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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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If It's not offensive to you, and let me know if it is and I'll switch to something else, I'm going to call the physical dysphoria variant transsexual and the social variant as transgender because this comment was difficult to make readable without two terms.

Do you mean that you shouldn’t give gender affirming care (i.e. medical treatments) if someone has only social dysphoria and no physical dysphoria? I agree with that and from what I can see that’s the general position many trans people have.

No I mean something different. Because both the transsexual people and the transgendered people are under the same umbrella term of "trans" every discussion on the topic has the group under discussion shift as is convenient to the argument. And it's not clear the mainstream trans position actually ever bothers to differentiate between these groups. Puberty blockers are frequently pushed as something all kids who identify as trans should get, with trans being inclusive of transgender kids. But this is an insane thing to suggest for a social phenomenon, even if it might make sense if we had some reliable way to detect transsexuality(which I do not believe we do). If I oppose blockers, which I do for a number of reasons, it may as well be as if the transgender segment doesn't even exist. And as I said above, I do not trust the gatekeepers on this, they do not seem to share your belief that there are different segments here.

I'd like to just comment on how confusing this must be to kids going through the normal discomfort of their bodies changing during puberty. Combined with normal teenage insecurity and identity formation and you have a perfect storm for false positives that will stick. I am incredibly unimpressed with how unserious the movement takes this massive potential hazard.

I think from the start I have tried to be clear that I don’t agree 100% with all of the modern day trans rights beliefs?

Yes and I believe you. It's not that you agree 100% with them, it's that we don't have a choice between what you believe and what we(We being broadly the trans skeptical side) believe. The choice is between what the mainstream trans side proposes and what the mainstream trans skeptical side proposes - and I also don't 100% agree with the main stream trans skeptical side.

So we can go back and forth given this bifurcation of trans and maybe reach a raesoned compromise but what is that worth if you're not at all representative of the movement? At the end of the day we're either confiscating guns or not and it has nothing to do with either of our positions. So when arguing against things like puberty blockers, it might be worth it just for the exercise and curiosity to find how your unique position feels on the topic but if the mainstream position is going to be to add them to the k-12 water fountains(hyperbole) then your more sane position isn't really useful.

The difference is that a kid being shot is always a horrifying thing, while gender affirming surgery can sometimes be horrifying, and sometimes the best thing to happen to someone.

The life saving gender affirming care in this metaphor is akin to a good shoot that saved lives.

Perhaps that is the cause of our disagreement regarding gender reassignment surgeries, you hold having a normal sex life as an incredibly important thing while I do not?

It's not just the sex life it's being thrown entirely off of the normal life path. I can have my own children, have normal parameters in all other areas of my life without a leg. It's difficult to fully explain all the differences it would make. What would you give up to have been born a woman?