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I keep meaning to make a post about the dichotomy between what I think of as "private reasons" (the reasons that convince some individual of some position) and "public reasons" (the reasons that might convince some group of some position) but this post will have to do for now.
For my part: I am probably about as SJW/Woke/whatever as they come in regards to LGBT issues in both a public policy and cultural norm sense. Separately I think it is exceedingly unlikely that either gender identity or sexual orientation are fixed from birth and have no connection to cultural factors. For clarity's sake I don't believe LGBT people can will themselves otherwise any more than I think non-LGBT people can will themselves LGBT but I do think there are cultural factors that influence where on that spectrum one ends up. I suspect where I depart from many people who believe the prior statements is that I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people. That is, my "private reasons" for supporting LGBT people legally and socially aren't conditional on the immutability of the traits in question, from a cultural context perspective.
I suspect the reason immutability features so heavily in modern discourse is because it was a rhetorical convenience in the United States. At the time the gay rights movement was gaining steam the United States was in the midst of several other civil rights movements more closely tied to immutable characteristics (black americans and feminism). I believe there was a widespread perception (probably correct) that those traits apparent immutability was key to the eventual success of their movements. Tying LGBT rights to a similar notion of immutability was, therefore, a convenient rhetorical move (a compelling "public reason") to get people on board with LGBT rights in a similar way.
I think this dichotomy between "public" and "private" reasons explains a great deal of perceived motte-and-bailey/hypocrisy in our political discourse.
All things being equal, I don't think of being gay as strictly worse than being straight. According to some definitions of what "trans" is, it absolutely is worse than being cis, according to the very terms insisted upon by trans activists.
If one assumes that a prerequisite for being "trans" is suffering from gender dysphoria, it just seems obvious that not having gender dysphoria is preferable to having it. All other things being equal, I think pretty much everyone would rather feel happy with their bodies as they are, not experience a sense of profound distress when looking at their reflection in the mirror, and not feel any urge to hack bits of healthy tissue off their bodies.
Analogies with anorexia are no accident. Anorexia is a mental illness in which one experiences profound distress at the sight of one's body. It seems extremely susceptible to social contagion (particularly in female adolescents) and culture-bound (almost exclusively diagnosed in WEIRD countries). I want anorexic people to be treated with respect and compassion, and to get the best treatment available. I also think that being anorexic is obviously worse than not being anorexic in essentially every way, and it's irresponsible to promote or glamorise it.
You may be working off a definition of "trans" in which a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not a prerequisite. This is long past the point at which the concept has completely collapsed into incoherence for me, so I can't really comment as to whether it's better, worse or indifferent to be trans (according to that definition) or cis. The "trans without gender dysphoria" cohort does seem to contain a disproportionate amount of vocal bad-faith actors, which is bound to colour my perspective.
I do agree that not having gender dysphoria is better than having gender dysphoria but I don't think having gender dysphoria is a prerequisite for being trans. Gender dysphoria is a common reason people are trans but probably not the only one.
And as I said, if "being trans" is wholly uncoupled from "experiencing gender dysphoria", then I'm not sure I even understand what it means to be trans. Maybe you're referring to "gender euphoria", which from context I can only infer is a euphemism for the sexual arousal that autogynephiliac males experience when performing femininity. All else being equal, I would likewise rather not be an autogynephiliac than be one.
I think of someone as being trans insofar as they have the requisite desire to change their sex. I'm agnostic on the ultimate source of that desire.
So in your view, is a person who "identifies as a member of the opposite sex/gender" but has no interest in medically transitioning a trans person?
I might need some more specification on what "identifies as" means but probably yes. I do not conceive of changing ones sex in the relevant way in purely physiological terms, maybe it would have been clearer if I had said gender.
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I agree that everyone would rather not have gender dysphoria.
That's why we treat gender dysphoria with medical and social transition, so that it goes away.
There's pretty much no other treatment for any other major psychological condition that's anywhere near as effective.
I don't have time for the back and forth research game, but why the conviction?
How did major international reviews find the evidence to be inconclusive and low quality but you state the opposite as fact?
Some studies that have been held up as gold standard such as the early Dutch puberty blockers studies have been shown to have major methodological flaws such as not accounting for the fact that people would transition in the pre/post survey instrument, thus rendering some of the items equivocal/unreliable. Recent studies have shown that even on its own merits it is inconclusive on showing improvement.
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From which it logically follows that not having gender dysphoria (and by extension not being trans) is strictly preferable to having gender dysphoria, and that if social influences play any significant role in developing gender dysphoria, it's irresponsible to raise awareness of or glamorise it.
Not necessarily. If raising awareness and making it acceptable increases prevalence by Y% but also means that social stigma is decreased by X% (meaning people are treated better) and the chances of treatment are increased by Z% (as it seen as worthy of investment in treatment) then it could still be responsible to do so.
That entirely depends on the numbers for X, Y and Z of course (if X were very high it could still be irresponsible for example), but you do have to factor in the positive impacts as well as the negative in that scenario.
Right. I don't have comparable figures to hand for X and Z, but the Tavistock Centre (the UK and Ireland's only dedicated medical centre for treating gender dysphoria in children) saw a 5,337% increase in referrals for female children in less than ten years, which I'm largely attributing to social contagion/awareness-raising campaigns/glamorisation.
I'd be quite surprised if X and Z are 5,000% combined. "Social stigma against trans people fell by 2,500%" essentially amounts to every trans person in the UK being treated like some combination of royalty and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which doesn't seem remotely realistic.
That of course would have to be part of the calculation, how much of that is social contagion vs people being willing to come forward with issues they would already have had but wouldn't have been able to get help with because stigma levels were too high.
