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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30046 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy. In comparison, 2,590 kids died from a gunshot in that same year.

With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anyone with kids going through those procedures. To me, this just seems like a moral panic amplified through the news in order to distract the masses from real issues - the housing crisis, corruption, school shootings, inflation, wealth inequality, social services being stripped away, the erosion of the middle class. Why do you care about this? Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?

You know what issue really affects children in the US? 1 in 4 kids are obese or overweight. Where is the medical establishment there? What about the 8.4% of kids on psych meds, some of whom are on them involuntarily?

Also maybe it’s because I don’t live in America, but in my modern Western country, transitioning isn’t a matter of waltzing into a clinic and getting your breasts chopped. Just getting evaluated by the gender service takes upward of 5 years, and you need to be vetted by a series of psychologists. Getting any kind of surgery requires an official gender identity disorder diagnosis and a letter from 2 separate professionals (and good luck getting those). Sure, you can go private - have you got ten thousand pounds in cash? You have to be incredibly dedicated, child or adult, to go through this system.

And as far as I know, America doesn’t have much public healthcare, so these kids getting surgeries while they’re underage have got to be the beneficiaries of rich parents who can afford to foot the bill. You can get all sorts of crazy ridiculous procedures, even as a minor, if you have more money then sense. Is it not absolutely disproportionate to have so much air time occupied to whatever most likely very low % of those few hundred kids from privileged backgrounds that might regret it later?

Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?

Trans issues are ideal for generating toxoplasma of rage. They affect a vanishingly small number of people, but touch on core fundamental attitudes that everyone has strong opinions on: you can take whichever side you want without ever having to interact with real people who care about it in a deeply personal sense. Regardless of whether someone is Right or Left, if someone lists trans war stuff as a top ten issue affecting the world, I think it's a safe assumption that they're full of shit (unless they identify as trans, in which case I give some leeway).

That's not to say it's irrelevant: different public policy around trans issues can affect O(1M) people, and there are pros and cons for both sides. But education, tax policy, foreign relations (as well as other things) are far more important and seemingly get a tenth the media attention that trans stuff does.

There's an additional wrinkle on social media (and Reddit in particular) where egregiously heavy handed moderation of anything that can be construed as even vaguely anti-locomotive drives a strong oppositional reaction. But it's silly for people to let that drive them to centering their worldview on it to the point of hysteria.

O(1M)

What kind of Big O notation is that?

An egregious abuse, I recognize.

According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy. In comparison, 2,590 kids died from a gunshot in that same year.

Do you happen to also have stats on HRT? My impression is that that's more common than either puberty blockers or surgery, but I have no particular knowledge of whether "more common" is "2x" or "200x".

With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anyone with kids going through those procedures.

Then I guess I'm exceedingly unlucky to have a cousin who went on puberty blockers then HRT. I lived with another person who began HRT at 16, no puberty blockers. Given that a quarter of the teenagers I've been close with have undergone some sort of medical transition, it does seem relevant to me.

But I also suspect that your source is a huge undercount, and also many of the people medically transitioning do not go on puberty blockers because they don't identify as Trans* until they are 14 or older. And even the people who do not medically transition might face health issues from chest binding and other encouraged practices.

…why would someone go on blockers if not for trans-adjacent reasons?

I know they’re used for certain medical situations, but I wouldn’t expect those to be very common at all.

Precocious puberty was the original reason before the trans thing came along.

And as far as I know, America doesn’t have much public healthcare, so these kids getting surgeries while they’re underage have got to be the beneficiaries of rich parents who can afford to foot the bill.

Aside from what others have mentioned about private insurers, there are 90 million people enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP, including 41 million children. People under 18 make up 21 pct of the 331 million people in the United States, so most children are covered by public healthcare.

You know what issue really affects children in the US? 1 in 4 kids are obese or overweight.

I've expressed my contempt for the "fat acceptance" movement plenty of times in this space (in addition to routinely beating the drum on how obesity is the single biggest risk factor for death from Covid among young people), so I, for one, don't think I can reasonably be accused of monomaniacal fixation on the trans thing at the expense of all other important social issues.

Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?

