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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33522 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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A heads-up: Yudkowsky will be talking AI with YouTube long-timer Ross Scott on the 3rd. This comes after Ross's last videochat with fans [warning: long, use the timestamps in one of the comments to skip around], where AI and Big Yud came up.

I expect that Ross will be able to wring some sort of explanation about AI risk out of Yudkowsky that will be palatable to the everyman. Ross has talked about things like Peak Oil before (here's an old, old video on the subject), so I think it will be interesting to see. I'll have to see if I can find out Ross's position on AI risk so far.

Yud should stop trying to convince the everyman. I’m not saying that no one should do that, just that Yud specifically should not bother with it. It’s not good for his mental health or morale to be dealing with people this dumb. It clearly disturbs him on an emotional level.

Maybe it's just because I'm not in on the game enough, or that I'm getting bored, or that I'm a little too honest about being stupid, but I'm starting to get the same kind of vibes from these interviews as I get from listening to one too many interviews with 'science popularizers' and physicists talking about black holes and solar systems or whatever. At some point the endless stream of analogies, abstractions and hypothetical arguments just starts sounding like a 2 hour poem about math that I don't understand.

You can assure me it makes sense. You can explain to me how this new and exciting theory of the universe, that hinges entirely on mathematical assumptions, is like dumping a gallon of milk into a box of cereal before pouring it into the bowl, and I can maybe relate to that analogy because I know milk and cereal. But, again, at the end of the day I will never be able to relate that analogy to what is actually being talked about because all that's really there is theoretical math I don't understand.

These conversations seem to follow a similar but slightly different path of, there's no actual math, just assumptions being made about the future. The AI man says we are doomed if we continue. Here's a powerful analogy. Here's technobabble about code... Like, dude, you got me, OK? This appeals to my vanity for coffee table philosophical arguments and you are a credentialed person who sounds confident in your convictions. I guess we are doomed. Now, who is the next guest on Joe Rogan? Oh, science man is going to tell me about a super massive black hole that can eat the sun. Bro, did you know that a volcanic eruption in Yellowstone park could decimate the entire planet? This doctor was talking about anti-biotics and...

I don't want to come across as too belligerent, but all this stuff just seems to occupy the same slot of 'it feels important/novel to care'. I'm not going to pretend to understand or care any more than I would care about Yellowstone. I'll accept all the passionate believers telling me that they told me so when the inevitable mega-earthquakes happen.

But until then I'll just continue enjoying the memes that predate our inevitable apocalypse with the same urgency that the people worrying over AI show when enjoying yet another 4 hour interview, followed by days of more rigorous debate, over the ever encroaching extinction level threat that is AI.

1/2

You can explain to me how this new and exciting theory of the universe, that hinges entirely on mathematical assumptions, is like dumping a gallon of milk into a box of cereal before pouring it into the bowl, and I can maybe relate to that analogy because I know milk and cereal. But, again, at the end of the day I will never be able to relate that analogy to what is actually being talked about because all that's really there is theoretical math I don't understand.

Your broad impression is correct with one massive caveat: there's no there, there. It is about milk and cereal, and the pretense that the analogy simplifies some profound idea is a pose, it serves to belittle and bully you into meek acceptance of the conclusion which is not founded on some solid model applying to the bowl and the universe alike. Yud's opinions do not follow from math, he arrived at them before stumbling on convenient math, most other doomers don't even understand involved math, and none of this math says much of anything about AI we are likely to build.

It's important to realize, I think, that Yud's education is 75% Science Fiction from his dad's library and 25% Jewish lore in cheder he flunked out of. That's all he learned systematically in his life, I'm afraid; other than that he just skimmed Kahnemahn, Cialdini and so on, assorted pop-sci, and some math and physics and comp sci because he is, after all, pretty smart and inclined to play around with cute abstractions. But that's it. He never had to meet deadlines, he never worked empirically, he never applied any of the math he learned in a way that was regularized against some real-world benchmark, KPI or a mean professor. Bluntly, he's a fraud, a simulacrum, an impostor.

More charitably, he's a 43-year-old professional wunderkind whose self-perception hinges on continuing to play the part. He's similar to Yevgeny «Genius» «Maestro» Ponasenkov, a weird fat guy who LARPs as a pre-Revolutionary noble and a maverick historian (based). Colloquially these people are known as freaks and crackpots, and their best defense for the last two millenia is that Socrates was probably the same but he became Great; except he did not LARP as anyone else.

I know this dirty observation is not polite to make among Rationalists. I've talked to really smart and accomplished people who roll their eyes when I say this about Yud, who object «come on now, you're clowning yourself, the guy's some savant – hell, I've got a Ph.D in particle physics and won at the All-Russian Math Olympiad, and he's nobody but talks jargon like he understands it better than my peers» and I want to scream «you dumb defenseless quokka, do you realize that while you were grinding for that Olympiad he was grinding to give off signals of an epic awesome Sci-Fi character?! That for every bit of knowledge, he gets a hundredfold more credit than you, because he arranges it into a mask while you add to the pearl of your inner understanding? That the way Yud comes across is not a glimpse of his formidability but the whole of it? Can you not learn that we wordcels are born with dark magic at the tips of our tongues, magic you do not possess, magic that cannot remake nature but enslaves minds?»

Ahem.

Let's talk about one such analogy, actually the core analogy he uses: it's about human evolution and inclusive genetic fitness. AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities, 5th Jun '22:

Section B:

So why not train a giant stack of transformer layers on a dataset of agents doing nice things and not bad things, throw in the word 'corrigibility' somewhere, crank up that computing power, and get out an aligned AGI?

Section B.2:  Central difficulties of outer and inner alignment.

16.  Even if you train really hard on an exact loss function, that doesn't thereby create an explicit internal representation of the loss function inside an AI that then continues to pursue that exact loss function in distribution-shifted environments.  Humans don't explicitly pursue inclusive genetic fitness; outer optimization even on a very exact, very simple loss function doesn't produce inner optimization in that direction.  This happens in practice in real life, it is what happened in the only case we know about, and it seems to me that there are deep theoretical reasons to expect it to happen again: the first semi-outer-aligned solutions found, in the search ordering of a real-world bounded optimization process, are not inner-aligned solutions.  This is sufficient on its own, even ignoring many other items on this list, to trash entire categories of naive alignment proposals which assume that if you optimize a bunch on a loss function calculated using some simple concept, you get perfect inner alignment on that concept.

Point 16, Misalignment In The Only Precedent We Know About, is a big deal. There are 46 points in total, but it's a bit of a sham: many about AGI being smart, politics of «preventing other people from building an unaligned AGI», handwringing in 39-43, «multiple unaligned AGIs still bad», other padding. Pretty much every moving part depends on the core argument for AI being very likely to «learn wrong» i.e. acquire traits that unfold as hazardous out of (training) distribution, and the 16th corroborates all of such distributional reasoning in B.1 (10-15). 17-19, arguably more, expound on 16.

Accordingly, Yudkowsky cites it a lot and in slightly varied forms, e.g. on Bankless, 20th Feb 23:

we do not know how to get goals into a system. We can cause them to do a thing inside a distribution they were optimized over using gradient descent. But if you shift them outside of that distribution, I expect other weird things start happening. … GPT-7, there's probably a bunch of stuff in there too that desires to accurately model things like humans under a wide range of circumstances, but it's not exactly humans because ice cream didn't exist in the natural environment, the ancestral environment, the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. There was nothing with that much sugar, salt, fat combined together as ice cream. We are not built to want ice cream. We were built to want strawberries, honey, a gazelle that you killed and cooked … but then ice cream comes along and it fits those taste buds better than anything that existed in the environment that we were optimized over.

On Fridman, 20th March '23:

You can nonetheless imagine that there is this hill climbing process, not like gradient descent, because gradient descent uses calculus, this is just using like, where are you? But still, hill climbing in both cases makes things something better and better over time, in steps, and natural selection was optimizing exclusively for this very simple, pure criterion of inclusive genetic fitness in a very complicated environment. We're doing a very wide range of things and solving a wide range of problems led to having more kids, and this got you humans which had no internal notion of inclusive genetic fitness until thousands of years later, when they were actually figuring out what had even happened, and no desire to, no explicit desire to increase inclusive genetic fitness. So from this important case study, we may infer the important fact that if you do a whole bunch of hill climbing on a very simple loss function, at the point where the system's capabilities start to generalize very widely, when it is in an intuitive sense becoming very capable and generalizing far outside the training distribution, we know that there is no general law saying that the system even internally represents, let alone tries to optimize the very simple loss function you are training it on.

(Distinguishing SGD from an evolutionary algorithm with the mention of «calculus» is a bit odd).

And on Twitter, April 24th 2023 :

…for example, hominid evolution falsifies any purported general law along the lines of "hill-climbing optimization for a loss function, to the point where that produces general intelligence, produces robust generalization of the intuitive 'meaning' of the loss function even as the system optimized becomes more intelligent". Humans were optimized purely for inclusive genetic fitness, and we ended up with no built-in internal psychological concept of what that is. When we got smarter, smart enough that condoms were a new option that didn't exist in the ancestral environment / training distribution, we started using condoms. Gradient descent isn't natural selection, but…

It's not just Yudkowsky these days but e.g. Evan Hubinger, AI safety research scientist at Anthropic, the premier alignment-concerned lab, in 2020.

And Yud's Youtube evangelist Rob Miles, Apr 21, 2023:

@ESYudkowsky I propose this as a clearer example to support "Humans are not trying to maximise inclusive genetic fitness even a little bit"

It definitely is the ultimate cause of our motivations, emotions, and values, my point is just that this fact is not sufficient for us to explicitly try to get it

2/2

Note that this evo-talk is nothing new. In 2007, Eliezer wrote Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximizers:

No human being with the deliberate goal of maximizing their alleles' inclusive genetic fitness, would ever eat a cookie unless they were starving. But individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers.

…This consequence is directly opposite the key regularity in the long chain of ancestral successes which caused the taste bud's shape. But, since overeating has only recently become a problem, no significant evolution (compressed regularity of ancestry) has further influenced the taste bud's shape.

…Smushing several of the concepts together, you could sort-of-say, "Modern humans do today what would have propagated our genes in a hunter-gatherer society, whether or not it helps our genes in a modern society."

The framing (and snack choice) has subtly changed: back then it was trivial that the «blind idiot god» (New Atheism was still fresh, too) does not optimize for anything and successfully aligns nothing. Back then, Eliezer pooh-poohed gradient descent as well. Now that it's at the heart of AI-as-practiced, evolution is a fellow hill-climbing algorithm that tries very hard to optimize on a loss function yet fails to induce generalized alignment.

I could go on but hopefully we can see that this is a major intuition pump.

It's a bad pump and Evolution is a bad analogy for AGI: inner alignment. Enter Quintin Pope, 13th Aug 2022.

One way people motivate extreme levels of concern about inner misalignment is to reference the fact that evolution failed to align humans to the objective of maximizing inclusive genetic fitness. … Evolution didn't directly optimize over our values. It optimized over our learning process and reward circuitry.

The relationship we want to make inferences about is: - "a particular AI's learning process + reward function + training environment -> the AI's learned values"

I think that "AI learning -> AI values" is much more similar to "human learning -> human values" than it is to "evolution -> human values". Steve Byrnes makes this case in much more detail in his post on the matter [23rd Mar 2021].

Evolution is a bi-level optimization process, with evolution optimizing over genes, and the genes specifying the human learning process, which then optimizes over human cognition. … SGD directly optimizes over an AI’s cognition, just as human within-lifetime learning directly optimizes over human cognition.

Or putting this in the «sharp left turn» frame:

within-lifetime learning happens much, much faster than evolution. Even if we conservatively say that brains do two updates per second, and that a generation is just 20 years long, that means a single person’s brain will perform ~1.2 billion updates per generation. … We don't train AIs via an outer optimizer over possible inner learning processes, where each inner learning process is initialized from scratch, then takes billions of inner learning steps before the outer optimization process takes one step, and then is deleted after the outer optimizer's single step. Such a bi-level training process would necessarily experience a sharp left turn once each inner learner became capable of building off the progress made by the previous inner learner. … However, this sharp left turn does not occur because the inner learning processes suddenly become much better / more foomy / more general in a handful of outer optimization steps.… In my frame, we've already figured out and applied the sharp left turn to our AI systems, in that we don't waste our compute on massive amounts of incredibly inefficient neural architecture search, hyperparameter tuning, or meta optimization.

Put another way: it is crucial that SGD optimizes policies themselves, and with smooth, high-density feedback from their performance on the objective function, while evolution random-walks over architectures and inductive biases of policies. An individual model is vastly more analogous to an individual human than to an evolving species, no matter on how many podcasts Yud says «hill climbing». Evolution in principle cannot be trusted to create policies that work robustly out of distribution: it can only search for local basins of optimality that are conditional on the distribution, outside of which adaptive behavior predicated on stupid evolved inductive biases does not get learned. This consideration makes the analogy based on both algorithms being «hill-climbing» deceptive, and regularized SGD inherently a stronger paradigm for OOD alignment.

But Yud keeps making it. When Quintin wrote a damning list of objections to Yud's position (using Bankless episode as a starting point), a month ago, he brought it up in more detail:

This is an argument [Yud] makes quite often, here and elsewhere, and I think it's completely wrong. I think that analogies to evolution tell us roughly nothing about the difficulty of alignment in machine learning.

… Moreover, robust alignment to IGF requires that you even have a concept of IGF in the first place. Ancestral humans never developed such a concept, so it was never useful for evolution to select for reward circuitry that would cause humans to form values around the IGF concept.

[Gradient descent] is different in that it directly optimizes over values / cognition, and that AIs will presumably have a conception of human values during training.

[Ice cream example] also illustrates the importance of thinking mechanistically, and not allegorically.

the reason humans like ice cream is because evolution created a learning process with hard-coded circuitry that assigns high rewards for eating foods like ice cream.

What does this mean for alignment? How do we prevent AIs from behaving badly as a result of a similar "misgeneralization"? What alignment insights does the fleshed-out mechanistic story of humans coming to like ice cream provide?

As far as I can tell, the answer is: don't reward your AIs for taking bad actions.

That's all it would take, because the mechanistic story above requires a specific step where the human eats ice cream and activates their reward circuits.

Compare, Yud'07: «Cognitive causes are ontologically distinct from evolutionary causes. They are made out of a different kind of stuff. Cognitive causes are made of neurons. Evolutionary causes are made of ancestors.» And «DNA constructs protein brains with reward signals that have a long-distance correlation to reproductive fitness, but a short-distance correlation to organism behavior… We, the handiwork of evolution, are as alien to evolution as our Maker is alien to us.»

So how did Yud'23 respond?

This is kinda long.  If I had time to engage with one part of this as a sample of whether it holds up to a counterresponse, what would be the strongest foot you could put forward?

Then he was pitched the evolution problem, and curtly answered the most trivial issue he could instead. «And that's it, I guess».

So the distinction of (what we in this DL era can understand as) learning policies and evolving inductive biases was recognized by Yud as early as in 2007; the concrete published-on-Lesswrong explanation why evolution is a bad analogy for AI training dates to 2021 at the latest; Quintin's analysis is 8+ months old; this hasn't had much effect on Yud's rhetoric about evolution being an important precedent supporting his pessimism, nor on the conviction of believers that his reasoning is sound.

It seems he's just anchored to the point, and strongly feels these issues are all nitpicks, and the argument should still work, one way or another, at least it proves that something-kinda-like-that is likely and therefore doom is still inevitable – even if evolution «does not use calculus», even if the category of «hill-climbing algorithms» is not informative. He barely glanced at what gradient descent does, and concluded that it's an optimization process, thus he's totally right.

People who try sniffing "nobody in alignment understands real AI engineering"... must have never worked in real AI engineering, to have no idea how few of the details matter to the macro arguments. … Or, of course, if they're real AI engineers themselves and do know all those technical details that are obviously not relevant - why, they must be lying, or self-deceiving so strongly that it amounts to other-deception, when they try that particular gambit for bullying and authority-assertion.

