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As do I, which is how I know. My wife was an ex-Jehovah's Witness and her family all still are, so I have considerable familiarity with how they operate and have been to multiple JW events. JW's do not baptize until adulthood, but they absolutely will attempt to convert children, they don't typically do that on a door to door visit with no adults around, because that looks very shady. But they absolutely will given the chance, my wife as a kid, had classes on how to talk to other kids about it. What do you think the point of leaving the Watchtower with you was about? I disagree with them fundamentally on almost everything, but the vast majority of them are good hearted people who truly believe what they are doing is for our own good and I think that does count for something.
That isn't the truce though. We have accepted it is ok to try and convert other people to our belief systems. Do conservatives try to stay away from say regulating abortion for other people, and persuading them it is wrong? No. There is no reason that trans advocates should be prevented from trying to spread their ideology. And you of course can spread yours, and I can spread mine and then the people we convert can choose to do what they like within that framework. Hell, the fact that I am here, means I accept Nazis and communists and antisemites and age of consent people should all be able to do that. And if that convinces doctors and parents that giving blood is harmful, or that GAC is good, then those are the results of our competing ideologies. We have to give people some level of agency. I accept a limit on significant amounts of harm should be imposed by the state. I don't stand in the way of JW's coming to your house and I won't stand in the way of trans advocates doing it either, whether it is in person, through TV shows, or whatever. If they win and change the culture they will deserve to have done so, just as the JW's would if they managed to convert 90% of the US. If you don't want to let them in your house that is entirely up to you. And if your kid decides they are JW or trans and you want to stop them then you should be allowed to try to stop them. And they can then go to the courts and try to emancipate themselves or argue you are harming them or whatever and then that decision can be made. I repeat, this is not a new thing, we have been dealing with how much control have over kids and where that balance lies either when parents want to do something dumb or the kids do. And if the trans advocates have managed to convince the judges then that too should be reflected in the outcomes. Just as elections have consequences so do to cultural changes. Christianity won for a long time, and was able to set and create a culture based upon it. And other ideologies should get the same chance. If they fail, they fail, it won't be the end of the world. If they succeed, it will also not be the end of the world.
I am fine with making getting testosterone easier for men sure, seems entirely reasonable. I accept the medical system in many countries is way too restrictive in allowing people access to drugs/treatments. But let's build on this victory not try to roll it back! This can be a template for how to persuade the medical community. Why nerf trans people's ability to get the treatment they want rather than buff everyone else's? If you want to give your son testosterone and they want it too, I'd suggest you find a doctor who can try to do it as safely as possible, but sure give it a whirl.
Not with me, at my doorstep. So my parents pick it up, and they do something with it, which everyone is aware almost noone ever does.
Even granting your portrayal of what they do, it pales in comparison to the sheer magnitude of the effort the rainbow industry puts into converting other people's kids. Though it must be said I do not grant your portrayal, since if they were as stubborn as you said, I would have been at the receiving end of it at some point, given my exposure. They don't even do door-to-door anymore from what I can tell. I only ever see them at subway / train stations, standing around with signs, and not approaching anyone, they're just waiting until they are approached.
??? We are currently in a situation where trans activists are persuading people to their belief system (using a lot of underhanded tactics that my side is not, by the way) and regulating in their favor, and my side is doing the same. Curiously you only complain about me, and never the trans activists, but ok. Anyway, I'm offering that we both stop - a truce. You say that's not a truce because... there's another active war on a completely different issue I have nothing to do with?
Right. And if the non-trans activists have managed to convince them that GAC should be banned, and GAC-doctors should be prosecuted, the same applies. What "double standard" were you even arguing against then?
Fine is not good enough. If you're going to go after me for proposing that I ban it for little girls, you better show me receipts for going after the current system for making it so hard to get for men. If not, you're the one with the double standard.
You said we shouldn't limit access to GAC because it would violate some sort of truce. I'm telling you no such truce exists, we violate self-determination routinely, for adults, so you cannot call upon it against my proposal to limit access to radical therapies for children. Now you're trying to use the first-person plural to portray it as some sort of victory for me? Why don't you just answer the point rather than trying to convince me this is something I asked for?
