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Last year I made a prediction about 2023 marking some sort of turning point regarding the Trans issues. But how does one judge the accuracy of a prediction that boils down to "the vibes are shifting"? To attempt that, let me explain where I was coming from when I made it.
My first exposure to trans issues was on weird rat-adjecant Internet forums, Somewhere between 10-15 years ago. Either a trans person would join the forum and bring the subject up, or, interestingly, a cis regular would bring it up, and a trans-poster would appear, seemingly out of nowhere (and in retrospect it's somewhat scary how often it turned out to be Zinnia Jones, speicifically). They spoke with confidence, they knew the Science (and in those places we respected the Science), and could dispatch any argument coming their way like pros. Through it all I had many doubts - is it really wise to let minors make that decision? How exactly can puberty blockers be reversible? How do you even diagnose dysphoria? But that was just my stomach grumbling, and they had the Science, they seemed ubeatable.
Fast forward a few years, and a whole bunch of things have happened. The replication crisis cast doubt on the Science writ large, and critical look at some of the foundational research in Trans-Science turned up massive issues in that specific branch, detransitioners started showing up, massive shifts in the demographics of transitioners started making it's way to official statistics, not to mention an exponential increase in the raw amount as well. Instead of confidence, I started seeing trans activists genuinely flustered, not dumbfounded, but clearly things were happening that they weren't expecting, and didn't know what to make of yet. For my part I still felt uncertain, maybe some new information is going to come up that will contradict what flustered them? Maybe they'll dig out some detail the critics overlooked? Maybe they'll come up with a really good argument to address the issues raised? By the end of 2022 I felt like clicked through the dialogue tree several times over, with several different people, over a long enough period of time - if they could come up with something, they would already.
So what would a vibe shift look like?
Around that time I saw the documentary The Minds Of Men (it's quite rambly, very conspiracy-theory-y, but if those aren't deal breakers, and you have 3.5 hours to kill, it's well argued, and I recommend it), it is about MK-Ultra and psychosurgery, and it is in fact what inspired me to get that copy of Time Magazine as well as a bunch of historical documents I could dig out online. One recurring question I had when watching the documentary was “how the hell did I not hear about tthis”? It's not like I'm an expert, but this is the sort of stuff that felt like it should pop up along the way in my areas of interest. I heard about the Rosenhan experiment, I heard about the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, even the 30-50's era lobotomies, why not the late 60's to early 70's era of psychosurgery? Was it just not a big deal? Well, it was big enough to be covered in Time, it was big enough for a best-selling thriller based on the premise, and it's movie adaptation (I wasn't sure when I wrote the post originally, but the Terminal Man is indeed based on the case of Leonard Kille, sometimes referred to as Thomas R. by the media, who was treated in the clinic that was covered in that Time article), the documentary featured footage I also recall from edgy 90's grunge MTV videos, hell my mother remembered hearing about it at the time, through the Iron Curtain, no less!
So assuming psychosurgery was indeed a decently-sized issue, could it just disappear into the mists of history? I asked that very question and the consensus response seems to have been “yes, definitely!”. Your theory on that may differ from mine, but I ended coming to the conclusion that memory of such events needs to be actively maintained or it will fade. We remember things that are useful for people writing history books (or the ones who employ them) and forget the others, so while a similarly sized scandal like the Tuskagee experiment has a certain “Never Again” quality to it, others, like psychosurgery will fall by the wayside. And before you bring it up - no, this is not due to the affected demographics, which are largely the same. If you read the Time magazine article, you'll see doctors Sweet, Mark, and Ervin were planning to deploy psychosurgery as a cure against the race riots of the 60's.
Some might notice that the hypothetical I linked to in the recent paragraph is specifically about trans issues. Indeed, all these thoughts were bubbling in my head for over a year now, and I pretty much expect the hypothetical to become reality. What does a vibe shift look like? That. Was the prediction accurate? Well, I was avoiding specifics because I don't know how to even begin to pin those down, but looking at the state of the discourse on this forum, the pro-trans side seems to have officially moved from “that did not happen” to “and if it did, that's not a big deal” regarding medical interventions on minors. But it is perhaps the reactions of relative outsiders to the debate that are more indicative of the vibe shift and it:s mechanics:
If we were to see a vibe-shift-fueled memory-holing of the issue, would it not happen through People of Status suddenly finding the subject “tacky”, and “played out”?
Now I'm not saying this is going to happen tomorrow, timing is exactly the thing that's going to be hard to get right in a prediction like this. It also might feel silly to make sweeping societal predictions off of changes in internet discourse, but who ended up being right, people freaking out about the changes in Internet discourse seen in Tumblr Social Justice Warriors, or people claiming it was just a couple crazy kids on the Internet?
