ShariaHeap
1yr ago
COVID made me aware that actually you can't resolve arguments by quoting scientific articles. There has actually always been a lot of low quality evidence that you can't trust. Researcher bias is a given in this area. Opinion pieces are mere sophistry. Science used to progress by consensus, whereby shared facts would gradually accrue through the process of reproducibility and sufficient status given to integrity and actually being right. Now science is just more polarised politics. There is no loss of status for spouting shit because your tribe will back it up. Actual biologists are failing to defend the most basic facts about biological sex, deliberately muddying longstanding understandings and erecting obvious straw men in pursuit of pleasing their tribe.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Gotcha, yeah it's frustrating because they make it so easy for the arguments to get smeared as right-wing religious or whatever to the centre-left. It's also unfortunate because it seems homosexual acceptance has actually improved over the last decades.
But I do have some sympathy for the fears, in addition to gay books they were presumably also getting rid of the 'I am Jazz' stuff, which I do consider grooming. Because of the head start this ideology has, it's quite possible that your children are exposed at an early age to it without you even being aware. And libraries aren't neutral on this topic. A friend of mine tried to get some adult books telling the trans story from the critical side (ie books by Helen Joyce, Abigail Shrier etc) and all were turned down - of course you can't expect the library to accept a book request just because you send it, but it's notable how captured the public library is by gender ideology - there was a quick link to various books on how you can choose your gender etc, over all age groups on the website, yet you won't find any of the books critical of it. Indeed there is a prominent trans flag in the library, which, try as I might to not to 'morally panic' about, feels like living under an authoritarian regime.
That's enough to create a sense of urgency and rage for some people to take matters into their own hands. I don't agree with it personally, particularly when perfectly suitable books about being gay are included, or even trans stories which deserve to be told as any other for the right ages (though I think trans stories are prone to reinforcing misunderstandings about the nature of gender, identity and the self, overstate the empirical weight of their first person experience, and are contributing to the social contagion in the current environment, presenting it as a positive or transcendent lifestyle choice and glossing over the medical realities).
So I'm torn, I don't agree with censorship but I also welcome some active resistance to the authoritarian environment we're in and I'm clear on what's starting the whole chain-people are actually trying to influence young children with these ideas that don't make any sense, and may contribute non-negligibly to the risk of them getting medical treatment through contagious ideas (though obviously not without other factors in play).
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Both sides of the debate spread via the internet - we all part of the information commons now and the epistemic challenges.
Unfortunately that means we have to work harder to understand the issues. Anti-LGBTQ activism is undoubtedly a thing (people who object against any and all of those) but the phrase betrays a lack of understanding of the actual issue-it is the wrong 'frame'.
In reality the T is in conflict with LGB because the definitional space that LGB exists in (biological sex) is being challenged by gender identity (self-asserted subjective sense of gender). This leads to the idea that a MtF who likes woman, is a lesbian and because the reality of biological sex is thrown out, this actually undermines the real identity of the original lesbian (a biological woman attracted to biological woman). It has got to the point where lesbians who do not want to have sex with biological males are called bigots and in some cases coerced into sex with these biological men.
Not to mention that the sociogenic idea of trans encourages gender non-conforming gay people (eg feminine boys and masculine girls) to think they might be the wrong sex. We know that many people who suffer from gender dysphoria and do not transition ultimately resolve their dysphoria, and that many of these people turn out to be gay.
So assuming that anyone speaking up against trans is Anti-LGBTQ is false.
Try this podcast - it's politically neutral and broadcasts a wide variety of guests and views.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
That link is not very good evidence even if you have access to the paper.
I know it might be hard to believe, I thought it was a right-wing talking point at first but when you think about it, it makes sense. Biological sex does actually mean something.
The sterility is all about not going through natal puberty (so puberty blockers). Puberty is the process of gaining sexual function (who knew?) What do you think happens to your body if you stop the process and go straight onto cross-sex hormones? For boys, this will lead to permanent sterility as sperm production doesn't occur, for girls the ovarian follicles don't develop (though girls could preserve their eggs which they are born with).
