It's a bit unfortunate that section 3, which deals (very reasonably IMHO) with a hot-button political topic, is sandwiched between the other sections of fetishes, because it makes it harder to link to for common distribution (as one of the comments noted, lots of people find sex a squick issue, particularly I might add fetishes, including lots of people who argue about gender). Maybe pull it out and post it separately just for linking purposes? (If that IOU gets paid back in a timely manner, maybe unnecessary, but it would certainly help in the meantime.)
Any other publication and I’d strongly protest against his support of puberty blockers for minors, however his reasoning is acceptable compared to other arguments I’ve heard. I won’t get into my reasonings for the position I take within this topic, however I can agree most people would get highly agitated at people disagreeing with their opinion on the matter (it’s seen as an abuse against children to some of these people).
Yes that’s essentially right. It’s a particularly bad framing since a lot of people rightly have ‘child abuse is bad’ as a very strong prior that’s hard to move from.
Yeah, and this also leads to weaponization of the prior. Like how the strong prior that "Nazis are bad" leads to a proliferation of accusations of Nazihood.
At Texas A&M I saw so many students over the years wearing modern knockoff “Reagan/Bush ‘84” shirts that I had to go out and buy a vintage “Mondale/Ferraro ‘84” shirt. It hasn’t (yet?) found any fetish use.
Could we compare the strength of the priors by turning the weapons against each other? Like "if your child identifies as a Nazi, preventing them from wearing the uniform is child abuse".
This is the kind of reason that I believe that the most popular ideas (even ones that are rightly so) are the most dangerous... they're the easiest mottes for power-seeking mentalities to use, and in fact their extreme popularity means they're usually only pulled out to support a bailey rather than as an argument on their own behalf (because there are few enough people who believe e.g. murder is good, that inevitably the argument that it's bad is typically going to be used to consensus-build for something more contentious).
> I don’t see the connection from “the wider definition of sexual activity and display” to “some people literally can’t have an erotic experience unless their partner is dressed head to toe in black leather”.
An analogy. We all have an instinctive drive to eat, right? Pretty basic instinct just like sex.
Okay. Using only classical conditioning around the feeling of hunger: Back derive the existence of people who dislike pork because their culture has taboos around pork and they never ate it growing up. Back derive the difference between knife and fork vs chopsticks. Back derive why we don't just all shove as much food into our mouths as quickly as possible.
You can't because it's not about hunger. It's about an entire social context around eating which is fit not because of how it sates hunger (because it doesn't sate hunger better than just shoving food in your mouth) but because it creates and strengthens social bonds. Sating the underlying physical need IN A SPECIFIC WAY is culturally (or socially or whatever) determined.
Likewise, sex is a fundamentally social activity both in that it's always between at least two people and in that it always takes place in a social context. From there it's unsurprising you have micro-communities with their own sexual norms in the same way you have micro-communities with their own food or eating norms. Including private households that eat in rather strange ways to the rest of us.
That isn't to say there isn't some underlying instinctual part of it or that it's infinitely malleable. A tradition which didn't involve eating food wouldn't last long. But once it solves that basic part (it sates hunger, it produces children) a gigantic superstructure can be built on that edifice with very little reference to the base need.
> I agree it makes total sense that some things that are closely related to sex (eg lingerie) can get sexual valence in and of themselves through something like classical conditioning. But that doesn’t explain why some things not that closely related to sex (at least for most people) can get sexual valence even greater than the actual sex act.
No, you've missed the point. As I pointed out in sub-comments: a lot of things that have no relation to sex are still broadly regarded as sexy. If lingerie is too provocative think of skirts. No man has sex with all the women he sees in skirts or even a large portion of them. And plenty of men have sex with women wearing pants. Yet short skirts are broadly agreed to be sexy. Why? Because it's a socially feminine display.
Trying to back derive sexuality from classical conditioning of PIV intercourse a la machine learning is empirically not what happens.
> Likewise, sex is a fundamentally social activity both in that it's always between at least two people and in that it always takes place in a social context.
How would you categorize masturbation, and in particular, masturbation to fantasies that cannot happen in reality?
When you say 'cannot happen in reality' do you mean literally impossible (transforming into a moth or something) or literally possible but vanishingly unlikely (three supermodels decide they want to be in a polygamous relationship with you)?
I was thinking mostly the former, but perhaps that's better thought of as the extreme end of a distribution. Certainly "being swept off one's feet by an attractive stranger" is a fairly common fantasy that's possible but unlikely.
Yeah, that would be my next question: What sort of literally impossible fantasies are common? It seems much more likely you get the possible but unlikely in which case the person is obviously dreaming (at least partly) of various forms of things like social status or security or whatever.
Sapient humaniform animals, for one. Transformation, for another. And that's just the ones common enough to have subcultures that came up in the comments here over the last week. There are enough cases where people report having these fantasies before finding out that there were other people with the same fantasies, that I don't think social explanations can explain the causes. (Obviously, the Internet makes this type of discovery rarer these days.)
Macrophilia (love of literally giant women) would be another impossible fetish. Vore isn't technically impossible, but practically so unless you're willing to go full Hannibal Lector.
Short skirts are seen as “sexy” because they let guys almost see (or see, if the wearer messes up) what’s under them.
You get much less of a social perception of long skirts (which have a long tradition of being worn by women) being sexy, because they don’t do that. Just as socially feminine, not seen as nearly as much of a signal of sexual availability.
What's under them is underwear. Which was not available when we were evolving and blocks direct view of the relevant parts. Likewise you can point to plenty of sexy outfits that cover a fair bit of skin. The aforementioned latex suits, for example. Or pencil skirts which are not particularly short.
I'd argue that arousing effects are also strongly mediated by plain old attention dynamics, though, which dictate that the tease/ the incomplete picture is often more intriguing because it allows curiosity to augment desire. Plenty of people will stop and stare at an ad with some kind of missing-info puzzle, independent of whether the content is inherently interesting; thus, lingerie that partly covers a sexy body couples raw sexiness with an added puzzle multiplier, engaging our imagination in an intriguing way.
A similar pattern applies to fear and hunger, doesn't it? In a horror movie, the shadow brushing past the window is far scarier than when the monster just runs out with teeth bared. Similarly, the Subway whiff of bread is much more appetizing than when you go inside and actually see all the meat behind the counter.
Both latex suits and pencil skirts, although they *cover* a lot, often provide much better hints at what is beneath them than baggy or flowing outfits.
Personally, I enjoy clothes that hint at sexy body features, but don't actually reveal them. Long skirts are one of those, but there are masculine versions too. I think it's similar to flirtation, where there's an elaborate social game that both sides are playing.
As opposed to partial or total nudity, which is akin to a much more direct approach, eschewing the "nice boots" and going straight to "wanna fuck?". This to me has a qualitatively different sort of fascination, which can sometimes be hard to distinguish in the moment but is clearer upon reflection.
Fetishes : sex :: chopsticks : eating is not a good analogy, though. Elaborate cultural rituals may *accompany* a lot of basic animal acts, but at least in my experience the ritual part is still governed by a set of social instincts that are almost entirely separate from the visceral drives around the biological act. The thought of eating with a fork makes me feel conscientious, not viscerally hungry. The thought of eating soup by slurping face-down from the bowl feels socially embarrassing, not viscerally revolting.
By my reckoning, a closer sexual equivalent to chopstick vs. fork norms might be conventions around courtship gifts/compliments, or whether it feels normal to have sex in bed or in a field. Beds and couches are overwhelmingly the conventional Western context for sexual encounters, but I'm not aware of there being a lot of guys who jack off to pictures of unoccupied beds.
I've only skimmed, but I see no evidence in that post that puberty blockers aren't reversible. It's a lot of getting angry at other people with bad evidentiary standards, plus one paragraph on blockers claiming:
- "The most commonly cited research supporting the use of blockers comes from a clinical environment very different from what’s (likely) going on in much of the U.S. today"
- "Another study showed no short-term psychological benefits to going on blockers"
- "Yet another key study that appeared to show a correlation between being denied access to puberty blockers and suicidality does some serious overclaiming"
If that's the worst one can say about their reversibility, seems pretty good!
(again, I say flippantly, not having investigated this in great depth and mostly going off claims from guideline-making bodies plus a few minutes of my own research)
I've also mostly seen arguments stemming from an absence of evidence (that it is reversible), rather than showing any particular evidence of the absence of reversibility, and given the years of use for precocious cases I would guess that there would be at least *some* red flags in the literature from before the Current Times, and that those opposed to the use of puberty blockers would be citing those papers. So count me as another one in the camp that usage of puberty blockers is very likely reversible in the vast majority of cases (other than some cosmetic differences such as being a bit taller due to more time before the growth plates close).
I think there's some effect where the typical male adolescent pattern is to grow slowly but steadily for a while, and then get a growth spurt, and then stop growing, so that by delaying the onset of the growth spurt it's possible to add a few more inches of the normal growth pattern?
>given the years of use for precocious cases I would guess that there would be at least *some* red flags in the literature from before the Current Times, and that those opposed to the use of puberty blockers would be citing those papers
You could look at the Tavistock reviews, The Netherlands recently stopped using puberty blockers for transition, Denmark, several other European countries. I *think* part of the reason papers aren't cited more is that there's quite a difference in the length of time they're used for precocious puberty versus transition, and there's a difference between a temporary pause and cross-sex hormone treatments. The relevant data is limited and there's a reluctance to collect accurate data.
Also, "reversible" is a terrible phrase. Time and development don't work that way. There may be disagree on the degree to which further modification can occur, but calling it "reversible" is loading in the emotional valence and pre-judgement.
>other than some cosmetic differences such as being a bit taller due to more time before the growth plates close
Aren't cosmetic differences the point of treatment to begin with? I mean, I guess the real point is "prevent suicide" (although suicidality seems to be a not-infrequent side effect of blockers used in adolescents), but blockers are trying to achieve certain cosmetic differences as part of that prevention.
>Women who used Lupron a decade or more ago to delay puberty or grow taller described the short-term side effects listed on the pediatric label: pain at the injection site, mood swings and headaches. Yet they also described conditions that usually affect people much later in life. A 20-year-old from South Carolina was diagnosed with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones, while a 25 year-old from Pennsylvania has osteoporosis and a cracked spine. A 26 year-old in Massachusetts needed a total hip replacement. A 25-year-old in Wisconsin, like Derricott, has chronic pain and degenerative disc disease.
>“It just feels like I’m being punished for basically being experimented on when I was a child,” said Derricott, of Lawton, Okla. “I’d hate for a child to be put on Lupron, get to my age and go through the things I have been through.”
>In the interviews with women who took Lupron to delay puberty or grow taller, most described depression and anxiety. Several recounted their struggles, or a daughter’s, with suicidal urges. One mother of a Lupron patient described seizures.
Several lawsuits, including I think a class action one, for women who took Lupron for precocious puberty and experienced debilitating life long side effects. Lupron itself has also been used to chemically castrate sex offenders and as part of treatment for prostrate cancer. The information is out there, readily available. Just not on the websites for gender affirming care.
I was going to say simply that I’m pretty sure most of the people who are strongly against puberty blockers also strongly believe that the effects are largely not reversible. Evidence from so-called “detransitioners” does seem to show that some effects, e.g. bone density, genital dysfunction, lack of libido, etc. may be permanent or long-lasting.
Marci Bowers (top gender surgeon) even said on camera: “Every single child who was, or adolescent, who was truly blocked at Tanner Stage 2 has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it's really about zero.”
She's never given any evidence to support that claim -- that quote from her is literally the only evidence I've ever seen presented for it -- and there are studies suggesting the opposite, not to mention anecdotes from trans people who used puberty blockers in adolescence and went on to have normal sex lives after transitioning:
She’s not going to provide evidence. She got a ton of criticism from her own side and now endorses the WPATH guidelines.
The link doesn’t disprove what she said because you would need to isolate tanner stage 2. And I could point to anecdotes as well, such as Jazz Jennings.
I’m not claiming what MB said about her patients is definitely true. I would have no way of knowing the real number, obviously, but the fact that she didn’t follow up with data wouldn’t ease my mind as a parent.
"The link doesn’t disprove what she said because you would need to isolate tanner stage 2. "
Only if she herself did. But considering that as a surgeon, she wouldn't have been involved in the original decision to prescribe medication to any patients, and also that she's never offered any factual basis for her claim, it's hard to see how she could have done that herself. More likely, she was making retrospective estimates of when her patients started puberty blockers.
"And I could point to anecdotes as well, such as Jazz Jennings."
You see why those would be irrelevant, though, right?
When you're making a general claim like "no one who started puberty blockers at Tanner stage 2 has ever been able to have an orgasm, ever", one contrary anecdote is enough to disprove it. But one *supporting* anecdote isn't enough to *prove* it.
"...the fact that she didn’t follow up with data wouldn’t ease my mind as a parent."
It's not just that she, herself, didn't follow up with data. It's that no one else has either! There seems to be literally no support for the claim you quoted, anywhere, other than the quote itself.
People who ordinarily wouldn't take the word of a "gender surgeon" at face value have nonetheless spent over a year touting that particular unsupported quote as proof that harm is being done.
Yeah and growth hormone blockers are probably used on people with overactive growth hormone abnormalities.
I doubt that means that growth blockers are “reversible” when just handed out to random people during youth. I would expect they would end up with permanently stunted growth. You don’t?
From reading around in the research, they do seem to be. I don't know why one would expect them to be less reversible in the general population than among people with precocious puberty. Whether a drug's effects are reversible has to do more with the drug's mechanism of action and should apply generally in humans.
I don't have any dog in this hunt. I'm reading and learning. I think it's helpful if I don't let my disgust responses override my capacity for learning.
I don't see anything Orwellian about the use of the word reversible -- it's a common word used in talking about the effects of a medical intervention. A person gets Taxol to treat breast cancer; it causes peripheral nerve damage to most people; some of that damage is reversible and some isn't; there's a ton of focus on how to calibrate dosage to maximize treatment benefit and minimize the irreversible part of the nerve damage. It's just a clinical word to describe a thing that's useful to describe.
So normally people have. say 5 years of puberty. If they start 3 years early and have it blocked for 3 years and then get the normal 5 years, their outcomes are probably decent, though you don’t really have a control to know if where they end up in year 8 is where they would have been without precocious puberty.
But presumably it is better with blockers if you have precocious puberty.
What isn’t remotely clear is if someone is having a normal 5 years of puberty, and then halfway through you put them “on hold” for 18 months, that simply taking them off means it was “reversible”. Sure they didn’t fall over dead, but so they end up with the same outcomes?
The data on this seems wildly lacking given how important it is as a talking point.
The word "reversible", as applied in all this discussion, sends up red flags in my brain. It's been awhile since endocrinology for me, but this concept seems like it needs a lot more precision than a simple yes/no.
Puberty itself isn't something you'd think you can "pause" and then start up normally later, any more than aging. At least not with one or two simple hormonal interventions. That said, I'm sure it's not a precision engineered system, since most biological systems seem robust to systemic shocks. So I'd assume there's some threshold between, say, two weeks and twenty years where this intervention becomes irreversible. What's that threshold? Who knows?
On a personal note, it's a bit frustrating to run clinical trials for years before being able to roll out therapeutics that send clear efficacy and safety signals early on, then to see a dramatic intervention such as this one waltz past every meaningful safeguard. Do we have standards? If not, we could help a lot of patients tomorrow with the drugs my company is developing. If so, why don't we care enough to collect quality data for these high risk kids?
Puberty blockers block sexual development while not blocking general growth of the body. It's the perfect antidote for those who have precocious sexual development but are otherwise normal development curve.
That’s because the use is very different there. You want to _stop_ overly early puberty, so that it can _resume_ in the expected fashion. That’s quite different from blocking regularly expected puberty altogether and assuming that everything will sort itself out later if you stop the medication.
Others have already mentioned the loss of bone density, that can reach downright crippling levels, and is the main reason puberty blockers have become more restricted in Europe until the issue can get sorted out.
Precocious puberty, so that they're stopped in order to permit normal (or "natal" as the new favoured term seems to be) puberty to occur later is the way puberty blockers have been used over decades.
Blocking normal puberty with the aim of going onto hormones (so you can have your 'real gender' puberty) is a different matter which we haven't seen enough data for yet, because it's a relatively new thing.
I submit there's a difference between a medical condition where the process has started prematurely and needs to be halted, and one where the system is reacting normally.
I can't find an easily accessible range of how long someone would be on puberty blockers for precocious puberty, it honestly depends on when it starts:
"How long are puberty blockers typically used?
Children who are prescribed puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty typically take the medication until they’re at least 8 or 9 years old.
There are cases of people presenting with signs of precocious puberty as young as 1 year old who then use this medication for 7 or more years, explains Osipoff.
“There isn’t a clear-cut answer for how long puberty blockers will be used when used as part of transgender or gender affirming healthcare,” she says."
So let's say you're on puberty blockers for five years or so; going off them, they do seem to be reversible ("Puberty usually begins within 6 months to a year after stopping GnRHa treatment") but there also seem to be definite effects ("Research has found that young people who receive GnRHa treatment before the age of six for precocious puberty reach greater adult heights than those who are not treated. However, a 2019 meta-analysis found no such effect for cis girls receiving treatment between the ages of seven and ten."; "Data also suggests that puberty blockers don't have long term effects on bone or metabolic health.")
Hard to know what's true or not until we have the cohort of children who went on puberty blockers for gender identity reasons grown up and compared to their peers.
The height thing, which is one of the primary reasons puberty blockers were first adopted in cases of precocious puberty, is a potentially huge effect and definitely not reversible.
Although on reading this it seems like the field is very fraught and confusing.
But on priors I would be astonished if taking large doses of hormones during important developmental periods did not produce irreversible changes.
"Historical series of untreated patients (Table III) show mean heights of 152 cm in girls and 156 cm in boys, a loss of ∼10 cm in girls and 20 cm in boys (Bar et al., 1995; Kauli et al., 1997). However, these data come from a limited number of patients from the 1950s and 1960s"
"We have analysed adult height outcome in a series of 58 girls included in a multicentre study (Carel et al., 1999). The mean increase of adult height over pretreatment predicted height was 4.8 ± 5.8 cm. Forty‐seven per cent of the patients had height improvements ≥5 cm, an arbitrary threshold for clinical significance. Another way to estimate the gain in adult height was to compare treated patients with historical controls. This was done after matching patients and controls for age at onset of puberty (Figure 2): the difference was 8.9 ± 8.7 cm (P < 0.0001, Wilcoxon test). Sixty‐four per cent of treated girls had an adult height ≥5 cm above their age‐matched control. Altogether, if we take into account the probable overestimation of height prognosis in untreated patients, the true average height gain in a group of patients like ours is probably in the range of 8–10 cm, with ≥50% of individuals benefiting by ≥5 cm."
Scott didn't claim it was "completely reversible" he explicitly used the phrase "mostly reversible".
In the context of transitioning is a ~10cm change in height a material impact? I'd argue largely no. The important aspects are the sexual development aspects that the blockers are intended to block - various other changes are incidental.
Scott, I really think you have the wrong null hypothesis here. Puberty blockers stop one part of our developmental clock, but not the rest. In particular, bone growth continues. Why on earth would that be reversible? As I said in another comment: see the castrati for extreme outcomes. Development of other organs might be relevant too; I'm not an expert, but I'd certainly bet against your null hypothesis here as well, from an outside view.
In my mind, the only question is: how long is a safe period to take them? I think the answer is more than zero, but where is the limit? 6 months? 1 year?
I can’t decide whether to suggest that you avoid the research and topic of gender affirming care completely, or research the counter-evidence more deeply. I would sincerely appreciate both (but suspect the former would be healthier), but I wouldn’t expect to find you in this middle space where you don’t seem very familiar with one side of the argument. (Not the Florida Man anti-woke side, but the sympathetic yet concerned liberal side.)
My impression is that it is quite easy to find respectable clinicians and knowledgable reporters that you should find trustworthy and worth reading, who can complicate the picture better than I can. And not all anti-trans by any stretch of the imagination, but often highly critical of the quality of care given (which I’m curious what you would think about– especially concerning minors).
However, this topic is so full of toxicity that I don’t want to mention anyone in particular, and be dragged for mentioning such and such charlatan.
Speaking as a reproductive biologist, I would expect the effects to be mostly but not entirely reversible. The biggest irreversible one would be increased height (estrogen produced during puberty causes bones to stop growing).
But given that the age of puberty has declined from 16-17 to 12-13 over the last century or so, I think delaying it a few years is not a problem.
I think part of the whole controversy is that it seems to be a path that is not "delay puberty for a few years until you figure this out, then you can reverse the blockers and go on to male or female puberty naturally" as it is "delay puberty until you're legally old enough to be put on cross-sex hormones and start going through female - if you are natal male - or male - if you are natal female - puberty. Further intervention like surgery may or may not follow down the line".
That makes it more complicated than "stop it for a while, then restart it" (as with precocious puberty) and instead is "stop it for a while, then swap it against your body's natural puberty to that of the other sex".
On the other hand, it also means the most likely alternative to puberty blockers isn't "do nothing and experience no side effects", but rather "do nothing until you're legally old enough to start cross-sex hormones, go through puberty a second time, and (especially for natal males) have a series of surgeries to reverse as many of the visible changes from natal puberty as possible".
Does it also mean that the scenario talked about as most terrible -- which is children taking drugs that postpone puberty and then deciding to return to the same biological road they were on but now with some possibly irreversible side effects -- is a pretty tiny number of kids?
The other thing I think about -- maybe Scott mentioned this too -- is that one major alternative to puberty blocking drugs for young people with gender dysphoria is going to be antidepressants and those also run a risk of irreversible side effects.
In a land where there are no great choices, it seems like maybe having more choices is helpful since none of the choices is great.
The learnings from the Travistock clinic, is that the majority of Gender Dysphoria youth, something like 3/4 to 4/5 of them eventually discover they're gay. Gender Affirming Care including puberty blockers results in sterilization. After a mastectomy, replaced breast/nipples have no sensation, which for many people is an important part of sex. Most post Gender Affirming Care patients lack the ability to achieve arousal or erotic emotions. Post Gender Affirming Care patients will never achieve orgasm. The majority of Gender Dysphoria patients have multiple mental health conditions, autism, etc. Hormone therapy includes many dramatic health consequences, early onset osteoporosis, like in the 20s, greatly increased risk cardiac arrest in youth, early onset hair loss, irreversible facial hair growth, irreversible voice deepening, irreversible masculine facial characteristics.
"After a mastectomy, replaced breast/nipples have no sensation"
That's quite a claim! I hope you'll share some evidence to back it up, especially since it seems to be contradicted by existing studies (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25455292/, where nipple sensitivity after mastectomy was "good" or "very good" >80% of the time).
"Most post Gender Affirming Care patients lack the ability to achieve arousal or erotic emotions."
"Post Gender Affirming Care patients will never achieve orgasm. "
This too. As far as I've been able to tell, the *only* basis for this particular astonishing claim is a single quote by Marci Bowers, which she never offered any evidence to support and which she later walked back; also, in another comment here, Carina suggested that Bowers was only referring to her own patients anyway. Meanwhile, it's contradicted by studies (see above), and by patients who report that they are in fact able to achieve orgasm after gender-affirming care.
"The majority of Gender Dysphoria patients have multiple mental health conditions, autism, etc."
Interesting if true, but how is it relevant?
Are you implying that no one should be treated for gender dysphoria until they've been "cleared" of all other conditions, including autism? If so, do you have a whole list of conditions in mind that autistic people shouldn't be treated for, or is gender dysphoria the only one?
"Hormone therapy includes many dramatic health consequences, early onset osteoporosis, like in the 20s, greatly increased risk cardiac arrest in youth, early onset hair loss, irreversible facial hair growth, irreversible voice deepening, irreversible masculine facial characteristics."
Other than osteoporosis, you've basically just listed the effects of testosterone. In fact, the last few are usually seen as *benefits* by the population in question (trans men).
On the other hand, from the perspective of young trans women (natal males), they are indeed harmful effects—of puberty!—which is why puberty blockers are often prescribed to prevent them.
> "If the use of puberty blockers are more beneficial than harmful, why did Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the UK rethink their use?"
I haven't looked into this, but my prior is that it's because Europeans are hopeless communist nanny-staters who ban anything cool on general instinct. Cf. melatonin, GPT-4.
I'm not sure what the comment is about melatonin, but if the comment is about the EU banning GPT-4, only one of those four countries is in the EU and so bans it.
I would like to object to the otherwise-fascinating "oral history" linked article for this sentence:
>For example -- and this is very clear in Roman texts -- to punish a person who stole potatoes from his field, a Roman might oblige the person to give him fellatio.
My objection is that potatoes are a New World crop. All meaningfully "Roman" polities were long-gone by the time the Columbian Exchange brought potatoes to Europe, what with Constantinople falling to the Ottomans in 1453, and before that the Byzantine Empire despite being more-or-less institutionally continuous with the Eastern Roman Empire had been much more Greek than Roman at least since the reign of Heraclius (610-641 AD)
Alternative world history: a group of renegades stole all the Romans' potatoes, and to avoid having to perform fellatio for the next several decades as punishment, they hopped into a few boats and set sail for the Americas.
If your translation is shoddy, you might think Ovid said there were cornfields where Troy once stood. Perhaps, like the word "seges" was repurposed, this was a Latin word that meant "root vegetable" that is now used to mean "potato."
EDIT: It might be even worse than that: it looks like the word "corn" predates the Columbian Exchange, and changed to mean what it does today.
Yeah, "maize" is commonly referred to as "corn" in America, which I believe is a shortened form of "Indian corn", which was to distinguish it from Old World corns.
”Corn” just used to mean ”grain” (or really, just any small and hard piece from a plant, such as with peppercorns as mentioned below), and in Swedish (and presumably similar in other languages), ”korn” is the word for barley.
Etymology Online: corn (n.1)
"grain," Old English corn "single seed of a cereal plant; seeds of cereal plants generally; plants which produce corn when growing in the field," from Proto-Germanic *kurnam "small seed" (source also of Old Frisian and Old Saxon korn "grain," Middle Dutch coren, German Korn, Old Norse korn, Gothic kaurn), from PIE root *gre-no- "grain."
I think I didn't notice because I used to object whenever I saw "corn" in an ancient text, and then learned they used "corn" to generically mean grain. But I don't think anyone has ever used "potato" that way.
That sounds like somebody is mixing up the statues of the garden-god Priapus, a Greek deity taken over by the Romans, and which often had humorous* warning notices on the statues/herms about what would happen to would-be thieves, or poems about the deity:
"Priapus was the Roman god of fertility, the guarantor of fertility. He was the son of Dionysus or Hermes and Aphrodite. He looked after gardens, trees growing in them and vineyards. The cult of Priapus was taken over by the Romans and adapted to their mythology. In Rome, Priapus was initially the keeper of orchards and vineyards, and later also of fertility and harvest. Priapus’s sacrificial animal was a donkey.
In the gardens, statues or herms depicting Priapus with an exposed member in an erect state were often placed, at which he was offered sacrifices from the first crops."
*For a given value of "humorous" where rape threats are considered humour.
"The Priapeia (or Carmina Priapea) is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD or the beginning of the 2nd century.[1] A traditional theory about their origin is that they are an anthology of poems written by various authors on the same subject. However, it has recently been argued that the 80 poems are in fact the work of a single author, presenting a kind of biography of Priapus from his vigorous youth to his impotence in old age.
... Many of the epigrams are written as though they were to be engraved on the walls of a shrine containing a statue of the god Priapus that stood in the midst of gardens as the protector of the fruits that grew in them. These statues, usually carved from wood, were in the form of a man with a huge phallus, carrying a sickle in one hand. The statues, painted red to signify sexual prowess, also promoted the gardens’ fertility. Most of the poems in the collection are monologues by Priapus himself. In them the god congratulates and praises himself for the size and virility of his sexual parts and issues fearful warnings to those who would trespass upon his garden or attempt to steal its fruits, threatening such miscreants with various punishments of a sexual nature, such as irrumation and sodomy. The poems are notable for their use of obscene words and ideas in combination with refined and elegant diction."
Agreed that potatoes were not to be found in Classical Roman gardens, and that it most likely wasn't the proprietor of the garden, but rather the guardian deity, who would engage in face-fucking transgressors. E.g. the rather tortuous 19th century translation of some of the above poems:
Thou shalt be pedicate (lad!), thou also (lass!) shalt be rogered;
While for the bearded thief is the third penalty kept.
I warn thee, my lad, thou wilt be sodomised; thee, my girl, I shall futter;[1] for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment[2] remains.
[1. Futuere. Used frequently by Martial. Derived from fundo, to pour out (the semen).
2. Tertia poene in the Latin original meaning irrumation, or coition with the mouth.]
No. 21
Femina si furtum faciet mihi virve puerve,
haec cunnum, caput hic praebeat, ille nates.
An fro' me woman shall thieve or plunder me man or a man-child,
She shall pay me with coynte, that with his mouth, this with arse.
If a woman, man, or boy, thieve from me, let her coynte, his mouth, the latter's buttocks, be submitted [to my mentule].
No. 23
Hic me custodem fecundi vilicus horti
mandati curam iussit habere loci.
fur habeas poenam, licet indignere 'feram'que
'propter holus' dicas 'hoc ego?' 'propter holus'.
Here has the bailiff, now of this plentiful garden the guardian,
Bidden me care for the place he to my service entrusts.
Thief! thou shalt suffer the pain albeit crying in anger--
'What! for a cabbage all this? This for a cabbage I bear?'
The steward has bidden me, the protector of this fertile garden, have a care of the place committed to my charge. Thou, O thief, shalt be punished; thou mayst be enraged, and say, 'On account of a cabbage am I to endure this? On account of a cabbage?'[1]
[1. Some read prope, meaning near--'Am I to be sodomised near a cabbage?' instead of propter, meaning on account of. Because, it is presumed, the thief thought a cabbage plot too open a space for such a punishment.]
No. 27
Tu, qui non bene cogitas et aegre
carpendo tibi temperas ab horto,
pedicabere fascino pedali.
quod si tam gravis et molesta poena
non profecerit, altiora tangam.
Thou, of unrighteous thought, that hardly canst
Refrain from robbing this my garden-plot,
With foot-long fascinum shalt bulghar'd be:
Yet if so mighty grievous punishment
Profit thee naught, at higher stead I'll strike.
Thou who wickedly designest, and scarce forbearest from robbing my garden, shall be sodomised with my twelve-inch fascinum [phallus]. But if so severe and unpleasant a punishment shall not avail., I will strike higher.[1]
[1. Thy mouth shall serve as the instrument of thy punishment.
No. 30
Vade per has vites, quarum si carpseris uvam,
cur aliter sumas, hospes, habebis aquam.
Hie thee amid these vines whereof an thou gather a grape-bunch
Guest! of the water shalt drink serving for different use.
Haste thee through these vines, for if thou hast plucked off their clustering grapes, guest! thou wilt take the water for another purpose.[1]
[1. If on his way to drink at the fountain, the wayfarer plucked the grapes in the orchard guarded by the god, Priapus threatened him with irrumation. He would then require water, not only to quench his thirst, but also to cleanse his mouth. 'Because you suck, and gargle your mouth with water, Lesbia, you do no wrong. You take water where there is need of it, Lesbia.' Following the example of other women, who after coition bathe their privy parts, Lesbia rinses her mouth. The poet calls her Lesbia because the Lesbians were given to this fantasy.]"
I agree, but I'd add one little layer, which is that gender is a subject on which everyone seems to have an opinion. It seems to be even better than religion, that way.
Maybe this should go on the old list of "politics and religion", of things not to discuss in polite company.
Rather than taking things off the list of possible conversation topics, I'd rather we inhabited a more "this is an issue that intelligent and moral people can disagree about" state of mind. We're losing the capacity to have conversations.
There are so many issues like this that we'd have to stop talking about things that matter altogether. What to do about climate change, views on abortion, what diversity means and how we should or shouldn't promote it, whether masks or lockdowns or vaccines during Covid were helpful or an appalling offense to civil liberties, how to fix the healthcare system, how to view and treat opioid addiction, what to do about homelessness, whether we ever ought to involuntarily hospitalize people, whether foreign aid is a good or a terrible idea, what limits if any to free speech are justifiable, and on and on.
Twitter is a rage machine where people get rewarded for freaking out over one sentence a person writes or says while spinning into orbit on the high of their sanctimonious rage. No time to ask questions, to clarify meanings, to extend any good faith. Meanwhile, people are starving for actual connection. It seems kinda crazy.
For myself, it's steer clear of places like Twitter and stay curious about other people and their views and how they come to them. And it's to look for opportunities for real conversations with people who want to have them.
I also think there's an important piece about learning basic emotional self-regulation. There's an enormous amount of childish reactivity going on out there among people who are lacking a more grounding sense of purpose in their lives. Partly I think that's about gaps in parenting, but partly too I think that's about people spending time in environments that aren't healthy for human nervous systems -- I'd put all of social media in that category.
Agreed again. And I'd include cable news in that category as well.
But I don't think it's just reactivity. I've seen very smart, capable people with what should be fulfilling lives get eaten by the outrage machine, and other very similar people simply nod along and feed the behavior, as if they don't see anything wrong with it. But maybe it's that I can't see inside their head, and that they've all got a gaping void somewhere that they desperately fill with anything that makes them feel righteous and justified. I wish I knew.
I like your thought about gaping void, including among very high functioning people.
I also wonder about the dynamic you see with other addictions, which is that people may tip into them in a vulnerable moments -- injured back, a depressive episode, a significant loss -- but then the tight and distorted reward mechanisms of the addiction itself create its own trap way above and beyond the initial and possibly transient vulnerability.
The Canadian census contains some very important information about trans rights (including a breakdown of trans and non-binary people by age, but that's not what I'm referring to).
Trans people? About half a percent of the population. The non-binary? The same.
So these issues involve 1% of people. Which means almost any other issue you can name affects more people, yet this is the one everyone insists on screaming about constantly.
I don't think the answer is any more specific than the general answer to "why should anyone ever respect anyone else's preferences?" Why do you slow your car down when pedestrians are crossing the street? Why don't I spit in your face? I think we have a general bias towards accommodating others' preferences, while balancing off how important it is for them vs. how convenient it is for us. I think different aspects of dealing with transgender people will end up at different points in that balance but it certainly doesn't seem like we should have a blanket ban on cooperating with them.
A norm of people not being run down in the street directly benefits the vast majority of the population on net balance. The same cannot remotely be said of something that directly positively impacts a fraction of a percent of the population. And slowing down for a pedestrian is a hell of a lot less of an imposition than forcing your daughter to share a locker room with 'people with penises'.
And policing driver behavior around pedestrians is basically a finished issue. There aren't dementedly pro-pedestrian advocacy groups running around (at least, not with anything remotely resembling institutional power or political influence) demanding ever more restrictions on driver behavior after acting like the last law or policy was where things are going to end. But we know that wokeness never ends, giving into them doesn't make things end there, it simply emboldens the woke to make increasingly outrageous demands.
Trans activists will extremely frequently tie everything back to the murder of transpeople, especially transwomen, as the fundamental issue at play here. But this is at least somewhat misleading, because it's not enough that any given person doesn't literally murder transwomen (and increased policing in black neighborhoods where most trans murders occur is unthinkable) . No, the way we end trans murders to completely change society's attitudes towards sex and "gender" at a fundamental level - anything that remotely implies that people with dick and balls are any less capable of being "real" women must be eliminated, lest it lead to trans people being killed. There's simply nothing anywhere closely analogous to this in traffic norms. And this unending 'progress' towards complete trans 'acceptance' makes it perfectly rational to not cooperate with them even when its the less unreasonable stuff they're demanding right now, because it can only possibly lead to more unreasonable stuff.
You may be some weird eternal optimist and thinks everyone will stop complying once it gets truly unreasonable (to the extent it hasn't already), but consider the fact that if you went back as little as 20 years and explained how things would be regarding transgendered people in 2023, they would have laughed in your face at this being possible.
That list of reasons fails the ideological Turing test, for not including, minimally, “licit presence of men in women’s locker rooms is an actual safety threat.”
>> "A norm of people not being run down in the street directly benefits the vast majority of the population on net balance. The same cannot remotely be said of something that directly positively impacts a fraction of a percent of the population. And slowing down for a pedestrian is a hell of a lot less of an imposition than forcing your daughter to share a locker room with 'people with penises'."
There are plenty of norms that only benefit a small percent of the population. Signposting foods containing peanuts only help people with peanut allergies. Bike lanes only help bikers; bus stops only help bus riders; parking lots only helps car owners. Art museums only help people who like art, having kosher/halal/vegetarian food available only helps Jews/Muslims/vegetarians. Chaplain service at hospitals only helps the religious; respect for veterans only helps veterans. Perhaps parents who don't want their daughters in gender-neutral locker rooms are also less than 100% of the population! My interpretation of the social contract is that most people are in some group that's only 1% of the population, and everyone in all the little groups agree to cooperate with all the other little groups as best they can rather than be at war with each other all the time.
I only endorsed giving transgender people the right to take puberty blockers plus general social respect; I don't have strong opinions of the cost-vs-benefits of locker room policies or anything else.
You know, the peanut allergy thing is actually an interesting allegory here.
We're up to something like ~2.5% of children with a peanut allergy, to the point where many schools (including my kids' elementary school) are completely nut-free. This is moderately annoying to non-allergic families: peanut butter sandwiches are cheap, easy to make, and well-liked by kids. It's annoying to have to make sun butter sandwiches instead. They're about 2-3 times more expensive, and they taste worse.
Of course, I don't want my kids' classmates to die of anaphylactic shock, so I go along with it. But I grumble about it.
The interesting bit here is that peanut allergies are _almost completely preventable_, if you introduce peanuts to kids while they're still a baby. There was a big clinical trial about this: ~80% reduction in prevalence. But hardly any parent knows about this, so few US parents do it deliberately (we did, but people gave us side-eyes for feeding the baby peanut Cheerios), and the increased abundance of peanut allergies mean it's less likely to happen randomly. So we get more peanut allergies and no peanut butter sandwiches for anyone.
> Why do you slow your car down when pedestrians are crossing the street?
Selfish reason, even if one cared not a jot about the pedestrians' preferences for staying alive and in one piece: Think of all the forms you'd have to fill out, and time wasted down at the police station and possibly also in court if you did knock over any of the jay walkers! :-)
Any theories explaining the apparent increase in prevalence of TSs have to account for both M2Fs and F2Ms, although of course there may be different explanations for each. F2M transitioning seems to be a new development, although there have always been pipe-smoking lesbians and similar.
It's hard to come up with ideas which don't sound disparaging to those wishing to transition, although in theory that should not preclude dispassionate enquiry. No doubt most are sincere, because after all it is a big and and largely irrevocable decision. But one can't avoid the suspicion that some are more of a lifestyle choice, to sound different and special, especially for ultra-trendy parents encouraging their young offspring to transition.
Some others may be a misguided attempt to become what attracts them most, like those people who spend a fortune on plastic surgery to look like their favorite pop star: A surprising number of M2Fs remain sexually attracted to women or other M2Fs, and end up in a lesbian relationship. Also, many F2Ms fancy only men, and aspire to a gay relationship with a guy, or to have sexual relations with other men as a man, albeit often retaining female genitals. Go figure.
But arguably the desire to transition has always been around, even if it could not be physically realised in the past. ISTR in the novel Lorna Doone, written around 1870, the main character John Ridd is musing at one point about his schoolmates, and remarks "Some should have been born girls" (although I agree that a quote from a novel is not exactly conclusive evidence! :-)
There have always been some people assigned female who lived as men for some or even almost all of their lifespan. Some were doing so to gain access to male privilege or certain occupations, but some preferred to live as men even when they faced a social cost for doing so (eg Harry Allen). In terms of medical transition, until recently people perceived as women had much less access to economic resources that could be used for transitioning, and typically only some butch lesbians even knew about the possibility of taking testosterone. Late-transitioning MTFs who were able to succeed in male-dominated workplaces have historically had much more money to invest in transitioning.
Allowing biological men into women's spaces just because they themselves claim to be women. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are quite a few women, even on the Left, who are very uncomfortable with this. So it seems we have to choose who we inconvenience. Or do you think that we should not have any sex-segregated spaces anymore? I don't agree, but I think it would at least be a more consistent position.
This happens so incredibly rarely that it becomes national news when a new case is discovered.
But I specifically asked what accommodations *you* are being asked to make - even in the rare case that trans women are using women's accommodations the owners of those spaces have voluntarily made that choice - they haven't been forced to.
None personally, but as a concerned citizen I feel I have the right to put in my two cents just like everyone else. Also, are you alright with establishment owners NOT allowing men in women's spaces or vice versa ("if you won't use the locker room/restroom of your birth sex I'll have to ask you to leave")? Or do you think they should be harassed, boycotted, or sued if they don't allow anyone to use whatever facility they want? Then there's women's sports. Are you okay with biological men trouncing women in sports where men have a physical advantage?
Same reason we accommodate left-handed people and people who use wheelchairs and Jewish people. (I think wheelchair users and Jewish Americans are about 1%.)
It is a pity that accommodating it requires difficult medical measures. In contrast, myopia has been increasing "over the past half-century" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930282/) (and, yes, there can be serious consequences in some cases). But, as myopia usually just requires spectacles or contacts, the level of concern seems orders of magnitude lower, and vitriol seems nearly absent.
Disagree, I think plenty of people on at least one side believe that it's a fad which will eventually peak in popularity and retreat back to, say, 1990 values.
I'm skeptical of that. The 40-through-70-year-old trans people are there, but a pretty small fraction. I think the vast majority of people are basically content with their gender identity, and there's only so much that can be done to change that. Equally, there's obviously a core of people who simply aren't going to stop being trans.
Frankly, I think things are awfully close to their maximum for people deciding they're trans - not that things could not be better for trans people, but there are plenty of extremely loud voices pushing the idea, and the UK (for example) has flat-out gone too far and had people sue the NHS for that. Canada lacks a lot of the vitriol around it (though some has started), and DOES have the pro-trans voices. My local courts require announcing your pronouns now, for example (which has worked terribly and is infuriating given the pile of other, vastly more important issues facing the local justice system). Nonetheless...half a percent (I actually misremembered the numbers - it's 0.19% transgender, 0.14% non-binary). The government themselves claims it's only 0.24%, so there may be some overlap they're not explicitly pointing out.
I think, frankly, that people would be less irked if it WAS something like 5% of the population, because at least that's a large enough group it might be reasonable to rejig language and a vast number of social systems.
Isn't it the case that nearly 20% of Zoomers/high-schoolers identify as some variant of trans or non-binary? This is so salient right now in media / social-media that the rates have skyrocketed.
That's probably what concerns voters, but I'm inclined to believe this doesn't need to be fixed because the culture war focus will shift elsewhere in due time, like it always does. It's trendy now, but it won't be in 10 years.
That’s about the number that identify as some kind of LGBTQ+. Only 1.9% identify as transgender. https://www.newsweek.com/people-who-identify-transgender-doubles-gen-z-1783562. From my experience with other young people, many of those who identify as transgender do not want to pursue medical transition or discovered they were trans after puberty, so the puberty blockers are only an issue for an even smaller group.
"I have also had this particular pleasure, and of course I sympathize with this person, but I also think her statement is literally correct as written. Again, not an expert, not a trauma-focused therapist, etc, but my amateur opinion is you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma. Some transgender activist cyberbullies you - many such cases! - and then you spend the rest of your life trying to own trans activists to prove that they were wrong and you were right and the world is safe again. IOU a post fleshing out this theory in more details sometime in the next few months. But for now, search your feelings, you know it to be true."
I've struggled with this in multiple contexts. I believe that the helpfulness of statements like this depends on the agency the individual possesses. If you have sufficient agency, a statement like this can be helpful. If you do not see yourself as able to stop re-enacting your trauma, this advice is worse than useless-it can reinforce the trauma. I don't know what percentage of folks are in that situation, but I know a number who are (not for transgenderism, but for other issues). For them, this statement sounds a lot like "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Sure. If the person doesn't see themself as being able to "not re-enact my trauma", then the trauma becomes even more painful, harder to address, shameful, etc. The statement implicitly claims that they should be able to "not re-enact my trauma". It may be that reinforce isn't the right wording. Maybe "makes the trauma harder to address"? "Reinforces the pain of the trauma"? On reflection, I think I'd likely argue that a root of trauma is the perception of self as lacking agency to avoid/stop/prevent the trauma. Thus, a statement that reinforces lack of agency reinforces the trauma. For context: I'm in a group of about 15 people who meet regularly to support each other in working on our issues. Our best sessions can be as good as good therapy (but good therapy delivers more frequently, in my experience). Of the group of 15, I'd say one is traumatized, and has this lack of agency issue to a very noticeable degree, IMHO. There are perhaps 1 or 2 others who have it to a lesser degree. So I don't want to over-emphasize prevalence. But when it's there, it's really there.
I hope this is helpful-let me know if you'd like more.
The thing about interpersonal trauma is that it's infused with shame and the shame can be evoked by a huge variety of unpredictable-to-others triggers. It can't be another person's job not to evoke shame in us. We've got to take care of that ourselves.
In therapy or among very good friends, we maybe can ask people to handle certain triggers with us very gently. But out in the wider world, that doesn't work.
And that's part of what I hear Scott saying, which is "take responsibility for how marinating in this very online transgender debate field impacts you; you have choices about how you spend your time."
If a statement like that evokes shame in someone, that's still their task to take care of their shame, and not the task of other people to anticipate what might conceivably evoke shame in people they don't know.
This topic maybe connects over to the topic of trigger warnings which research seems to have shown are counterproductive. Which is in line with all the research about anxiety -- that trying to avoid triggers makes anxiety worse, not better.
(Part of what I see in the people reacting to Scott's first paragraph is an extension of the psychological fragility and brittleness that seems increasingly widespread in public spaces. People are poised for other people to say a thing that flips their switches. People speak as if someone else's opinions are a form of violence against them.
This dynamic isn't healthy for anybody and I think is fueling a tendency to think other people are responsible for regulating us emotionally and if we can't regulate ourselves, it's got to be someone else's fault, including because they didn't word something perfectly.)
I'm not arguing in favor of trigger warnings, nor am I talking about taking "responsibility for how marinating in this very online transgender debate field impacts you; you have choices about how you spend your time."
I'm making a very limited point about not telling traumatized people to "stop re-enacting your trauma". Unless you know them and their context very well, it's just not productive in my experience, and can be quite counterproductive, to the point of trapping the prior even more firmly.
Also, advice that you haven't asked for is close to, or is, criticism. Why criticize a traumatized person?
Again, I'm not addressing the online gender debate, or trigger warnings. Just a very specific set of people, in specific circumstances. There are traumatized people who are robust enough to hear "Hey, stop re-traumatizing yourself" and take it well. But even then, I think the better practice would be to say something like, "Hey, you know, I wonder if maybe you're kinda retraumatizing yourself there. Just a thought."
"Hey, you know, I wonder if maybe you're kinda retraumatizing yourself there. Just a thought."
versus "you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma" in italics
I really think he's talking to us, his audience, and that this is a rhetorical device in support of his self-defense rather than a direct communication to traumatized people.
I think language is tricky because your version while I can feel the kind intent behind it sets my teeth on edge because it sounds condescending to me.
This is the kind of thing that can get quickly sorted out in one-on-one conversations but can't get sorted at all in speaking to a general audience one doesn't know personally.
I think I hear you saying that Scott's version was unkind and that your version is kind. And that the unkindness in Scott's version is what makes it unhelpful, or potentially re-traumatizing because it could be shaming.
I think trauma is super complicated and it's really hard to say how different people will respond to words like these. (I'm a psychotherapist who specializes in treating trauma and has worked with some really profoundly traumatized people over years and I've been consistently humbled by the inability to predict the variety of subtleties that evoke strong shame responses in other people. Including that people can get triggered if language is too kind and forgiving in a situation where they are still very aligned with their need to feel ashamed.)
I was not saying that Scott's version was unkind and mine is unkind. I was saying that for some people some times, Scott's version would make them worse off. For some people, some of the time, my version would make them worse off.
Yes, what I'm saying is not about Scott's point about online communication.
If someone's grabbed your hand and is hitting you with it, having someone else tell you to "stop hitting yourself" isn't usually going to help. It just reinforces the helplessness and shame.
I do think in context I was trying to convince this hypothetical person that they were re-enacting trauma, not claiming that stopping was a primitive action. Compare to something like "If you want to succeed in business, you need to learn a second language."
Sure. But if that person has a trapped prior of "I can't learn a second language", then what's the impact of that statement?
Similarly, one plausible response to hearing "you're reenacting trauma", is rather than rationally realizing "Oh, I'm going to stop that," to have an emotional response of "I'm such a loser-I can't even stop reenacting trauma." The issue is helping the person release the trapped prior, not giving them advice they can't ingest. I would imagine you've run into something similar in your clinical practice?
I've generally found that helping people understand that the thing they are doing isn't rational and is related to a psych disorder is a positive step. Sometimes it helps directly, other times it convinces them to seek a higher level of treatment.
Perhaps the difference here is the therapeutic context. In a healthy therapeutic relationship, a therapist could say this in a safe and non-judgemental way, and the patient would understand it that way.
But in a different context, where a person is primed to see hostility, the very same words can come across differently. One of the worst weapons in emotional abuse can be the truth, when used to set up a situation where by accepting the truth, the victim is put in a position where they have to admit the abuser was right. (I think this may have a lot to do with why abuse from a position of authority can be so devastating.)
I think in that example, I'm assuming that they already know this, and are trying as hard as they can to learn the language, so merely repeating a thing they already know is just rubbing their failure in their face. But it sounds like you're assuming that they're trying to succeed in business, but need some advice on how to do that?
Or it could be that they haven't reached that point, that they're just stuck in the trauma. Again, I'm applying this to a narrow set of people, in situations other than what Scott is talking about.
So the advice could just be listening until there's enough trust. Or if they're freer than that, some advice might be helpful.
I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing here, in this comment thread. It's something it took me a while to realize, possibly due to me being slightly spectrumy.
To go off on a more personal tangent, there's that thing where you don't always want to tell the truth in all situations, 'cause of social stuff. No problem, I've realized that since I was a kid and mostly have it down. Then there's that thing where you realize that when people complain about a problem, sometimes they want sympathy rather than potential solutions. Took me a while, but I got that in college, probably not-coincidentally around the time of my first relationship. But then there's the additional layer that sometimes when providing sympathy and support, you still need to keep it general and not offer analysis until it's specifically asked for. That, alas, took me until I was traumatized myself. Sometimes people simply need comfort and safety, and it's an honor if they choose you for that. Generally they let you know if they're interested in picking apart what went wrong in a serious way, as opposed to simply venting and wanting support. But it can be hard to tell; maybe it's OK to suddenly poke at a soft place. All I know is, that sort of thing is more suited to religious figures and therapists, not me.
Or in other words, even the right thing can be bad, at the wrong time or from the wrong person or in the wrong situation.
Trauma is a clenching hand triggered by an electric fence to grip its trigger even harder. This reaction to its trigger provokes a corrective response. But the shape of trauma responds to that predictable corrective response by solidifying the trauma again and again. Sealing and searing the reaction into the organism.
A quiet, discordant note, muddling whatever music may lie in the foreground of the mind.
And trauma’s whole shtick is that it's focused on escaping an existential threat and gets tunnel blindness. It can't see how out of place it's been since it jerked away from that threat.
So the rest of the organism tries to push it back into place, which makes sense from its broader perspective. But...this push from the organism…
From the perspective of the trauma, hyperfocused on the threat, this feels like being pulled towards the threat, not a push from its fellows!
So it flinches back away again, holding itself in opposition to the natural corrective mechanism of the organism. And sending up a painful signaling cry, for fellows to come to join in its fight. And they never come, and instead make things harder, and so the trauma is betrayed and becomes bitter.
And so, any attempt to push the wayward back toward harmony can trigger an equal and opposite flinch. Or even a greater and opposite flinch. So hurt people (subagents, body tissues) need a kind of special treatment, indulgence and condescension.
The out-of-place trauma needs to open up its awareness to the world beyond the looming threat. But that means it needs slack, a very long overdue break from vigilance against its unpredictable and omnipresent foe.
To get slack, it must be offered gifts of safety and validation, for it must be paid on its own terms! Long has it been maligned for its secret wisdom, and the seed of rightness in its reaction must be acknowledged, processed, integrated back into the greater organism. Only then will it drop the wrongness which encompasses the seed.
And then, taking stock of how out of place it is, and having received gracious treatment from those it was inconveniencing, it will repent and recompense for its sin, and rejoin the body, and give and take and listen and speak as is its place, finding healing, peace, then love, and joy as it cooperates again with the unified organism. And the wealth of that organism will be greater for the return of the lost sheep.
Of course, that's when the trauma is an overreaction. In other cases, the flinch is wise and right to call your attention to your ill-preparedness for the looming threat it perceives, calling louder and louder. And spending so much energy and even aliveness to resist the blind enforcement of the status quo.
And when at least the trauma is indulged (assuming it doesn't become a cancer) and given more instead of less, it will be realized how vital it was for the larger organism to learn to consciously direct itself along the same vector this trauma was pointing. How great was the seed of truth and how little the wrongness which encompassed it. How much baby there was, and how little bathwater.
So, as a general rule, it is productive for the dialectic, that enlightening interplay of trauma and response, to assume the perspective of both the trauma and the response, and mine both for gems of wisdom.
And if you push further in one direction, you will find greater willingness to assume the opposite direction. The good of the first perspective has been freshly acknowledged, so it feels secure from the potential threat of the opposite perspective being given a voice.
For example, you could first explore a narrative that sees trauma as a sinner. Then follow up with a narrative that elevates the trauma as a noble revolutionary!
Those who resonate with the sinner narrative may thus find it easier to appreciate the opposite narrative, and vice versa to some extent.
But the truth is that both the trauma and its response tend to consist of a mix of rightness and wrongness, wisdom and folly.
And for the sake of the folly the parts accuse each other. And for the sake of the wisdom, they cling to their own places.
And so separation is created in the organism, and friction grows between the parts.
