GBRK
3d ago
So I went out and tried to find a study about this and found a reddit comment that links to a study you might be interested in:
Sampson, R. J., Morenoff, J. D., & Raudenbush, S. (2005). Social anatomy of racial and ethnic disparities in violence. American Journal of Public Health, 95(2), 224-232.
Abstract: We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black–White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino–White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.
I can see the outline for a counterargument that goes, "race is causative of ethnicity (meaning: race linked culture), which is causative of marital status of parents, immigrant status, etcetera, which are causative of violence." Again, though... You can just filter on the direct causes instead. Fatherless behavior looks similar regardless of race, and regardless of race I would discriminate against young men engaged in it.
Just think about base rates here. People are very unlikely to commit violent crimes in general, regardless of race. But there are particular adjectives that you can apply to people that significantly raise their threat level. Imagine you have a database of every person (on earth/in your country/in your city/whatever), and a query that filters that database to only the subset that matches all adjectives in a list. Your goal is to minimize the average likelyhood of the people returned by that query committing a crime against you. In which order would you prioritize removing adjectives from the following list?
[Black fatherless poor druggie young male]
I would go for either "druggie" or "male" first, then after those two are gone "poor", then either "young" or "fatherless".
Plausibly there are some co-correlations, where the intersection of two adjectives interact to make things particularly bad... But I'd guess that in most of the cases where that happens with "Black", that's more attributable to discrimination than to afroamerican culture.
being forced to use a segregated water fount
Being forced
... Do you seriously not see the difference between a measure that restricts the volition of others, versus a measure that doesn't?
Anyways, you're still missing the point. Just address the OPs thesis that we should be spending more effort holding people accountable for acts of bigotry and less effort for holding people accountable for feelings of bigotry. Do you disagree with that premise? I'm not going to be pulled into the orthogonal argument you clearly want to have until you at least admit that it is orthogonal. Good faith debate is one person claims "A" and the other person claims "Not A." You are claiming B. Arguing against A will not establish B. Arguing for B will not defeat A.
GBRK
3d ago
No. There is a massive difference between a group of young Asian guys and black guys hanging out. Basic stats will tell you this.
Advanced stats will tell you otherwise. Do you not know what a factor analysis is?
being black is highly predictive in the same way being male is.
It literally isn't though. If you keep everything constant except sex, male vs female is still HUGELY predictive of criminality. If you keep everything constant except race, the relationship is much, much weaker. Your counterargument is going to be that things are not, on average, kept constant-- but that's still not a convincing reason to look at mostly proxy factors for criminality (like race) rather than much more causitice factors like SES.
I think this you're missing @EverythingIsFine 's whole point because you present this situation as a counterargument to his "we should care more about discrimination than stereotyping" spiel, but in your situation no one is actually being discriminated against. Is having a car parked next to you a public good?
If you were interviewing for a job and trashed their resumes in the basis if their race, then there would be something to talk about. But while having a particular negative attitude about some identifiable group is not necessarily a good thing (and indeed may in fact be a bad thing), the OP was very specifically saying that society should be less concerned about that than it is.
... And in any case, I think "black" is far from the most predictive factor here. "Young" and "men" are hugely predictive, and treating people differently based on their age and gender is good, actually (🇻🇦). But what decides my perception of (other) young men as safe is primarily their presentation of class status and upbringing. I would feel plenty safe around any group of young men wearing suits, carrying college textbooks, holding hobby objects (e.g. skateboards, cameras, basketballs), engaging in a church event, etcetera. I would feel about equally unsafe regardless of race around a group of young men that are drunk, smoking pot in public, blasting loud music, wearing excessively baggy clothes, etcetera. If you pressed me, I would admit that I probably felt slightly more unsafe around a low-class afroamerican group than a low class white or latino group, but race genuinely does not rank very high in my factor analysis.
GBRK
7d ago
The "story" doesn't do anything. That bazooka was made in israel and hand-delivered by mossad. Israel did, in fact, lie and pressure america into a pointless, expensive war. Israeli influence over US politics is worse than iran having nukes when compared against replacement (using the money we would have spent on welfare, tax cuts, or paying down the debt.) Also DJT is a dumbass, but even if the feebleminded elderly are ultimately responsible for believing the nigerian princes of the world, their children are still entitled to be mad about it.
