prior ability to pass fucks you up too, to say nothing of the body parts you hacked off. As for health issues, you're the doctor, but the idea that being exposed to puberty blockers and hormone treatment earlier rather later, results in better health outcomes, strikes me as a bit counter-intuitive.
Where would you say you part ways with them?
They have an ontology where "gender" exists as an ethereal entity entirely divorced from one's physical form, for one. Or that you can simply claim to be the opposite gender without passing as it, and then have everyone treat you as such. While I endorse the hypothetical of people switching sexes, that's only when they succeed, points for effort are minimal.
You will note that in most of those examples, parents are allowed to either grant them liberty to do so, or sign them on their behalf. I believe that the argument upstream was all about kids, parents and trusted authorities all colluding to make teen transitions feasible.
Meh. That seems orthogonal to transhumanism, not in contradiction to it.
Letting your kids drink or drive will get you in trouble in most countries, so society is perfectly happy to limit that liberty
But I'm callous enough to let progressive parents fuck up their kids, if that's what they want to do. My issue is with normie parents who sign off on it under duress. "Would you rather have a happy daughter, or a dead son", this is shit "gender experts" actually tell parents. Even doctors bow out of responsibility for the decision. So I'm saying the scenario as outlined is not representative of what's going on.
If a ban is too much for you, I gave another suggestion to simply add liability.
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The canonical answer is "it works worse with age". I don't know how accurate that is, though it certainly seems plausible to me that delays will result in worse patient outcomes among those who do transition.
I'm not aware of any medical interventions that are banned even when the patient wants them, and their guardian approves it, and a doctor recommends it, but which are allowed once the patient reaches the age of majority.
Yes, and that was bad. I would prefer fewer things like that, not more things like that.
How is it plausible that a mastectomy works better when you're 14 than when you're 18?
If you're referring to puberty blockers only, other than accuracy of "works worse with age" (which is indeed under question), there's also the issue with diagnosis. Even if the treatment worked as advertised, there's a fundamental question of whether we can actually tell "trans kids" apart from "non-trans kids".
But it happened, the precedent is already set.
There's a massive question mark under each of these components. The patients in question are minors, respectfully, they don't know what the hell they want. Some guardians approve it, but many have their arm twisted into it by dishonest statistics about risk of suicide. Doctors also mostly wash their hands of the responsibility, your family doctor, endocrinologist, even a run-of-the-mill psychologist and psychiatrist will say "I don't know anything about this gender stuff, go to a gender specialist", and the "gender specialist" ends up being a crank who believes in "gender angles".
Why is it beyond the pale to regulate an industry that functions this way?
What on earth are “gender angles”??
It comes from Dr. Dianne Ehrensaft, one of my favorite characters in this entire saga. She first came to prominence during the Satanic Panic that OP mentioned, not satisfied of only having it on her track record, she decided to jump on the gender bandwagon. I originally heard the term without further explanation, in a video from some trans-care conference, so I had to look it up. Luckily it is now used in academic literature:
You might also be interested in other terms she promoted like "gender minotaur", "gender Prius", "gender Tesla", "gender smoothie", or "gender Tootsie Roll Pop".
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And then when they turn 18 they become legal adults, famous for making good decisions that align with their long-term interests.
Yeah this is pretty terrible, and the "the statistics on how things actually tend to go in practice are shit to begin with and then further obscured by biased parties on all sides" bit means that it's very hard to make a well-informed decision here. Such is life in an environment of imperfect and sometimes hostile information, but it still sucks.
I don't think it's beyond the pale, I just expect that the costs of regulation here, as it is likely to be implemented in practice, exceed the benefits. I don't actually think it's a good thing that a bunch of teenagers feel like they're trapped in the wrong body and that their best shot at happiness is major medical interventions, I just expect that any attempts by our current regulatory apparatus to curb the problem will cause horrible "unanticipated" problems.
If you have some statistics that show that, actually, regulation here is likely to prevent X0,000 unnecessary surgeries per year, which in turn will prevent Y,000 specific negative aftereffects, I might change my mind on that. But my impression as of now is that this is a small enough problem, and regulation a large and inexact enough hammer, that it's not worth it.
You're not wrong, adult detransitioners are quite bitter about people going "you made your decision when you were 18+? Well, fuck you then, I guess!". I'd be happy with banning the practice from mainstream medicine entirely, if this is what you're offering, but what I offer is a compromise.
No, it's not, actually. An environment of imperfect information is one where everybody gets to make their case, and everybody gets to make their decision, not one where one side gets to pretend they're The Science, and hound all skeptics and dissidents.
Yeah, there are statistics that show the dstience rate was above 80%, before activists took over the field. Do you have any statistics to show any of these surgeries are necessary to begin with?
Tuskagee was a spit in the bucket compared to what's happening, not to mention George Floyd, or MeToo. If you can link to making that s sort of argument about these cases, I'll believe that you actually made this argument in good faith.
Huh, apparently reddit is more of a tire fire than I thought, because I definitely made the "what exactly do you hope to accomplish, how does what's currently going on accomplish that, and are there any downsides to normalizing looting unrelated businesses and homes in response to injustice" point during the 2020 riots. But apparently it's been memory-holed. IIRC it was my second most downvoted comment ever.
I've got quite a lot of "measures to contain covid have costs as well as benefits, and I've seen no evidence that the benefits exceed the costs and quite a bit of evidence of the reverse" of you're interested in that.
Honestly though, you will probably not have much success modeling me as "on your side" or "against your side" - I would like to grill, and I object to moral busibodies who get between me and my grill with their schemes to make society better. And I especially object when those schemes aim to solve tiny problems that affect a few thousand people in a country of hundreds of millions, or when those schemes obviously won't help with the problem they're supposedly trying to solve, or when the cure is clearly worse than the disease.
That's no fun, how am I supposed to dunk on you then?
I can sympathize. I still have a libertarian temperament, even I don't think modelling people as free-floating atoms is either accurate, or something to aim for.
I think this is the part I object to the most. While your response to BLM was laudable, it doesn't exactly touch on what I was trying to get from you. BLM was objectionable regardless of whether the way the police treated black people was a big problem or not. It's exactly the idea that things that don't affect a large enough proportion of the population shouldn't be talked about, or have any action taken to stop them, that I have a problem with. You could probably justify several genocides on the grounds that the targeted ethnicity was tiny compared to the global population.
These are fine arguments to bring up, but obviously I disagree they apply in this case.
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The idea is that it’s far easier for a person who transitions at 14 to pass as the gender of their choice than it is for a person who transitions at 18, especially for MTFs. I don’t think they’re actually wrong about this. At 14, most boys and girls are still fairly androgynous; by 18, most boys are clearly young men: tall, prominent jaw line, Adam’s apple, facial hair, muscular structure, etc. If a gender dysphoric boy wants to transition and pass as a girl, puberty blockers at as young an age as possible are his best shot. The same holds true for girls but in reverse.
Cool, but how is it plausible that a mastectomy works better when you're 14 than when you're 18? You are aware this is a thing that is actually being done?
Not really. You can take testosterone when you're a full-grown adult, and you'll pass pretty well. And like I said in the other comment, to the extent this helps trans people, it hurts people who decide to detransition.
A mastectomy specifically? I assume there’s no medical benefit to doing it earlier (though maybe it heals better the younger you do it?). I imagine the proponents of that procedure are solely focused on the psychological benefits—reducing the “trauma” of seeing your body change in ways you don’t want it to. They probably also don’t consider detransitioning to be a real future concern, so why not just get it over with?
That’s the best I can come up with; I’m not actually in favor of such things myself.
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