His arguments, on the level of pointing at something particular, are purely verbal, not even verbal math. When he uses specific technical terms, they don't necessarily correspond to the discussed issue, and often sound like buzzwords he vaguely associated with it. Sometimes he's demonstrably ignorant about their meaning. The Big Picture conclusion never changes.

Maybe it can't.

This is a sample from dunk on Yud that I drafted over 24 hours of pathological irritation recently. Overall it's pretty mean and unhinged and I'm planning to write something better soon.

Hope this helps.

Bad take, except that MAML also found no purchase, similar to other Levine's ideas.

He directly and accurately describes evolution and its difference from current approaches, but he's aware of a wide range or implementations of meta-learning. In the objections list he literally links to MAML::

I'm a lot more bullish on the current paradigm. People have tried lots and lots of approaches to getting good performance out of computers, including lots of "scary seeming" approaches such as:

1 Meta-learning over training processes. I.e., using gradient descent over learning curves, directly optimizing neural networks to learn more quickly.

2 Teaching neural networks to directly modify themselves by giving them edit access to their own weights.

3 Training learned optimizers - neural networks that learn to optimize other neural networks - and having those learned optimizers optimize themselves.

4 Using program search to find more efficient optimizers.

5 Using simulated evolution to find more efficient architectures.

6 Using efficient second-order corrections to gradient descent's approximate optimization process.

7 Tried applying biologically plausible optimization algorithms inspired by biological neurons to training neural networks.

8 Adding learned internal optimizers (different from the ones hypothesized in Risks from Learned Optimization) as neural network layers.

9 Having language models rewrite their own training data, and improve the quality of that training data, to make themselves better at a given task.

10 Having language models devise their own programming curriculum, and learn to program better with self-driven practice.

11 Mixing reinforcement learning with model-driven, recursive re-writing of future training data.

Mostly, these don't work very well. The current capabilities paradigm is state of the art because it gives the best results of anything we've tried so far, despite lots of effort to find better paradigms.

And the next paragraph on sharp left turn:

In my frame, we've already figured out and applied the sharp left turn to our AI systems, in that we don't waste our compute on massive amounts of incredibly inefficient neural architecture search, hyperparameter tuning, or meta optimization. For a given compute budget, the best (known) way to buy capabilities is to train a single big model in accordance with empirical scaling laws

Yuddites, on the other hand, mostly aren't aware of any of that. I am not sure they even read press releases.

I admit this is surprising. I would've predicted the Butlerian Jihad movement deprioritizing Yud as a crank who may blurt out some risky political take, but he establishes himself more and more as the Rightful Caliph. Have Yuddites discovered a stash of SBF's lunch money to buy a bunch of podcasters, including some crypto has-beens looking for a new grift? Or is this simply a snowball effect, where Yud is becoming more credible and attractive the more he goes to podcasts?

On the other hand, this is all show for the plebs anyway; Policy people never lack for experts to cite. And «rationalists» can straight up lie to their audiences even about words of those experts.

I should accelerate my work on a dunk on Yudkowsky's whole paradigm, even though it honestly feels hopeless and pointless. If anyone has better ideas, I'm all ears.

Yud is a useful idiot. Not in the sense that he's stupid or even that his arguments are wrong: their truth or well-reasoned-ness is entirely besides the point. AI is clearly important, and people (including people with political power) are worried about it and the threat it poses to them. Amplifying a weird, neurotic extremist yelling on the sidelines about paperclips provides useful cover for more "restrained" control over AI: on one side is Yud, on the other is careless AI libertarians hellbent on either destroying civilization or making revenge porn of their exes, and in the middle are helpful folks like the FTC, EEOC, and CFPB who offer careful, educated policies to expand their power to protect the people from unlawful bias and other harmful outcomes.

Yud is a useful idiot.

What makes useful idiots useful is that they are not dumb, just clueless or naive. So probably good description of the non grifter portion of AI concerned people.

I don't think Yud is either, he is just optimised for maintaining his grift. I'm not even sure if he is aware what is happening, people usually aren't. In fact the more intelligent people are the more susceptible they seem to be to their own arguments.

People subconsciously drink their own coolaid and move goalposts around and use arguments as soldiers so they don't have to change. Its hilarious how someone so into "rationalism" could be such an antithesis of his stated goal.

I admit this is surprising. I would've predicted the Butlerian Jihad movement deprioritizing Yud as a crank who may blurt out some risky political take, but he establishes himself more and more as the Rightful Caliph. Have Yuddites discovered a stash of SBF's lunch money to buy a bunch of podcasters, including some crypto has-beens looking for a new grift? Or is this simply a snowball effect, where Yud is becoming more credible and attractive the more he goes to podcasts?

Yud was right, Kulak was wrong. Way to get things done is from above, through influencing elites and aspiring elites, not through impressing normies with handsome looks and smart fashion, not through doomed direct action.

This is only the beginning. The Katechon pact is coming, hide your laptop.

Yud's message is aligned with the powers that be, so his voice will be magically amplified by the algorithm. The state is scrambling to ramp up their AI capabilities. They need the boot on any ambitious small companies in the form of a "six month pause". Yud thinks he's advocating for a less dangerous arms race, in reality he's just helping the most dangerous people catch up.

This makes sense if you consider that Yud takes Roko's Basilisk seriously. He's clearly realized this is his best contribution to its existence.

This makes sense if you consider that Yud takes Roko's Basilisk seriously. He's clearly realized this is his best contribution to its existence.

Well, how Big Yud reacted back then when Roko posted his idea on Less Wrong?

Called it wrong?

No, Yud went into full loud screaming mode.

https://basilisk.neocities.org/

I don't usually talk like this, but I'm going to make an exception for this case.

Listen to me very closely, you idiot.

YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL.

and then put total ban on any further basilisk discussions on LW.

Not a reaction of someone who is not even slightly worried.

If big Y dissmissed this thing or just stayed silent, the whole idea would be forgotten in few days like other LW thought experiments. Streissand effect bites hard even if you are super genius.

Not a reaction of someone who is not even slightly worried.

Sure it is. Yudkowsky is exactly the sort of person who would be outraged at the idea of someone sharing what that person claims is a basilisk, regardless of whether he thinks the specific argument makes any sense. He is also exactly the sort of person who would approach internet moderation with hyper-abstract ideas like "anything which claims to be a basilisk should be censored like one" rather than in terms of PR.

Speaking or writing in a way where it's difficult to use your statements to smear you even after combing through decades of remarks is hard. It's why politicians use every question as a jumping off point to launch into prepared talking-points. Part of Yudkowsky's appeal is that he's a very talented writer who doesn't tend to do that, instead you get the weirdness of his actual thought-processes. When presented with Roko's dumb argument his thoughts were about "correct procedure to handle things claiming to be basilisks", rather than "since the argument claims it should be censored, censoring it could be used to argue I believe it, so I should focus on presenting minimum attack-surface against someone trying to smear me that way".

https://archive.is/nM0yJ

Again, I deleted that post not because I had decided that this thing probably presented a real hazard, but because I was afraid some unknown variant of it might, and because it seemed to me like the obvious General Procedure For Handling Things That Might Be Infohazards said you shouldn't post them to the Internet. If you look at the original SF story where the term "basilisk" was coined, it's about a mind-erasing image and the.... trolls, I guess, though the story predates modern trolling, who go around spraypainting the Basilisk on walls, using computer guidance so they don't know themselves what the Basilisk looks like, in hopes the Basilisk will erase some innocent mind, for the lulz. These people are the villains of the story. The good guys, of course, try to erase the Basilisk from the walls. Painting Basilisks on walls is a crap thing to do. Since there was no upside to being exposed to Roko's Basilisk, its probability of being true was irrelevant. And Roko himself had thought this was a thing that might actually work. So I yelled at Roko for violating basic sanity about infohazards for stupid reasons, and then deleted the post. He, by his own lights, had violated the obvious code for the ethical handling of infohazards, conditional on such things existing, and I was indignant about this.

I recommend Ross' old Deus Ex review/retrospective where he discussed various conspiracy theories in detail.

Ross is well suited to these kinds of discussions. He's the best.

To be fair it is sort of cheating when you have a time machine.

Now this is a weird crossover I didn't expect. What's next, Angry Joe interviewing Nick Land?

...Holy shit, I kinda want that. I mean, I never cared for Angry Joe all that much, but still.

The state of Minnesota has passed a trans refuge bill.

Specifically, the bill would prohibit the enforcement of a court order for removal of a child or enforcement of another state’s law being applied in a pending child protection action in Minnesota when the law of another state allows the child to be removed from the parent or guardian for receiving medically necessary health care or mental health care that respects the gender-identity of the patient.

From my reading of this (not a lawyer, obvs): previously if a child ran away from home, and was found, the child would be returned to the child's parents. Now, however, if a child runs away from home, and claims a "transgender identity" the state will use its powers to keep the child from its parents.

This seems: absolutely pants-shittingly insane to me? Like I'm sortof reeling from disbelief at this and am still trying to figure out what I'm missing. This also seems to imply that if a child runs away to Minnesota, that the child will be kept in Minnesota away from his or her parents.

Can anybody help me understand this? This goes so far beyond anything that I had even considered in the realm of possibility that I'm sure I must be misunderstanding this.

As a related side note: I am reaching a point where reading things on this topic is becoming incredibly difficult. There seems to be so many seemingly double/triple/quadruple entendre words that its hard to follow.

Insane? If I'm correct in believing a fundamental necessity of American life in the 21st century -- as far as moneyed powers are concerned -- is to prune the surplus population in ways which provoke their naïve consent, then this proposed measure is very, very sane.

  • -10

But muh Demographic Transition...

Put more eloquently, this doesn't make sense. A number of people here will likely have the stats on hand showing that the US is already below the replacement threshold in terms of fertility. And, of course, I think this law is within that area of "I think the stated motivations of the people behind it are their literal and honest motivations, and there is no ulterior motive, only ignorance of repercussions."

Since the death rate is exceeding the birth rate the system should stop employing its eugenicist gears? This is a silly thought.

To your second point, your opinion is in that area of “No one knows anything that isn’t explicitly spelled out to them, even if the pattern should be obvious without the explanation.”

What if you are not correct?

Then the world is exactly as dumb as you think it is.

That's not what I mean.

Surely you have to take into account, as anybody with reason, that dooming people to terrible fates when you are not certain it is for the best is not good, because you might just be wrong and doing evil. And even then, all of the most terrible people of history share one unshaking belief in the righteousness of their cause, and they were all wrong.

The hard part of virtue is finding the strength to do things even in the face of our own fallibility, but we should first climb over the hurdle of the easy part: not treating matters of life and death with reckless banality.

Of course no evil is ever done in the name of evil. But that has nothing to do with what I’m saying, so I’ll level: I don’t think there’s anything good about this particular brand of sanity.

But if you believe there are “too many” people (I don’t)…

If you believe this surplus creates damage to the whole (I don’t)…

If you believe transgenderism is an innate and immutable condition (I don’t)…

Then these measures are defensible on any of those grounds, (albeit for very different reasons) and you’ll find yourself on the losing end of these arguments more often than not if you concede to any of those framing narratives.

Me? I believe most everything is imaginary and divisions are created or destroyed in order to meet the dictates of an unknown author. Whether it’s Von Neumann’s idea of unthinking geometrical processes to which humans are blindly governed, Steiner’s idea of competing archetypes (Lucifer and Ahriman), Jung’s idea of participacion mystique, or if some people are knowingly serving nonhuman/antihuman entities, I’m not sure and I doubt anyone who is.

Yeah, I see this being abused by people claiming that their child abuse cases are about the kid being trans.

How so?

This would just render the previous law meaningless if they're just going to take the kid's word for it when they claim to be trans. It's disheartening how we came about to completely dismantle the family, a basic foundations of society, through a literal culture war.

Came about? Wasn't that the primary goal of one side in the culture war?

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

It's chapter two of their manefesto.

There are a lot of people in this thread comparing their child transitioning to death.

It's one thing to think of it as a bad thing that is happening to your child. But it is hyperbolic to compare transition with death.

Um. Sir or Madam. Your child is not dead. Unless you're saying they're dead to you-

Its either a serious case of ideological blindness or serious levels of intellectual dishonesty to actually claim trans child == dead child.

All the posters saying the bloodline ends at sterility, do you prefer sterile but alive or dead? As if parents only want their kids to be alive for the bloodline.

To add onto the other comments here, I'm under the perception that a significantly-non-zero amount of trans teens and young adults tend to have strained relationships with their parents precisely because they no longer resemble the parent's idea/vision/memory of the child they once sired. No, this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that their ability to have children of their own has been compromised, but for some parents, yes, a trans child is so dissimilar that the "original" might as well be dead.

I don't think it is necessarily a serious level of intellectual dishonesty. There are a lot of statistics available on the survival rates of trans individuals, and in terms of long-lasting consequences or death you're probably better off hearing that your child was just shot in the chest than hearing that they've just transitioned.

Its either a serious case of ideological blindness or serious levels of intellectual dishonesty to actually claim trans child == dead child.

It's stealing a base, but it's as apt a metaphor for the parents as it is for the trans people who use it to describe themselves.

I have a nephew who has claimed to be a girl for the last few years. He recently told his parents that he was encouraged to do this by his therapist as a way to mitigate suicidal feelings. He's still suicidal and worse now that he went through this insanity and it didn't help. In a way, his transition was a kind of failed metaphorical suicide attempt. I have no idea how parents react to a child who tried and failed to kill themselves, except from movies like Ordinary People, but it's like a kind of death. There's grieving for sure. It turns death from a remote specter to an omnipresent reality in every future interaction with that child. Parents tend to irrationally fear the worst, anyway; although you compartmentalize such fears as irrational. After a suicide attempt, however, they have pictured their kid dead as reality and now will fear suicide every time the phone rings and probably for most minutes in between those phone calls. If it's not death it must be an excruciating and unrelenting tease of death.

It's not a huge leap for me to assume that the parental reaction to a serious suicide attempt would be similar to a reaction to a supposed gender transition.

There's also a kind of an "undead" quality to their presence after transition, like in a horror movie where a loved one has returned as a vampire or zombie. There's this uncanny valley between the person you used to think you knew and this disturbing thing that has replaced them that signifies something no one wants to address or think about. While is does not threaten harm, it casts a pall of unease over every interaction. If it's not the death of a person, it is like the death of normalcy. Maybe normalcy was a fantasy, but it was a mutually agreed fantasy that has been destroyed by this thing that lives between the lines of order and now stares everyone in the face in broad daylight, and you know that both you are shamed by how you react to its presence as it is shamed by the disruption of its unspeakable presence in its current form. It's a death that has half-happened and stands in the room as a reminder of its possibility and yet can't be spoken about. Is that worse than death? With death there is peace. Maybe there's not a word for it yet, and death is the closest we can come up with so far.

In practice, it's pretty close.

It's not just the superficial transformation, because it's usually accompanied by a kind of religious conversion, and the transition is like a "born again" experience, with the old identity becoming a "deadname". Moreover, if you question or resist this along the way, you will cast as a villain in the ideological grand narrative. There are so many ways this can either ruin your child or ruin your relationship with them, and in the end they are no less likely to commit suicide anyway.

Do you take the same issue with the term “dead naming”?

This is not as much of a gotcha as you think it is because I am not a big believer of the descriptions and prescriptions put forward by the trans activists.

But I am a big believer in not letting politics cloud my judgement.

Just checking!

The whole idea is that your old child died and a new one replaced it

I'd be more interested in knowing whether they'd equate a normal but childless-past-some-significant-age child (as many Millenials are) to a dead one. I know that some would, in traditional societies especially.

But here, obviously this bloodline thing is a rationalization for a moral intuition about badness of trans. I'd prefer if people argued directly for what they believe. Fear of reprisal warps human reasoning into really strange and inauthentic shapes, unfortunately.

There's no difference between sterilization and death in the fossil record

And?

On a literal level, no -- the fossil record records things that have died in favorable circumstances, not things that have reproduced.

On the evolutionary level, 30_000_000_000_000_000 sterile social insects argue otherwise.

How is any of this relevant to the conversation?

Over the long term, if you care about your lineage, sterilization and death in you or your descendants have the same outcome - the bones no longer appear

>Child is permanently mutilated and sterilized.

Um. Sir or Madam. Your child is not dead.