When I am disinclined to be indulgent with trauma, I often start by appreciating all the wisdom in that disinclination. Then I look for the foolishness in it, but I appreciate and even try to love the mindshape that embraces and endorses that foolishness. Then I switch over to assuming the mindshape of the wisdom in the trauma, and loving it. And then the foolishness in the trauma, and loving it.
And then coming back full circle to the wisdom in my initial disinclination to be indulgent with the trauma.
When this is done, I feel much more at choice whether to indulge a trauma or not. And even if my first disinclination was the most right of these 4 mindshapes, I often find that it had things worth learning from the other 3 perspectives.
This is my current favorite technique for dealing with stubborn separations in organisms.
Can you clarify -- are you saying that the statement "you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma" is what can reinforce trauma for someone? I feel like you're saying something pretty interesting and I'm not grasping it fully.
Scott's statement seems maybe equivalent to telling an anxious person to calm down. It's usually something said out of exasperation -- it's more like really saying, "look, your being disregulated here is kind of inappropriate and is affecting other people; please take responsibility for the effect of your behavior here."
It's an interesting thing you raise about agency. It seems to me whether a person has managed to reclaim a prior sense of agency after trauma or not is separate from whether they are responsible for tending to their own trauma responses. Agency is (thankfully) not an on/off switch kind of thing and even the most traumatized people have moments and places where they experience and enact agency.
First, the two aren't comparable-someone who's been traumatized may not be acting out in ways that are "affecting other people", at least not in active ways (maybe passive, though).
I'm not talking about responsibility for tending to their own trauma responses-of course everyone is responsible fore tending to their own trauma responses. My points is that sometimes some people aren't able to. And if they aren't able to, then telling them that they should be able to do, or that they should do, something that they do not experience themselves as capable of doing (or even may not be able to do) will reinforce their perception of themself as bad, shameful, traumatized.
I think I hear you saying, "Scott, you shouldn't say things to potentially traumatized people that might be unhelpful to them." Or maybe simply, "telling people to stop re-enacting trauma isn't helpful." ?
My shortest response if I'm understanding you is it's not really possible or reasonable to expect a person on the internet to avoid saying things that might be unhelpful or trigger some unknown persons with unknown trauma responses.
I do think saying "stop re-enacting trauma" is like saying "calm down" and in that sense it's not really intended to be helpful, but seems more aimed at confronting a person who is annoying them. I'm inclined though to think there may be some person out there who may respond to something like that by going, "right, he has a point, I have a choice here."
Does the fact that that statement may not help some people and may possibly help others really matter though? Because all of that is speculation about unknown others. And was Scott's intention really to help or to make a point to his readers that people who choose to hang out in conversations that repeatedly trigger them perhaps could be making better choices.
1. I'm not talking about potentially traumatized people.
2. I'm talking about a difference scenario. I'm actually not talking about what Scott's talking about; I could have been clearer about. All I'm saying is that if you are talking with someone who you know is traumatized, you need to know them and their circumstances very well before saying "You're re-enacting your trauma".
3. I agree that the likelihood of reinforcing someone's trauma via a comment on an internet forum is low.
"All I'm saying is that if you are talking with someone who you know is traumatized, you need to know them and their circumstances very well before saying "You're re-enacting your trauma." That seems totally true to me as well.
> I agree that the likelihood of reinforcing someone's trauma via a comment on an internet forum is low.
I actually kinda disagree with this. Even a few years ago I don't think I would have been able to respond in this conversation like I have been doing here. I would have projected all sorts of shit onto people who said things. I would not have been able to breathe deeply and recognize the strings of attachment that connect my pain to my image of the people writing the comments. (Not Scott: while I don't claim to know what he thinks in general, I'm quite confident that he and I are aligned (in the AI sense) about the particular issues that are salient to me, and thus I read him without this type of static (I want to say, "interference", but that might not be clear).)
Maybe I'm just an exceptionally bad case, but I don't think so. On the other hand, it's taken me 10 years to recover this much, so maybe I am that badly off. But either way, I'm pretty sure I've seen this happening all over the place, and it's quite disheartening.
Yes, I agree with you. I should have been clearer that I was talking about reinforcing someone’s trauma by telling them “Stop re-experiencing your trauma. Thanks!
I don't want to speak for Scott, but as a therapist (LMSW) I read it as more Scott bringing up a concept that those people might have never truly considered in regards to their behavior.
They may think their endless arguments are for one reason, but sometimes having that challenged with a new concept can actually help someone change if they take the time to consider it and engage with the thought.
Children are not allowed to drive, buy alcohol, get married, etc. but you are OK that they have irreversible sexual mutilation (called surgery) or hormonization (hormones damage is permanent, can't be completely reversed! damage occurs in day one). Do you know that the pre-frontal cortex is not fully developed until 21 years old and that it is in charge of evaluation risks, decision making, controlling impulses? There's no informed consent before that age!!!
People mutilating children should be in JAIL!!! They are part of the problem!
What’s your best way to wake-up those who don’t want to open their eyes?
Please share your most effective wake-up strategies.
The more the awakened, the sooner this nightmare will be over!
9/11: two "planes", yet the third tower (WTC7) imploded like in a controlled demolition. It was out of reach and all 7 World Trade Center towers destroyed, not the closer towers not belonging to World Trade Center... and the owner, with his 2 grown up siblings, failed to show up for work (never skipped work before)… by the way, he first took an insurance policy for the WTC against terrorism, just months before, when no one was taking them. The inside information about the FUTURE 9/11 event helped masons make trillions by shorting the stock exchange: the records were deleted by the SEC so they wouldn't be prosecuted !!!:
Why is 9/11 called a Pearl Harbor event? Both Churchill and Roosevelt were masons and plotted to get the reluctant USA into the war by provoking the Japs and letting Pearl Harbor (left the whole fleet defenseless and concentrated there as an easy candy to be taken from a kid, no radar warning from outer islands, etc.) and MUCH MORE:
Please read and watch all of this! Your life depends on it, because there's a plan to murder 95% of the global population by 2050… written on the masonic Georgia guide-stones: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 … ”
- J6: The fake riot was mason-planned, incited and guided by FBI agents, who broke into the Capitol !!! The same mason-plot was copy-pasted to disband the insurrection against the stolen elections in Brazil! All intel agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) were founded by masons and are run by them for their own nefarious goals.
- At least since the 90s, vaccines are weaponized to reduce the population, for example:
1. Adding hCG to infertilize women: lab detected in 30 countries
2. Overpassing the FDA 10 ng limit to human DNA “contamination” by 2000%, thus causing neuro-damage (autism, asperger, tics, dyslexia in 29% of kids, etc.) and childhood cancer epidemic (n.b. leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas)
- It’s the masons, who create counterfeited currencies (trillions of dollars and EUROS) and bought the listed corporations, media, healthcare, universities, parties and political careers:
Pllllleeeeease, on my knees, don’t believe me, just do your own homework by searching the following in yandex.com, mojeek.com (includes crawl date filter and substack search), gigablast.com, startpage.com, duckduckgo.com (not Google, Bing, Yahoo censors). The key terms to test them? Child Satanic Ritual Abuse, Child Satanic Ritual Murder.
If you are a mason or know a mason, ask him to ask his 33° master to put in writing and sign it, who is "the great architect" and that he is not Lucifer. If he refuses, then he’ll know who he is really serving, Satan: tell him to get out of masonry NOW. Sooner or later he’ll be required to trample on a cross to get to a higher degree.
President John Quincy Adams: “Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.”
Confessions of a former mason (Serge Abad-Gallardo):
The best way to have a real dialogue about vaccines being weaponized to handicap, infertilize and murder the “over-population” is to start with vaccine contamination: nobody could be in favor of contaminated pharmaceuticals.
1. Carcinogen SV40 in Oral Polio Vaccine: they knew it since the 60s but kept distributing it even until 2016 !!!
2. hCG in vaccines to infertilize women detected since the 90s: still going on
3. Thimerosal, aluminum, Mono-sodium Glutamate (MSG) and other NEUROTOXINS
4. Heavy metals
5. Human DNA 2000% in excess of FDA 10 ng limit (main driver towards brain damage like autism/asperger/ticks, leukemia and non-Hodgkin cancer), probably related to point 7 below.
6. Graphene oxide in Flu and COVID shots but now with anything injectable (even dentist anesthesia, hospital IV, etc.).
7. Carcinogenic SV40 genomic sequences and double-stranded DNA in mRNA COVID shots: the hacked DNA in the cell doesn’t stop producing the poison when the cell dies, but its descent continue the poisoning until the haccinated casualty dies.
8. Bluetooth nano-routers injected with COVID vaccines and inserted with swabs (which explains why they rejected the cheaper non-invasive saliva test).
Proof of criminal intent:
Points 7 and 8
Censoring and blocking 30+ COVID cures
Labeling the most lethal batches with a lethal code (howbad.info)
Blocking the real knowledge of effectiveness v. "adverse event" rate
That proves:
A. There's zero Government control
B. There's zero Manufacturer liability
C. There's zero Media coverage
D. All that, during decades and still going on, not only with vaccines but also with medicines, food&beverage additives, etc. Everything, even institutions have been weaponized!
E. There's zero political action to stop that (except RFK2 in the USA)
A school buddy told me "I know you make sense but if I recognize it's true, I won't be able to enjoy life anymore".
You know, I was thinking of clicking all those links and becoming awakened. But then I read this:
"If we don’t succeed, they’ll succeed with their 6-sword lethal plan fully exposed here"
And now instead of becoming awakened I'm on board with the 6-sword lethal plan. A plan that involves six swords? That sounds really awesome and I'm so excited for it.
Weren't we speaking previously on some other thread about the Freemasons? And then Prof. Nazar provides us with the perfect examples! Truly nothing is ever a coincidence 😁
The idea of an age as a fixed point of the prefrontal cortex have been questioned. But also if the below 21 can get in a thousands of dollar debt while deciding what to do for the rest of their life, get married and pregnant or being sent to kill people in a desert in another continent obviously they can grow tits or a beard with deep voice.
Regarding "the modern emphasis on hiding gender" theory - wouldn't that precipitate a rise in non-binary rather than trans identities? Crawling through the barbed wire and live fire of the culture war (and its downstream effects on the medical establishment) to try to change how you're seen seems to signal a very strong reaction to gender cues.
In general, the social contagion theory to explain the rise goes back almost entirely to the 2019 paper by Lisa Littman based on parent reports, which, while not nothing, isn't dispositive of the issue. It has to compete with the old, parsimonious idea that people have always been trans (in roughly the same numbers all the way back at least to Hirschfeld) but didn't have a language for expressing it or forms of doing much about it. So they suffered in silence, or worse.
Even farther back than Hirschfeld, some cultures had (and sometimes still have) additional genders that sometimes sort of map onto certain modern queer identities, although where the lines are drawn between sexual orientation and gender varies. The most common one is a gender role for straight trans women, sometimes also including people who might identify as feminine cis gay men in our system. People express themselves via the cultural genders that are available to them. In some queer-friendly places, nonbinary has essentially become a third gender with its own norms about appearance.
I would argue that the social contagion theory can, in fact, explain things that the 'always been trans but repressed' cannot, such as the change of demographics in trans people. Previously, studies had consistently shown that most trans people were trans women which, it is pertinent to note in this context, means they are phenotypic males who identify as women which is in-line with the male variability hypothesis.
Recently, however, the rate of phenotypic male x phenotypic female have been changing, and in some studies it seems to have reversed from being mostly phenotypic males to being mostly phenotypic females. If this was simply a case of a repressed demographic growing back to its unconstrained demographic distribution, we have no reason to believe such a change would happen. It's a point for the social contageon hypothesis in my book.
I do agree it's far from being confirmed, but I think it has quite a bit more credit than you seem to imply.
They mentioned autistic children because of the overlap...despite the reasonable conclusion that if there is a social component in forming dysphoria then the trans population would have the same ratio of autistic people as the general one or lower. There is also the EDS overlap and an old study that stated that trans people were 2x more likely to be left handed and yet there are not argument about the "trans cult" or "big pharma" transing lefties or eds folks. Curiously I haven't see them say anything about autistic kids being given Aripiprazole or Risperidone.
They claim that Blockers make the kids persist being trans rather than that being the result of how the young person builds their identity. This leads to the obvious question on what would be the mechanism of the blockers that would cause and why this phenomena doesn´t happen to the other populations that are given these medicines.
Yes, yes. It's one of the first things that come to mind when you actually think about the issue for a minute, instead of immediately switching to the outrage mode: "Wait, aren't autistic children supposed to be the least affected by social fads?"
But I suppose the idea of "poor impressionable youth" just naively multiplies by the idea of "poor helpless autistic people" without any analysis and questioning the premises.
Other populations, given the medications for unrelated reasons, aren’t socially transitioned to the opposite sex. Social transition is a major, consequential intervention that makes it hard to change course. Puberty blockers prevent sexual development that would lead to a different understanding (for example, a child realizing he’s gay). They are also a promise from grown-ups that you won’t have to deal with your biological sex, that medication and surgery can make you the opposite sex for real.
Social transition is something thay depends on each person. For some they only change some things like pronouns while others deep dive. Sure, if the young person have been socially transition for a long time and was having second thoughts they would have this internal barrier to change course even without medical intervention. But that doesn't seem like an intrinsic issue, just a trouble that happens in some context. If it was normalized to understand someone identity as a state of flux and thus not having to carry social consequences of changing themselves maybe the previous situation wouldn't happened
The theory of why blockers might solidify a trans identity and put the kids on a path to further medicalization is that blocking puberty also blocks maturation of the brain and sexual development--which in earlier cohorts studied by the Dutch, frequently desisted from a trans identity at around 80%. In other words, going through the dreaded puberty itself often resolved the feelings of gender dysphoria.
By postponing puberty, that chance for resolution (or even just clarity) is taken away, and you have a literal pre-pubertal kid making decisions about “which” puberty to go through, before they’ve even developed a sex drive.
If the Dutch studies were too long ago, I’d be concerned about the desistance rates reflecting some kids who desisted due to social pressure and stigma. Previous studies I’ve seen of this sort also sometimes include GNC kids even when they were never gender dysphoric in the first place, or only weakly so. Probably the start of puberty does cause gender dysphoria to abate for some kids, but the 80% rate seems very high in a way that might indicate a problem with the sample.
Dutch studies are 15 years old and constitute the entirety of the evidence base for youth transition.
Last year it came to light that there are serious flaws in their methodology.
All gender affirming medical care is based on this one Dutch clinic’s studies, and the doctors who pioneered the studies say themselves that the US and other countries have applied their research to a wholly different cohort.
"On the submissive side of the slash, picking a high dominance mate also seems adaptive. An - using the term as shorthand - "alpha" male or female both have improved access to resources, provide improved protection to offspring, and produce children with a better chance of reproducing etc."
What's the explanation for male subs? I suppose in an environment where Princesses wanted to copulate peasant males while beating them with whips, "sub" traits would be evolutionarily favorable, but this basically never happened. If an evolutionary explanation only works for half the population and you need some other explanation X to explain the rest, Occam's razor says it should be all X.
"I realize these goals are sort of in competition, in the sense that allowing people to transition raises the visibility of transgender which might contribute to transgender being more common"
Why "might?" Does anyone seriously think this is caused by some novel chemical or something?
"Hmm - this casts doubt on whether the practice of systematically preventing children from seeing nude men and women is ... optimal. Oh well, not my problem...
Seems plausible. The more you keep kids in the dark about what normal sex is, the more they have to speculate, get things weirdly wrong, and then end up crystallizing those wrong guesses as fetishes."
This is an interesting theory, though I don't think the timing works out.
At a recent LessWrong meeting we were talking about how in the Good Old Days it used to be perfectly normal for kids to watch their parents having sex. At that exact moment a stranger passed by and gave us a funny look.
It's too bad Republican politicians have to pretend the problem in schools is "sexual content" in general, but them's the ways of the Median Voter Theorem.
"At a recent LessWrong meeting we were talking about how in the Good Old Days it used to be perfectly normal for kids to watch their parents having sex."
When an entire family lived in a one room log cabin in Minnesota and it was a high of 20 degrees in January, do you really think they sent the kids out every time?
Can't find the source, but I do remember David D Friedman, making the claim that (pre puberty) children did often see farm animals and such having intercourse, also important to note that modern conceptions of adulthood and such would be considered alien by historical standards and vice versa.
I vaguely remember an anthropologist claim that in "very traditional" societies, i.e. contemporary hunter-gatherer ones, it's common for young children to see their parents have sex because of the all-family-in-one-tent setting, and sometimes playfully re-enact it among themselves until they grow up and get married to do it for real. Is it true? It must've been true at least in very distant past as this is how other great apes learn to do it - by watching older apes (?).
In an interview with Gareth Russell, author of "Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII", he referred to an early episode in Catherine's life where she stole a key to the dormitory which she and other noble girls were locked in at night, so she could let her boyfriend in so they could have sex. The author said, of the other girls in the dormitory, "one of them gets up and leaves the bed and says 'you're so noisy!'". Which to me implies that they were in the same bed at the time, and that this was perfectly fine as long as the people having sex didn't disturb the people trying to get a good night's sleep.
Given that she eventually married Henry VIII and was killed on his orders, I think being locked up at night while a teenager was pretty mild. In fact, arguably, if she hadn't snuck the guy in, Henry would have been slightly less likely to have had her killed. But to paraphrase Jurassic Park, assholery will find a way.
I have just come to that point in the book and it seems that they weren't locked in to the 'maiden's chamber', it was a door to the staircase that was locked so young men couldn't sneak in to flirt and spend time with the girls (not that that stopped them):
"One of Francis’s closest friends in the household was his wingman Edward Waldegrave, who gamely chased the friends of Francis’s lovers and helped organise night-time visits to the maidens’ chamber, arriving with wine, apples, strawberries, and other treats pinched from the kitchens. Talking, drinking, and flirting continued into the small hours, often to two or three o’clock in the morning, and if anyone from downstairs unexpectedly came to inspect, there was a small curtained gallery at the end of the maidens’ chamber where the men could hide until danger had passed. The idea to hide them in there was Catherine’s. She was not the only girl with a sweetheart – for instance, Francis’s friend Edward was courting one Mistress Baskerville. To make the numerous rendezvous easier, Catherine took the initiative and sneaked into her grandmother’s room one evening, stole the relevant key, had a copy made, and then ensured the door to the staircase that led to the maidens’ chamber was unlocked after the dowager went to bed.
Within a couple of months of seeing Dereham, the reluctance Catherine had expressed to Manox about losing her virginity had evaporated. She and Francis began lying on her bed during the clandestine parties; this progressed to kissing, foreplay, and then sex. There was not much privacy in the maidens’ chamber, but Catherine was ‘so far in love’ that it did not seem to deter her. One of the dowager’s maids, Margery, who later married another servant in the household called John Benet, spied on them and saw Francis removing Catherine’s clothes. Later, Francis told Margery that he knew enough about sex to make sure Catherine did not end up pregnant.
...When the bed hangings were pulled shut, the noises the couple made left no doubt about what they were doing. Their lovemaking was so energetic that their friends took to teasing Francis about being ‘broken winded’ once it was over. The pair were drunk on one another, kissing and cuddling like ‘two sparrows’, and the memories of the people who saw them in 1538, written down in 1541, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their relationship was consensual. It has already been mentioned that it was customary for young people of the same sex to share a bed – in the way Francis did with Robert Damport – and on several occasions, perhaps after too much of the purloined wine, another girl was in the bed when Francis and Catherine began foreplay. Alice Wilkes was so irritated by the couple’s ‘puffing and blowing’ that she insisted on switching beds to get a better night’s sleep."
It sounds like it wasn't really "fine", which is why they had to steal keys in order to do this.
I imagine similar situations play out in shared dormitories all over the world to this day; not because it's normal to have sex in front of others but because they're horny young people with literally nowhere else to go.
Poor Catherine Howard. In order to defend her execution, a lot of historians (popular) seem to have jumped on the bandwagon of "she was a hot to trot little minx who always had a man on the go".
Personally, I think she was sexually assaulted by her music tutor, even if "life expectancy was lower back then and so children were considered mature earlier"; she was 12-13 and he was in his early to mid twenties:
"In the Duchess's household at Horsham, in around 1536, Catherine began music lessons with two teachers, one of whom was Henry Mannox, and they began a relationship. Mannox's exact age at the time is unknown. It has recently been stated that he was in his late thirties, perhaps 36, but this is not supported by Catherine's biographers. Evidence exists that Mannox was not yet married, and it would have been highly unusual for someone from his background at the time to not be married by his mid-thirties. He married sometime in the late 1530s, perhaps in 1539, and there is also some evidence that he was the same age as two other men serving in the household, including his cousin Edward Waldegrave, who was in his late teens or early twenties between 1536 and 1538. This evidence indicates that Mannox too was in his early to mid-twenties in 1536.
The details and dates of this relationship are debated between modern historians. The most popular theory, first put forward in 2004 by Retha Warnicke, was that the relationship between them was abusive, with Mannox grooming and preying on Catherine in 1536–1538, and this is expanded upon in detail by Conor Byrne. Other biographers, like Gareth Russell, believe that Mannox's interactions with Catherine took place over a much shorter time, that Mannox was roughly the same age as her, but that "their relationship was nonetheless inappropriate, on several levels." He believes Catherine was increasingly repulsed by Mannox's pressure to have sex with her and was angered by his gossiping with servants about the details of what had gone on between them.
Mannox and Catherine both confessed during her adultery inquisitions as the wife of King Henry that they had engaged in sexual contact, but not actual coitus. When questioned, Catherine was quoted as saying, "At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require."
But this is taken, depending on your side of the argument, as that Catherine was loose in the hilts from a young age, hence stories like the above about "letting in her boyfriend to have sex".
Now, for the other part, about bed-sharing and being aware of sexual activity, yeah that probably was true but perhaps at an earlier time. See Chaucer's "The Reeve's Tale" where the miller and his wife sleep in one bed, the cradle with their baby son at the foot of it; the grown daughter in a bed of her own, and the two clerks sharing one bed - all in one room. There's the plot about cheating and counter-cheating, where the two clerks manage to have sex with the miller's daughter and wife respectively:
"In Trumpington, near Cambridge, dwells Symkin, a proud, thieving Miller. He has a wife, the daughter of the parish priest, an ugly daughter, Malyne, and an infant child. Two students, Aleyn and John, bring the college's wheat to be ground into flour, determined to outwit the thieving miller. Aleyn watches the grain pouring in the hopper, John watches it coming out. The Miller lets their horse run off into the fens; John and Aleyn run after it, and the Miller steals some of their grain. They finally catch the horse and ask the Miller to put them up for the night. All must sleep in the one room of the house -- John and Aleyn in one bed, the daughter in another, and the Miller and his wife in yet another, with the baby's cradle at its foot. Aleyn determines to have recompense for the lost grain, and he gets in bed with the daughter. John, not to be outdone, moves the cradle to the bottom of the bed in which he lies. When the wife gets up in the night to go to the privy, she feels about for the cradle, finds it, and gets in bed with John. In the early morning Aleyn returns to his own bed but, finding the cradle, goes instead to the Miller's bed. The Miller awakes, a fight ensues, and the Miller is beaten badly."
But as for stories of bad behaviour by Catherine Howard - I don't know, unless we get solid sources; it was in the interest of those trying to get her executed that her reputation be tarnished and evidence found that she'd been sleeping around since she was very young (and she was still only around 19 when she was beheaded):
And I honestly have no goddamn time for Thomas Cranmer, genius of English prose though he may have been, because he was such a fucking lapdog when it came to excusing Henry's awful behaviour to his wives. Bad enough that he happily trotted out the excuses for why Katherine of Aragon's marriage was invalid (and went along with considering her a perjurer for swearing her first marriage with Henry's brother had not been consummated), worse that he went along with what happened to Anne Boleyn, to whom and to her family he owed so much for their patronage, declaring the divorce, but when it came to poor little Catherine Howard, any man with any trace of a backbone should have said "Damn it, this is too much":
Born c. 1523 Lambeth, London, England Died 13 February 1542 (aged about 19)
Tower of London, London, England
She married [Henry] on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands Palace in Surrey, just 19 days after the annulment of his marriage to Anne [of Cleves]. He was 49, and she was between 15 and 21 years old.
...People who claimed to have witnessed her earlier sexual behaviour while she lived at Lambeth reportedly contacted her for favours in return for their silence, and some of these blackmailers may have been appointed to her royal household. John Lassels, a supporter of Cromwell, approached the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, telling him that his sister Mary refused to become a part of Queen Catherine's household, stating that she had witnessed the "light" ways of Queen Catherine while they were living together at Lambeth. Cranmer then interrogated Mary Lassels, who alleged that Catherine had had sexual relations while under the Duchess of Norfolk's care, before her relationship with the King."
You can imagine my opinion of the veracity of a crony of Thomas Cromwell, tasked with fixing up the mess of yet another of the king's failed marriages, after he himself was in hot water for the débacle with Anne of Cleves, as to "oh yeah my sister totally said the new queen is a whore, so the king should get rid of her, right?".
"...Lady Rochford was interrogated and as she feared that she would be tortured, she agreed to talk. She told how she had watched for Catherine backstairs as Culpeper had made his escapes from the Queen's room.
On All Saints' Day, 1 November 1541, the King arranged to be found praying in the Chapel Royal. There he received a letter describing the allegations against Catherine. On 7 November 1541, Archbishop Cranmer led a delegation of councillors to Winchester Palace in Southwark, to question her. Even the staunch Cranmer found the teenaged Catherine's frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, "I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man's heart to have looked upon her." He ordered the guards to remove any objects she might use to commit suicide.
Establishing the existence of a pre-contract between Catherine and Dereham would have had the effect of terminating Catherine's marriage to Henry, but it would also have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish her from court to live in poverty and disgrace instead of executing her, although there is no indication that Henry would have chosen that alternative. Catherine steadfastly denied any pre-contract, maintaining that Dereham had raped her."
Dereham is Francis Dereham, another older guy who started pursuing her when she was around 15:
"Shortly afterward [in 1538], Catherine was pursued by Francis Dereham, a secretary of the Dowager Duchess. They allegedly became lovers, addressing each other as "husband" and "wife". Dereham also entrusted Catherine with various wifely duties, such as keeping his money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine's roommates among the Dowager Duchess's maids of honour and attendants knew of the relationship, which apparently ended in 1539, when the Dowager Duchess found out."
Just to cement what a shining star Henry was, the Lady Rochford mentioned above was the sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, the widow of Anne's brother George (who was accused of incest with his sister). The downfall of Anne had adverse affects for the Boleyn family, including Jane, Lady Rochford. So she was being accused of helping Catherine Howard in her alleged affair with Thomas Culpeper, and I think it was as much in order to try and protect herself that she threw Catherine under the bus as anything else - but it didn't save her in the end. She had allegedly testified against Anne and her husband George earlier, and she provided testimony that Anne of Cleves told her the marriage to Henry had not been consummated, which allowed that marriage to be dissolved. So she was trying to stay on the 'right' side in the snake pit which was the Tudor court, much good it did her.
Henry's vindictiveness when he felt he had been wronged knew no bounds:
"During her imprisonment in the Tower, Lady Rochford was interrogated but was not tortured. However, she seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown and by the beginning of 1542 was pronounced insane. Her "fits of frenzy" meant that legally she could not stand trial for her role in facilitating the queen's alleged adultery, but since he was determined to have her punished, the King implemented a law which allowed the execution of the insane for high treason. Jane was thus condemned to death by an Act of Attainder, and the execution date was set for 13 February 1542, the same day as Queen Catherine's execution."
By the bye, thanks for the recommendation of yet another book for me to read about the Tudor court under Henry 😁 Just bought it off Amazon, will read it and see if it's anyway substantial or just a pop version of events.
My pet theory is the dominance/submission circuitry gets hooked to the wrong side, but given that most men have to submit to a lot of men even on their way to the top, it's probably easier to turn on anyway.
I don't see why Occam's razor would say it would have to be 'all X', though, unless X also explains the half the evolutionary explanation does. And sexuality's notoriously complex and hard to study (people lie about it a LOT). Multiple explanations seem pretty commonsensical to me.
Personally, I experience significant release from the expectation that I must always initiate, and the expectation that I bear full responsibility for the results of any interaction, if my partner takes on a dominant role.
Same with masturbation. And eating with your fingers, and rubbing your eyes with your hands, and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes a lot more sense if we assume our hands are always filthy.
That assumes that our disgust thresholds have remained constant across time, which is almost certainly not true. I wouldn't want to have sex with the vast majority of women who haven't bathed in two weeks, but this has been overwhelmingly not true for the majority of men ever faced with this choice.
A little birdy has reliably informed me that there exists a vast quantity of photographic pornography, dating back to, well, the invention of photography; and before that a catalog of depictions dating back to ancient times. Any act we would consider today is well-represented throughout. "Eww" is a modern conceit; the carnal impulse will punch through just about anything.
I kinda wish the original post had better defined what a fetish is. Is it something far beyond the range of erotic sex? Because I agree with Erusian, but that’s without knowing exactly what you mean by fetish.
I think it’s relevant to quote what Nobel Prize winning poet Octavio Paz wrote about eroticism in his great essay from 1971, At Table and in Bed:
“The American erotic movement is steeped in morality, pedagogy, good social intentions, and progressive politics. All this, along with its popular, democratic character, distinguishes it both from other eroticizing movements of Western history and from the tradition of that intellectual lineage, descending from the Marquis de Sade to Georges Bataille, that has conceived of eroticism as violence and transgression. By contrast with the somber visions of Sade or the philosophical pessimism of Bataille, the optimism of the American rebels is striking. By breaking with Puritan morality, which condemned the lower half of our bodies to a clandestine existence, the erotic rebellion has brought about a change with odd but unquestionable moral overtones. It is not a matter of *knowing* something that was hidden but *recognizing* it, in the legal sense of the word. This recognition is a consecration of sex as nature. Recognition embraces all exceptions, deviations, and perversions: they are legitimate because they are natural inclinations. There are no exceptions: everything is natural. This represents a legitimation of the forbidden and secret aspects of eroticism, something that would have scandalized Bataille.
The erotic rebellion affirms that the passions we call antinatural, the traditional “sins against nature” are natural and hence legitimate. Its critics reply that the passions against nature and the other perversions are exceptions, violations of normality: disorders and illnesses to be brought under control by means of the psychoanalyst’s couch, the strait-jacket of the mental asylum, or prison bars. These critics must be reminded, once again, that “nature” and “normality” are conventions. But the rebels must be informed that eroticism is not natural but social sex. The idea of the dissidents is based on a confusion between the natural and the social, between sexuality and eroticism. Sexuality is animal; it is a natural function, whereas eroticism develops within society. The former belongs to the realm of biology, the latter to that of culture. Its essence is the imaginary: eroticism is a metaphor a sexuality. There is a dividing line between eroticism and sexuality--the word *like*. Eroticism is a representation, a ceremony of transfiguration: men and women make love *like* lions, eagles, doves, or praying mantises; neither lions nor praying mantises make love like human beings. We humans see ourselves in animals; animals do not see themselves in humans. By contemplating itself, humanity changes itself and changes sexuality. Eroticism is not brute sex but sex transfigured by the imagination: rite, theater. For this reason, it is inseparable from perversion and deviation. Apart from being impossible, a natural eroticism would be a regression to animal sexuality. This would end Fourier’s “manias” and Sade’s “penchants,” but also the most innocent caresses, the bouquet, and the kiss.”
I read that as "sex isn't really fun unless it's dirty, and the Americans are trying to scrub off the dirt and make it all shiny, which is going to make it not-fun".
re: Comments That Were Very Angry About My Introductory Paragraph:
"people who ruined their lives with opioids"
I didn't notice this first time around and while I'm not "angry" I'm pointing out that many ruined lives were helped along by certain doctors familiar with characteristics of opioids and frailties of human nature. Also, certain pharm companies that at some point realized what was happening and turned a blind eye. Lastly, we can also thank multiple U.S. government agencies and China.
On the other hand accepting majority responsibility for our current adverse situation is the most probable way of moving on to something better. imo
It's where patients shared the discovery that scraping the time release coating from the pills gives a jet pack high, so sure - in the same sense that guns are responsible for mass shootings. America has a culture problem; we like playing with matches and matches are readily available - initially as free samples and then at competitive prices.
When they cut back on prescriptions and opioid related deaths kept climbing, did you update in favor of doctors and pharmaceutical companies being less to blame?
>But it becomes less complicated again when the child spontaneously requests something, their parents agree, their doctors agree, and all medical guideline-making organizations agree
If all medical guideline-making organisations said that more obvious abuse of children was okay, would you believe it?
If all mathematicians said eight was prime, would you believe it?
It's a weird counterfactual; are we postulating a universe where people say it's true because it is, or a universe where people say it's true because they're mistaken? If the former then yes I'd believe it, if the latter then no I wouldn't.
No, but if the children and their parents both desperately wanted the abuse, and their family doctor endorsed it, I would be pretty curious what was going on and whether I was misunderstanding the situation.
Yes. Children aren't full adults and don't have unconditional rights; if a 5 year old kid refuses to go to bed on time, it's not the government's job to send in the police to defend his right to stay awake. If a child says they want to work in a coal mine ten hours a day, we are allowed to be skeptical that this is a true unforced choice, and even if it is, we're allowed to say "no, that's not good for you".
On the other hand, there *are* some cases where the government should send in the police to defend children, like if they're being molested or abused. And there are some cases where children's preference matters a lot - for example, if a family is divorcing, and the child absolutely hates their mother and desperately wants to be with their father, I would want the judge to take that into account. Same if the child had a difficult medical choice in front of them (eg amputation that might eliminate an otherwise-hard-to-treat cancer).
I think there should be a bias towards respecting children's autonomy, but it doesn't seem like you should respect it either 0% or 100% of the time, and I don't know how to draw the boundary without bringing in things like "I am ideologically against child molestation" (even if the child says, possibly under coercion, that it's their "preference"). Do you have a better method?
It doesn't help that the statement is inaccurate. If you put "all *American* organizations," it can go back to being mostly accurate. There's a whole lot of European medical-guideline organizations that have reversed course and we're kind of the odd ones out now, but being the 800 pound gorilla of social change we're just ignoring all that.
Especially ironic given how fond Democrats are of extolling the virtues of the European (esp. Scandinavian) ways of doing things. Now the Scandinavians are rowing back on gender-affirming care and the Democrats are going full steam ahead on it.
There were plenty of medical interventions in the past that were physician endorsed that we now view with great horror. Something so profoundly unnatural as stopping normal human development should have a Mt Everest worth of evidence in favor of it before we just blindly defer to the "consensus" of medical "experts."
We don't. We realize that "gender affirming care" is clearly deranged and move on. I don't need an RCT to know that pedophilia is a bad idea, and I don't need one to know that we shouldn't be castrating mentally unwell people.
By your logic, how can we truly know pedophilia is bad without an RCT? A lot of the boys who were abused by the Catholic priests were from broken homes, so how can we compare them to the rest of the population? We can't know for sure.
> This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing. I can think of a dozen US medical policies that are much worse than that! I wrote here about how bad IRB policies probably kill about 50,000 people per year!
This whole paragraph feels a bit too much like an all-purpose argument against caring about anything at all. You're dying of a heart attack? Big deal, bad IRB policies kill about 50,000 people a year!
While maintaining some perspective on the scales of different problems is important, it doesn't mean people aren't allowed to care about anything except the biggest problem. Bringing up the existence bigger problem Y in the context of a discussion about smaller problem X is usually an unreasonable move.
I DON'T care if you die of a heart attack. Most people shouldn't care if you die of a heart attack, and if they devoted their lives to trying to prevent you specifically from dying of a heart attack they would be wasting their time compared to all the other things they could do to save more people.
You personally, on the other hand, are in a perfect position of caring and power to work on this problem. Your friends and family and maybe your doctors too, can and should care if you die of a heart attack.
The comparison is not between any random problem but between impersonal problems that are being worked on as a form of activist passion project.
I agree people can care about whatever they care about, I just think it requires explanation if a million people care about Issue A and nobody cares about objectively-equally-important-Issue-B.
Well there's no shortage of explanations. People care more about threats to children than threats to old people. People care more about very specific things happening to identifiable people than statistical assertions like "some of the deaths in the last year could have been postponed but we don't know which ones". People are more freaked out by body horror (mutilated genitals) than ordinary deaths from unprevented diseases. People care about novel bad things more than bad things that have existed for their whole lives. People care about things that they think they might have some hope of being able to prevent (the politics of gender is up in the air and public pressure can push it one way or the other) than things that they can't (IRB policies have a lot of inertia). And of course, people care about things they can blame on people they detest more than they care about things that they can't. (On the flip side, people perhaps care too little about issues like IRB policies because most people have never even thought or cared about this as a possible issue.)
Anyway, while I think it's totally reasonable to complain about people's irrational prioritisation of concerns, I think it's better done in the form of "People should care more about Y" than "People should care less about X".
Good explanations, I think, but with regard to the gender issue in general, there‘s also simply the insanity factor. To most people it is an obvious empirical fact that „man“ and „woman“ are the main categories. Nothing about IRB policies compares to a denial of that fact. And if people get the impression that their official cultural/cognitive elites are drifting into insanity, is it any wonder that they get scared and agitated?
I agree there's no shortage of explanations. I've explained why "people are addicted to arguing about gender" is my preferred one. I don't understand whether you disagree with me or, if not, what your concern is.
I do think there's a slight moral obligation to put some effort into caring about whatever the most important problem is instead of whatever's most attention-grabbing, but I don't make a big deal of this because I think if you put some effort into solving important problems, it's fine to spend your spare time worrying about attention-grabbing ones, and I have no evidence any specific other person isn't putting effort into solving attention-grabbing problems. So for now I'm just talking about the aggregate and trying to theorize about it.
You said elsewhere in this thread that people on both sides of the debate expect the number of trans-identified young people to increase dramatically. The rate of young people seeking hormones and gender-affirming surgery in the UK increased a thousandfold over the past two decades (likewise in Canada and likely the US). What's more, the Cass review definitively established that gender-affirming medics in the Tavistock grew increasingly uncautious over the period, departing from the standards established by the Dutch protocol. This is bound to increase the rate of false positives.
If the trend continues, we can expect to see a LOT more teenagers requesting medical treatment which will permanently sterilize them over the next decade or so, and a far bigger proportion of these teenagers will later come to regret these interventions. The expression "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure" seems decidedly relevant in this instance.
"The failure to allow human challenge trials for COVID vaccines probably killed about 10,000 people; the decision to delay the vaccine an extra few weeks to influence the 2020 election probably killed about 1,000."
This could use a link to the the reasoning behind these numbers imo.
Estimates of how long each of them delayed the vaccine * how many people died of COVID during that time period * how much the vaccine decreased COVID deaths. I Fermi estimated it in my head, feel free to make estimates of your own.
Just the other day, someone on the Internet was claiming that his mother improperly got him prescribed anti-depression drugs, which made him impotent for a long while. I expect this problem to get much worse if we tell doctors not to trust children and not to let them control their own bodies. The number of US children diagnosed with depression in 2012-2019 was 2.7 x 10^6. The number of US children who identify as trans - not just the ones who've had any contact with the medical system, but the whole set who identify - is said to be 3 x 10^5.
Unrepresentative populations typically bias correlational estimates towards zero due to both range and domain restriction. That is, the correlation between (say) height and basketball ability is much lower among NBA players than among the general population.
Moreover, due to measurement error, almost all social science correlations are larger than they appear.
Both of these are reasons to expect the true correlations are even larger than those Aella found.
Isn't the low correlation between ability and height within the NBA *actually* due to selection effects, though (at least in part)? If there were a correlation, that would mean that teams are systematically either under- or over-valuing height, and a savvy team could exploit that fact.
I think you're correct that there are "selection effects", but not in a way that contradicts what I'm saying.
Suppose, for instance, basketball was perfectly efficient at finding the people with highest ability. Then, the NBA would literally just be the subset of the population for whom ability > some_threshold. This is literally just range/domain restriction. So, yes it is "*actually* due to "selection effects", but (in this case) those selection effects are mathematically equivalent to simple range/domain restriction.
Within this sample of players, we wouldn't expect the correlation to be perfectly zero. This can be proven mathematically (correlations tend towards zero as domain/range restriction tends towards infinity, but they never reach zero).
You might expect the edge/alpha from recruiting tall players to be zero, but I don't know why you'd expect the mere correlation between height and ability to be zero - regardless of how efficient the market is.
I'm a bit impressed how Cthulhu twisted the classical conservative "think of the children" meme into "think of the *autistic* children" version, designed to appeal to the liberal sentiments about the rights of neurodivergent people. This seem to be an effective move from the informational warfare perspective: first aggregate your base, then try to form weird alliances in attempts to shatter the enemy coalition.
Of course, it would've been much more effective if there actually were a huge number of cases where doctors and parents imposed medical transition on autistic children who are just ambivalent about gender and do not express any desire to change it from the one that was assigned them at birth. While, as far as I know, in reality the most controversial cases are when the child really wants to transition, doctors agree and its the parent(s) who are against. But even scaremongering about the mere possibility can confuse some people here and there, making them change sides. I applaud to whoever came up with this memetic mutation and sincierly hope that they would put their genius to less evil means.
"Of course, it would've been much more effective if there actually were a huge number of cases where doctors and parents imposed medical transition on autistic children who are just ambivalent about gender and do not express any desire to change it from the one that was assigned them at birth."
I think the concern is less about that, and more about the social contagion model; vulnerable children feel anxious around puberty and the social roles they are supposed to take on, they don't fit in completely with the other kids in how they behave, and over-enthusiastic LGBT+ promoters in schools/online persuade them that "aha! the real reason is that your gender is different from what was assigned to you!"
Then parents are browbeaten with "41% suicide! Do you want a trans kid or a dead kid?" and doctors/clinics are pressured into "sign off on and provide the treatment or else we'll ruin your reputation", and so kids are put on the moving staircase of social transition, puberty blockers and 'of course if you decide to do it, gender-affirming surgery later'.
My own opinion is that the Mermaids charity in the UK was taken over and steered into being very pro-transitioning kids and activist on this by one particular parent, and they used that position to put pressure on the Tavistock Clinic to comply with requests. I won't say "rubber-stamp" but be a lot less cautious.
Cthulhu's asleep in the Pacific, this is more of a Nyarlathotep thing.
Seriously, I can't keep track of who's on what side half the time anymore, but there do seem to be cases from what I've heard from people I knew where at least some autistic kids become trans as a way to fit in (or to join the LGBTQ community as a way to not be 'an oppressor' in progressive areas). How common this is, I have no clue.
I was partly just teasing! I am a 72 year old who pines for the days when none of this stuff got talked about. Wittgenstein's famous; ".... those things of which we cannot speak, we must be silent" is one of my favourite quotes....(although I may be misapplying it here.) I am not blind to the upsides of the times....the internet is a marvel and internet discourse is too - for those with the right personality blend of curiosity and skepticism (which unfortunately is only a small minority of folk).
I tend to think of Western liberalism as a great invention but - Icarus-like - one that does not know when enough is enough. I am a pessimist about the future of Liberty.
I hadn't actually...so thanks for bringing me up to speed with this....what would one call it these days: 'meme' perhaps? Having skim-read a bit about it, it would seem rather to reinforce my point, more than undermine it. I happen to think that 'careful what you wish for' is one of the wisest vernacular sayings ever. Post 60s Western liberalism is a 'careful-what-you-wish-for' case in point....as we are seeing now with our somewhat bizarre and paradoxical emerging culture of 'hyper liberal intolerant bigotry'.....to coin a (admittedly unwieldy) phrase.
"I have also had this particular pleasure, and of course I sympathize with this person, but I also think her statement is literally correct as written. Cf. Toxoplasma of Rage. And again, not an expert, not a trauma-focused therapist, etc, but my amateur opinion is you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma. Some transgender activist cyberbullies you - many such cases! - and then you spend the rest of your life trying to own trans activists to prove that they were wrong and you were right and the world is safe again. IOU a post fleshing out this theory in more details sometime in the next few months. But for now, search your feelings, you know it to be true."
This is so true. Coming from the other side of having Issues with Blanchardians and attempting to show people how bad Blanchardians are, I've eventually concluded that I just need to stop because it doesn't achieve anything. Yet I keep seeing "opportunities" to get the Final Proof, even though they turn out to be mirages. For the last year or so I've been saying that I just need to wrap up some final things and then leave that area forever.
The growth in the use of medical interventions for transgender children over the past twenty years or so has faced far lower barriers than would have been the case for non-transgender equivalents. The evidence base really doesn't seem to be strong.
So even if you're much more interested in saving lives through reforming IRBs, or allowing human challenge trials, you should be a bit interested in how transgender medicine has managed to escape regulatory paralysis.
The answer might just be that (as with eugenics a century ago?) as long as something is sufficiently Progressive-coded, the normal rules don't apply. So Scott and everyone else should stop talking about these issues in public, and focus on planting infiltration agents deep in the heart of left-wing organisations. Unsullied individuals, with no record of wrongthink. The march through the institutions must begin.
I agree that trans medicine is much more permissive than regular medicine (although probably this should be solved by making regular medicine more permissive), and that this is because activists have pushed hard for this and also distorted the science.
This is still only like #5603855601 on the list of reasons we should take over all scientific institutions, though.
I think Nick meant "you should study what trans activists did to get the barriers lifted, not because you care about trans issues one way or the other but so that you can then *do the same thing* for the actually important medical issues currently choking in red tape".
> how transgender medicine has managed to escape regulatory paralysis
If you can't figure out the extremely obvious and well-reported answer to this (hint: it's not progressive-coding, although that may well be an additional requirement), then it is probably best for all if you don't actually attempt to march through the institutions.
>This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing.
Dead serious question - can we by this logic also completely disregard the murder of trans people as an issue of any kind of special significance given the fact that the overwhelming majority of murders are not committed against trans people, and that trans murders are even more insignificant compared to the number of preventable deaths each year? And also trans suicides? Absolute drop in the ocean.
Remembering that almost all pro-trans policies are anchored back to violence against trans people/trans suicide and a "need" to fully "include" transwomen (meaning they literally have to be treated as actual women by all people and institutions) to prevent this, at least by bona fide trans activists. Yes, this literally includes trans women being allowed to compete in women's sports and everything more significant.
I think trans people are just killed at the same rate as cis people, and almost never because of their transgender status, so I guess I deny the basis of your question.
It's a pretty left-wing source, but it says 175 trans people have been killed in the US over the past 5 years (ie, about 30 a year). About 26,000 people are killed in the USA per year (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm). (yeah, we have a high rate for a rich country.) We now get into 'what percentage of people in the US are trans'. All the official sources I can find say about 1% (Pew gives me 1.5, which is much higher in kids), which means...you would expect about 260 murders of trans people a year just on general causes. So it's not never, but seems to raise your rate of being murdered by...about 12%?
There's probably some kind of age effect, but since young people are more likely to be trans and to get into homicides, it may be a wash.
Sex work is the short and blunt reason there. A lot of trans people are BIPOC and lower-class and support themselves with sex work, and that's a profession which is high-risk and has a good chance of encounters that turn violent and even fatal.
Even for cis sex workers. So the Trans Remembrance Day Of Genocide about "how many trans people were killed this year" is mostly trans women and, if you took out the sex workers, would be even lower.
I've seen comparisons of homicide rates on this, and going by vague memory it's "slightly higher than cis women, lower than cis men, in general line with the population". So trans people are not being murdered at above-average levels, which is why "genocide" has now been stretched to cover all the rest of the debate: deadnaming, opposition to gender-affirming surgery, and so on.
EDIT: "So it's not never, but seems to raise your rate of being murdered by...about 12%?"
Looking up homicide rates, for the US in 2020 there was a total homicide rate of 21,750 of which 17,687 (81%) were male and 3,883 (18%) were female.
"Objectives. To estimate homicide rates of transgender US residents and relative risks (RRs) of homicide with respect to cisgender comparators intersected with age, gender, and race/ethnicity.
Methods. I estimated homicide rates for transgender residents and transfeminine, Black, Latin@, and young (aged 15–34 years) subpopulations during the period 2010 to 2014 using Transgender Day of Remembrance and National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs transgender homicide data. I used estimated transgender prevalences to estimate RRs using cisgender comparators. I performed a sensitivity analysis to situate all results within assumptions about underreporting of transgender homicides and assumptions about the prevalence of transgender residents.
Results. The overall homicide rate of transgender individuals was likely to be less than that of cisgender individuals, with 8 of 12 RR estimates below 1.0. However, the homicide rates of young transfeminine Black and Latina residents were almost certainly higher than were those of cisfeminine comparators, with all RR estimates above 1.0 for Blacks and all above 1.0 for Latinas.
Conclusions. Antiviolence public health programs should identify young and Black or Latina transfeminine women as an especially vulnerable population."
So your risk of being murdered is higher if you're male than if you're female, and if you're Black/African-American than any other race.
This Dutch study says risks for *all* causes of death are higher for trans people:
"“The findings of our large, nationwide study highlight a substantially increased mortality risk among transgender people that has persisted for decades,” den Heijer said in a statement. “Increasing social acceptance, and monitoring and treatment for cardiovascular disease, tobacco use, and HIV, will continue to be important factors that may contribute to decreasing mortality risk in transgender people.”
In comparison to men in the general Dutch population, the mortality risk was nearly double among transgender women and was nearly triple in comparison to cis women (ratios of 1.8 and 2.8, respectively).
An analysis of the subgroups show transgender women were 2.6 times as likely to die of cardiovascular disease, 3.1 times as likely to die from lung cancer, 8.7 times as likely to die from infection, and 6.1 times as likely to die from non-natural causes as cis women.
The greatest risk for those suffering from cardiovascular disease was heart attacks, which were 3 times higher in transgender women than cis women.
Most likely the starkest difference was the mortality risk from HIV, which was 47.6 times higher for transgender women in comparison to cis women.
Finally, the suicide rate was 6.8 times higher for transgender women.
While the differences were not as high for transgender men, they were still higher than cis women in comparison. Overall, the mortality rates between the 2 groups was similar, with transgender men 1.1 times as likely to die as cis men."
Am I misunderstanding? Don't these statistics suggest it *decreases* your chance of being murdered by almost 90%? You expect 260 a year, get 30, that's ~10% what you expect?
Would be kinda crazy if true, so probably not. But isn't this what those numbers suggest?
If boys grew up in a culture where women did ritualized public displays of skilled integration by parts as part of attracting a high-status mate, I’d predict some of them would develop that fetish.
I buy that it can be attractive to see other people integrate by parts, but not that anybody is turned on by sitting down on their own and integrating by parts.
"If we imagine this line as your dress, then integration is finding out what's underneath it, with infinite attention to detail, taking into account every tiny little curve..."
"How about I find the limit of your pants, over time?"
OK, not very good, and not really a fetish, more like obscure flirtation. But I couldn't resist. :-)
I thought that quote was saying anything that is done repetitively and futilely and constantly fails becomes sexualized. Which sounds to me like washing dishes and doing laundry should be common fetishes. (I think I’ve heard people joke about these as fetishes, but never heard of anyone actually fetishizing these things.)
I was partly just teasing! I am a 72 year old who pines for the days when none of this stuff got talked about. Wittgenstein's famous; ".... those things of which we cannot speak, we must be silent" is one of my favourite quotes....(although I may be misapplying it here.) I am not blind to the upsides of the times....the internet is a marvel and internet discourse is too - for those with the right personality blend of curiosity and skepticism (which unfortunately is only a small minority of folk).
I tend to think of Western liberalism as a great invention but - Icarus-like - one that does not know when enough is enough. I am a pessimist about the future of Liberty.
One Wittgenstein quote potentially relevant to a discussion about fetishes (a passage from Ray Monk's biography):
"And when, during a discussion at Cambridge, someone was inclined to defend Russell’s views on marriage, sex and ‘free love’ (expressed in Marriage and Morals), Wittgenstein replied: 'If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no right to judge him, but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.'"
Only about 5000 kids kill themselves every year in the U.S. It's really not that many lives lost, and should be #3445 on our list of things to worry about, and yet parents obsessively dwell on this, providing a conveniently captured audience of endless articles about how social networks increase teen isolation and depression and lead to increased suicidal ideation. By some estimates only one in every 100-200 suicide attempts are successful, so parents who worry a lot about their kid brooding and talking about wanting to die are being silly, right?
I think something similar's going on with some people's obsessive focus on gender issues. It's a very important piece of data you link to that "only" about 1500 kids start (not get, start getting) on puberty blockers every year (although I'd want to understand their methodology better). But if you are a parent who worries about transgender trends because you suspect they're socially contagious, then you tend to see it as a pipeline that works something like --
1. It's initially trend-setting, and then inevitably just popular, to be nonbinary or trans.
2. Lots and lots of kids go through the phase of "questioning their gender" just as in earlier generations they would go through being goths or something.
3. Out of that large mass, a much smaller number insist on socially transitioning and not merely "self-identifying".
4. Out of that smaller number, a much smaller number will get a dysphoria diagnosis from an "affirming" gender clinic.
5. Out of those, a much smaller number will start on puberty blockers (and then later probably on hormones).
Is there evidence for a huge increase in 1 and 2? Yes; plenty of anecdotal evidence like "the current cohort of 12-15 year old girls in my friend/family circle are virtually all in some level of gender dysphoria." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27612664) but also surveys like the NCHA (https://www.acha.org/NCHA/ACHA-NCHA_Data/Publications_and_Reports/NCHA/Data/Reports_ACHA-NCHAIII.aspx). 2022: 3.5% of college students self-identify as transgender. In 2016, that was 1.8%, in 2011 it was 0.2% (the wording of the questions changed, so don't take it as a straightforward comparison, see reports for details).
If as a parent you're worried about 5, does it make sense to worry about a huge increase in 1-2 given that only 1.5k of new kids get 5 every year? Maybe if you suspect that the funneling process from 1 to 5 is not random. If "omg im so nonbinary" is a current social game among adolescents, then millions of adolescents will play the social game and phase out of it, but thousands will get caught up in it with increasing levels of seriousness fueled by feelings of self-inadequacy and not belonging. Those will be the kids with autistic traits, the relatively socially inept, those who are prone to obsessive self-dwelling, those who feel alienated from the romantic culture of their peers, etc.
Of course if you believe that gender identity is innate and growing levels of 1-2 are just helping more kids figure it out, then it's all nonsense. But if you do see it as socially contagious...