GBRK
12d ago
Knocks her up one more time after the divorce was filed.
Grippy socks, grippy box.
Men would be better off in nearly every respect if we weren't lead around by our dicks... but also, we wouldn't be men.
GBRK
17d ago
typo correction is actually
Some root factor makes people both more likely to be non-cis AND more likely to [report being] sexually assaulted
btw.
...
I do think autism is very plausible as a root cause for the legit-trans people (as opposed to they/them attention seekers). I've had enough personal experience with autists and trans people to see the pattern. However, I'm not convinced it's the only root cause, or even the most root-y of the root causes. Given base rates, I suspect most of those non-cis respondents are nonbinary and non-autistic, rather than trans, and yet they still show the same patter re: reporting. I think "anxiety and depression" still functions better as the base-level causes, because I think it's when autism causes those things that it puts autists at risk, and that people with anxiety and depression but no autism have a similar risk profile to anxious depressed autists (while happy autists have a similar risk profile to happy regular people.)
GBRK
17d ago
I can't find the original meme, but I remember seeing an image macro that went something like this:
[Protestant LGBT:] "Jesus loves everyone! Love is love! I go to a church with a pride flag!" (Secretly wracked with guilt.)
[Catholic LGBT:] "Man is a fallen creature. I accept that I am a pervert. I go to the BDSM club on fridays, confession on saturdays, and church on Sundays." (Openly wracked with guilt.)
...
I thought that they were diametrically opposed.
So yeah, that's basically it.
@Tretiak I do appreciate the charity though.
GBRK
17d ago
I know you meant "victim of CSA and non-cis",
Fixed typo:
Some root factor makes people both more likely to be non-cis AND more likely to report being sexually assaulted
("report" is also important here.)
I see being trans as a minor medical annoyance for the patient, less severe than diabetes and a bit more severe than Hashimoto.
I've had (non-trans-related) body image issues since puberty and it's been fucking horrible. If I didn't think therapy would be largely useless for me I'm pretty sure I could get a body dysmorphia diagnosis. (Useless compared to the replacement option of looksmaxxing, not in general-- I'd probably go if it was free, quick, and convenient, but as-is I have better ways to spent my time.) I completely understand, on an emotional level, why trans people are trans-- I just don't believe that wanting to be something is the same thing as being something. To my eternal furry chagrin, I am not a wolf on any level, including physical.
Given that experience, I very much hope that if (and hopefully when) I have children, I will be able to protect them from feeling similarly-- and by applying the pharmaceutical, behavioral, and social interventions that would have helped me, hope to dramatically reduce the internal factors that would contribute to the same thing. The final piece would be just, "not talking about it." The body-image issues in my family are generational, so I think combining the other interventions with "stop yelling meme" would cut them off at the knees. Applying that logic to transgenderism, I think that helping kids feel pride in their gender roles without being neurotic about conformity is half the puzzle, and easy, so figuring out how to counter whatever confounding factor exists between CSA and becoming non-cis is what I should be focusing to spare my kids from a frankly hellish fate. (Meaning: the dysphoria, not the non-cis-ness specifically... though as opposed to something like bigorexia I do think gender-related ailments are particularly pernicuous, and that post-treatment surveys significantly underestimate the amount of trans people telling themselves ego-preserving lies, A.K.A "coping.")
GBRK
18d ago
I don't really think the debate about gender is even that useful.
I think it's useful, but that's because I specifically believe that gender roles are specifically duties, created by God, and that individuals and societies should encourage those duties like they should encourage everything else God wants humans to do. Identifying which duties are relevant to yourself and others is therefore necessary and good.
GBRK
18d ago
Wow, those graphs are physically difficult to parse- in fact I'd actually say they're actively harmful to a proper understanding of the data. A "plain reading" (at least to me) of that data suggests 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 12 boys have been sexually penetrated in an unwanted manner before the age of 12, which isn't passing the sniff test given, if I remember correctly, prevalence of sexual contact by 12 is about 5%, or 1 in 20. So I doubt I'm reading the graph correctly, but there's no way to derive the total context or get a scale of the proportions involved relative to all respondents.