Another important feature related to the use of GnRHa is the fertility issue. Adolescents that undergo puberty blockade, invariably display a scarce maturation of the gametes, as happens in hypogonadism. In addition to this aspect, there is the scant attention that the subjects with GD/GI shows towards this topic, given the psychological distress related to the condition, associated with the anxiety of wanting to transit to a more congenial body, as fast as possible. In male to female subjects, the only possibility is the cryopreservation of testicular tissue, given that, at Tanner stage 2, only 20% of transgender girls will have begun spermatogenesis. In the case of a blockage in later stages, it would be possible the collection of mature sperm via ejaculation, but the problem of the appearance of secondary sexual characters would occur [54]. In female-to-male subjects, the situation is quite similar: ovarian tissue cryopreservation is the only option available if the follicular stimulation is ineffective, as happens in the first Tanner stages (prepubertal ovaries). On the contrary, during later stages, it would be possible the oocyte cryopreservation, as done in oncological patients [55, 56].
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40618-023-02077-5
The effects of puberty blockers on sexual function:
Even less is known about the effects of puberty suppression on sexual functioning. Jennings, who started on GnRHa at the age of 11, has no libido and cannot orgasm. Jennings’ surgeon, Marci Bowers, who has performed over 2,000 vaginoplasties, acknowledges that “every single child … who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2, has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it’s really about zero” (Bowers, Citation2022).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238
Side effects of GnRH agonists are related to sex hormone deficiency and include symptoms of low testosterone levels and low estrogen levels such as hot flashes, sexual dysfunction, vaginal atrophy, penile atrophy, osteoporosis, infertility, and diminished sex-specific physical characteristics. They are agonists of the GnRH receptor and work by increasing or decreasing the release of gonadotropins and the production of sex hormones by the gonads. When used to suppress gonadotropin release, GnRH agonists can lower sex hormone levels by 95% in both sexes.[2][3][4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonadotropin-releasing_hormone_agonist
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, I'd agree.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
In regards to following the official line, I knew a lady in my kids school community who was a staunch masker, pro-vaccine, whatever it takes person. Eventually covid regulations ended, her daughter got sick with a second bought of covid and she had her daughter back within a week despite symptoms... It wasn't covid she was acting against rationally but just going with the official line...
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Interesting, yes, I think projection of life circumstances onto the other sex plausibly accounts for a lot of male misogyny. Obviously a lot of different contextual factors might account for it, ie a patterns learned from their fathers.
But not necessarily an infant attachment thing, ie Bowlby. That seems to lead to deeper issues perhaps than misogyny/misandry.
Re the self-hate I just mean that it doesn't seem directed at man or woman per se. It has that empty-like ego quality, at least for me.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Giving children, young adolescents the vote is the worst part of the whole idea. The idea that people with undeveloped brains and a lack of understanding of basic features of the world can help us, is fatally flawed and forgets that we're responsible for developing children, not the other way round.
Granted even at 18 this development and understanding hasn't progressed that much...
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Thanks for your input and personal experience. Yes, I think you're right. It seems a poor assumption that both men and women tend to misogyny and ironically wrong even for me, I don't hate women and feel somewhat aligned with them. Also, the cliche of the archetypal feminist is man-hating, so not consistent either if we take that cliche seriously. I'll abandon that bit then as it doesn't seem to pass the sniff test. The bit I'm trying to explain is that misogyny tends to be more prevalent in both men and women than misandry and it seems that in 3rd wave feminism, in upholding ideas that undermine the rights of women and viciously othering and attacking 'terfs', women are being fundamentally misogynistic - the whole trans phenomenon has a misogynistic thrust and it's mainly women supporting it. Perhaps it's just the 'dark mother', the projected dark side of the kindness and nurturing of women.
Though of course, these Jungian analyses could be just a lot of just-so bullshit and it's just contextual...
But persevering with the deep psyche as the explanatory frame, i know from experience an extraordinary amount of men are somewhat or very misogynistic - I wonder why that is, it seems like a mother issue and feels like an early imprint around early rejection in infancy around needs met. I speculate that woman could experience this same imprint and be misogynistic by virtue of mother being the first thing, while man being somewhat peripheral. Though of course many women have very good relationships with their mothers...
In exploring the self-hate, which I know well also (perhaps it's a universal?), I wonder if it is in fact not gendered in it's sense at all.