Consider that in California, they are trying to get "is not gender-affirming of their child" written into law as child abuse to be considered in custody cases:
"Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
This bill, for purposes of this provision, would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
SECTION 1. Section 3011 of the Family Code is amended to read:
3011. (a) In making a determination of the best interests of the child in a proceeding described in Section 3021, the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following:
(1) (A) The health, safety, and welfare of the child.
(B) As used in this paragraph, the health, safety, and welfare of the child includes a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.
(2) (A) A history of abuse by one parent or another person seeking custody against any of the following:
(i) A child to whom the parent or person seeking custody is related by blood or affinity or with whom the parent or person seeking custody has had a caretaking relationship, no matter how temporary.
(ii) The other parent.
(iii) A parent, current spouse, or cohabitant of the parent or person seeking custody, or a person with whom the parent or person seeking custody has a dating or engagement relationship.
(B) (i) As a prerequisite to considering allegations of abuse, the court may require independent corroboration, including, but not limited to, written reports by law enforcement agencies, child protective services or other social welfare agencies, courts, medical facilities, or other public agencies or private nonprofit organizations providing services to victims of sexual assault or domestic violence.
(ii) As used in this paragraph, “abuse against a child” means “child abuse or neglect” as defined in Section 11165.6 of the Penal Code.
(iii) Abuse against another person, as described in clause (ii) or (iii) of subparagraph (A), means “abuse” as defined in Section 6203.
(3) The nature and amount of contact with both parents, except as provided in Section 3046.
(4) (A) The habitual or continual illegal use of controlled substances or the habitual or continual abuse of alcohol or prescribed controlled substances by either parent. Before considering these allegations, the court may first require independent corroboration, including, but not limited to, written reports from law enforcement agencies, courts, probation departments, social welfare agencies, medical facilities, rehabilitation facilities, or other public agencies or nonprofit organizations providing drug and alcohol abuse services.
(B) As used in this paragraph, “controlled substances” has the same meaning as defined in the California Uniform Controlled Substances Act (Division 10 (commencing with Section 11000) of the Health and Safety Code).
(5) (A) When allegations about a parent pursuant to paragraph (2) or (4) have been brought to the attention of the court in the current proceeding and the court makes an order for sole or joint custody or unsupervised visitation to that parent, the court shall state its reasons in writing or on the record. In these circumstances, the court shall ensure that an order regarding custody or visitation is specific as to time, day, place, and manner of transfer of the child as set forth in subdivision (c) of Section 6323.
(B) This paragraph does not apply if the parties stipulate in writing or on the record regarding custody or visitation.
(b) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), the court shall not consider the sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation of a parent, legal guardian, or relative in determining the best interests of the child."
That's the amended version, the unamended text was stronger:
"Existing law authorizes a person to petition for a court order conforming the person’s name to the person’s gender identity. Existing law requires the court, upon the filing of a petition commencing a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity, to make an order reciting the filing of the petition and directing all persons interested in the matter to make their objections known, as specified. Existing law requires the petition and order to be served on the parent who did not sign the petition if a petition to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity does not include the signature of both living parents, as specified.
This bill would require the court to strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child if a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity.
This bill would require a court, when determining the best interests of a child, to also consider a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.
SECTION 1.Section 1277.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure is amended to read:
1277.5.(a)(1)If a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is commenced by the filing of a petition, the court shall thereupon make an order reciting the filing of the petition, the name of the person by whom it is filed, and the name proposed. The order shall direct all persons interested in the matter to make known an objection to the change of name by filing a written objection, which includes the reasons for the objection, within six weeks of the making of the order and shall state that if no objection showing good cause to oppose the name change is timely filed, the court shall, without hearing, enter the order that the change of name is granted.
(2)(A)If a petition is filed to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity and the petition does not include the signatures of both living parents, the petition and the order to show cause made in accordance with paragraph (1) shall be served on the parent who did not sign the petition, pursuant to Section 413.10, 414.10, 415.10, or 415.40, within 30 days from the date on which the order is made by the court. If service cannot reasonably be accomplished pursuant to Section 415.10 or 415.40, the court may order that service be accomplished in a manner that the court determines is reasonably calculated to give actual notice to the parent who did not sign the petition.
(B)If a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity, the court shall strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child pursuant to Section 3011 of the Family Code.
(b)The proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is exempt from a requirement for publication.
(c)A hearing date shall not be set in the proceeding unless an objection is timely filed and shows good cause for opposing the name change. Objections based solely on concerns that the proposed change is not the petitioner’s actual gender identity or gender assigned at birth shall not constitute good cause. At the hearing, the court may examine under oath any of the petitioners, remonstrants, or other persons touching the petition or application and may make an order changing the name or dismissing the petition or application as the court may deem right and proper.
[3011. (a) In making a determination of the best interests of the child in a proceeding described in Section 3021, the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following]
(6)A parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity because it is in the best interest of the child to affirm their gender identity."
So if you're a parent in California in a custody dispute, and part of the dispute is over "I don't think Johnny is trans and I'm not willing to change his name" or affirm her gender identity, well - that's going to be lumped in with child abuse/neglect on the same order as beating, starving, etc. your kid, if this bill passes.
But parents shouldn't worry, it never happens (and if it does, it will be a good thing).
The reason I suspect we see such an outsized % of young people now identifying as trans/non-binary (aside from the salience/popularity) is through playing fast and loose with definitions. As the activist camp would avow, any motivation for identifying as x/y/z gender is valid, which would necessarily include fashion. Now rather than gender being short-hand for the social phenomenon of identifying a person based on perceived sex, it can be pegged based purely on perceived gender *roles* and preferences, or some other fashion that is further divorced from sex.
Where once a girl might be suggested to be a tomboy, or a guy "metro"/girly, where gender is not called into question, the very same types might now dub themselves non-binary. It seems moot to me because if you're not transitioning, the sex is still there and therefore obvious to anyone else, regardless of their pressured use of non-binary pronouns. Ultimately it has no bearing on either your self-image or the way others see you. You're an individual, and you can't escape sex. I expect once the collective culture-war obsession wanes, numbers for non-binary will drop (but not the other type of trans).
I did not get 3, lol. I expected some people would get worked up about "Scott snide-swiping about the opioid-crises". Actually I raised an eyebrow when first reading the essay: OxyContin started a national catastrophe killing 500,000 people in the USofA and still going strong; strong enough to reduce national life-expectancy in this land of the free. And Scott dares to compare it with this most pointless luxury debate "gender"?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States - But yeah, I have boomer priorities. Take over, TitaniaMcGrath: https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/july-2023/jesus-christ-was-a-trans-woman/
> "But it becomes less complicated again when the child spontaneously requests something[...]"
This seems weirdly charitable. In my experience, having observed online communities, it's more like children are being held by the ankle and veritably dunked in the river of gender ideology. Rather than 'spontaneously requesting something' it's more like Derren Brown's Red BMX Bike sketch.
I want to recognize that you immediately go on to say that the explosion of transgender individuals is disconcerting, I'm not trying to mischaracterize your opinion.
> "The biggest studies suggest that about 98% of children who take puberty blockers do later go on to transition[...]"
Here's another one where you quickly double back to nuance and indicate that there's probably something wrong with the study, but I don't think the percentage that you quoted is right. I couldn't find a 98% anywhere in the study, I think you might've wanted 94%(?)...
Anyway, based on the median age and length of study, most of these kids were eight when logged and thirteen on latest snapshot. The impression I've gotten from folks who are spreading retransition horror stories is that these regrets tend to show up later-on in life. I'm not advocating for anything, so consider this a good faith attempt to steelman the opposition.
Agreed on the first point. If a child in the 90s presented with gender issues unprompted, I'd be far more inclined to take their claim seriously compared to a child who only "realises" they're trans after spending hundreds of hours on Tumblr and/or being taught about "genderbread people" by their well-meaning secondary school teacher, both of which have primed them to interpret even totally banal gender nonconformance as potential red flags for clinically significant gender dysphoria.
Regarding your “proves too much”...doesn’t your preferred explanation of “resembles sexual motions and happens near the genitals” prove too much as well, or at least raise the question of why THESE behaviors and not others which could also fit the criteria? For instance, riding a mechanical bull, which has motions similar to sex yet isn’t a fetish I’ve ever heard of.
To me at least part of the explanation for “why spanking and not stubbing your toe,” “why urination and not a Slip N Slide,” etc, is psychological: fetish behaviors tend to involve complicated feelings such as shame (no one is disciplined by toe-stubbing but people are disciplined by spanking), disgust, powerlessness, etc.
The complicated feelings explanation seems reasonable, but in the examples you gave, spanking and piss kink typically involve the intimate presence of another person, while stubbing your toe and the Slip N Slide don’t.
So you think every adolescent girl who undergoes FGM does so against their will and has to be physically restrained during the procedure? Or is it possible that they're raised in a culture in which it's seen as normal and necessary, and hence undergo it willingly?
You're right that FGM would never be considered for medical transition. Medical transition instead involves far more extreme interventions like mastectomies (of healthy tissue), orchiectomies (of healthy tissue), penectomies (of healthy tissue) and so on. Surgically removing a healthy clitoris but otherwise leaving the reproductive organs intact seems like small beer by comparison, frankly.
> So you think every adolescent girl who undergoes FGM does so against their will and has to be physically restrained during the procedure? Or is it possible that they're raised in a culture in which it's seen as normal and necessary, and hence undergo it willingly?
They can't consent, so the question is redundant. Notwithstanding that it's possible for a girl to believe it's necessary, while still unequivocally not wanting it to happen.
> You're right that FGM would never be considered for medical transition
You're being coy, but you know that isn't the type of transition referred to.
> Surgically removing a healthy clitoris but otherwise leaving the reproductive organs intact seems like small beer by comparison, frankly.
The conceit of advocates relies entirely on the notion that these procedures are effectively consequence-free and therefore we need not question a child's purported choice. As far as we can tell, we cannot say with any reasonable confidence that they are consequence-free - but they are calling on the rest of society to prove it, rather than erring to safety. Hence a lot of noise is made over conjecture that denial of procedures for kids either harming psyche in the short-run (difficult to prove) or diminishing the potential physical extent of transition in the future (in terms of bone density sure, but with surgery and interventions this is trivial, you can change your body to the extent you stop resembling a normal human and this will only go further in the future.. though in the other direction, unclear to what extent your dick and bone density can ever be repaired).
There's a lot of weight thrown behind the idea that undergoing puberty is necessarily traumatizing for kids who want to transition, as the worldview relies on it, but no strong evidence for it. Is it inhumane for a kid to go through an ugly teenage phase, acne and all, despite it not being how they "see themselves"? No, their confidence does not have to be nil, happiness and well-being is informed by many things.
This isn't to say there aren't "for real" trans kids, the stats and Occam's razor suggests this is probably true. But it's not a fair comparison to weigh the # of kids who enthusiastically report wanting to transition vs the ones who change their minds - the absolute number of the former camp does not matter. What matters is consent and consequences.
I don't think it's "just" or humane to think of kids in the "regret" camp as mere collateral in the battle for trans rights. They matter.
Indeed. But genital mutilation has a real definition and you can't play fast and loose with it. Puberty blockers aren't tantamount to cutting a dick off. That does not mean that they are consequence-free, or appropriate for kids.
I see what you’re arguing, but I think “FGM” has an agreed definition, whereas genital mutilation...I dunno. I don’t know how permanently stunting the growth of a penis that simultaneously precludes orgasm doesn’t qualify.
Puberty blockers are not the only tool used with these "misgendering" situations - you do know this, right?
There are all manner of surgical interventions, the extent of which is such that a significant number of large hospitals started specific surgical units to serve the market.
Even in the non-surgical front: puberty blockers aren't used by themselves - do they not also generally get accompanied by estrogen/testosterone hormones? Does this combination not affect future capabilities over and above Jean's mention of penis size?
Genital mutilation, however horrific it is, doesn't actually affect fertility AFAIK.
If in fact there are future losses in fertility - this is a far more horrific denial of capability.
Okay, I'm calling shenanigans on this article about oral sex:
"What are the earliest traces of fellatio?
A well-known French paleontologist by the name of Yves Coppens suggested that the famous Lucy (the first prehistoric woman) practiced a sort of "paleo-fellatio." But the first clear real traces of fellatio are from ancient Egypt. Many of the more stellar examples are in the British Museum, where we find the famous myth of Osiris and Iris: Osiris was killed by his brother and cut into pieces. His sister Iris put the pieces together but, by chance, the penis was missing. An artificial penis was made out of clay, and Iris "blew" life back into Osiris by sucking it. There are explicit images of this myth."
Now, there may be (probably are) variant versions of this myth; certainly, that Set cut Osiris into pieces, scattered the pieces, and that Isis searched them out and reconstructed them is the main myth, and I think I've read one where indeed Osiris gets an artificial penis because that part was missing.
But the version I'm most familiar with is that Isis eventually finds the missing penis and uses it to impregnate herself, thus Horus is born to avenge his father's death. Not fellatio. (Though Horus and Set in another myth do get involved in weird mpreg via semen on lettuce which is unwittingly consumed):
"In a key episode in the conflict, Set sexually abuses Horus. Set's violation is partly meant to degrade his rival, but it also involves homosexual desire, in keeping with one of Set's major characteristics, his forceful and indiscriminate sexuality. In the earliest account of this episode, in a fragmentary Middle Kingdom papyrus, the sexual encounter begins when Set asks to have sex with Horus, who agrees on the condition that Set will give Horus some of his strength. The encounter puts Horus in danger, because in Egyptian tradition semen is a potent and dangerous substance, akin to poison. According to some texts, Set's semen enters Horus's body and makes him ill, but in "Contendings", Horus thwarts Set by catching Set's semen in his hands. Isis retaliates by putting Horus's semen on lettuce-leaves that Set eats. Set's defeat becomes apparent when this semen appears on his forehead as a golden disk. He has been impregnated with his rival's seed and as a result "gives birth" to the disk. In "Contendings", Thoth takes the disk and places it on his own head; other accounts imply that Thoth himself was produced by this anomalous birth."
That's why the oxyrhyncus fish is venerated - it's the place where the penis was found! Or eaten, depending on the version of the myth:
"Oxyrhynchus lies west of the main course of the Nile on the Bahr Yussef, a branch that terminates in Lake Moeris and the Faiyum oasis. In ancient Egyptian times, there was a city on the site called Per-Medjed, named after the medjed, a species of elephantfish of the Nile worshipped there as the fish that ate the penis of Osiris. It was the capital of the 19th Upper Egyptian Nome."
"Once Osiris is made whole, Isis conceives his son and rightful heir, Horus. One ambiguous spell in the Coffin Texts may indicate that Isis is impregnated by a flash of lightning, while in other sources, Isis, still in bird form, fans breath and life into Osiris's body with her wings and copulates with him. Osiris's revival is apparently not permanent, and after this point in the story he is only mentioned as the ruler of the Duat, the distant and mysterious realm of the dead. Although he lives on only in the Duat, he and the kingship he stands for will, in a sense, be reborn in his son.
...The cohesive account by Plutarch, which deals mainly with this portion of the myth, differs in many respects from the known Egyptian sources.
...Plutarch also states that Set steals and dismembers the corpse only after Isis has retrieved it. Isis then finds and buries each piece of her husband's body, with the exception of the penis, which she has to reconstruct with magic, because the original was eaten by fish in the river. According to Plutarch, this is the reason the Egyptians had a taboo against eating fish. In Egyptian accounts, however, the penis of Osiris is found intact, and the only close parallel with this part of Plutarch's story is in "The Tale of Two Brothers", a folk tale from the New Kingdom with similarities to the Osiris myth.
A final difference in Plutarch's account is Horus's birth. The form of Horus that avenges his father has been conceived and born before Osiris's death. It is a premature and weak second child, Harpocrates, who is born from Osiris's posthumous union with Isis. Here, two of the separate forms of Horus that exist in Egyptian tradition have been given distinct positions within Plutarch's version of the myth."
We've thrashed out the 'potatoes in Classical Rome' nonsense further down. I know it's from 2000 and it's really clickbait (read all about sexy sexy!) but honestly, is there *no* rigour at all in even opinion pieces? Never mind that they don't seem to know the distinction between fellatio and irrumatio. Tsk! Somebody needs to bone up on their Catullus!
Time to quote some Swinburne, from "Dolores" (or, as GKC characterised it, "Ruskin’s dark and doubtful decision to accept Catholic art but not Catholic ethics had borne rapid or even flagrant fruit by the time that Swinburne, writing about a harlot, composed a learned and sympathetic and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin"):
"For instance, there were throughout antiquity, both in its first stage and its last, modes of idolatry and imagery of which Christian men can hardly speak. “Let them not be so much as named among you.” Men wallowed in the mere sexuality of a mythology of sex; they organised prostitution like priesthood, for the service of their temples; they made pornography their only poetry; they paraded emblems that turned even architecture into a sort of cold and colossal exhibitionism. Many learned books have been written of all these phallic cults; and anybody can go to them for the details, for all I care. But what interests me is this:
In one way all this ancient sin was infinitely superior, immeasurably superior, to the modern sin. All those who write of it at least agree on one fact; that it was the cult of Fruitfulness. It was unfortunately too often interwoven, very closely, with the cult of the fruitfulness of the land. It was at least on the side of Nature. It was at least on the side of Life. It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility. The new Paganism literally merits the reproach of Swinburne, when mourning for the old Paganism: “and rears not the bountiful token and spreads not the fatherly feast.” The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast – to themselves. They are worse than Swinburne’s Pagans. The priests of Priapus and Cotytto go into the kingdom of heaven before them."
A lowbrow literary reference book might be of note. A pre-WW2 dirty joke book a friend had some jokes about oral sex. Those jokes revolved around husbands trying to introduce the practice to their wives, as if it was becoming more part of the zeitgeist. There might be a long history of fellatio, but the practice became more common in the 20th century.
I have to say that I greatly enjoy how, in a post that was mostly about something else, Scott took a moment to lay one of the most thorough intellectual smack downs I've ever seen against the anti-gender-affirming-care movement. That group has been very loud, rude, and intellectually overconfident in the online places I frequent lately, so it was a very enjoyable read. It evoked the same sort of emotions in me as a scene from a movie or TV show where the hero defeats a swaggering bully.
You enjoying it that much should probably be a signal to you that it might not be the most rigorous/truthful/accurate thing you could read on the subject. It usually is for me.
Perhaps if this were any other blog, but Scott is one of the rare authors who regularly writes posts that are rigorous, truthful, accurate, *and* enjoyably satisfying to read.
>I’m not a child/adolescent psychiatrist and I don’t prescribe hormones, so I’m not an expert in this topic and this should be considered my amateur opinion only
And he brushes up against recognize that a prominent statistic is *really bizarre*
>nothing in real life is 98%, so I assume something is wrong with this study
then just moves on. This is not a topic that he is willing to handle seriously.
"He said his take *isn't* rigorous, nor accurate."
Well, no: he said (in the part you quoted) that he isn't an expert, and then (in the part you omitted) pointed out that the experts agree with him. Even amateurs can come up with rigorous, accurate takes, and this is hardly the first time Scott has done so.
Scott was, historically, dismissive of "experts" as a meaningful concept-class (not expertise, per se, but appealing to experts). As well, being not-dismissive of the mentioned American experts is to be dismissive of a whole lot of European experts instead.
Amateurs can come up with rigorous, accurate takes; this is not Scott doing so. His "Much more than you wanted to know" are rigorous and I'll presume accurate, and sometimes on topics to which is an amateur. Like the one on [face masks](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/) where he wasn't an expert either, and it didn't result in "hmm, I'm just going to be *incredibly optimistic* about this really shocking statistic."
Scott, despite the rationalism, has a really *human* blindspot called "his friends," and that's how you end up with a guy that says some rando's Twitter polls are useful but most of peer-reviewed social science is not. I'm not even going so far as to say he's *wrong*, mind you- just that this topic has always been one that seems like it should be in Scott's wheelhouse to take seriously, but he shies away. And I definitely understand why; I certainly wouldn't want to throw myself on that pyre either. No matter what he wrote he'd piss off a lot of people. He's wiser now and writes fewer things he thinks he'll regret.
I think the fact that he began this discussion by noting that engaging in this discussion (on any side!) is in some ways as addictive taking heroin might also give rise to some caution about these joyous feelings.
It would be a very brave thing for him to do, and doing a brave thing is what made him a blogging superstar in the first place. Might not be much benefit in doing a brave thing twice.
My takeaway from that comment section was that even though Scott's post was explicitly invoking fetishes as a metaphor for AI, approximately nobody was more interested in the AI metaphor that in the fetishes themselves.
Apologies in advance for being one more voice chiming in on the introductory paragraph...
(1) I appreciate the explanation of your object-level position here.
I used to be pretty skeptical of what seemed like the transgender movement's overreach, but my position has shifted over the past couple years, mostly because of my first hand experience.
Rationalist-adjacent discussions of this topic are often frustrating, because I see people making arguments that I might've once believed myself, but the experiences that changed my own mind are just more easily dismissed anecdotes to them.
For instance, I thought the case for "ROGD" as a kind of "social contagion" was convincing because the standard explanation for gender issues suddenly arising in clusters of friends seemed so far-fetched. That case became much less convincing when I came out to my own friends, learned a few things about them in response, and realized I was seeing the standard explanation play out in front of me exactly as described.
(2) It's hard to know what anyone means when they talk about the effects of some intervention (or lack thereof) being "irreversible".
Especially since many aspects of transition are about countering effects of natal puberty! For example, testosterone causes a deeper voice and body hair; those effects are sometimes cited as "irreversible", at least when they happen to FTM detransitioners. But those effects can be countered with voice training and laser/electrolysis, albeit with limitations and at the cost of significant pain, effort, and expense.
Learning about Facial Feminization Surgery was a big factor in my choice to transition, because it meant my chiseled, Adonis-like features wouldn't necessarily prevent me from ever being read visually as a woman. But it comes with all the drawbacks that accompany any major surgery: risk of infection or injury or complications of anesthesia, slow and painful recovery, huge medical bills, etc.
As unfortunate as those costs are, they make it easier to quantify at least some of the value of early treatment. When the risk of denying puberty blockers is just "it'll be harder for them to blend in in the future", that's easy to handwave away: yeah, they might get called "sir" more often, but how can you compare that to medical stuff like a possible effect on bone density? But when it's "transitioning in the future will require surgeries X, Y, Z to correct the changes that could've been avoided", the costs of early and late treatment can be compared more directly.
(3) Changes in available treatment can cause changes in the apparent size of the population needing treatment.
If transition for me had meant what I gather it meant a generation earlier—convince a team of doctors and psychologists that I was the "right" kind of patient (i.e. a straight woman trapped in an effeminate man's body), then present as a woman in public full-time for two years, then get genital surgery and hormones—I wouldn't have bothered.
But instead, what it meant was find an informed consent clinic, start hormones, see how I felt about them, start voice therapy and hair removal, gradually change my presentation to keep pace with the physiological changes, and plan for surgeries as I felt the need to, knowing that there were a lot of options and my insurance would cover any of them. That change in treatment protocol is what ultimately made me visible to the medical system, surveys, etc., as a trans person.
I suspect the difference is even more dramatic for trans men: having to present as a man for an extended time without the help of any masculine physical features seems like it would've been even less appealing than the equivalent for trans women (at least we can use makeup!), as would the options for further treatment at the end of it. So I'm not surprised that more young natal women are coming out as trans men, now that it's possible for them to look and sound pretty damn male in a short time.
"Learning about Facial Feminization Surgery was a big factor in my choice to transition, because it meant my chiseled, Adonis-like features wouldn't necessarily prevent me from ever being read visually as a woman."
That kind of procedure is part of my frustration with this entire discussion, because the concepts are so slippery. "Biology isn't simple, sex and gender are a spectrum not a binary, everything from secondary sexual characteristics to chromosomes don't define what is a 'male' or a 'female', you can't tell someone's sex from their skeleton*" and so forth are arguments put forth on one level.
Then we get the simplistic gender/sex reductionism of "facial feminisation surgery" because men in general have particular physical features and women in general have somewhat different physical features and to pass better as the identified gender, you can make yourself look like an average member of that sex by paring down your skull etc.
It infuriates me, to be honest, because 'biology not real' when it's convenient, and then biology very real when that's convenient, and I'm not supposed to notice the divergence and I am supposed to believe six impossible things before breakfast, because "all political correctness/wokeness/progressivism/trans activism means is treating people civilly, just be polite if Susan wants you to call her 'she/her' and 'Susan' when yesterday he was Philip".
All that being said, good luck with it for yourself.
*On the best reading, they probably mean "gender" and sure, that possessor of a male/female skeleton may have lived or identified as a female/male when alive, but you damn well can identify bones as male or female.
I would prefer the framing "biology is not the boss of us". It's not incoherent to say "the current state of their biology has no ethical power to override someone's preference, and indeed they are entitled to change their biology if that's their preference". If someone wants to be called a woman despite having a male jawline, that's valid; if they want to change their jawline to be more womanly, that's also, separately, valid. Indeed they would have the right to change their jawline even if they *did* stay a man.
The problem is that transgenderism is fundamentally a narrow form of transhumanism, and you can't systematise it without running into a case for general transhumanism, which is not currently socially acceptable, even to the limited extent that vanilla "you have an innate sense of gender in your brain" trans theory is acceptable. (But I think when they're among themselves and have nothing to prove, trans people intuitively grok this; note correlation between support for gender transition, and support for tattoos, piercings, and other associated forms of self-modification.)
So you get the somewhat awkward dissonance you highlight, where the most vocal arguments focus on a sort of nigh-mystical "you should treat people as spirits who happen to be embodied, and listen to the spirit if it disagrees with the body" thing, but people try to bundle in the morphological-self-determination aspect in a way that really only makes sense as part of the *full* "people have a right to become whatever they want to become within the limit of their ability".
I like the analogy to transhumanism, but I think the dissonance comes from being told about people who have male brains in female bodies or vice versa, after decades of being told that there is no such thing as male brains or female brains, because the only thing that differs between men and women is the shape of their genitals. And in both cases, disagreement makes you a monster.
In other words, the feminist ideology makes a 180 degree change about one of its tenets, and everyone is expected to pretend that it didn't happen. Gender roles are evil and need to be eradicated, unless trans people want them, in which case they are a basic human right and should be celebrated. We should stop using pronouns "he" and "she" and collectively switch to "they" (or even some made-up word), oops that was only true yesterday, but today *not* using someone's favorite pronouns is hate speech. And tomorrow... who knows.
You talk about “the” feminist ideology as though there is a single one. I think you’ll find that a lot of people on many sides of the debate call themselves feminists, and there are also many on many sides that call themselves anti-feminists. There are some contexts in which it is a useful approximation to say there is a single “feminist ideology”, but the issues about gender and whether it is biological, social, individual, to be celebrated, to be eliminated, etc have never been one of them. There has always been strong disagreement among feminists about this, though different strains have had more or less control of the megaphones in different decades, so it can seem like there was a switch.
I agree. But for most practical purposes, the important part is the "corporate feminism" i.e. the people who dictate HR policies and can get you fired if you disagree with their beliefs.
The radical feminists are now on the wrong side of history. I don't think they will ever recover from that. But of course, surprises happen; I think their fall also came as a surprise.
If I tried to predict who will get the megaphone next, it seems to me that these things are mostly decided on Twitter and similar places. The position "there are no differences" is simply too boring for all the special snowflakes out there. More attractive positions are the ones you can join halfway even if you don't belong there. For example, if you are heterosexual, you can still declare that you are bisexual... you just happen to currently date people of the opposite sex. Similarly, if you are cis, you can still declare that you are agender. In other words, if you want, you can make it all about you. So I would predict that whatever is the next step, it will be like this (people can join it halfway, without actually changing anything about their lives).
I didn't weigh in last time so I'll share some anecdotal experience.
On nature versus nurture, regardless of any defacto predisposition or early-life influence, I am confident that exposure to stimulus even later in life can ignite indulgence in fetishism. That stimulus being pornography. I had developed an unhealthy addiction and habit from my teens through my 20s, and throughout, consumption of fetish content expanded and escalated. Most shared a dominance/submission theme (for instance, I never cared about "feet" in and of themselves, but somewhere along the way, I started viewing foot worship). The majority of the content was hitherto of no interest or seemed weird/off-putting, and it's hard to nail down the essence of what I would have liked at the outset. My theory is that dominance and submission, in either direction, can be exciting to most people to some variable extent, as a kind of primal kernel, and that leaning into it can facilitate development of other fetishes in service of that primary (not a universal theory of fetishism, as obviously many aren't interested in D/s at all and have one specific fetish). I also think that culture informs preferences, as suggested by statistics shared by pornhub and the like.
The popular view seems to be that the mind does not "unkink", but I mostly disagree. I stopped watching pornography some time ago, and lo and behold, I am much less interested in kink. Some element of it can still excite me if I focus on it, but not nearly at the same level as before. By extension, I am able to better enjoy "vanilla" activity and have a greater interest in that.
In my experience it's better for my psyche. It's unclear to me if that is more-so owing to cutting out porn or cutting out fetish content. I suspect the latter, and moreover, I strongly suspect that fetish content is far more addicting, to the extent that porn need not be the vehicle for that to be addicting and by extension problematic.
So put me in the camp of "fetishism might be bad, actually", as it can lead to an addictive cycle. The mistake addicts make is to seek validation for their state as their "identity" to avoid curbing addictive behavior, usually by refusing to acknowledge addiction. Not to say it's not possible to safely enjoy kink.
It is, but you're better off not being kinky if you have the choice. There are serious safety risks for female subs and switches, problems finding partners for male subs, and reputational and potential legal issues for male doms and switches. In addition, of course, it limits your partner pool severely. If there is a way to remove kinks, a lot of us would be better off. (I don't do porn, but your post may help other people...)
I want to register my opposition to the slide between "kinky" and "BDSM". There's nothing unusually risky about a leather kink or a foot fetish. BDSM, in particular, can be inconvenient/risky, for extremely obvious reasons, but I don't think that says anything about the desirability of fetishes/kinks and otherwise.
(Also, I'm sort of confused about the idea that it limits your partner pool. Scott does talk about people who genuinely can't enjoy or indeed perform vanilla sex, but… aren't those people unusual extreme edge-cases? Most people I've talked to are perfectly capable of having all kinds of sex. Indeed they tend to have multiple possible kinks. Maybe this is just a semantic dispute and some people use "kink" to mean the strong "can't climax without it" thing? But then what do you call finding handcuffs a bit of fun if the occasion arises, but being perfectly happy to go old-fashioned too?)
I think what you're describing, the gradual descent into fetish content through porn addiction, is very different from how fetishes normally arise. I'm sure you've read the original post about how fetishes might arise and you will note that porn addiction was not mentioned among the possibilities. It's probably more akin to a continuously reinforced conditioning effect, which differs from how fetishes usually arise because they are one-and-done: something happens in your formative childhood years and it imprints on your brain for the rest of your life. If you can un-kink yourself by stopping the conditioned behavior, evidently nothing was imprinted on you to begin with.
Yes I'm making a distinction in terms of how they manifest, but I would also suggest that development through porn consumption is probably very common.
> If you can un-kink yourself by stopping the conditioned behavior, evidently nothing was imprinted on you to begin with.
I don't know a ton about this subject, so these are intended as questions from a parent who has thought about what I would think if one of my kids wanted to medically transition, but who hasn't had to address the issue in reality. Scott writes:
"The biggest studies suggest that about 98% of children who take puberty blockers do later go on to transition (nothing in real life is 98%, so I assume something is wrong with this study, but things do seem to lean towards a vast majority continuing). An optimistic interpretation is that the screening process is very good and they’re only given to people who really want them; a pessimistic interpretation is that they push children further onto the transgender path. I don’t think whatever “pushing” doctors can do is enough to produce these kinds of numbers - compare the success rate of doctors/parents trying to push kids away from transgender! - so I lean towards the optimistic interpretation. That makes it even clearer that we should do the reversible thing (which helps 98% of people and reversibly harms 2% of people) and not the irreversible thing (which helps 2% of people and irreversibly harms 98% of people)."
1) Scott writes: " compare the success rate of doctors/parents trying to push kids away from transgender." Are there any doctors trying to push kids away from transgender? Do we know the success rate? The "left-handedness" example, if true, suggests that there was always a large reservoir of potential trans people out there, but that most of them were nudged into leading reasonably successful lives as their assigned at birth gender. Do we have any data on whether people who grew up as their assigned gender in the 80s were happier or sadder than trans people today?
2) The general thrust of this article is that if a person voluntarily transitions after blockers and living as an NB or trans kid, then transition is a good idea. And I get the voluntary argument. But the counterargument is that a lot of kids are uncomfortable with the stress of puberty, but go on to lead happy lives as their assigned gender, while avoiding the medical stress of transition, likely infertility, possible inability to orgasm, etc.
My biggest concern if my own kid were proposing this is that as far as I know, we don't really have a control group of how many kids go on to lead well adjusted lives as their assigned gender if they go through puberty vs. not.
What is the evidence that anti transgender activists, in general, are "ruining their lives" (like opium addicts)? Isn't this a position that many have attracted a following over (just like any other issue potentially)? How are they re enacting their traumas? What traumas do they have? (I mean, sure, people spend lots of time (you can say waste, if you like) arguing about all kinds of things on the Internet, but that is the nature of the Internet.)
Graham Linehan, in particular, seems like a noncentral example of the case, given that his career as a TV writer had been circling the drain for years prior to his getting involved in trans stuff. His Substack has 23,000 subscribers of whom I assume a significant proportion are paid. Far better to be a moderately successful Substacker than a failed TV writer.
I think he is just taking their assertions at face value. They say that it has ruined their lives, and that is evidence that they’re not doing it because they enjoy it. He says that is in fact the best possible evidence that this is like an addiction. (But maybe both of them are wrong about it ruining their lives.)
The Tweet he quoted appears to be from a woman saying "yeah I just got really addicted to the high of losing all of my friends, having my character maligned, and losing job opportunities".
True, but the name is blurred out (so we don’t know what is going on really?) and I interpret it as being at least to some degree ironical, since it ends with a heart eyes emoji.
This is just speculation but the impression I get is that Scott lives in an environment that is more affirming of trans than most, so he somehow assumes that “anti trans movement” people are usually taking irrational risks with the society around them, which he feels he has to explain psychologically.
People do become cranks about all kinds of issues but I never heard before that it has a traumatic etiology.
It's a very weird thing to see intellectually serious and rigorous people respond to a demand that we attempt to treat (often not permanent) mental illness via invasive medical treatment that messes with bone growth and the entire endocrine system, and then major reconstructive surgery that often renders the patient sterile and without the ability to experience sexual pleasure (the efficacy for both of which we have a tiny and messy and politically compromised body of evidence), and then the reordering of our entire society, with anything but a very firm "are you super 100% sure that you've tried literally everything else first?"
And it's even weirder to see them not ask that question, and then argue that in fact the burden of proof about whether this demand is appropriate is on those who are really concerned that it might not be. And it gets even weirder when the demand for this course of action starts coming on behalf of children and teens, and these intellectually serious and rigorous people still don't bat an eye, even when the rate of desistance from this mental illness is still as yet unknown, but anecdotally seems pretty high.
But the very weirdest part to me, is that the ISAR's, who unless they have been living under a rock, know very well that this demand is no longer just coming from individuals, but from tax-payer funded schools and governments, who literally, and I mean this in the truest most classic sense of the word, conspire to introduce the concepts and ideas that might influence one onto the path of this mental illness to children and teens without the knowledge of their parents, conspire to hide from parents the work they are doing to accommodate this demand from those who claim this illness, and who conspire to take away the parental rights of parents who disagree with this course of action. They also must know that California has introduced a bill that would allow the state to take away a child from parents who do not go along with this.
And yet, still, the response? "You are a loser/addict/insane for caring about this. And also I won't engage with this it all until you produce evidence that this unproven, controversial, religiously sensitive, politically and financially compromised, career-killing-for-researchers/clinicians-who-dissent-from-the-status-quo course of treatment is ineffective or not worth the cost".
But it's actually not that weird, when I really think about it. Because this is the person and this is the place and these are the people that have taught me more than anything else about the overwhelming power of the in-group to make you compromise yourself intellectually.
Exactly, I've never gotten the answer to the question: "Why is gender dysphoria the only mental illness where we explicitly affirm someone's clear break with reality? Why don't we all pretend like the CIA is secretly implanting monitoring chips in the head of every schizophrenic, the same way we are supposed to pretend that a man in a dress is a woman?"
I don't think it is the only such mental illness. People go along with a lot of crazy beliefs when they're presented in a religious or spiritual context.
I meant in the context of medical treatment. There is no other disorder where someone denies basic reality and practitioners encourage them to continue doing so.
Scott addressed this in his most famous post on the topic, giving the example of an OCD woman who was unable to function in work because she was convinced she'd left her hairdryer on. One therapist suggested that she bring the hairdryer her (which was highly controversial, as it's validating an irrational phobia) - but it did the trick of alleviating the woman's anxiety and allowing her to function.
Funnily enough, I do actually agree with this part of the article (it's probably the only part I still agree with). If medical transition is the best way to treat the undeniable distress associated with gender dysphoria, then I want trans people to get it.
But that's the "if". The question of "is this the best treatment for gender dysphoria?" is an empirical one, not an ethical one. It should be investigated as dispassionately as any other medical question, and seeing academics and medics trying to fudge the results of studies investigating this question (as extensively documented by Jesse Singal) does not inspire a great deal of confidence about their impartiality.
I also don't necessarily believe that "alleviating the distress of trans people" is a terminal goal, or the only goal society should be optimising for. Liberal democracies are supposed to be about balancing the rights of different groups and finding compromises. Even if it was conclusively demonstrated that allowing trans women to compete in female sporting events completely ameliorated their gender dysphoria - well, so what? Female people don't get a chance to compete anymore because there are some sad males higher on the oppression totem pole than them?
That's a bad analogy because it's not as if the therapist is saying "your feeling that the hair dryer is on means that it's actually on." It's also a trivial intervention with no long term consequences, and the purpose of it is to eventually be able to overcome the irrational belief. None of that is true with transgenderism, where therapists are telling men that they are actually women, and that getting life altering medical treatments, sometime as a child, will help them manifest their reality.
Well, it's Scott's analogy, not mine. What the example has in common with gender dysphoria is that the person has a problem with her brain (an erroneous belief that she may have left her hairdryer on) and rather than trying to change her brain (persuade her that she did not, in fact, leave her hairdryer on), we're treating the problem by changing the physical world in some way (bringing the hairdryer with her to work so she can plainly see that it's turned off).
You're obviously correct that the scale and impact of this intervention is minuscule compared to medical (or even strictly social) transition.
But again, the therapist is not telling that their belief that the hair dryer manifests that into reality. No one, neither the therapist or the patient, thinks that the hair dryer is actually on. The solution is to have a short term, mild, reversible, intervention that eventually weans them to not being held captive by the fear. If they still hold this belief 2 years from the now the intervention has been a failure.
Also, just look at the fake men and women in the comments of that article. These people are clearly not mentally healthy, even though their delusions are being encouraged.
Trans people do not (typically) believe that they *are* physically their preferred gender. Trans women believe that they would be happier if they were treated as women and, ideally, if they were physically *transformed into* women.
Consider: I think I would probably be happier if I were an immortal angelic being, and if there was a procedure I could undertake to become an at-least-sort-of-immortal sort-of-deity I might sign up on that basis. But that's not the same as me having a delusion that I am in fact Jesus.
(Or consider someone who doesn't like their birth name for not-gender-related reasons. Let's say a Clytemnestra who really wishes her parents had called her Alice. If this girl is really sad about this, wishes she could get a legal name change, and wants all her friends to start calling her Alice even before the paperwork goes through, is that a "clear break with reality" about what her name "actually is"?)
"Trans people do not (typically) believe that they *are* physically their preferred gender. Trans women believe that they would be happier if they were treated as women and, ideally, if they were physically *transformed into* women."
They believe that they are women at a fundamental level that transcends biology. Your analogy to Jesus only holds if you believe at some level you are Jesus. In which case, both you and transgender people are delusional, mentally ill, and should be treated accordingly.
> They believe that they are women at a fundamental level that transcends biology
Don't all sorts of strains of Christianity believe that they have some spark of the Holy Spirit deep within their essence, at a fundamental level that transcends biology? If I believe that I have that trace of godliness in me (as all humans do), and I believe that this is responsible for my desire to get into Heaven, and also, in this conversation, for my hypothetical willingness to be turned into an angel if that were possible, does that make me delusional?
Seems to me like in that scenario, "I" just have an ordinary superstitious belief in some non-specific Essence that I rationalize as the cause of certain preferences of mine, which I'd feel regardless. God doesn't exist and I'm a monkey made of meat, so hypothetical eternal essences are not actually responsible for my desire to go to Heaven, but I'd still quite like to live forever in a city of infinite beauty, if that's on the table. If you could make all religious people into perfectly rational atheists, I predict most of them would say yes to the "if it really materially exists do you want to go to Heaven" question, and a substantial percentage would say yes to the "do you want to be an angel" question. They would just find that this desire is unrelated to the irrational belief in the ineffable spark of God thing.
Indeed, I don't even think most trans women believe in the "intangible eternal Innate Sense Of Gender" thing. I've seen explicit discussion of it in trans-activist spaces as a palatable simplification for the real, principled thing, which is what they actually believe in but which is unfortunately hard to make win elections (because most Americans have deep-rooted anti-transhumanism biases).
> Then why is the "What is a woman" question so hard for them and their activists to answer?
I would flip this back on you. If they believed in, and had a coherent model of, the "immutable ineffable Sense Of Gender" thing, they would just say "someone whose soul has the [gender=F] tag on it".
I think their inability to inaccurately answer this comes instead from the fact that their movement desperately wants to escape this entire framework. As I said in my reply to Deiseach, transgenderism makes sense as a facet of transhumanism. People who want to be women should, all else being equal, get to be women for the same reason people who want to he anthropomorphic cats should get to be anthropomorphic cats. There's no essence-of-woman-ness there that needs specifying for this to make sense, any more than there is for cats.
If we get a good singularity, or indeed if there's a halfway-decent non-technological Heaven after all, then they will all get their wishes someday. Currently we don't really have the tech to do either on boring old Earth (though we're closer with the women), but, goes the intuition, it's still polite to talk to people in accordance with their preferred manifestation. You're not talking to the meat, you're talking to the mind currently running on that meat. If I were talking to a furry who would find it irritating for me to constantly break their kayfabe of "being" a cat right-here-right-now, I would try to respect their wishes in much the same way, and understand if they considered refusal to do so a dealbreaker. Doesn't mean that the furry is delusional about "really being a cat" *or* that she possesses some specific non-biological essence of catness.
I admit that the last part — the "treat people as what they intend to be, not what they've achieved thus far" — is shakier, or at least relies on assumptions not hitherto specified by the rest of the argument. But I think the counterfactual is useful as an intuition-pump. I think it'd be very strange to say "consenting adults have an inalienable right to get whatever cosmetic surgery they want, wear what clothes they like, and change their name and demeanour, and loudly precommit to even more extensive changes in the event of a singularity" (and this much I think is ethically inarguable), only to then add "but you should still call them by the pronouns corresponding to their naughty bits, not to everything else about their self-presentation, *that* bit is wrong". Besides, in many a plausible Singularity-World, chromosomes and conventional genitalia would probably be very quaint things to have as a permanent part of your avatar at *all*, even if you don't go too exotic with it.
For me, to be frank, I accept it because it works. I've seen a few trans people go through the stages, and it's almost heartbreaking how happy they become, and how much their overall mental health improves. Like, there was a mid-20s depressed lesbian who over the course of a few years transformed into the happiest teenage boy I've ever seen, complete with being super-proud of his new chin fuzz. To this day it brings a smile to my face to think about it.
I've got other issues with the last decade or so of the trans movement, and we probably agree on a lot more stuff than you'd expect from that first paragraph. I'm trying, and here failing, to keep myself from arguing gender too much. :-)
Overall, it's weird that this is a thing, but there it is. I've known too many trans people to ignore how well the treatment can work. If schizophrenics could achieve that level of cure simply by everyone around them pretending that they had a CIA chip in their head, I'd probably go along with it too, the way I don't talk about alcohol around alcoholics.
"Like, there was a mid-20s depressed lesbian who over the course of a few years transformed into the happiest teenage boy I've ever seen, complete with being super-proud of his new chin fuzz."
But does it work long term? Are these people, who very well could have grown past there depression (I certainly didn't need a sex change to get past my early 20's depression), going to be just as happy when they're 40-50, still having to take hormones every day, still in the uncanny valley between woman and man, still having to fight their menstrual cycle, etc?
As far as I know, those people are still fine. But this was 15-20 years ago, when the demographics were different; I would not be surprised if people transitioning today were more likely to have regrets.
I would define "depression" as a symptom, which can have various causes, including bad life situations, deaths in the family, untreated dysphoria, and whatever "major depressive disorder" is. Generally I've found that when depression is a result of something other than "major depressive disorder", the reliable solution is to fix whatever the cause is, and then the depression will go away on its own. Antidepressant drugs can help relieve the symptom a bit, but the main practical effect in these cases is that it makes the person more capable of fixing the real cause. And yeah, sometimes time is the only real solution, and there have been cases where people have reported that their dysphoria went away after a number of years. That's great, but it does seem unusual, at least with the earlier demographics. Again, I don't know what things are like today. Perhaps there were a number of people in the past who were considering transition, and quietly gave up, and then had their dysphoria vanish. It doesn't sound very likely to me, but it's certainly possible.
I never inquired about menstruation, I think the "uncanny valley" effect fades with time. Or rather, age masks the difference, experience helps them learn to minimize it, and medical treatments can continue to reduce it.
I don't consider myself an especially 'intellectually serious and rigorous' person, but I see the fight for trans rights (which amount to a person's right to be socially acknowledged and respected as being of the gender they understand themselves to be) as a step in the overall expansion of civil rights. Which, I realise, for a lot of people here might not be the endorsement I think it is - but it is my position.
So, I see being transgender as part of the class of 'mental illnesses' akin to the delusional desire to fully partake in society, the workforce, government, etc. despite being a woman and 'obviously unsuitable for such things on account of emotional instability'. Or the delusional desire to love and have sex with people of the same gender. Meaning, medicalised only because it lets more people do things other people already get to do (in this case, be acknowledged as a man/woman) and introduces inconvenience to some aspects of the status quo.
And it passes the gut feeling test. As a cis guy, if I woke up tomorrow in a body generated by an XX prompt, and everyone I knew told me that I've always been a woman, I'd be pretty pissed off and I would doubtless seek surgical and endocrine solutions to the problem. I'm sure that the safe and 'sane' and not-making-waves option would in that case be to shrug and go on as a woman, in accordance with my body, but it wouldn't be an option. Similarly, from what I know of my trans friends, successfully conversion-therapying them as you suggest would be akin to a lobotomy. It would fix the problem by essentially removing the person, because of how essential the orientation toward gender is to one's personality.
Anyway, the point of my comment is not to convince you, but to remind you of this other framing, which you're doubtless aware of. Viewed thus, it's not especially weird.
This framing seems impossibly facile to me. The moral question of "should we address trans people by their preferred names and pronouns?" is wholly separate from the empirical question of "is medical transition the most effective means of treating the distress caused by gender dysphoria?"
>So, I see being transgender as part of the class of 'mental illnesses' akin to the delusional desire to fully partake in society, the workforce, government, etc. despite being a woman and 'obviously unsuitable for such things on account of emotional instability'. Or the delusional desire to love and have sex with people of the same gender.
Surely you don't really believe this. Gender dysphoria as classically understood was not "I feel perfectly happy in my own skin, but SOCIETY won't let me live my best life and is persecuting me for no good reason". Gender dysphoria is a mental illness in which people experience crippling, unbearable distress because of a perceived mismatch between their physical body and who they feel they really are on the inside, distress which can be triggered by the simple act of looking in the mirror or going to the bathroom. The reason they're seeking out psychiatric and/or medical care is because they're in grave psychological distress, not because society is insufficiently affirming and accommodating.
Additionally, if transgender people were being inappropriately medicalised because our society is insufficiently accommodating to gender non-conforming people, that actually implies that "gender-affirming care" is the wrong approach to be taking for most trans people! "It's okay to be a girl with short hair who prefers trucks to Barbies, it doesn't mean you have to undergo a double mastectomy' - that sounds like an opinion that would get you called a TERF, and yet it seems to logically follow from your claim that trans has been "inappropriately" medicalised.
I read an article yesterday (https://unherd.com/2023/08/the-trouble-with-conversion-therapy/) which pointed out that, in the past when homosexuality was stigmatised and medicalised in the UK, gay men were forced to undergo chemical castration and hormone therapy. Obviously we now understand that this was cruel and unnecessary and we don't do it anymore. But you seem to be arguing the opposite: that trans people are inappropriately medicalised, therefore we SHOULD chemically/surgically castrate them and put them under a lifetime regimen of hormone therapy. Like, what? I'm just baffled by your two claims: "trans has been inappropriately medicalised" and "trans people should have access to whatever hormonal and surgical interventions they think they need". Don't you see how those two claims are diametrically opposed?
>And it passes the gut feeling test. As a cis guy, if I woke up tomorrow in a body generated by an XX prompt, and everyone I knew told me that I've always been a woman, I'd be pretty pissed off and I would doubtless seek surgical and endocrine solutions to the problem.
The problem with your thought experiment is that the brain of every trans person you've met was generated by the same chromosomal prompt as the rest of their body. There may be certain examples of people whose brains somewhat resemble those of the modal brain of someone of the opposite sex, but I suspect the vast majority of people suffering from gender dysphoria have a brain which looks absolutely typical for someone of their sex (and, once again, suggesting that a gender dysphoria diagnosis be authenticated via brain scan would get you called a hateful gatekeeping TERF in some circles).
And even if we allow the terms of your thought experiment, I don't think I agree. Let's say someone put a hex on me and I woke up tomorrow in a female body, and this situation causes me grave distress. I might look into the options for hormone and surgical treatment of this condition. But, as I said above, "is medical transition the most effective means of alleviating the distress experienced by someone with gender dysphoria?" is an empirical question. I might do my research and discover that some trans people find that their dysphoria worsens after they medically transition, that a study in Sweden found that trans people who medically transition are more likely to kill themselves than trans people who don't, that even many trans men who medically transition have a hard time passing etc. etc. Even leaving aside medical research, I might just do a simple cost-benefit analysis: "I'm not entirely happy with the body I've got, but at least I have a fully functioning reproductive system and don't need to take a cocktail of meds every day, neither of which will be the case if I medically transition." I might well decide, given the evidence base available, that medical transition isn't worth it and I'll be happier in the long run if I try to get used to my body, perhaps assisted by talk therapy. (I'll note that many self-identified trans people who have socially and legally transitioned to the opposite sex have absolutely no interest in medical transition, suggesting that the situation isn't as obvious and straightforward as your "gut feeling" thought experiment.)
'The moral question of "should we address trans people by their preferred names and pronouns?" is wholly separate from the empirical question of "is medical transition the most effective means of treating the distress caused by gender dysphoria?'
Not at all. Names and pronouns, much like breasts, jaws, voice, fat distribution, and other aspects of physical appearance corrected by gender affirming treatments, are proxies for gender identity, not ends-in-themselves. When you meet me in person, you don't karyotype me or check the contents of my trousers. You assume my gender (with a very high probability of correctness) based on what I look and sound like. This is also the reason for the discourse of 'passing', which is quite common around this subject, and is related to dysphoric feelings.
And the ways we approach gender-affirming care in trans and cis people are different, and downstream of acceptance. Mastectomies are frequently performed on cis boys and men with persistent gynaecomastia, for example, without much controversy. Cis men with waning testosterone have no trouble supplementing. Similarly for phalloplasty in amab biological males afflicted with aphallia, various degrees of micropenis, etc.
Trans people born and raised in a society formally accepting of 'third genders', or in a hypothetical society where the bioessentialist view of gender were not prevalent, might well experience less dysphoria even when contemplating their own bodies in isolation. It's bizarre to me that you wish to decouple the two.
'Gender dysphoria as classically understood was not "I feel perfectly happy in my own skin, but SOCIETY won't let me live my best life and is persecuting me for no good reason". Gender dysphoria is a mental illness in which people experience crippling, unbearable distress because of a perceived mismatch between their physical body and who they feel they really are on the inside, distress which can be triggered by the simple act of looking in the mirror or going to the bathroom. The reason they're seeking out psychiatric and/or medical care is because they're in grave psychological distress, not because society is insufficiently affirming and accommodating.'
As classically understood, 'transsexualism' itself was seen as a disorder back in DSM-III and ICD-9, as late as 1980. Back in DSM-II, so was homosexuality. (I am not inclined to use 'homosexuality was once seen as a disease!' as a generalised argument against all psychiatry, but it's germane in in this case.) In DSM-IV/ICD-10, this switched to gender identity disorder, with some interesting detours along the way. By the time DSM-V and ICD-11 rolled around, a laudable effort was made to destigmatise the identity itself and try reduce clinical concern to dysphoria. In light of this history, I place 'gender incongruence is a mental disorder' along the same axis as every other 'different=crazy' disorder in the past, which had more to do with social power dynamics than medicine.
The current definition of gender dysphoria ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK577212/table/pediat_transgender.T.dsm5_criteria_for_g/) is a distressing incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and natal gender. Yes, wrong sex characteristics are usually central to this, because of how powerful a proxy for identity the body becomes in a cis-dominant/gender bioessentialist society, but I don't understand how a definition wholly based on the individual's experience of gender can be considered without a context for that experience.
'Additionally, if transgender people were being inappropriately medicalised because our society is insufficiently accommodating to gender non-conforming people, that actually implies that "gender-affirming care" is the wrong approach to be taking for most trans people! "It's okay to be a girl with short hair who prefers trucks to Barbies, it doesn't mean you have to undergo a double mastectomy' - that sounds like an opinion that would get you called a TERF, and yet it seems to logically follow from your claim that trans has been "inappropriately" medicalised.'