I don't think that anyone is saying that transgender care for kids is not Serious Business. And I imagine that a lot of our posters would agree that it's really bad actually. But applying inaccurate labels to things just muddies the waters and drags the discussion down. Saying that your kid getting transgender care is like killing them is no better than when woke activists refer to speech they don't like as "violence". Words mean things, and it behooves people to use them correctly and not just fling them around for emotional impact.

I disagree entirely, if Mr. Normative Man's daughter was mutilated and sterilized (or raped, or paralyzed, or brain damaged, etc), I assert his normative response to "Um. Sir. Your child is not dead" would be righteous indignation directed at the speaker.

Only because it's callous and rude to say that to someone who is upset because their child was harmed. But Mr. Normative Man would be completely correct. That child would not be dead, and would in fact be a bad hyperbole to describe them as such.

Yeah, but we can recognise what is being referenced as being unhelpful hyperbole, right?

people in this thread comparing their child transitioning to death

While ‘trans child=dead child’ is definitely an exaggeration, I don’t think that exaggeration rises to the level of hyperbole- trans people are, as a rule, miserable and often sterilized and mutilated.

I would certainly agree that trans people are sterilized and mutilated. I think it's completely accurate to say that, and while I think consenting adults should be able to do what they want I think anyone who does that to a child should lose their license to practice medicine at a minimum. However, as bad as those things are they still aren't death, which was my point. Words mean things, and one shouldn't stretch words to cover things they don't mean just because they're upset.

It isn’t but it is almost as scary to a parent as death.

and to a significant portion of the population, it’s also brainwashed against you

As an anology consider this statement: " Let's sterilise all the jews, it's not a crime mate honest, after all they are still alive right now yes, therefore it's not anti semitic and doesn't form part of a final solution, definetly not something a nazi would do oh no sir its just being compassionate and empathising with them, after all in the future they might be happier if we sterilise them all now you see."

Now apply it back to the level of a family and you'll see that actually encouraging someone kid to be trans is actually not quite killing them, but is worse than almost anything else.

Pretending this isn't obviously the case is itsself obviously said or written in malicious bad faith. Sorry, but this is like arguing that actually murder is good levels of insane.

"Let's sterilize all the Jews" is extremely different from "we'll let ~1% of the Jews voluntarily sterilize themselves".

So sterilization of Uighur women is fine?

voluntarily sterilize themselves

I don't want to engage with most of this analogy, but I think your view is impoverished if it doesn't account for children's questionable ability to provide informed consent, and the seeming purpose of the law in attenuating their parents' ability to act as stewards for their children's interests. The question of what is truly voluntary is the heart of the matter.

My point is less that the decision should rest with the parents, and more that it shouldn't rest with the child.

Sometimes we leave the decision with the parents... whether to attend a parochial school, whether to allow the child access to Instagram, etc.

Sometimes we decide for the family; children aren't allowed to have sex with adults, for example, regardless of what the children or their parents think about it.

What we never do (other than with this trans issue -- at least, I cannot think of any other examples) is leave decisions of momentous lifelong consequences fully up to the child, and attempt to disintermediate the parents in favor of the child's own judgment.

So arguments premised on a child's voluntary and insuperable consent in high-stakes decisionmaking seem rather anomalous.

I’m personally sympathetic simply because this is a situation (and I think trans human will be like this as well) where once you start there’s pretty much literally no going back. As such, I think there is a need to pump every break possible and really think about it before doing anything. Especially given that the person driving the entire process is a child who isn’t fully developed, doesn’t really understand how serious of a decision he’s actually making, or just how long he/she will have to live with th3 results.

There’s just simply no way that a child of ten years old being asked to consider puberty blockers has any idea what they’ll want ten years from now, let alone 30 or 40. There’s no way that a child who is too young for a PG13 movie can think about whether he will want to have sex or children. He can’t possibly understand this because he’s 10, and ten years is doubling of his entire life experience. And to basically remove any potential for someone to come alongside the kid and say “you know, in a few years you might want to be male and date girls and marry and have a family. You might want to be a father. You might want to live as a man as you grow into your body. Likewise there’s no potential that someone sits down with a child like this and says “this decision you’re making is one you’ll be dealing with forever. You’ll likely live to be 70 years old, and a decision you’re making right now, at ten years old — you’re making it for life. You’ll be living with it when you’re going off to college. When you get a job, when you turn 50, when you retire. There are lots of things you simply have no context for that you’re permanently closing off here. You cannot have sex in the normal way. You will be sterile and thus will never have biological children. If you get a neo-vagina you’re going to have to dilate it for the rest of your life. If you get a neo-penis as a girl, the muscles they take from your area won’t grow back.

I think we’re coming from different places here, and I think a big part of it is that I’m older, old enough that my mother was pregnant with me when she saw Star Wars: A new Hope. And looking back on being a kid, on making decisions even up to age 25 or so and a lot of them were bad decisions made because I didn’t think long term about them. I didn’t really think that way until much later — well into high school. They’re a moment in high school somewhere around 15 where it hits you like a ton of bricks that life is about to get serious and the decisions you’re making will impact you forever. I’m fortunate that I didn’t really fuck up too badly. But this is why I’m leery of allowing kids under 16 to make permanent changes to their bodies. It’s easy for a young kid to think they want something right now that they won’t want later. Even as adults, something you think is a good thing ends up not working for you later.

For that reason, I think I’d personally not want medical interventions before 16. Only a maturing brain can really understand the choice of “you will be sterile, you’ll have these medical conditions forever, and after you sign up, you will never again be able to go back to your old life.” Social stuff, fine. Changing hair and clothes are both easy. I think the blockers might be harder, or might permanently limit height or something. But beyond that, I think such permanent changes shouldn’t happen until the child is reall old enough to understand the decision and what it means.

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I am fundamentally not comfortable with the government coming in and saying a parent who has taken their child to therapists and doctors and gone through extensive thought and counseling is engaged in child abuse and needs to have their kids taken away or be put in prison.

The horse left that barn 40 years ago with the criminalization of kids walking down the street or playing in their front yard (yes, they'll take your kids away for this too). Red states are slowly fixing this, but progress is slow, inconsistent, and not politically glamorous.

And sure, I trust that the parents, police, and social workers prosecuting these "crimes" are taking their roles seriously and not just being flippant either... but "taking one's role seriously" and "going through extensive thought and counseling" is not a guarantee that what they're doing isn't also extremely disruptive or that their conclusion is correct.

This standard of State intervention is the current room temperature; yes, strictly speaking it's worse for the people who legitimately do have this problem, but we're already comfortable enforcing worse outcomes in measures stretching far beyond the 0.01% of kids that would actually benefit from doing this because of crippling risk aversion... so why would we stop now?

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The idea here is that there are some things that are outside even a parent’s right to choose (eg blood infusion and Jehovah witness cases). It might be true that transitioning (ie eliminating sexual function) are so fundamental to a person that their parent cannot consent for them to eliminate such things.

Then that needs to be the argument made.

That usually is the argument made- that medical transitioning is a form of mutilation that can’t be consented to, so it nullifies the parent’s rights to make medical decisions for their kids. Parents rights are more of an argument about social transitions.

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It seems reasonable that transitioning is so extreme that at a minimum parents should need to be on board. It could be reasonable to say that even if parents consent the process is too extreme and therefore State A won’t permit it. That is, there are three potential states:

  1. Transition solely based on kids decision

  2. Kid and parent decision

  3. Not permitted for kids

These states go from most permissive to least permissive. While I favor 3, it also means I favor 2 to 1. Therefore I can object to the Minnesota law on parental rights ground not withstanding that I generally would support 3.

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People who are against genocide aren't against it because they think murder or sterilization is wrong, they're against it because it targets a specific group or genetic line.

Consider two things.

First is a religious community like the Amish. If the English (ie everyone who isn’t Amish) target their kids by trying to show them the ‘wonders’ of modernity and do, there is a certain cultural genocide that occurs. In a real sense, if the kids convert the Amish have been genocided.

Consider the same except the English sterilize all of the Amish kids.

I think people would object a lot more to the latter instead of the former.

Nah I think it's the murder and sterilization actually.

People are much less squeamish about eugenics when nobody has to die and the given genetic line is that of some terrible heritable disease.

Hell they're also much less squeamish about discriminating against groups in general. But crossing the line into killing and sterilizing is enough to give pause to some of the most ardent nationalists.

There is moral substance to acts, most people aren't total consequentialists. Arguably nobody is.

The original poster compared a non-targeted harm (medical transitioning) to a targeted harm (sterilizing "the jews"), and I was pointing out a possible misanalogy. When I used the word "genocide" I was, by definition, referring to ethnically targeted cleansing.

People who believe in genocide necessarily think its worse than murder, or else they would just call it murder, and Hitler's crime would have just been murdering 6 million people. Instead, believers in genocide think the ethnically targeted component makes it worse than just murder. Because murdering members of protected classes is worse than just murder (See also: hate crimes).

Of course, for anyone who doesn't believe in genocide, they still probably think Hitler is a bad guy for the whole mass murder thing.

I do find it darkly hilarious that the supposed most positive outcome of transition is a total social death that leads to a phoenix like social rebirth, but with like, makeup and shit.

If your child was drafted to a war and came back with his genitals blown off and a condition requiring life long medical treatment that results in a drastically shortened lifespan it isn't fair to say he's dead, but he's certainly well on his way. Whatever life you shared before is over and new vista of terrifying possibilities has opened its stead.

How much is the actual lifespan reduction for a trans person? The 35 year stat that gets quotes a lot seems to be based on the mortality of black trans women who are disproportionately likely to be sex workers. What is the lifespan expectancy of a middle class white trans woman/man? A sterile kid with diabetes is going to get lifelong injections and have to adopt if they want kids but I wouldn't characterize that as a "vista of terrifying possibilities".

Is this really about outcomes or is it about regarding transition as fundamentally illegitimate? Would you prefer to have a cis straight sterile kid with the life expectancy of a trans person, or a trans kid in a T4T marriage and bio kids with the life expectancy of a cis person?

The whole question is pretty philosophically precarious. I don't know how I'd feel about trans people in a world where they were mentally healthy, lived normal life spans, and didn't tend to die young due to overmedicalization and the outcomes of their suicidality and other dangerous mental health issues. I live in the world where most "trans" people who make it to twenty without going on hormonal treatment just return "normalcy". My current biases say that the hypothetical you draw is statistically impossible, and I wouldn't trust the person offering the bargain.

A sterile kid with diabetes is going to get lifelong injections and have to adopt if they want kids but I wouldn't characterize that as a "vista of terrifying possibilities".

I actually think "terrifying" would be a pretty reasonable word if one were contemplating a scenario in which children were being persuaded at scale by niche online communities to become infertile diabetics for life and the government were employing the power of the state to prevent parents from protecting them.

Doesn't medically transitioning make your child infertile? From an evolutionary psychology perspective, isn't that similar to your child dying? It doesn't surprise me that some parents react as strongly to that as they would to their children dying.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective, sterile individuals can provide a hell of a lot more care to their siblings and extended family than dead ones.

Yes, but I don't think the parents think that's the most likely alternative. They are upset because they were hoping they would live and have children of their own and their transition means that won't happen.

I can't imagine wanting any trans cousin to babysit my kids, let alone them being put together and selfless enough to do so.

You can freeze sperm and eggs before the transition and then have a surrogate bear the child. Let's say some billionaire has a trans kid and creates a massive free sperm/egg preservation service and covers the cost of surrogacy/artificial wombs in 2040 for all trans people. Is the issue resolved, do conservative parents suddenly become okay with their kids transitioning knowing their genes will live on? Who is a conservative parent more likely to keep in their social life, an unmarried childless cis straight son or daughter, or a trans kid in a T4T marriage with a biological child?

Obviously not, because the issue isn't actually fertility (which is massively declining among cis people too). It's an aesthetic/social/moral revulsion at transness.

That's not how evolutionary psychology works. We didn't evolve to just care whether we have grandchildren. We evolved to care about the things that historically led to grandchildren in environments that didn't have assisted reproduction technology.

What’s wrong with revulsion at transness? From a natural law perspective or a utilitarian perspective and probably from a virtue ethics perspective, it’s certainly morally revolting. From an aesthetic perspective it’s certainly usually not an improvement. There certainly don’t seem to be any improvements except in keeping with a certain model of gender fluidity.

You can't argue about what causes someone to experience revulsion so it's not really a good basis for public reasoning in a democratic society. Especially if you're going to make the case that the state should do something to curtail someone's individual autonomy you generally need to ground it in the prevention of harm.

You can, in fact, argue about why revulsion is right or wrong, and I just gave you 4 arguments about why revulsion towards trans people is right(three about moral revulsion, one about aesthetic revulsion). They weren’t fleshed out arguments, but that’s because my post is short, not because they’re bad arguments.

I'm sorry but you can't argue that democracy only cares about logos when this entire issue is naught but pathos on every side.

People absolutely care what is inarguably disgusting or not. Politicians play to it all the time. And they should.

This idea that you should only appeal to the prevention of harm is only typical of precisely those people that can only use that particular moral foundation and are always dumbfounded that some care more about sanctity, loyalty or freedom.

You know, I consider myself to be a person with a very strong stomach. I very rarely feel disgust on a visceral level, even when dealing with excrement or wounds.

But I was listening to a podcast and at one point they were discussing uterus transplants in india for western trans tourists, trans women obviously.

The idea of grafting a uterus, taken from a “willing” 3rd world natal female, onto a natal man who is an autogynephile so they could feel like a “real woman” filled me with a level of disgust I have never encountered in my entire life. No lie, I had to turn the program off, pull over on the highway and just breathe for a minute.

How much of it is due to taking someone else’s perfectly functional uterus? I do wonder how it would be if we could “grow” a womb with the transwoman‘s DNA (replacing the Y with X somewhere somehow), would that be less ick.

Or just a full body transplant? Grow a body with the appropriate chromosomal configuration — again, replacing the appropriate sex chromosome from the original person — but somehow leave out the brain, then transplant the trans brain into the new body.

(I don’t think it would work out very well embryologically or in terms of surgery to reconnect all the nerves, but thought-experiment wise…)

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Suppose an online fad were persuading children to have their left arms amputated, and the power of the state dedicated itself to facilitating the amputations and to retaliating against parents who tried to interfere. What argument against that public policy would you consider to be fair, if any?

The argument there would be that amputation is such an irrecoverable harm that a child can't possibly consent to it, not that I find amputees aesthetically or philosophically revolting.

Then the argument moves to, well isn't puberty blockers irrecoverable harm to the child because of sterilization just like cutting off an arm? I'd say no, the issue isn't the loss of tissue it's the loss of capabilities. Prosthetic arms are nowhere near the capability of a real arm but a child born from stored eggs and sperm is genetically your child. You don't lose the capacity for fertility even if you lose some genital tissue. I also grew up in a church with many loving adoptive families and and I'm not inclined to view having to adopt a kid rather than having a genetic one as a loss of capability as significant as losing an arm. Reducing children to a means of gene perpetuation flattens one of the deepest and most transformative human relationships possible.

It also seems significant that many adults choose never to have children, where there are no adults I know of who spend their entire lives without using one of their arm. If there is human capability that a large share of the population voluntarily never exercises then I'm inclined to think it's okay for a tiny sliver of the population to modify their bodies such that they lose that capacity.

I'm not unsympathetic to the concern. There's clearly some level of social contagion going on and gender care providers need to move from a model where if a kid has any cross gender identification that must mean they're trans because there's nowhere in mainstream culture where they could have picked that up to one where they're far more skeptical of it. But I also think Gender Dysphoria is not wholly sociogenic and so I would prefer families be allowed how to approach trans children on their own rather than having it dictated to them by the state.

Minnesota's law says it will not enforce Texas's law which makes gender affirming care legally child abuse, strips parents of custody and potentially imprisons them. The idea that Minnesota would emancipate trans runaways is a conclusion posters in this thread have reached by assuming that a state claiming jurisdiction to do a custody proceeding also means it claims jurisdiction to terminate parental rights which is not in the bills text.

The argument there would be that amputation is such an irrecoverable harm that a child can't possibly consent to it, not that I find amputees aesthetically or philosophically revolting.