I think the power structure explanation you outline seems right.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Don't forget the anti-jihadist immigration stance that excluded a lot of talent.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
While obviously the right-wing machinery has activated the response, I think it's a mistake to view it solely as right-wing. I may be optimistically overestimating my demographic, but there's a growing tranche of people whom the left has left, who would gladly take an opportunity to picket against the cultural hegemony of the woke liberal left.
Also, the trans issue is not just another culture war issue. It's a strange and dark turn towards Orwellianism. Gender ideology asks people to assert things that aren't actually true and to accept this untruth promulgated through public institutions, including education of their children. While other excesses are also concerning, you can't get much more fundamental than 'queering' the truth that sex is binary. Beyond this just lies nihilism and complete post-capitalist decay.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I like your take, we always have to dig deeply into accepted ideas to see how much myth-making. It's something I will 'lean-into' over the next while to see where I land.
However, I was already aware that females contribute a good portion of partner violence - although of course, tending to be less serious harm than male on female violence. I was also aware that key males had been written out of the suffragette story.
I also don't view it as man beating wife with stick through human history. The past is a different country as they say, so it's mistaken to project the modern idea of agency blindly onto previous eras Obviously women have always had agency and our history is shared, there must have always been accommodation of needs in the shared goal of child rearing and woman have been honoured and had certain priviliges over different cultures etc, depending on class. However, and bearing in mind I'm no historian and I shudder to think how little I know of it, but I'd say it's a given that among human hierarchies, women would tend to be lower than men in terms of power. The church asserts this explicitly, and clearly there wasn't even a thought to consider women as distinct entities legally until modern times. So I suspect that while revisionism against some of the myth-making of feminism may be due, it's not going to upend it to the point of there is 'no thing there'.
Feminism fits within a modern liberal view of freedom and opportunity. Here I think it's clear that there was a patriarchy, as evidenced by the efforts required for women to do things that men had always done-get a degree, occupy professional positions of power, own things, receive benefits as single parents etc. Now most women probably didn't object to this world, it was the water they swam in, but for some women it was a grave injustice under the modern liberal terms taking root. Now that doesn't subsume women to some powerless servitude but it is pretty inarguable as a real patriarchy.
I have also observed patriarchy first-hand, though as an outsider, when living in Japan. Again many women have power, many are happy with the status quo, but the hierarchy is plain to see. I'm given to understand that effectively the wife sits underneath her sons in the power structure side of things (though probably worth checking) and language itself reified this in the honorifics etc used when addressing then. Men have a mixed position there, often as salarymen that might only see there children on weekends, and of course are wedded to their own work heirarchies, but equally, are clearly top-dogs as far as society goes. Again this is under the lens of modern liberal values. Japan is a very civil society and there are many great things about it. And if course it's changing. But if you're a young woman wanting to progress professionally in male-dominated fields, you're going to put up with a lot of unjust shit, by virtue of being a woman.
Anyway I take your broader point and I have gone on too long. One of my first posts here was complaining about long posts and here I am....
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I think you have a point, but it's also natural to talk about the big issues of the day. Culture war issues are aggravated by unnecessary polarisation and politics generally, but they are pretty big issues that we should all have a view on, eg abortion, the shift to gender ideology, shifts in attitudes to free speech, the rise of AI (not a culture war issue, but hugely important). The let's talk about stuff that matters less seems a bit apathetic to me. We should talk about global warming and the environment more, but that's plagued by so much scientific detail.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
I like this.
That too I know. I encourage people to get on a board but public meetings with people shouting don't achieve anything for a school it has to be said.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Is there not a great meaningful story being told in the current digital age, where we are on the cusp of creating generally artificially intelligent beings?
I see this as terrifying, precisely because of the state of decay we find ourselves in. Yes, we have progressed, and I wouldn't want to go back, but we are currently stuck in a pit of philosophical relativism and a suite of human political problems, no different from the past but exacerbated through the new technology of the internet. In short we have fallen already from peak-progress and are now adding disruptive technologies to the already existing X-risk problems.
Call me an old-fashioned pessimist, or just old maybe...
Men play high stakes but in times of war increase their power advantage over women, so men die but do lots of sacking and raping.
Mind you, war increases the desire for chivalrous protection of women and could enhance in-group honour codes that prohibit taking advantage of women of one's own side.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Part of this is just normal scale impediments to organisational decision making, whatever the politics. The truth is nothing good gets done by consensus, it just ends in entropic back and forth.