A tomboy who likes trucks is more likely to be a boy, but is not necessarily a boy, particularly if she continues to say she's a girl. But in a society where the overwhelming message is 'you can't be a real boy if you have breasts', it's more distressing to be a boy with breasts. Ironically, the extremely woke society of right-wing nightmares, where gender is even more detached from bodies, would probably result in social transition becoming more commonly resolving of dysphoria, and detransitioning becoming even less common than it is. Perhaps one day we'll find out.
'Like, what? I'm just baffled by your two claims: "trans has been inappropriately medicalised" and "trans people should have access to whatever hormonal and surgical interventions they think they need". Don't you see how those two claims are diametrically opposed?'
Yeah, I think your confusion (quite likely my fault, but then, as a stupid man, I cannot really help writing badly) stems from your insistence on 'inappropriately medicalised' = 'medically transitioned'. For me, 'inappropriately medicalised' = 'written up in psych guides as a medical abnormality rather than treated as a rare, but equivalent mode of being human'.
'The problem with your thought experiment is that the brain of every trans person you've met was generated by the same chromosomal prompt as the rest of their body.'
I make no claims for Hypothetical Me's entire karyotype, certainly not for the brain bits. Mostly replacement of Y, SOX9 not going pear-shaped, possibly a couple regions on 9 and 11.
'And even if we allow the terms of your thought experiment, I don't think I agree. Let's say someone put a hex on me and I woke up tomorrow in a female body, and this situation causes me grave distress. I might look into the options for hormone and surgical treatment of this condition. But, as I said above, "is medical transition the most effective means of alleviating the distress experienced by someone with gender dysphoria?" is an empirical question.'
If you're interpreting my gut feeling thing as a claim that medical transition is the best option for every trans person ever, then no, I don't think that. What I meant was that the anger and resentment at being told (including by looking at my own body) that I'm something I'm not seems perfectly natural to me, and so does the impulse to change it with hormone and scalpel. As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I find this intuition to be a useful contribution, not to say corrective, to the otherwise intellectually rigorous debate.
By the way, I'd appreciate it if you linked me that Swedish study. The only Sweden-related study on suicidality I'm aware of is this one: ( edit: corrected link - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/ ) and it used the general population as control, not trans people who opted against medical transition. In general, medical research suggests, very strongly, that people who undergo medical transition do not regret it.
"The caveat with this design is that transsexual persons before sex reassignment might differ from healthy controls (although this bias can be statistically corrected for by adjusting for baseline differences). It is therefore important to note that the current study is only informative with respect to transsexuals persons health after sex reassignment; no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment as a treatment for transsexualism. In other words, the results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment. As an analogy, similar studies have found increased somatic morbidity, suicide rate, and overall mortality for patients treated for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.[39], [40] This is important information, but it does not follow that mood stabilizing treatment or antipsychotic treatment is the culprit."
None of them detract from the essential point that motivated me to bring up the study: that gender reassignment surgery is widely portrayed as a silver bullet for trans people's psychological distress (including many people in this very thread), which it obviously isn't.
>Trans people born and raised in a society formally accepting of 'third genders', or in a hypothetical society where the bioessentialist view of gender were not prevalent, might well experience less dysphoria even when contemplating their own bodies in isolation.
Thailand is widely considered the most trans-affirming nation in the world, performing more gender reassignment surgeries a year than any other. And yet, the suicide rate for LGBT people seems no lower there than in any Western nation. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-022-02292-0
If you can find an actual concrete example of nations or communities which recognise a third gender and in which trans or non-binary people seem unusually prone to flourishing compared to their counterparts in Western nations, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I'm sticking with my null hypothesis: that gender dysphoria is a highly unfortunate mental illness which causes intense distress in those it afflicts, and this distress is no more amenable to amelioration by social validation/affirmation than the distress experienced by someone with depression or schizophrenia.
I actually think you're brushing up against the "social model of disability", which Scott so elegantly skewered here (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-the-social-model-of-disability), applying far more rigour than he applied in this article. Either that or that tired old saw used by Marxists everywhere: "REAL gender-affirming societies have never been tried."
" As shown, both higher levels of perceived stigma (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.25; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.10–1.41) and enacted stigma (AOR = 1.31; 95% CI: 1.11–1.55) were independently and positively associated with lifetime suicide attempt. Social support was also independently and negatively associated with lifetime suicide attempt (AOR = 0.79; 95% CI: 0.70–0.89)."
"Transgender and intersex participants had higher levels of enacted stigma (p < 0.001) compared to the cisgender counterparts."
"Despite these seemingly dramatic political shifts, social stigmatization continues to be pervasive in Indian society. Indeed, sexual and gender minorities are subject to a great deal of prejudice, social stress, social exclusion, violence and hatred [12, 13]. Many internalize a sense of shame around their sexual orientation and sense of gender difference [12, 14]."
"Gender-based victimization, discrimination, bullying, violence, being rejected by the family, friends, and community; harassment by intimate partner, family members, police and public; discrimination and ill treatment at health-care system are the major risk factors that influence the suicidal behavior among transgender persons."
"Trans people born and raised in a society formally accepting of 'third genders', or in a hypothetical society where the bioessentialist view of gender were not prevalent, might well experience less dysphoria even when contemplating their own bodies in isolation."
I brought up the fact that trans/NB people in these countries seem to be no less miserable than trans/NB people in Western nations to illustrate the point that a society simply being "formally accepting" of third genders is not the shortcut to ameliorating dysphoria and ostracisation that my interlocutor seemed to think it was.
You keep insisting that trans has been inappropriately medicalised when it's just a different way of being just as valid as any other. I still don't understand how this attitude can possibly be squared with the idea that "gender-affirming care" is appropriate and necessary for trans people. Puberty blockers, hormones, mastectomies, penectomies etc. - these are medical interventions. I don't want testosterone and puberty blockers available over the counter, and it sounds like you don't either. I want mastectomies only to be performed by qualified medical professionals, which means they're subject to the exact same safeguards as any other serious surgical intervention.
Like, I'm trying to square this circle, but I can't. "Trans is just a different way of being no less valid than any other which has been inappropriately medicalised by an uncomprehending medical establishment - but in order to feel fully whole, trans people need to undergo highly invasive medical interventions to remove healthy tissue which are otherwise not medically indicated. But it's not a medical condition." Even after reading both of your comments, I still cannot understand how one can believe both of these things at once.
>As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I find this intuition to be a useful contribution, not to say corrective, to the otherwise intellectually rigorous debate.
Your thought experiment is not a useful contribution, because it assumes the conclusion: namely, that trans people really do have a brain of sex A located inside a body of sex B. To be maximally charitable, this situation probably describes a small minority of self-identified trans people. Most self-identified trans people give every indication of having otherwise perfectly typical brains for someone of their sex (to the point of having exactly the kinds of interests you would expect someone of that sex to have), aside from the unfortunate fact that (a subset of them) suffer from debilitating gender dysphoria.
To reiterate: if it could be demonstrated that trans people did in fact have a brain of sex A inside the body of sex B, feeling angry about this state of affairs and wanting to remedy it would be a completely understandable reaction. But that state of affairs DOES NOT describe the vast majority of trans people, so this thought experiment doesn't seem remotely relevant.
In which Scott, after years of trying to promote the values of honesty, truth-seeking and charity, accedes to the heckler's veto. If a bad actor is trying to maliciously destroy your life because you have different opinions from them, then simply stop publicly expressing the opinions they hate so much i.e. give the bullies exactly what they want.
After you published your detailed fisking of Charles (excuse me, "Charlotte") Clymer's bullshit article about how false rape accusations are rarer than comet strikes, people tried to destroy your career, livelihood and life. At the time, do you think it would have been appropriate for someone to say to you "Scott, it's not worth it. Just let the bad actors spread known falsehoods which are damaging to the social fabric, what's the big deal? If you're going to sell your soul, consider how much you're getting for it."
I don’t know what it is about this topic--which itself is so wide ranging it seems to touch almost everything--that makes some people turn off their otherwise curious brains.
Otherwise punchy, skeptical, truth-seeking voices turn simple on this issue.
Sometimes I think it’s an emotional dissonance that happens when someone you love or care for is trans. I don’t know why that’s different from loving a religious person if you’re an atheist, etc., but it does seem to be that way.
I think it ties directly into puberty itself, a trauma that (mostly) everyone goes through, and a trauma which everybody responds to differently.
It probably doesn't help matters that we -treat- puberty as trauma, as a society. I get the impression things are getting better, but a lot of us grew up being told that puberty would turn us into monsters, and took it seriously.
Some went through it and went "Wait, what? That's what you terrified me about?" I think they'll be over-represented among the people angry about trans stuff, because I think a lot of them think they'd have taken the option to avoid turning into a monster, and are deeply concerned that society is terrifying children into taking that option when it isn't right for them.
(It really doesn't help matters that the popular perception is that the same people most responsible for terrifying them are also the ones pushing trans ideology now.)
I get really viscerally angry about this topic for essentially the reasons you describe: I was pretty gender non-conforming as a kid, many of the people pushing this direction would have pushed me had they been around when I was a kid, and that would have, in retrospect, have destroyed the best part of my life.
Scott is open about having dated trans people and having numerous trans friends, which may have coloured his judgement.
I mean, I get it. Everybody wants to stay on good terms with their friends, and no one wants a beloved family member cutting them out of their life. But like you say, it's still disappointing when otherwise clearsighted writers who don't care whose toes they step on get all hesitant and mealy-mouthed on this specific issue. Freddie deBoer is the same: so good at skewering the logical fallacies routinely committed by woke people and liberals, and yet falls for the exact same ones as soon as the trans issue comes up. (To head off an objection which always gets raised when I make this point: I'm not complaining that Freddie banned people from talking about trans stuff on his blog. His blog, his rules. If he gets annoyed by every article he writes getting derailed by trans debates, that's his call to make. What I'm objecting to are the actual specific arguments he makes about the trans thing, and how dismissive he is of people who disagree with him.)
I almost mentioned FdB by name--he was exactly who I had in mind. Jane Coaston as well. And maybe the severity of the issue at hand--people *are* making radical decisions for themselves and their kids, and to cast doubt on it while simultaneous claims about “trans kids will commit suicide without medical transition” and “there’s no evidence base” sounds emotionally torturous.
I imagine Scott's issue is the same as mine: The principles around the fight are sufficiently muddled that there's not a clear winner. Children aren't the property of their parents, but parents are better proxies for children than government (except when they aren't, a state of affairs which does not come into being merely because they disagree).
Ultimately this is a custodial disagreement between parents and government over who gets to make the decisions in a very specific edge case, the precise contours of which will mean that somebody is wrong at least some of the time.
Also, in the two sides of this debate, they aren't consistent in whether they want the parents, or the government, to make the decisions; rather, the consistency is only in which decision they'll support. But it's all framed in terms of principles.
But let's go into the decision.
The specific decision in question touches on a deeply philosophically confounding one, because puberty overwrites your desires with an entirely new set of desires, overwrites "you" with a different "you". Prior to puberty, given the option, would I have gone through puberty? Probably not; I liked who I was. As an adult who went through puberty, given the retroactive option, would I have gone through puberty? Probably; I like who I am now. However, I also clearly remember going through puberty, and noticing and resenting the process of my mind being altered.
Insofar as puberty resolves whatever issues you had with puberty going into it, it does so by overwriting the part of your mind that had the issues.
I could see this as a Borg-like assimilation of independent minds into the reproductive evolutionary hivemind. I could see it as "part of growing up" and turning into a functional adult. Neither of these views is wrong!
At some point I have to notice - I don't have the answers. So it's hard to muster up too much outrage about the subject.
AFAIK nobody is proposing that teenagers should be able to avoid puberty forever. The argument is over whether kids should be able to choose which puberty they go through. Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty so that kids have more time to make a decision.
I'm sure I can find -somebody- who is proposing that. Pretty sure that's one of the laws of the internet.
I didn't say that was the debate, however, I said it touched upon this subject, which probably matters more to somebody who has identified as asexual, or at least asexual-adjacent, for a substantive part of their life than it does to the average person.
That is, I'm implying that this consideration may factor into Scott's consideration of the topic. (May. Not speaking for Scott.)
I've heard that some nonbinary people *discuss* the idea, but the only published case study I've found appears to be about a hypothetical (but yes, nonbinary) person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7656150/
>Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty so that kids have more time to make a decision.
A 98% rate of going on to cross-sex hormones suggests to me the decision is either already made, or puberty blockers play a significant role in finalizing the decision rather than simply providing time.
Or that the statistic is BS and everyone on the topic is ideologically motivated and no one has any real evidence for anything.
For me, the debate essentially boils down to the medical ethics debate about whether the government should take children into the care of the state if their parents are denying them access to life-saving medical treatment (at a lesser level, treatment which isn't life-saving but which would vastly improve the child's quality of life).
No one objects to the government getting a court order to take a child under the state's wing if the child's parents are Jehovah's Witnesses who don't want the child to get a blood transfusion (in fact, probably no one objects less than the parents themselves).
To maintain the analogy, trans activists are hence required to present the issue as though medical transition is the most effective treatment available for gender dysphoria (a condition which will not resolve on its own), without which the child in question will certainly kill themselves.
The problem (obviously) is that EVERY component of the previous sentence is in question. Many if not most children who present with gender dysphoria go on to "desist" without any pharmaco-surgical interventions at all. There's no robust evidence that medical transition prevents against suicide, and at least one Swedish study compared a group trans people who didn't medically transition with a group who did, and found the latter were more likely to commit suicide in the following years. There's some anecdotal evidence that certain trans people's reported dysphoria worsens post-medical transition. Even among trans people who do kill themselves, many have comorbidities which are themselves risk factors for elevated suicide risk. And so on and so on.
So you're fine with (other) parents consenting to having this procedure done to their children?
If so, alright. Just be aware that you're having a different debate than a lot of people, and arguing as if your position is the central debate in question is missing a large part of the point.
No, I'm not fine with it. That's my point: I might be fine with it if the evidence pointed to it being both necessary and effective. Thus far it seems to be neither in most cases.
Reread your comment, and observe how much of it revolves around the government taking an action, when your issue, as you say now, has nothing to do with the government taking an action, but rather with that action being taken at all.
Do you believe adults should be permitted to make this decision for themselves?
If so, at what point does a child become competent to make this decision?
I believe adults should be permitted to make this decision for themselves. I'm something of a bodily autonomy absolutist.
From a legal perspective, the child unambiguously becomes competent to make the decision at the age of 18. From a developmental perspective, I'm not sure. This is why I believe far more caution is warranted than is currently being exhibited by many medical boards in the Anglosphere.
My point about the government taking action is, if indeed medical transition was unambiguously life-saving treatment for any child presenting with gender issues, parents consenting for their child to undergo it would be as uncontroversial as their giving their consent for the child to undergo a life-saving appendectomy. If a parent, for some reason, refused to allow their child to undergo a life-saving appendectomy, it would make sense for the government to secure a court order to temporarily take the child into care.
But obviously, medical transition is nowhere near as clear-cut as an appendectomy. It isn't obvious that it's medically necessary for every child presenting with gender issues, nor is it obvious that it's even effective at alleviating (in a durable way) the distress associated with gender dysphoria.
Besides the medical issues, there is the educational one -- what are children taught that sex is? I know some people who have been very surprised to learn that their small children are taught that they can choose whether to be a boy or a girl. This is at an age when many children can learn to believe it in an unqualified sense.
He’s not giving in to the heckler’s veto - he’s trying to give up a dangerous addiction to telling someone they are wrong about gender on the internet. (Of course, he does so in a post where he tries to tell people they are wrong about gender on the internet.)
I'm baffled as to how that was your takeaway. To quote Scott:
"I do think it’s suspicious and bad that everyone is suddenly becoming transgender, and I support efforts to figure out why and stop it at the root, in some way which will prevent so many kids from wanting to be transgender."
In other words, Scott fully endorses the social contagion hypothesis of trans-identification, a hypothesis which many gender-critical people have been harassed, doxxed etc. for endorsing.
"But none of this is especially relevant to the current debate, since my paragraph deliberately didn’t single out either side as worse than the other. It just said lots of people seemed too addicted to arguing about this."
If he thinks gender-critical people are wrong on the facts, wouldn't he say that they're worse than the other side of the debate?
What follows are two paragraphs arguing that even if gender-critical people are right about the overprescription of puberty blockers, there are way bigger medical scandals out there so why don't they just shut up about it. "Even if you're right, there are more important things to be worrying about" is a weird way to respond to someone you think is wrong - it looks more like a deflection than a rebuttal.
"Some transgender activist cyberbullies you - many such cases! - and then you spend the rest of your life trying to own trans activists to prove that they were wrong and you were right and the world is safe again."
Scott describes cyberbullying by trans activists as widespread. If they were right on all of the merits, would so many of them need to resort to such bullying tactics? Maybe you think so, but I don't think Scott does - a point he's made repeatedly over the last ten years is that you should be very suspicious of people with ostensibly prosocial goals who enforce their opinions with lies, harassment and other bad behaviour. But in spite of freely acknowledging that pro-trans cyberbullying is widespread, Scott then encourages people who disagree with trans activists not to voice their disagreement because it's not worth the trouble i.e. accede to the heckler's veto, and give the bad actor using bullying tactics to enforce their ideology exactly what they want.
"I don’t think I’m desperate. I think I’ve seen a lot of people go crazy over this and am trying to warn those who aren’t too far gone. I freely admit that sometimes you should go crazy about confronting injustice - John Brown ended up dead but his abolitionism was worthwhile. But if you’re going to sell your soul, ask how much you’re getting for it."
Scott freely admits that gender-critical people are "confronting injustice", which is an odd way to describe someone that you think is wrong about gender.
In my experience, when Scott thinks someone is just flat wrong about a political issue, he's not shy about saying so. This isn't one of those times. If anything this strikes me as Scott getting as close as he felt he could to coming out and saying he agrees with gender-critical people on the merits without getting into trouble.
I admittedly find it a bit odd and slightly amusing that my comment shows up in "Alternative Theories Of Fetishes" (and not e.g. "Commenters Describing Their Own Fetishes"), since it wasn't intended as a counterpoint to your article at all. As you say, it can't be a general explanation, and it wasn't meant to be one - if it were presented as a general theory of kinks, anyone who would be into thrills or horror would be a submissive masochist, which they clearly aren't. It really was just addressing the (relatively common) narrative that submissives are generally shameful about sexuality, which doesn't particularly match my experience with the BDSM subculture.
I was in a relationship with one for several years who was a relationship anarchist and was seeing another fellow at the same time for vanilla nookie. It's not necessarily the case at all.
Bit of a strawman to only talk about minors when a serious issue is the way women's rights are being eroded
Freedom of speech, freedom to explore philosophical thought, denial of science are all also non-trivial side-effects of the orthodoxy being forced upon us.
There's two different things here. I'm pretty against attempts to censor freedom of speech and denial of science that conflicts with the interests of trans activists (as I am with more recent right-wing censorship attempts), and calling deadnaming 'genocide' is silly (you know, some of us had a couple of relatives die in one of those back in Europe), but I certainly don't think that *nobody* should transition, and as Tara says below, there are benefits from early transition, so it's not as simple as having everyone wait until the age of majority.
Graham Linehan, for example, is outraged at the practice of housing trans women convicted of crimes in female prisons, which is policy in many Anglophone nations. Many of these trans women only "realised" they were trans after conviction, have fully intact and functional genitalia, and were convicted of sex crimes against children and/or women.
It baffles me that the only people who are allowed to care about violent male rapists being housed in female prisons are "crazy" "TERFs" who are "addicted to arguing about gender".
I haven’t fact-checked this, but my particular social media bubble has been circulating a story about a (medically transitioned) trans man housed in a women’s prison who was sexually harassed (and maybe assaulted?) by several cis women. The stereotype about large numbers of predatory men supposedly pretending to be women disproportionately promotes certain cases of potential prison sexual assault as more important than others.
I don't mean to in any way undermine the suffering of female people who have been sexually assaulted by other female people, as I have no doubt it's an extremely upsetting and traumatic experience. I will nevertheless maintain that a male person raping a female person is a qualitatively different matter, given that a) pregnancy can result and b) the risk of the victim contracting an STI is vastly elevated compared to female-on-female sexual assault.
The fact that the trans man in question preferred to be housed in a female prison despite identifying as a man, I think in itself demonstrates my point.
He did not choose to be housed in a women’s prison. The authorities would not let him be housed in the men’s prison regardless of the fact that medical transition had given him a penis. For point (b), trans women in a men’s prison probably have a higher chance of contracting an STI from an assault by a cis man than a cis woman raped by a trans woman, so that argument doesn’t exactly hold up. Additionally, I personally don’t mind the term “female” used for my assigned sex, but consider whose rights you’re really protecting if you won’t respect the linguistic preferences of trans men who are dysphoric about the word female.
Perhaps you could share this article so I can see for myself.
Perhaps some trans men are dysphoric about being described as "female". Don't care. They can change their gender if they please but they haven't changed their sex, and we will always need a way to refer to people's sex independently of their gender. The terms "man", "woman", "girl" and "boy" have been decisively colonised by trans activists: I will always use "male" and "female" to refer to sex and sex alone.
>(b), trans women in a men’s prison probably have a higher chance of contracting an STI from an assault by a cis man than a cis woman raped by a trans woman, so that argument doesn’t exactly hold up.
I don't know what you mean. The chances of a female contracting an STI after being sexually assaulted by another female are vanishingly small, functionally nil. The chances of a female contracting an STI after being raped by a male are much higher. Yes, the chances of a male contracting an STI after being raped by another male are higher still, but so what? The point I was making was that male-on-female rape is qualitatively different from female-on-female sexual assault.
> and we will always need a way to refer to people's sex independently of their gender.
The contexts in which we rightfully need those tend to be highly technical, so I think the optimal thing here is just to say "biologically male"/"biologically female". (Some trans activists dislike this, but they are wrong to do so, this bullet I am willing to bite.) Trying to hang on to "female" and "male", unspecified, as meaning those things not only risks being perceived as petty, it would also get just plain confusing in a society where "man"/"woman" for purely social genders have otherwise become normalised.
I couldn’t find the original social media story, but this article is interesting and has some similar accounts: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/strip-searches-trauma-isolation-trans-men-describe-life-bars-rcna6490. Returning to your original comment, many people react to someone talking about the risk of trans women raping someone in a similar way they would react to someone who frequently talks about crimes committed by immigrants from Mexico. It’s technically possible that person is just legitimately concerned about crime in an unbiased way, but the focus is indicative of a media diet and possibly a social circle that feeds racism generally. Similarly, someone may be concerned about rape in general, but a focus on this one issue usually indicates you’ve been hanging out in a transphobic media bubble.
There's way fewer trans men in male prisons than there are trans women in female prisons. And even a trans man in a female prison is going to be much more likely of the same average height, mass and strength to the women there.
The trans rights activism set make much of "a long-term transitioned trans woman doing time for a non-violent crime" example, but it turns out that there aren't too many of those, rather the trans prison population are disproportionately likely to be convicted of assault/sexual assault and rape:
"Of prisoners who declared their sexual orientation4 97% (65,397) identified as heterosexual. gay/lesbian and bisexual offenders accounted for 1.3% (909) and 1.5% (980) of the total prison population respectively. Those who identified as “Other” 5 comprised 0.2% (113) of the total population. These proportions were calculated excluding individuals whose sexual orientation is stated as “Refusal/Not Disclosed” or “Not Known”.
There were 230 prisoners living in, or presenting in, a gender different from their legal gender and who have had a local case board. Of these, 187 reported their legal gender as male, 43 reported their legal gender as female.
When asked about the gender with which the prisoner identified from the following categories, 168 identified as transgender female , 42 as transgender male0, 13 as non-binary and 7 self-identified in a different way or did not provide a response.
There were 11 prisoners known to have a Gender Recognition Certificate as of 31st March 2022. These prisoners are not included in the transgender figures included in this report.
Of the 230 transgender prisoners:
• 49 were in female prisons, with 6 self-identifying as transgender female.
• 181 were in male prisons, with 162 self-identifying as transgender female"
Even the articles trying to rebut the claim that 41% of transgender inmates are convicted sex offenders have to do a lot of "yes, but" to soften the accusation:
"We submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Ministry of Justice.
It said that 60 of the 125 transgender inmates it counted in England and Wales were serving time for a sexual offence.
This is roughly half - but it's not the full picture.
Remember - those 125 transgender inmates only include people who have had a prison case conference. It won't include transgender people who haven't identified themselves to the prison service or who already have a gender recognition certificate.
Of the 60 serving time for sexual offences:
27 were convicted of rape (plus a further five of attempted rape)
13 were convicted of possessing, distributing or making indecent images of children
13 were convicted of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault
Nine were convicted of causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity
Seven were convicted of sexual activity with a child
Seven were convicted of indecent assault or gross indecency
Those numbers add up to more than 60 because some prisoners are serving time for more than one offence.
We don't know the gender of the victims or perpetrators in these cases."
Well, BBC, you "don't know the gender" because often the perpetrator identified as male at the time and only later found out, when it was time to go to prison, that they were really a woman. You got into some trouble over that, as I seem to recall, British Broadcasting Corporation?
"The BBC changed the testimony of a rape victim after a debate over the pronouns of her transgender attacker, The Times has learnt.
The woman referred to her alleged rapist as “him” but insiders said that her words were changed to avoid “misgendering” the abuser in an article on the corporation’s website.
The BBC article replaced every reference to “he” or “him” with “they” or “them”. A source said the quote was the subject of heated debate prior to publication. Some journalists argued that the quote should remain intact, while others said it should reflect the trans woman’s preferred she/her pronouns.
It comes amid growing concern among BBC staff that an internal diversity team is influencing what journalists can report, preventing them from covering gender."
I’m realizing that geographic differences are causing us to completely misunderstand each other. It seems that the concerns about prisoner placement in the UK are more reasonable, but I live in the US South, where the authorities have a completely different Overton window for these policies. In Florida, trans women can currently be jailed for using a public women’s restroom, regardless of medical transition, and I believe they may be classified as sex offenders. I’m not sure how much this law is being enforced in practice, but my automatic reaction to this topic of discussion is to worry about the trans women I know. They could be placed in a men’s prison after visiting Disney World and be at serious risk of assault from the cisgender men in the prison.
I'm confused about the general relativity analogy Zizek used. If you throw a massive object into an initially flat region of space, it becomes curved, and I can't think of any reasonable way to not consider the matter to have caused the curvature. The distribution of matter (and light and stuff) doesn't uniquely determine the curvature of spacetime (e.g. black holes and gravitational waves exist), but that doesn't mean the relationship that is there isn't causal. Possibly Zizek saw the Einstein field equation, in the form f(g) = T (for some function f I can't remember the details of), where g describes the shape of spacetime and T its contents, and concluded that because it's an equation, and equality is symmetrical, this is just an arbitrary relationship not a causal one, but that's how everything in physics works.
Notice, in responding to a statement that matter isn't distinct from curvature, that you posit a thought experiment based on the idea that matter is distinct from curvature, to prove that matter is distinct from curvature.
Suppose the phenomena of mass and curvature are not distinct; then what you are saying is "If you curve a region of spacetime, it becomes curved, and I can't think of any reasonable way not to conclude that the curvature caused the curvature."
Given that curvature propagates at the speed of light, and can be modeled as emission of gravitons from a mass, it seems reasonable to view mass as causing curvature? At least, it's one of several equivalent models. Although if someone disproves gravitons, it will probably become a mere approximation like Newtonian physics.
Matter is distinct from the curvature of spacetime in that it has charges with which it interacts with the other three forces. The curvature of space around an electron and a positron are exactly the same, but they interact differently with other physical systems (those that contain other charged particles) therefore the curvature of spacetime does not determine the entire physics of the system, you need an extra component to have a complete description, and that component is matter (and the other fields). In my thought experiment, it's significant that "you throw a massive object" is a distinctly electromagnetic interaction. Also note that the quote says "matter", not "mass". Mass (and stress-energy in general) being equivalent to spacetime curvature feels slightly more defensible, but still convoluted and unlikely.
There’s a lot to worry about with Žižek, but here I think he is getting Einstein basically right. Einstein wants to get rid of causal relationships and replace them with constitutive ones, but only showed how this could work for gravity. It’s an open problem whether this can be done for the other forces.
In Maxwell's equations, the charge/magnetism determine the force, and then force and mass together determine the acceleration, just like in Newton's equations, the mass determines the force, and then force and mass together determine the acceleration. But Einstein re-describes Newton's case, allowing mass to be canceled from both steps, and then allowing force to fall out as well - it's just curvatures moving through curved space along geodesics.
My hypothesis is actually that raising kids in a more gender-neutral environment and/or with more blank-slateist gender beliefs is often delaying the start of gender dysphoria until puberty. I believe this was true for both myself (on the HSTS transmasculine spectrum) and Zack M. Davis. This may be especially likely for children with ADHD and autism, who may be less susceptible to picking up gender socialization from their peers. Based partly on the Stone Butch Disco podcast and Kay/Candice Brown’s blog, my model predicts the following:
1. Before puberty, some kids are naturally very GNC relative to their assigned sex. In an environment with a rigid view of binary gender and gendered behaviors, many of these kids develop distress/dysphoria about the ways they don’t fit. Some of them come up with the idea that they must be, for example, a boy in a girl’s body. Some, especially the more neurotypical kids, are socialized into behaving “appropriately” for their assigned sex. In a more gender-neutral environment without knowledge of transness, GNC kids can behave as they like, are less likely to develop dysphoria, and are more often cis-by-default.
2. Some of the aforementioned GNC kids develop gender dysphoria at puberty, along with some kids who weren’t all that GNC before puberty (may be impacted by socialization and/or located in a different part of the brain from the behavioral aspects.) If they were raised gender-neutrally, this gender dysphoria may seem to come out of nowhere (“Rapid onset gender dysphoria”). With knowledge of transness, they are able to identify their gender dysphoria. Some of the GNC kids raised in a rigidly gendered environment may “desist” from transgender identification at puberty and grow up to be cis (by default?) GNC adults. Others have worsening gender dysphoria with puberty and want to medically transition.
Something else to note is that many people identify as transgender and/or nonbinary without gender dysphoria. Plenty also have relatively low levels of dysphoria and do not pursue medical transition.
I skipped this article originally when I first saw your ad hoc explanations for the fetishes, because I think you've limited yourself to spinning in circles by trying to get at the phenomenon through Pavlov and Darwin rather than looking at the symbolic associations. I think most sexual fetishes (like fetishes proper) are symbolic — sex represents some value to people and something else that has a similar valency/connotation to what is abstractly exciting about sex will arouse them. For instance, people may like binding because sex entails vulnerability and violation, spanking because sex includes lack of agency and pleasure for an other, excreta because sex includes intimacy and shame, and so on. Not that all sex has these elements or that all these elements are recognized or appreciated by others (I theorize that "Cartoony" fetishes allow escapism and flexibility of physicality that you may find in intimacy but that is especially noticed by the autistic, who are sensitive to touch), but you'll have more fruitful thinking about people (not AI) with these associations rather than appealing to physicalism and evolution, especially the latter. I know that these are essentially the rules of narrative, which is not your all's thing because you distrust it (narrative is the real counterpart to logic, not emotion, as the rationalist claims) but that makes it no less real in the mental operations of people.
I don't think Pavlov & Darwin and Jung are mutually exclusive--people are made of molecules, but trying to discuss the Meiji Restoration in terms of physical chemistry is going to be very inefficient and cumbersome. People definitely do think symbolically, and associations are a big part of that--indeed, a lot of the AI that's wowing everyone with its (simulated?) creative ability now is making associations after being trained on giant corpuses of literature. It might know that 'sun' goes with 'life' even if it's just tokens 78954 and 12365 in its internal representations.
So it's a complex mix of both. Vulnerability and violation--sure, there's an element of dominance and submission for many people. Spanking--the same. Excreta--sure, the circuitry for sex gets connected to that for poo and pee because both connect to ideas of intimacy and shame. Cartoons may allow escapism and flexibility, though I think the thing with autistics and anime is that anime is pretty popular among introverts (back when they were guessing people's five-factor scores from words on their social media profiles, half the introvert words had some connection to anime), and autistics lean that way because social rules are more difficult for them. And, as you say, narrative is very important in the mental operations of people. Now, *why* do people want sex and power so badly? That's evolution. But it makes more sense to look at a lot of these things on the narrative level, as you say; artists have always understood these things on an intuitive level, which is why Shakespeare and Lady Murasaki could write stories that people are still excited about centuries before Darwin was born.
Here are the five-factor word clouds, BTW. They're from the mid-2000s but the biggest word associated with introversion is 'anime', followed by 'manga' and 'internet'. The low agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism ones made me laugh out loud.
Well, people actually *do* develop fetishes about burns. Candle/wax-play! (Come to that, foot-torture fetishism also exists, but I guess that's more parsimoniously explained by "foot fetish + pain fetish" than a specific stubbed-toe mechanism.)
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to categorize this discussion on a left/right axis. It’s probably better to categorize it as trans-inclusive vs gender-critical, since both sides (particularly the gender-critical side) span very wide parts of the left-right axis.
It was rather a shock to me when I realized it some years ago. I'm not sure how well it fits in this discussion, but it came back to me, so I thought, what the hell, I'll post it.
This also applies to many behavioral traits and interests considered characteristic of manhood or womanhood in different times, places, and cultures. Obviously there are some traits that tend to be universally considered masculine or feminine, but so many are variable.
Which is what makes the emphasis on long hair, jewellery, makeup, cute clothes, etc. so aggravating to me. It seems to be reducing womanhood down to a particular set of stereotypes. What, then, of times and cultures where men wore heels, or cosmetics, or long hair, or earrings and necklaces?
I know it's part of the entire package that "I am not *this*, I am *that*" and being 'that' comes with all these attributes. But I would prefer that we change gender roles so that okay, you want to wear the frilly skirts or whatever? Go ahead, whether you're male or female. And you *don't* want to wear the frilly skirts? Also go ahead, whether you're male or female.
I think "changing acceptable parameters of fashion" is a hell of a lot easier than "changing understanding of what man and woman means".
You may be underestimating how imprinted people get about clothing. Fashion changes fast, but some things are stable. For example, a business suit with shorts seems to just get laughs.
> A hundred years ago, it might have felt obvious that oral sex was a fetish; a hundred years from now, it might feel obvious that BDSM isn’t.
In my circles at least, this already seems to be happening. The next generation of local (non-directly-BDSM-involved) people I talk to seems to lean very hard into thinking of most of the stuff I get down to as normal. I say "most", because a very common conversation I have with people I'm newly introduced to involves them being non-chalant regarding my rope/impact/electro activities (Oh yeah; everyone does that) and utterly scanadlized by the fact that I have multiple partners (wait, do they know about each other? and they're all _ok_ with that??).
More than? SHE WAS ONLY TWENTY-FIVE, YOU MONSTER! And he was thirty-two, clearly he took advantage of this innocent blossom.
While Leo DiCaprio chasing young women of the same age range as he gets older isn't edifying (1) he's not yet at the age where it's creepy, he's got another few years to go and (2) it's been established that men of all ages prefer women in a tight age-range, while women are open to a wider range of ages in men.
So DiCaprio is famous enough, rich enough, and still young and attractive enough to be able to get 25 year old model girlfriends that he then dumps after a few years and moves on to the next 25 year old model.
There’s a good (free-to-access) episode of the Fifth Column podcast where Michael Moynihan talks to Jon Ronson about various things, including a rather heartbreaking section on Graham Lineham’s self-destruction over trans. He and Ronson were once good friends. Now, not.
There’s a good (free-to-access) episode of the Fifth Column podcast where Michael Moynihan talks to Jon Ronson about various things, including a rather heartbreaking section on Graham Lineham’s self-destruction over trans. He and Ronson were once good friends. Now, not.
Never mind. I got stuck on the idea that it was at a site called podchaser, which does host some Fifth Column links, but not that one. Instead, it's at the Fifth Column substack.
At the risk of totally missing the point of #3, Scott, are you aware at all of those Swedish documentaries which demonstrated that puberty blockers are not reversible, that there has never existed any actual scientific evidence that puberty blockers are reversible (this is just some shit that people at gender clinics keep saying, and referring to each other's impressive-sounding clinics as evidence), and that the side effects are in some cases intolerably severe (one girl in one of the docus had her spine collapse, as in her vertebrae became porous and broke)? They were a pretty big deal outside of diehard trans rights circles when they popped a year or two back.
Also, surely the argument that "This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing" cuts both ways?! Couldn't a person on your opponents' side just as reasonably say "yeah, well, even if 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined by being declined puberty blockers and having to transition after age 18, that's nothing"? I mean, if the numbers are so low that a wrong decision here is irrelevant, surely it's irrelevant *regardless of the specific decision* and you can just let your opponents have their way? Epsilon is epsilon.
The multigenerational effect is very different depending on the direction of error: delayed transitioning of those who will go through with it regardless doesn't substantively change their lifetime fertility rate, whereas transitioning those who would otherwise not dramatically reduces theirs. Given parents' stereotypical desire for grandchildren, this dynamic could explain much of the vehemence on one side.
> the decision to delay the vaccine an extra few weeks to influence the 2020 election probably killed about 1,000.
It's disappointing to see you repeat this canard when IIRC, ACX was the place where I originally saw it refuted in the first place! I'm not sure whether my memory is playing tricks on me, or whether you've forgotten your own writing.
Anyway, AIUI, the original plan was to conduct an interim analysis after 32 cases, but the problem with that is that a small number of cases means low statistical power, and hence a higher risk of the vaccines falsely being found to not be statistically significantly effective. Additionally, the FDA expressed concerns that 32 cases would not be sufficient.
In October, COVID surged again and they realized that they would soon have a lot more cases, so they might as well wait a bit to get more data and set a new target of 62 cases in order to have a higher chance of success. It's only coincidence that the data for the new analysis threshold happened to become available soon after election day. And the CEO of Pfizer has explicitly said that they would have announced the results whenever they happened to become available, regardless of the election timing.
If there were any villains in the story, it would be the FDA, but it seems like they had a point about the original threshold being underpowered. (Or at least, they expected it to be, since noone knew at the time that the data would show such a large effect.) But even if they were, the FDA holding things back isn't exactly news.
This whole thing seems below your usual standards.
The precautionary principle makes very little sense, but to the extent that it is getting at a legitimate argument, I don't possibly see how it can favor giving children puberty blockers over not doing that. "The precautionary principle says you should never change anything" is possibly the single most common complaint against it. The idea that it's reversible, and this is sufficient, is A) based on what seems to be weak evidence all things considered, and B) ignores any other potential downsides.
Can't seem to find this articulated in the comments, so just to put it out there:
Best I can tell, most people decide if they are trans based on the masculine/feminine traits they possess, compared with the traits of their peers, as well as general gender expectations. So, assuming that that is the case: Puberty Blockers + Time = Less masculine/feminine in relation to peers/expectations = More likely to transition. This would be a perfectly acceptable chain if that was how people understood puberty blockers to work, but unfortunately not everyone catches it, so the idea that puberty blockers serve as impartial stallers persists. I don't really blame kids or parents for this, but doctors should be well aware of this stuff, and pass the word along to anyone who's seeking a presciption. It's just good medical practice, and pretty easy to accomplish.
Also, what's up with the "2,500 children having their lives low key ruined is nothing"? What a weird argument to make. If puberty blockers really take off as a standard treatment, that number could balloon way past 2,500 but also... It's kids, man. Every mistake is way worse when you do it to kids.
Even if Scott didn't point out that it was in the Open Thread, a well-known writer like Scott leaving his phone number in the comments unprompted is just incredibly unlikely. If someone famous (or even 'internet famous') tries to get you to contact them in a channel where you cannot verify their identity, you should immediately be suspecting an impersonation scam.
There's no way that Scott is going to give out a phone number linked to him on a publicly accessible online site that is not "For an appointment with Dr. Alexander, ring XXX-XXXXXXX", because he is not a gibbering idiot.
There is especially no way Scott is going to give out a personal phone number to this shower of scallywags, scofflaws, wretches and malcontents that make up the commentariat (my people! I love you all dearly!) with an open invitation for us to harangue, harass, and deliver homilies at him 😀
Did white women express concerns about their physical safety with black women, or was it just an "ick" issue like what prompted separate drinking fountains?
On transwomen being assaulted, are you referring to prison rape? It's my understanding that this happens to inmates of all orientations, and it would be nice if it didn't happen at all. If you have some statistical evidence of transwomen being regularly assaulted in men's bathrooms or lockers I'd be interested to see it.
I thought the fear was always black men with white women.
Given what we know of dating patterns from the mid-2010s OKCupid data at least, it may have been based in reality (though of course that definitely didn't justify Jim Crow!)
“By analogy, one should also 'desubstantialize' sexuality: sexuality is not a kind of traumatic substantial Thing, which the subject cannot attain directly; it is nothing but the formal structure of failure which, in principle, can 'contaminate' any activity. So, again, when we are engaged in an activity which fails to attain its goal directly, and gets caught in a repetitive vicious cycle, this activity is automatically sexualized - a rather vulgar everyday example: if, instead of simply shaking my friend's hand, I were to squeeze his palm repeatedly for no apparent reason, this repetitive gesture would undoubtedly be experienced by him or her as sexualized in an obscene way.”
This is gibberish isn’t it. Sexuality is assumed to be a substance which just isn’t proven - although philosophy is generally incoherent on substance anyway.
Then we must “desubstantialize” sexuality. Why? Because sexuality is a “formal structure of failure”. Google that because it may be a technical philosophical term and you won’t find anything except buildings collapsing. So who knows why failure even comes into this, or why this failure is considered to contaminate anything.
The last example is unconvincing. Is it true that weirdly handshaking like that is automatically sexual? Maybe but only because it might be.
Do French people see the repetitive cheek kissing with which they greet each other as sexual? No, although other cultures might. Anyway they kiss their mothers like that. And work colleagues.
That follows from this claim “when we are engaged in an activity which fails to attain its goal directly, and gets caught in a repetitive vicious cycle, this activity is automatically sexualized”
No it isn’t. That could describe OCD patterns, or a failed training regime. Or lots more activities that fail to meet their goal, most of which aren’t sexualised.
It’s fairly typical of philosophical texts to do this, pummelling you with unproven claims, non sequiturs, new terms and so on. After a while you think “there’s a lot of shit here so some out it must stick” even if none of it does.
Interestingly, John Boyne (author of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas") has just issued a public apology to Graham Linehan for having earlier condemned him for his trans-critical views.
Brilliant and useful original post. Interesting to me how there is no mention of Freud?
Luckily I am here to set you all straight. Freud says: "If we now address ourselves to the question of what circumstances have the power to frustrate the carrying out of the pleasure principle we will tread safer and better known ground" (37) He continues: "[Pleasure principle] ... under the influence of the instinct of ego for self preservation it is replaced by the 'reality principle"" "during the development of the ego ... all energy is from instincts"(38). it continues: "particular instincts ... prove irreconcilable with the ... comprehensive unity of the ego." This of course leads to the idea, "if [the sexual impulses] succeed in fighting ... to a direct or substitutive gratification...(ie come to conscious awareness) the result is pain." So the theory goes, the pleasure principle must be repressed for the sake of the psychic factor called reality principle. Thus the child's developing psyche foregoes instant gratification despite the the sexual impulses remaining unconsiously. These desires ie pleasure principle are unconscious ie not controlled(because repressed). When the repressed, underdeveloped because unconscious energies force through to consciousness they are "experienced by the ego as pain."(38) Neurotic individuals identify pain as pleasure because the ego is identified with the reality principle which wants to repress sexual drives (unconscious pleasure principle) for the ego unity. So if the child wants to repress the libido instincts for ego unity, the libido still remains. It's like a confusion of the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The repressed libido is "violated" because it is unconscious and not in the control of the patient. "All Neurotic pain is pleasure that cannot be experienced as such" (Freud 37)
Sigmund Freud "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" then appears to go on (havent read it fully) to use the theory to illustrate how how dreams indicate the patient's effort to free the mind from the pain of the unconscious stimuli. Ie the dream makes energies no longer avoidable and the task, Freud says "becomes binding" the psychic material so that it can be weakened, separated and dealt with.
Freud says a lot more and I cannot be certain I have not bastardized it through misconception. The point is Freud would call a fetish a complex, which is a psychic confusion or twist, that develops from repressed material. I get the sense that the the pleasure principle being a source of pain that needs to be bound to another factor is the explanation.
Forget it, Jake, it's Twitter.
Cue arguing that "the urge to start fires was advantageous in the ancestral environment" as Rome burns.
It's a bit unfortunate that section 3, which deals (very reasonably IMHO) with a hot-button political topic, is sandwiched between the other sections of fetishes, because it makes it harder to link to for common distribution (as one of the comments noted, lots of people find sex a squick issue, particularly I might add fetishes, including lots of people who argue about gender). Maybe pull it out and post it separately just for linking purposes? (If that IOU gets paid back in a timely manner, maybe unnecessary, but it would certainly help in the meantime.)
Given the reaction to the introductory paragraph on the previous post, that seems like a feature, not a bug.
I strongly suspect this is deliberate.
Any other publication and I’d strongly protest against his support of puberty blockers for minors, however his reasoning is acceptable compared to other arguments I’ve heard. I won’t get into my reasonings for the position I take within this topic, however I can agree most people would get highly agitated at people disagreeing with their opinion on the matter (it’s seen as an abuse against children to some of these people).
Isn't part of the dilemma right now that both sides feel that children are being abused by the position advocated by the other side?
The abuse against children accusation makes it really hard to navigate imperfect solutions in a terrain that is new and quickly evolving, doesn't it?
Yes that’s essentially right. It’s a particularly bad framing since a lot of people rightly have ‘child abuse is bad’ as a very strong prior that’s hard to move from.
Yeah, and this also leads to weaponization of the prior. Like how the strong prior that "Nazis are bad" leads to a proliferation of accusations of Nazihood.
Yes, but Nazi uniforms have a much greater role in fetish play than Mondale/Ferraro campaign buttons.
Not in my house!
They're certainly much more stylish, as the Star Trek episode "Patterns of Force" demonstrated.
At Texas A&M I saw so many students over the years wearing modern knockoff “Reagan/Bush ‘84” shirts that I had to go out and buy a vintage “Mondale/Ferraro ‘84” shirt. It hasn’t (yet?) found any fetish use.
Could we compare the strength of the priors by turning the weapons against each other? Like "if your child identifies as a Nazi, preventing them from wearing the uniform is child abuse".
The Kobayashi Maru test of the Internet age.
This is the kind of reason that I believe that the most popular ideas (even ones that are rightly so) are the most dangerous... they're the easiest mottes for power-seeking mentalities to use, and in fact their extreme popularity means they're usually only pulled out to support a bailey rather than as an argument on their own behalf (because there are few enough people who believe e.g. murder is good, that inevitably the argument that it's bad is typically going to be used to consensus-build for something more contentious).
> I don’t see the connection from “the wider definition of sexual activity and display” to “some people literally can’t have an erotic experience unless their partner is dressed head to toe in black leather”.
An analogy. We all have an instinctive drive to eat, right? Pretty basic instinct just like sex.
Okay. Using only classical conditioning around the feeling of hunger: Back derive the existence of people who dislike pork because their culture has taboos around pork and they never ate it growing up. Back derive the difference between knife and fork vs chopsticks. Back derive why we don't just all shove as much food into our mouths as quickly as possible.
You can't because it's not about hunger. It's about an entire social context around eating which is fit not because of how it sates hunger (because it doesn't sate hunger better than just shoving food in your mouth) but because it creates and strengthens social bonds. Sating the underlying physical need IN A SPECIFIC WAY is culturally (or socially or whatever) determined.
Likewise, sex is a fundamentally social activity both in that it's always between at least two people and in that it always takes place in a social context. From there it's unsurprising you have micro-communities with their own sexual norms in the same way you have micro-communities with their own food or eating norms. Including private households that eat in rather strange ways to the rest of us.
That isn't to say there isn't some underlying instinctual part of it or that it's infinitely malleable. A tradition which didn't involve eating food wouldn't last long. But once it solves that basic part (it sates hunger, it produces children) a gigantic superstructure can be built on that edifice with very little reference to the base need.
> I agree it makes total sense that some things that are closely related to sex (eg lingerie) can get sexual valence in and of themselves through something like classical conditioning. But that doesn’t explain why some things not that closely related to sex (at least for most people) can get sexual valence even greater than the actual sex act.
No, you've missed the point. As I pointed out in sub-comments: a lot of things that have no relation to sex are still broadly regarded as sexy. If lingerie is too provocative think of skirts. No man has sex with all the women he sees in skirts or even a large portion of them. And plenty of men have sex with women wearing pants. Yet short skirts are broadly agreed to be sexy. Why? Because it's a socially feminine display.
Trying to back derive sexuality from classical conditioning of PIV intercourse a la machine learning is empirically not what happens.
> Likewise, sex is a fundamentally social activity both in that it's always between at least two people and in that it always takes place in a social context.
How would you categorize masturbation, and in particular, masturbation to fantasies that cannot happen in reality?
When you say 'cannot happen in reality' do you mean literally impossible (transforming into a moth or something) or literally possible but vanishingly unlikely (three supermodels decide they want to be in a polygamous relationship with you)?
I was thinking mostly the former, but perhaps that's better thought of as the extreme end of a distribution. Certainly "being swept off one's feet by an attractive stranger" is a fairly common fantasy that's possible but unlikely.
Yeah, that would be my next question: What sort of literally impossible fantasies are common? It seems much more likely you get the possible but unlikely in which case the person is obviously dreaming (at least partly) of various forms of things like social status or security or whatever.
Sapient humaniform animals, for one. Transformation, for another. And that's just the ones common enough to have subcultures that came up in the comments here over the last week. There are enough cases where people report having these fantasies before finding out that there were other people with the same fantasies, that I don't think social explanations can explain the causes. (Obviously, the Internet makes this type of discovery rarer these days.)
Macrophilia (love of literally giant women) would be another impossible fetish. Vore isn't technically impossible, but practically so unless you're willing to go full Hannibal Lector.
Socially feminine display?!
Short skirts are seen as “sexy” because they let guys almost see (or see, if the wearer messes up) what’s under them.
You get much less of a social perception of long skirts (which have a long tradition of being worn by women) being sexy, because they don’t do that. Just as socially feminine, not seen as nearly as much of a signal of sexual availability.
What's under them is underwear. Which was not available when we were evolving and blocks direct view of the relevant parts. Likewise you can point to plenty of sexy outfits that cover a fair bit of skin. The aforementioned latex suits, for example. Or pencil skirts which are not particularly short.
I'd argue that arousing effects are also strongly mediated by plain old attention dynamics, though, which dictate that the tease/ the incomplete picture is often more intriguing because it allows curiosity to augment desire. Plenty of people will stop and stare at an ad with some kind of missing-info puzzle, independent of whether the content is inherently interesting; thus, lingerie that partly covers a sexy body couples raw sexiness with an added puzzle multiplier, engaging our imagination in an intriguing way.
A similar pattern applies to fear and hunger, doesn't it? In a horror movie, the shadow brushing past the window is far scarier than when the monster just runs out with teeth bared. Similarly, the Subway whiff of bread is much more appetizing than when you go inside and actually see all the meat behind the counter.
Both latex suits and pencil skirts, although they *cover* a lot, often provide much better hints at what is beneath them than baggy or flowing outfits.
Personally, I enjoy clothes that hint at sexy body features, but don't actually reveal them. Long skirts are one of those, but there are masculine versions too. I think it's similar to flirtation, where there's an elaborate social game that both sides are playing.
As opposed to partial or total nudity, which is akin to a much more direct approach, eschewing the "nice boots" and going straight to "wanna fuck?". This to me has a qualitatively different sort of fascination, which can sometimes be hard to distinguish in the moment but is clearer upon reflection.
Long skirts let guys almost see... the legs. Which was probably sexy in the past, when legs were not displayed publicly so often.
Nail on the head! You wrapped the Zizek interpretation and the loose threads into a neat little bow. Love it!
Fetishes : sex :: chopsticks : eating is not a good analogy, though. Elaborate cultural rituals may *accompany* a lot of basic animal acts, but at least in my experience the ritual part is still governed by a set of social instincts that are almost entirely separate from the visceral drives around the biological act. The thought of eating with a fork makes me feel conscientious, not viscerally hungry. The thought of eating soup by slurping face-down from the bowl feels socially embarrassing, not viscerally revolting.
By my reckoning, a closer sexual equivalent to chopstick vs. fork norms might be conventions around courtship gifts/compliments, or whether it feels normal to have sex in bed or in a field. Beds and couches are overwhelmingly the conventional Western context for sexual encounters, but I'm not aware of there being a lot of guys who jack off to pictures of unoccupied beds.
Don't let Jesse Singal hear you claim that puberty blockers are reversible (for cases other than precocious puberty) https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/when-your-epistemic-bubble-pops-unlocked
I've only skimmed, but I see no evidence in that post that puberty blockers aren't reversible. It's a lot of getting angry at other people with bad evidentiary standards, plus one paragraph on blockers claiming:
- "The most commonly cited research supporting the use of blockers comes from a clinical environment very different from what’s (likely) going on in much of the U.S. today"
- "Another study showed no short-term psychological benefits to going on blockers"
- "Yet another key study that appeared to show a correlation between being denied access to puberty blockers and suicidality does some serious overclaiming"
If that's the worst one can say about their reversibility, seems pretty good!
(again, I say flippantly, not having investigated this in great depth and mostly going off claims from guideline-making bodies plus a few minutes of my own research)
I've also mostly seen arguments stemming from an absence of evidence (that it is reversible), rather than showing any particular evidence of the absence of reversibility, and given the years of use for precocious cases I would guess that there would be at least *some* red flags in the literature from before the Current Times, and that those opposed to the use of puberty blockers would be citing those papers. So count me as another one in the camp that usage of puberty blockers is very likely reversible in the vast majority of cases (other than some cosmetic differences such as being a bit taller due to more time before the growth plates close).
Wait, puberty blockers make you taller? Damn, now I wish I'd taken puberty blockers.
I think there's some effect where the typical male adolescent pattern is to grow slowly but steadily for a while, and then get a growth spurt, and then stop growing, so that by delaying the onset of the growth spurt it's possible to add a few more inches of the normal growth pattern?