Amputees are not revolting, the voluntary amputation of a healthy limb is.

Then the argument moves to, well isn't puberty blockers irrecoverable harm to the child because of sterilization just like cutting off an arm? I'd say no, the issue isn't the loss of tissue it's the loss of capabilities. Prosthetic arms are nowhere near the capability of a real arm but a child born from stored eggs and sperm is genetically your child. You don't lose the capacity for fertility even if you lose some genital tissue.

Stored sperm or eggs that you may decide to use later - assuming they aren't lost or tainted or destroyed, and at great expense - is a dramatic loss of capability compared to the old in out in out, which is so simple even animals can do it. You don't just lose a bit of tissue, you lose the capability to produce sperm or ovulate. Hell I struggle to think of a clearer portrayal of destroyed capability than castration - one of its synonyms, neutered, is simultaneously defined as 'make ineffective'.

Edit: either SwiftKey's auto correct is getting shittier or I am losing my mind, but I keep finding grammatically incorrect or just plain wrong words in my posts. Changed straight to simultaneously, which I meant to write.

Then the argument moves to, well isn't puberty blockers irrecoverable harm to the child because of sterilization just like cutting off an arm? I'd say no, the issue isn't the loss of tissue it's the loss of capabilities.

There is good reason to believe that puberty blockers permanently hinder brain development, which hormones during puberty play an important role in. Unfortunately there are zero randomized control trials examining this, and even less evidence regarding using them to prevent puberty entirely rather than to delay precocious puberty a few years, but they have that effect in animal trials:

A reduction in long-term spatial memory persists after discontinuation of peripubertal GnRH agonist treatment in sheep

The long-term spatial memory performance of GnRHa-Recovery rams remained reduced (P < 0.05, 1.5-fold slower) after discontinuation of GnRHa, compared to Controls. This result suggests that the time at which puberty normally occurs may represent a critical period of hippocampal plasticity. Perturbing normal hippocampal formation in this peripubertal period may also have long lasting effects on other brain areas and aspects of cognitive function.

That study also cites this study in humans which found a 3-year course of puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty was associated with a 7% reduction in IQ, but since it doesn't have a control group I wouldn't put much weight on it.

Similar concerns were mentioned by the NHS's independent review:

A further concern is that adolescent sex hormone surges may trigger the opening of a critical period for experience-dependent rewiring of neural circuits underlying executive function (i.e. maturation of the part of the brain concerned with planning, decision making and judgement). If this is the case, brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences. To date, there has been very limited research on the short-, medium- or longer-term impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development.

Then the argument moves to, well isn't puberty blockers irrecoverable harm

By moving the argument to puberty blockers, are you agreeing that all gender confirming care for minors that is more aggressive or less reversible than puberty blockers should be banned?

Otherwise, I assume you'd move the argument to those instead, right?

What if the children just wanted their ears removed? This wouldn't render them deaf, just leave them visibly mutilated by prevailing standards. Is that irrecoverable harm? Who is to decide what constitutes harm, and what constitutes the realization of one's inner truth however aberrant by wider standards?

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You can freeze sperm and eggs before the transition a

Can't, with teenage transitions.

You aren't just denying them fertility, in many cases -if they were on puberty blockers, they can't orgasm.

if they were on puberty blockers, they can't orgasm.

That's a myth. The only basis for it is the word of one or two individuals, who, as far as I can tell, have never offered any evidence to support it. And there are multiple studies (not to mention countless anecdotes) contradicting it.

One of two individuals, one of whom was apparently from the board of WPATH and responsible for ~2k sex reassignment procedures.

Specifically, the individual said that in 'her' experience children who were put on puberty blockers before Tanner stage 2 can never orgasm.

https://thepostmillennial.com/gender-affirming-surgeon-admits-children-who-undergo-transition-before-puberty-never-attain-sexual-satisfaction

multiple studies (not to mention countless anecdotes) contradicting it.

You're free to provide links to such.

It is worth noting that the two individuals in question are Marci Bowers, and Joanne Olson-Kennedy. Both are medical doctors specializing in transgender care, and members of WPATH (Bowers used to be it's president, and is now an elected board member).

And there are multiple studies (not to mention countless anecdotes) contradicting it.

Please name one study that contradicts the claim that you can't have an orgasm if your puberty is blocked before you have one. If you have any anecdotes contradicting that specific claim, I'll be happy to hear them as well - on my side there's Jazz Jennings who publicly said she never had an orgasm.

Obviously our programming can’t update for continued fertility so it would be weird. Same way every guy I’ve ever met doesn’t want to wear a condom during sex. It’s just feels fake even if the sensory perception is identical.

There is still a fakeness about being trans that is giving up a bit of your humanity. Your gender is a part of your identity and I don’t believe in fluidity as being natural. It has no evolutionary advantage. It appears to be purely a social construct as opposed to gender at birth being natural.

Personally for those who want your kids to be gender normal I think you need to boost their confidence and hope they are one of the cool kids. Trans seems like goth or emo to me in generation past where the non popular kids take up something to have their own internal social structure they can win at without competing with the traditional social hierarchy.

Ummm, I've had sex wearing and not wearing a condom and it's noticeably different. Sex with a condom on is still great and guys who pressure women by claiming it's awful are shitty but no, it's definitely not identical.

Yeah so we're in agreement, it's not actually about fertility it's about the belief that transness is fake.

Sex with a condom is kind of shit though. Not really worth it unless you're a horny teenager.

I agree that sex without a condom is better, but let's not go into absurd hyperbole territory here. Sex with a condom is still really good and well worth it.

I genuinely disagree. Sex with a condom isn't really worth outside of the first sexual encounters with someone (and even then it's highly frustrating) or when you're a teenager.

I feel like the expression of eating candy with the wrapper on is fairly accurate. There is some enjoyment to be had but unless I'm really starving I'm not going to bother.

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It's one of those things where it depends on which way you look at it. From the perspective of a person who is not having sex, sex with a condom is fantastic and totally worth it. But from the perspective of someone who regularly has sex without a condom on, boy is it a disappointment.

On a related note, it's not just guys who prefer condomless sex, every woman I have dated has been eager to do away with them as quickly as possible too. I don't think it's purely about the physical sensation in either case, the feeling of connection and being one with another person is just so much stronger without a condom in the way.

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I'm sure some do. I have very little sympathy for those people.

It says something about their ulterior motives and what they see children as.

It also doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you ask the same people how they feel about progress in artificial wombs.

The point of my invoking evolutionary psychology was to say that our minds probably evolved to have an instinctive reaction of this kind. I'm not saying parents are primarily upset because they consciously assess that this means they won't have grandchildren although that may be part of it.

It says nothing about ulterior motives and very little about how they see their children. It seems like many if not most parents find having children to be a source of fulfillment and happiness, so it would follow that this would be an experience said parents would want to share with their children (as they would for any number of positive choices made in life, a key component to generational success). Unless you mean to suggest your negative view of lineage or fecundity is/should be the baseline moral position for all humanity, and deviation from it is malicious/self serving?

I think it’s coming from Tucker Carlson recently making a similar comment.

Personally I think it’s a fair comparison. But this gets into all the old pro-life arguments. I think you either think like that or you don’t.

From non religious view I think I’ve come to a conclusion we all live forever by spreading our specific programming. Castration ends that process.

They’re chemically castrated and physically mutilated. Yeah that’s not death but “we’ve only castrated and mutilated your kids. C’mon they survived the surgery! Relax!” is not offering much in the way of comfort.

In terms of severity, it’s somewhere in the ballpark of simultaneously being lobotomized and becoming a jihadist.

It’s not just the potential sterilization & being unable to achieve an orgasm for life, it’s also being a lifelong patient, and thusly a financial supporter, for “big pharma”, an industrial complex that is very politically powerful and I find have proven themselves to be extremely dangerous.

They are also often a supporter for a memeplex that is fundamentally hateful towards what I and many others would consider to be healthy, normal behavior and social dynamics.

So not only is a transitioned person deeply alienated towards their own physical body, they are often radicalized against their friends and neighbors who knew them beforehand.

I had a close friend who transitioned during university, in the early 2000s before trans issues became more mainstream. We are both of an age & class where we were some of the earliest people to be “extremely online”. I spent a lot of time lurking in trans friendly spaces, and honestly the right-wing outrage machine might be even underselling how intensely hateful the rhetoric is in those places towards their “enemies”, real or perceived.

At the time I was a supporter but I felt myself being so turned off by the whole “trans communist” schtick that I unconsciously distanced myself from them and I’m likely to never speak to this person again. At the time I didn’t think much of it but with the benefit of hindsight a lot of things sort of fell into place for me.

I have children in public school in a mega blue area, so I have real skin in the game. I can confirm even in elementary school they are already being exposed to this stuff, if I wasn’t so poor I’d put them in private school.

I don't think it is quite as bad as being lobotomized. The upthread comparison - sterility plus type 1 diabetes - is more in the ballpark.

I spent a lot of time lurking in trans friendly spaces, and honestly the right-wing outrage machine might be even underselling how intensely hateful the rhetoric is in those places towards their “enemies”, real or perceived.

Yes that sort of thing, and real world interactions, pretty much convinced me that these people are really not well at all and are dangerous, jihadi extremist level dangerous, back in 2013 or so.

I'm not saying I don't see the concern. I'm saying that it's disingenuous to compare it to death.

Also only somewhere around 5-15% of trans women get bottom surgery. So you can cut that risk factor for another 10x for them. Chemical castration is known to be reversible in trans women.

As someone pointed out in another thread it is stunning how much we need to be concerned, change our entire society for, less than 1% of the population, yet within that population - the irreversible infertility of an entire group of people (males who don't go through natal puberty) is not even worth mentioning.

Also, what are stats on women who don't go through their puberty having their fertility return-seems like egg preservation is recommended for women as well as men on gender clinic sites- though that could just be because it's an additional revenue stream I suppose...

I wish I could show these statements to people even a few years ago. “Don’t worry, the chemical castration we will do to your children is probably reversible, and we only physical mutilate some of them!”

It’s just incomprehensible. How did we get here?

Don't worry the brainwashing into religion is probably reversible and we'll only intellectually and culturally ruin some of them. And mutilate a fair number (depending on religion).

It's just incomprehensible. How did we get here?

Its easy. If you believe in the fundamental axioms its not crazy and if you don't its a cult of God-flesh eating, God-blood drinking psychically mutilated Manchurian candidates who infest the planet.

Trans ideology is no crazier than pretty much every religion. So if religions can demand crazy things and religions are just ideologies with a supernatural skin, why is it surprising ideologies look crazy from the outside?

Magic cannibalism, magic underpants, magic apples, magic hammers, magic hats, magic babies. Magic loaves and fishes.

If you can convince people of that, to the extent some religions practiced literal human sacrifice, why are you surprised by getting here?

We got here the way we always did, someone came up with something to believe (palpable nonsense or otherwise), convinced other people to believe it and everything cascades from there.

This isn't some new development, this is how we (humanity as a whole)operate.

Might as well be taking communion when told this is the literal blood of Christ despite not changing in any detectable way and thinking "how did we get here, its incomprehensible".

Why? A religion is just an ideology with a supernatural skin. Can compare it to the terrible things people have done for Communism or nazism or some other not religious ideology if you prefer, it doesn't change the point.

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As an atheist, I will say that, while there are a lot of aspects of traditional religions I do not like, I find many new-age ideologies (e.g. Scientology, Heaven's Gate, Rajneeshi Neo-Sannyasins, Synanon, NXIVM) to be even worse, even if only slightly, for reasons such as these:

  1. New age religions come off as extra "Fake and Gay" in comparison to Christianity or Buddhism, in no small part because of their lack of age and much smaller tradition to draw upon. Traditional religions are Lindy because they've managed to persist in spite of the erosion of the ages; their new age rivals, on the other hand, are plainly from a much less mystical and much more informationally-aware time, and as such their beliefs are built on much sandier foundations (e.g. the entire founding mythology of Scientology literally being a sci-fi story told by Hubbard).

  2. New age religions are at least slightly more likely to lead to cult-like behavior (likely due to the aforementioned weakness of the religion as a young and new belief system that tends to be created practically from whole-cloth), which often tends to have pretty negative outcomes for their members; such people may end up psychologically-broken, physically-disfigured, or even dead. Yes, I'm aware that some traditional religions can lead to similar harms (e.g. refusing medical treatments in favor of prayer), but I think cults have a much worse track record on net.

"I love ancient trees, they are so majestic!"

"I hate little seedlings, they are so ugly! Stomp out these dirty weeds!"

Just have patience, it does not need more than century for delusionary doomsday cult to transform into respected ancient religion with magnificent art and architecture.

I guess what I'm saying is that certain religions have a sort of grandfather clause. Meanwhile, I'm less charitable to any blood spilt to build Flag Buildings.

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Do you believe your ideology is crazy?

No, thats the point i am making. Firmamento is i believe a devout Catholic, so i am asking him to take a step outside and realize that just as he thinks the beliefs in question being acted upon is incomprehensible, from an outside perspective many of his beliefs seem similarly or even more so incomprehensible when it comes to how millions of people end up believing and acting upon eating the body and blood of the son of a God and this is some entirely normal thing to do.

I got that, but doesn't that mean that you do think your ideology is crazy? Or rather, you know your ideology is crazy, but you don't think about it? I guess what I'm asking is how do you square this understanding with your belief in your ideology? The religious can at least gesture in the direction of history and say 'ok the supernatural stuff sounds crazy I guess but our results speak for themselves'.

My lizard brain decision tree for this sees ideology as religion minus the supernatural and so minus the crazy - it's not a perfect heuristic, but it used to serve me well (and is also probably part of why, like firmamenti, I too scream "how the fuck could this happen?" at the sky roughly once a quarter).

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Too much charity.

Early and often, that’s the real solution.

If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.

Forget trans, every cultural standard that removes agency from children is up for review for exclusion from the eschaton.

Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure, at best it's a benevolent dictatorship and at worst its tyranny.

Precisely. If children can consent to change their gender, they should also be allowed to have sex with adults. Gender, such as the concept was invented, has a very close relationship with intercourse, like a car has a close relationship with the engine. If you were sold a car without an engine, you might well throw your hands up in the air and swear in indignation.

I take the position that children can't meaningfully consent to change gender and shouldn't be having sex with adults. Yet I sense that's where we're headed next.

I take the position that children can't meaningfully consent to change gender

But they can meaningfully consent to having one?

You must have interesting trolley problem outputs.

Listen. Sex with kids is bad because it traumatizes and wrecks them. It's not that complicated. Bad things are bad.

We care about consent in adults so much because we've seen the consequences of people not using it. It's the same thing, those people are traumatized and wrecked. Bad things are bad. It's not that complicated.

If you want to argue that early transition traumatizes and wrecks people-

I can appreciate that argument. I might not agree but I recognize it as an argument rooted in a sensible definition of the Good and the Bad.

Though, there are also people who swear by the early transition they went through and became FAANG programmers or whatever. (namely my in-group). And I am always going to be on the side of those people being able to have done what they did. Because everything turned out great for them and they were clearly not traumatized and wrecked by transition. The only thing they tend to be working through is the time their parents sent them to gay deconversion camp, or some other mistreatment by anti-trans normative society. Which I will fight against because it is traumatizing and wrecking people.

Consent is about locus of control. If you think parents can rob teenagers of that locus and not risk doing the same sort of damage...

I don't think you understand why rape is bad.

Surely throughout human history there are some child-adult sexual relationships which went well for both parties? Say they did have a respectful, gentle, loving relationship.

But generally, sex between adults and children is harmful to the child, they don't really know what they're getting into, don't understand the long-term consequences. It might go well or it might go very badly. Because we can't judge beforehand whether the parties are mature, sensible and so on, we blanket-ban a huge swathe of child-adult sexual relationships on the basis that the vast majority are predatory and bad. That there might be some such relationships that end well is not a sufficient argument for them to be legal.

But they can meaningfully consent to having one?

Tattoos are illegal for children to get in many jurisdictions - yet nobody goes full Event Horizon and says children can't consent to having skin. Many consider that the increased autonomy isn't worth the danger of making choices that will be later regretted.