I'll put it the other way around - why are establishment bodies constantly pushing trans stuff when it's a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people? In the US, there are 39 separate days in the calendar specifically for celebrating trans people (and an additional 77 days for celebrating trans people as a subset of LGBTQIA+), even though trans people represent about 0.4% of the population. (By contrast, black Americans represent 12% of the population, yet Black History Month famously takes up the shortest month in the Gregorian calendar.) Gender ideology is being actively promoted in schools throughout the Anglosphere. The modern pride flag (the new, horrendously overdesigned one with designated stripes specifically for trans people) is routinely flown for weeks at a time in cities throughout North America and Europe, often at the decree by civic bodies like city or county councils, including no less than the White House.

The trans rights movement can't enthusiastically push this shit and then turn around and go "why are you even talking about this, it doesn't affect you lol" whenever they get the slightest amount of pushback on it. You brought it up. When you stop pushing it (or at least dial back the aggression and penetration of the message), we'll stop pushing back against it.

According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy. In comparison, 2,590 kids died from a gunshot in that same year.

On the other hand, referrals to the UK's Gender Identity Development Service increased by 1,460% for boys and 5,337% for girls, in less than ten years. I think people are perfectly entitled to look at a graph like this and feel a certain amount of alarm about where it might end up if the trend continues unabated. A 50% increase in gun deaths among children in the US over a two-year period was considered a shocking jump by the Pew Research Centre, and you're asking us to look at a 5,000% increase in referrals for gender issues with "ho-hum, nothing to see here, pass the butter".

Out of interest, how many children/teens have to receive "gender-affirming care" in a calendar year before you consider it a topic worthy of discussion? If the figures you quoted were tenfold higher? Fifty-fold? A hundredfold?

Also, it's generally good form to cite your sources.

1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers

I reject this because I know of someone prepubescent who was put on puberty blockers in like 2008. And it has exploded since then. My life is interesting, but not so much that I'd be part of the initial cadre in-the-know if the numbers of adolescents were still so low.

My life is interesting, but not so much that I'd be part of the initial cadre in-the-know if the numbers of adolescents were still so low.

Depending on what particular social circles you ran in in 2008, it is entirely possible that your life is sufficiently interesting for you to be in the top 0.1% of people in terms of likelihood to run into this in your social circles (e.g. if you lived in a coastal state and knew this person from a state-level robotics or performing arts event).

1390 out of 42 million is way less than .1%

You know more than 1 person, and you know of a lot more people than you know personally. A typical American knows something on the order of 500 people, and knows of probably 20x that many. If there was exactly one person on puberty blockers out of 300 million Americans, you'd expect ~10k / 300M or 0.0033% of Americans to know of them. To get to "0.1% of people know of someone on puberty blockers" you'd only have to have 30 such people in the entire country.

And 1390 is supposed to be number for today, not 2008.

I'm just going to assume your numbers are true. I agree, in the grand scheme of things, the kids being trans issue is not as important as compared to many issues you've identified in terms of scale and impact on our personal lives.

It's also not as small as you present it to be. First five sources I found had higher amounts. Here's one for example:

The number of children who started on puberty-blockers or hormones totaled 17,683 over the five-year period, rising from 2,394 in 2017 to 5,063 in 2021, according to the analysis. These numbers are probably a significant undercount since they don’t include children whose records did not specify a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose treatment wasn’t covered by insurance.

There are also estimates that 300,000 of youths aged 13-17 identify as trans (Data up to 2020, the number is probably higher today). It's an issue because the numbers are growing.

You also bring up school shootings, which according to your numbers is nearly as small as the trans issue. Anyone can get shot? Well anyone can have kids and their kids might go on puberty blockers, which there seems to more and more evidence that these things are not fully reversible and may have permanent effects.

The trans issue seems to be pushed more and more into my face these days, from both an anti and pro trans perspective. There are examples that the trans issue is impacting our daily lives. For example, does your company enforce or encourage people to put pronouns on their email/profile? Why do we need to do that? For 99.99% of people it should be obvious what your gender is. I work with a lot of different companies due to my industry and more and more companies are implementing pronouns into their HR systems.

We're also seeing trans ideas showing up in our culture through movies, books, video games, tv shows, etc. And I'll be honest, more of then than not, the experience is ruined by the inclusion of a trans person, because it's usually forced into for the sake of diversity and inclusion rather than for the sake of telling an interesting story. The Japanese seem to do better job of exploring these ideas. Inside Mari is a manga I read many years ago that explores the idea of a man waking up in a woman's body. It displays the experience of dysphoria quite well, so a story that explores trans issues can still be interesting. But so many modern entertainment just want to push it into my face now, and it's executed horribly.