You can see that effect in neutered dogs.
Yes, because estrogen induces bones to stop growing.
>given the years of use for precocious cases I would guess that there would be at least *some* red flags in the literature from before the Current Times, and that those opposed to the use of puberty blockers would be citing those papers
You could look at the Tavistock reviews, The Netherlands recently stopped using puberty blockers for transition, Denmark, several other European countries. I *think* part of the reason papers aren't cited more is that there's quite a difference in the length of time they're used for precocious puberty versus transition, and there's a difference between a temporary pause and cross-sex hormone treatments. The relevant data is limited and there's a reluctance to collect accurate data.
Also, "reversible" is a terrible phrase. Time and development don't work that way. There may be disagree on the degree to which further modification can occur, but calling it "reversible" is loading in the emotional valence and pre-judgement.
>other than some cosmetic differences such as being a bit taller due to more time before the growth plates close
Aren't cosmetic differences the point of treatment to begin with? I mean, I guess the real point is "prevent suicide" (although suicidality seems to be a not-infrequent side effect of blockers used in adolescents), but blockers are trying to achieve certain cosmetic differences as part of that prevention.
Anyways-
PBS isn't "the literature" but here you go, from 2017: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/women-fear-drug-they-used-to-halt-puberty-led-to-health-problems
>Women who used Lupron a decade or more ago to delay puberty or grow taller described the short-term side effects listed on the pediatric label: pain at the injection site, mood swings and headaches. Yet they also described conditions that usually affect people much later in life. A 20-year-old from South Carolina was diagnosed with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones, while a 25 year-old from Pennsylvania has osteoporosis and a cracked spine. A 26 year-old in Massachusetts needed a total hip replacement. A 25-year-old in Wisconsin, like Derricott, has chronic pain and degenerative disc disease.
>“It just feels like I’m being punished for basically being experimented on when I was a child,” said Derricott, of Lawton, Okla. “I’d hate for a child to be put on Lupron, get to my age and go through the things I have been through.”
>In the interviews with women who took Lupron to delay puberty or grow taller, most described depression and anxiety. Several recounted their struggles, or a daughter’s, with suicidal urges. One mother of a Lupron patient described seizures.
After review the FDA did not restrict Lupron: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/30/2019-11243/determination-that-lupron-leuprolide-acetate-injection-1-milligram02-milliliter-was-not-withdrawn
Several lawsuits, including I think a class action one, for women who took Lupron for precocious puberty and experienced debilitating life long side effects. Lupron itself has also been used to chemically castrate sex offenders and as part of treatment for prostrate cancer. The information is out there, readily available. Just not on the websites for gender affirming care.
I was going to say simply that I’m pretty sure most of the people who are strongly against puberty blockers also strongly believe that the effects are largely not reversible. Evidence from so-called “detransitioners” does seem to show that some effects, e.g. bone density, genital dysfunction, lack of libido, etc. may be permanent or long-lasting.
That sounds like very “not reversible”.
Marci Bowers (top gender surgeon) even said on camera: “Every single child who was, or adolescent, who was truly blocked at Tanner Stage 2 has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it's really about zero.”
She's never given any evidence to support that claim -- that quote from her is literally the only evidence I've ever seen presented for it -- and there are studies suggesting the opposite, not to mention anecdotes from trans people who used puberty blockers in adolescence and went on to have normal sex lives after transitioning:
https://genderanalysis.net/2022/04/abigail-shrier-and-surgeon-marci-bowers-falsely-claimed-trans-girls-on-puberty-blockers-lack-sexual-response-after-vaginoplasty/
She’s not going to provide evidence. She got a ton of criticism from her own side and now endorses the WPATH guidelines.
The link doesn’t disprove what she said because you would need to isolate tanner stage 2. And I could point to anecdotes as well, such as Jazz Jennings.
I’m not claiming what MB said about her patients is definitely true. I would have no way of knowing the real number, obviously, but the fact that she didn’t follow up with data wouldn’t ease my mind as a parent.
"The link doesn’t disprove what she said because you would need to isolate tanner stage 2. "
Only if she herself did. But considering that as a surgeon, she wouldn't have been involved in the original decision to prescribe medication to any patients, and also that she's never offered any factual basis for her claim, it's hard to see how she could have done that herself. More likely, she was making retrospective estimates of when her patients started puberty blockers.
"And I could point to anecdotes as well, such as Jazz Jennings."
You see why those would be irrelevant, though, right?
When you're making a general claim like "no one who started puberty blockers at Tanner stage 2 has ever been able to have an orgasm, ever", one contrary anecdote is enough to disprove it. But one *supporting* anecdote isn't enough to *prove* it.
"...the fact that she didn’t follow up with data wouldn’t ease my mind as a parent."
It's not just that she, herself, didn't follow up with data. It's that no one else has either! There seems to be literally no support for the claim you quoted, anywhere, other than the quote itself.
People who ordinarily wouldn't take the word of a "gender surgeon" at face value have nonetheless spent over a year touting that particular unsupported quote as proof that harm is being done.
Considering I had my first orgasm at five (well before puberty onset for me) why would puberty blockers inhibit it?
Probably by some kind of Schrödinger's retrocausality effect (epistemic status: sarcastic, to be clear)
She said blocked at Tanner 2 *who continue immediately on to* cross sex hormones.
How many of those detransitioners had *only* used puberty blockers?
By definition, I would think a detransitioner had done more than that, because in order to detransition one must first transition.
Why on earth would they be reversible? That sounds wildly unscientific as a null hypothesis.
Would you expect “growth blockers” to be “reversible”?
One would expect that because they've been used for decades for precocious puberty and have been shown to be.
Yeah and growth hormone blockers are probably used on people with overactive growth hormone abnormalities.
I doubt that means that growth blockers are “reversible” when just handed out to random people during youth. I would expect they would end up with permanently stunted growth. You don’t?
This Orwellian use of “reversible” is just silly.
From reading around in the research, they do seem to be. I don't know why one would expect them to be less reversible in the general population than among people with precocious puberty. Whether a drug's effects are reversible has to do more with the drug's mechanism of action and should apply generally in humans.
I don't have any dog in this hunt. I'm reading and learning. I think it's helpful if I don't let my disgust responses override my capacity for learning.
I don't see anything Orwellian about the use of the word reversible -- it's a common word used in talking about the effects of a medical intervention. A person gets Taxol to treat breast cancer; it causes peripheral nerve damage to most people; some of that damage is reversible and some isn't; there's a ton of focus on how to calibrate dosage to maximize treatment benefit and minimize the irreversible part of the nerve damage. It's just a clinical word to describe a thing that's useful to describe.
So normally people have. say 5 years of puberty. If they start 3 years early and have it blocked for 3 years and then get the normal 5 years, their outcomes are probably decent, though you don’t really have a control to know if where they end up in year 8 is where they would have been without precocious puberty.
But presumably it is better with blockers if you have precocious puberty.
What isn’t remotely clear is if someone is having a normal 5 years of puberty, and then halfway through you put them “on hold” for 18 months, that simply taking them off means it was “reversible”. Sure they didn’t fall over dead, but so they end up with the same outcomes?
The data on this seems wildly lacking given how important it is as a talking point.
It just doesn’t remotely pass the smell test.
The word "reversible", as applied in all this discussion, sends up red flags in my brain. It's been awhile since endocrinology for me, but this concept seems like it needs a lot more precision than a simple yes/no.
Puberty itself isn't something you'd think you can "pause" and then start up normally later, any more than aging. At least not with one or two simple hormonal interventions. That said, I'm sure it's not a precision engineered system, since most biological systems seem robust to systemic shocks. So I'd assume there's some threshold between, say, two weeks and twenty years where this intervention becomes irreversible. What's that threshold? Who knows?
On a personal note, it's a bit frustrating to run clinical trials for years before being able to roll out therapeutics that send clear efficacy and safety signals early on, then to see a dramatic intervention such as this one waltz past every meaningful safeguard. Do we have standards? If not, we could help a lot of patients tomorrow with the drugs my company is developing. If so, why don't we care enough to collect quality data for these high risk kids?
Puberty blockers block sexual development while not blocking general growth of the body. It's the perfect antidote for those who have precocious sexual development but are otherwise normal development curve.
But for people who are physiologically healthy, weird things like excessive bone growth will happen, resulting in an imbalanced body. For an extreme example, see the castrati (there was a book review about the topic here on ACX about a year ago): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrato#/media/File:Bartolomeo_Nazari_-_Portrait_of_Farinelli_1734_-_Royal_College_of_Music_London.jpg
That’s because the use is very different there. You want to _stop_ overly early puberty, so that it can _resume_ in the expected fashion. That’s quite different from blocking regularly expected puberty altogether and assuming that everything will sort itself out later if you stop the medication.
Others have already mentioned the loss of bone density, that can reach downright crippling levels, and is the main reason puberty blockers have become more restricted in Europe until the issue can get sorted out.
Precocious puberty, so that they're stopped in order to permit normal (or "natal" as the new favoured term seems to be) puberty to occur later is the way puberty blockers have been used over decades.
Blocking normal puberty with the aim of going onto hormones (so you can have your 'real gender' puberty) is a different matter which we haven't seen enough data for yet, because it's a relatively new thing.
I submit there's a difference between a medical condition where the process has started prematurely and needs to be halted, and one where the system is reacting normally.
I can't find an easily accessible range of how long someone would be on puberty blockers for precocious puberty, it honestly depends on when it starts:
"How long are puberty blockers typically used?
Children who are prescribed puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty typically take the medication until they’re at least 8 or 9 years old.
There are cases of people presenting with signs of precocious puberty as young as 1 year old who then use this medication for 7 or more years, explains Osipoff.
“There isn’t a clear-cut answer for how long puberty blockers will be used when used as part of transgender or gender affirming healthcare,” she says."
Here's the study on height, by the way:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342775/
So let's say you're on puberty blockers for five years or so; going off them, they do seem to be reversible ("Puberty usually begins within 6 months to a year after stopping GnRHa treatment") but there also seem to be definite effects ("Research has found that young people who receive GnRHa treatment before the age of six for precocious puberty reach greater adult heights than those who are not treated. However, a 2019 meta-analysis found no such effect for cis girls receiving treatment between the ages of seven and ten."; "Data also suggests that puberty blockers don't have long term effects on bone or metabolic health.")
Hard to know what's true or not until we have the cohort of children who went on puberty blockers for gender identity reasons grown up and compared to their peers.
At minimum, there seems to be no clinical studies showing that they're reversible and how.
If there were, people would not debate this by all these anecdotes that gets passed around.
You think that having clinical studies that contradict your opinion would stop people from making arguments? What planet are you from?
No, but I think those whose opinion was *supported* by such studies would point to them.
If they existed...
The height thing, which is one of the primary reasons puberty blockers were first adopted in cases of precocious puberty, is a potentially huge effect and definitely not reversible.
Although on reading this it seems like the field is very fraught and confusing.
But on priors I would be astonished if taking large doses of hormones during important developmental periods did not produce irreversible changes.
https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/10/2/135/617162
"Historical series of untreated patients (Table III) show mean heights of 152 cm in girls and 156 cm in boys, a loss of ∼10 cm in girls and 20 cm in boys (Bar et al., 1995; Kauli et al., 1997). However, these data come from a limited number of patients from the 1950s and 1960s"
"We have analysed adult height outcome in a series of 58 girls included in a multicentre study (Carel et al., 1999). The mean increase of adult height over pretreatment predicted height was 4.8 ± 5.8 cm. Forty‐seven per cent of the patients had height improvements ≥5 cm, an arbitrary threshold for clinical significance. Another way to estimate the gain in adult height was to compare treated patients with historical controls. This was done after matching patients and controls for age at onset of puberty (Figure 2): the difference was 8.9 ± 8.7 cm (P < 0.0001, Wilcoxon test). Sixty‐four per cent of treated girls had an adult height ≥5 cm above their age‐matched control. Altogether, if we take into account the probable overestimation of height prognosis in untreated patients, the true average height gain in a group of patients like ours is probably in the range of 8–10 cm, with ≥50% of individuals benefiting by ≥5 cm."
Scott didn't claim it was "completely reversible" he explicitly used the phrase "mostly reversible".
In the context of transitioning is a ~10cm change in height a material impact? I'd argue largely no. The important aspects are the sexual development aspects that the blockers are intended to block - various other changes are incidental.
Scott, I really think you have the wrong null hypothesis here. Puberty blockers stop one part of our developmental clock, but not the rest. In particular, bone growth continues. Why on earth would that be reversible? As I said in another comment: see the castrati for extreme outcomes. Development of other organs might be relevant too; I'm not an expert, but I'd certainly bet against your null hypothesis here as well, from an outside view.
In my mind, the only question is: how long is a safe period to take them? I think the answer is more than zero, but where is the limit? 6 months? 1 year?
Why one earth would you assume he thought they were reversible?
I can’t decide whether to suggest that you avoid the research and topic of gender affirming care completely, or research the counter-evidence more deeply. I would sincerely appreciate both (but suspect the former would be healthier), but I wouldn’t expect to find you in this middle space where you don’t seem very familiar with one side of the argument. (Not the Florida Man anti-woke side, but the sympathetic yet concerned liberal side.)
My impression is that it is quite easy to find respectable clinicians and knowledgable reporters that you should find trustworthy and worth reading, who can complicate the picture better than I can. And not all anti-trans by any stretch of the imagination, but often highly critical of the quality of care given (which I’m curious what you would think about– especially concerning minors).
However, this topic is so full of toxicity that I don’t want to mention anyone in particular, and be dragged for mentioning such and such charlatan.
Speaking as a reproductive biologist, I would expect the effects to be mostly but not entirely reversible. The biggest irreversible one would be increased height (estrogen produced during puberty causes bones to stop growing).
But given that the age of puberty has declined from 16-17 to 12-13 over the last century or so, I think delaying it a few years is not a problem.
I think part of the whole controversy is that it seems to be a path that is not "delay puberty for a few years until you figure this out, then you can reverse the blockers and go on to male or female puberty naturally" as it is "delay puberty until you're legally old enough to be put on cross-sex hormones and start going through female - if you are natal male - or male - if you are natal female - puberty. Further intervention like surgery may or may not follow down the line".
That makes it more complicated than "stop it for a while, then restart it" (as with precocious puberty) and instead is "stop it for a while, then swap it against your body's natural puberty to that of the other sex".
On the other hand, it also means the most likely alternative to puberty blockers isn't "do nothing and experience no side effects", but rather "do nothing until you're legally old enough to start cross-sex hormones, go through puberty a second time, and (especially for natal males) have a series of surgeries to reverse as many of the visible changes from natal puberty as possible".
Does it also mean that the scenario talked about as most terrible -- which is children taking drugs that postpone puberty and then deciding to return to the same biological road they were on but now with some possibly irreversible side effects -- is a pretty tiny number of kids?
The other thing I think about -- maybe Scott mentioned this too -- is that one major alternative to puberty blocking drugs for young people with gender dysphoria is going to be antidepressants and those also run a risk of irreversible side effects.
In a land where there are no great choices, it seems like maybe having more choices is helpful since none of the choices is great.
If the use of puberty blockers are more beneficial than harmful, why did Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the UK rethink their use?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/06/06/increasing-number-of-european-nations-adopt-a-more-cautious-approach-to-gender-affirming-care-among-minors/?sh=4c6cd5f47efb
The learnings from the Travistock clinic, is that the majority of Gender Dysphoria youth, something like 3/4 to 4/5 of them eventually discover they're gay. Gender Affirming Care including puberty blockers results in sterilization. After a mastectomy, replaced breast/nipples have no sensation, which for many people is an important part of sex. Most post Gender Affirming Care patients lack the ability to achieve arousal or erotic emotions. Post Gender Affirming Care patients will never achieve orgasm. The majority of Gender Dysphoria patients have multiple mental health conditions, autism, etc. Hormone therapy includes many dramatic health consequences, early onset osteoporosis, like in the 20s, greatly increased risk cardiac arrest in youth, early onset hair loss, irreversible facial hair growth, irreversible voice deepening, irreversible masculine facial characteristics.
"After a mastectomy, replaced breast/nipples have no sensation"
That's quite a claim! I hope you'll share some evidence to back it up, especially since it seems to be contradicted by existing studies (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25455292/, where nipple sensitivity after mastectomy was "good" or "very good" >80% of the time).
"Most post Gender Affirming Care patients lack the ability to achieve arousal or erotic emotions."
This too, which also seems to be contradicted by existing studies (e.g. see citations at https://genderanalysis.net/2022/04/abigail-shrier-and-surgeon-marci-bowers-falsely-claimed-trans-girls-on-puberty-blockers-lack-sexual-response-after-vaginoplasty/).
"Post Gender Affirming Care patients will never achieve orgasm. "
This too. As far as I've been able to tell, the *only* basis for this particular astonishing claim is a single quote by Marci Bowers, which she never offered any evidence to support and which she later walked back; also, in another comment here, Carina suggested that Bowers was only referring to her own patients anyway. Meanwhile, it's contradicted by studies (see above), and by patients who report that they are in fact able to achieve orgasm after gender-affirming care.
"The majority of Gender Dysphoria patients have multiple mental health conditions, autism, etc."
Interesting if true, but how is it relevant?
Are you implying that no one should be treated for gender dysphoria until they've been "cleared" of all other conditions, including autism? If so, do you have a whole list of conditions in mind that autistic people shouldn't be treated for, or is gender dysphoria the only one?
"Hormone therapy includes many dramatic health consequences, early onset osteoporosis, like in the 20s, greatly increased risk cardiac arrest in youth, early onset hair loss, irreversible facial hair growth, irreversible voice deepening, irreversible masculine facial characteristics."
Other than osteoporosis, you've basically just listed the effects of testosterone. In fact, the last few are usually seen as *benefits* by the population in question (trans men).
On the other hand, from the perspective of young trans women (natal males), they are indeed harmful effects—of puberty!—which is why puberty blockers are often prescribed to prevent them.
> "If the use of puberty blockers are more beneficial than harmful, why did Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the UK rethink their use?"
I haven't looked into this, but my prior is that it's because Europeans are hopeless communist nanny-staters who ban anything cool on general instinct. Cf. melatonin, GPT-4.
I'm not sure what the comment is about melatonin, but if the comment is about the EU banning GPT-4, only one of those four countries is in the EU and so bans it.
I would like to object to the otherwise-fascinating "oral history" linked article for this sentence:
>For example -- and this is very clear in Roman texts -- to punish a person who stole potatoes from his field, a Roman might oblige the person to give him fellatio.
My objection is that potatoes are a New World crop. All meaningfully "Roman" polities were long-gone by the time the Columbian Exchange brought potatoes to Europe, what with Constantinople falling to the Ottomans in 1453, and before that the Byzantine Empire despite being more-or-less institutionally continuous with the Eastern Roman Empire had been much more Greek than Roman at least since the reign of Heraclius (610-641 AD)
Ah yes, but false implies true is true. Therefore despite the lack of potatoes the consequence of fellatio still follows.
You might even say that forced fellatio happened in response to literally every time someone stole a Roman's potatoes.
> every time someone stole a Roman's potatoes
This should be a euphemism for something.
Possibly I'm thinking of the apocryphal martial arts move, "Monkey steals the peaches".
That's not apocryphal.
Interesting! Would you mind sharing what style(s) you've seen it in?
Alternative world history: a group of renegades stole all the Romans' potatoes, and to avoid having to perform fellatio for the next several decades as punishment, they hopped into a few boats and set sail for the Americas.
If your translation is shoddy, you might think Ovid said there were cornfields where Troy once stood. Perhaps, like the word "seges" was repurposed, this was a Latin word that meant "root vegetable" that is now used to mean "potato."
EDIT: It might be even worse than that: it looks like the word "corn" predates the Columbian Exchange, and changed to mean what it does today.
Yeah, "maize" is commonly referred to as "corn" in America, which I believe is a shortened form of "Indian corn", which was to distinguish it from Old World corns.
Also, maize corn is objectively cornier (having larger and thus more distinctive kernels) than or the cereal grains.
Peppercorns do come close, though!
”Corn” just used to mean ”grain” (or really, just any small and hard piece from a plant, such as with peppercorns as mentioned below), and in Swedish (and presumably similar in other languages), ”korn” is the word for barley.
Etymology Online: corn (n.1)
"grain," Old English corn "single seed of a cereal plant; seeds of cereal plants generally; plants which produce corn when growing in the field," from Proto-Germanic *kurnam "small seed" (source also of Old Frisian and Old Saxon korn "grain," Middle Dutch coren, German Korn, Old Norse korn, Gothic kaurn), from PIE root *gre-no- "grain."
Yeah, that's pretty bad.
I think I didn't notice because I used to object whenever I saw "corn" in an ancient text, and then learned they used "corn" to generically mean grain. But I don't think anyone has ever used "potato" that way.
That sounds like somebody is mixing up the statues of the garden-god Priapus, a Greek deity taken over by the Romans, and which often had humorous* warning notices on the statues/herms about what would happen to would-be thieves, or poems about the deity:
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-religion/gods-of-ancient-rome/list-of-roman-gods/priapus/
"Priapus was the Roman god of fertility, the guarantor of fertility. He was the son of Dionysus or Hermes and Aphrodite. He looked after gardens, trees growing in them and vineyards. The cult of Priapus was taken over by the Romans and adapted to their mythology. In Rome, Priapus was initially the keeper of orchards and vineyards, and later also of fertility and harvest. Priapus’s sacrificial animal was a donkey.
In the gardens, statues or herms depicting Priapus with an exposed member in an erect state were often placed, at which he was offered sacrifices from the first crops."
*For a given value of "humorous" where rape threats are considered humour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapeia
"The Priapeia (or Carmina Priapea) is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD or the beginning of the 2nd century.[1] A traditional theory about their origin is that they are an anthology of poems written by various authors on the same subject. However, it has recently been argued that the 80 poems are in fact the work of a single author, presenting a kind of biography of Priapus from his vigorous youth to his impotence in old age.
... Many of the epigrams are written as though they were to be engraved on the walls of a shrine containing a statue of the god Priapus that stood in the midst of gardens as the protector of the fruits that grew in them. These statues, usually carved from wood, were in the form of a man with a huge phallus, carrying a sickle in one hand. The statues, painted red to signify sexual prowess, also promoted the gardens’ fertility. Most of the poems in the collection are monologues by Priapus himself. In them the god congratulates and praises himself for the size and virility of his sexual parts and issues fearful warnings to those who would trespass upon his garden or attempt to steal its fruits, threatening such miscreants with various punishments of a sexual nature, such as irrumation and sodomy. The poems are notable for their use of obscene words and ideas in combination with refined and elegant diction."
Agreed that potatoes were not to be found in Classical Roman gardens, and that it most likely wasn't the proprietor of the garden, but rather the guardian deity, who would engage in face-fucking transgressors. E.g. the rather tortuous 19th century translation of some of the above poems:
https://sacred-texts.com/cla/priap/priapeia.htm
"No. 12
Percidere puer, moneo: futuere puella:
barbatum furem tertia poena manet.
Thou shalt be pedicate (lad!), thou also (lass!) shalt be rogered;
While for the bearded thief is the third penalty kept.
I warn thee, my lad, thou wilt be sodomised; thee, my girl, I shall futter;[1] for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment[2] remains.
[1. Futuere. Used frequently by Martial. Derived from fundo, to pour out (the semen).
2. Tertia poene in the Latin original meaning irrumation, or coition with the mouth.]
No. 21
Femina si furtum faciet mihi virve puerve,
haec cunnum, caput hic praebeat, ille nates.
An fro' me woman shall thieve or plunder me man or a man-child,
She shall pay me with coynte, that with his mouth, this with arse.
If a woman, man, or boy, thieve from me, let her coynte, his mouth, the latter's buttocks, be submitted [to my mentule].
No. 23
Hic me custodem fecundi vilicus horti
mandati curam iussit habere loci.
fur habeas poenam, licet indignere 'feram'que
'propter holus' dicas 'hoc ego?' 'propter holus'.
Here has the bailiff, now of this plentiful garden the guardian,
Bidden me care for the place he to my service entrusts.
Thief! thou shalt suffer the pain albeit crying in anger--
'What! for a cabbage all this? This for a cabbage I bear?'
The steward has bidden me, the protector of this fertile garden, have a care of the place committed to my charge. Thou, O thief, shalt be punished; thou mayst be enraged, and say, 'On account of a cabbage am I to endure this? On account of a cabbage?'[1]
[1. Some read prope, meaning near--'Am I to be sodomised near a cabbage?' instead of propter, meaning on account of. Because, it is presumed, the thief thought a cabbage plot too open a space for such a punishment.]
No. 27
Tu, qui non bene cogitas et aegre
carpendo tibi temperas ab horto,
pedicabere fascino pedali.
quod si tam gravis et molesta poena
non profecerit, altiora tangam.
Thou, of unrighteous thought, that hardly canst
Refrain from robbing this my garden-plot,
With foot-long fascinum shalt bulghar'd be:
Yet if so mighty grievous punishment
Profit thee naught, at higher stead I'll strike.
Thou who wickedly designest, and scarce forbearest from robbing my garden, shall be sodomised with my twelve-inch fascinum [phallus]. But if so severe and unpleasant a punishment shall not avail., I will strike higher.[1]
[1. Thy mouth shall serve as the instrument of thy punishment.
No. 30
Vade per has vites, quarum si carpseris uvam,
cur aliter sumas, hospes, habebis aquam.
Hie thee amid these vines whereof an thou gather a grape-bunch
Guest! of the water shalt drink serving for different use.
Haste thee through these vines, for if thou hast plucked off their clustering grapes, guest! thou wilt take the water for another purpose.[1]
[1. If on his way to drink at the fountain, the wayfarer plucked the grapes in the orchard guarded by the god, Priapus threatened him with irrumation. He would then require water, not only to quench his thirst, but also to cleanse his mouth. 'Because you suck, and gargle your mouth with water, Lesbia, you do no wrong. You take water where there is need of it, Lesbia.' Following the example of other women, who after coition bathe their privy parts, Lesbia rinses her mouth. The poet calls her Lesbia because the Lesbians were given to this fantasy.]"
Thank you
What it seems to me people are addicted to is outrage.
I agree, but I'd add one little layer, which is that gender is a subject on which everyone seems to have an opinion. It seems to be even better than religion, that way.
Maybe this should go on the old list of "politics and religion", of things not to discuss in polite company.
Rather than taking things off the list of possible conversation topics, I'd rather we inhabited a more "this is an issue that intelligent and moral people can disagree about" state of mind. We're losing the capacity to have conversations.
There are so many issues like this that we'd have to stop talking about things that matter altogether. What to do about climate change, views on abortion, what diversity means and how we should or shouldn't promote it, whether masks or lockdowns or vaccines during Covid were helpful or an appalling offense to civil liberties, how to fix the healthcare system, how to view and treat opioid addiction, what to do about homelessness, whether we ever ought to involuntarily hospitalize people, whether foreign aid is a good or a terrible idea, what limits if any to free speech are justifiable, and on and on.
Twitter is a rage machine where people get rewarded for freaking out over one sentence a person writes or says while spinning into orbit on the high of their sanctimonious rage. No time to ask questions, to clarify meanings, to extend any good faith. Meanwhile, people are starving for actual connection. It seems kinda crazy.
I agree with everything you say. But I don't see a way from here to there. :-(
I don't either in any grand way.
For myself, it's steer clear of places like Twitter and stay curious about other people and their views and how they come to them. And it's to look for opportunities for real conversations with people who want to have them.
I also think there's an important piece about learning basic emotional self-regulation. There's an enormous amount of childish reactivity going on out there among people who are lacking a more grounding sense of purpose in their lives. Partly I think that's about gaps in parenting, but partly too I think that's about people spending time in environments that aren't healthy for human nervous systems -- I'd put all of social media in that category.
Agreed again. And I'd include cable news in that category as well.
But I don't think it's just reactivity. I've seen very smart, capable people with what should be fulfilling lives get eaten by the outrage machine, and other very similar people simply nod along and feed the behavior, as if they don't see anything wrong with it. But maybe it's that I can't see inside their head, and that they've all got a gaping void somewhere that they desperately fill with anything that makes them feel righteous and justified. I wish I knew.
Yes totally about cable news.
I like your thought about gaping void, including among very high functioning people.
I also wonder about the dynamic you see with other addictions, which is that people may tip into them in a vulnerable moments -- injured back, a depressive episode, a significant loss -- but then the tight and distorted reward mechanisms of the addiction itself create its own trap way above and beyond the initial and possibly transient vulnerability.
Obligatory Simpsons reference: https://youtu.be/kCUIzs8i9EU?si=VYuNklJ6wXYr5EAA
The Canadian census contains some very important information about trans rights (including a breakdown of trans and non-binary people by age, but that's not what I'm referring to).
Trans people? About half a percent of the population. The non-binary? The same.
So these issues involve 1% of people. Which means almost any other issue you can name affects more people, yet this is the one everyone insists on screaming about constantly.
Devil's advocate: people wouldn't care if it looked likely to remain 1% of the population, but everyone on both sides expects it to grow.
To further this point, why is it so important that the rest of the world accommodate that 1%,?
I don't think the answer is any more specific than the general answer to "why should anyone ever respect anyone else's preferences?" Why do you slow your car down when pedestrians are crossing the street? Why don't I spit in your face? I think we have a general bias towards accommodating others' preferences, while balancing off how important it is for them vs. how convenient it is for us. I think different aspects of dealing with transgender people will end up at different points in that balance but it certainly doesn't seem like we should have a blanket ban on cooperating with them.
Highlights from the Comments on the Highlights from the Comments on Fetishes:
"Why don't I spit in your face?"
- Scott Alexander
That's why I hate Twitter.
Highlights from the Highlight Comment from the Comments on the Highlights from the Comments on Fetishes:
"I spit in your face..."
- Scott Alexander
Top-rated comment from wherever on Mastodon Sneer Club's gone:
"Scott Alexander's into face-spitting, and spits on people's faces at meetups..."
A norm of people not being run down in the street directly benefits the vast majority of the population on net balance. The same cannot remotely be said of something that directly positively impacts a fraction of a percent of the population. And slowing down for a pedestrian is a hell of a lot less of an imposition than forcing your daughter to share a locker room with 'people with penises'.
And policing driver behavior around pedestrians is basically a finished issue. There aren't dementedly pro-pedestrian advocacy groups running around (at least, not with anything remotely resembling institutional power or political influence) demanding ever more restrictions on driver behavior after acting like the last law or policy was where things are going to end. But we know that wokeness never ends, giving into them doesn't make things end there, it simply emboldens the woke to make increasingly outrageous demands.
Trans activists will extremely frequently tie everything back to the murder of transpeople, especially transwomen, as the fundamental issue at play here. But this is at least somewhat misleading, because it's not enough that any given person doesn't literally murder transwomen (and increased policing in black neighborhoods where most trans murders occur is unthinkable) . No, the way we end trans murders to completely change society's attitudes towards sex and "gender" at a fundamental level - anything that remotely implies that people with dick and balls are any less capable of being "real" women must be eliminated, lest it lead to trans people being killed. There's simply nothing anywhere closely analogous to this in traffic norms. And this unending 'progress' towards complete trans 'acceptance' makes it perfectly rational to not cooperate with them even when its the less unreasonable stuff they're demanding right now, because it can only possibly lead to more unreasonable stuff.
You may be some weird eternal optimist and thinks everyone will stop complying once it gets truly unreasonable (to the extent it hasn't already), but consider the fact that if you went back as little as 20 years and explained how things would be regarding transgendered people in 2023, they would have laughed in your face at this being possible.
That list of reasons fails the ideological Turing test, for not including, minimally, “licit presence of men in women’s locker rooms is an actual safety threat.”
>> "A norm of people not being run down in the street directly benefits the vast majority of the population on net balance. The same cannot remotely be said of something that directly positively impacts a fraction of a percent of the population. And slowing down for a pedestrian is a hell of a lot less of an imposition than forcing your daughter to share a locker room with 'people with penises'."
There are plenty of norms that only benefit a small percent of the population. Signposting foods containing peanuts only help people with peanut allergies. Bike lanes only help bikers; bus stops only help bus riders; parking lots only helps car owners. Art museums only help people who like art, having kosher/halal/vegetarian food available only helps Jews/Muslims/vegetarians. Chaplain service at hospitals only helps the religious; respect for veterans only helps veterans. Perhaps parents who don't want their daughters in gender-neutral locker rooms are also less than 100% of the population! My interpretation of the social contract is that most people are in some group that's only 1% of the population, and everyone in all the little groups agree to cooperate with all the other little groups as best they can rather than be at war with each other all the time.
I only endorsed giving transgender people the right to take puberty blockers plus general social respect; I don't have strong opinions of the cost-vs-benefits of locker room policies or anything else.
You know, the peanut allergy thing is actually an interesting allegory here.
We're up to something like ~2.5% of children with a peanut allergy, to the point where many schools (including my kids' elementary school) are completely nut-free. This is moderately annoying to non-allergic families: peanut butter sandwiches are cheap, easy to make, and well-liked by kids. It's annoying to have to make sun butter sandwiches instead. They're about 2-3 times more expensive, and they taste worse.
Of course, I don't want my kids' classmates to die of anaphylactic shock, so I go along with it. But I grumble about it.
The interesting bit here is that peanut allergies are _almost completely preventable_, if you introduce peanuts to kids while they're still a baby. There was a big clinical trial about this: ~80% reduction in prevalence. But hardly any parent knows about this, so few US parents do it deliberately (we did, but people gave us side-eyes for feeding the baby peanut Cheerios), and the increased abundance of peanut allergies mean it's less likely to happen randomly. So we get more peanut allergies and no peanut butter sandwiches for anyone.
> Why do you slow your car down when pedestrians are crossing the street?
Selfish reason, even if one cared not a jot about the pedestrians' preferences for staying alive and in one piece: Think of all the forms you'd have to fill out, and time wasted down at the police station and possibly also in court if you did knock over any of the jay walkers! :-)
Any theories explaining the apparent increase in prevalence of TSs have to account for both M2Fs and F2Ms, although of course there may be different explanations for each. F2M transitioning seems to be a new development, although there have always been pipe-smoking lesbians and similar.
It's hard to come up with ideas which don't sound disparaging to those wishing to transition, although in theory that should not preclude dispassionate enquiry. No doubt most are sincere, because after all it is a big and and largely irrevocable decision. But one can't avoid the suspicion that some are more of a lifestyle choice, to sound different and special, especially for ultra-trendy parents encouraging their young offspring to transition.
Some others may be a misguided attempt to become what attracts them most, like those people who spend a fortune on plastic surgery to look like their favorite pop star: A surprising number of M2Fs remain sexually attracted to women or other M2Fs, and end up in a lesbian relationship. Also, many F2Ms fancy only men, and aspire to a gay relationship with a guy, or to have sexual relations with other men as a man, albeit often retaining female genitals. Go figure.
But arguably the desire to transition has always been around, even if it could not be physically realised in the past. ISTR in the novel Lorna Doone, written around 1870, the main character John Ridd is musing at one point about his schoolmates, and remarks "Some should have been born girls" (although I agree that a quote from a novel is not exactly conclusive evidence! :-)
There have always been some people assigned female who lived as men for some or even almost all of their lifespan. Some were doing so to gain access to male privilege or certain occupations, but some preferred to live as men even when they faced a social cost for doing so (eg Harry Allen). In terms of medical transition, until recently people perceived as women had much less access to economic resources that could be used for transitioning, and typically only some butch lesbians even knew about the possibility of taking testosterone. Late-transitioning MTFs who were able to succeed in male-dominated workplaces have historically had much more money to invest in transitioning.
Which accommodation, specifically, are you being asked to provide?
Allowing biological men into women's spaces just because they themselves claim to be women. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are quite a few women, even on the Left, who are very uncomfortable with this. So it seems we have to choose who we inconvenience. Or do you think that we should not have any sex-segregated spaces anymore? I don't agree, but I think it would at least be a more consistent position.
This happens so incredibly rarely that it becomes national news when a new case is discovered.
But I specifically asked what accommodations *you* are being asked to make - even in the rare case that trans women are using women's accommodations the owners of those spaces have voluntarily made that choice - they haven't been forced to.
None personally, but as a concerned citizen I feel I have the right to put in my two cents just like everyone else. Also, are you alright with establishment owners NOT allowing men in women's spaces or vice versa ("if you won't use the locker room/restroom of your birth sex I'll have to ask you to leave")? Or do you think they should be harassed, boycotted, or sued if they don't allow anyone to use whatever facility they want? Then there's women's sports. Are you okay with biological men trouncing women in sports where men have a physical advantage?
This is not true. In California at least, it is required by law.
Same reason we accommodate left-handed people and people who use wheelchairs and Jewish people. (I think wheelchair users and Jewish Americans are about 1%.)
It is a pity that accommodating it requires difficult medical measures. In contrast, myopia has been increasing "over the past half-century" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930282/) (and, yes, there can be serious consequences in some cases). But, as myopia usually just requires spectacles or contacts, the level of concern seems orders of magnitude lower, and vitriol seems nearly absent.
Disagree, I think plenty of people on at least one side believe that it's a fad which will eventually peak in popularity and retreat back to, say, 1990 values.
That's my personal suspicion anyway.
I'm skeptical of that. The 40-through-70-year-old trans people are there, but a pretty small fraction. I think the vast majority of people are basically content with their gender identity, and there's only so much that can be done to change that. Equally, there's obviously a core of people who simply aren't going to stop being trans.
Frankly, I think things are awfully close to their maximum for people deciding they're trans - not that things could not be better for trans people, but there are plenty of extremely loud voices pushing the idea, and the UK (for example) has flat-out gone too far and had people sue the NHS for that. Canada lacks a lot of the vitriol around it (though some has started), and DOES have the pro-trans voices. My local courts require announcing your pronouns now, for example (which has worked terribly and is infuriating given the pile of other, vastly more important issues facing the local justice system). Nonetheless...half a percent (I actually misremembered the numbers - it's 0.19% transgender, 0.14% non-binary). The government themselves claims it's only 0.24%, so there may be some overlap they're not explicitly pointing out.
I think, frankly, that people would be less irked if it WAS something like 5% of the population, because at least that's a large enough group it might be reasonable to rejig language and a vast number of social systems.
Isn't it the case that nearly 20% of Zoomers/high-schoolers identify as some variant of trans or non-binary? This is so salient right now in media / social-media that the rates have skyrocketed.
That's probably what concerns voters, but I'm inclined to believe this doesn't need to be fixed because the culture war focus will shift elsewhere in due time, like it always does. It's trendy now, but it won't be in 10 years.
That’s about the number that identify as some kind of LGBTQ+. Only 1.9% identify as transgender. https://www.newsweek.com/people-who-identify-transgender-doubles-gen-z-1783562. From my experience with other young people, many of those who identify as transgender do not want to pursue medical transition or discovered they were trans after puberty, so the puberty blockers are only an issue for an even smaller group.
"I have also had this particular pleasure, and of course I sympathize with this person, but I also think her statement is literally correct as written. Again, not an expert, not a trauma-focused therapist, etc, but my amateur opinion is you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma. Some transgender activist cyberbullies you - many such cases! - and then you spend the rest of your life trying to own trans activists to prove that they were wrong and you were right and the world is safe again. IOU a post fleshing out this theory in more details sometime in the next few months. But for now, search your feelings, you know it to be true."
I've struggled with this in multiple contexts. I believe that the helpfulness of statements like this depends on the agency the individual possesses. If you have sufficient agency, a statement like this can be helpful. If you do not see yourself as able to stop re-enacting your trauma, this advice is worse than useless-it can reinforce the trauma. I don't know what percentage of folks are in that situation, but I know a number who are (not for transgenderism, but for other issues). For them, this statement sounds a lot like "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Can you explain in more detail how saying "don't re-enact your trauma" can reinforce the trauma?
Sure. If the person doesn't see themself as being able to "not re-enact my trauma", then the trauma becomes even more painful, harder to address, shameful, etc. The statement implicitly claims that they should be able to "not re-enact my trauma". It may be that reinforce isn't the right wording. Maybe "makes the trauma harder to address"? "Reinforces the pain of the trauma"? On reflection, I think I'd likely argue that a root of trauma is the perception of self as lacking agency to avoid/stop/prevent the trauma. Thus, a statement that reinforces lack of agency reinforces the trauma. For context: I'm in a group of about 15 people who meet regularly to support each other in working on our issues. Our best sessions can be as good as good therapy (but good therapy delivers more frequently, in my experience). Of the group of 15, I'd say one is traumatized, and has this lack of agency issue to a very noticeable degree, IMHO. There are perhaps 1 or 2 others who have it to a lesser degree. So I don't want to over-emphasize prevalence. But when it's there, it's really there.
I hope this is helpful-let me know if you'd like more.
The thing about interpersonal trauma is that it's infused with shame and the shame can be evoked by a huge variety of unpredictable-to-others triggers. It can't be another person's job not to evoke shame in us. We've got to take care of that ourselves.
In therapy or among very good friends, we maybe can ask people to handle certain triggers with us very gently. But out in the wider world, that doesn't work.
And that's part of what I hear Scott saying, which is "take responsibility for how marinating in this very online transgender debate field impacts you; you have choices about how you spend your time."
If a statement like that evokes shame in someone, that's still their task to take care of their shame, and not the task of other people to anticipate what might conceivably evoke shame in people they don't know.
This topic maybe connects over to the topic of trigger warnings which research seems to have shown are counterproductive. Which is in line with all the research about anxiety -- that trying to avoid triggers makes anxiety worse, not better.
(Part of what I see in the people reacting to Scott's first paragraph is an extension of the psychological fragility and brittleness that seems increasingly widespread in public spaces. People are poised for other people to say a thing that flips their switches. People speak as if someone else's opinions are a form of violence against them.
This dynamic isn't healthy for anybody and I think is fueling a tendency to think other people are responsible for regulating us emotionally and if we can't regulate ourselves, it's got to be someone else's fault, including because they didn't word something perfectly.)
I'm not arguing in favor of trigger warnings, nor am I talking about taking "responsibility for how marinating in this very online transgender debate field impacts you; you have choices about how you spend your time."
I'm making a very limited point about not telling traumatized people to "stop re-enacting your trauma". Unless you know them and their context very well, it's just not productive in my experience, and can be quite counterproductive, to the point of trapping the prior even more firmly.
Also, advice that you haven't asked for is close to, or is, criticism. Why criticize a traumatized person?
Again, I'm not addressing the online gender debate, or trigger warnings. Just a very specific set of people, in specific circumstances. There are traumatized people who are robust enough to hear "Hey, stop re-traumatizing yourself" and take it well. But even then, I think the better practice would be to say something like, "Hey, you know, I wonder if maybe you're kinda retraumatizing yourself there. Just a thought."
"Hey, you know, I wonder if maybe you're kinda retraumatizing yourself there. Just a thought."
versus "you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma" in italics
I really think he's talking to us, his audience, and that this is a rhetorical device in support of his self-defense rather than a direct communication to traumatized people.
I think language is tricky because your version while I can feel the kind intent behind it sets my teeth on edge because it sounds condescending to me.
This is the kind of thing that can get quickly sorted out in one-on-one conversations but can't get sorted at all in speaking to a general audience one doesn't know personally.
I think I hear you saying that Scott's version was unkind and that your version is kind. And that the unkindness in Scott's version is what makes it unhelpful, or potentially re-traumatizing because it could be shaming.
I think trauma is super complicated and it's really hard to say how different people will respond to words like these. (I'm a psychotherapist who specializes in treating trauma and has worked with some really profoundly traumatized people over years and I've been consistently humbled by the inability to predict the variety of subtleties that evoke strong shame responses in other people. Including that people can get triggered if language is too kind and forgiving in a situation where they are still very aligned with their need to feel ashamed.)
I was not saying that Scott's version was unkind and mine is unkind. I was saying that for some people some times, Scott's version would make them worse off. For some people, some of the time, my version would make them worse off.
Yes, what I'm saying is not about Scott's point about online communication.
And all this is super complicated and contextual.
If someone's grabbed your hand and is hitting you with it, having someone else tell you to "stop hitting yourself" isn't usually going to help. It just reinforces the helplessness and shame.
I appreciate the explanation.
I do think in context I was trying to convince this hypothetical person that they were re-enacting trauma, not claiming that stopping was a primitive action. Compare to something like "If you want to succeed in business, you need to learn a second language."
Sure. But if that person has a trapped prior of "I can't learn a second language", then what's the impact of that statement?
Similarly, one plausible response to hearing "you're reenacting trauma", is rather than rationally realizing "Oh, I'm going to stop that," to have an emotional response of "I'm such a loser-I can't even stop reenacting trauma." The issue is helping the person release the trapped prior, not giving them advice they can't ingest. I would imagine you've run into something similar in your clinical practice?
I've generally found that helping people understand that the thing they are doing isn't rational and is related to a psych disorder is a positive step. Sometimes it helps directly, other times it convinces them to seek a higher level of treatment.
Agreed. But that assumes an absence of strongly trapped priors. And it's a rational argument-what do you do when they aren't responsive to that?
Perhaps the difference here is the therapeutic context. In a healthy therapeutic relationship, a therapist could say this in a safe and non-judgemental way, and the patient would understand it that way.
But in a different context, where a person is primed to see hostility, the very same words can come across differently. One of the worst weapons in emotional abuse can be the truth, when used to set up a situation where by accepting the truth, the victim is put in a position where they have to admit the abuser was right. (I think this may have a lot to do with why abuse from a position of authority can be so devastating.)
I think in that example, I'm assuming that they already know this, and are trying as hard as they can to learn the language, so merely repeating a thing they already know is just rubbing their failure in their face. But it sounds like you're assuming that they're trying to succeed in business, but need some advice on how to do that?
Or it could be that they haven't reached that point, that they're just stuck in the trauma. Again, I'm applying this to a narrow set of people, in situations other than what Scott is talking about.
So the advice could just be listening until there's enough trust. Or if they're freer than that, some advice might be helpful.
I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing here, in this comment thread. It's something it took me a while to realize, possibly due to me being slightly spectrumy.
To go off on a more personal tangent, there's that thing where you don't always want to tell the truth in all situations, 'cause of social stuff. No problem, I've realized that since I was a kid and mostly have it down. Then there's that thing where you realize that when people complain about a problem, sometimes they want sympathy rather than potential solutions. Took me a while, but I got that in college, probably not-coincidentally around the time of my first relationship. But then there's the additional layer that sometimes when providing sympathy and support, you still need to keep it general and not offer analysis until it's specifically asked for. That, alas, took me until I was traumatized myself. Sometimes people simply need comfort and safety, and it's an honor if they choose you for that. Generally they let you know if they're interested in picking apart what went wrong in a serious way, as opposed to simply venting and wanting support. But it can be hard to tell; maybe it's OK to suddenly poke at a soft place. All I know is, that sort of thing is more suited to religious figures and therapists, not me.
Or in other words, even the right thing can be bad, at the wrong time or from the wrong person or in the wrong situation.
Trauma is a clenching hand triggered by an electric fence to grip its trigger even harder. This reaction to its trigger provokes a corrective response. But the shape of trauma responds to that predictable corrective response by solidifying the trauma again and again. Sealing and searing the reaction into the organism.
A quiet, discordant note, muddling whatever music may lie in the foreground of the mind.
And trauma’s whole shtick is that it's focused on escaping an existential threat and gets tunnel blindness. It can't see how out of place it's been since it jerked away from that threat.
So the rest of the organism tries to push it back into place, which makes sense from its broader perspective. But...this push from the organism…
From the perspective of the trauma, hyperfocused on the threat, this feels like being pulled towards the threat, not a push from its fellows!
So it flinches back away again, holding itself in opposition to the natural corrective mechanism of the organism. And sending up a painful signaling cry, for fellows to come to join in its fight. And they never come, and instead make things harder, and so the trauma is betrayed and becomes bitter.
And so, any attempt to push the wayward back toward harmony can trigger an equal and opposite flinch. Or even a greater and opposite flinch. So hurt people (subagents, body tissues) need a kind of special treatment, indulgence and condescension.
The out-of-place trauma needs to open up its awareness to the world beyond the looming threat. But that means it needs slack, a very long overdue break from vigilance against its unpredictable and omnipresent foe.
To get slack, it must be offered gifts of safety and validation, for it must be paid on its own terms! Long has it been maligned for its secret wisdom, and the seed of rightness in its reaction must be acknowledged, processed, integrated back into the greater organism. Only then will it drop the wrongness which encompasses the seed.
And then, taking stock of how out of place it is, and having received gracious treatment from those it was inconveniencing, it will repent and recompense for its sin, and rejoin the body, and give and take and listen and speak as is its place, finding healing, peace, then love, and joy as it cooperates again with the unified organism. And the wealth of that organism will be greater for the return of the lost sheep.
Of course, that's when the trauma is an overreaction. In other cases, the flinch is wise and right to call your attention to your ill-preparedness for the looming threat it perceives, calling louder and louder. And spending so much energy and even aliveness to resist the blind enforcement of the status quo.
And when at least the trauma is indulged (assuming it doesn't become a cancer) and given more instead of less, it will be realized how vital it was for the larger organism to learn to consciously direct itself along the same vector this trauma was pointing. How great was the seed of truth and how little the wrongness which encompassed it. How much baby there was, and how little bathwater.
So, as a general rule, it is productive for the dialectic, that enlightening interplay of trauma and response, to assume the perspective of both the trauma and the response, and mine both for gems of wisdom.
And if you push further in one direction, you will find greater willingness to assume the opposite direction. The good of the first perspective has been freshly acknowledged, so it feels secure from the potential threat of the opposite perspective being given a voice.
For example, you could first explore a narrative that sees trauma as a sinner. Then follow up with a narrative that elevates the trauma as a noble revolutionary!
Those who resonate with the sinner narrative may thus find it easier to appreciate the opposite narrative, and vice versa to some extent.
But the truth is that both the trauma and its response tend to consist of a mix of rightness and wrongness, wisdom and folly.
And for the sake of the folly the parts accuse each other. And for the sake of the wisdom, they cling to their own places.
And so separation is created in the organism, and friction grows between the parts.
When I am disinclined to be indulgent with trauma, I often start by appreciating all the wisdom in that disinclination. Then I look for the foolishness in it, but I appreciate and even try to love the mindshape that embraces and endorses that foolishness. Then I switch over to assuming the mindshape of the wisdom in the trauma, and loving it. And then the foolishness in the trauma, and loving it.
And then coming back full circle to the wisdom in my initial disinclination to be indulgent with the trauma.
When this is done, I feel much more at choice whether to indulge a trauma or not. And even if my first disinclination was the most right of these 4 mindshapes, I often find that it had things worth learning from the other 3 perspectives.
This is my current favorite technique for dealing with stubborn separations in organisms.
Can you clarify -- are you saying that the statement "you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma" is what can reinforce trauma for someone? I feel like you're saying something pretty interesting and I'm not grasping it fully.
Scott's statement seems maybe equivalent to telling an anxious person to calm down. It's usually something said out of exasperation -- it's more like really saying, "look, your being disregulated here is kind of inappropriate and is affecting other people; please take responsibility for the effect of your behavior here."
It's an interesting thing you raise about agency. It seems to me whether a person has managed to reclaim a prior sense of agency after trauma or not is separate from whether they are responsible for tending to their own trauma responses. Agency is (thankfully) not an on/off switch kind of thing and even the most traumatized people have moments and places where they experience and enact agency.
First, the two aren't comparable-someone who's been traumatized may not be acting out in ways that are "affecting other people", at least not in active ways (maybe passive, though).
I'm not talking about responsibility for tending to their own trauma responses-of course everyone is responsible fore tending to their own trauma responses. My points is that sometimes some people aren't able to. And if they aren't able to, then telling them that they should be able to do, or that they should do, something that they do not experience themselves as capable of doing (or even may not be able to do) will reinforce their perception of themself as bad, shameful, traumatized.
Is that helpful?
I think so. I wrote more below.
I think I hear you saying, "Scott, you shouldn't say things to potentially traumatized people that might be unhelpful to them." Or maybe simply, "telling people to stop re-enacting trauma isn't helpful." ?
My shortest response if I'm understanding you is it's not really possible or reasonable to expect a person on the internet to avoid saying things that might be unhelpful or trigger some unknown persons with unknown trauma responses.
I do think saying "stop re-enacting trauma" is like saying "calm down" and in that sense it's not really intended to be helpful, but seems more aimed at confronting a person who is annoying them. I'm inclined though to think there may be some person out there who may respond to something like that by going, "right, he has a point, I have a choice here."
Does the fact that that statement may not help some people and may possibly help others really matter though? Because all of that is speculation about unknown others. And was Scott's intention really to help or to make a point to his readers that people who choose to hang out in conversations that repeatedly trigger them perhaps could be making better choices.
That's all fair. A couple of points.
1. I'm not talking about potentially traumatized people.
2. I'm talking about a difference scenario. I'm actually not talking about what Scott's talking about; I could have been clearer about. All I'm saying is that if you are talking with someone who you know is traumatized, you need to know them and their circumstances very well before saying "You're re-enacting your trauma".
3. I agree that the likelihood of reinforcing someone's trauma via a comment on an internet forum is low.
"All I'm saying is that if you are talking with someone who you know is traumatized, you need to know them and their circumstances very well before saying "You're re-enacting your trauma." That seems totally true to me as well.
> I agree that the likelihood of reinforcing someone's trauma via a comment on an internet forum is low.
I actually kinda disagree with this. Even a few years ago I don't think I would have been able to respond in this conversation like I have been doing here. I would have projected all sorts of shit onto people who said things. I would not have been able to breathe deeply and recognize the strings of attachment that connect my pain to my image of the people writing the comments. (Not Scott: while I don't claim to know what he thinks in general, I'm quite confident that he and I are aligned (in the AI sense) about the particular issues that are salient to me, and thus I read him without this type of static (I want to say, "interference", but that might not be clear).)
Maybe I'm just an exceptionally bad case, but I don't think so. On the other hand, it's taken me 10 years to recover this much, so maybe I am that badly off. But either way, I'm pretty sure I've seen this happening all over the place, and it's quite disheartening.
Yes, I agree with you. I should have been clearer that I was talking about reinforcing someone’s trauma by telling them “Stop re-experiencing your trauma. Thanks!