And what about Chesterton's Fence - not changing complex biological equilibria we don't really understand.

Chesterton's Fence is a fine heuristic but at the same time, your species will never learn to fight bulls if it always respects fences.

Children are not full people with full rights. Far from it.

In fact if you really want to characterize their status they are natural slaves. They're easily manipulated fools who are a danger to themselves and others.

Which is why any realistic conception of rights can't afford them full personhood and autonomy, and has to defer proportions of it to their protectors.

If you truly believe children should be empowered to make all important personal decisions for themselves, without interference, then how would you argue against pedophilia? Or are prohibitions of pedophilia likewise to be excluded from the eschaton, whatever that means?

The only reason “parents have control over their children” isn’t in the Bill of Rights is that it was inconceivable that someone would doubt it, like doubting whether people have the right to oxygen. This is a fundamental biological right. Children are and ought to be the Property of their parents until the age of, I don’t know, at least 14. They are theirs, not the State, and definitely not the Twitter Gender Peoples’

This seems like a slightly inflammatory claim, so here's some evidence that at least some other people hold it.

But when are we to say that this parental trustee jurisdiction over children shall come to an end? Surely any particular age (21,18, or whatever) can only be completely arbitrary. The clue to the solution of this thorny question lies in the parental property rights in their home. For the child has his full rights of self-ownership when he demonstrates that he has them in nature—in short, when he leaves or "runs away" from home. Regardless of his age, we must grant to every child the absolute right to run away and to find new foster parents who will voluntarily adopt him, or to try to exist on his own. Parents may try to persuade the runaway child to return, but it is totally impermissible enslavement and an aggression upon his right of self-ownership for them to use force to compel him to return. The absolute right to run away is the child's ultimate expression of his right of self-ownership, regardless of age.

That is interesting. I suppose that it boils down to "can you essentially emancipate yourself" which is kind of admirable in practice. There are some that have extremely strong convictions that they're straight up willing to die over. I am not sure how many trans kids have that strong of convictions; if they do, that is to be respected.

I would imagine far more people hold an “earth is flat” view than agree with Rothbard here. In every developed human society, children are seen as the property of their parents, who may guide and discipline them before they become independent, just like mammals guide and discipline their young (and don’t let them go off and run away whenever they want). Removing rights of parents in raising their children is going against mammalian nature, like forbidding pair-bonding or sex or walking. I was pointing out that from the perspective of those who created the idea of rights to begin with, it would be an inconceivable view; therefore, you can’t argue from rights as traditionally understood, as a proxy appeal to authority/tradition which simply does not apply (“rights” compels us only because of the authority and tradition of the concept, and not because we are applying an oversimplification to contexts where it doesn’t apply).

I think you might be in more of a bubble than you realize. It's a regular talking point in progressive-leaning political forums to claim horrified that conservatives treat their children like property. It's surprising to me to see people like you in this thread literally saying as much in so many words.

Removing rights of parents in raising their children is going against mammalian nature, like forbidding pair-bonding...

well, we are well on our way to make pair bonding as mythical as the American Dream is right now. They (The Progressive Front) are consistent, I will give them that.

What age? 2? 7? 13?

Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure

Single point of failure, are you sure you meant this? It sounds like if there is any failure in the arrangement it is unevenly massively distributed amongst billions of different parents. Rather it sounds antifragile fail-safe against a variety of centralization schemes attempting to improve the human condition.

When you remove parents from the upbringing of children, or at least remove their authority, you likely end up with some state apparatus, perhaps public schooling, which as we see in America there is the potential there for them to transition into groomatories by enterprising trans/trans humanist actors championing, of course what else, “human rights”. This is the single point of failure, not the variety of family life.

Except that Texas will take your kids away and charge you with child abuse if you let them take puberty blockers rather than allow that variety of family life to flourish. As far as I know most U.S. states have some proceedings to take away your child if you abuse them, and is there anyone who is such a believer in parental rights that they would allow a pedophile widower to retain custody of a 12-year-old after impregnating her? It's not really a meta-dispute about centralized state authority vs. anti-fragile family life, it's an object-level dispute over whether puberty blockers and/or hormones constitute child abuse. Texas thinks it does and will take your child away to be raised by bureaucrats, Minnesota thinks it doesn't and will refuse to enforce Texas's rulings stripping a parent of custody if their kid is in Minnesota.

People in this thread are then very concerned that Minnesota's claim of emergency temporary jurisdiction over child custody proceedings means they will also emancipate runaways. So far has shown themselves to be an expert on Minnesota custody laws and explained whether jurisdiction over a custody proceeding also means jurisdiction to hear a termination of parental rights by a minor, and/or whether refusing to allow a child to receive gender-affirming care would be grounds for termination of parental rights in the absence of other abuse.

Except that Texas will take your kids away and charge you with child abuse if you let them take puberty blockers rather than allow that variety of family life to flourish.

"Allow that variety of family life to flourish" in this instance parses to this reader much like "Allow that variety of MRSA to flourish"

and is there anyone who is such a believer in parental rights that they would allow a pedophile widower to retain custody of a 12-year-old after impregnating her?

When they did genetic studies of people in Britain they found that one person was the product of father daughter incest. But, they kept it secret, because, of course, the people involved were Pakistani.

Let's not forget too the minority grooming/rape Gangs that were abetted for years too. No child is sacred, only the ideology.

Forget trans, every cultural standard that removes agency from children is up for review for exclusion from the eschaton.

How much agency?

As for your last sentence, it doesn't follow from the first two.

Agency should be maximized insofar as it does not contradict possibility and sustainability.

Limits on the possible and sustainable should be attacked aggressively insofar as technological and social progress can eliminate them.

They should be treated as enemies of all humanity that require slaying, like Death or Cancer.

As for your last sentence

"Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure, at best it's a benevolent dictatorship and at worst its tyranny."?

Yes, perhaps that belongs in a separate post. I intended that to stand on its own, it follows from the definition of benevolent dictatorship and the phrase "Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force".

Agency should be maximized insofar as it does not contradict possibility and sustainability.

I'm not sure about an imperative based around three vague abstractions whose pursuit is apparently in tension. That seems to leave a lot of power for those with the role of doing the interpreting, and of enforcing the eventual intepretation in policy.

Agency should be maximized insofar as it does not contradict possibility and sustainability.

Limits on the possible and sustainable should be attacked aggressively insofar as technological and social progress can eliminate them.

But if the result of this is the possible sterilization of the subject, and we consider that we are in population decline with a bellow replacement level Reproductive rate, how is that in any way, shape or form sustainable?

If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.

I find that framing disingenuous. If you take away the children from their parents, because you don't like the way they're raising them, you're not respecting the child's rights and actual personhood, you're merely transferring the right to mold them on to a bunch of bureaucrats.

It's funny how the "nature vs. nurture" stuff flips political valence when gay/trans issues come along. The right is skeptical of the state's ability to improve test scores and career outcomes for women and (non-asian) minorities but thinks the state is quite capable of convincing people to cut off their own genitals. The left thinks that representation and role models are hugely important in convincing women and minorities to enter male-dominated career paths, but can't possibly influence kids gender or sexual identity.

The right is skeptical of the state's ability to improve test scores and career outcomes for women and (non-asian) minorities but thinks the state is quite capable of convincing people to cut off their own genitals.

I think there's a fundamental difference in that career outcomes are measured over the entire population, whereas "making people trans" only affects a (more suggestible) subgroup of the target group.

The government can convince some people, particularly confused teenagers, to transition, and there are also surely some women who respond to a women-in-tech program.

The government can not convince everyone to cut off their genitals, and equally not convince women as a group to make life choices indistinguishable from men as a group.

To be fair, I don't think progressives are all that wrong about the influence of media broadly speaking, and I don't begrudge them wanting to provide representation for minorities. My issue was with replacing/cucking established characters, and making the story suck.

Well we have no examples state educational interventions correcting IQs and test scores and have numerous examples of at least allowing a certain social contagion to convince (some small number of) people to cut off their genitals. But most trans-trenders don't bother with that.

But what you're saying is over-simplistic. There are plenty of easily conceivable models that could consider things like IQ, ambition, height, disagreeability, openness or a number of other traits including potentially the curiosity to want to toy with the idea of genital mutilation to be highly inherited and yet the expression of those to be highly regulated by environment. If every modern trans would have been trans-curious in other cultural environments but gone on to mostly grow out of it and live happy lives that doesn't mean that the modern environment where they're rushed onto puberty blockers is strictly better. In fact that proclivity may have had some advantage only in environments where it wouldn't be indulged.

Obviously if it is indulged it will likely breed itself out of existence.

The right is skeptical of the state's ability to improve test scores and career outcomes for women and (non-asian) minorities but thinks the state is quite capable of convincing people to cut off their own genitals.

Is this not just the empirical reality we observe? Black test scores remain low despite decades of effort and millions of dollars thrown at the problem, but the incidence rate of people cutting off their own genitals has skyrocketed in the last 10 years.

Yes, and you can explain that as either a) the government is really bad at getting black kids to study and really good at convincing them to chop off their genitals or b) the state isn't actually very influential over either and culture/genetics is the driving force in both cases.

It feels like we took a wrong turn somewhere.

First I don't see why you introduced a distinction between state and culture. The single flat nature vs nurture distinction you started with is fine.

Second I don't understand why you're discounting the idea that some things are driven primarily by nature, and others are driven primarily by nurture. Different things can be different, it doesn't have to be all one or the other.

When something doesn't change for a long time despite lots of effort to change it, that's evidence that biological factors are at work. When something changes very rapidly, that's evidence that social factors are at work. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

I think in both cases there's a mix of nature and nurture going on, but the scale can lean more heavily towards one side or the other in different cases.

Or the government isn't magic. They can only perform the possible.

Getting black kids to want to perform better, possible.

Getting kids to want to cut their dicks off, possible.

Getting black kids to actually perform better, not possible.

This is borderline consensus building, and well over the line of needing to bring evidence in proportion to the inflammatoriness of your claim. Don't post like this, please.

It wasn't my intent to suggest that everyone already agrees. I wouldn't have thought this claim was particularly inflamitory. What sort of evidence would you like to see that government is only able to perform the possible?

Primaprimaprima response to Ecgtheow that

Black test scores remain low despite decades of effort and millions of dollars thrown at the problem, but the incidence rate of people cutting off their own genitals has skyrocketed...

Is an accurate description of our concensus reality.

Ecgtheow response (a can be true, I'm not sure I'd call it government but I dont think the semantics are important here. For (b the state's influence, not sure I'd call it the state, is substantial but grounded in the possible. Genetics / heritability rule outcomes, while TPTB can influence / move desirability / attempts.

In the same way I'm confident there are interventions that would increase attempts at the SAT, ACT, ASVAB, etc., but those interventions are unlikely to drive attainment for those attempts.

This allows genetics / HBD to be the driving force for attainment / success, while explaining the outcomes we see in other areas (genital chopping).

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. With the right marketing and community (intervention) you can induce people to try. With the application of science and technology and a rubric that helps recontextualize what a 'silk purse' is. Perhaps some nuspeak to paper over the obvious defeciencies. Some under this program would produce an ersatz nuspeak 'silk purse'. Chineese silk producers are unmoved.

I think it's possible. It just requires indoctrinating them into the culture which The Experts (TM) currently consider "white supremacist". And this is not something that will be done, especially as making black kids perform better would mean also making them and their kid middle class, with middle class voting patterns. And who needs that trouble? Certainly not people who are now in power in places where there are a lot of black kids. They already have the votes locked in, thankyouverymuch, and they don't need to mess with a working system.

indoctrinating them into the culture which The Experts (TM) currently consider "white supremacist".

Wasn't that the plan through the the mid - late 90's? Then it was called academic excellence, or fundamental education something, something.

The cohort of non-responders was too dark and the culture of academic excellence was identified as white supremacist as the performance of the cohort of responders was too light or asian.

That there's a ready made voting block of is a bonus. That TPTB have not been as successful pushing globohomo here is a little interesting. But this is a cohort of non-responders.

I don't know that the "high-low coalition vs. the middle" concept applies to your assertion, though. Surely the counterargument is that black people and families will be loyal to the party whose policies gave their children better opportunities, i.e. delivering tangible progress?

I don't know. I suppose if I was an East Coast machine politician who was never in any real danger of losing to an R candidate, I like to think I'd have enough electoral free reign to do what I thought would objectively improve things for my constituents.

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That's fair. I don't think children should be "taken away". I think children should be free to go where they want to and systems should be configured such that roaming children remain supported.

Since this is not what is actually happening in the top post- it's fair to say I disagree with present implementation.

But I do absolutely think- what most parents who are afraid of transgender role models are afraid of- is their kids making the choice.

I claim the resistance to my ideal would consist of mostly the same people for mostly the same reasons.

Child liberation is opposed mainly by people who want the power to ensure that their children become the upstanding ideal of their culture, and are uninterested in any compromise that would free their children to pursue becoming the upstanding ideal of a different culture. See "Groomer" rhetoric.

Child liberation is opposed mainly by people who want the power to ensure that their children become the upstanding ideal of their culture, and are uninterested in any compromise that would free their children to pursue becoming the upstanding ideal of a different culture.

“Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians - we call them 'children'.” - Hannah Arendt

Child liberation is opposed mainly by people who want the power to ensure that their children become the upstanding ideal of their culture, and are uninterested in any compromise that would free their children to pursue becoming the upstanding ideal of a different culture. See "Groomer" rhetoric.

Yes_Chad.jpg

With the added caveat that "child liberation" is a mirage. Unless you're dropping them off at the jungle to be raised by wolves, you're not liberating them from anything, you're raising them in different values that they have no choice over.

What kind of jungle has wolves?

This kind, I guess...

The kind where lions sleep?

The kind in the imagination and work of Rudyard Kipling.

I guess there actually are wolves in India -- it says they avoid "wet, dense forests" though. (which I guess doesn't mean that they never go in the jungle):

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2022.814966/full

That's fair. I don't think children should be "taken away". I think children should be free to go where they want to and systems should be configured such that roaming children remain supported.

And if they all end up on Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island, is that a good thing?

That is a hell of a bad thing. However, if kids have a realistic view of how likely something like that is...and they decide that winding up there in the pursuit of their desired life choices is preferable to not being able to pursue something like transition...

I mean, it's a kind of mutually assured destruction. Someone that sits down and decides that they would rather wind up in this kind of hellhole than not transition is one hell of a determined motherfucker and as such deserves respect.

Are you of the opinion that children are just as capable of mental analysis as Adults but just in a small form factor?

No. I am of the opinion that when it comes to individual issues children can be surprisingly capable, although they often fail to consider the big picture. When they examine long-term consequences the analysis often lacks nuance and depth, and may miss certain important issues entirely. However, it is often surprising what children - what people in general - achieve when [they believe] their life or bodily sovereignty is at stake.

I know a couple of children who more or less invoked MAD when they were quite young - ten or eleven. In one case this was extremely deliberate and carefully planned. The kid called a family meeting and discussed the terms of their conflict about a week after it started. In both cases it left them with lifelong side effects that they weren't able to predict at the time but which most mature adults would be able to foresee. That being said. They were fairly impressive in their resourcefulness, determination, and resolve; that is to be admired. This is a sort of power that is not given but taken by the simple and desperate expedient of being willing to suffer terribly, or even to die, for the strength of your personal or philosophical convictions. Only the very determined, or the very scared, or the very maladjusted will go this far in attempting this, and make no mistake about it - it is a terrible thing, sometimes. It alters relationships and changes people for life.

To say nothing of the kids that invoke MAD and wind up with one side overplaying their hand. This being said: I still believe that it takes an exceptional level of willpower or determination to risk the abyss. It turns what might have been bullshit power struggles of a generation ago about wearing your hair short or even dating the same sex into genuine straight-up goddamn existential battles that are far likelier to have deleterious lifelong consequences. But in the end it is ultimately a battle of human will against human will, and I've seen some damned strong-willed kids...at that point it is very much a naked power struggle, everything else be damned. Who has the power? Who is genuinely okay with being buried, rather than not getting what they are after?