Do you care about women's rights/issues? The common example is the trans in women's athletic competitions. I don't know how anyone who claims to support women's right can also support having trans people in women's athletic competitions. We're seeing trans athletes dominate the space, taking away opportunities for women. There's a reason we have a women's only league/competition in so many different sports.

It's also impacting language and the way we speak. I know it's a bit of a meme, but there are people who can't even define what is a woman anymore. I'm pretty sure the attempt to remove gender from gendered languages e.g. saying latinx instead of latino/latina is related to the trans movement. It's no longer pregnant women, it's pregnant people, because now a man can get pregnant. If trans people are such a small percentage of the population, why are so many people trying to reshape our language and the way we speak to be inclusive of such a small percentage of the population?

And if you ever engage in a discussion about trans issues and say anything that could be anti trans, so many people seem to get offended and will even make attempts to dox you, get you fired, yell at you, scream in your face, call you Nazi scum, or any other myriad of rude and toxic behavior. And many of these people are activist types that try to change culture and society. The reason Jordan Peterson got famous in 2017 is because trans activist types recorded themselves confronting him about his views on Canada's Bill C-16. This is over 6 years ago, has the trans issue gotten better or worse since then? I remember reddit was fawning over this man around that time, now he's actively hated and despised. More and more young people support the idea that misgendering should be a crime. It seems to me that the trans issues have only become more prevalent in our lives.

I used to not care about trans issues. But when the trans issues start popping up over so many different areas of life, and many of the loudest proponents for the trans issues seem to be angry, anti-intellectual activist types, well it makes me want to be on the opposing side. Given the impact the trans movement has had on our modern culture and society, I'm not sure I can agree trans issues are no longer irrelevant in our lives anymore. It certainly doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.

And as far as I know, America doesn’t have much public healthcare, so these kids getting surgeries while they’re underage have got to be the beneficiaries of rich parents who can afford to foot the bill.

Just because we don't have public healthcare doesn't mean it's a free for all. Every single state has an Insurance Commissioner who is charged with regulating insurance in the state. Through this type of regulation, states have required any health insurance plan offered to include coverage for hormone supplementation and cosmetic surgery. Of course, this is not exactly the same from state to state, but in many, many places the only kinds of plans you are allowed to offer are required to pay for this, so every single different employer-offered health insurance plan is going to pay for your child to be sterilized as a teenager.

That number is likely an undercount -- even the most comprehensive data provider, Komodo, acknowledges this in their reporting-- and regardless why is the number important, or why is the fact that some people are particularly exercised by it an issue? Also your comparison is off, at least the way youve worded it -- you need to compare the number of adolescents who are already receiving puberty blockers with their baseline population, not just the annual figure of those who start puberty blockers.

Moral panic? The reality is numbers of dysphoric adolescents and those receiving blockers and hormones is rising exponentially. When something changes rapidly, some people are curious why -- there is an inherent urgency implied in understanding rapid change. And the sphere of influence, and age of influence of these ideas has gotten wider and younger, so depending on where you live and whether legislative changes occur, it will likely continue to grow. Unless individuals act to do something.

Some people have children (autistic children even) who are entering an education system where they will learn that they don't have a sex until they decide what it is, so they have actual skin in the game. We're also talking a legal, and progressive campaign to change society wholesale fundamentally, with people effective being compelled to accept unproven ideas around gender in the workplace, in medical clinics, in education. Factually inconsistent and wrong ideas about sex are spreading through medical institutions and acadme. I agree that this is just one manifestation of problems in science, academia, medicine and psychology, but it is a flagshap example and to paraphrase Blake, one where you can see the whole world-- progressive attempts at social engineering, post-modernist queerying of categories and truth, transhumanism, philosophical relativism and nihilism leading to bad ideas. Plenty of people are witness to transitioning children and adolescents and a growing number of parents are grieving there children and dealing with dissonance of being in a completely unemphatetic environment to their plight, all while kindness and inclusivity are preached.

Relative to drug addiction, gun and road deaths, yes it's small but rareness doesn't exonerate wrongness, and it's possible to care to varying degrees, or at least have an informed opinion about, many different issues at once.

This is a canary in the coalmine as part of woke progressive social engineering (along with anti-whiteness etc), so a lot of people have an interest. I would argue it's an important manifestation of where we are at as liberal societies with rising mental health issues for children and youth and a pervasive lack of meaning broadly.