I don't want to speak for Scott, but as a therapist (LMSW) I read it as more Scott bringing up a concept that those people might have never truly considered in regards to their behavior.
They may think their endless arguments are for one reason, but sometimes having that challenged with a new concept can actually help someone change if they take the time to consider it and engage with the thought.
I agree, and it's very context specific.
Children are not allowed to drive, buy alcohol, get married, etc. but you are OK that they have irreversible sexual mutilation (called surgery) or hormonization (hormones damage is permanent, can't be completely reversed! damage occurs in day one). Do you know that the pre-frontal cortex is not fully developed until 21 years old and that it is in charge of evaluation risks, decision making, controlling impulses? There's no informed consent before that age!!!
People mutilating children should be in JAIL!!! They are part of the problem!
What’s your best way to wake-up those who don’t want to open their eyes?
Please share your most effective wake-up strategies.
The more the awakened, the sooner this nightmare will be over!
For example, I start with this video (2 minutes):
https://odysee.com/@ImpossiblyWackedOutWorld:f/WTC-7-Free-Falling:8
(caveat: pot destroys your brain…)
9/11: two "planes", yet the third tower (WTC7) imploded like in a controlled demolition. It was out of reach and all 7 World Trade Center towers destroyed, not the closer towers not belonging to World Trade Center... and the owner, with his 2 grown up siblings, failed to show up for work (never skipped work before)… by the way, he first took an insurance policy for the WTC against terrorism, just months before, when no one was taking them. The inside information about the FUTURE 9/11 event helped masons make trillions by shorting the stock exchange: the records were deleted by the SEC so they wouldn't be prosecuted !!!:
4 min. (0.75 speed):
https://rumble.com/v1jpdwl-a-911-conspiracy-theory-explained-in-5-minutes-by-james-corbett-classic.html
Where’s the plane for the 2nd Tower (WTC1)?
https://odysee.com/@N%C3%A9mesis2030:8/11WTC:3
Controlled demolition?
https://odysee.com/@covid2020:d/9-11-World-Trade-Center-..-Demolition-Control%C3%A9e-1:2
Why is 9/11 called a Pearl Harbor event? Both Churchill and Roosevelt were masons and plotted to get the reluctant USA into the war by provoking the Japs and letting Pearl Harbor (left the whole fleet defenseless and concentrated there as an easy candy to be taken from a kid, no radar warning from outer islands, etc.) and MUCH MORE:
Please read and watch all of this! Your life depends on it, because there's a plan to murder 95% of the global population by 2050… written on the masonic Georgia guide-stones: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 … ”
- J6: The fake riot was mason-planned, incited and guided by FBI agents, who broke into the Capitol !!! The same mason-plot was copy-pasted to disband the insurrection against the stolen elections in Brazil! All intel agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) were founded by masons and are run by them for their own nefarious goals.
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/j6-what-you-need-to-know
It's such a mason manual that they organized the same J6 play in Brazil when it was proven that the voting machines owned by mason Soros, were rigged:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-2020-american-coup
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/dominion-over-us
- At least since the 90s, vaccines are weaponized to reduce the population, for example:
1. Adding hCG to infertilize women: lab detected in 30 countries
2. Overpassing the FDA 10 ng limit to human DNA “contamination” by 2000%, thus causing neuro-damage (autism, asperger, tics, dyslexia in 29% of kids, etc.) and childhood cancer epidemic (n.b. leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas)
Check soundchoice.org or videos at bottom after this page:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/wake-up-videos
- COVID was designed as a primer for even more lethal COVID haccines:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-real-covid-timeline
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/not-vaccine-not-gene-therapy-just
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/what-do-bioweapons-have-to-do-with
- Wake up videos:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/wake-up-videos
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/2050-youll-go-nowhere-and-youll-be
- It's genocide for depopulation:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/depop-vaccines-no-myth
- It’s the masons, who create counterfeited currencies (trillions of dollars and EUROS) and bought the listed corporations, media, healthcare, universities, parties and political careers:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/david-rockefeller-illuminati
Confessions of ex-illuminati Ronald Bernard (all lodges obey the same master, Satan):
http://youtu.be/JAhnCdXqPww
Now, are you really ready for this?:
The full PLAN exposed:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed
16 laws we need to exit Prison Planet
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/laws-to-exit-planet-prison
Pllllleeeeease, on my knees, don’t believe me, just do your own homework by searching the following in yandex.com, mojeek.com (includes crawl date filter and substack search), gigablast.com, startpage.com, duckduckgo.com (not Google, Bing, Yahoo censors). The key terms to test them? Child Satanic Ritual Abuse, Child Satanic Ritual Murder.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/rpn5aj/i_have_found_the_perfect_uncensored_search_engines/
https://www.deepwebsiteslinks.com/uncensored-search-engines-for-anonymous-searching/
If you are a mason or know a mason, ask him to ask his 33° master to put in writing and sign it, who is "the great architect" and that he is not Lucifer. If he refuses, then he’ll know who he is really serving, Satan: tell him to get out of masonry NOW. Sooner or later he’ll be required to trample on a cross to get to a higher degree.
President John Quincy Adams: “Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.”
Confessions of a former mason (Serge Abad-Gallardo):
https://www.ncregister.com/interview/confessions-of-a-former-freemason-officer-converted-to-catholicism
Confessions of ex-illuminati Ronald Bernard (all lodges obey the same master, Satan):
http://youtu.be/JAhnCdXqPww
Confession of 33rd degree master mason - Masons worship deities/demons
https://rumble.com/v294ksc-words-from-33rd-degree-master-mason-rare-video-masons-worship-all-sorts-of-.html
Masonry's Satanic Connection
https://odysee.com/@HiddenTruths:c/Masonry's-Satanic-Connection:4
Masonry's Satanic Doctrine | From Their Own Books
https://rumble.com/v2wg24a-masonrys-satanic-doctrine-from-their-own-books.html
Do Freemasons Worship Lucifer？ Evidence They Don't Want You To See
https://odysee.com/@John_4-14:a/Do-Freemasons-Worship-Lucifer%EF%BC%9F-Evidence-They-Don't-Want-You-To-See-%EF%BD%9C-Hidden-Agendas---Walter-Veith:0
Satanic Ritual Abuse and Secret Societies [1995] [VHS]
https://odysee.com/@thisworldworks:1/satanic-ritual-abuse-and-secret-societies-1995:3
Satanic Pedophilia Torture and Blood - Dark Satanic Secrets Revealed
https://odysee.com/@Gmail.com:52/822821884_Satanic-Pedophilia-Torture-and-Blood---Dark-Satanic-Secrets-Revealed:4
UNITED NATIONS LUCIFER AND THE LUCIFER TRUST
https://odysee.com/@dynosarus:c/UNITED-NATIONS-LUCIFER-AND-THE-LUCIFER-TRUST:4
The best way to have a real dialogue about vaccines being weaponized to handicap, infertilize and murder the “over-population” is to start with vaccine contamination: nobody could be in favor of contaminated pharmaceuticals.
1. Carcinogen SV40 in Oral Polio Vaccine: they knew it since the 60s but kept distributing it even until 2016 !!!
2. hCG in vaccines to infertilize women detected since the 90s: still going on
3. Thimerosal, aluminum, Mono-sodium Glutamate (MSG) and other NEUROTOXINS
4. Heavy metals
5. Human DNA 2000% in excess of FDA 10 ng limit (main driver towards brain damage like autism/asperger/ticks, leukemia and non-Hodgkin cancer), probably related to point 7 below.
6. Graphene oxide in Flu and COVID shots but now with anything injectable (even dentist anesthesia, hospital IV, etc.).
7. Carcinogenic SV40 genomic sequences and double-stranded DNA in mRNA COVID shots: the hacked DNA in the cell doesn’t stop producing the poison when the cell dies, but its descent continue the poisoning until the haccinated casualty dies.
8. Bluetooth nano-routers injected with COVID vaccines and inserted with swabs (which explains why they rejected the cheaper non-invasive saliva test).
Proof of criminal intent:
Points 7 and 8
Censoring and blocking 30+ COVID cures
Labeling the most lethal batches with a lethal code (howbad.info)
Blocking the real knowledge of effectiveness v. "adverse event" rate
That proves:
A. There's zero Government control
B. There's zero Manufacturer liability
C. There's zero Media coverage
D. All that, during decades and still going on, not only with vaccines but also with medicines, food&beverage additives, etc. Everything, even institutions have been weaponized!
E. There's zero political action to stop that (except RFK2 in the USA)
A school buddy told me "I know you make sense but if I recognize it's true, I won't be able to enjoy life anymore".
16 laws we need to exit Extermination Planet
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/laws-to-exit-planet-prison
If we don’t succeed, they’ll succeed with their 6-sword lethal plan fully exposed here:
https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed
Change goes in hand with the number of awakened! Thank you for sharing this to save lives!
Before you ask, I'm not deleting this comment; it's a work of art.
It certainly answers some questions I had about Freemasons.
If I hold it upside down and read it backward, I get my questions about gay frogs answered, too!
Reminds me of Dr Bronners soap
https://images.app.goo.gl/cFCvyEvFRAczEPY69
That AskHistorians link is fascinating, too.
You know, I was thinking of clicking all those links and becoming awakened. But then I read this:
"If we don’t succeed, they’ll succeed with their 6-sword lethal plan fully exposed here"
And now instead of becoming awakened I'm on board with the 6-sword lethal plan. A plan that involves six swords? That sounds really awesome and I'm so excited for it.
This sounds like a coded reference to Kali, and from what little I know, not one of her more pleasant aspects.
Weren't we speaking previously on some other thread about the Freemasons? And then Prof. Nazar provides us with the perfect examples! Truly nothing is ever a coincidence 😁
Laugh or cry, but he has a substack with “over 2000 subscribers”.
The idea of an age as a fixed point of the prefrontal cortex have been questioned. But also if the below 21 can get in a thousands of dollar debt while deciding what to do for the rest of their life, get married and pregnant or being sent to kill people in a desert in another continent obviously they can grow tits or a beard with deep voice.
Well maybe they shouldn't do those things either.
What's the name of this fallacy?
One Man’s Modus Ponens? https://gwern.net/modus
So in countries where the age of consent is 13, then anything less bad than sex with adults should be considered fine for children to do?
Regarding "the modern emphasis on hiding gender" theory - wouldn't that precipitate a rise in non-binary rather than trans identities? Crawling through the barbed wire and live fire of the culture war (and its downstream effects on the medical establishment) to try to change how you're seen seems to signal a very strong reaction to gender cues.
In general, the social contagion theory to explain the rise goes back almost entirely to the 2019 paper by Lisa Littman based on parent reports, which, while not nothing, isn't dispositive of the issue. It has to compete with the old, parsimonious idea that people have always been trans (in roughly the same numbers all the way back at least to Hirschfeld) but didn't have a language for expressing it or forms of doing much about it. So they suffered in silence, or worse.
Even farther back than Hirschfeld, some cultures had (and sometimes still have) additional genders that sometimes sort of map onto certain modern queer identities, although where the lines are drawn between sexual orientation and gender varies. The most common one is a gender role for straight trans women, sometimes also including people who might identify as feminine cis gay men in our system. People express themselves via the cultural genders that are available to them. In some queer-friendly places, nonbinary has essentially become a third gender with its own norms about appearance.
I would argue that the social contagion theory can, in fact, explain things that the 'always been trans but repressed' cannot, such as the change of demographics in trans people. Previously, studies had consistently shown that most trans people were trans women which, it is pertinent to note in this context, means they are phenotypic males who identify as women which is in-line with the male variability hypothesis.
Recently, however, the rate of phenotypic male x phenotypic female have been changing, and in some studies it seems to have reversed from being mostly phenotypic males to being mostly phenotypic females. If this was simply a case of a repressed demographic growing back to its unconstrained demographic distribution, we have no reason to believe such a change would happen. It's a point for the social contageon hypothesis in my book.
I do agree it's far from being confirmed, but I think it has quite a bit more credit than you seem to imply.
They mentioned autistic children because of the overlap...despite the reasonable conclusion that if there is a social component in forming dysphoria then the trans population would have the same ratio of autistic people as the general one or lower. There is also the EDS overlap and an old study that stated that trans people were 2x more likely to be left handed and yet there are not argument about the "trans cult" or "big pharma" transing lefties or eds folks. Curiously I haven't see them say anything about autistic kids being given Aripiprazole or Risperidone.
They claim that Blockers make the kids persist being trans rather than that being the result of how the young person builds their identity. This leads to the obvious question on what would be the mechanism of the blockers that would cause and why this phenomena doesn´t happen to the other populations that are given these medicines.
Yes, yes. It's one of the first things that come to mind when you actually think about the issue for a minute, instead of immediately switching to the outrage mode: "Wait, aren't autistic children supposed to be the least affected by social fads?"
But I suppose the idea of "poor impressionable youth" just naively multiplies by the idea of "poor helpless autistic people" without any analysis and questioning the premises.
Other populations, given the medications for unrelated reasons, aren’t socially transitioned to the opposite sex. Social transition is a major, consequential intervention that makes it hard to change course. Puberty blockers prevent sexual development that would lead to a different understanding (for example, a child realizing he’s gay). They are also a promise from grown-ups that you won’t have to deal with your biological sex, that medication and surgery can make you the opposite sex for real.
Social transition is something thay depends on each person. For some they only change some things like pronouns while others deep dive. Sure, if the young person have been socially transition for a long time and was having second thoughts they would have this internal barrier to change course even without medical intervention. But that doesn't seem like an intrinsic issue, just a trouble that happens in some context. If it was normalized to understand someone identity as a state of flux and thus not having to carry social consequences of changing themselves maybe the previous situation wouldn't happened
So like, I don't know what trans community you're interacting with, but the idea that you might be gay kinda comes up.
The theory of why blockers might solidify a trans identity and put the kids on a path to further medicalization is that blocking puberty also blocks maturation of the brain and sexual development--which in earlier cohorts studied by the Dutch, frequently desisted from a trans identity at around 80%. In other words, going through the dreaded puberty itself often resolved the feelings of gender dysphoria.
By postponing puberty, that chance for resolution (or even just clarity) is taken away, and you have a literal pre-pubertal kid making decisions about “which” puberty to go through, before they’ve even developed a sex drive.
If the Dutch studies were too long ago, I’d be concerned about the desistance rates reflecting some kids who desisted due to social pressure and stigma. Previous studies I’ve seen of this sort also sometimes include GNC kids even when they were never gender dysphoric in the first place, or only weakly so. Probably the start of puberty does cause gender dysphoria to abate for some kids, but the 80% rate seems very high in a way that might indicate a problem with the sample.
Dutch studies are 15 years old and constitute the entirety of the evidence base for youth transition.
Last year it came to light that there are serious flaws in their methodology.
All gender affirming medical care is based on this one Dutch clinic’s studies, and the doctors who pioneered the studies say themselves that the US and other countries have applied their research to a wholly different cohort.
"On the submissive side of the slash, picking a high dominance mate also seems adaptive. An - using the term as shorthand - "alpha" male or female both have improved access to resources, provide improved protection to offspring, and produce children with a better chance of reproducing etc."
What's the explanation for male subs? I suppose in an environment where Princesses wanted to copulate peasant males while beating them with whips, "sub" traits would be evolutionarily favorable, but this basically never happened. If an evolutionary explanation only works for half the population and you need some other explanation X to explain the rest, Occam's razor says it should be all X.
"I realize these goals are sort of in competition, in the sense that allowing people to transition raises the visibility of transgender which might contribute to transgender being more common"
Why "might?" Does anyone seriously think this is caused by some novel chemical or something?
"Hmm - this casts doubt on whether the practice of systematically preventing children from seeing nude men and women is ... optimal. Oh well, not my problem...
Seems plausible. The more you keep kids in the dark about what normal sex is, the more they have to speculate, get things weirdly wrong, and then end up crystallizing those wrong guesses as fetishes."
This is an interesting theory, though I don't think the timing works out.
At a recent LessWrong meeting we were talking about how in the Good Old Days it used to be perfectly normal for kids to watch their parents having sex. At that exact moment a stranger passed by and gave us a funny look.
It's too bad Republican politicians have to pretend the problem in schools is "sexual content" in general, but them's the ways of the Median Voter Theorem.
"At a recent LessWrong meeting we were talking about how in the Good Old Days it used to be perfectly normal for kids to watch their parents having sex."
Is this true? I've never heard about this.
When an entire family lived in a one room log cabin in Minnesota and it was a high of 20 degrees in January, do you really think they sent the kids out every time?
I don't know. I would still expect they'd wait until the kids were asleep and do it under the covers.
Can't find the source, but I do remember David D Friedman, making the claim that (pre puberty) children did often see farm animals and such having intercourse, also important to note that modern conceptions of adulthood and such would be considered alien by historical standards and vice versa.
I vaguely remember an anthropologist claim that in "very traditional" societies, i.e. contemporary hunter-gatherer ones, it's common for young children to see their parents have sex because of the all-family-in-one-tent setting, and sometimes playfully re-enact it among themselves until they grow up and get married to do it for real. Is it true? It must've been true at least in very distant past as this is how other great apes learn to do it - by watching older apes (?).
In an interview with Gareth Russell, author of "Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII", he referred to an early episode in Catherine's life where she stole a key to the dormitory which she and other noble girls were locked in at night, so she could let her boyfriend in so they could have sex. The author said, of the other girls in the dormitory, "one of them gets up and leaves the bed and says 'you're so noisy!'". Which to me implies that they were in the same bed at the time, and that this was perfectly fine as long as the people having sex didn't disturb the people trying to get a good night's sleep.
The most concerning thing to me is the fact that they were locked in.
Given that she eventually married Henry VIII and was killed on his orders, I think being locked up at night while a teenager was pretty mild. In fact, arguably, if she hadn't snuck the guy in, Henry would have been slightly less likely to have had her killed. But to paraphrase Jurassic Park, assholery will find a way.
I have just come to that point in the book and it seems that they weren't locked in to the 'maiden's chamber', it was a door to the staircase that was locked so young men couldn't sneak in to flirt and spend time with the girls (not that that stopped them):
"One of Francis’s closest friends in the household was his wingman Edward Waldegrave, who gamely chased the friends of Francis’s lovers and helped organise night-time visits to the maidens’ chamber, arriving with wine, apples, strawberries, and other treats pinched from the kitchens. Talking, drinking, and flirting continued into the small hours, often to two or three o’clock in the morning, and if anyone from downstairs unexpectedly came to inspect, there was a small curtained gallery at the end of the maidens’ chamber where the men could hide until danger had passed. The idea to hide them in there was Catherine’s. She was not the only girl with a sweetheart – for instance, Francis’s friend Edward was courting one Mistress Baskerville. To make the numerous rendezvous easier, Catherine took the initiative and sneaked into her grandmother’s room one evening, stole the relevant key, had a copy made, and then ensured the door to the staircase that led to the maidens’ chamber was unlocked after the dowager went to bed.
Within a couple of months of seeing Dereham, the reluctance Catherine had expressed to Manox about losing her virginity had evaporated. She and Francis began lying on her bed during the clandestine parties; this progressed to kissing, foreplay, and then sex. There was not much privacy in the maidens’ chamber, but Catherine was ‘so far in love’ that it did not seem to deter her. One of the dowager’s maids, Margery, who later married another servant in the household called John Benet, spied on them and saw Francis removing Catherine’s clothes. Later, Francis told Margery that he knew enough about sex to make sure Catherine did not end up pregnant.
...When the bed hangings were pulled shut, the noises the couple made left no doubt about what they were doing. Their lovemaking was so energetic that their friends took to teasing Francis about being ‘broken winded’ once it was over. The pair were drunk on one another, kissing and cuddling like ‘two sparrows’, and the memories of the people who saw them in 1538, written down in 1541, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their relationship was consensual. It has already been mentioned that it was customary for young people of the same sex to share a bed – in the way Francis did with Robert Damport – and on several occasions, perhaps after too much of the purloined wine, another girl was in the bed when Francis and Catherine began foreplay. Alice Wilkes was so irritated by the couple’s ‘puffing and blowing’ that she insisted on switching beds to get a better night’s sleep."
It sounds like it wasn't really "fine", which is why they had to steal keys in order to do this.
I imagine similar situations play out in shared dormitories all over the world to this day; not because it's normal to have sex in front of others but because they're horny young people with literally nowhere else to go.
"Fine" in that the other girls didn't object to it, but not "fine" in that the parents presumably did object to it.
Poor Catherine Howard. In order to defend her execution, a lot of historians (popular) seem to have jumped on the bandwagon of "she was a hot to trot little minx who always had a man on the go".
Personally, I think she was sexually assaulted by her music tutor, even if "life expectancy was lower back then and so children were considered mature earlier"; she was 12-13 and he was in his early to mid twenties:
"In the Duchess's household at Horsham, in around 1536, Catherine began music lessons with two teachers, one of whom was Henry Mannox, and they began a relationship. Mannox's exact age at the time is unknown. It has recently been stated that he was in his late thirties, perhaps 36, but this is not supported by Catherine's biographers. Evidence exists that Mannox was not yet married, and it would have been highly unusual for someone from his background at the time to not be married by his mid-thirties. He married sometime in the late 1530s, perhaps in 1539, and there is also some evidence that he was the same age as two other men serving in the household, including his cousin Edward Waldegrave, who was in his late teens or early twenties between 1536 and 1538. This evidence indicates that Mannox too was in his early to mid-twenties in 1536.
The details and dates of this relationship are debated between modern historians. The most popular theory, first put forward in 2004 by Retha Warnicke, was that the relationship between them was abusive, with Mannox grooming and preying on Catherine in 1536–1538, and this is expanded upon in detail by Conor Byrne. Other biographers, like Gareth Russell, believe that Mannox's interactions with Catherine took place over a much shorter time, that Mannox was roughly the same age as her, but that "their relationship was nonetheless inappropriate, on several levels." He believes Catherine was increasingly repulsed by Mannox's pressure to have sex with her and was angered by his gossiping with servants about the details of what had gone on between them.
Mannox and Catherine both confessed during her adultery inquisitions as the wife of King Henry that they had engaged in sexual contact, but not actual coitus. When questioned, Catherine was quoted as saying, "At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require."
But this is taken, depending on your side of the argument, as that Catherine was loose in the hilts from a young age, hence stories like the above about "letting in her boyfriend to have sex".
Now, for the other part, about bed-sharing and being aware of sexual activity, yeah that probably was true but perhaps at an earlier time. See Chaucer's "The Reeve's Tale" where the miller and his wife sleep in one bed, the cradle with their baby son at the foot of it; the grown daughter in a bed of her own, and the two clerks sharing one bed - all in one room. There's the plot about cheating and counter-cheating, where the two clerks manage to have sex with the miller's daughter and wife respectively:
https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/reeves-tale
"In Trumpington, near Cambridge, dwells Symkin, a proud, thieving Miller. He has a wife, the daughter of the parish priest, an ugly daughter, Malyne, and an infant child. Two students, Aleyn and John, bring the college's wheat to be ground into flour, determined to outwit the thieving miller. Aleyn watches the grain pouring in the hopper, John watches it coming out. The Miller lets their horse run off into the fens; John and Aleyn run after it, and the Miller steals some of their grain. They finally catch the horse and ask the Miller to put them up for the night. All must sleep in the one room of the house -- John and Aleyn in one bed, the daughter in another, and the Miller and his wife in yet another, with the baby's cradle at its foot. Aleyn determines to have recompense for the lost grain, and he gets in bed with the daughter. John, not to be outdone, moves the cradle to the bottom of the bed in which he lies. When the wife gets up in the night to go to the privy, she feels about for the cradle, finds it, and gets in bed with John. In the early morning Aleyn returns to his own bed but, finding the cradle, goes instead to the Miller's bed. The Miller awakes, a fight ensues, and the Miller is beaten badly."
But as for stories of bad behaviour by Catherine Howard - I don't know, unless we get solid sources; it was in the interest of those trying to get her executed that her reputation be tarnished and evidence found that she'd been sleeping around since she was very young (and she was still only around 19 when she was beheaded):
And I honestly have no goddamn time for Thomas Cranmer, genius of English prose though he may have been, because he was such a fucking lapdog when it came to excusing Henry's awful behaviour to his wives. Bad enough that he happily trotted out the excuses for why Katherine of Aragon's marriage was invalid (and went along with considering her a perjurer for swearing her first marriage with Henry's brother had not been consummated), worse that he went along with what happened to Anne Boleyn, to whom and to her family he owed so much for their patronage, declaring the divorce, but when it came to poor little Catherine Howard, any man with any trace of a backbone should have said "Damn it, this is too much":
Born c. 1523 Lambeth, London, England Died 13 February 1542 (aged about 19)
Tower of London, London, England
She married [Henry] on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands Palace in Surrey, just 19 days after the annulment of his marriage to Anne [of Cleves]. He was 49, and she was between 15 and 21 years old.
...People who claimed to have witnessed her earlier sexual behaviour while she lived at Lambeth reportedly contacted her for favours in return for their silence, and some of these blackmailers may have been appointed to her royal household. John Lassels, a supporter of Cromwell, approached the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, telling him that his sister Mary refused to become a part of Queen Catherine's household, stating that she had witnessed the "light" ways of Queen Catherine while they were living together at Lambeth. Cranmer then interrogated Mary Lassels, who alleged that Catherine had had sexual relations while under the Duchess of Norfolk's care, before her relationship with the King."
You can imagine my opinion of the veracity of a crony of Thomas Cromwell, tasked with fixing up the mess of yet another of the king's failed marriages, after he himself was in hot water for the débacle with Anne of Cleves, as to "oh yeah my sister totally said the new queen is a whore, so the king should get rid of her, right?".
"...Lady Rochford was interrogated and as she feared that she would be tortured, she agreed to talk. She told how she had watched for Catherine backstairs as Culpeper had made his escapes from the Queen's room.
On All Saints' Day, 1 November 1541, the King arranged to be found praying in the Chapel Royal. There he received a letter describing the allegations against Catherine. On 7 November 1541, Archbishop Cranmer led a delegation of councillors to Winchester Palace in Southwark, to question her. Even the staunch Cranmer found the teenaged Catherine's frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, "I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man's heart to have looked upon her." He ordered the guards to remove any objects she might use to commit suicide.
Establishing the existence of a pre-contract between Catherine and Dereham would have had the effect of terminating Catherine's marriage to Henry, but it would also have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish her from court to live in poverty and disgrace instead of executing her, although there is no indication that Henry would have chosen that alternative. Catherine steadfastly denied any pre-contract, maintaining that Dereham had raped her."
Dereham is Francis Dereham, another older guy who started pursuing her when she was around 15:
"Shortly afterward [in 1538], Catherine was pursued by Francis Dereham, a secretary of the Dowager Duchess. They allegedly became lovers, addressing each other as "husband" and "wife". Dereham also entrusted Catherine with various wifely duties, such as keeping his money when he was away on business. Many of Catherine's roommates among the Dowager Duchess's maids of honour and attendants knew of the relationship, which apparently ended in 1539, when the Dowager Duchess found out."
Just to cement what a shining star Henry was, the Lady Rochford mentioned above was the sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, the widow of Anne's brother George (who was accused of incest with his sister). The downfall of Anne had adverse affects for the Boleyn family, including Jane, Lady Rochford. So she was being accused of helping Catherine Howard in her alleged affair with Thomas Culpeper, and I think it was as much in order to try and protect herself that she threw Catherine under the bus as anything else - but it didn't save her in the end. She had allegedly testified against Anne and her husband George earlier, and she provided testimony that Anne of Cleves told her the marriage to Henry had not been consummated, which allowed that marriage to be dissolved. So she was trying to stay on the 'right' side in the snake pit which was the Tudor court, much good it did her.
Henry's vindictiveness when he felt he had been wronged knew no bounds:
"During her imprisonment in the Tower, Lady Rochford was interrogated but was not tortured. However, she seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown and by the beginning of 1542 was pronounced insane. Her "fits of frenzy" meant that legally she could not stand trial for her role in facilitating the queen's alleged adultery, but since he was determined to have her punished, the King implemented a law which allowed the execution of the insane for high treason. Jane was thus condemned to death by an Act of Attainder, and the execution date was set for 13 February 1542, the same day as Queen Catherine's execution."
By the bye, thanks for the recommendation of yet another book for me to read about the Tudor court under Henry 😁 Just bought it off Amazon, will read it and see if it's anyway substantial or just a pop version of events.
I haven't read it, so I hope to hear how it is!
I also think we've lost something in our culture by not being more exposed to farm animals and un-neutered pets.
My pet theory is the dominance/submission circuitry gets hooked to the wrong side, but given that most men have to submit to a lot of men even on their way to the top, it's probably easier to turn on anyway.
I don't see why Occam's razor would say it would have to be 'all X', though, unless X also explains the half the evolutionary explanation does. And sexuality's notoriously complex and hard to study (people lie about it a LOT). Multiple explanations seem pretty commonsensical to me.
"What's the explanation for male subs?"
Apes often use submissive gay sex to calm down aggressive dominant peers, maybe it has something to do with this?
"What's the explanation for male subs?"
Personally, I experience significant release from the expectation that I must always initiate, and the expectation that I bear full responsibility for the results of any interaction, if my partner takes on a dominant role.
I strongly suspect that oral sex got more popular in the mid-20th century, because most people started having access to showers.
If you're on a "bath every 1-2 weeks" hygiene cycle, I assume oral sex will be less appealing.
Same with masturbation. And eating with your fingers, and rubbing your eyes with your hands, and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes a lot more sense if we assume our hands are always filthy.
But humans did eat with their hands for most of their history. Utensils are relatively modern.
Sure, but often only one of those hands. But I'm mostly talking about stuff from a century or two ago, in America.
That assumes that our disgust thresholds have remained constant across time, which is almost certainly not true. I wouldn't want to have sex with the vast majority of women who haven't bathed in two weeks, but this has been overwhelmingly not true for the majority of men ever faced with this choice.
A little birdy has reliably informed me that there exists a vast quantity of photographic pornography, dating back to, well, the invention of photography; and before that a catalog of depictions dating back to ancient times. Any act we would consider today is well-represented throughout. "Eww" is a modern conceit; the carnal impulse will punch through just about anything.
I kinda wish the original post had better defined what a fetish is. Is it something far beyond the range of erotic sex? Because I agree with Erusian, but that’s without knowing exactly what you mean by fetish.
I think it’s relevant to quote what Nobel Prize winning poet Octavio Paz wrote about eroticism in his great essay from 1971, At Table and in Bed:
“The American erotic movement is steeped in morality, pedagogy, good social intentions, and progressive politics. All this, along with its popular, democratic character, distinguishes it both from other eroticizing movements of Western history and from the tradition of that intellectual lineage, descending from the Marquis de Sade to Georges Bataille, that has conceived of eroticism as violence and transgression. By contrast with the somber visions of Sade or the philosophical pessimism of Bataille, the optimism of the American rebels is striking. By breaking with Puritan morality, which condemned the lower half of our bodies to a clandestine existence, the erotic rebellion has brought about a change with odd but unquestionable moral overtones. It is not a matter of *knowing* something that was hidden but *recognizing* it, in the legal sense of the word. This recognition is a consecration of sex as nature. Recognition embraces all exceptions, deviations, and perversions: they are legitimate because they are natural inclinations. There are no exceptions: everything is natural. This represents a legitimation of the forbidden and secret aspects of eroticism, something that would have scandalized Bataille.
The erotic rebellion affirms that the passions we call antinatural, the traditional “sins against nature” are natural and hence legitimate. Its critics reply that the passions against nature and the other perversions are exceptions, violations of normality: disorders and illnesses to be brought under control by means of the psychoanalyst’s couch, the strait-jacket of the mental asylum, or prison bars. These critics must be reminded, once again, that “nature” and “normality” are conventions. But the rebels must be informed that eroticism is not natural but social sex. The idea of the dissidents is based on a confusion between the natural and the social, between sexuality and eroticism. Sexuality is animal; it is a natural function, whereas eroticism develops within society. The former belongs to the realm of biology, the latter to that of culture. Its essence is the imaginary: eroticism is a metaphor a sexuality. There is a dividing line between eroticism and sexuality--the word *like*. Eroticism is a representation, a ceremony of transfiguration: men and women make love *like* lions, eagles, doves, or praying mantises; neither lions nor praying mantises make love like human beings. We humans see ourselves in animals; animals do not see themselves in humans. By contemplating itself, humanity changes itself and changes sexuality. Eroticism is not brute sex but sex transfigured by the imagination: rite, theater. For this reason, it is inseparable from perversion and deviation. Apart from being impossible, a natural eroticism would be a regression to animal sexuality. This would end Fourier’s “manias” and Sade’s “penchants,” but also the most innocent caresses, the bouquet, and the kiss.”
Thanks for this. It is so concise and so true.
That's a very interesting quote, thanks!
I read that as 'the gringos are repressed, even when they're trying to be liberated'.
He puts it in flowerier language, of course, but that's what they gave him a Nobel for.
Not that he's wrong.
I read that as "sex isn't really fun unless it's dirty, and the Americans are trying to scrub off the dirt and make it all shiny, which is going to make it not-fun".
Probably a better summary of Paz's words, which may also be correct!
re: Comments That Were Very Angry About My Introductory Paragraph:
"people who ruined their lives with opioids"
I didn't notice this first time around and while I'm not "angry" I'm pointing out that many ruined lives were helped along by certain doctors familiar with characteristics of opioids and frailties of human nature. Also, certain pharm companies that at some point realized what was happening and turned a blind eye. Lastly, we can also thank multiple U.S. government agencies and China.
On the other hand accepting majority responsibility for our current adverse situation is the most probable way of moving on to something better. imo
Could we give some liability to social media in the same sense?
We could threaten to have them be sold to Elon Musk? ;-)
"liability to social media"
It's where patients shared the discovery that scraping the time release coating from the pills gives a jet pack high, so sure - in the same sense that guns are responsible for mass shootings. America has a culture problem; we like playing with matches and matches are readily available - initially as free samples and then at competitive prices.
Obviously, there are 'hidden' costs.
When they cut back on prescriptions and opioid related deaths kept climbing, did you update in favor of doctors and pharmaceutical companies being less to blame?
"doctors and pharmaceutical companies being less to blame"
It's not a gradient of wrongs that we can assign precision blame as much a mottled looking heat map diagram that changes over time.
Who knew what, when and with what intention did they act?
[should I link to my Instinct to Social Morality presentation again?]
"The Paperclip Hipster" sounds like the name of someone's Substack.
I love these sorts of sites, and I’ve benefited from several:
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/
https://mattressunderground.com/
https://michaelbluejay.com/house/
I have unfortunately not yet found one that convinced me that paper clips have important distinguishing features.
It seems a little on the nose that the guy quoting the continental philosopher jams in way too many words for a single paragraph...
>But it becomes less complicated again when the child spontaneously requests something, their parents agree, their doctors agree, and all medical guideline-making organizations agree
If all medical guideline-making organisations said that more obvious abuse of children was okay, would you believe it?
If all mathematicians said eight was prime, would you believe it?
It's a weird counterfactual; are we postulating a universe where people say it's true because it is, or a universe where people say it's true because they're mistaken? If the former then yes I'd believe it, if the latter then no I wouldn't.
This is a good answer, thanks.
No, but if the children and their parents both desperately wanted the abuse, and their family doctor endorsed it, I would be pretty curious what was going on and whether I was misunderstanding the situation.
So only some child's expressed preferences are valid, and not the ones you're ideologically against?
Yes. Children aren't full adults and don't have unconditional rights; if a 5 year old kid refuses to go to bed on time, it's not the government's job to send in the police to defend his right to stay awake. If a child says they want to work in a coal mine ten hours a day, we are allowed to be skeptical that this is a true unforced choice, and even if it is, we're allowed to say "no, that's not good for you".
On the other hand, there *are* some cases where the government should send in the police to defend children, like if they're being molested or abused. And there are some cases where children's preference matters a lot - for example, if a family is divorcing, and the child absolutely hates their mother and desperately wants to be with their father, I would want the judge to take that into account. Same if the child had a difficult medical choice in front of them (eg amputation that might eliminate an otherwise-hard-to-treat cancer).
I think there should be a bias towards respecting children's autonomy, but it doesn't seem like you should respect it either 0% or 100% of the time, and I don't know how to draw the boundary without bringing in things like "I am ideologically against child molestation" (even if the child says, possibly under coercion, that it's their "preference"). Do you have a better method?
It doesn't help that the statement is inaccurate. If you put "all *American* organizations," it can go back to being mostly accurate. There's a whole lot of European medical-guideline organizations that have reversed course and we're kind of the odd ones out now, but being the 800 pound gorilla of social change we're just ignoring all that.
Especially ironic given how fond Democrats are of extolling the virtues of the European (esp. Scandinavian) ways of doing things. Now the Scandinavians are rowing back on gender-affirming care and the Democrats are going full steam ahead on it.
There were plenty of medical interventions in the past that were physician endorsed that we now view with great horror. Something so profoundly unnatural as stopping normal human development should have a Mt Everest worth of evidence in favor of it before we just blindly defer to the "consensus" of medical "experts."
How do you propose we study it, then?
We don't. We realize that "gender affirming care" is clearly deranged and move on. I don't need an RCT to know that pedophilia is a bad idea, and I don't need one to know that we shouldn't be castrating mentally unwell people.
You mean just like using poison and radiation to cure cancer is clearly deranged.
By your logic, how can we truly know pedophilia is bad without an RCT? A lot of the boys who were abused by the Catholic priests were from broken homes, so how can we compare them to the rest of the population? We can't know for sure.
> This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing. I can think of a dozen US medical policies that are much worse than that! I wrote here about how bad IRB policies probably kill about 50,000 people per year!
This whole paragraph feels a bit too much like an all-purpose argument against caring about anything at all. You're dying of a heart attack? Big deal, bad IRB policies kill about 50,000 people a year!
While maintaining some perspective on the scales of different problems is important, it doesn't mean people aren't allowed to care about anything except the biggest problem. Bringing up the existence bigger problem Y in the context of a discussion about smaller problem X is usually an unreasonable move.
I DON'T care if you die of a heart attack. Most people shouldn't care if you die of a heart attack, and if they devoted their lives to trying to prevent you specifically from dying of a heart attack they would be wasting their time compared to all the other things they could do to save more people.
You personally, on the other hand, are in a perfect position of caring and power to work on this problem. Your friends and family and maybe your doctors too, can and should care if you die of a heart attack.
The comparison is not between any random problem but between impersonal problems that are being worked on as a form of activist passion project.
I agree people can care about whatever they care about, I just think it requires explanation if a million people care about Issue A and nobody cares about objectively-equally-important-Issue-B.
Well there's no shortage of explanations. People care more about threats to children than threats to old people. People care more about very specific things happening to identifiable people than statistical assertions like "some of the deaths in the last year could have been postponed but we don't know which ones". People are more freaked out by body horror (mutilated genitals) than ordinary deaths from unprevented diseases. People care about novel bad things more than bad things that have existed for their whole lives. People care about things that they think they might have some hope of being able to prevent (the politics of gender is up in the air and public pressure can push it one way or the other) than things that they can't (IRB policies have a lot of inertia). And of course, people care about things they can blame on people they detest more than they care about things that they can't. (On the flip side, people perhaps care too little about issues like IRB policies because most people have never even thought or cared about this as a possible issue.)
Anyway, while I think it's totally reasonable to complain about people's irrational prioritisation of concerns, I think it's better done in the form of "People should care more about Y" than "People should care less about X".
Good explanations, I think, but with regard to the gender issue in general, there‘s also simply the insanity factor. To most people it is an obvious empirical fact that „man“ and „woman“ are the main categories. Nothing about IRB policies compares to a denial of that fact. And if people get the impression that their official cultural/cognitive elites are drifting into insanity, is it any wonder that they get scared and agitated?
I agree there's no shortage of explanations. I've explained why "people are addicted to arguing about gender" is my preferred one. I don't understand whether you disagree with me or, if not, what your concern is.
I do think there's a slight moral obligation to put some effort into caring about whatever the most important problem is instead of whatever's most attention-grabbing, but I don't make a big deal of this because I think if you put some effort into solving important problems, it's fine to spend your spare time worrying about attention-grabbing ones, and I have no evidence any specific other person isn't putting effort into solving attention-grabbing problems. So for now I'm just talking about the aggregate and trying to theorize about it.
You said elsewhere in this thread that people on both sides of the debate expect the number of trans-identified young people to increase dramatically. The rate of young people seeking hormones and gender-affirming surgery in the UK increased a thousandfold over the past two decades (likewise in Canada and likely the US). What's more, the Cass review definitively established that gender-affirming medics in the Tavistock grew increasingly uncautious over the period, departing from the standards established by the Dutch protocol. This is bound to increase the rate of false positives.
If the trend continues, we can expect to see a LOT more teenagers requesting medical treatment which will permanently sterilize them over the next decade or so, and a far bigger proportion of these teenagers will later come to regret these interventions. The expression "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure" seems decidedly relevant in this instance.
"The failure to allow human challenge trials for COVID vaccines probably killed about 10,000 people; the decision to delay the vaccine an extra few weeks to influence the 2020 election probably killed about 1,000."
This could use a link to the the reasoning behind these numbers imo.
Estimates of how long each of them delayed the vaccine * how many people died of COVID during that time period * how much the vaccine decreased COVID deaths. I Fermi estimated it in my head, feel free to make estimates of your own.
How then does "1,000 estimated extra deaths" stack up against "2,500 lives low-key ruined is nothing"?
On the one hand, death is the most ruinous. On the other, having to live out decades of a ruined life might be considered worse than dying.
Just the other day, someone on the Internet was claiming that his mother improperly got him prescribed anti-depression drugs, which made him impotent for a long while. I expect this problem to get much worse if we tell doctors not to trust children and not to let them control their own bodies. The number of US children diagnosed with depression in 2012-2019 was 2.7 x 10^6. The number of US children who identify as trans - not just the ones who've had any contact with the medical system, but the whole set who identify - is said to be 3 x 10^5.
> On the other, having to live out decades of a ruined life might be considered worse than dying.
I agree.
User was banned for this comment.
Is there any evidence that Aella's surveys are remotely representative of the population at large?
See here for why I don't think this matters for correlational questions like the correlation between childhood spanking and spanking fetishes: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/selection-bias-is-a-fact-of-life
Unrepresentative populations typically bias correlational estimates towards zero due to both range and domain restriction. That is, the correlation between (say) height and basketball ability is much lower among NBA players than among the general population.
Moreover, due to measurement error, almost all social science correlations are larger than they appear.
Both of these are reasons to expect the true correlations are even larger than those Aella found.
Isn't the low correlation between ability and height within the NBA *actually* due to selection effects, though (at least in part)? If there were a correlation, that would mean that teams are systematically either under- or over-valuing height, and a savvy team could exploit that fact.
I think you're correct that there are "selection effects", but not in a way that contradicts what I'm saying.
Suppose, for instance, basketball was perfectly efficient at finding the people with highest ability. Then, the NBA would literally just be the subset of the population for whom ability > some_threshold. This is literally just range/domain restriction. So, yes it is "*actually* due to "selection effects", but (in this case) those selection effects are mathematically equivalent to simple range/domain restriction.
Within this sample of players, we wouldn't expect the correlation to be perfectly zero. This can be proven mathematically (correlations tend towards zero as domain/range restriction tends towards infinity, but they never reach zero).
You might expect the edge/alpha from recruiting tall players to be zero, but I don't know why you'd expect the mere correlation between height and ability to be zero - regardless of how efficient the market is.
I'm a bit impressed how Cthulhu twisted the classical conservative "think of the children" meme into "think of the *autistic* children" version, designed to appeal to the liberal sentiments about the rights of neurodivergent people. This seem to be an effective move from the informational warfare perspective: first aggregate your base, then try to form weird alliances in attempts to shatter the enemy coalition.
Of course, it would've been much more effective if there actually were a huge number of cases where doctors and parents imposed medical transition on autistic children who are just ambivalent about gender and do not express any desire to change it from the one that was assigned them at birth. While, as far as I know, in reality the most controversial cases are when the child really wants to transition, doctors agree and its the parent(s) who are against. But even scaremongering about the mere possibility can confuse some people here and there, making them change sides. I applaud to whoever came up with this memetic mutation and sincierly hope that they would put their genius to less evil means.
"Of course, it would've been much more effective if there actually were a huge number of cases where doctors and parents imposed medical transition on autistic children who are just ambivalent about gender and do not express any desire to change it from the one that was assigned them at birth."
I think the concern is less about that, and more about the social contagion model; vulnerable children feel anxious around puberty and the social roles they are supposed to take on, they don't fit in completely with the other kids in how they behave, and over-enthusiastic LGBT+ promoters in schools/online persuade them that "aha! the real reason is that your gender is different from what was assigned to you!"
Then parents are browbeaten with "41% suicide! Do you want a trans kid or a dead kid?" and doctors/clinics are pressured into "sign off on and provide the treatment or else we'll ruin your reputation", and so kids are put on the moving staircase of social transition, puberty blockers and 'of course if you decide to do it, gender-affirming surgery later'.
My own opinion is that the Mermaids charity in the UK was taken over and steered into being very pro-transitioning kids and activist on this by one particular parent, and they used that position to put pressure on the Tavistock Clinic to comply with requests. I won't say "rubber-stamp" but be a lot less cautious.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/17/mermaids-why-has-the-trans-charity-been-in-the-news
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/02/regulator-escalates-investigation-into-trans-charity-mermaids
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65340857
Hard agree.
Cthulhu's asleep in the Pacific, this is more of a Nyarlathotep thing.
Seriously, I can't keep track of who's on what side half the time anymore, but there do seem to be cases from what I've heard from people I knew where at least some autistic kids become trans as a way to fit in (or to join the LGBTQ community as a way to not be 'an oppressor' in progressive areas). How common this is, I have no clue.
Given all that is in this post, have you ever considered 'transing out' of being a 'libertarian'?
Care to explain what you mean further?
I was partly just teasing! I am a 72 year old who pines for the days when none of this stuff got talked about. Wittgenstein's famous; ".... those things of which we cannot speak, we must be silent" is one of my favourite quotes....(although I may be misapplying it here.) I am not blind to the upsides of the times....the internet is a marvel and internet discourse is too - for those with the right personality blend of curiosity and skepticism (which unfortunately is only a small minority of folk).
I tend to think of Western liberalism as a great invention but - Icarus-like - one that does not know when enough is enough. I am a pessimist about the future of Liberty.
Care to respond further?
Hi, not set up for international (I'm UK). My email: grahampcunningham@gmail.com
You've heard of the libertarian-to-fascist pipeline, so be careful what you wish for. ;)
I hadn't actually...so thanks for bringing me up to speed with this....what would one call it these days: 'meme' perhaps? Having skim-read a bit about it, it would seem rather to reinforce my point, more than undermine it. I happen to think that 'careful what you wish for' is one of the wisest vernacular sayings ever. Post 60s Western liberalism is a 'careful-what-you-wish-for' case in point....as we are seeing now with our somewhat bizarre and paradoxical emerging culture of 'hyper liberal intolerant bigotry'.....to coin a (admittedly unwieldy) phrase.
"I have also had this particular pleasure, and of course I sympathize with this person, but I also think her statement is literally correct as written. Cf. Toxoplasma of Rage. And again, not an expert, not a trauma-focused therapist, etc, but my amateur opinion is you gotta stop re-enacting your trauma. Some transgender activist cyberbullies you - many such cases! - and then you spend the rest of your life trying to own trans activists to prove that they were wrong and you were right and the world is safe again. IOU a post fleshing out this theory in more details sometime in the next few months. But for now, search your feelings, you know it to be true."
This is so true. Coming from the other side of having Issues with Blanchardians and attempting to show people how bad Blanchardians are, I've eventually concluded that I just need to stop because it doesn't achieve anything. Yet I keep seeing "opportunities" to get the Final Proof, even though they turn out to be mirages. For the last year or so I've been saying that I just need to wrap up some final things and then leave that area forever.
The growth in the use of medical interventions for transgender children over the past twenty years or so has faced far lower barriers than would have been the case for non-transgender equivalents. The evidence base really doesn't seem to be strong.
So even if you're much more interested in saving lives through reforming IRBs, or allowing human challenge trials, you should be a bit interested in how transgender medicine has managed to escape regulatory paralysis.
The answer might just be that (as with eugenics a century ago?) as long as something is sufficiently Progressive-coded, the normal rules don't apply. So Scott and everyone else should stop talking about these issues in public, and focus on planting infiltration agents deep in the heart of left-wing organisations. Unsullied individuals, with no record of wrongthink. The march through the institutions must begin.
I agree that trans medicine is much more permissive than regular medicine (although probably this should be solved by making regular medicine more permissive), and that this is because activists have pushed hard for this and also distorted the science.
This is still only like #5603855601 on the list of reasons we should take over all scientific institutions, though.
I think Nick meant "you should study what trans activists did to get the barriers lifted, not because you care about trans issues one way or the other but so that you can then *do the same thing* for the actually important medical issues currently choking in red tape".
> how transgender medicine has managed to escape regulatory paralysis
If you can't figure out the extremely obvious and well-reported answer to this (hint: it's not progressive-coding, although that may well be an additional requirement), then it is probably best for all if you don't actually attempt to march through the institutions.
What is the obvious and well-reported answer?
I got quoted! Does that make me mainstream?
But I was hoping somebody would kick the tyres of my "most fetish is super stimulation" hypothesis.
>This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing.
Dead serious question - can we by this logic also completely disregard the murder of trans people as an issue of any kind of special significance given the fact that the overwhelming majority of murders are not committed against trans people, and that trans murders are even more insignificant compared to the number of preventable deaths each year? And also trans suicides? Absolute drop in the ocean.
Remembering that almost all pro-trans policies are anchored back to violence against trans people/trans suicide and a "need" to fully "include" transwomen (meaning they literally have to be treated as actual women by all people and institutions) to prevent this, at least by bona fide trans activists. Yes, this literally includes trans women being allowed to compete in women's sports and everything more significant.
I think trans people are just killed at the same rate as cis people, and almost never because of their transgender status, so I guess I deny the basis of your question.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/data-behind-transgender-homicides
It's a pretty left-wing source, but it says 175 trans people have been killed in the US over the past 5 years (ie, about 30 a year). About 26,000 people are killed in the USA per year (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm). (yeah, we have a high rate for a rich country.) We now get into 'what percentage of people in the US are trans'. All the official sources I can find say about 1% (Pew gives me 1.5, which is much higher in kids), which means...you would expect about 260 murders of trans people a year just on general causes. So it's not never, but seems to raise your rate of being murdered by...about 12%?
There's probably some kind of age effect, but since young people are more likely to be trans and to get into homicides, it may be a wash.
Sex work is the short and blunt reason there. A lot of trans people are BIPOC and lower-class and support themselves with sex work, and that's a profession which is high-risk and has a good chance of encounters that turn violent and even fatal.
Even for cis sex workers. So the Trans Remembrance Day Of Genocide about "how many trans people were killed this year" is mostly trans women and, if you took out the sex workers, would be even lower.
I've seen comparisons of homicide rates on this, and going by vague memory it's "slightly higher than cis women, lower than cis men, in general line with the population". So trans people are not being murdered at above-average levels, which is why "genocide" has now been stretched to cover all the rest of the debate: deadnaming, opposition to gender-affirming surgery, and so on.
EDIT: "So it's not never, but seems to raise your rate of being murdered by...about 12%?"
Looking up homicide rates, for the US in 2020 there was a total homicide rate of 21,750 of which 17,687 (81%) were male and 3,883 (18%) were female.
Other data about trans people gives me this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5551594/
"Objectives. To estimate homicide rates of transgender US residents and relative risks (RRs) of homicide with respect to cisgender comparators intersected with age, gender, and race/ethnicity.
Methods. I estimated homicide rates for transgender residents and transfeminine, Black, Latin@, and young (aged 15–34 years) subpopulations during the period 2010 to 2014 using Transgender Day of Remembrance and National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs transgender homicide data. I used estimated transgender prevalences to estimate RRs using cisgender comparators. I performed a sensitivity analysis to situate all results within assumptions about underreporting of transgender homicides and assumptions about the prevalence of transgender residents.
Results. The overall homicide rate of transgender individuals was likely to be less than that of cisgender individuals, with 8 of 12 RR estimates below 1.0. However, the homicide rates of young transfeminine Black and Latina residents were almost certainly higher than were those of cisfeminine comparators, with all RR estimates above 1.0 for Blacks and all above 1.0 for Latinas.
Conclusions. Antiviolence public health programs should identify young and Black or Latina transfeminine women as an especially vulnerable population."
So your risk of being murdered is higher if you're male than if you're female, and if you're Black/African-American than any other race.
This Dutch study says risks for *all* causes of death are higher for trans people:
https://www.hcplive.com/view/mortality-rate-higher-transgender-people
"“The findings of our large, nationwide study highlight a substantially increased mortality risk among transgender people that has persisted for decades,” den Heijer said in a statement. “Increasing social acceptance, and monitoring and treatment for cardiovascular disease, tobacco use, and HIV, will continue to be important factors that may contribute to decreasing mortality risk in transgender people.”
In comparison to men in the general Dutch population, the mortality risk was nearly double among transgender women and was nearly triple in comparison to cis women (ratios of 1.8 and 2.8, respectively).
An analysis of the subgroups show transgender women were 2.6 times as likely to die of cardiovascular disease, 3.1 times as likely to die from lung cancer, 8.7 times as likely to die from infection, and 6.1 times as likely to die from non-natural causes as cis women.
The greatest risk for those suffering from cardiovascular disease was heart attacks, which were 3 times higher in transgender women than cis women.
Most likely the starkest difference was the mortality risk from HIV, which was 47.6 times higher for transgender women in comparison to cis women.
Finally, the suicide rate was 6.8 times higher for transgender women.
While the differences were not as high for transgender men, they were still higher than cis women in comparison. Overall, the mortality rates between the 2 groups was similar, with transgender men 1.1 times as likely to die as cis men."
Yeah, that makes more sense. Thanks.
Am I misunderstanding? Don't these statistics suggest it *decreases* your chance of being murdered by almost 90%? You expect 260 a year, get 30, that's ~10% what you expect?
Would be kinda crazy if true, so probably not. But isn't this what those numbers suggest?