I think this is just reporting bias-- CSA victims are probably more likely to share and respond to this survey. I don't think that's an issue with respect to Aella's analysis because she's specifically interested in cross-response correlations rather than the headline numbers.
I think this is ignoring the obvious-to-me confounder that becoming non-cis can cause them to become a victim of sexual assault
The confounder definitely exists-- we have plenty of other surveys showing non-cis people are more vulnerable to sexual assault-- but the data for this survey contradicts any notion that this is primary. If this was the primary confounder, then we should expect to see a much larger difference between response rates of cis vs non-cis people comparing between the 0-12 vs 13-18 age groups, since the coming-out rate is WAY higher in later adolescence than childhood and pre-teen-hood. Instead, the difference in response rates remain very similar. Plausibly there's still some "wierd kid" confounding factor because the kids who become non-cis are never normal even before transitioning... (the one kid I know that transitioned had previously shown me furry porn in the cafeteria because we were both bronies... and had some pretty solid taste, honestly, ngl.) That gets right back into the question of what exactly makes these kids weird, however.
Well, no, if you grew up poor, 2 things are likely true for kid-you:
You say this like you're going to provide a counterargument and then propose two factors that seem extremely likely to increase anxiety and depression.
we don't actually hear the first question: what's abuse?
I made a typo in my OP. Fixed it, so my second bullet point reads:
Some root factor makes people both more likely to be non-cis AND more likely to report being sexually assaulted
I do think it's likely that the difference in sexual assault rates between cis and non-cis people is partially (though probably not totally) due to differences in specifically reporting rates. I don't actually think we need an explicit definition for what constitutes as 'abuse' though-- it would be sufficiently interesting to find that non-cis people adopt inclusive definitions of abuse at a higher rate, or are more likely to re-interpret invents in a negative way.
GBRK
18d ago
I don't think you're disagreeing with me, but just in case you are I wanted to clarify that this "pre-analytic congnitive framework" that comes prior to politics, being a way to experience life, is one of those things I'd lump under "other-life-experiences." I'll moot discussing whether it's the specific life experience that determines reporting rates and non-cisgender-ness though. The phrase is general enough that I think we would get into a dictionary definition argument. A broad enough definition of the term would compel me to agree that it's the prior factor I'm talking about, but likely result in me complaining that it's so broad a definition as to be practically useless-- and a narrow enough definition to be useful would probably have me dithering about a lack of hard data to conclude if it's central.
GBRK
18d ago
I don't think this explanation works.
- The ratios between cis vs. non-cis people reporting sexual abuse in the 0-12 range remains similar for household vs non-household penetrative assaults.
- (My prior is that) people who are abused by non-family-members are more likely to receive therapy (because they're less likely to be abused by the people who would otherwise be responsible for getting them that therapy)
- However, your explanation predicts that likelyhood that a child recieved therapy should increase CSA reporting rates relative to baseline.
2 and 3 contradict.
I admit that there probably is some relationship with therapy->liberalism->non-cisgenderism, but I don't think it's central.
GBRK
18d ago
Becoming left or right wing is downstream of other life experiences. It's more plausible that whatever common factor causes the other two things also causes the left-wing-ness.
New Aella survey post on child sexual assault just dropped: https://aella.substack.com/p/a-whole-lot-of-csa-data
I think her analysis is generally unobjectionable, but do find it notable that she buries the lead on the "non-cis" sexual assault findings. I didn't dig into the crosstabs, but non-cis people are plausibly getting sexually assaulted even before they become openly non-cis. And while there's plausibly causation in the direction of abnormal pre-egg-breaking/transition behavior being more likely to attract sexually assault, the data re: non-cis people reporting more CSA still very much supports the hypothesis that either:
- Being sexually assaulted causes people to become non-cis
- Some root factor makes people both more likely to be non-cis AND more likely to report being sexually assaulted
It might be that these hypothesis are both correct, but for different population subsets. For example, nonbinary people might be disproportionately motivated by a desire to escape a concept they associate with their assault, while transgender people are the ones afflicted by a root factor. (Or vica-versa, either explanation would be possible.)