Also, you're always interested in responding, so it's a funny charge to make when you are just as focused on the issue.

I think part of it is that highly vocal trans activists and their writings are disproportionately represented online compared to the how few actual trans people there are in the world. For example, if you based your idea of America just on reading Reddit, you might think that something like 10% of Americans were trans. And I also think, based on the kind of slang they use and the fact that they regularly write thousands of words about politics, that probably most people on The Motte are also highly online. So from a Motte commenter's perspective, trans people might seem to be everywhere.

Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?

I tire of this style of dismissal. It's posted continuously because intelligent people disagree and the most uncomfortable feeling in the world is knowing that people you otherwise respect disagree on something that seems so obvious with no explanation you can imagine an intelligent person believing readily available. No intelligent people really disagree about the problem of obesity, there are some disagreements on what should be done about it and those are talked about consistently but they often terminate in an agreement that more information is needed or a few reasonable theories to be investigated.

I guess it’s another victim of the toxoplasma of rage? Important issues that no one disagrees with are largely ignored, whereas less important ones will get talked about if you can create a debate over them.

This happens on a micro scale as well in trans issues; the trans people that will attract the most attention will naturally be the most divisive, e.g. Dylan Mulvaney. Fewer people care about say, Rebekah Bruesehoff, the trans girl activist who plays field hockey and just looks like your typical boring blonde American girl; but everybody knows Lia Thomas because leftists look virtuous defending a male looking 6’1 broad shouldered trans woman, and most importantly, they can have a flaming debate with conservatives online about it.

I guess it’s another victim of the toxoplasma of rage? Important issues that no one disagrees with are largely ignored, whereas less important ones will get talked about if you can create a debate over them.

Sure, but especially on a debate forum this doesn't even seem like a failure mode. If you want to say the republicans focusing on it as a point in the last mid terms lead to bad outcomes for them then I'd agree with you.

Put another way, if you come in here and claim to be able to see out of the back of your head and also think that we should focus on increasing fiber rather than decreasing sugar in American school lunches the claim that objectively impacts more people is absolutely not the claim I'm more likely to want to discuss. To many of us that claim that there is an internal feeling of gender is more like the former than the latter.

According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy. In comparison, 2,590 kids died from a gunshot in that same year.

With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anyone with kids going through those procedures. To me, this just seems like a moral panic amplified through the news in order to distract the masses from real issues - the housing crisis, corruption, school shootings, inflation, wealth inequality, social services being stripped away, the erosion of the middle class. Why do you care about this? Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?

If even 139 adolescents of the 2,590 kids gunned down every year were all targeted by followers of the same ideology who were all following a standard playbook on best practices to gun down adolescents and members of that ideology were openly teaching it in public schools with support from public institutions, that would absolutely be a controversial issue that people talk about all the time. Heck, I'm pretty sure that'd apply even if it were just 14 adolescents a year. Salem Witch trials killed what, 19 people like 300 years ago? It's not a culture war issue, but it's still brought up a bunch to this day, in a large part because it was a case of our religious and governmental institutions all being complicit in, if not actively participating in, the unjust killing of those people.

And that's the missing piece from all these things like the housing crisis, corruption, school shootings, etc. At best you can say that social services being stripped away is largely from conservative/Republican ideology, but the rest, there's no particular ideologically aligned group of people actively pushing for this stuff with support from powerful institutions at every level of society. These are mostly just standard-issue societal problems which often do have culture war implications but which lacks any powerful institutions who are full-throatedly yelling to the skies that this is a Good Thing. The amount of people who say they love corruption and want more of it and will shout down anyone who tries to convince others that corruption is a bad thing is too small to matter. Even the Trumps of the world will frame their corruption as actually not-corrupt or a correction to a deeper corruption. In contrast to youths going through medical transition where you do see plenty of people doing those very things, all following a similar playbook from the same ideology which has massive institutional support.

With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anyone with kids going through those procedures. To me, this just seems like a moral panic amplified through the news in order to distract the masses from real issues - the housing crisis, corruption, school shootings, inflation, wealth inequality, social services being stripped away, the erosion of the middle class. Why do you care about this? Why do trans issues keep getting posted, over and over, when it’s a largely irrelevant issue to the vast majority of people?