Yeah, here's the thing. You might convince me if the deal is we abolish the "medical community" as it's seen today. That was what you were implying in your argument - self-determination trumping scientific validity. If the medical community becomes just a bunch of service providers anyone can pick and choose, I might take it. I'm not interested in haggling over what the medical community allows the rest of us.
Because if we have a system where authorities are deciding who is allowed to use which medicine for what ailment, I want these authorities to prevent usage of very potent medicine in a way that is not scientifically valid, against an ailment that doesn't even have a proper definition, and cannot be reliably detected beyond a self-report.
I wish you'd address my arguments the way I actually present them, rather than constantly changing them to your liking. If anything we were talking about giving testosterone to aging me, when I'm starting to run short on it. And I just told you you're far more likely to find a doctor that will prescribe it to a little girl, than to an aging man.
I am saying that you cannot separate one issue from the others. I agree it would probably be better if we could, but that is not the reality of the situation. Alliances and coalitions have formed, and so beliefs are correlated, we can't simply trade one thing for another. We frame it as a culture war not a culture debate for a reason. Your side whether you like it or not includes people who are trying to do the very thing you want the trans community to stop doing to you, to others. If you want me (or some fictional me, who would care enough, and have enough time to do so) to go to bat against my side, you would need to go against yours. And what would actually happen is we would both end up being expelled from our sides for being traitors. And then we wouldn't have even a tiny amount of influence. We are judged not just by our own positions but also by the positions of those we are allied with. I don't think anyone is in a position to offer a truce at all. All that happens is that an equilibrium is reached where the people roughly settle on what they find acceptable. And to be clear I expect on the trans issue that will be somewhere short of where we are now. It just isn't anything that can be negotiated, it's emergent from people's reaction to the situation.
But that wouldn't be a one to one correlation. But in any case, I said I agree with you there no? Aging men should be able to access testosterone more easily. Your answer appears to be to make it harder for someone else, I would say let's make it easier for you and boys in general as an extension. If you want it to be easy to get these kind of interventions why aren't you arguing that instead of trying to make it more difficult for the other group, that doesn't actually include you? Isn't that the crabs in the bucket mentality often decried here? I can't get it easily, so these other people should not?
Then become a doctor or scientist and write papers about it. Because now we have just circled all the way back to the beginning, where they claim it is scientifically valid (and you say they are wrong) and back around we go.
Try to set aside whether you think they are scientifically right or wrong, and just look at what they are allowing, in almost all the instances you are talking about the parents, child and doctor are all agreed. So what's the big deal? Why should your judgement of what is harmful override theirs? Some chance one of your kids decides they are trans? Well you can deal with that by talking to them, and forbidding them treatment and assuming your spouse agrees, it is extremely unlikely they will ever be able to get treatment until they are an adult. They might be able to go to court and emancipate themselves early or perhaps get a court appointed guardian, but if your kid is willing to do all that to get treatment then that in and of itself is probably a pretty good indicator of actual intent. We can control a lot about our children but we cannot control everything. I'm pretty satisfied with "it is up to the parents except in unusual situations where a court gets to decide" I don't think that is going to break anything that allowing parents to decide on healthcare or when to withdraw healthcare does. There will be some cases where a court mandates healthcare is withdrawn over the parents wishes, or mandated over the parents wishes, but they will be few and far between and essentially a rounding error. Very sad for the families involved but you can't rearrange your entire system for rounding errors.
To try and close this down as we don't seem to be getting anywhere. I think it is absolutely ok to think trans ideology is harmful, I think it is perfectly ok to vote or take other actions downstream of that. What I don't think is ok is pretending this is some brand new thing that we let people's ideologies inform what harmful things they choose for their children and then demand this is the one we stop at. We have already done that for hundreds of years. This isn't anything new.
Finally I still submit that assuming the doctors are operating in good faith and trying to help not harm, they are less morally wrong than someone who is trying to harm. They may still need to be sanctioned and perhaps even commit a crime, but that is why we separate negligent homicide and manslaughter from first degree homicide, or even first degree homicide from 2nd degree. The intentions of a person have an impact on how moral their actions are perceived to be.