I would personally bet on the second hypothesis predominating, though. And in particular, the associations re: social class/parental age/trauma are suggestive of some specifically anxiety-related problem. Working hypothesis: If you grow up poor or insecure or to young parents or female you become anxious and depressed, which leads you to be more likely to suffer sexual assault, more likely to interpret past events as sexual assault, more likely to start identifying yourself as non-cis (because of body image issues? Data is obviously underspecified and outside the scope of aella's post), and more likely to be negatively affected long-term by sexual assault when it does happen.
...So if you have kids, and want to maximize their chances of identifying as cisgender into adulthood, your top priority should be reducing their opportunities for anxiety. Openly worrying about drag queen story hour and queer books would be ironically counterproductive.
Ideological disclaimer: as a catholic I believe there are only two genders, fixed at birth, but as a transhumanist also I'm in favor of letting anyone, including children, do whatever they want to their own bodies. (I accept some nuance re: having to get psychologists/a judge to sign off that someone is truly acting in their own uncoerced self-interest, with increasing scrutiny in proportion to the danger posed by the modification and the mental irresponsibility of the requestor.)
GBRK
19d ago
That applies to state vs. state conflicts but I think it's at least plausible that they'd be better suited for terrorism, which is what rebelling against the government always is.
GBRK
20d ago
Honestly, I think the lockdowns were good for me. Like, in the moment the personal isolation sucked, but moving to permanent work from home (still going strong three jobs later!) and the realization that I could and should take control of my social life, health, and joi de vivre has has profound positive effects on my life. Looking back, I think there was retrospectively enough information to conclude that the negative effects of learning loss on children by far outweighed the health concerns for any learn-from-home lockdown except the very first. Aside from that, I have a hard time judging any other type of restriction as particularly insane... at least for the midwestern city I lived in. China or europe or the blue coastal cities probably had it worse. If only the entire world could be as sane as a democrat-controlled city in a republican-controlled state.
GBRK
20d ago
I really don't understand it when 2A people draw the line at the kinds of weapons specifically useful for overthrowing the government. My guy, that is the whole point. Small, easily concealable sidearms should be banned because civilians have no business making themselves assassins. But anyone who wants a machine gun, artillery piece, or fighter jet should have one. The only regulation should be to make sure civilian chemical weapon and ammunition stockpiles are being mantained with best safety practices.
GBRK
29d ago
It only takes 51 votes to remove the filibuster. It's a fig leaf that the senate uses to avoid blame, nothing more. I blamed the democrats for being useless when they could have removed it before, and I'm happy blaming the republicans for refusing to remove it now.
GBRK
1mo ago
without driving the price up prohibitively.
Why would that be a limiting factor? If the economic-political situation gets so screwed up we're considering a draft or mass service-for-citizenship scheme, it would be entirely feasible for the government to redirect american economic productivity from old-age healthcare to military power. It wouldn't exactly be very popular, but nothing about this is anyway.
GBRK
1mo ago
I used a bunch of those at my last apartment. Guess how many holes in the plaster I had to patch...
GBRK
1mo ago
It's not about convincing the court, it's about convincing the jury. Which is, you should remember, composed entirely of people too dumb to get out of jury duty.
GBRK
1mo ago
It's not so much about the meme as it is about he plausible deniability, I'd wager. Understanding that our government has a panipticon that may be at any moment oriented toward you in particular, sometimes it's necessary to clarify that you're only proposing we do radical things in minecraft.
Okay I can tell we're getting into bravery debate territory here (not your fault, I think even OP was aware of the doodoo they were stepping in.) Trying to phrase this neutrally though... If you were the racism tsar (but otherwise kept your values) and could magically alter all government-sponsored antiracism messaging within the united states to one of the following options, which would you choose?
I think OPs argument is in line with point two, assuming limited anti-bigltry resources.
I don't know how libertarians use it. I'm using it in the sense that I would be a lot more offended by someone refusing to let me use a waterfountain than refusing to park their car near me. I would still be sad about the car thing, but I would rather more resources be spent fighting the waterfountain thing.
Hurting people feelings isn't not important, but I think OPs point (which I agree with), is that we are weighing the prevention of hurt feeling too highly relative to other antiracist goals.
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