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I don’t think kids in Alabama deserve bad education that puts them behind their peers because their parents aren’t very smart
Poor, minority heavy states do badly at education. It doesn’t have much to do with policy it’s about what they have to work with.
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And I don't think kids in California deserve to be chemically castrated because they gravitated to the wrong kind of toy. Would you rather have my views applied locally or globally?
Do you have any evidence that kids in California are being chemically castrated?
Anyone who's on puberty blockers is being chemically castrated. It's the same did ug that's used for both.
Okay, well, that’s not true, but you do you.
Do you have any evidence that it's not true? Like I said, they use the exact same drug, with the exact same purpose (sex-hormone suppression).
Also, answer my question: do you want my views applied globally or locally?
I, too, would like a source for that.
A casual search suggests that the standard for chemical castration is “MPA”, or maybe “DMPA.” At least that’s what California law specified. If I understand it right, that’s a progestin (progestogen??) similar to what’s in the combination birth control pill.
Wikipedia claims the preferred blockers are “GnRH agonists” and maybe antagonists. It mentions progestogens to say they might be cheaper, and the main source is about precocious puberty, not gender identity.
In case Wikipedia is shamelessly misrepresenting the issue, I looked at a couple other sites. Neither suggests (D)MPA or any progestogen.
I think you got too fixated on the DMPA thing, GnRH agonists are also used for chemical castration. Off the top off my head Lupron is used for both chemical castration and puberty suppression.
Looks like I did.
Though I notice we’re talking about voluntary cancer treatments rather than state-mandated sterilization. I get the impression there’s some noncentral uses of “chemical castration.” When you say kids are castrating themselves, are you comparing them to cancer patients taking desperate measures? To predators being made safe for society? No, the central meaning of “castration” is pretty different.
Bringing it back to the progestins. Progesterones? Progestogens? I think you could draw a much less ambiguous line between the California-compliant DMPA and the various hormonal types of birth control. I think it would be easy to collect evidence of how the hormones affect libido, disrupt cycles, and otherwise warp the normal human sexual experience. But it would be really unconvincing to complain that women are “castrating” themselves. Supporters would say something like “yeah, I guess, except it’s reversible and non surgical and doesn’t make us the power behind the imperial throne. So, different in the ways that matter.”
That’s kind of how I feel about the usage here. The load-bearing questions are things like safety, reversibility, political leverage. Calling it “chemical castration” isn’t enough to answer those.
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Adding that I think its a time thing, any kid that goes on puberty blockers for more than a few months will never proceed through all of the puberty phases (even if you give them cross sex hormones) and they hit their 20s unable to orgasm. Not to mention the nasty damage it does to their brains (possibly an entire standard deviation of IQ).
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In 2024, Alabama had a higher average literacy score than Maine, Vermont, Delaware, Texas, and California, to name a few. And the same or higher percentage of students at basic reading level. Who is getting a bad education because of dumb parents?
Can you link the study that says that?
https://www.newsweek.com/math-reading-scores-us-states-2022836
1 second of googling.
The rules of this forum are….? Suggestions?
Demanding rigor in a rhetorical cage match is a fatality. OP's statement was clear and google-able at a copy/paste, first-result level. The off-handed claim about Alabama sucking didn't help either, some around here might call it a dog-whistle. Anyway, save your battles.
Claim: it's dangerous for different states to adopt different standards from each other.
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Here's a convenient summary of the National Center for Education Statistics data on National Assessment of Educational Progress. To clarify, this does not include adult literacy, just students in grade school. Which I think is a better view of current education standings than adult literacy.
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