They may still be harming people! They may still need to be stopped! But I don't think you have come anywhere near persuading me that a trans advocate doctor who truly believes transitioning some 14yo boy will be best for them, is just as bad as some doctor who believes it will be bad but does it anyway for the lulz or because they are a sadist, or whatever. The child in question may suffer equal harm, but the level of harm is not the only component of moral judgement for anyone outside of hard consequentialists.
Ok then that has nothing to do with the origin of the whole argument, which was:
Like I said there is no such truce at the moment, and according to what you're saying now, one is not even being offered, so I reject this entire line of argument.
Have you? Like I said you're constantly reframing what I said to make an answer more convenient for you, rather than answering what I already said. I don't see you saying "yes, let us abolish the system where medicine is only available through prescription" you're haggling over details like which drug should be more available to whom - precisely what I said I'm not interested in doing.
As long as you're in favor of there being a system where authority is used as a safeguard for people using medicine, I want that authority to safeguard a segment of the public that is vulnerable, impressionable, and currently neglected.
My talents were never in academic pursuits, so my time is far better spent financially supporting doctors and scientists who are writing papers about, and critiquing the utter state of transgender care. You may have heard of a certain doctor Hillary Cass recently, and like her there are many others. As far as I can tell anyone whoever bothered doing a systemic review of the state of evidence came to a similar conclusion as she did, including a review commissioned by WPATH itself, which they promptly decided to bury.
They can claim what they want, and I can expose their lies. This is my right as a member of the public.
I do not grant that. The child is too impressionable and ignorant to make an informed decision on the subject, and from personal experience, most parents are intimidated to agree by activist doctors, abusing their authority. This is why I am in favor of taking that authority away from them.
Cool, but I'm not worried about myself, or my family. As the saying goes "we live in a society". You just put on a long spiel about how it's completely fine and nothing new for trans advocates to go around changing the culture, including the opinion of judges. This is what I am doing as well, so please do not stand in my way, as you said you won't stand in case of JWs and trans advocates.
I agree. From ovariotomies, lobotomies, apotemnophilia, to giving the human growth hormone to short boys / synthetic estrogen to tall girls in order to "normalize" their height, you're right that scandals like this aren't new, but they are pretty rare, and should be treated as the aberration that they are.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. Especially when it comes to doctors, now that I think about it. They hold a position of trust from the public, so they have an extra duty to make sure their work is done in service of their patients, rather than their sensibilities, or their fanciful ideologies. This is what the WPATH practitioners are in blatant disregard of, they get together at their conferences, and mock the very idea of their approach being wrong, or anyone who brings substantial criticism against them. They refuse debate, and use their political connections to shut down conversations. I don't care if this all comes from "good intentions", the "good intentions" only make the whole thing more horrifying.
Again, nothing I said relies on consequentialism.
This is a fully generalizable argument against anybody deciding anything. If your government and culture provides incentives and pressure to get married and have kids does that mean you can't make an informed decision so every one is abusive? I submit the answer is no. But I point out your argument is basically the one used by strands of feminism, that all marriage is unwilling, that all sex is rape because women exist in a world where men are bigger and stronger and more powerful than them. I reject that that from them and I reject it from you. We are the captain of our own ships. Doctors have no power and authority over parents that those parents themselves do not allow. And I note it also applies to priests and any authority who doesn't have legal authority. Like I say fully generalizable and ends up saying that none of us can actually make our own choices where someone else has some kind of pressure to exert. Which given as you say we exist in a society, is almost everyone.
I reject that premise entirely. You do not have to do what a doctor tells you, you can get a second opinion or a third, you can research yourself. This is not the middle ages. Just as with David Bowie, they have no power over you! Stop denying people their agency.
No, U. There's a spectrum between agency and coercion, I'm arguing that what the GAC doctors are doing is falling on the coercive side of the spectrum. If you wish to disagree about my assessment, that's fair game, but you're saying I'm denying the very possibility of someone having agency. This implies a strict binary (or hell, unary) worldview, where no shades of grey exist. It is you, therefore that is making a fully generalizable argument for the total invalidity of the concepts of manipulation and pressure. I wouldn't even mind, if you actually believed that, but as usual, I'm pretty sure you're only deploying this argument strategically. But I dunno man, surprise me. Show me your #MeToo era posts defending Harvey Weinstein.