I may be rambling. But I am of the opinion that if your child is old enough and wants something badly enough to be okay being maimed or raped or killed over it - and they're unwilling or unable to desist - that needs to be respected even if you deeply disagree with it, perhaps especially if you deeply disagree with it. It's kind of...invoking a state of war or at least some kind of extraordinary circumstance where the usual rules do not apply in the same way, or apply only in the sense that they are part of the power struggle.

Game theory is a motherfucker. Anyone who wants can pull out a live hand grenade, though this takes a lot of willpower and is almost always inadvisable.

The way to deal with this is long before your 14-year-old has decided that they are trans, that they will pursue medical treatment by any means necessary, and that they consider it a straight up life and death struggle. You may be able to win that battle by force or threat of force, to be honest. But if they don't get the memes that if they're gender-nonconforming, they're trans...or if they're not good at performing gender roles, they're trans...they are a hell of a lot less likely to wind up playing Mutually Assured Destruction: Trans Edition.

This sounds much more epic and reasonable until you realize kids will regularly get into this level of game of chicken over liker Katy Perry tickets and the weaker willed parents will cave. You really really don't want to set standards that encourage brinksmanship like this.

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if your child is old enough

What range or limit are you thinking about here? 14 and up, less or more?

The way to deal with this is long before your 14-year-old has decided that they are trans, ...

How do you grok this with cases in which the children were groomed secretly by their teachers and they spring this up suddenly to the parents?

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Child liberation is opposed mainly by people who want the power to ensure that their children become the upstanding ideal of their culture

I proudly own this label, and I ask you why it’s bad. Our society does not do enough to make sure children become an upstanding ideal of normiedom. Instead we leave them to decide what they want to do, which is usually something stupid but glamorous like ‘become an influencer’ and then when they grow up put energy into helping them become normies in the back end when a bunch of them have already screwed the pooch.

So why, exactly, is it bad to want children to turn out like their parents but better?

I appreciate the candor.

But you missed the other half.

Child liberation is opposed mainly by people who want the power to ensure that their children become the upstanding ideal of their culture, and are uninterested in any compromise that would free their children to pursue becoming the upstanding ideal of a different culture.

So why is it bad for them to become the upstanding ideal of a different culture? I agree that it is bad when a child fails to find any viable niche, which is what your argument describes, but why should every child be crammed into their parents' niche? Last I checked, most of us here value horizontal and vertical societal mobility. Forcing children to be their parents but better is... inhuman. Ant-like.

Seeds within a child should be nurtured. However, if you raise a child with ulterior motives, you are compelled to quash seeds that do not conform. This damages the child and perpetuates a culture of painfully breaking people into a mold. You are losing efficiency by cramming round pegs into square holes. This is an argument against modern conventional schooling as well, you may be more familiar with it in that context.

Longterm- I proudly hold the goal of seeding every ecological niche with human/transhuman intelligence.

Crushing children's exploration of new cultural niches is antithetical to this prospect. Instead legitimizing and teaching the fear of the Other and the New. It robs children of their innocence and teaches them fear.

So why is it bad for them to become the upstanding ideal of a different culture?

Because the basic foundation of society the willingness of people to sacrifice their own pleasures to invest in futures they will not personally benefit from. If generations are not tied together and current generations do not have the right to shape what comes next, people will not invest in the future at all. They'll go off and have "fur babies" instead of kids, and let their communities collapse into chaos in pursuit of their own personal virtue-signalling and status.

The idea that we all have special seeds within us that need to be expressed in the world is decadent romanticism. This belief system is one of the current failure modes of society because it fundamentally misunderstands what a self is. We participate in our ongoing development in embodied relation with the world and others.

In terms of human development it doesn't make sense to posit someone born into one family system and culture as if they were born into another.

This doesn't preclude development that honor's the child's unique characteristics and preferences to give them sovereignty and agency. Or for cultures to adapt and change.

Any parent with any sense knows that while they have a special unique child, they are also responsible for shaping that child's development while their brain is forming. This duty of development means a parent often needs to overrule the childs own view of the world, ie in limiting this or that food, technology, being wary of strangers, trying to advocate options that don't limit in education etc.

Unfortunately people, families and cultures come with a lot of baggage, but there is no utopian shortcut. Transhuman ideas and decadent romanticism have fed into the current trans contagion and are causing irreversible harms.

So why is it bad for them to become the upstanding ideal of a different culture?

Because they mostly don't.

Children need real, living role models that they interact with every day to absorb enough of a functional culture to smoothly take it up themselves. Right now, society is absolutely full of fake role models, cardboard cutouts of fictional cultures that attempt to lure children into their clutches to be used in some way, whether somewhat banally as brand dedicated consumers or more maliciously.

Children are impressionable. They lack good judgment and, especially, have no real concept of the long term until they are already quite mature, ie., until they have already been raised within one culture. There is a reason we don't just leave cigarettes or alcohol or sexual activity to the good judgment and curious nature of children: They will make bad, often harmful mistakes much more often than they will learn valuable life lessons and become the wiser for it.

The worst part? The children themselves are the only ones with the right incentives to raise themselves right. Because their judgment is impaired, we are left with the second best choice, those whose incentives are aligned with the child's the second most: The parents. Society has no skin in the game for any particular child and anonymous or large scale social institutions most of all. No parent is perfect and always has all their child's best interests in mind at all times, everywhere, but they're going to be significantly better than a teacher who only has that child for one class for one year, where they are but one of dozens of others. They're certainly better than any bureaucrat for whom the child is one of a faceless multitude.

In the past, face-to-face local society provided an additional set of adults whose caring and long term exposure to the child offered a non-exclusive alternative to the child's parents, but that culture is dead and the modern replacements are not up to the job.

The alternative to children being broken into a mold by their parents isn't those children freely and independently choosing their own destiny, it's those children being broken into a mold by the first social trend, infohazard, or two-bit groomer they come across. Would that be true of all of them? Of course not, but we don't make policy for outliers, we make it for the average, and it is better for society that a few weirdos like us are given less agency than we could potentially handle for a few years as teenagers then letting all the kids roam free and be manipulated by bad actors into pursuing harmful goals.

Interestingly minnesota prohibits drinking to minors of 21 and piercings and tattoos to minors of 18, without the consent of a parent or guardian.

Because it doesn't consider those medically necessary.

It's curious that a bunch of activists managed to do what all the might of the Alcohol and Tobaco industry didn't. Still remember those cigarettes commercials with Doctors seal of approval and whatnot.

Hilariously, this is the first time it's occurred to me that one can genuinely die from being denied alcohol while withdrawing. Alcoholics have a wildly stronger claim to fear of death through marginalization and failure to provide 'treatment' than 'trans people'

During Prohibition Era, you could get a doctor's prescription allowing you to purchase "medically necessary" alcohol. This went much like the recent medical marijuana policies in many states. The biggest difference was that alcohol prescriptions were more constrained, mostly only being available to the wealthy and connected at the time.

Now, however, if a child runs away from home, and claims a "transgender identity" the state will use its powers to keep the child from its parents.

If anything, the quote you included says the opposite: MN courts will not enforce another state's attempt to take a child away from a parent because the parent allowed the child to "receiv[e] medically necessary health care or mental health care that respects the gender-identity of the patient."

And this is what section 1 of the law says:

A law of another state that authorizes a state agency to remove a child from the child's parent or guardian because the parent or guardian allowed the child to receive gender-affirming health care, as defined in section 543.23, paragraph (b), is against the public policy of this state and must not be enforced or applied in a case pending in a court in this state. A court order for the removal of a child issued in another state because the child's parent or guardian assisted the child in receiving gender-affirming care in this state must not be enforced in this state.

Wow, you actually looked up the law and avoided quoting the relevant part?

Isn't this a little too low effort? What's the relevant part neither of you are quoting?

Well, maybe a bit..

Firmamenti posted a link, it was just below your comment.

I have quoted what I consider the relevant sections of the law here

The comments thereto re what the law actually does seem to me to be correct.

I ask this earnestly and seriously: I’m about to have a son. What specific things should I do to protect him from what seems to me like an obviously predatory movement. I’m not really interested in hashing out whether this is predatory or how to fix it on a social level. I want to know what specific things I, as a soon to be parent, can do.

Raising your child in a conservative environment won’t help. I know a transwoman from a Muslim family with a father who’s vehemently anti-trans and anti-gay, and she still ended up transitioning. Also read about Eden Knight, a Saudi trans woman who committed suicide after her wealthy family did everything to try to get her to detransition.

If there’s trans people in Saudi Arabia of all places, what hope do you have as a parent in a western country?

I imagine the OP’s worry isn’t the one in a million chance that there is something genuinely out of balance with his kid but the much likely scenario of his kid getting influenced by the current year ideology of his teachers/Reddit powermod/Netflix show to a direction that wouldn’t have happened without such influences.

It’s simple. Teach your son about chromosomes and sex differences before the schools do. Physical sex differences are real, obvious, and rest on theoretically sound genetics.

How does this prevent anyone from transitioning? I’m a trans woman and I’m very much aware of my chromosomes, and sex differences are the entire reason I’m trans. If anything I probably know more about sex differences than the average poster here due to constant hyper-scrutiny of my own physical traits, heck I’m even aware of extremely specific things like the difference in shape between typical male and female navels, philtrum length, mid-face ratio, pelvic obliquity, etc.

Two major memetic transmission vectors for progressivism, including transsexualism: the media and the education system. To protect your son, need to be willing to homeschool and kill your television (including streaming).

From "The cause of population decline" by the Dreaded Jim:

The Amish absolutely insist on controlling their kids schooling. They also ban television. They allow their adolescent kids out into the world to visit the fleshpots, but not, however, the classrooms. They fear both the classrooms and the televisions, but primarily the classrooms.

I would say that it is memetic infection, the same memeplex, propagated both by soap operas and the education system, each reinforcing the other, but primarily by the education system.

And from "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" by AntiDem:

First, as the leftists used to say, “Kill Your Television”. I am not one who generally thinks that machines are inherently evil. Television is an exception. It is no more and no less than a hypnotic mind control device. Don’t believe me? Sit a hyperactive toddler in front of a television and watch what happens. They freeze, turn away from everything they were doing, and stare at the screen. Gavin McInnes once noted that the “on” switch of his television was an “off” switch for his kids, and so it is. Do you think this device does not place ideas in the minds of those who fall into a trance in its presence? And what ideas do you think the Hollywood/New York axis wishes to place there? I recall reading one account of a father who, tired of his two under-10 daughters’ bratty attitudes, limited their television viewing to a DVD box set of Little House on The Prairie. The change in his daughters’ behavior was dramatic – within a couple of weeks, they were referring to him and his wife as “Ma” and “Pa”, and offering to help with chores. The lesson is obvious: people (and especially children) learn their social norms from television, far more even than from the people around them.

Ideally, one would cut oneself off from it totally. Many find this rather difficult (I must admit, myself included at times). Some keep a television set, but make sure it is disconnected from broadcast channels and use it only as a monitor for a carefully-selected library of DVDs. Others (myself included) don’t own a set, but download a few select programs from torrent sites and watch on laptops or tablets. My total viewership of television programs tops out at perhaps 3-4 hours per week during particularly good seasons. Any traditionalist should strive to do the same. In fact, traditionalists should reject – should “drop out” of – all popular culture (especially that produced after, say, 1966) to the greatest degree possible, and make sure their children are exposed to it as little as possible. Music, video games, even the web – either drop out of it completely, or, at very least, carefully limit the time and scope of it in your life and the lives of your children.

While we’re on the subject of children: DO NOT send your children to a public school. “Drop out” here too; by which I do not mean that your children should go uneducated, but that you should – you must – homeschool. To do otherwise is pure child abuse. Perhaps fifty years ago, this was not the case, but these times are not those times. The failures of the public schools need not be repeated here, but they are undeniable, and any reasonably smart ten-year-old whose attention span hasn’t been destroyed by television can learn more by being left alone all day with a stack of books than they can in any public school classroom anyway. As for the universities, there are not quite any suitable replacements for them yet, but some lurk just over the horizon and will appear before long.

To say that one should “drop out” of – not bother listening to and not ever trusting – the mainstream news media goes without saying.

College is harder. Long way off, but think ahead. Learn a trade?

These days, lots of kids also transed by internet; do not give smartphone. If must use computer/internet, do so on desktop in living room in clear view of everyone. Otherwise, at risk from TikTok, Discord, and porn.

Yes, this is somewhat hardcore asceticism. Is necessary. As society becomes more degenerate, a greater level of eccentricity is required to keep healthy. Same as addiction.

Should also go to church, the tradder the better. If right ethnicity, become Orthodox; if not, Catholic or Mormon. Islam is also resistant, but has serious downsides; last resort.

Awesome post, thanks.

ETA: In context, a simple thank you is all right, though we still prefer people not post one-line responses that are just agreement or thanks.

Dude asked for advice, got advice, and thanked person for advice.

Just... what even?

For once, a reasonable objection. I saw a low-effort report and we discourage "I agree" posts. That said, I merely warned, I didn't even give him a mod note, but the warning is rescinded.

As others have said, be involved in his life. Play with him.

If he's three years old and goofing around with looking like his mom or pretending to be someone different, don't make a big deal about it. Three years is exactly the right time to be doing that! He should be around other people who are also pretend playing, and know it, and think it's fun or funny and no big deal.

If he's eight and the social mania is still in full swing, perhaps consider moving to a different social environment, possibly drastically so. If he gets matched with a weirdo teacher and can't change classrooms, it would probably be worth changing schools over. But there's a pretty good chance the zeitgeist will have moved onto some other repellant thing by then.

I’m in the same position. I have a plan to flee my blue state early if I get a hint of anything like this. Florida is one option. International is another. I don’t know if Florida can and will protect me, I haven’t done the research yet. Immediately removing the kid from local environment and basically putting them in short term social confinement seems like it would work. Damaging, sure, but better than the alternative.

I’m lucky to have a job that would likely accommodate me.

Sanctuary laws like these make the benefit of moving states pretty minimal. At age twelve kids can purchase plane tickets and fly alone to a state that will keep them from you.

Maybe you’d wonder where they could get the money. A wild amount of runaways end up earning money through prostitution. Googling around shows estimates of around a third will end up being prostituted or trafficked.

I’ve thought about this, and this is something I’m willing to die for. If the state comes for my son because they’ve brainwashed him into thinking he’s a girl and I won’t consent to medical interventions, then I will defend my son with lethal force. Morally I find it no different than defending my child against a pedophile who has convinced my kid that they’re in love and is trying to kidnap them. I’m not going to stand aside and let such grave damage be inflicted on someone that I have the ultimate duty to protect.

I'm not sure there's a good answer here.

One big problem is - being 'smart, intellectually independent, and aggressive in figuring things out yourself' is a trait the best people have, and if your kid is one of those that's great. But when you figure things out yourself, you can make mistakes. So that teenager - just like that kind of adult - might learn about being trans on the internet, along with being shaped by all of modernity, decide to be trans for more complex, authentic reasons, and less for trend-following reasons. Not that it's easy to separate the two, but clearly there were many trend-setting trans women who did it before it was mainstream.

And there aren't many good options for preventing that. Not allow them to use the internet, or only under supervision, until age 17? I think it would help a lot. Both preventing exposure to the idea, not seeing the cute anime girls or porn, decontextualized images the will takes up for lack of anything more compelling. But - You've taken away the best avenue for learning and understanding - and the place the child'll probably make his living - along with the main method of social interaction for people that age. And if the tradeoff is (2% chance trans) vs (10% reduced life-experience), not that numbers mean much here - picking the latter is life-denying, causing general harm to slightly reduce the chance of some other harm? Cutting off a limb because it might get cancer?

I'm also not sure what to do with a more 'normal' kid who goes trans because of dumb random kid reasons (which is more common). But it's in principle a much easier problem. Just raising them as right-wing, in a right-wing community, is a reasonable move. Even without 'values', maybe watch their discord/reddit/[other platform] use and keep them out of trans-adjacent communities? I think that'd work in some cases, but not in others, and sometimes backfire.

The teachers thing is just a red herring, trans comes from the internet and social peers. And being a Wholesome Dad Chungus 100 won't do too much either, plenty of trans people had good parents.

