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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30069 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Trans is an unusually high profile example of, perhaps the most high profile example of, American society’s peculiar loathing for saying ‘no’ to adolescents and for people who do so, but it is very definitely not the only one. Everything from choice of college major to choice of gender to even table stakes things like choice of fashion- parents are told over and over again that their job is to affirm whatever their adolescents want to do even if it’s obviously stupid.

And trans is downstream of that! Obviously parenting of 12-21 year olds involves lots of saying ‘no, quit being stupid’. But when parents already think they’re doing screwing up by it, the narrative of ‘you’re killing your kid!’ Just takes better.

It's not even 12 year olds, that's positively ancient by comparison with "how can you tell if a pre-verbal child is trans?" and getting told "if they pull the barrettes out of their hair or open their onesie to look like a skirt" by the expert who is helping to set national policy on trans issues.

Timestamp for the question about pre-verbal children. And that was from back in 2016.

I think that you might not be seeing the forest for the trees. The vast majority of adolescents in the US are forced to go to school whether they want to or not, which is a 40 hour a week involuntary commitment. Also, helicopter parenting is common at least among the middle and upper classes. Minors in the US are actually pretty constricted in what they are allowed to do. I mean, even the barbaric practice of parents getting their sons circumcised is legal in this country.

Americans have never liked the idea of saying no. I’ve often thought of it as a sort of Achilles heel for our version of western civilization. We aren’t the people of “you have to earn it”, and “work hard” or even really delaying gratification. It’s something I tend to admire a bit more in older societies and often East Asian societies. You are not simply handed things. If you don’t earn it or aren’t good enough to have it, you don’t. And they generally don’t see themselves as exceptions to the rules. You aren’t allowed to bring a dog or food into a building, you don’t. You don’t try to argue about how the rules don’t apply to you.

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