Yes, I agree with you. There's a sense of solidarity by a modern liberal woman with anything perceived as progressive that overrides debate on certain issues.
I'd like to outline my meta-critique of feminism in relation to this phenomenon. It's a kind of speculative post-Jungian thing and doesn't attempt any evidence so take it with a grain of salt.
The first thing women know is that men are more powerful than them physically - they are stronger and more violent, so the average woman would lose in a fight to an average man. Additionally because of procreation they are more vulnerable- men desire to rape woman more often than they desire to rape men, so even a weak man will be safer on the streets from that kind of violation (though more likely to experience common assault).
Men also have higher representation in the tails of achievement across many different domains - this is not describing the average, but does mean that generally the smartest woman would have usually found a smarter man in her domain (of course there are spectacularly smart woman in the distribution as well).
All this means that deep in their psyches, women feel an inferiority complex in relation to men (men in turn have inferiority around the ability to procreate, hence a push to have the heavenly father dominate over earth mother in Western traditions). Also as an aside both men and women are misogynistic, projecting their existential disgust/despair onto woman as the closest to 'life/creation/existence'.
This inferiority combines with the actual injustice of historical patriarchy, servitude, male domineering that woman have experienced into feminism.
To avoid the knowledge of male primary power, feminism took up the ideas of social constructivism a la Foucault, where power relations determine the way things are. Thus the exclusion of biological science in discourse in favour of blank-slate ideas. And the explicit use of politics and solidarity to wield power.
But, political aims work against truth discernment and so feminism has wandered, and failed to integrate biology and evolution, and has, like a lot of social science, favoured novelty over synthesis.
This political wandering has led to internal factionism, first with intersectionality, which undermines solidarity across the category women, and now gender ideology and queer theory, the bastard sister of gender studies, which undermines the very category of women.
But modern liberal progressive politics demands solidarity across the sisterhood, and so more than anyone, women are responsible for sustaining the politics undermining feminism, and womanhood, itself.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Absolutely, I am cognitively biased, but so many of these men scream playing at being a woman to me, or just not really a woman at all but there for complicated reasons.
Also it's fashionable and can advance your career, just look at all the shameless athletes wanting to shine in glory they were never able to get before. Contrapoints has interesting and thoughtful videos with great production ideas. But even with his creative takedown of Jordan Peterson (everyone loves the JP click train) he wouldn't have been nearly as successful as a regular guy. He captured the zeitgeist perfectly and it's his entire shtick really.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, gay people are being transitioned. Clinicians used to joke at the Tavistock, UK's gender clinic, now closed, that there wouldn't be any gay people left when they had finished...
I'd be interested in hearing people's perspective - how is it not objectively better to have gay people without medical treatment than trans people with?
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Well, it's a tricky thing to measure as it's dependent on the therapist-client interaction. I had a number of years of counselling and I would say I had benefit, but no counterfactual with another modality to compare against. I would be surprised if it was no better than active listening as I'm not enough of a skeptic to think it adds nothing beyond active listening, which it also does.
Modern approaches that teach a method like CBT or IFS could well be better, but I would guess that certain people may benefit from counselling, especially those trying to untangle weird families that could benefit from the perspective of a wise person.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Bear in mind I'm skeptical even of good therapists but the above discussion seems to downgrade therapy to having a chat with your barber.
Therapists do things like hold space, prompt you to explore connections of current problems with your past, explore dynamics of your family of origin, practice role play, see unhelpful patterns, sit with discomfort as well as make practical suggestions. This is much better in person with a human.
I don't think it's for everyone and I'm not sure of the efficacy over the whole class of therapists and the average person but I think people who are assuming chat-gtp will fulfill therapeutic needs are drastically under selling it.
ShariaHeap
1yr ago
Yes, I think I see, thanks.
If we're talking about androgen insensitivity syndrome I don't think it's a given that's the case:
"Individuals with partial forms of AIS show variable degrees of virilization and sexual ambiguity, but even in the face of complete lack of androgen response, some anthropometric features, such as height and the dimensions of bone and teeth, are intermediate between typical male and female patterns (20)."
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/85/3/1032/2660594
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