Carefully screen teachers at their school perhaps? There's a certain type of profoundly creepy individual you'd see on libsoftiktok - they're to be avoided. Piercings are a big red flag, died hair...

Be present in your child's life.

That's all you can do. Anyone who says differently is wrong. Be a role model. Be kind. Be loving. Be there for the t-ball games. Be there for the after school concert, drop him off for sports practice and pick him up when he's done. Ask him about his day and at least pretend to be interested in the 1000th time he tells you about making macaroni art. Don't tease him about his hobbies, even if they seem incredibly dumb to you.

Eventually he's going to get older, and when he does he's going to start to look and sound and talk like a real person. Like an adult. Don't be fooled. He's still a kid. He's still your son. I'm not saying don't let him learn and grow and change, because he will, but don't make the mistake of thinking that he's a buddy before he actually is. Don't tease him about the high school girlfriend (too much), not like you'd tease a buddy who was acting like a teenager about some girl, because he will actually be a teenager. He's going to make mistakes, he's going to fuck up, and he's going to make you see red because of how angry you'll be with him. When that happens, just remember, he is your son and you love him. Everything else is crap.

You can be an authoritarian, you can rule his life with an iron fist. Monitor his internet usage, screen his friends, screen his teachers, whatever. It won't work. I grew up in what the Brits would call a "posh" neighborhood. I knew plenty of kids, good kids, who turned into raging shitheads because their parents tried to rule them. Did they all turn into trannies? No. But they didn't turn into good people either. Your job isn't to make sure your kid turns out cisgender, your job is to make sure your kid turns out to be a good person. Does that mean keeping him safe from this gender crap? Yeah. But you do that by making sure you are there for him. That's it. Just love him. Teach him your values by living them, not by talking about them.

Oh and apparently kids are more likely to laugh off a scraped knee if you don't make a big fuss over it. Worth a try.

For now though, relax. Your kid isn't even born yet. He won't be speaking until he's around a year, a year and a half old. He won't even be going to kindergarten until he's at least four. You have literal years before your kid is even going to be exposed to anyone outside you, mom, and his little play group (there will be a play group). Deep breath. Relax. In four years this may all just be a bad memory. If it's not, well, that's tomorrow's problem.

This sums it up, really. 15% of Gen Z's are apparently queer, but I think they just saw the biggest zeitgeist in society that also comes with a very easy ticket and went about seeking validation and care they never received at home elsewhere. Many socially maladjusted folk join online subcultures because of this too.

A majority of that number is 'just' bisexual or adjacent people. I don't think that's meaningless -- at least for some fandom spaces, I've seen some pretty interesting results when a specific subcommunity starts to become >40%ish bisexual. But it does make it less relevant for trans stuff.

((And I'm not sure how much of the Gallup poll's trans stuff is trans-as-you-or-I-would-define it. I'm not finding the actual questions in a quick search, and there's a lot of nonbinary or genderfluid that rounds themselves closer to trans than to queer, largely for historical reasons, but does not raise most of the conventional medical concerns for trans stuff.))

Could you elaborate what those interesting results are?

Furries have a stereotype as being, by-and-large, bi and large. While that's not true strictly true, as around 25% are strictly gay or strictly straight, the stereotype isn't exactly unfounded.

There's nothing preventing a furry from being straight, and indeed no small number of well-known artists are (I'll point to meesh and ruaidri as particularly well-known, but eddiew is another good artist that draws gay, but found out experimentally that it wasn't working for him). The standard explanation is that there's literally no alternatives, but if you actually poke at the demographic info, you find that there's actually a lot more women in the fandom than the stereotype, and even if not parity, closer to gender-parity than spaces like the ratsphere or electronics engineering, and they're more het than the fandom at large. And furries do date outside of the fandom (albeit still much more gay than the general world). Yet this large portion of bi people aren't just theoretically or socially bi, or even just bi-for-roleplay purposes. Nor does it seem solely a matter of selection bias pulling in gayer people: there's a pretty sizable number of people who identify as straight, get into the fandom, and then having the "Oh No He's Hot!" moments (cw: tasteful shirtless male).

((There's a few other fandoms I've seen with similar trends, albeit usually to less extremes. FFXIV's fandom isn't that gay in the strict sense, but it's pretty gay in the .))

And this doesn't just change the culture for the gay and bisexual people. All of the three straight artists above have done significant M/M work, often including their own characters, and Meesh in particular is pretty famous for a long-form coming-out-style comic. And there's a good few others I could name in a similar boat. Normal culture doesn't have as much a norm around drawing yourself as the middle strut in an Eiffel Tower, and less of a norm around money talking, so obviously this directly isn't something that's going to generalize; you're not going to see the world turn into an Anthrocon room party as soon as the scale hits 40% bi. And having more older straight people around will provide some inductance to slow some massive changes that do happen.

But I think there will be some pretty large changes, often faster than people would expect, probably reflecting things people can't even name, if this generalizes and if the general trend continues. Population dynamics are the most obvious and severe, and while I think there are some counterpressures, since a lot of people in same-sex relationships do want kids of their own enough to find a surrogate or lay back and think of England, it's another potential worry on top of already collapsing birth rates. Outside of that, there's just a massive potential for changes in a lot of norms, both in single-sex and mixed-sex environments.

More broadly... a common perspective is that the growth of a lot of this stuff is social status-tied, rather than some deeper or more meaningful cause: at 'best', that a lot of this new generation of LGBs are effectively Kinsey 1s, and more often Kinsey 0s who just aren't grossed out and want the recognition, and at worst have pushed themselves into situations they don't actually enjoy because of social pressures. See here for a motte-sphere example, but there's a lot of if you look at social cons, even pretty squishy ones.

Some of that's the tension between the 'born this way' framework and rapidly increasing self-identification (including changes in identification), but a bigger thing these people point at is the number of bisexuals who end up in heterosexual relationships. A different Gallup poll puts around bisexuals as six times more likely to end up in a het long-term relationship than a same-sex one, and while there are some process problems with that poll, it's definitely an existence proof of something. And you can find individual evidence of even the most extreme variants of the claim.

But a different explanation's that, until very recently, if you were Kinsey 2-3 (or 4-5!) and looking for a romantic partner, you had the choice:

  • go to very highly gay spaces (gay bars, gay clubs, so on) where most people were gay or the accepted romantic (or, uh, other) overtures were gay.

  • not, and trying to identify someone else's sexuality before making an overture.

  • not, and just go for whatever's most likely to work out.

And in practice, unless you went to the far of the first category, even if you tried all three approaches, you'd probably still end up with a majority of prospective partners being different sex. There's more to romantic compatibility than a simple odds game, but it's not a small driver, either. This seldom made it impossible or even required especially heroic acts to find a same-sex partner, but it's basically Beware Trivial Inconveniences writ large, especially since a lot of those inconveniences weren't that trivial (eg, moving to The Big City) or could be undesirable for other reasons (eg, being a teetotaller at a lot of gay bars is pretty unpleasant; gay-straight alliances tend to be a very specific sort of thing).

In a perfectly-spherical cow world, assuming 2% bisexual and 3% gay, you need to encounter 40 people to have one same-gender person who'd even consider your entire sex, already outside of the scale of a small club or a small business (as compared to 1-in-4.5ish for opposite-sex, note both gay and straight numbers are further modified by age, marital status, yada yada). But as those numbers change and it becomes easier to go looking (or to date for a specific gender from a very large supply, or not for a specific gender, qua online dating), the results twist rapidly. At 18% bisexual and 2% gay, it's 1-in-10. At 30% bisexual and 5% gay, 1-in-6, and the risk of hitting on a gay opposite-gender person has more than doubled.

And for most people, that simple division isn't quite the right math. For a variety of reasons, you're likely to spend more time around people of the same sex, and there are a number of cultural norms specific to each sex that have historically made inter-gender dating more complicated and especially complicated to start.

((LGBT identification isn't the only thing driving this; there have also been drastically changing norms about dating in the workplace or at some hobby locations, if not consistently enforced, as has the movement to online dating and finding dating partners through online communities have had a pretty big impact, too. A lot of norms about appropriate behavior to opposite-sex casual acquaintances have an impact, too, and continue to increase limits.))

Thank you for such a detailed reply! Do I understand correctly that the main point is that you expect number of same-sex relationships to grow faster than linearly with proportion of bisexuals? And I feel bad to ask for even more elaboration after such a reply, but I was most interested in something you only just touched on: “a massive potential for changes in a lot of norms, both in single-sex and mixed-sex environments,” what have such changes been in the communities you know?

Is ruaidri even a single person? The way he puts out both detailed 3d animation and high quality drawings at a steady pace, he's either several people or a true Renaissance man of furry porn.

Do I understand correctly that the main point is that you expect number of same-sex relationships to grow faster than linearly with proportion of bisexuals?

Yeah, pretty much, modulo perhaps some time offset with some hysteresis.

And I feel bad to ask for even more elaboration after such a reply, but I was most interested in something you only just touched on: “a massive potential for changes in a lot of norms, both in single-sex and mixed-sex environments,” what have such changes been in the communities you know?

It's... kinda tricky to summarize, and I'm not sure how much each change will generalize.

As a trivial example of the limits of trying to extrapolate, all three of the furry fandom and FFXIV and pre-porn ban tumblr, for example, have developed a pretty wide tolerance for 'mild' 'queer' or 'feminine' sexuality, as have some other smaller communities, not just in the mainstream sense of not being offended by its existence, but actively accepting its presence in a lot of more semi-public adult-specific spaces. That's not (just) sex or porn or lewd jokes, but the sort of conversations that pop up, even for het couples in the sphere, and how they're acceptable to make pretty public. It's not universal, but it's a very noticeable contrast from post-1990s conventions through a number of cultures that really strongly discourage even the het variants.

Some of this is probably just the possibility of male-male, female-female, or other romance, but another probably a more complicated bit where social opprobrium has driven a lot of contested behavior and a lot of bad actors out from public awareness so the normal social norms against being too flirty haven't (or don't) apply. I think in the longer term a lot of this doesn't end up surviving in its current form into day-to-day life, especially workplaces -- when it comes to queer-as-in-gay versus the administrative class, the HR sphere probably wins, even and maybe especially when it restricts subaltern groups -- but there's probably going to be some variant around.

Or... so, the expectations that gay-area gyms are rolling orgies isn't right, but I don't think it's realistic (or even possible!) to expect androphillic attraction to completely disappear as soon as someone steps into the public sphere. In practice, most areas I've seen with a lot of gay or bisexual guys always end up having a lot more romantic overtures happening in spaces that aren't gay bars or online dating, both because it stops being a minefield with only mines, and because getting an incompatible overture stops meaning anything other than a complement. This dynamic something I've seen pop up in as small groups as college clubs.

Okay, well, changes in sexuality affect sexual behavior and dating norms, that's not a huge surprise. But there's a lot of things downstream of that.

Some gay or lesbian couples adopt kids or make other arrangements, but it's not as common as straight couples doing making kids and even when it does happen it has a pretty different set of pathways -- not always later, but often later. I'm kinda hoping this trend doesn't continue or even reverses, but a lot of very-gay and very-lesbian spaces are extremely DINK, in a pretty wide variety of ways. That impacts everything from scheduling (late nights suck a lot more when you've got to get kids to the bus stop by 7am) to expectations around non-sobriety (hangovers are a lot rougher when the kids are waking you up at 7am) to availability of large time blocks (it's a lot harder to support a five-day event, even a completely kid-focused one, if you have your own kids to work around). These aren't always or even often bad; my own nature has made it a lot more possible to support a number of STEM outreach programs that have needed a lot of manpower on short notice. But it's a difference.

And more controversially... for most people, relationships are the single biggest way that they let another person into their lives after leaving home. Yes, there are the people who are actually roommates and deal with 99% of the same stuff that couples who were oh my good roommates might, but most of that is a lot closer to 'tolerate' at best. You pick up norms and expectations, and in turn so does your partner. And to some extent, there are a lot of gendered norms and expectations that get tempered in our society by being forced to deal with their counterparts. A lot of gay guys historically have had other IRL exposures to women that a lot of straight men didn't, hence a lot of the flouncy stereotypes, but that's going to be less and less present.

Is ruaidri even a single person? The way he puts out both detailed 3d animation and high quality drawings at a steady pace, he's either several people or a true Renaissance man of furry porn.

I don't know. There are a few 'artists' that are collaborative works, either openly (Blotch, MrSafetyLion) or less so, but I've not seen any evidence of it for ruaidri specifically. He presents as a single person in a way that would take a lot of effort to fake, at least, but I don't think he has a major presence in convention circuits.

He's far from the only multi-disciplinary furry artist, including a number that are pretty good at what they do: compare ToykoZilla (dragons in 2d digital media, does a lot of VRchat avatars, sfw), pre-burnout Fek (bi trending gay, some mild bdsm, drawing, 3d models, and did programming for the solo projects RACK/RACK2), accelo (about as gay as it can get for media sometimes involving women, mostly digital art, some 3d modeling for resin-scale printing, /very/ NSFW). Even for the list of straight furries, Eddiew's not particularly happy about his artwork or writing, but he does both reasonably well by my standards and has been at a good pace for over a decade. And there's a lot of other people with stranger focuses in skillsets or content focuses: see SixthLeafClover for a (mostly SFW) artist that's branched out to collectables, and there's a handful of artists that are also general aviation pilots. Not every furry creator is a Renaissance man (or woman, or whatever), but there are a lot.

But ruaidri does have an amazing tempo; I could see that, combined with the lack of other social media presence, as a plausible explanation. But it's very weak evidence if so.

Oh and apparently kids are more likely to laugh off a scraped knee if you don't make a big fuss over it. Worth a try.

In my experience this does work, but only if done as a combination of emotional support and distraction. First take the child in to console them, then immediately transition to directing their attention to something interesting. I.e., don't tell them to suck it up, don't teach them that you don't care about their pain, but do show them that daddy cares and that there are better things to do than dwell on pain.

So true. Whenever one of my young daughters get hurt I pick them up and do something silly. The tears turn to laughter and thirty seconds later they forget they were even hurt.

Which is also a good way to handle pain in one's own life, emotional or physical. "It sucks, but..." is a powerful schema.

Pain is: a prompt for corrective action, a learning opportunity, or pointless and should be moved on from... Pain is never: an excuse to inflict misery on others, a way to increase your status, an indication of your worth as a human being...

A kid who learns this would in my opinon be well equipped to deal with life.

Pretty much. I recently had a revelation when I realised that the most important part of "conscientiousness", which has all this data linking it to success, is just frustration tolerance - whether pain, disappointment, rejection, or whatever irks someone. Achieving notable things generally requires tolerating a lot of "frustration", in the sense of things you are frustrated about. Of course, that doesn't mean that frustration itself is what is useful: it's frustration in pursuit of a goal.

There are 17 states that have passed anti-trans healthcare laws for minors. You could consider moving to one of those places, if this is really a big concern for you.

That said, I think this kind of worrying and paranoia is a bit overblown. Even with a double-digit percentage of Gen Z fashionably adopting non-binary identities, the number of minors actually receiving HRT, puberty blockers and surgeries is still pretty small. This Reuter's article says that there were 42,000 gender dysphoria diagnoses in 2021, and a quick search shows there were 26.2 million children in the US in the same year. Even if you assume that every child diagnosed with gender dysphoria gets the full suite of trans healthcare including surgery and sterilizing hormones, that's a 0.1% chance you kid will actually end up medically transitioning.

The odds of your kid dying in a car crash in their lifetime is ~1%. The odds of someone in the US dying of an opioid overdose is 1.5%. The odds of dying of cancer are about 14%.

I'm sure as a father, you've thought a lot about the many possible risks your child may face. But my overall advice is worry more about other more likely risks your child may face, and don't spend so much time on something that is exceedingly unlikely. I'm not even sure that trans ideology is the most likely way that your son will end up "sterilized" - environmentalist doomerism, feminism, etc. all seem like much more likely ideologies to capture a young mind, and even if you try to raise your son in a socially conservative environment, you'll never be able to keep the world entirely out.

You're comparing diagnoses per year for those 6-17 to number of children. You have to multiply the yearly figure by 12 for the whole time period. The U.S. population 6-17 is apparently 49,466,485, which would put the percentage who end up with gender-dysphoria diagnoses before the age of 18 at 1.02%.