Welcome to the culture wars in America. This trend dates to the early 90s, in which a few suicides possibly due to lyrics was the most pressing thing in America at the time. 'Big issues' are understood to be hard to fix and out of anyone's control. Smaller-stakes culture war battles get more mileage. Trans issues are seen as being symptomatic of broader-scale problems...the canary in a coal mine.

'Big issues' are understood to be hard to fix and out of anyone's control. Smaller-stakes culture war battles get more mileage.

This line of thinking is why I sometimes think that the Culture War is best described as bike shedding at the scale of governance: we fight hardest about the things we think we understand most, even if they are, at the end of the day, mostly inconsequential.

the Culture War is best described as bike shedding at the scale of governance

This analogy is so uncomfortably accurate that my knee-jerk reaction was to downvote. Instead I'm nominating it as an AAQC. It was a real life "they hated him because he spoke the truth" moment.

I agree we should focus on economic issues and intergenerational disparities but gender ideology is ubiquitous - in the sense of scale it's huge, an attempted takeover of a prior social consensus. Just because a lot of people ignore it, doesn't mean it's not consequential.

According to stats I’ve found, something like 1390 adolescents went on puberty blockers in the US in 2021, out of a population of about 42 million total teenagers. 282 teenagers got a mastectomy

Would you stake your reputation on these numbers? I'm willing to put a bet on "no way is this true". Combined with "minors don't get hormones or surgeries, they only get blockers" argument we heard a few years, it really looks like we're hitting every step on the road from "it's not happening" to "it's a good thing that it is".

Inseparable from the issue of medical care for trans children is the entire 'gender ideology' that some worry threatens to permeate every aspect of public life in a way school shootings don't, by definition. Obesity probably inches closer to that, what with the fat acceptance movement and the glamorization of unhealthy celebrities. But it's hard for anybody to take the fat man seriously for complaining he's being charged two tickets for filling two seats on a flight. Gender affirming care and the ideological umbrella it operates under is one of the few things where criticising or doubting it from any angle, in any context, to any degree can risk severe professional and often personal disadvantage in a way other political or social topics don't despite their polarization. The only other subject matter I can think of that prompts this 'zero-tolerance' treatment is race. By contrast, I don't think my employer really cares that much about how I feel about climate change, even if it annoys them. I'm not risking a lawsuit if I think the science is 'fake and gay'.

Given that, I don't think it's too surprising that trans issues will get more fuel because it's something we've found will raise its head anywhere and everywhere in due course. I haven't been to a high school or been a teenager for decades. Meanwhile, 'gender crap' is something I have to endure on multiple fronts both public, personal, and professional. And it can be this way even if a trans person only physically enters my orbit once a year.

With those numbers, you’re exceedingly unlikely to know anytime with kids going through those procedures.

Yeah, and yet I do. You know, this actually reminds me of the discussion downthread, about some author misrepresenting/misunderstanding stats to try to show that a greater proportion of whites are illiterate than blacks in CA.

When you posted the site with those stats before, I wanted to push back then, but got distracted. But your own source pointed out it was likely undercounting, because it was only capturing a very narrow statistical category of trans youth. Namely, youth with a formal diagnosis and formal prescription for gender dysphoria.

Meanwhile, using older stats, there are at ~150,000 transgender youth from age 13-17 in the united states. So something here isn't adding up by several orders of magnitude.

I recently made a comment linking an article that gives the same numbers rae did, which might be the article you're thinking of: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/ . That article's total number of teens diagnosed with gender dysphoria agrees with yours (the years/ages don't line up so the numbers aren't directly comparable):

Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.

So, according to that article it is orders of magnitude more common for a teen to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria than for any medical intervention to be taken. That seems like exactly what you'd expect: we think medical interventions are a major step that should be carefully considered, and especially should be avoided for people under 18 because we think they are too young to make that decision. Although I don't know the ratio of adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria to those undergoing some sort of medical intervention to compare.

You know, this actually reminds me of the discussion downthread, about some author misrepresenting/misunderstanding stats to try to show that a greater proportion of whites are illiterate than blacks in CA.

This is weak. You can’t just associate a statistic you cannot debunk to one that has been. If trans researcher lie, I think it’s much more likely that they lie on the positive effects of transition rather than on raw numbers like these.

But your own source pointed out it was likely undercounting, because it was only capturing a very narrow statistical category of trans youth. Namely, youth with a formal diagnosis and formal prescription for gender dysphoria.

