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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.
I may not have been sufficiently clear earlier:
I do not endorse MAD; I am merely describing a dynamic that anyone that is determined and desperate enough can access. Even if the child wins this struggle, it is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory in many ways and may leave lifelong scars. To say nothing of the dead and maimed people that will be the result of one side or the other overplaying their hand. I've heard it said that war is a dirty, nasty business, and while this isn't Vietnam, it's still a bit nasty and ugly. I hope that most kids will realize this...and that most parents will find ways to make it clear that irreparably altering your relationship with your parents isn't worth Katy Perry tickets.
I mean. In some instances of MAD you need to have plausible deniability. What's Sarah going to do if she doesn't get Katy Perry tickets? Jump off a cliff? If you're a middle-class parent, you just reply that if she's for real, she needs psychiatric care, and she's going to go for a vacation in the grippy sock hotel. Which, coincidentally, is expensive and is going to leave them unable to afford concert tickets. That is fairly likely to work...especially if she's told about all the horrible things that sometimes happen in psych wards, or the side effects of antipsychotics. For this to work you need the credible threat of mutual annihilation.
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And this is the exact reason why parents get really frustrated when it comes to dealing with
young adultteenaged children. (That said, the condition of being "weaker willed" is a sinking waterline with respect to children developing a stronger will over time- the inflection point is popularly around 14, but parents [being too close to the problem] tend to overestimate it.)More options
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What range or limit are you thinking about here? 14 and up, less or more?
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?
In practice, about ten. As young as that sounds - and as horrible as that sounds (and is!) that is about when kids in extremis are able to satisfy the condition "Wants something badly enough to be okay being maimed or raped or killed over it - and unwilling or unable to desist. And competent enough to be able to pose a significant, sustained threat to themselves or other people.
You might have the occasional malicious or predatory or just plain criminally ignorant teacher pulling this. I suspect that the teachers doing this are well-intentioned but basically swallowed certain kinds of bait hucked by political ax-grinders and quacks in the medical establishment. We both agree that current memes around this trans shit are fucked. If it was treated as the goddamn medical condition it is, we might not be having this problem...if it was a more intense and life-altering version of the decision on whether or not to send Johnny to the neurosurgeon because he herniated a disc playing football as a freshman in high school.
But: how many of these kids who are essentially following a fashion trend are willing to look terrible suffering and even death right in the goddamn face and say "Yes. I would rather this, than desist. Here I stand; I can do no other." and then actually fucking follow through with it? Like. For MAD to work, you have to have a credible threat of mutual annihilation. I suppose that certain kinds of peer pressure and belonging might get people to do that - but that IMHO usually happens to teenagers, not middle-schoolers.
I thank you for your answers, and while I disagree with the age thing (I even think that the age of consent, for drinking, for military shit should be raised [Kids being the little retards that they are]) I can see where you are coming from. As for the second part (About grooming situations and MAD and what not) I think that if the current environment persists with the trans community and allies incapable or unwilling to police itself, the government (at least majority D ones) and the media just fanning the flames, it will serve to incentivize more malicious actors to join in. As an accelerationist I'm all for it, but I recognize that not everyone is as misanthropic as me (And really the population collapse is going to fuck all before anything else).
I mean. I do not believe that it is at all a good idea that 11-year-olds make life-altering decisions that they are in many ways unable to understand the consequences of. However, the reality is that if sufficiently motivated they will make such decisions, although that kind of motivation is thankfully quite rare. It's...any sufficiently determined individual can play the MAD card and get a tense but stable peace out of it. It is simply a way for a weaker player with a live grenade to force a draw from a stronger adversary.
I also think that...hmm. Getting someone to risk their damn life for an ideology is kind of a difficult thing. If Sarah sees that her friend Jane (and both her parents) are dead because of a murder-suicide that happened over trans care...and they're both 12...does Sarah have THAT much strength in her convictions to go down the MAD route? I doubt it. And some of the time, yes. People will be killed, maimed, and imprisoned because one side or the other overplayed their hand.
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