Right, that's why Deiseach found a better study for me. Yup, it actually does increase your risk of being killed as I initially expected.
Surprisingly based.
On a lighter note, how come are you still getting ads? Get uBlock right now!
I doubt Zizek's claim that anything can acquire a sexual connotation. I don't think anybody has a fetish for integration by parts.
If boys grew up in a culture where women did ritualized public displays of skilled integration by parts as part of attracting a high-status mate, I’d predict some of them would develop that fetish.
I buy that it can be attractive to see other people integrate by parts, but not that anybody is turned on by sitting down on their own and integrating by parts.
"If we imagine this line as your dress, then integration is finding out what's underneath it, with infinite attention to detail, taking into account every tiny little curve..."
"How about I find the limit of your pants, over time?"
OK, not very good, and not really a fetish, more like obscure flirtation. But I couldn't resist. :-)
I thought that quote was saying anything that is done repetitively and futilely and constantly fails becomes sexualized. Which sounds to me like washing dishes and doing laundry should be common fetishes. (I think I’ve heard people joke about these as fetishes, but never heard of anyone actually fetishizing these things.)
I was partly just teasing! I am a 72 year old who pines for the days when none of this stuff got talked about. Wittgenstein's famous; ".... those things of which we cannot speak, we must be silent" is one of my favourite quotes....(although I may be misapplying it here.) I am not blind to the upsides of the times....the internet is a marvel and internet discourse is too - for those with the right personality blend of curiosity and skepticism (which unfortunately is only a small minority of folk).
I tend to think of Western liberalism as a great invention but - Icarus-like - one that does not know when enough is enough. I am a pessimist about the future of Liberty.
One Wittgenstein quote potentially relevant to a discussion about fetishes (a passage from Ray Monk's biography):
"And when, during a discussion at Cambridge, someone was inclined to defend Russell’s views on marriage, sex and ‘free love’ (expressed in Marriage and Morals), Wittgenstein replied: 'If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no right to judge him, but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.'"
Yes, relevant....Well spotted. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Only about 5000 kids kill themselves every year in the U.S. It's really not that many lives lost, and should be #3445 on our list of things to worry about, and yet parents obsessively dwell on this, providing a conveniently captured audience of endless articles about how social networks increase teen isolation and depression and lead to increased suicidal ideation. By some estimates only one in every 100-200 suicide attempts are successful, so parents who worry a lot about their kid brooding and talking about wanting to die are being silly, right?
I think something similar's going on with some people's obsessive focus on gender issues. It's a very important piece of data you link to that "only" about 1500 kids start (not get, start getting) on puberty blockers every year (although I'd want to understand their methodology better). But if you are a parent who worries about transgender trends because you suspect they're socially contagious, then you tend to see it as a pipeline that works something like --
1. It's initially trend-setting, and then inevitably just popular, to be nonbinary or trans.
2. Lots and lots of kids go through the phase of "questioning their gender" just as in earlier generations they would go through being goths or something.
3. Out of that large mass, a much smaller number insist on socially transitioning and not merely "self-identifying".
4. Out of that smaller number, a much smaller number will get a dysphoria diagnosis from an "affirming" gender clinic.
5. Out of those, a much smaller number will start on puberty blockers (and then later probably on hormones).
Is there evidence for a huge increase in 1 and 2? Yes; plenty of anecdotal evidence like "the current cohort of 12-15 year old girls in my friend/family circle are virtually all in some level of gender dysphoria." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27612664) but also surveys like the NCHA (https://www.acha.org/NCHA/ACHA-NCHA_Data/Publications_and_Reports/NCHA/Data/Reports_ACHA-NCHAIII.aspx). 2022: 3.5% of college students self-identify as transgender. In 2016, that was 1.8%, in 2011 it was 0.2% (the wording of the questions changed, so don't take it as a straightforward comparison, see reports for details).
If as a parent you're worried about 5, does it make sense to worry about a huge increase in 1-2 given that only 1.5k of new kids get 5 every year? Maybe if you suspect that the funneling process from 1 to 5 is not random. If "omg im so nonbinary" is a current social game among adolescents, then millions of adolescents will play the social game and phase out of it, but thousands will get caught up in it with increasing levels of seriousness fueled by feelings of self-inadequacy and not belonging. Those will be the kids with autistic traits, the relatively socially inept, those who are prone to obsessive self-dwelling, those who feel alienated from the romantic culture of their peers, etc.
Of course if you believe that gender identity is innate and growing levels of 1-2 are just helping more kids figure it out, then it's all nonsense. But if you do see it as socially contagious...
Consider that in California, they are trying to get "is not gender-affirming of their child" written into law as child abuse to be considered in custody cases:
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB957/id/2823779#:~:text=This%20bill%20would%20require%20a,and%20welfare%20of%20the%20child.
"Existing law governs the determination of child custody and visitation in contested proceedings and requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including, among other things, the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
This bill, for purposes of this provision, would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.
SECTION 1. Section 3011 of the Family Code is amended to read:
3011. (a) In making a determination of the best interests of the child in a proceeding described in Section 3021, the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following:
(1) (A) The health, safety, and welfare of the child.
(B) As used in this paragraph, the health, safety, and welfare of the child includes a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.
(2) (A) A history of abuse by one parent or another person seeking custody against any of the following:
(i) A child to whom the parent or person seeking custody is related by blood or affinity or with whom the parent or person seeking custody has had a caretaking relationship, no matter how temporary.
(ii) The other parent.
(iii) A parent, current spouse, or cohabitant of the parent or person seeking custody, or a person with whom the parent or person seeking custody has a dating or engagement relationship.
(B) (i) As a prerequisite to considering allegations of abuse, the court may require independent corroboration, including, but not limited to, written reports by law enforcement agencies, child protective services or other social welfare agencies, courts, medical facilities, or other public agencies or private nonprofit organizations providing services to victims of sexual assault or domestic violence.
(ii) As used in this paragraph, “abuse against a child” means “child abuse or neglect” as defined in Section 11165.6 of the Penal Code.
(iii) Abuse against another person, as described in clause (ii) or (iii) of subparagraph (A), means “abuse” as defined in Section 6203.
(3) The nature and amount of contact with both parents, except as provided in Section 3046.
(4) (A) The habitual or continual illegal use of controlled substances or the habitual or continual abuse of alcohol or prescribed controlled substances by either parent. Before considering these allegations, the court may first require independent corroboration, including, but not limited to, written reports from law enforcement agencies, courts, probation departments, social welfare agencies, medical facilities, rehabilitation facilities, or other public agencies or nonprofit organizations providing drug and alcohol abuse services.
(B) As used in this paragraph, “controlled substances” has the same meaning as defined in the California Uniform Controlled Substances Act (Division 10 (commencing with Section 11000) of the Health and Safety Code).
(5) (A) When allegations about a parent pursuant to paragraph (2) or (4) have been brought to the attention of the court in the current proceeding and the court makes an order for sole or joint custody or unsupervised visitation to that parent, the court shall state its reasons in writing or on the record. In these circumstances, the court shall ensure that an order regarding custody or visitation is specific as to time, day, place, and manner of transfer of the child as set forth in subdivision (c) of Section 6323.
(B) This paragraph does not apply if the parties stipulate in writing or on the record regarding custody or visitation.
(b) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), the court shall not consider the sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation of a parent, legal guardian, or relative in determining the best interests of the child."
That's the amended version, the unamended text was stronger:
"Existing law authorizes a person to petition for a court order conforming the person’s name to the person’s gender identity. Existing law requires the court, upon the filing of a petition commencing a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity, to make an order reciting the filing of the petition and directing all persons interested in the matter to make their objections known, as specified. Existing law requires the petition and order to be served on the parent who did not sign the petition if a petition to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity does not include the signature of both living parents, as specified.
This bill would require the court to strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child if a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity.
This bill would require a court, when determining the best interests of a child, to also consider a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.
SECTION 1.Section 1277.5 of the Code of Civil Procedure is amended to read:
1277.5.(a)(1)If a proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is commenced by the filing of a petition, the court shall thereupon make an order reciting the filing of the petition, the name of the person by whom it is filed, and the name proposed. The order shall direct all persons interested in the matter to make known an objection to the change of name by filing a written objection, which includes the reasons for the objection, within six weeks of the making of the order and shall state that if no objection showing good cause to oppose the name change is timely filed, the court shall, without hearing, enter the order that the change of name is granted.
(2)(A)If a petition is filed to change the name of a minor to conform to their gender identity and the petition does not include the signatures of both living parents, the petition and the order to show cause made in accordance with paragraph (1) shall be served on the parent who did not sign the petition, pursuant to Section 413.10, 414.10, 415.10, or 415.40, within 30 days from the date on which the order is made by the court. If service cannot reasonably be accomplished pursuant to Section 415.10 or 415.40, the court may order that service be accomplished in a manner that the court determines is reasonably calculated to give actual notice to the parent who did not sign the petition.
(B)If a nonconsenting parent objects to a name change to conform to the minor’s gender identity, the court shall strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the best interest of the child pursuant to Section 3011 of the Family Code.
(b)The proceeding for a change of name to conform the petitioner’s name to the petitioner’s gender identity is exempt from a requirement for publication.
(c)A hearing date shall not be set in the proceeding unless an objection is timely filed and shows good cause for opposing the name change. Objections based solely on concerns that the proposed change is not the petitioner’s actual gender identity or gender assigned at birth shall not constitute good cause. At the hearing, the court may examine under oath any of the petitioners, remonstrants, or other persons touching the petition or application and may make an order changing the name or dismissing the petition or application as the court may deem right and proper.
[3011. (a) In making a determination of the best interests of the child in a proceeding described in Section 3021, the court shall, among any other factors it finds relevant and consistent with Section 3020, consider all of the following]
(6)A parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity because it is in the best interest of the child to affirm their gender identity."
So if you're a parent in California in a custody dispute, and part of the dispute is over "I don't think Johnny is trans and I'm not willing to change his name" or affirm her gender identity, well - that's going to be lumped in with child abuse/neglect on the same order as beating, starving, etc. your kid, if this bill passes.
But parents shouldn't worry, it never happens (and if it does, it will be a good thing).
The reason I suspect we see such an outsized % of young people now identifying as trans/non-binary (aside from the salience/popularity) is through playing fast and loose with definitions. As the activist camp would avow, any motivation for identifying as x/y/z gender is valid, which would necessarily include fashion. Now rather than gender being short-hand for the social phenomenon of identifying a person based on perceived sex, it can be pegged based purely on perceived gender *roles* and preferences, or some other fashion that is further divorced from sex.
Where once a girl might be suggested to be a tomboy, or a guy "metro"/girly, where gender is not called into question, the very same types might now dub themselves non-binary. It seems moot to me because if you're not transitioning, the sex is still there and therefore obvious to anyone else, regardless of their pressured use of non-binary pronouns. Ultimately it has no bearing on either your self-image or the way others see you. You're an individual, and you can't escape sex. I expect once the collective culture-war obsession wanes, numbers for non-binary will drop (but not the other type of trans).
I did not get 3, lol. I expected some people would get worked up about "Scott snide-swiping about the opioid-crises". Actually I raised an eyebrow when first reading the essay: OxyContin started a national catastrophe killing 500,000 people in the USofA and still going strong; strong enough to reduce national life-expectancy in this land of the free. And Scott dares to compare it with this most pointless luxury debate "gender"?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States - But yeah, I have boomer priorities. Take over, TitaniaMcGrath: https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/july-2023/jesus-christ-was-a-trans-woman/
> "But it becomes less complicated again when the child spontaneously requests something[...]"
This seems weirdly charitable. In my experience, having observed online communities, it's more like children are being held by the ankle and veritably dunked in the river of gender ideology. Rather than 'spontaneously requesting something' it's more like Derren Brown's Red BMX Bike sketch.
I want to recognize that you immediately go on to say that the explosion of transgender individuals is disconcerting, I'm not trying to mischaracterize your opinion.
> "The biggest studies suggest that about 98% of children who take puberty blockers do later go on to transition[...]"
Here's another one where you quickly double back to nuance and indicate that there's probably something wrong with the study, but I don't think the percentage that you quoted is right. I couldn't find a 98% anywhere in the study, I think you might've wanted 94%(?)...
Anyway, based on the median age and length of study, most of these kids were eight when logged and thirteen on latest snapshot. The impression I've gotten from folks who are spreading retransition horror stories is that these regrets tend to show up later-on in life. I'm not advocating for anything, so consider this a good faith attempt to steelman the opposition.
Agreed on the first point. If a child in the 90s presented with gender issues unprompted, I'd be far more inclined to take their claim seriously compared to a child who only "realises" they're trans after spending hundreds of hours on Tumblr and/or being taught about "genderbread people" by their well-meaning secondary school teacher, both of which have primed them to interpret even totally banal gender nonconformance as potential red flags for clinically significant gender dysphoria.
Regarding your “proves too much”...doesn’t your preferred explanation of “resembles sexual motions and happens near the genitals” prove too much as well, or at least raise the question of why THESE behaviors and not others which could also fit the criteria? For instance, riding a mechanical bull, which has motions similar to sex yet isn’t a fetish I’ve ever heard of.
To me at least part of the explanation for “why spanking and not stubbing your toe,” “why urination and not a Slip N Slide,” etc, is psychological: fetish behaviors tend to involve complicated feelings such as shame (no one is disciplined by toe-stubbing but people are disciplined by spanking), disgust, powerlessness, etc.
The complicated feelings explanation seems reasonable, but in the examples you gave, spanking and piss kink typically involve the intimate presence of another person, while stubbing your toe and the Slip N Slide don’t.
Some of us still remember when genital mutilation was considered a bad thing.
FGM is forced and isn't something that would be considered in any way for "transitioning".
So you think every adolescent girl who undergoes FGM does so against their will and has to be physically restrained during the procedure? Or is it possible that they're raised in a culture in which it's seen as normal and necessary, and hence undergo it willingly?
You're right that FGM would never be considered for medical transition. Medical transition instead involves far more extreme interventions like mastectomies (of healthy tissue), orchiectomies (of healthy tissue), penectomies (of healthy tissue) and so on. Surgically removing a healthy clitoris but otherwise leaving the reproductive organs intact seems like small beer by comparison, frankly.
> So you think every adolescent girl who undergoes FGM does so against their will and has to be physically restrained during the procedure? Or is it possible that they're raised in a culture in which it's seen as normal and necessary, and hence undergo it willingly?
They can't consent, so the question is redundant. Notwithstanding that it's possible for a girl to believe it's necessary, while still unequivocally not wanting it to happen.
> You're right that FGM would never be considered for medical transition
You're being coy, but you know that isn't the type of transition referred to.
> Surgically removing a healthy clitoris but otherwise leaving the reproductive organs intact seems like small beer by comparison, frankly.
Maybe ask someone who has a clitoris.
>They can't consent
But they can consent to medical transition?
No, they can't.
The conceit of advocates relies entirely on the notion that these procedures are effectively consequence-free and therefore we need not question a child's purported choice. As far as we can tell, we cannot say with any reasonable confidence that they are consequence-free - but they are calling on the rest of society to prove it, rather than erring to safety. Hence a lot of noise is made over conjecture that denial of procedures for kids either harming psyche in the short-run (difficult to prove) or diminishing the potential physical extent of transition in the future (in terms of bone density sure, but with surgery and interventions this is trivial, you can change your body to the extent you stop resembling a normal human and this will only go further in the future.. though in the other direction, unclear to what extent your dick and bone density can ever be repaired).
There's a lot of weight thrown behind the idea that undergoing puberty is necessarily traumatizing for kids who want to transition, as the worldview relies on it, but no strong evidence for it. Is it inhumane for a kid to go through an ugly teenage phase, acne and all, despite it not being how they "see themselves"? No, their confidence does not have to be nil, happiness and well-being is informed by many things.
This isn't to say there aren't "for real" trans kids, the stats and Occam's razor suggests this is probably true. But it's not a fair comparison to weigh the # of kids who enthusiastically report wanting to transition vs the ones who change their minds - the absolute number of the former camp does not matter. What matters is consent and consequences.
I don't think it's "just" or humane to think of kids in the "regret" camp as mere collateral in the battle for trans rights. They matter.
FGM is because the parents advocate it.
Given that minors are, by law, not able to make decisions on their own - it is not the least bit clear to me that there is any difference.
Here's one difference: puberty blockers aren't tantamount to genital mutilation.
Puberty blockers do indeed stunt the growth of the penis, sometimes so much so that later attempts at vaginoplasty are thwarted due to lack of tissue.
Indeed. But genital mutilation has a real definition and you can't play fast and loose with it. Puberty blockers aren't tantamount to cutting a dick off. That does not mean that they are consequence-free, or appropriate for kids.
I see what you’re arguing, but I think “FGM” has an agreed definition, whereas genital mutilation...I dunno. I don’t know how permanently stunting the growth of a penis that simultaneously precludes orgasm doesn’t qualify.
Puberty blockers are not the only tool used with these "misgendering" situations - you do know this, right?
There are all manner of surgical interventions, the extent of which is such that a significant number of large hospitals started specific surgical units to serve the market.
Even in the non-surgical front: puberty blockers aren't used by themselves - do they not also generally get accompanied by estrogen/testosterone hormones? Does this combination not affect future capabilities over and above Jean's mention of penis size?
Genital mutilation, however horrific it is, doesn't actually affect fertility AFAIK.
If in fact there are future losses in fertility - this is a far more horrific denial of capability.
Okay, I'm calling shenanigans on this article about oral sex:
"What are the earliest traces of fellatio?
A well-known French paleontologist by the name of Yves Coppens suggested that the famous Lucy (the first prehistoric woman) practiced a sort of "paleo-fellatio." But the first clear real traces of fellatio are from ancient Egypt. Many of the more stellar examples are in the British Museum, where we find the famous myth of Osiris and Iris: Osiris was killed by his brother and cut into pieces. His sister Iris put the pieces together but, by chance, the penis was missing. An artificial penis was made out of clay, and Iris "blew" life back into Osiris by sucking it. There are explicit images of this myth."
Now, there may be (probably are) variant versions of this myth; certainly, that Set cut Osiris into pieces, scattered the pieces, and that Isis searched them out and reconstructed them is the main myth, and I think I've read one where indeed Osiris gets an artificial penis because that part was missing.
But the version I'm most familiar with is that Isis eventually finds the missing penis and uses it to impregnate herself, thus Horus is born to avenge his father's death. Not fellatio. (Though Horus and Set in another myth do get involved in weird mpreg via semen on lettuce which is unwittingly consumed):
"In a key episode in the conflict, Set sexually abuses Horus. Set's violation is partly meant to degrade his rival, but it also involves homosexual desire, in keeping with one of Set's major characteristics, his forceful and indiscriminate sexuality. In the earliest account of this episode, in a fragmentary Middle Kingdom papyrus, the sexual encounter begins when Set asks to have sex with Horus, who agrees on the condition that Set will give Horus some of his strength. The encounter puts Horus in danger, because in Egyptian tradition semen is a potent and dangerous substance, akin to poison. According to some texts, Set's semen enters Horus's body and makes him ill, but in "Contendings", Horus thwarts Set by catching Set's semen in his hands. Isis retaliates by putting Horus's semen on lettuce-leaves that Set eats. Set's defeat becomes apparent when this semen appears on his forehead as a golden disk. He has been impregnated with his rival's seed and as a result "gives birth" to the disk. In "Contendings", Thoth takes the disk and places it on his own head; other accounts imply that Thoth himself was produced by this anomalous birth."
That's why the oxyrhyncus fish is venerated - it's the place where the penis was found! Or eaten, depending on the version of the myth:
"Oxyrhynchus lies west of the main course of the Nile on the Bahr Yussef, a branch that terminates in Lake Moeris and the Faiyum oasis. In ancient Egyptian times, there was a city on the site called Per-Medjed, named after the medjed, a species of elephantfish of the Nile worshipped there as the fish that ate the penis of Osiris. It was the capital of the 19th Upper Egyptian Nome."
"Once Osiris is made whole, Isis conceives his son and rightful heir, Horus. One ambiguous spell in the Coffin Texts may indicate that Isis is impregnated by a flash of lightning, while in other sources, Isis, still in bird form, fans breath and life into Osiris's body with her wings and copulates with him. Osiris's revival is apparently not permanent, and after this point in the story he is only mentioned as the ruler of the Duat, the distant and mysterious realm of the dead. Although he lives on only in the Duat, he and the kingship he stands for will, in a sense, be reborn in his son.
...The cohesive account by Plutarch, which deals mainly with this portion of the myth, differs in many respects from the known Egyptian sources.
...Plutarch also states that Set steals and dismembers the corpse only after Isis has retrieved it. Isis then finds and buries each piece of her husband's body, with the exception of the penis, which she has to reconstruct with magic, because the original was eaten by fish in the river. According to Plutarch, this is the reason the Egyptians had a taboo against eating fish. In Egyptian accounts, however, the penis of Osiris is found intact, and the only close parallel with this part of Plutarch's story is in "The Tale of Two Brothers", a folk tale from the New Kingdom with similarities to the Osiris myth.
A final difference in Plutarch's account is Horus's birth. The form of Horus that avenges his father has been conceived and born before Osiris's death. It is a premature and weak second child, Harpocrates, who is born from Osiris's posthumous union with Isis. Here, two of the separate forms of Horus that exist in Egyptian tradition have been given distinct positions within Plutarch's version of the myth."
We've thrashed out the 'potatoes in Classical Rome' nonsense further down. I know it's from 2000 and it's really clickbait (read all about sexy sexy!) but honestly, is there *no* rigour at all in even opinion pieces? Never mind that they don't seem to know the distinction between fellatio and irrumatio. Tsk! Somebody needs to bone up on their Catullus!
Time to quote some Swinburne, from "Dolores" (or, as GKC characterised it, "Ruskin’s dark and doubtful decision to accept Catholic art but not Catholic ethics had borne rapid or even flagrant fruit by the time that Swinburne, writing about a harlot, composed a learned and sympathetic and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin"):
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45283/dolores-notre-dame-des-sept-douleurs
"We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
Thou art noble and nude and antique;
Libitina thy mother, Priapus
Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
We play with light loves in the portal,
And wince and relent and refrain;
Loves die, and we know thee immortal,
Our Lady of Pain.
On thy bosom though many a kiss be,
There are none such as knew it of old.
Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,
Male ringlets or feminine gold,
That thy lips met with under the statue,
Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves
From the eyes of the garden-god at you
Across the fig-leaves?
Then still, through dry seasons and moister,
One god had a wreath to his shrine;
Then love was the pearl of his oyster,
And Venus rose red out of wine.
We have all done amiss, choosing rather
Such loves as the wise gods disdain;
Intercede for us thou with thy father,
Our Lady of Pain.
In spring he had crowns of his garden,
Red corn in the heat of the year,
Then hoary green olives that harden
When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
And milk-budded myrtles with Venus
And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,
A visible God."
While I'm on the Chesterton kick:
"For instance, there were throughout antiquity, both in its first stage and its last, modes of idolatry and imagery of which Christian men can hardly speak. “Let them not be so much as named among you.” Men wallowed in the mere sexuality of a mythology of sex; they organised prostitution like priesthood, for the service of their temples; they made pornography their only poetry; they paraded emblems that turned even architecture into a sort of cold and colossal exhibitionism. Many learned books have been written of all these phallic cults; and anybody can go to them for the details, for all I care. But what interests me is this:
In one way all this ancient sin was infinitely superior, immeasurably superior, to the modern sin. All those who write of it at least agree on one fact; that it was the cult of Fruitfulness. It was unfortunately too often interwoven, very closely, with the cult of the fruitfulness of the land. It was at least on the side of Nature. It was at least on the side of Life. It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility. The new Paganism literally merits the reproach of Swinburne, when mourning for the old Paganism: “and rears not the bountiful token and spreads not the fatherly feast.” The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast – to themselves. They are worse than Swinburne’s Pagans. The priests of Priapus and Cotytto go into the kingdom of heaven before them."
A lowbrow literary reference book might be of note. A pre-WW2 dirty joke book a friend had some jokes about oral sex. Those jokes revolved around husbands trying to introduce the practice to their wives, as if it was becoming more part of the zeitgeist. There might be a long history of fellatio, but the practice became more common in the 20th century.
I have to say that I greatly enjoy how, in a post that was mostly about something else, Scott took a moment to lay one of the most thorough intellectual smack downs I've ever seen against the anti-gender-affirming-care movement. That group has been very loud, rude, and intellectually overconfident in the online places I frequent lately, so it was a very enjoyable read. It evoked the same sort of emotions in me as a scene from a movie or TV show where the hero defeats a swaggering bully.
You enjoying it that much should probably be a signal to you that it might not be the most rigorous/truthful/accurate thing you could read on the subject. It usually is for me.
Perhaps if this were any other blog, but Scott is one of the rare authors who regularly writes posts that are rigorous, truthful, accurate, *and* enjoyably satisfying to read.
He said his take *isn't* rigorous, nor accurate.
>I’m not a child/adolescent psychiatrist and I don’t prescribe hormones, so I’m not an expert in this topic and this should be considered my amateur opinion only
And he brushes up against recognize that a prominent statistic is *really bizarre*
>nothing in real life is 98%, so I assume something is wrong with this study
then just moves on. This is not a topic that he is willing to handle seriously.
"He said his take *isn't* rigorous, nor accurate."
Well, no: he said (in the part you quoted) that he isn't an expert, and then (in the part you omitted) pointed out that the experts agree with him. Even amateurs can come up with rigorous, accurate takes, and this is hardly the first time Scott has done so.
Scott was, historically, dismissive of "experts" as a meaningful concept-class (not expertise, per se, but appealing to experts). As well, being not-dismissive of the mentioned American experts is to be dismissive of a whole lot of European experts instead.
Amateurs can come up with rigorous, accurate takes; this is not Scott doing so. His "Much more than you wanted to know" are rigorous and I'll presume accurate, and sometimes on topics to which is an amateur. Like the one on [face masks](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/) where he wasn't an expert either, and it didn't result in "hmm, I'm just going to be *incredibly optimistic* about this really shocking statistic."
Scott, despite the rationalism, has a really *human* blindspot called "his friends," and that's how you end up with a guy that says some rando's Twitter polls are useful but most of peer-reviewed social science is not. I'm not even going so far as to say he's *wrong*, mind you- just that this topic has always been one that seems like it should be in Scott's wheelhouse to take seriously, but he shies away. And I definitely understand why; I certainly wouldn't want to throw myself on that pyre either. No matter what he wrote he'd piss off a lot of people. He's wiser now and writes fewer things he thinks he'll regret.
Agreed that he is unwilling to take this on seriously. Why? is an interesting question, given his wide-ranging deep dives into other topics.
I think the fact that he began this discussion by noting that engaging in this discussion (on any side!) is in some ways as addictive taking heroin might also give rise to some caution about these joyous feelings.
Seconded. I'd like to see Scott's "full" take on the topic, but I think it would ultimately be unhealthy for him to do so.
It would be a very brave thing for him to do, and doing a brave thing is what made him a blogging superstar in the first place. Might not be much benefit in doing a brave thing twice.
The same posts are just as likely to offend the gender-affirming-care movement.
My takeaway from that comment section was that even though Scott's post was explicitly invoking fetishes as a metaphor for AI, approximately nobody was more interested in the AI metaphor that in the fetishes themselves.
Even here, AI is less interesting than sex.
Probably a good thing for the world.
Apologies in advance for being one more voice chiming in on the introductory paragraph...
(1) I appreciate the explanation of your object-level position here.
I used to be pretty skeptical of what seemed like the transgender movement's overreach, but my position has shifted over the past couple years, mostly because of my first hand experience.
Rationalist-adjacent discussions of this topic are often frustrating, because I see people making arguments that I might've once believed myself, but the experiences that changed my own mind are just more easily dismissed anecdotes to them.
For instance, I thought the case for "ROGD" as a kind of "social contagion" was convincing because the standard explanation for gender issues suddenly arising in clusters of friends seemed so far-fetched. That case became much less convincing when I came out to my own friends, learned a few things about them in response, and realized I was seeing the standard explanation play out in front of me exactly as described.
(2) It's hard to know what anyone means when they talk about the effects of some intervention (or lack thereof) being "irreversible".
Especially since many aspects of transition are about countering effects of natal puberty! For example, testosterone causes a deeper voice and body hair; those effects are sometimes cited as "irreversible", at least when they happen to FTM detransitioners. But those effects can be countered with voice training and laser/electrolysis, albeit with limitations and at the cost of significant pain, effort, and expense.
Learning about Facial Feminization Surgery was a big factor in my choice to transition, because it meant my chiseled, Adonis-like features wouldn't necessarily prevent me from ever being read visually as a woman. But it comes with all the drawbacks that accompany any major surgery: risk of infection or injury or complications of anesthesia, slow and painful recovery, huge medical bills, etc.
As unfortunate as those costs are, they make it easier to quantify at least some of the value of early treatment. When the risk of denying puberty blockers is just "it'll be harder for them to blend in in the future", that's easy to handwave away: yeah, they might get called "sir" more often, but how can you compare that to medical stuff like a possible effect on bone density? But when it's "transitioning in the future will require surgeries X, Y, Z to correct the changes that could've been avoided", the costs of early and late treatment can be compared more directly.
(3) Changes in available treatment can cause changes in the apparent size of the population needing treatment.
If transition for me had meant what I gather it meant a generation earlier—convince a team of doctors and psychologists that I was the "right" kind of patient (i.e. a straight woman trapped in an effeminate man's body), then present as a woman in public full-time for two years, then get genital surgery and hormones—I wouldn't have bothered.
But instead, what it meant was find an informed consent clinic, start hormones, see how I felt about them, start voice therapy and hair removal, gradually change my presentation to keep pace with the physiological changes, and plan for surgeries as I felt the need to, knowing that there were a lot of options and my insurance would cover any of them. That change in treatment protocol is what ultimately made me visible to the medical system, surveys, etc., as a trans person.
I suspect the difference is even more dramatic for trans men: having to present as a man for an extended time without the help of any masculine physical features seems like it would've been even less appealing than the equivalent for trans women (at least we can use makeup!), as would the options for further treatment at the end of it. So I'm not surprised that more young natal women are coming out as trans men, now that it's possible for them to look and sound pretty damn male in a short time.
"Learning about Facial Feminization Surgery was a big factor in my choice to transition, because it meant my chiseled, Adonis-like features wouldn't necessarily prevent me from ever being read visually as a woman."
That kind of procedure is part of my frustration with this entire discussion, because the concepts are so slippery. "Biology isn't simple, sex and gender are a spectrum not a binary, everything from secondary sexual characteristics to chromosomes don't define what is a 'male' or a 'female', you can't tell someone's sex from their skeleton*" and so forth are arguments put forth on one level.
Then we get the simplistic gender/sex reductionism of "facial feminisation surgery" because men in general have particular physical features and women in general have somewhat different physical features and to pass better as the identified gender, you can make yourself look like an average member of that sex by paring down your skull etc.
It infuriates me, to be honest, because 'biology not real' when it's convenient, and then biology very real when that's convenient, and I'm not supposed to notice the divergence and I am supposed to believe six impossible things before breakfast, because "all political correctness/wokeness/progressivism/trans activism means is treating people civilly, just be polite if Susan wants you to call her 'she/her' and 'Susan' when yesterday he was Philip".
All that being said, good luck with it for yourself.
*On the best reading, they probably mean "gender" and sure, that possessor of a male/female skeleton may have lived or identified as a female/male when alive, but you damn well can identify bones as male or female.
I would prefer the framing "biology is not the boss of us". It's not incoherent to say "the current state of their biology has no ethical power to override someone's preference, and indeed they are entitled to change their biology if that's their preference". If someone wants to be called a woman despite having a male jawline, that's valid; if they want to change their jawline to be more womanly, that's also, separately, valid. Indeed they would have the right to change their jawline even if they *did* stay a man.
The problem is that transgenderism is fundamentally a narrow form of transhumanism, and you can't systematise it without running into a case for general transhumanism, which is not currently socially acceptable, even to the limited extent that vanilla "you have an innate sense of gender in your brain" trans theory is acceptable. (But I think when they're among themselves and have nothing to prove, trans people intuitively grok this; note correlation between support for gender transition, and support for tattoos, piercings, and other associated forms of self-modification.)
So you get the somewhat awkward dissonance you highlight, where the most vocal arguments focus on a sort of nigh-mystical "you should treat people as spirits who happen to be embodied, and listen to the spirit if it disagrees with the body" thing, but people try to bundle in the morphological-self-determination aspect in a way that really only makes sense as part of the *full* "people have a right to become whatever they want to become within the limit of their ability".
I like the analogy to transhumanism, but I think the dissonance comes from being told about people who have male brains in female bodies or vice versa, after decades of being told that there is no such thing as male brains or female brains, because the only thing that differs between men and women is the shape of their genitals. And in both cases, disagreement makes you a monster.
In other words, the feminist ideology makes a 180 degree change about one of its tenets, and everyone is expected to pretend that it didn't happen. Gender roles are evil and need to be eradicated, unless trans people want them, in which case they are a basic human right and should be celebrated. We should stop using pronouns "he" and "she" and collectively switch to "they" (or even some made-up word), oops that was only true yesterday, but today *not* using someone's favorite pronouns is hate speech. And tomorrow... who knows.
You talk about “the” feminist ideology as though there is a single one. I think you’ll find that a lot of people on many sides of the debate call themselves feminists, and there are also many on many sides that call themselves anti-feminists. There are some contexts in which it is a useful approximation to say there is a single “feminist ideology”, but the issues about gender and whether it is biological, social, individual, to be celebrated, to be eliminated, etc have never been one of them. There has always been strong disagreement among feminists about this, though different strains have had more or less control of the megaphones in different decades, so it can seem like there was a switch.
I agree. But for most practical purposes, the important part is the "corporate feminism" i.e. the people who dictate HR policies and can get you fired if you disagree with their beliefs.
The radical feminists are now on the wrong side of history. I don't think they will ever recover from that. But of course, surprises happen; I think their fall also came as a surprise.
If I tried to predict who will get the megaphone next, it seems to me that these things are mostly decided on Twitter and similar places. The position "there are no differences" is simply too boring for all the special snowflakes out there. More attractive positions are the ones you can join halfway even if you don't belong there. For example, if you are heterosexual, you can still declare that you are bisexual... you just happen to currently date people of the opposite sex. Similarly, if you are cis, you can still declare that you are agender. In other words, if you want, you can make it all about you. So I would predict that whatever is the next step, it will be like this (people can join it halfway, without actually changing anything about their lives).
I didn't weigh in last time so I'll share some anecdotal experience.
On nature versus nurture, regardless of any defacto predisposition or early-life influence, I am confident that exposure to stimulus even later in life can ignite indulgence in fetishism. That stimulus being pornography. I had developed an unhealthy addiction and habit from my teens through my 20s, and throughout, consumption of fetish content expanded and escalated. Most shared a dominance/submission theme (for instance, I never cared about "feet" in and of themselves, but somewhere along the way, I started viewing foot worship). The majority of the content was hitherto of no interest or seemed weird/off-putting, and it's hard to nail down the essence of what I would have liked at the outset. My theory is that dominance and submission, in either direction, can be exciting to most people to some variable extent, as a kind of primal kernel, and that leaning into it can facilitate development of other fetishes in service of that primary (not a universal theory of fetishism, as obviously many aren't interested in D/s at all and have one specific fetish). I also think that culture informs preferences, as suggested by statistics shared by pornhub and the like.
The popular view seems to be that the mind does not "unkink", but I mostly disagree. I stopped watching pornography some time ago, and lo and behold, I am much less interested in kink. Some element of it can still excite me if I focus on it, but not nearly at the same level as before. By extension, I am able to better enjoy "vanilla" activity and have a greater interest in that.
In my experience it's better for my psyche. It's unclear to me if that is more-so owing to cutting out porn or cutting out fetish content. I suspect the latter, and moreover, I strongly suspect that fetish content is far more addicting, to the extent that porn need not be the vehicle for that to be addicting and by extension problematic.
So put me in the camp of "fetishism might be bad, actually", as it can lead to an addictive cycle. The mistake addicts make is to seek validation for their state as their "identity" to avoid curbing addictive behavior, usually by refusing to acknowledge addiction. Not to say it's not possible to safely enjoy kink.
It is, but you're better off not being kinky if you have the choice. There are serious safety risks for female subs and switches, problems finding partners for male subs, and reputational and potential legal issues for male doms and switches. In addition, of course, it limits your partner pool severely. If there is a way to remove kinks, a lot of us would be better off. (I don't do porn, but your post may help other people...)
I want to register my opposition to the slide between "kinky" and "BDSM". There's nothing unusually risky about a leather kink or a foot fetish. BDSM, in particular, can be inconvenient/risky, for extremely obvious reasons, but I don't think that says anything about the desirability of fetishes/kinks and otherwise.
(Also, I'm sort of confused about the idea that it limits your partner pool. Scott does talk about people who genuinely can't enjoy or indeed perform vanilla sex, but… aren't those people unusual extreme edge-cases? Most people I've talked to are perfectly capable of having all kinds of sex. Indeed they tend to have multiple possible kinks. Maybe this is just a semantic dispute and some people use "kink" to mean the strong "can't climax without it" thing? But then what do you call finding handcuffs a bit of fun if the occasion arises, but being perfectly happy to go old-fashioned too?)
I think what you're describing, the gradual descent into fetish content through porn addiction, is very different from how fetishes normally arise. I'm sure you've read the original post about how fetishes might arise and you will note that porn addiction was not mentioned among the possibilities. It's probably more akin to a continuously reinforced conditioning effect, which differs from how fetishes usually arise because they are one-and-done: something happens in your formative childhood years and it imprints on your brain for the rest of your life. If you can un-kink yourself by stopping the conditioned behavior, evidently nothing was imprinted on you to begin with.
Yes I'm making a distinction in terms of how they manifest, but I would also suggest that development through porn consumption is probably very common.
> If you can un-kink yourself by stopping the conditioned behavior, evidently nothing was imprinted on you to begin with.
I'm not sure if it's that simple.
I don't know a ton about this subject, so these are intended as questions from a parent who has thought about what I would think if one of my kids wanted to medically transition, but who hasn't had to address the issue in reality. Scott writes:
"The biggest studies suggest that about 98% of children who take puberty blockers do later go on to transition (nothing in real life is 98%, so I assume something is wrong with this study, but things do seem to lean towards a vast majority continuing). An optimistic interpretation is that the screening process is very good and they’re only given to people who really want them; a pessimistic interpretation is that they push children further onto the transgender path. I don’t think whatever “pushing” doctors can do is enough to produce these kinds of numbers - compare the success rate of doctors/parents trying to push kids away from transgender! - so I lean towards the optimistic interpretation. That makes it even clearer that we should do the reversible thing (which helps 98% of people and reversibly harms 2% of people) and not the irreversible thing (which helps 2% of people and irreversibly harms 98% of people)."
1) Scott writes: " compare the success rate of doctors/parents trying to push kids away from transgender." Are there any doctors trying to push kids away from transgender? Do we know the success rate? The "left-handedness" example, if true, suggests that there was always a large reservoir of potential trans people out there, but that most of them were nudged into leading reasonably successful lives as their assigned at birth gender. Do we have any data on whether people who grew up as their assigned gender in the 80s were happier or sadder than trans people today?
2) The general thrust of this article is that if a person voluntarily transitions after blockers and living as an NB or trans kid, then transition is a good idea. And I get the voluntary argument. But the counterargument is that a lot of kids are uncomfortable with the stress of puberty, but go on to lead happy lives as their assigned gender, while avoiding the medical stress of transition, likely infertility, possible inability to orgasm, etc.
My biggest concern if my own kid were proposing this is that as far as I know, we don't really have a control group of how many kids go on to lead well adjusted lives as their assigned gender if they go through puberty vs. not.
What is the evidence that anti transgender activists, in general, are "ruining their lives" (like opium addicts)? Isn't this a position that many have attracted a following over (just like any other issue potentially)? How are they re enacting their traumas? What traumas do they have? (I mean, sure, people spend lots of time (you can say waste, if you like) arguing about all kinds of things on the Internet, but that is the nature of the Internet.)
Graham Linehan, in particular, seems like a noncentral example of the case, given that his career as a TV writer had been circling the drain for years prior to his getting involved in trans stuff. His Substack has 23,000 subscribers of whom I assume a significant proportion are paid. Far better to be a moderately successful Substacker than a failed TV writer.
Right, he is the only example I can think of, and not a particularly good one.
I think he is just taking their assertions at face value. They say that it has ruined their lives, and that is evidence that they’re not doing it because they enjoy it. He says that is in fact the best possible evidence that this is like an addiction. (But maybe both of them are wrong about it ruining their lives.)
Has someone else said that it ruined their lives besides Graham Linehan?
What I thought was odder was the idea that they are reenacting their traumas.
The Tweet he quoted appears to be from a woman saying "yeah I just got really addicted to the high of losing all of my friends, having my character maligned, and losing job opportunities".
True, but the name is blurred out (so we don’t know what is going on really?) and I interpret it as being at least to some degree ironical, since it ends with a heart eyes emoji.
This is just speculation but the impression I get is that Scott lives in an environment that is more affirming of trans than most, so he somehow assumes that “anti trans movement” people are usually taking irrational risks with the society around them, which he feels he has to explain psychologically.
People do become cranks about all kinds of issues but I never heard before that it has a traumatic etiology.
It's a very weird thing to see intellectually serious and rigorous people respond to a demand that we attempt to treat (often not permanent) mental illness via invasive medical treatment that messes with bone growth and the entire endocrine system, and then major reconstructive surgery that often renders the patient sterile and without the ability to experience sexual pleasure (the efficacy for both of which we have a tiny and messy and politically compromised body of evidence), and then the reordering of our entire society, with anything but a very firm "are you super 100% sure that you've tried literally everything else first?"
And it's even weirder to see them not ask that question, and then argue that in fact the burden of proof about whether this demand is appropriate is on those who are really concerned that it might not be. And it gets even weirder when the demand for this course of action starts coming on behalf of children and teens, and these intellectually serious and rigorous people still don't bat an eye, even when the rate of desistance from this mental illness is still as yet unknown, but anecdotally seems pretty high.
But the very weirdest part to me, is that the ISAR's, who unless they have been living under a rock, know very well that this demand is no longer just coming from individuals, but from tax-payer funded schools and governments, who literally, and I mean this in the truest most classic sense of the word, conspire to introduce the concepts and ideas that might influence one onto the path of this mental illness to children and teens without the knowledge of their parents, conspire to hide from parents the work they are doing to accommodate this demand from those who claim this illness, and who conspire to take away the parental rights of parents who disagree with this course of action. They also must know that California has introduced a bill that would allow the state to take away a child from parents who do not go along with this.
And yet, still, the response? "You are a loser/addict/insane for caring about this. And also I won't engage with this it all until you produce evidence that this unproven, controversial, religiously sensitive, politically and financially compromised, career-killing-for-researchers/clinicians-who-dissent-from-the-status-quo course of treatment is ineffective or not worth the cost".
But it's actually not that weird, when I really think about it. Because this is the person and this is the place and these are the people that have taught me more than anything else about the overwhelming power of the in-group to make you compromise yourself intellectually.
Exactly, I've never gotten the answer to the question: "Why is gender dysphoria the only mental illness where we explicitly affirm someone's clear break with reality? Why don't we all pretend like the CIA is secretly implanting monitoring chips in the head of every schizophrenic, the same way we are supposed to pretend that a man in a dress is a woman?"
I don't think it is the only such mental illness. People go along with a lot of crazy beliefs when they're presented in a religious or spiritual context.
I meant in the context of medical treatment. There is no other disorder where someone denies basic reality and practitioners encourage them to continue doing so.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
Scott addressed this in his most famous post on the topic, giving the example of an OCD woman who was unable to function in work because she was convinced she'd left her hairdryer on. One therapist suggested that she bring the hairdryer her (which was highly controversial, as it's validating an irrational phobia) - but it did the trick of alleviating the woman's anxiety and allowing her to function.
Funnily enough, I do actually agree with this part of the article (it's probably the only part I still agree with). If medical transition is the best way to treat the undeniable distress associated with gender dysphoria, then I want trans people to get it.
But that's the "if". The question of "is this the best treatment for gender dysphoria?" is an empirical one, not an ethical one. It should be investigated as dispassionately as any other medical question, and seeing academics and medics trying to fudge the results of studies investigating this question (as extensively documented by Jesse Singal) does not inspire a great deal of confidence about their impartiality.
I also don't necessarily believe that "alleviating the distress of trans people" is a terminal goal, or the only goal society should be optimising for. Liberal democracies are supposed to be about balancing the rights of different groups and finding compromises. Even if it was conclusively demonstrated that allowing trans women to compete in female sporting events completely ameliorated their gender dysphoria - well, so what? Female people don't get a chance to compete anymore because there are some sad males higher on the oppression totem pole than them?
That's a bad analogy because it's not as if the therapist is saying "your feeling that the hair dryer is on means that it's actually on." It's also a trivial intervention with no long term consequences, and the purpose of it is to eventually be able to overcome the irrational belief. None of that is true with transgenderism, where therapists are telling men that they are actually women, and that getting life altering medical treatments, sometime as a child, will help them manifest their reality.
Well, it's Scott's analogy, not mine. What the example has in common with gender dysphoria is that the person has a problem with her brain (an erroneous belief that she may have left her hairdryer on) and rather than trying to change her brain (persuade her that she did not, in fact, leave her hairdryer on), we're treating the problem by changing the physical world in some way (bringing the hairdryer with her to work so she can plainly see that it's turned off).
You're obviously correct that the scale and impact of this intervention is minuscule compared to medical (or even strictly social) transition.
But again, the therapist is not telling that their belief that the hair dryer manifests that into reality. No one, neither the therapist or the patient, thinks that the hair dryer is actually on. The solution is to have a short term, mild, reversible, intervention that eventually weans them to not being held captive by the fear. If they still hold this belief 2 years from the now the intervention has been a failure.
Also, just look at the fake men and women in the comments of that article. These people are clearly not mentally healthy, even though their delusions are being encouraged.
Trans people do not (typically) believe that they *are* physically their preferred gender. Trans women believe that they would be happier if they were treated as women and, ideally, if they were physically *transformed into* women.
Consider: I think I would probably be happier if I were an immortal angelic being, and if there was a procedure I could undertake to become an at-least-sort-of-immortal sort-of-deity I might sign up on that basis. But that's not the same as me having a delusion that I am in fact Jesus.
(Or consider someone who doesn't like their birth name for not-gender-related reasons. Let's say a Clytemnestra who really wishes her parents had called her Alice. If this girl is really sad about this, wishes she could get a legal name change, and wants all her friends to start calling her Alice even before the paperwork goes through, is that a "clear break with reality" about what her name "actually is"?)
"Trans people do not (typically) believe that they *are* physically their preferred gender. Trans women believe that they would be happier if they were treated as women and, ideally, if they were physically *transformed into* women."
They believe that they are women at a fundamental level that transcends biology. Your analogy to Jesus only holds if you believe at some level you are Jesus. In which case, both you and transgender people are delusional, mentally ill, and should be treated accordingly.
> They believe that they are women at a fundamental level that transcends biology
Don't all sorts of strains of Christianity believe that they have some spark of the Holy Spirit deep within their essence, at a fundamental level that transcends biology? If I believe that I have that trace of godliness in me (as all humans do), and I believe that this is responsible for my desire to get into Heaven, and also, in this conversation, for my hypothetical willingness to be turned into an angel if that were possible, does that make me delusional?
Seems to me like in that scenario, "I" just have an ordinary superstitious belief in some non-specific Essence that I rationalize as the cause of certain preferences of mine, which I'd feel regardless. God doesn't exist and I'm a monkey made of meat, so hypothetical eternal essences are not actually responsible for my desire to go to Heaven, but I'd still quite like to live forever in a city of infinite beauty, if that's on the table. If you could make all religious people into perfectly rational atheists, I predict most of them would say yes to the "if it really materially exists do you want to go to Heaven" question, and a substantial percentage would say yes to the "do you want to be an angel" question. They would just find that this desire is unrelated to the irrational belief in the ineffable spark of God thing.
Indeed, I don't even think most trans women believe in the "intangible eternal Innate Sense Of Gender" thing. I've seen explicit discussion of it in trans-activist spaces as a palatable simplification for the real, principled thing, which is what they actually believe in but which is unfortunately hard to make win elections (because most Americans have deep-rooted anti-transhumanism biases).
"I don't even think most trans women believe in the "intangible eternal Innate Sense Of Gender" thing."
Then why is the "What is a woman" question so hard for them and their activists to answer?
> Then why is the "What is a woman" question so hard for them and their activists to answer?
I would flip this back on you. If they believed in, and had a coherent model of, the "immutable ineffable Sense Of Gender" thing, they would just say "someone whose soul has the [gender=F] tag on it".
I think their inability to inaccurately answer this comes instead from the fact that their movement desperately wants to escape this entire framework. As I said in my reply to Deiseach, transgenderism makes sense as a facet of transhumanism. People who want to be women should, all else being equal, get to be women for the same reason people who want to he anthropomorphic cats should get to be anthropomorphic cats. There's no essence-of-woman-ness there that needs specifying for this to make sense, any more than there is for cats.
If we get a good singularity, or indeed if there's a halfway-decent non-technological Heaven after all, then they will all get their wishes someday. Currently we don't really have the tech to do either on boring old Earth (though we're closer with the women), but, goes the intuition, it's still polite to talk to people in accordance with their preferred manifestation. You're not talking to the meat, you're talking to the mind currently running on that meat. If I were talking to a furry who would find it irritating for me to constantly break their kayfabe of "being" a cat right-here-right-now, I would try to respect their wishes in much the same way, and understand if they considered refusal to do so a dealbreaker. Doesn't mean that the furry is delusional about "really being a cat" *or* that she possesses some specific non-biological essence of catness.
I admit that the last part — the "treat people as what they intend to be, not what they've achieved thus far" — is shakier, or at least relies on assumptions not hitherto specified by the rest of the argument. But I think the counterfactual is useful as an intuition-pump. I think it'd be very strange to say "consenting adults have an inalienable right to get whatever cosmetic surgery they want, wear what clothes they like, and change their name and demeanour, and loudly precommit to even more extensive changes in the event of a singularity" (and this much I think is ethically inarguable), only to then add "but you should still call them by the pronouns corresponding to their naughty bits, not to everything else about their self-presentation, *that* bit is wrong". Besides, in many a plausible Singularity-World, chromosomes and conventional genitalia would probably be very quaint things to have as a permanent part of your avatar at *all*, even if you don't go too exotic with it.
For me, to be frank, I accept it because it works. I've seen a few trans people go through the stages, and it's almost heartbreaking how happy they become, and how much their overall mental health improves. Like, there was a mid-20s depressed lesbian who over the course of a few years transformed into the happiest teenage boy I've ever seen, complete with being super-proud of his new chin fuzz. To this day it brings a smile to my face to think about it.
I've got other issues with the last decade or so of the trans movement, and we probably agree on a lot more stuff than you'd expect from that first paragraph. I'm trying, and here failing, to keep myself from arguing gender too much. :-)
Overall, it's weird that this is a thing, but there it is. I've known too many trans people to ignore how well the treatment can work. If schizophrenics could achieve that level of cure simply by everyone around them pretending that they had a CIA chip in their head, I'd probably go along with it too, the way I don't talk about alcohol around alcoholics.
"Like, there was a mid-20s depressed lesbian who over the course of a few years transformed into the happiest teenage boy I've ever seen, complete with being super-proud of his new chin fuzz."
But does it work long term? Are these people, who very well could have grown past there depression (I certainly didn't need a sex change to get past my early 20's depression), going to be just as happy when they're 40-50, still having to take hormones every day, still in the uncanny valley between woman and man, still having to fight their menstrual cycle, etc?
As far as I know, those people are still fine. But this was 15-20 years ago, when the demographics were different; I would not be surprised if people transitioning today were more likely to have regrets.
I would define "depression" as a symptom, which can have various causes, including bad life situations, deaths in the family, untreated dysphoria, and whatever "major depressive disorder" is. Generally I've found that when depression is a result of something other than "major depressive disorder", the reliable solution is to fix whatever the cause is, and then the depression will go away on its own. Antidepressant drugs can help relieve the symptom a bit, but the main practical effect in these cases is that it makes the person more capable of fixing the real cause. And yeah, sometimes time is the only real solution, and there have been cases where people have reported that their dysphoria went away after a number of years. That's great, but it does seem unusual, at least with the earlier demographics. Again, I don't know what things are like today. Perhaps there were a number of people in the past who were considering transition, and quietly gave up, and then had their dysphoria vanish. It doesn't sound very likely to me, but it's certainly possible.
I never inquired about menstruation, I think the "uncanny valley" effect fades with time. Or rather, age masks the difference, experience helps them learn to minimize it, and medical treatments can continue to reduce it.
Thank you so much for this.
Yes.
I don't consider myself an especially 'intellectually serious and rigorous' person, but I see the fight for trans rights (which amount to a person's right to be socially acknowledged and respected as being of the gender they understand themselves to be) as a step in the overall expansion of civil rights. Which, I realise, for a lot of people here might not be the endorsement I think it is - but it is my position.
So, I see being transgender as part of the class of 'mental illnesses' akin to the delusional desire to fully partake in society, the workforce, government, etc. despite being a woman and 'obviously unsuitable for such things on account of emotional instability'. Or the delusional desire to love and have sex with people of the same gender. Meaning, medicalised only because it lets more people do things other people already get to do (in this case, be acknowledged as a man/woman) and introduces inconvenience to some aspects of the status quo.
And it passes the gut feeling test. As a cis guy, if I woke up tomorrow in a body generated by an XX prompt, and everyone I knew told me that I've always been a woman, I'd be pretty pissed off and I would doubtless seek surgical and endocrine solutions to the problem. I'm sure that the safe and 'sane' and not-making-waves option would in that case be to shrug and go on as a woman, in accordance with my body, but it wouldn't be an option. Similarly, from what I know of my trans friends, successfully conversion-therapying them as you suggest would be akin to a lobotomy. It would fix the problem by essentially removing the person, because of how essential the orientation toward gender is to one's personality.