I don’t think it’s a narrow category. The adolescents, and the parents who go along with it, think it's What The Science Says. They're not out there getting gonzo surgeries on their own initiative. If you want to play up scary numbers, it seems that the number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria rose from 25k to 42k from 2020 to 2021, and the mean age for the diagnostic is decreasing. It could be that there’s tens of thousands of kids in the pipeline for such surgeries, they just didn't have the time to get to the previous ones in large numbers before they matured.

This is weak. You can’t just associate a statistic you cannot debunk to one that has been.

There has to be a way to push back against suspicious statistics. The information is not public so common people can't verify them, so a "you can't deboonk this" approach leaves others with the ability to make numbers up, and get away with it for years.

If trans researcher lie, I think it’s much more likely that they lie on the positive effects of transition rather than on raw numbers like these.

They were lying about hormones and surgeries being done children at all. So even with these stats it has to be conceded they lie about the numbers.

There has to be a way to push back against suspicious statistics.

But just pointing to a completely different false statistic + your intimate conviction is not the way. What is the rule being applied here? All statistics are false if I feel like it?

Your ‘deboonking’ quip is invalid, it’s supposed to make fun of people’s tendency to falsely claim they have debunked their opponent’s statistics. But on the literacy numbers, it would be hard to find a halfway reasonable ‘antiracist progressive’ who would still support the original claim after the debunking. Ergo, it’s a true debunking, not a ‘deboonking’.

They were lying about hormones and surgeries being done children at all.

Who is ‘they’? To make the “282 teenage mastectomies” claim false here, one researcher has to lie, and then all the other researchers have to support it by not publishing any contradictory evidence (since you haven’t found it). And that group includes a lot of people who think it’s a very good thing that those surgeries are being performed, so the dubious claim can be attacked both from a pro-trans and anti-trans perspective. The ‘they’ obscures the difference between a few liars within a broadly sympathetic group and an extremely well-coordinated conspiracy, requiring all to act as one.

But just pointing to a completely different false statistic + your intimate conviction is not the way.

I'm not invested in any particular form of pushback, just in there being some response available, when people do the equivalent of newspapers publishing bullshit on the frontpage, and a correction notice in tiny print, on page 19.

What is the rule being applied here? All statistics are false if I feel like it?

More like: just because it's a officially published statistic, doesn't mean it's true. If you expect people to change their mind based on the statistic you're citing, but it turns out to be false, you should be willing to suffer reputational damage if it turns out to be false, going forward people should have a right to be skeptical of any statistics posted in favor of the idea you're arguing for.

Who is ‘they’?

"They" is people arguing in favor of transgender care. It was an extremely popular at the time, including from researchers albeit not ex-cathedra. It was based on the assumption that the WPATH standards of care were being followed to the letter, and anyone disputing the assumption had the burden of proof shifted onto them.

(since you haven’t found it).

This is dishonest. I have not not found it, I have not gone looking for it. I don't think anyone should have to go looking for a refutation of any numbers, unless the person making the original claim vouches with their reputation for the statistics used to that back it.

To make the “282 teenage mastectomies” claim false here, one researcher has to lie, and then all the other researchers have to support it by not publishing any contradictory evidence.

No. All the other researchers have to do, is need a few years to try an replicate the original finding.

And that group includes a lot of people who think it’s a very good thing that those surgeries are being performed, so the dubious claim can be attacked both from a pro-trans and anti-trans perspective.

People who think it's a good thing those surgeries are being performed are still aware of their political environment, and the backlash that will come if the awareness of high numbers spreads to the public.

The ‘they’ obscures the difference between a few liars within a broadly sympathetic group and an extremely well-coordinated conspiracy, requiring all to act as one.

Ok, so someone does a study estimating the number of gender-affirming surgery in the US, but they aggregate the youngest age group into 12-18 year olds, so you don't actually know how many have been done on minors, and when a journalist asks them "hey can you sand me the raw disaggregated data", they answer with "all of the analysis we did was based on the age groups that we specified, we haven’t done analyses with other age groups", and refuse to send the data. Nothing comes out of it in the months that follow, is that an "extremely well-coordinated conspiracy"?

This is dishonest. I have not not found it, I have not gone looking for it. I don't think anyone should have to go looking for a refutation of any numbers, unless the person making the original claim vouches with their reputation for the statistics used to that back it.