Why yes, if you don't like Dr. Freeman's opinion on the necessity of you getting a lobotomy, you can get a second opinion from Dr. Watts, and if you don't like his opinion either, you can always talk to Dr. Moniz.
Your right to get a second opinion does not absolve doctors from acting in an ethical way. The whole point of there being a licencing system to begin with, is so that people don't have to constantly keep "caveat emptor" in their mind, when they go visit a doctor. Now, if you want to argue for the total abolition of the licensing system (and no, "ho hum, I am not against relaxing the licensing a little" does not count), the conversation can progress, but as long as there is licensing, ethical rules must apply.
Sure,but where you started out was where the doctors were actually advocating for what they believed was the best solution, but were wrong. That isn't an ethical problem.
If a doctor is recommending something they know to be harmful, i've already said they should be dealt with however their local area prefers.
But a doctor who is trying to do their best and is wrong, should be advocating for what they think is in the patients best interest. And the patient or parent can accept that or not. If they are being lied to that is different, but the situation we are discussing is one where they don't lie, they themselves are wrong, but well intentioned.
Otherwise we wouldn't have been talking about whether intentionally doing harm was worse than trying to help but doing harm anyway remember?
This is why the first time round, i was trying to understand your actual position, because you kind of keep equivocating between these doctors are well intentioned and these doctors know they are wrong. And so your arguments keep criss-crossing over that point. You initially talk about them as if they are well intentioned but incorrect, but then your arguments assume they are lying, pushy assholes. But someone who is genuinely well intentioned and actively trying to get the best outcome for the patient is highly unlikely to be a lying pushy asshole (most doctors in my experience are distinctly not Gregory House M.D.)
My arguments are based on us talking about people who are genuinely well intentioned. A good person who is wrong is highly unlikely to lie to a patient about treatment because from his perspective he doesn't have to. The facts are on his side. This is the best option.
What are you talking about? Of course it is. Lobotomists thought lobotomies were the best solution, ovariotomists thought ovariotomies were the best solution, etc., etc., etc. None of that absolves them of the violation of ethics they comitted.
There is, again, pages upon pages of various ethical guidelines that medical practitioners have to follow, they usually don't get to circumvent them with "I think this will yield the best results". Why do you want transgender care to be handled differently?
Yes, so are mine. There is a certain type of "genuinely good intentions" that are used to justify lying, and sometime much, much worse. This is the entire basis of me calling some types of well-intentioned behavior just as bad as ill-intentioned behavior, and transgender care would be a very salient example. They have been caught lying in public and in private, and they have been doing so systemically. They do have good intentions though.
By the way - please stick to a single subject, and limit yourself to advocating only for things you actually believe. We've went from the abstract topic of judging well-intentioned behavior just as bad as ill-intentioned bahvior, to the ins and outs of transgender care, and back again. Nothing we talked about in the middle was necessary to reach this point, and it comes off as throwing spaghetti at the wall.
This is a discussion and a conversation, not a debate being scored. It goes where it goes that's the beauty of this format. So no, I won't stick to a single point, any more than you have. You don't get to set the rules in a conversation. That is not how this works. If I go on a tangent you don't want to talk about, just don't follow me down that path. Neither of ys get yo control what the other says, just what we do.
Do you have examples of where you think doctors have lied to their patients (or the parents of their parients) in this frame?
Doctors who lobotomized patients when that was the prevailing medical consensus were not themselves behaving unethically at the time. This is critical because it one of the reasons I am not a progressive. The most ethical doctor in the world who looked at all the reearch and thought, sounds like this is exactly what my patient needs is not being unethical. He is just wrong and ignorant. A doctor who did it today, knowing better would be unethical.
If we discover tomorrow that heart transplants are slowly destroying the planet, that doesn't mean heart surgeons were unethical to do it.
Lets say for the sake of argument you are correct that doctors themselves are being hoodwinked by WPATH. But that doesn't mean Dr Smith who is following the guidelines (but had no hand in writing them) is being unethical himself. Being unethical requires (ironically) informed decision making.
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