Anyway, the point of my comment is not to convince you, but to remind you of this other framing, which you're doubtless aware of. Viewed thus, it's not especially weird.
This framing seems impossibly facile to me. The moral question of "should we address trans people by their preferred names and pronouns?" is wholly separate from the empirical question of "is medical transition the most effective means of treating the distress caused by gender dysphoria?"
>So, I see being transgender as part of the class of 'mental illnesses' akin to the delusional desire to fully partake in society, the workforce, government, etc. despite being a woman and 'obviously unsuitable for such things on account of emotional instability'. Or the delusional desire to love and have sex with people of the same gender.
Surely you don't really believe this. Gender dysphoria as classically understood was not "I feel perfectly happy in my own skin, but SOCIETY won't let me live my best life and is persecuting me for no good reason". Gender dysphoria is a mental illness in which people experience crippling, unbearable distress because of a perceived mismatch between their physical body and who they feel they really are on the inside, distress which can be triggered by the simple act of looking in the mirror or going to the bathroom. The reason they're seeking out psychiatric and/or medical care is because they're in grave psychological distress, not because society is insufficiently affirming and accommodating.
Additionally, if transgender people were being inappropriately medicalised because our society is insufficiently accommodating to gender non-conforming people, that actually implies that "gender-affirming care" is the wrong approach to be taking for most trans people! "It's okay to be a girl with short hair who prefers trucks to Barbies, it doesn't mean you have to undergo a double mastectomy' - that sounds like an opinion that would get you called a TERF, and yet it seems to logically follow from your claim that trans has been "inappropriately" medicalised.
I read an article yesterday (https://unherd.com/2023/08/the-trouble-with-conversion-therapy/) which pointed out that, in the past when homosexuality was stigmatised and medicalised in the UK, gay men were forced to undergo chemical castration and hormone therapy. Obviously we now understand that this was cruel and unnecessary and we don't do it anymore. But you seem to be arguing the opposite: that trans people are inappropriately medicalised, therefore we SHOULD chemically/surgically castrate them and put them under a lifetime regimen of hormone therapy. Like, what? I'm just baffled by your two claims: "trans has been inappropriately medicalised" and "trans people should have access to whatever hormonal and surgical interventions they think they need". Don't you see how those two claims are diametrically opposed?
>And it passes the gut feeling test. As a cis guy, if I woke up tomorrow in a body generated by an XX prompt, and everyone I knew told me that I've always been a woman, I'd be pretty pissed off and I would doubtless seek surgical and endocrine solutions to the problem.
The problem with your thought experiment is that the brain of every trans person you've met was generated by the same chromosomal prompt as the rest of their body. There may be certain examples of people whose brains somewhat resemble those of the modal brain of someone of the opposite sex, but I suspect the vast majority of people suffering from gender dysphoria have a brain which looks absolutely typical for someone of their sex (and, once again, suggesting that a gender dysphoria diagnosis be authenticated via brain scan would get you called a hateful gatekeeping TERF in some circles).
And even if we allow the terms of your thought experiment, I don't think I agree. Let's say someone put a hex on me and I woke up tomorrow in a female body, and this situation causes me grave distress. I might look into the options for hormone and surgical treatment of this condition. But, as I said above, "is medical transition the most effective means of alleviating the distress experienced by someone with gender dysphoria?" is an empirical question. I might do my research and discover that some trans people find that their dysphoria worsens after they medically transition, that a study in Sweden found that trans people who medically transition are more likely to kill themselves than trans people who don't, that even many trans men who medically transition have a hard time passing etc. etc. Even leaving aside medical research, I might just do a simple cost-benefit analysis: "I'm not entirely happy with the body I've got, but at least I have a fully functioning reproductive system and don't need to take a cocktail of meds every day, neither of which will be the case if I medically transition." I might well decide, given the evidence base available, that medical transition isn't worth it and I'll be happier in the long run if I try to get used to my body, perhaps assisted by talk therapy. (I'll note that many self-identified trans people who have socially and legally transitioned to the opposite sex have absolutely no interest in medical transition, suggesting that the situation isn't as obvious and straightforward as your "gut feeling" thought experiment.)
'The moral question of "should we address trans people by their preferred names and pronouns?" is wholly separate from the empirical question of "is medical transition the most effective means of treating the distress caused by gender dysphoria?'
Not at all. Names and pronouns, much like breasts, jaws, voice, fat distribution, and other aspects of physical appearance corrected by gender affirming treatments, are proxies for gender identity, not ends-in-themselves. When you meet me in person, you don't karyotype me or check the contents of my trousers. You assume my gender (with a very high probability of correctness) based on what I look and sound like. This is also the reason for the discourse of 'passing', which is quite common around this subject, and is related to dysphoric feelings.
And the ways we approach gender-affirming care in trans and cis people are different, and downstream of acceptance. Mastectomies are frequently performed on cis boys and men with persistent gynaecomastia, for example, without much controversy. Cis men with waning testosterone have no trouble supplementing. Similarly for phalloplasty in amab biological males afflicted with aphallia, various degrees of micropenis, etc.
Trans people born and raised in a society formally accepting of 'third genders', or in a hypothetical society where the bioessentialist view of gender were not prevalent, might well experience less dysphoria even when contemplating their own bodies in isolation. It's bizarre to me that you wish to decouple the two.
'Gender dysphoria as classically understood was not "I feel perfectly happy in my own skin, but SOCIETY won't let me live my best life and is persecuting me for no good reason". Gender dysphoria is a mental illness in which people experience crippling, unbearable distress because of a perceived mismatch between their physical body and who they feel they really are on the inside, distress which can be triggered by the simple act of looking in the mirror or going to the bathroom. The reason they're seeking out psychiatric and/or medical care is because they're in grave psychological distress, not because society is insufficiently affirming and accommodating.'
As classically understood, 'transsexualism' itself was seen as a disorder back in DSM-III and ICD-9, as late as 1980. Back in DSM-II, so was homosexuality. (I am not inclined to use 'homosexuality was once seen as a disease!' as a generalised argument against all psychiatry, but it's germane in in this case.) In DSM-IV/ICD-10, this switched to gender identity disorder, with some interesting detours along the way. By the time DSM-V and ICD-11 rolled around, a laudable effort was made to destigmatise the identity itself and try reduce clinical concern to dysphoria. In light of this history, I place 'gender incongruence is a mental disorder' along the same axis as every other 'different=crazy' disorder in the past, which had more to do with social power dynamics than medicine.
The current definition of gender dysphoria ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK577212/table/pediat_transgender.T.dsm5_criteria_for_g/) is a distressing incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and natal gender. Yes, wrong sex characteristics are usually central to this, because of how powerful a proxy for identity the body becomes in a cis-dominant/gender bioessentialist society, but I don't understand how a definition wholly based on the individual's experience of gender can be considered without a context for that experience.
'Additionally, if transgender people were being inappropriately medicalised because our society is insufficiently accommodating to gender non-conforming people, that actually implies that "gender-affirming care" is the wrong approach to be taking for most trans people! "It's okay to be a girl with short hair who prefers trucks to Barbies, it doesn't mean you have to undergo a double mastectomy' - that sounds like an opinion that would get you called a TERF, and yet it seems to logically follow from your claim that trans has been "inappropriately" medicalised.'
A tomboy who likes trucks is more likely to be a boy, but is not necessarily a boy, particularly if she continues to say she's a girl. But in a society where the overwhelming message is 'you can't be a real boy if you have breasts', it's more distressing to be a boy with breasts. Ironically, the extremely woke society of right-wing nightmares, where gender is even more detached from bodies, would probably result in social transition becoming more commonly resolving of dysphoria, and detransitioning becoming even less common than it is. Perhaps one day we'll find out.
'Like, what? I'm just baffled by your two claims: "trans has been inappropriately medicalised" and "trans people should have access to whatever hormonal and surgical interventions they think they need". Don't you see how those two claims are diametrically opposed?'
Yeah, I think your confusion (quite likely my fault, but then, as a stupid man, I cannot really help writing badly) stems from your insistence on 'inappropriately medicalised' = 'medically transitioned'. For me, 'inappropriately medicalised' = 'written up in psych guides as a medical abnormality rather than treated as a rare, but equivalent mode of being human'.
'The problem with your thought experiment is that the brain of every trans person you've met was generated by the same chromosomal prompt as the rest of their body.'
I make no claims for Hypothetical Me's entire karyotype, certainly not for the brain bits. Mostly replacement of Y, SOX9 not going pear-shaped, possibly a couple regions on 9 and 11.
'And even if we allow the terms of your thought experiment, I don't think I agree. Let's say someone put a hex on me and I woke up tomorrow in a female body, and this situation causes me grave distress. I might look into the options for hormone and surgical treatment of this condition. But, as I said above, "is medical transition the most effective means of alleviating the distress experienced by someone with gender dysphoria?" is an empirical question.'
If you're interpreting my gut feeling thing as a claim that medical transition is the best option for every trans person ever, then no, I don't think that. What I meant was that the anger and resentment at being told (including by looking at my own body) that I'm something I'm not seems perfectly natural to me, and so does the impulse to change it with hormone and scalpel. As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I find this intuition to be a useful contribution, not to say corrective, to the otherwise intellectually rigorous debate.
By the way, I'd appreciate it if you linked me that Swedish study. The only Sweden-related study on suicidality I'm aware of is this one: ( edit: corrected link - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/ ) and it used the general population as control, not trans people who opted against medical transition. In general, medical research suggests, very strongly, that people who undergo medical transition do not regret it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/
"The caveat with this design is that transsexual persons before sex reassignment might differ from healthy controls (although this bias can be statistically corrected for by adjusting for baseline differences). It is therefore important to note that the current study is only informative with respect to transsexuals persons health after sex reassignment; no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment as a treatment for transsexualism. In other words, the results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment. As an analogy, similar studies have found increased somatic morbidity, suicide rate, and overall mortality for patients treated for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.[39], [40] This is important information, but it does not follow that mood stabilizing treatment or antipsychotic treatment is the culprit."
All those points noted and acknowledged.
None of them detract from the essential point that motivated me to bring up the study: that gender reassignment surgery is widely portrayed as a silver bullet for trans people's psychological distress (including many people in this very thread), which it obviously isn't.
>Trans people born and raised in a society formally accepting of 'third genders', or in a hypothetical society where the bioessentialist view of gender were not prevalent, might well experience less dysphoria even when contemplating their own bodies in isolation.
Thailand is widely considered the most trans-affirming nation in the world, performing more gender reassignment surgeries a year than any other. And yet, the suicide rate for LGBT people seems no lower there than in any Western nation. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-022-02292-0
Likewise India, which recognises a third gender (https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-021-03043-2; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/).
If you can find an actual concrete example of nations or communities which recognise a third gender and in which trans or non-binary people seem unusually prone to flourishing compared to their counterparts in Western nations, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I'm sticking with my null hypothesis: that gender dysphoria is a highly unfortunate mental illness which causes intense distress in those it afflicts, and this distress is no more amenable to amelioration by social validation/affirmation than the distress experienced by someone with depression or schizophrenia.
I actually think you're brushing up against the "social model of disability", which Scott so elegantly skewered here (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-the-social-model-of-disability), applying far more rigour than he applied in this article. Either that or that tired old saw used by Marxists everywhere: "REAL gender-affirming societies have never been tried."
I'm not convinced of your interlocutor's points, but these studies do not support your claims.
>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-022-02292-0
" As shown, both higher levels of perceived stigma (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.25; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.10–1.41) and enacted stigma (AOR = 1.31; 95% CI: 1.11–1.55) were independently and positively associated with lifetime suicide attempt. Social support was also independently and negatively associated with lifetime suicide attempt (AOR = 0.79; 95% CI: 0.70–0.89)."
"Transgender and intersex participants had higher levels of enacted stigma (p < 0.001) compared to the cisgender counterparts."
>https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-021-03043-2
"Despite these seemingly dramatic political shifts, social stigmatization continues to be pervasive in Indian society. Indeed, sexual and gender minorities are subject to a great deal of prejudice, social stress, social exclusion, violence and hatred [12, 13]. Many internalize a sense of shame around their sexual orientation and sense of gender difference [12, 14]."
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/
"Gender-based victimization, discrimination, bullying, violence, being rejected by the family, friends, and community; harassment by intimate partner, family members, police and public; discrimination and ill treatment at health-care system are the major risk factors that influence the suicidal behavior among transgender persons."
My interlocutor asserted the following:
"Trans people born and raised in a society formally accepting of 'third genders', or in a hypothetical society where the bioessentialist view of gender were not prevalent, might well experience less dysphoria even when contemplating their own bodies in isolation."
I brought up the fact that trans/NB people in these countries seem to be no less miserable than trans/NB people in Western nations to illustrate the point that a society simply being "formally accepting" of third genders is not the shortcut to ameliorating dysphoria and ostracisation that my interlocutor seemed to think it was.
You keep insisting that trans has been inappropriately medicalised when it's just a different way of being just as valid as any other. I still don't understand how this attitude can possibly be squared with the idea that "gender-affirming care" is appropriate and necessary for trans people. Puberty blockers, hormones, mastectomies, penectomies etc. - these are medical interventions. I don't want testosterone and puberty blockers available over the counter, and it sounds like you don't either. I want mastectomies only to be performed by qualified medical professionals, which means they're subject to the exact same safeguards as any other serious surgical intervention.
Like, I'm trying to square this circle, but I can't. "Trans is just a different way of being no less valid than any other which has been inappropriately medicalised by an uncomprehending medical establishment - but in order to feel fully whole, trans people need to undergo highly invasive medical interventions to remove healthy tissue which are otherwise not medically indicated. But it's not a medical condition." Even after reading both of your comments, I still cannot understand how one can believe both of these things at once.
>As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I find this intuition to be a useful contribution, not to say corrective, to the otherwise intellectually rigorous debate.
Your thought experiment is not a useful contribution, because it assumes the conclusion: namely, that trans people really do have a brain of sex A located inside a body of sex B. To be maximally charitable, this situation probably describes a small minority of self-identified trans people. Most self-identified trans people give every indication of having otherwise perfectly typical brains for someone of their sex (to the point of having exactly the kinds of interests you would expect someone of that sex to have), aside from the unfortunate fact that (a subset of them) suffer from debilitating gender dysphoria.
To reiterate: if it could be demonstrated that trans people did in fact have a brain of sex A inside the body of sex B, feeling angry about this state of affairs and wanting to remedy it would be a completely understandable reaction. But that state of affairs DOES NOT describe the vast majority of trans people, so this thought experiment doesn't seem remotely relevant.
>I don't consider myself an especially 'intellectually serious and rigorous' person
I commend your self-awareness.
In which Scott, after years of trying to promote the values of honesty, truth-seeking and charity, accedes to the heckler's veto. If a bad actor is trying to maliciously destroy your life because you have different opinions from them, then simply stop publicly expressing the opinions they hate so much i.e. give the bullies exactly what they want.
After you published your detailed fisking of Charles (excuse me, "Charlotte") Clymer's bullshit article about how false rape accusations are rarer than comet strikes, people tried to destroy your career, livelihood and life. At the time, do you think it would have been appropriate for someone to say to you "Scott, it's not worth it. Just let the bad actors spread known falsehoods which are damaging to the social fabric, what's the big deal? If you're going to sell your soul, consider how much you're getting for it."
I don’t know what it is about this topic--which itself is so wide ranging it seems to touch almost everything--that makes some people turn off their otherwise curious brains.
Otherwise punchy, skeptical, truth-seeking voices turn simple on this issue.
Sometimes I think it’s an emotional dissonance that happens when someone you love or care for is trans. I don’t know why that’s different from loving a religious person if you’re an atheist, etc., but it does seem to be that way.
I think it ties directly into puberty itself, a trauma that (mostly) everyone goes through, and a trauma which everybody responds to differently.
It probably doesn't help matters that we -treat- puberty as trauma, as a society. I get the impression things are getting better, but a lot of us grew up being told that puberty would turn us into monsters, and took it seriously.
Some went through it and went "Wait, what? That's what you terrified me about?" I think they'll be over-represented among the people angry about trans stuff, because I think a lot of them think they'd have taken the option to avoid turning into a monster, and are deeply concerned that society is terrifying children into taking that option when it isn't right for them.
(It really doesn't help matters that the popular perception is that the same people most responsible for terrifying them are also the ones pushing trans ideology now.)
I get really viscerally angry about this topic for essentially the reasons you describe: I was pretty gender non-conforming as a kid, many of the people pushing this direction would have pushed me had they been around when I was a kid, and that would have, in retrospect, have destroyed the best part of my life.
Scott is open about having dated trans people and having numerous trans friends, which may have coloured his judgement.
I mean, I get it. Everybody wants to stay on good terms with their friends, and no one wants a beloved family member cutting them out of their life. But like you say, it's still disappointing when otherwise clearsighted writers who don't care whose toes they step on get all hesitant and mealy-mouthed on this specific issue. Freddie deBoer is the same: so good at skewering the logical fallacies routinely committed by woke people and liberals, and yet falls for the exact same ones as soon as the trans issue comes up. (To head off an objection which always gets raised when I make this point: I'm not complaining that Freddie banned people from talking about trans stuff on his blog. His blog, his rules. If he gets annoyed by every article he writes getting derailed by trans debates, that's his call to make. What I'm objecting to are the actual specific arguments he makes about the trans thing, and how dismissive he is of people who disagree with him.)
I almost mentioned FdB by name--he was exactly who I had in mind. Jane Coaston as well. And maybe the severity of the issue at hand--people *are* making radical decisions for themselves and their kids, and to cast doubt on it while simultaneous claims about “trans kids will commit suicide without medical transition” and “there’s no evidence base” sounds emotionally torturous.
But still.
I imagine Scott's issue is the same as mine: The principles around the fight are sufficiently muddled that there's not a clear winner. Children aren't the property of their parents, but parents are better proxies for children than government (except when they aren't, a state of affairs which does not come into being merely because they disagree).
Ultimately this is a custodial disagreement between parents and government over who gets to make the decisions in a very specific edge case, the precise contours of which will mean that somebody is wrong at least some of the time.
Also, in the two sides of this debate, they aren't consistent in whether they want the parents, or the government, to make the decisions; rather, the consistency is only in which decision they'll support. But it's all framed in terms of principles.
But let's go into the decision.
The specific decision in question touches on a deeply philosophically confounding one, because puberty overwrites your desires with an entirely new set of desires, overwrites "you" with a different "you". Prior to puberty, given the option, would I have gone through puberty? Probably not; I liked who I was. As an adult who went through puberty, given the retroactive option, would I have gone through puberty? Probably; I like who I am now. However, I also clearly remember going through puberty, and noticing and resenting the process of my mind being altered.
Insofar as puberty resolves whatever issues you had with puberty going into it, it does so by overwriting the part of your mind that had the issues.
I could see this as a Borg-like assimilation of independent minds into the reproductive evolutionary hivemind. I could see it as "part of growing up" and turning into a functional adult. Neither of these views is wrong!
At some point I have to notice - I don't have the answers. So it's hard to muster up too much outrage about the subject.
AFAIK nobody is proposing that teenagers should be able to avoid puberty forever. The argument is over whether kids should be able to choose which puberty they go through. Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty so that kids have more time to make a decision.
I'm sure I can find -somebody- who is proposing that. Pretty sure that's one of the laws of the internet.
I didn't say that was the debate, however, I said it touched upon this subject, which probably matters more to somebody who has identified as asexual, or at least asexual-adjacent, for a substantive part of their life than it does to the average person.
That is, I'm implying that this consideration may factor into Scott's consideration of the topic. (May. Not speaking for Scott.)
I've heard that some nonbinary people *discuss* the idea, but the only published case study I've found appears to be about a hypothetical (but yes, nonbinary) person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7656150/
>Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty so that kids have more time to make a decision.
A 98% rate of going on to cross-sex hormones suggests to me the decision is either already made, or puberty blockers play a significant role in finalizing the decision rather than simply providing time.
Or that the statistic is BS and everyone on the topic is ideologically motivated and no one has any real evidence for anything.
For me, the debate essentially boils down to the medical ethics debate about whether the government should take children into the care of the state if their parents are denying them access to life-saving medical treatment (at a lesser level, treatment which isn't life-saving but which would vastly improve the child's quality of life).
No one objects to the government getting a court order to take a child under the state's wing if the child's parents are Jehovah's Witnesses who don't want the child to get a blood transfusion (in fact, probably no one objects less than the parents themselves).
To maintain the analogy, trans activists are hence required to present the issue as though medical transition is the most effective treatment available for gender dysphoria (a condition which will not resolve on its own), without which the child in question will certainly kill themselves.
The problem (obviously) is that EVERY component of the previous sentence is in question. Many if not most children who present with gender dysphoria go on to "desist" without any pharmaco-surgical interventions at all. There's no robust evidence that medical transition prevents against suicide, and at least one Swedish study compared a group trans people who didn't medically transition with a group who did, and found the latter were more likely to commit suicide in the following years. There's some anecdotal evidence that certain trans people's reported dysphoria worsens post-medical transition. Even among trans people who do kill themselves, many have comorbidities which are themselves risk factors for elevated suicide risk. And so on and so on.
So you're fine with (other) parents consenting to having this procedure done to their children?
If so, alright. Just be aware that you're having a different debate than a lot of people, and arguing as if your position is the central debate in question is missing a large part of the point.
No, I'm not fine with it. That's my point: I might be fine with it if the evidence pointed to it being both necessary and effective. Thus far it seems to be neither in most cases.
Reread your comment, and observe how much of it revolves around the government taking an action, when your issue, as you say now, has nothing to do with the government taking an action, but rather with that action being taken at all.
Do you believe adults should be permitted to make this decision for themselves?
If so, at what point does a child become competent to make this decision?
I believe adults should be permitted to make this decision for themselves. I'm something of a bodily autonomy absolutist.
From a legal perspective, the child unambiguously becomes competent to make the decision at the age of 18. From a developmental perspective, I'm not sure. This is why I believe far more caution is warranted than is currently being exhibited by many medical boards in the Anglosphere.
My point about the government taking action is, if indeed medical transition was unambiguously life-saving treatment for any child presenting with gender issues, parents consenting for their child to undergo it would be as uncontroversial as their giving their consent for the child to undergo a life-saving appendectomy. If a parent, for some reason, refused to allow their child to undergo a life-saving appendectomy, it would make sense for the government to secure a court order to temporarily take the child into care.
But obviously, medical transition is nowhere near as clear-cut as an appendectomy. It isn't obvious that it's medically necessary for every child presenting with gender issues, nor is it obvious that it's even effective at alleviating (in a durable way) the distress associated with gender dysphoria.
Besides the medical issues, there is the educational one -- what are children taught that sex is? I know some people who have been very surprised to learn that their small children are taught that they can choose whether to be a boy or a girl. This is at an age when many children can learn to believe it in an unqualified sense.
He’s not giving in to the heckler’s veto - he’s trying to give up a dangerous addiction to telling someone they are wrong about gender on the internet. (Of course, he does so in a post where he tries to tell people they are wrong about gender on the internet.)
I'm baffled as to how that was your takeaway. To quote Scott:
"I do think it’s suspicious and bad that everyone is suddenly becoming transgender, and I support efforts to figure out why and stop it at the root, in some way which will prevent so many kids from wanting to be transgender."
In other words, Scott fully endorses the social contagion hypothesis of trans-identification, a hypothesis which many gender-critical people have been harassed, doxxed etc. for endorsing.
"But none of this is especially relevant to the current debate, since my paragraph deliberately didn’t single out either side as worse than the other. It just said lots of people seemed too addicted to arguing about this."
If he thinks gender-critical people are wrong on the facts, wouldn't he say that they're worse than the other side of the debate?
What follows are two paragraphs arguing that even if gender-critical people are right about the overprescription of puberty blockers, there are way bigger medical scandals out there so why don't they just shut up about it. "Even if you're right, there are more important things to be worrying about" is a weird way to respond to someone you think is wrong - it looks more like a deflection than a rebuttal.
"Some transgender activist cyberbullies you - many such cases! - and then you spend the rest of your life trying to own trans activists to prove that they were wrong and you were right and the world is safe again."
Scott describes cyberbullying by trans activists as widespread. If they were right on all of the merits, would so many of them need to resort to such bullying tactics? Maybe you think so, but I don't think Scott does - a point he's made repeatedly over the last ten years is that you should be very suspicious of people with ostensibly prosocial goals who enforce their opinions with lies, harassment and other bad behaviour. But in spite of freely acknowledging that pro-trans cyberbullying is widespread, Scott then encourages people who disagree with trans activists not to voice their disagreement because it's not worth the trouble i.e. accede to the heckler's veto, and give the bad actor using bullying tactics to enforce their ideology exactly what they want.
"I don’t think I’m desperate. I think I’ve seen a lot of people go crazy over this and am trying to warn those who aren’t too far gone. I freely admit that sometimes you should go crazy about confronting injustice - John Brown ended up dead but his abolitionism was worthwhile. But if you’re going to sell your soul, ask how much you’re getting for it."
Scott freely admits that gender-critical people are "confronting injustice", which is an odd way to describe someone that you think is wrong about gender.
In my experience, when Scott thinks someone is just flat wrong about a political issue, he's not shy about saying so. This isn't one of those times. If anything this strikes me as Scott getting as close as he felt he could to coming out and saying he agrees with gender-critical people on the merits without getting into trouble.
I admittedly find it a bit odd and slightly amusing that my comment shows up in "Alternative Theories Of Fetishes" (and not e.g. "Commenters Describing Their Own Fetishes"), since it wasn't intended as a counterpoint to your article at all. As you say, it can't be a general explanation, and it wasn't meant to be one - if it were presented as a general theory of kinks, anyone who would be into thrills or horror would be a submissive masochist, which they clearly aren't. It really was just addressing the (relatively common) narrative that submissives are generally shameful about sexuality, which doesn't particularly match my experience with the BDSM subculture.
I was in a relationship with one for several years who was a relationship anarchist and was seeing another fellow at the same time for vanilla nookie. It's not necessarily the case at all.
Bit of a strawman to only talk about minors when a serious issue is the way women's rights are being eroded
Freedom of speech, freedom to explore philosophical thought, denial of science are all also non-trivial side-effects of the orthodoxy being forced upon us.
There's two different things here. I'm pretty against attempts to censor freedom of speech and denial of science that conflicts with the interests of trans activists (as I am with more recent right-wing censorship attempts), and calling deadnaming 'genocide' is silly (you know, some of us had a couple of relatives die in one of those back in Europe), but I certainly don't think that *nobody* should transition, and as Tara says below, there are benefits from early transition, so it's not as simple as having everyone wait until the age of majority.
Graham Linehan, for example, is outraged at the practice of housing trans women convicted of crimes in female prisons, which is policy in many Anglophone nations. Many of these trans women only "realised" they were trans after conviction, have fully intact and functional genitalia, and were convicted of sex crimes against children and/or women.
It baffles me that the only people who are allowed to care about violent male rapists being housed in female prisons are "crazy" "TERFs" who are "addicted to arguing about gender".
Does that *actually* lead to worse outcomes than housing them in male prisons, given the rates at which rapes occur in those?
Worse outcomes for whom?
I haven’t fact-checked this, but my particular social media bubble has been circulating a story about a (medically transitioned) trans man housed in a women’s prison who was sexually harassed (and maybe assaulted?) by several cis women. The stereotype about large numbers of predatory men supposedly pretending to be women disproportionately promotes certain cases of potential prison sexual assault as more important than others.
I don't mean to in any way undermine the suffering of female people who have been sexually assaulted by other female people, as I have no doubt it's an extremely upsetting and traumatic experience. I will nevertheless maintain that a male person raping a female person is a qualitatively different matter, given that a) pregnancy can result and b) the risk of the victim contracting an STI is vastly elevated compared to female-on-female sexual assault.
The fact that the trans man in question preferred to be housed in a female prison despite identifying as a man, I think in itself demonstrates my point.
He did not choose to be housed in a women’s prison. The authorities would not let him be housed in the men’s prison regardless of the fact that medical transition had given him a penis. For point (b), trans women in a men’s prison probably have a higher chance of contracting an STI from an assault by a cis man than a cis woman raped by a trans woman, so that argument doesn’t exactly hold up. Additionally, I personally don’t mind the term “female” used for my assigned sex, but consider whose rights you’re really protecting if you won’t respect the linguistic preferences of trans men who are dysphoric about the word female.
Perhaps you could share this article so I can see for myself.
Perhaps some trans men are dysphoric about being described as "female". Don't care. They can change their gender if they please but they haven't changed their sex, and we will always need a way to refer to people's sex independently of their gender. The terms "man", "woman", "girl" and "boy" have been decisively colonised by trans activists: I will always use "male" and "female" to refer to sex and sex alone.
>(b), trans women in a men’s prison probably have a higher chance of contracting an STI from an assault by a cis man than a cis woman raped by a trans woman, so that argument doesn’t exactly hold up.
I don't know what you mean. The chances of a female contracting an STI after being sexually assaulted by another female are vanishingly small, functionally nil. The chances of a female contracting an STI after being raped by a male are much higher. Yes, the chances of a male contracting an STI after being raped by another male are higher still, but so what? The point I was making was that male-on-female rape is qualitatively different from female-on-female sexual assault.
> and we will always need a way to refer to people's sex independently of their gender.
The contexts in which we rightfully need those tend to be highly technical, so I think the optimal thing here is just to say "biologically male"/"biologically female". (Some trans activists dislike this, but they are wrong to do so, this bullet I am willing to bite.) Trying to hang on to "female" and "male", unspecified, as meaning those things not only risks being perceived as petty, it would also get just plain confusing in a society where "man"/"woman" for purely social genders have otherwise become normalised.
I couldn’t find the original social media story, but this article is interesting and has some similar accounts: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/strip-searches-trauma-isolation-trans-men-describe-life-bars-rcna6490. Returning to your original comment, many people react to someone talking about the risk of trans women raping someone in a similar way they would react to someone who frequently talks about crimes committed by immigrants from Mexico. It’s technically possible that person is just legitimately concerned about crime in an unbiased way, but the focus is indicative of a media diet and possibly a social circle that feeds racism generally. Similarly, someone may be concerned about rape in general, but a focus on this one issue usually indicates you’ve been hanging out in a transphobic media bubble.
There's way fewer trans men in male prisons than there are trans women in female prisons. And even a trans man in a female prison is going to be much more likely of the same average height, mass and strength to the women there.
The trans rights activism set make much of "a long-term transitioned trans woman doing time for a non-violent crime" example, but it turns out that there aren't too many of those, rather the trans prison population are disproportionately likely to be convicted of assault/sexual assault and rape:
https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/01/27/trans-prisoners-scotland-uk/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1119803/HMPPS_Offender_Equalities_2021-22_Report.pdf
"Of prisoners who declared their sexual orientation4 97% (65,397) identified as heterosexual. gay/lesbian and bisexual offenders accounted for 1.3% (909) and 1.5% (980) of the total prison population respectively. Those who identified as “Other” 5 comprised 0.2% (113) of the total population. These proportions were calculated excluding individuals whose sexual orientation is stated as “Refusal/Not Disclosed” or “Not Known”.
There were 230 prisoners living in, or presenting in, a gender different from their legal gender and who have had a local case board. Of these, 187 reported their legal gender as male, 43 reported their legal gender as female.
When asked about the gender with which the prisoner identified from the following categories, 168 identified as transgender female , 42 as transgender male0, 13 as non-binary and 7 self-identified in a different way or did not provide a response.
There were 11 prisoners known to have a Gender Recognition Certificate as of 31st March 2022. These prisoners are not included in the transgender figures included in this report.
Of the 230 transgender prisoners:
• 49 were in female prisons, with 6 self-identifying as transgender female.
• 181 were in male prisons, with 162 self-identifying as transgender female"
Even the articles trying to rebut the claim that 41% of transgender inmates are convicted sex offenders have to do a lot of "yes, but" to soften the accusation:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42221629
"We submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Ministry of Justice.
It said that 60 of the 125 transgender inmates it counted in England and Wales were serving time for a sexual offence.
This is roughly half - but it's not the full picture.
Remember - those 125 transgender inmates only include people who have had a prison case conference. It won't include transgender people who haven't identified themselves to the prison service or who already have a gender recognition certificate.
Of the 60 serving time for sexual offences:
27 were convicted of rape (plus a further five of attempted rape)
13 were convicted of possessing, distributing or making indecent images of children
13 were convicted of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault
Nine were convicted of causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity
Seven were convicted of sexual activity with a child
Seven were convicted of indecent assault or gross indecency
Those numbers add up to more than 60 because some prisoners are serving time for more than one offence.
We don't know the gender of the victims or perpetrators in these cases."
Well, BBC, you "don't know the gender" because often the perpetrator identified as male at the time and only later found out, when it was time to go to prison, that they were really a woman. You got into some trouble over that, as I seem to recall, British Broadcasting Corporation?
"The BBC changed the testimony of a rape victim after a debate over the pronouns of her transgender attacker, The Times has learnt.
The woman referred to her alleged rapist as “him” but insiders said that her words were changed to avoid “misgendering” the abuser in an article on the corporation’s website.
The BBC article replaced every reference to “he” or “him” with “they” or “them”. A source said the quote was the subject of heated debate prior to publication. Some journalists argued that the quote should remain intact, while others said it should reflect the trans woman’s preferred she/her pronouns.
It comes amid growing concern among BBC staff that an internal diversity team is influencing what journalists can report, preventing them from covering gender."
I’m realizing that geographic differences are causing us to completely misunderstand each other. It seems that the concerns about prisoner placement in the UK are more reasonable, but I live in the US South, where the authorities have a completely different Overton window for these policies. In Florida, trans women can currently be jailed for using a public women’s restroom, regardless of medical transition, and I believe they may be classified as sex offenders. I’m not sure how much this law is being enforced in practice, but my automatic reaction to this topic of discussion is to worry about the trans women I know. They could be placed in a men’s prison after visiting Disney World and be at serious risk of assault from the cisgender men in the prison.
Belated thank you for this.
"And it seems unfair to deflect their anger by pointing out it was a joke, when I feel the joke has a core of truth."
Seems to me as though some of these people are living proof of that core of truth.
I'm confused about the general relativity analogy Zizek used. If you throw a massive object into an initially flat region of space, it becomes curved, and I can't think of any reasonable way to not consider the matter to have caused the curvature. The distribution of matter (and light and stuff) doesn't uniquely determine the curvature of spacetime (e.g. black holes and gravitational waves exist), but that doesn't mean the relationship that is there isn't causal. Possibly Zizek saw the Einstein field equation, in the form f(g) = T (for some function f I can't remember the details of), where g describes the shape of spacetime and T its contents, and concluded that because it's an equation, and equality is symmetrical, this is just an arbitrary relationship not a causal one, but that's how everything in physics works.
Notice, in responding to a statement that matter isn't distinct from curvature, that you posit a thought experiment based on the idea that matter is distinct from curvature, to prove that matter is distinct from curvature.
Suppose the phenomena of mass and curvature are not distinct; then what you are saying is "If you curve a region of spacetime, it becomes curved, and I can't think of any reasonable way not to conclude that the curvature caused the curvature."
And, well, yes.
Given that curvature propagates at the speed of light, and can be modeled as emission of gravitons from a mass, it seems reasonable to view mass as causing curvature? At least, it's one of several equivalent models. Although if someone disproves gravitons, it will probably become a mere approximation like Newtonian physics.
Sure. But it's equally reasonable to view curvature as causing mass. Or them being the same thing exactly.
Matter is distinct from the curvature of spacetime in that it has charges with which it interacts with the other three forces. The curvature of space around an electron and a positron are exactly the same, but they interact differently with other physical systems (those that contain other charged particles) therefore the curvature of spacetime does not determine the entire physics of the system, you need an extra component to have a complete description, and that component is matter (and the other fields). In my thought experiment, it's significant that "you throw a massive object" is a distinctly electromagnetic interaction. Also note that the quote says "matter", not "mass". Mass (and stress-energy in general) being equivalent to spacetime curvature feels slightly more defensible, but still convoluted and unlikely.
Per Kaluza-Klein, you can get the effective behavior of electrical charge out of spacetime curvature by adding a cylindrical dimension.
There’s a lot to worry about with Žižek, but here I think he is getting Einstein basically right. Einstein wants to get rid of causal relationships and replace them with constitutive ones, but only showed how this could work for gravity. It’s an open problem whether this can be done for the other forces.
What makes Einstein's equations less causal than Maxwell's?
In Maxwell's equations, the charge/magnetism determine the force, and then force and mass together determine the acceleration, just like in Newton's equations, the mass determines the force, and then force and mass together determine the acceleration. But Einstein re-describes Newton's case, allowing mass to be canceled from both steps, and then allowing force to fall out as well - it's just curvatures moving through curved space along geodesics.
My hypothesis is actually that raising kids in a more gender-neutral environment and/or with more blank-slateist gender beliefs is often delaying the start of gender dysphoria until puberty. I believe this was true for both myself (on the HSTS transmasculine spectrum) and Zack M. Davis. This may be especially likely for children with ADHD and autism, who may be less susceptible to picking up gender socialization from their peers. Based partly on the Stone Butch Disco podcast and Kay/Candice Brown’s blog, my model predicts the following:
1. Before puberty, some kids are naturally very GNC relative to their assigned sex. In an environment with a rigid view of binary gender and gendered behaviors, many of these kids develop distress/dysphoria about the ways they don’t fit. Some of them come up with the idea that they must be, for example, a boy in a girl’s body. Some, especially the more neurotypical kids, are socialized into behaving “appropriately” for their assigned sex. In a more gender-neutral environment without knowledge of transness, GNC kids can behave as they like, are less likely to develop dysphoria, and are more often cis-by-default.
2. Some of the aforementioned GNC kids develop gender dysphoria at puberty, along with some kids who weren’t all that GNC before puberty (may be impacted by socialization and/or located in a different part of the brain from the behavioral aspects.) If they were raised gender-neutrally, this gender dysphoria may seem to come out of nowhere (“Rapid onset gender dysphoria”). With knowledge of transness, they are able to identify their gender dysphoria. Some of the GNC kids raised in a rigidly gendered environment may “desist” from transgender identification at puberty and grow up to be cis (by default?) GNC adults. Others have worsening gender dysphoria with puberty and want to medically transition.
Something else to note is that many people identify as transgender and/or nonbinary without gender dysphoria. Plenty also have relatively low levels of dysphoria and do not pursue medical transition.
I skipped this article originally when I first saw your ad hoc explanations for the fetishes, because I think you've limited yourself to spinning in circles by trying to get at the phenomenon through Pavlov and Darwin rather than looking at the symbolic associations. I think most sexual fetishes (like fetishes proper) are symbolic — sex represents some value to people and something else that has a similar valency/connotation to what is abstractly exciting about sex will arouse them. For instance, people may like binding because sex entails vulnerability and violation, spanking because sex includes lack of agency and pleasure for an other, excreta because sex includes intimacy and shame, and so on. Not that all sex has these elements or that all these elements are recognized or appreciated by others (I theorize that "Cartoony" fetishes allow escapism and flexibility of physicality that you may find in intimacy but that is especially noticed by the autistic, who are sensitive to touch), but you'll have more fruitful thinking about people (not AI) with these associations rather than appealing to physicalism and evolution, especially the latter. I know that these are essentially the rules of narrative, which is not your all's thing because you distrust it (narrative is the real counterpart to logic, not emotion, as the rationalist claims) but that makes it no less real in the mental operations of people.
I don't think Pavlov & Darwin and Jung are mutually exclusive--people are made of molecules, but trying to discuss the Meiji Restoration in terms of physical chemistry is going to be very inefficient and cumbersome. People definitely do think symbolically, and associations are a big part of that--indeed, a lot of the AI that's wowing everyone with its (simulated?) creative ability now is making associations after being trained on giant corpuses of literature. It might know that 'sun' goes with 'life' even if it's just tokens 78954 and 12365 in its internal representations.
So it's a complex mix of both. Vulnerability and violation--sure, there's an element of dominance and submission for many people. Spanking--the same. Excreta--sure, the circuitry for sex gets connected to that for poo and pee because both connect to ideas of intimacy and shame. Cartoons may allow escapism and flexibility, though I think the thing with autistics and anime is that anime is pretty popular among introverts (back when they were guessing people's five-factor scores from words on their social media profiles, half the introvert words had some connection to anime), and autistics lean that way because social rules are more difficult for them. And, as you say, narrative is very important in the mental operations of people. Now, *why* do people want sex and power so badly? That's evolution. But it makes more sense to look at a lot of these things on the narrative level, as you say; artists have always understood these things on an intuitive level, which is why Shakespeare and Lady Murasaki could write stories that people are still excited about centuries before Darwin was born.
Here are the five-factor word clouds, BTW. They're from the mid-2000s but the biggest word associated with introversion is 'anime', followed by 'manga' and 'internet'. The low agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism ones made me laugh out loud.
https://wwbp.org/personality_wc.html
I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that the evolutionary aspect was illegitimate or even that physicalist, conditioned fetishes do not exist.
Well, people actually *do* develop fetishes about burns. Candle/wax-play! (Come to that, foot-torture fetishism also exists, but I guess that's more parsimoniously explained by "foot fetish + pain fetish" than a specific stubbed-toe mechanism.)
Rather surprised to see that the people most offended to be told that they talk too much about gender are on the right rather than the left.
Lmao
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to categorize this discussion on a left/right axis. It’s probably better to categorize it as trans-inclusive vs gender-critical, since both sides (particularly the gender-critical side) span very wide parts of the left-right axis.
There is no such thing as dressing like a woman. There is only dressing like a woman of a time, place, and culture.
True, but that could be said of anything. I'm not sure it adds very much to the conversation. (Besides, there's always fake breasts…)
It was rather a shock to me when I realized it some years ago. I'm not sure how well it fits in this discussion, but it came back to me, so I thought, what the hell, I'll post it.
This also applies to many behavioral traits and interests considered characteristic of manhood or womanhood in different times, places, and cultures. Obviously there are some traits that tend to be universally considered masculine or feminine, but so many are variable.
Which is what makes the emphasis on long hair, jewellery, makeup, cute clothes, etc. so aggravating to me. It seems to be reducing womanhood down to a particular set of stereotypes. What, then, of times and cultures where men wore heels, or cosmetics, or long hair, or earrings and necklaces?
I know it's part of the entire package that "I am not *this*, I am *that*" and being 'that' comes with all these attributes. But I would prefer that we change gender roles so that okay, you want to wear the frilly skirts or whatever? Go ahead, whether you're male or female. And you *don't* want to wear the frilly skirts? Also go ahead, whether you're male or female.
I think "changing acceptable parameters of fashion" is a hell of a lot easier than "changing understanding of what man and woman means".
You may be underestimating how imprinted people get about clothing. Fashion changes fast, but some things are stable. For example, a business suit with shorts seems to just get laughs.
> A hundred years ago, it might have felt obvious that oral sex was a fetish; a hundred years from now, it might feel obvious that BDSM isn’t.
In my circles at least, this already seems to be happening. The next generation of local (non-directly-BDSM-involved) people I talk to seems to lean very hard into thinking of most of the stuff I get down to as normal. I say "most", because a very common conversation I have with people I'm newly introduced to involves them being non-chalant regarding my rope/impact/electro activities (Oh yeah; everyone does that) and utterly scanadlized by the fact that I have multiple partners (wait, do they know about each other? and they're all _ok_ with that??).
Purely anecdotal obviously.
If you really want to shock people these days have an age inappropriate relationship. Anything more than ten years and you are a groomer.
More than? SHE WAS ONLY TWENTY-FIVE, YOU MONSTER! And he was thirty-two, clearly he took advantage of this innocent blossom.
While Leo DiCaprio chasing young women of the same age range as he gets older isn't edifying (1) he's not yet at the age where it's creepy, he's got another few years to go and (2) it's been established that men of all ages prefer women in a tight age-range, while women are open to a wider range of ages in men.
https://www.businessinsider.com/dataclysm-shows-men-are-attracted-to-women-in-their-20s-2014-10?r=US&IR=T
So DiCaprio is famous enough, rich enough, and still young and attractive enough to be able to get 25 year old model girlfriends that he then dumps after a few years and moves on to the next 25 year old model.
There’s a good (free-to-access) episode of the Fifth Column podcast where Michael Moynihan talks to Jon Ronson about various things, including a rather heartbreaking section on Graham Lineham’s self-destruction over trans. He and Ronson were once good friends. Now, not.
There’s a good (free-to-access) episode of the Fifth Column podcast where Michael Moynihan talks to Jon Ronson about various things, including a rather heartbreaking section on Graham Lineham’s self-destruction over trans. He and Ronson were once good friends. Now, not.
Is that Episode 162 from April 30, 2023?
No, it’s episode 356 from May 10, 2022.
I'm sorry, but could you post the link? I've tried searching the site and it doesn't turn up.
Never mind. I got stuck on the idea that it was at a site called podchaser, which does host some Fifth Column links, but not that one. Instead, it's at the Fifth Column substack.
No problem at all!
https://wethefifth.com/blogs/episodes/356-unlocked-things-fell-apart-a-conversation-with-jon-ronson?page=3
Thank you. I found it at https://wethefifth.substack.com/p/356-unlocked-things-fell-apart-a#details
Podchaser has two Moynihan/Ronson interviews, but not that one.
At the risk of totally missing the point of #3, Scott, are you aware at all of those Swedish documentaries which demonstrated that puberty blockers are not reversible, that there has never existed any actual scientific evidence that puberty blockers are reversible (this is just some shit that people at gender clinics keep saying, and referring to each other's impressive-sounding clinics as evidence), and that the side effects are in some cases intolerably severe (one girl in one of the docus had her spine collapse, as in her vertebrae became porous and broke)? They were a pretty big deal outside of diehard trans rights circles when they popped a year or two back.
Also, surely the argument that "This is going to sound insensitive, but as far as “bad US medical policies” go, 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined is nothing" cuts both ways?! Couldn't a person on your opponents' side just as reasonably say "yeah, well, even if 2,500 children having their lives low-key ruined by being declined puberty blockers and having to transition after age 18, that's nothing"? I mean, if the numbers are so low that a wrong decision here is irrelevant, surely it's irrelevant *regardless of the specific decision* and you can just let your opponents have their way? Epsilon is epsilon.
Good point.
The multigenerational effect is very different depending on the direction of error: delayed transitioning of those who will go through with it regardless doesn't substantively change their lifetime fertility rate, whereas transitioning those who would otherwise not dramatically reduces theirs. Given parents' stereotypical desire for grandchildren, this dynamic could explain much of the vehemence on one side.
> the decision to delay the vaccine an extra few weeks to influence the 2020 election probably killed about 1,000.
It's disappointing to see you repeat this canard when IIRC, ACX was the place where I originally saw it refuted in the first place! I'm not sure whether my memory is playing tricks on me, or whether you've forgotten your own writing.
Anyway, AIUI, the original plan was to conduct an interim analysis after 32 cases, but the problem with that is that a small number of cases means low statistical power, and hence a higher risk of the vaccines falsely being found to not be statistically significantly effective. Additionally, the FDA expressed concerns that 32 cases would not be sufficient.
In October, COVID surged again and they realized that they would soon have a lot more cases, so they might as well wait a bit to get more data and set a new target of 62 cases in order to have a higher chance of success. It's only coincidence that the data for the new analysis threshold happened to become available soon after election day. And the CEO of Pfizer has explicitly said that they would have announced the results whenever they happened to become available, regardless of the election timing.
If there were any villains in the story, it would be the FDA, but it seems like they had a point about the original threshold being underpowered. (Or at least, they expected it to be, since noone knew at the time that the data would show such a large effect.) But even if they were, the FDA holding things back isn't exactly news.
This whole thing seems below your usual standards.
The precautionary principle makes very little sense, but to the extent that it is getting at a legitimate argument, I don't possibly see how it can favor giving children puberty blockers over not doing that. "The precautionary principle says you should never change anything" is possibly the single most common complaint against it. The idea that it's reversible, and this is sufficient, is A) based on what seems to be weak evidence all things considered, and B) ignores any other potential downsides.
Good point.
Can't seem to find this articulated in the comments, so just to put it out there:
Best I can tell, most people decide if they are trans based on the masculine/feminine traits they possess, compared with the traits of their peers, as well as general gender expectations. So, assuming that that is the case: Puberty Blockers + Time = Less masculine/feminine in relation to peers/expectations = More likely to transition. This would be a perfectly acceptable chain if that was how people understood puberty blockers to work, but unfortunately not everyone catches it, so the idea that puberty blockers serve as impartial stallers persists. I don't really blame kids or parents for this, but doctors should be well aware of this stuff, and pass the word along to anyone who's seeking a presciption. It's just good medical practice, and pretty easy to accomplish.
Also, what's up with the "2,500 children having their lives low key ruined is nothing"? What a weird argument to make. If puberty blockers really take off as a standard treatment, that number could balloon way past 2,500 but also... It's kids, man. Every mistake is way worse when you do it to kids.
Good point.
Hi, not set up for USA texting. (I'm UK).
grahampcunningham@gmail.com
Responding to your text request.
That was a scam.
Thanks...... but can you explain how you know that?
Even if Scott didn't point out that it was in the Open Thread, a well-known writer like Scott leaving his phone number in the comments unprompted is just incredibly unlikely. If someone famous (or even 'internet famous') tries to get you to contact them in a channel where you cannot verify their identity, you should immediately be suspecting an impersonation scam.
There's no way that Scott is going to give out a phone number linked to him on a publicly accessible online site that is not "For an appointment with Dr. Alexander, ring XXX-XXXXXXX", because he is not a gibbering idiot.
There is especially no way Scott is going to give out a personal phone number to this shower of scallywags, scofflaws, wretches and malcontents that make up the commentariat (my people! I love you all dearly!) with an open invitation for us to harangue, harass, and deliver homilies at him 😀
Did white women express concerns about their physical safety with black women, or was it just an "ick" issue like what prompted separate drinking fountains?
On transwomen being assaulted, are you referring to prison rape? It's my understanding that this happens to inmates of all orientations, and it would be nice if it didn't happen at all. If you have some statistical evidence of transwomen being regularly assaulted in men's bathrooms or lockers I'd be interested to see it.
I thought the fear was always black men with white women.
Given what we know of dating patterns from the mid-2010s OKCupid data at least, it may have been based in reality (though of course that definitely didn't justify Jim Crow!)
“By analogy, one should also 'desubstantialize' sexuality: sexuality is not a kind of traumatic substantial Thing, which the subject cannot attain directly; it is nothing but the formal structure of failure which, in principle, can 'contaminate' any activity. So, again, when we are engaged in an activity which fails to attain its goal directly, and gets caught in a repetitive vicious cycle, this activity is automatically sexualized - a rather vulgar everyday example: if, instead of simply shaking my friend's hand, I were to squeeze his palm repeatedly for no apparent reason, this repetitive gesture would undoubtedly be experienced by him or her as sexualized in an obscene way.”
This is gibberish isn’t it. Sexuality is assumed to be a substance which just isn’t proven - although philosophy is generally incoherent on substance anyway.
Then we must “desubstantialize” sexuality. Why? Because sexuality is a “formal structure of failure”. Google that because it may be a technical philosophical term and you won’t find anything except buildings collapsing. So who knows why failure even comes into this, or why this failure is considered to contaminate anything.
The last example is unconvincing. Is it true that weirdly handshaking like that is automatically sexual? Maybe but only because it might be.
Do French people see the repetitive cheek kissing with which they greet each other as sexual? No, although other cultures might. Anyway they kiss their mothers like that. And work colleagues.
That follows from this claim “when we are engaged in an activity which fails to attain its goal directly, and gets caught in a repetitive vicious cycle, this activity is automatically sexualized”
No it isn’t. That could describe OCD patterns, or a failed training regime. Or lots more activities that fail to meet their goal, most of which aren’t sexualised.
It’s fairly typical of philosophical texts to do this, pummelling you with unproven claims, non sequiturs, new terms and so on. After a while you think “there’s a lot of shit here so some out it must stick” even if none of it does.
>"This is gibberish isn’t it."
It's Zizek, so yes.
Interestingly, John Boyne (author of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas") has just issued a public apology to Graham Linehan for having earlier condemned him for his trans-critical views.
https://twitter.com/JohnBoyneBooks/status/1698830513077694477?t=KyT4fhgT5dvNCTQ-VqZeLg&s=19
Brilliant and useful original post. Interesting to me how there is no mention of Freud?
Luckily I am here to set you all straight. Freud says: "If we now address ourselves to the question of what circumstances have the power to frustrate the carrying out of the pleasure principle we will tread safer and better known ground" (37) He continues: "[Pleasure principle] ... under the influence of the instinct of ego for self preservation it is replaced by the 'reality principle"" "during the development of the ego ... all energy is from instincts"(38). it continues: "particular instincts ... prove irreconcilable with the ... comprehensive unity of the ego." This of course leads to the idea, "if [the sexual impulses] succeed in fighting ... to a direct or substitutive gratification...(ie come to conscious awareness) the result is pain." So the theory goes, the pleasure principle must be repressed for the sake of the psychic factor called reality principle. Thus the child's developing psyche foregoes instant gratification despite the the sexual impulses remaining unconsiously. These desires ie pleasure principle are unconscious ie not controlled(because repressed). When the repressed, underdeveloped because unconscious energies force through to consciousness they are "experienced by the ego as pain."(38) Neurotic individuals identify pain as pleasure because the ego is identified with the reality principle which wants to repress sexual drives (unconscious pleasure principle) for the ego unity. So if the child wants to repress the libido instincts for ego unity, the libido still remains. It's like a confusion of the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The repressed libido is "violated" because it is unconscious and not in the control of the patient. "All Neurotic pain is pleasure that cannot be experienced as such" (Freud 37)
Sigmund Freud "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" then appears to go on (havent read it fully) to use the theory to illustrate how how dreams indicate the patient's effort to free the mind from the pain of the unconscious stimuli. Ie the dream makes energies no longer avoidable and the task, Freud says "becomes binding" the psychic material so that it can be weakened, separated and dealt with.
Freud says a lot more and I cannot be certain I have not bastardized it through misconception. The point is Freud would call a fetish a complex, which is a psychic confusion or twist, that develops from repressed material. I get the sense that the the pleasure principle being a source of pain that needs to be bound to another factor is the explanation.