Do you need an official “I vouch for those numbers on my children’s children lives” ? Rae and I will suffer some reputational damage for defending those numbers if you find contradicting ones, and that is usually enough of a motivation for others.

I did find them suspiciously low myself, did a quick search, saw no contradicting statistic. This is the point where your priors should move somewhat (since, as in the literacy numbers, there is an alternate universe where they are easily debunked by the quick search), not where you double down on your intuition. And please don’t call me dishonest lightly. Whether you went looking for them or not, you haven’t found them. I am not trying to deceive anyone.

People who think it's a good thing those surgeries are being performed are still aware of their political environment, and the backlash that will come if the awareness of high numbers spreads to the public.

Then why haven’t they lied on the 42k diagnoses ?

Ok, so someone does a study estimating the number of gender-affirming surgery in the US, but they aggregate the youngest age group into 12-18 year olds, so you don't actually know how many have been done on minors

The study said “3678 (7.7%) were aged 12 to 18 years“ (gender-affirming surgeries over 4 years). That’s in the same ballpark as “282 mastectomies per year on minors”, no matter how they choose to massage the disaggregated data.

Do you need an official “I vouch for those numbers on my children’s children lives” ? Rae and I will suffer some reputational damage for defending those numbers if you find contradicting ones, and that is usually enough of a motivation for others.

I don't actually think you should suffer reputational damage since you're just trying to get to the real numbers, rather than throwing a wet blanket on the conversation. So from Rae I'll either need an official statement, or a rephrasing of their post in a way that doesn't imply my loicence to care will be taken away if I don't prove the number of surgeries exceed a certain threshold (which, I will notice, is not even specified).

This is the point where your priors should move somewhat, not where you double down on your intuition.

I don't know if I agree. Like I said, for some time I have been frustrated at the "posting bullshit on the front page - posting a retraction on page 19" dynamic, and I'm not in the mood to keep letting it happen. I did move my priors somewhat, back when people were posting WPATH guidelines to tell me surgeries on minors don't happen at all. My reward for that is people telling me to stop caring, because even though surgeries on minors absolutely are happening, it's not a lot. If I am to give this argument any credence, it needs to come with pre-declared costs to the people putting it forward, if the statistics they're using turn out to be wrong. Either that or I feel entitled to reject the argument in it's entirety.

And please don’t call me dishonest lightly. Whether you went looking for them or not, you haven’t found them. I am not trying to deceive anyone.

The implication seems to have been (and apparently still is) that since I was unable to provide any contradicting numbers, I should move my priors as you said. That would be a good argument, but I think there's a massive difference between "unable" and "haven't even attempted", and it's not right to conflate the two in this type of argument.

Then why haven’t they lied on the 42k diagnoses ?

A diagnosis says nothing about the interventions that will take place, you can always say keep repeating the old "reversible interventions only" line that used be popular. We also don't know whether these are undercounted or not.

The study said “3678 (7.7%) were aged 12 to 18 years“ (gender-affirming surgeries over 4 years). That’s in the same ballpark as “282 mastectomies per year on minors”, no matter how they choose to massage the disaggregated data.

I haven't posted this study as an example of contradicting numbers, I've posted this study as an example of how they can hide inconvenient data without an "extremely well-coordinated conspiracy" (alternatively, as proof that one exists), so I'm rather miffed this is precisely the point you chose to not answer.

If you want to know why I'm so skeptical of the numbers, one of the reasons is that Kaiser Permanente was doing 40-50 mastectomies on minors per year by 2020 (it being the year of COVID the numbers actually went down somewhat). Now sure, it's a big clinic, it's a progressive state, so probably they'll be doing more of them than the national average, but there's a couple hundred pediatric gender clinics in the US. Maybe they don't all have surgeons, or there are none around to refer to, but it just doesn't pass the sniff test at first glance. Then, even if the mastectomies are in the right ballpark, is opening a new clinic worth it for an average of 5-ish or so blocker prescriptions? I only know of one American whistleblower from a clinic so far, but she reported it being overwhelmed.

Maybe my various inferences about the numbers are wrong, and maybe Rae's numbers do pan out, but given how the goalposts have shifted in the broader debate, I feel entitled to strong skepticism unless overwhelming evidence is provided.

...Yeah, most trans teens don't get any medical treatment yet.

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