My apologies if this is something you've addressed in the past elsewhere, but I think an important preliminary question is what one thinks the underlying phenomenon of Trans is. Not so much the question of biological vs mental vs cultural vs spiritual, that can fall within any category, but the question of are there real people who are really trans and should transition. The way I see it, with variations, we can point to three broad theories/explanations:
The mainstream Pro-Trans TRA view: All, or at least a morally-significant vast majority, of people who claim to be trans are trans in some significant way where the best thing they can do is transition socially and medically. No, or at least a morally insignificant minority, of people who declare themselves trans are not actually trans and will be harmed by transitioning. The correct number of trans people to exist is as many as state they are trans, probably higher than currently exist in our still "trans-phobic" society.
The standard anti-trans social contagion view: Trans people do not exist. No one is trans. At best people who think that they are trans have been infected by some form of social contagion which acted on another variety of mental illness, and they will not be happier as a result of transitioning. At worst, people who state that they are trans are exploiting society and its kid-glove treatment of trans people. The correct number of trans people is zero.
The blended, anti-absolutist, mushy-middle, false-compromise, empirical but unprincipled view (which I hold): Some hard-core of people exist who, for whatever reason, will always want to transition to living as the opposite sex and will be happier if they do so; but there also exist today people who transition for reasons of social contagion or to take advantage of policies, who would be happier living as their birth-sex. The correct number of trans people is probably much smaller than the number among young people today, but it is not zero.
The vibe shift will look different depending what people think is the underlying reality. Let's Stop Talking About it So Much is a shift away from 1), but it might be a shift towards 2) or a shift toward 3); it is optimal policy for 3) while 2) would seem to require a more militant anti-trans view, a crusade to remove it from history books. Lobotomies and Electroshock Therapy went through significant pop-culture crusades against them before they were forgotten. While today we mostly forget these controversies altogether, they never really existed for us, they were first demonized aggressively and publicly.
I personally hold view 3), and more or less always have. Empirically, I've met and known and interacted with people who call themselves trans who are basically fine citizens, and state that they are happier as a result. I see no evidence strong enough to doubt them. I also have met and known people who I don't think are actually trans, despite announcing so, and I'm certainly aware of the evidence of social contagion. I don't think making transition illegal for adults is a good idea, or outlawing trans people otherwise, but I also think the attention paid to the issue is out of all proportion and probably leads to the social contagion problem. Vocally supporting or opposing trans stuff makes trans stuff interesting, teens want nothing more than they want to be interesting. Overly villainizing something gives it power. It all strikes me as increasingly uninteresting.
Now there is a strong argument that 3) is a halfway house, a wishy washy morally cowardly position. I'm not sure I have much of a philosophical counter to it.
Overall, I hope you're correct.
If I ever addressed it, it's scattered across different posts. I don't think 3) is a wishy-washy halfway house, I think it's a perfectly respectable position, and would be happy if this ends up being the new compromise. I also don't think it's a good idea to make decisions for adults, but I don't think this is what the controversy is about, nor do I think it's about the amount off attention paid to the issue. For me, it's two things:
I do have to admit I started leaning a bit towards 2), since I heard that anorexia essentially didn't exist, until one case was documented, covered by the media, and suddenly the whole thing became endemic. I started thinking that some people are just Not Well, and gravitate towards these self-harming behaviors, for reasons which might by unknown even to them. What to do about it is anyone's guess, the answer will depend on one's values rather than any evidence, and I heard compelling arguments for and against either approach.
But psychosurgery did not. It was a separate episode from lobotomies, and it really does look like a case of Culture War that went down the memory hole.
The idea that trans issues gained power on the back of being villanized strikes me as extremely ahistorical. I also don't see how pretending it's not there will take away it's power stemming from it being taught as fact at the local school.
I personally find it sensible.
But, I recall rejecting the gender binary was a fad among some online progressives. I've never seen a good contrarian following through with the obvious response to online trans people. "Trans women aren't women. No one is. There aren't two and only two categories. Gender is a spectrum not meaningfully described by this arbitrary binary. So no, a guy on estrogen is not a woman. People born with 2 X chromosomes aren't, so you transwomen also aren't."
Cool. Wouldn't it be great if people were free to embrace and reject philosophical views depending on which ones they find plausible, rather than being pressured to embrace them through social ostracism, threat of losing your job, and hate speech laws?
I'm not sure what's that suppose to achieve. Sure no one is a woman in the same way that chairs aren't really chairs, horses aren't really horses, and tulips aren't really tulips. Every category can be deconstructed until it ceases to exist, but none of that changes the material reality around us.
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