(To viewer) "Do you buckle your child up when you put them in the car? Of course you do. You care about them, and car accidents are all too common. But did you know that your 6 - 17 year old is more likely to be 'diagnosed' trans than to die in a fatal car accident? Don't you think you might wanna do something about that, too?"

Not sure who would pay for this ad or even who the target audience would be but it was a funny thought.

If I won the powerball…

Fair enough, but even that 1.02% is just measuring the likelihood of a gender dysphoria diagnosis. I doubt that all 1.02% of people in that group are getting the full suite of medical transition. Unfortunately, we don't have good numbers on minors getting surgeries, HRT or puberty blockers.

I still stand by my original statement. 1.5% of an opioid overdose death is a much scarier possibility than the apparently 1.02% chance your child gets a gender dysphoria diagnosis. Especially with how many gender-non-conforming children desist by the end of puberty, I actually find it fairly likely that the 1.02% is still something you should weigh less than other ways your child's life might end up being screwed up.

I still stand by my original statement. 1.5% of an opioid overdose death is a much scarier possibility than the apparently 1.02% chance your child gets a gender dysphoria diagnosis.

That's still a 1.5% lifetime chance of opioid overdose death versus the dysphoria diagnosis in a 12 year period. I don't know how one would convert the 2, but they're still not like-for-like. Also, is getting a gender dysphoria diagnosis a prerequisite for getting HRT or puberty blockers?

Eh, it depends on your social class. You can disregard the worry of opioid death is your children are middle class upwards (I'm sure the lifetime risk of this is less than 0.5% for children who's parents earned more than $100,000) while if anything the risk of a gender dysphoria diagnosis goes up with household income. So it's perfectly sensible for well off people to worry about gender dysphoria rather than opioid overdose (and the opposite for low income people).

Especially with how many gender-non-conforming children desist by the end of puberty,

That would be encouraging if it weren't for the medical establishment's push for puberty blockers, and the law that will take your kids away if you don't give them to them...

If there’s a serious concern about that, you can always leave Minnesota.

The issue is that if you kid runs away and goes, that state will assume jurisdiction over them.

No, if your kid runs away and goes to Minnesota and claims to be trans, the state will assume jurisdiction to determine child custody. There is a difference.

Yeah it doesn't add up -- I am in about the least queer environment possible, and do have a close colleague going through this with his kid. Also one other little stepkid of a fairly close old friend. This is just the teens (younger in one case actually) I know that are being sucked into this -- there are plenty of adults I'm aware of in this orbit -- I don't know one damn kid that's died in a car accident anymore. (there were a couple at my high school, but driving seems a lot safer now.)

The damnable thing is the celebration of it -- if a kid dies in a car accident people cry and hug you and say how tragic it is. If your kid transitions, it's stunning and brave and you will bloody well like it or else. Fuck this gay earth.

Yes, the gaslighting of parents in this is another real cost.

The general wisdom that comes from 'heterodox' parents I've heard from is that what kind of friends your kid will have will be the biggest influencing factor. There's no one ruleset for all kids, but if there was one it would be rule number one. That being said, it's much easier said than done to control what kind of friends your kid will have.

For us it was to start getting involved in our Catholic Church.

Monitor internet use.

Critically evaluate your local schools. Consider your options for private school.

But the fact that the kid has an involved and concerned father is more powerful than either of those.

What’s so special about discord?

Don't trust the educational system or the internet, mainly. Media's a problem as well. Probably you need to teach him a durable value system that will armor him against these sorts of ideas.

I suppose I'm one of the people @Quantumfreakonomics is describing in their post. The logic seems quite straightforward.

It is good that we have a rebuttable presumption that parents are acting in their child's best interests. Most of the time, they are! But when we have sufficient reason to believe they are not we should do the thing that is in the child's best interest, without regard to what the parent thinks. It is a similar logic that leads me to oppose laws that mandate reporting to parents when a child expresses the possibility they have an LGBT identity. The foremost concern is the health and well being of the child in question and how disclosure of that information will impact them.

As an aside, I'm interested in how these laws interact with the Full Faith and Credit clause. Anyone know of any litigation on this?

we should do the thing that is in the child's best interest,

Yes, this is what makes the issue more complicated than those on both sides seem to want to admit. Obviously, parents have rights, but so do children. Moreover, there are a lot of children for whom a teacher is the only reliable adult in their lives, and still more for whom a teacher is the only adult in whom they can confide. When a teacher should break that confidence is a difficult question, not an easy one, particularly when the teacher has reason to think that breaking that confidence might have negative consequences for the child (the obvious classic example is the gay child who fears getting kicked out of the house, or simply fears that he or she will lose the love of his or her parent).

As an aside, I'm interested in how these laws interact with the Full Faith and Credit clause. Anyone know of any litigation on this?

See here. It is my understanding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause only applies to enforcement of final judgments.

It is a similar logic that leads me to oppose laws that mandate reporting to parents when a child expresses the possibility they have an LGBT identity. The foremost concern is the health and well being of the child in question and how disclosure of that information will impact them.

I don't know about legal mandates, but I feel like there should be a strong societal presumption in favor of telling a parent what's going on with their child, especially something massive like using new pronouns and nicknames while at school.

To me, it just seems like such a strange and unsustainable status quo to try and maintain. Are we really trying to keep major aspects of kids' lives secret from their parents, just so we can deceive the parents until they turn 18 and are able to fend for themselves? I can understand the idea of putting the needs of the child above those of the parents, but I don't get how we arrive at this as the most natural solution to the problem of, "If we tell the parents that their kid identifies as trans, the parent might freak out and do something drastic that isn't in the best interest of the child."

In fact, I think that "tearing the band-aid off" and just telling parents about trans children is the "safer" option for LGBT people on the whole. Anti-LGBT parents who might abandon or abuse their LGBT children are a tough problem to solve by government mandate, but I think a mildly anti-LGBT parent is much more likely to have a massive overreaction if they come in 6 months into their child's social transition, which has all happened behind their backs, than they would have if a teacher had reached out to them and said, "Hey, John goes by Jenny now, and prefers she/her, I thought you ought to know."

To me, it just seems like such a strange and unsustainable status quo to try and maintain. Are we really trying to keep major aspects of kids' lives secret from their parents, just so we can deceive the parents until they turn 18 and are able to fend for themselves? I can understand the idea of putting the needs of the child above those of the parents, but I don't get how we arrive at this as the most natural solution to the problem of, "If we tell the parents that their kid identifies as trans, the parent might freak out and do something drastic that isn't in the best interest of the child."

I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students. What information students confide changes over the time but I don't think this is a new phenomenon or status quo. I don't think this is the best solution to this problem. The best solution would be something like "there are no parents who would disown or abuse their children for being LGBT" but I have no idea how to bring about that solution! It seems like we've settled on this one as the best alternative, in terms of protecting children's wellbeing. If you have further alternatives I'm open to hearing them.

In fact, I think that "tearing the band-aid off" and just telling parents about trans children is the "safer" option for LGBT people on the whole. Anti-LGBT parents who might abandon or abuse their LGBT children are a tough problem to solve by government mandate, but I think a mildly anti-LGBT parent is much more likely to have a massive overreaction if they come in 6 months into their child's social transition, which has all happened behind their backs, than they would have if a teacher had reached out to them and said, "Hey, John goes by Jenny now, and prefers she/her, I thought you ought to know."

I guess I don't agree. Either that telling parents is more generally the "safer" option or that mildly anti-LGBT parents would be more outraged about their child's transition being hidden than more strongly anti-LGBT parents. When I look at the kinds of people going to school board meetings and whatever complaining about schools policies of keeping student information confidential my impression is they are pretty strongly anti-LGBT, not mildly.

I agree that this is an old phenomenon with a long history: courageous teachers becoming involved with a child's welfare at some risk to themselves. But institutionalizing it changes everything. Guaranteeing state support dramatically reduces the risk to the teacher, which destroys the balance of incentives.

I'm sympathetic to kids trapped in a hellish adversarial relationship with their own parents, but predict that solving their problems by substituting state-approved parental figures will create a different series of problems that will probably affect a much larger number of children. Attempting to solve a tiny minority of problem cases, these laws create a new vector for neglect and abuse, because they cut parents out of the loop, when they are, in most cases, the people most committed to a child's well-being by many orders of magnitude.

It’s a typical pattern in politics- ‘oh yeah, you’re worried about easily predictable consequences of policies I’m pushing for agenda reasons? Well how about [problem my policy may or may not solve and which is much smaller than the easily foreseeable consequences]? Checkmate, hypocrites.’

I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students. What information students confide changes over the time but I don't think this is a new phenomenon or status quo.

This is the typical shuffle. In the past there were much more lax child safety laws, which could lead to a child getting beaten by his father for wanting to join the chess club instead of rugby, or for doing home ec instead of shop. This was considered a bad thing and rightly so.

Now if you so much as flinch at the idea of a bunch of barren authoritarian busybodies parenting your child in secret into destroying their life so we can tweet about making a difference, we can point back at those dads beating kids for not playing rugby and call you a danger to your child, and then quietly smile as your brains tears itself in two between overwhelming rage at the travesty of justice that is likening your shocked reaction to the discovery of betrayal to mercilessly beating your child, and overwhelming heartbreak at the realisation that this scum has actually convinced your child that you are a monster. And you have zero recourse, you either roll over and give them what they want, or you explode, and they take what they want.

And then if we talk to the unsympathetic we just have to pretend we actually think it's the same, even if we have demonstrated sufficient intelligence and self awareness in the past to make such a confusion impossible.

I guess I don't agree. Either that telling parents is more generally the "safer" option or that mildly anti-LGBT parents would be more outraged about their child's transition being hidden than more strongly anti-LGBT parents.

Yes of course a mildly opposed person will be less outraged than a strongly opposed person, but that was never in dispute. The question is if it's safer for teachers to lie to parents and transition kids behind their backs than to just tell them upfront. Because I guess in my perspective that is the literal definition of grooming.

I am confident the general phenomena of "student tells a trusted teacher information the student doesn't want their parents to know and the teacher keeps that confidence" is a phenomena as old as teachers and students.

And so have limitations on that.

The question is what shall a teacher incur legal risk over, they are already mandatory reporters for many other things.

If it is a matter of honor, then let there be honor with risk.

This seems: absolutely pants-shittingly insane to me?

You should not be surprised. This is a very simple logical syllogism that follows from two premises believed by almost all democrat politicians.

  • Children who run away from home because their parents refuse them medically necessary health care should not be returned to their parents because it is unsafe.

  • Gender affirming care for transgender children is medically necessary.

  • Therefore, transgender children who run away from home because their parents refuse them gender affirming care should not be returned to their parents because it is unsafe.

Gender affirming care for transgender children is medically necessary.

Is this really believed by almost all Democratic politicians? I'd thought that medical transition of children as being necessary was still not universally accepted in the left. I've seen my share of left-leaning activists who are rather skeptical of it at all, much less believe it necessary. And Democratic politicians tend to lag behind the SocJus/idpol left in most issues like this.

I think you're underestimating the level of ideological conformity required to become a politician. There are no Jesse Singals in elected legislative office. Carrick Flynn got pwned in the primary. Lest you think I'm picking on Democrats here, look at what happened to Liz Cheney.

I would highlight that the key phrase is "ideological conformity" and not "commitment to the ideology"

If they actually exhibited an ideology beyond conformity they wouldn't change it so readily in response to shifts in the overton window.

Which is to say most of them care about trans issues like megacorps care about pride month.

There are a few outliers like Manchin but I take your point. He sometimes bows to the needs of his party, more often than I thought.

In March 2021, Manchin was the only Democrat to vote for a failed amendment to rescind funding from public schools that allow transgender youth to participate in the sporting teams of their gender identity.[255][256] In November 2022, Manchin reversed his prior position and voted to advance and pass legislation, the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects same-sex marriages under federal law.

There are a few outliers like Manchin

Manchin is in a Trump +40 state, and facing a popular GOP governor in his next senate race.

It looks like this is a custody dispute thing, not a runaway thing. I’m open to being wrong, but it looks like the law is specifying that Minnesota will not cooperate with Texas CPS removing children from their parents for putting them on hormones.

It’s unclear to me that there was much interstate CPS cooperation anyways.

FULLTEXT here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?session=ls93&number=HF146&session_number=0&session_year=2023&version=list

Sec. 3. Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 518D.204, is amended to read:

518D.204 TEMPORARY EMERGENCY JURISDICTION.

(a) A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in

this state and:

(1) the child has been abandoned or;

(2) it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is subjected to or threatened with mistreatment or abuse; or

(3) the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care as defined in section 543.23, paragraph (b).

This seems to suggest that the child simply has to be present in the state, with or without their parents.

And this is that section:

(b) "Gender-affirming health care" means medically necessary health care or mental

health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by

the patient, and that may include but is not limited to:

(1) interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex

characteristics;

(2) interventions to align the patient's appearance or physical body with the patient's

gender identity;

(3) interventions to alleviate the patient's symptoms of clinically significant distress

resulting from gender dysphoria as defined in the current version of the Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; and

(4) developmentally appropriate exploration and integration of the patient's gender

identity, reduction of the patient's distress, adaptive coping, and strategies to increase family acceptance of the patient's gender identity.

I don't know much about child custody law, but that section reads to me a establishing jurisdiction for the state of Minnesota to do a child custody determination. Does it necessarily follow from them having the jurisdiction to determine custody that they would refuse to return a runaway minor?

Does it necessarily follow from them having the jurisdiction to determine custody that they would refuse to return a runaway minor?

Not necessarily but it does grant them the right to decide, whereas before the parents could argue the court has no jurisdiction.

Does it grant them the right to terminate parental rights or just the ability to award custody between the two parents?

I'm not a lawyer and it remains unclear to me whether something like a petition to terminate parental rights brought by the minor, or a child in need of protective services action brought by a state agency is a subcategory of a "custody proceeding" that Minnesota now claims temporary emergency jurisdiction over, or a separate legal proceeding this law would not give them jurisdiction over. There would then need to be a second step where, refusing to give a child gender-affirming care was considered grounds for terminating rights or a CPS action in an otherwise non-abusive home.

There's definitely a lot of explicit text that in the case of "parent X runs away with kid to Minnesota to transition, parent Y sues in other state demanding kid back", the legal process in the other state is to be ignored, and that in the case of "person breaks laws of other state by assisting transition, and flees to Minnesota" the person's not to be handed over.

How it interacts with runaways is murkier: I agree that there's nothing explicitly requiring the state to take custody, but some of those additions do apply in that case and depending on the rest of Minnesota law (of which I am ignorant) that might wind up with Minnesota failing to return the kid.

I don't think minnesota foster care is the relevant outcome- I think this is a bill that will get used by trans kids seeking emancipation. Yes, emancipation is usually a really bad idea, but it's probably a fairly common outcome of late teens alleging extreme abuse, and trans teens pattern match to the kinds of people who regularly get their emancipation requests denied.

Hold on.

A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in this state and the child has been abandoned or it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is subjected to or threatened with mistreatment or abuse.

So if a kid is abandoned or abused by both parents, it doesn't give the state the authority to remove custody from both of them?

In that situation, if the child is in Minnesota, "the child is present in the state and [...] it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child [...] is subjected to [...] abuse", so there's temporary emergency jurisdiction.

If the child is not present in the state, then there wouldn't be temporary emergency jurisdiction, but that's correct in a bunch of cases (e.g. preventing a family, none of whom live in Minnesota, from asking Minnesota courts to intervene in its custody dispute).

The way I understood his argument is: It's not true that Minnesota courts will be able to take away kids from the parents when both of them are against transition, because this is merely about jurisdiction over cases where the parents are fighting over custody.

My argument is that giving them jurisdiction is enough to give the state the ability to take the kid from both the parents, the same way it would be if the kid was abused by both parents, and the kid ran away to Minnesota.

I wasn't sure what you meant with your previous post and wanted to err on the side of issuing unnecessary clarifications rather than nonissuing necessary ones.

Sorry for wasting your time.

So a carbon copy of California’s trans sanctuary law, then.


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