For example with sexuality, I would suggest that skyrocketing numbers of people coming out, was down to a lot of people being more comfortable in admitting they were sometimes attracted to the same sex, rather than social contagion making people bi. I think it's likely with trans issues, because as you pointed out, they aren't treated as royalty still. The exact magnitude of each effect is difficult if not impossible to determine.
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To me, this is nearly a complete non sequitur. Why the sudden spike of people identifying as trans? Society is more accepting now for sure, but gay people have always been with us. Trans is something new, and certainly in these numbers. I personally believe there is a strong biological cause. I’ll place my bet on ingesting microwaved plastic daily. Actually looking for the reason would imply that there is something wrong with trans people and that they can be fixed or even prevented so I’m not holding my breath.
I think being trans is about as morally wrong as being deaf. I’d expect the federal government to do something in the case of an unparalleled epidemic of deafness.
I agree with most of what you say, though I doubt that you could have a genetic cause for a trait and have it increase at the rates we’re talking about. Absent a bottleneck, the rates of most genetic traits stay fairly constant throughout time and across populations.
I suspect we might be dealing with both social contagioun and environmental chemicals.
We have a lot of chemicals from industrial processes that end up in our food, in our water, and in the air. To the degree that these chemicals disrupt natural hormones and thus thus would change the development of a fetus, that’s going to likely affect gender and sexuality. At some point during fetal development, a male challis brain is flooded with hormones to make the brain masculine. But if you have something that either prevents this from happening or blocks the hormones, or blocks them in certain regions of the brain, it’s entirely plausible to have a male body and a female, or partially female brain. Exposure to chemicals that mimic this process might well create a female with a masculine brain (or partially masculine). Thus you’d have a baby with a brain-body mismatch that isn’t genetic, but is inborn.
On the social side, we have managed to give gayness the veneer of “cool”. Being gay is celebrated in liberal circles as brave, being true to yourself, and often celebrated in media and in public places. They’re given special status and what kids crave — attention and a feeling of special importance. If I’m a nerd, I get shoved into lockers. Low status. If I’m gay, I get protected from that, enforced by the teachers.
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Why the sudden spike in people identifying as something that wasn't an identity in the past? Because it's an identity now.
There were very few authors before the invention of written language. There were very few basketball players before we started playing basketball.
It's not 'more' people identifying as trans, it's 'any', as it was not a thing you could identify as until very recently.
There have been various analogues in different cultures at different times, and we have zero accurate records on how common any of those were in their own times and places.
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The comparison with the deaf community is interesting because my impression is there are absolutely members who would object to government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people, depending on the means. Maybe I ought to caveat my statement similarly.
And they would be wrong to do so.
Doesn't that depend on the method of reduction?
It would be obviously wrong to murder deaf people to reduce their numbers, but would it be obviously wrong to reduce the deaf population by curing them?
I would agree that it would be wrong to cure deaf people against their will, but what if 30% wanted curing? Would it be wrong to reduce deafness by 30% in that scenario? What if more wanted curing but were pressured by the deaf community to reject the cure?
What if, in a world where deafness was reduced to an even smaller fraction of its current presence, librarians and teachers started encouraging hearing children to explore deafness as a potential identity so that it does not go extinct? Would that be noble and something parents needn't worry about?
I think you misunderstood me- deaf activists who object to curing deafness are wrong to do so.
Yes, I did. I read it as "government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people..." "...would be wrong to so"
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I can see the scenario where hard-of-hearing children were previously beaten down on, presumed to be slow and inattentive while they're actually just worse at perceiving speech than others. Indeed, that appears to be the experience of at least 1 person I've read about. In that world, I think it would be better if teachers tried to identify children who might be hard of hearing and encourage them to explore "deafness identity" such as sign language, hearing aids and potential cochlear implants in the future. Not to "prevent deafness from going extinct", but to help those children live in society. If parents started to block this and insist their child is perfectly normal without any medical examination to confirm it, I would assume it's the common instinct of trying to look normal which is harmful when you're actually not normal.
I trust you have quotes, at least, from teachers who claim they encourage children to explore transness for the sake of it not going extinct?
No. It was a hypothetical starting with "What if..."
Don't you think that the liberal fetishization of minorities as ideals who are somehow superior to the normies is a real phenomenon?
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That is my understanding as well. I really enjoyed learning sign language but I wouldn’t think twice about curing deafness in all newborns.
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Thank you for your honesty. I have to ask, though, do you worry at all about any future backlash? That if people realize that the whole thing was a lie, an intentional one, purely for convenience sake to win a political battle, and that they were the dupes who fell for it... they might get angry and start not believing the other things you say in the public discourse?
Nah, lying in politics rarely creates backlash, it's too common and the public's attention span is too short.
Remember when we had those websites with rolling tickers of every lie Trump was telling with citations, and everyone just rolled their eyes and ignored them until constantly lying became part of his 'charm'? You could have made a ticker like that for most people and groups in politics, people care about results a lot more than they care about strict honesty.
If anything, it's telling the truth that most commonly leads to backlash, because it leaves you vulnerable and under-optimized.
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Not the person you're asking, but, I don't think normal people think that way in general, and especially not when the facts are so nebulous to begin with. Leaked tapes and memos about lying to the American people about casus belli are one thing, but here, who's to say that people weren't just sincerely mistaken? After all, that will be the fallback position for those who bought what they were selling, and it's much psychologically easier to write the whole thing off as an honest mistake, since for the followers it was, rather than admitting that anyone was fleeced. No one wants to believe that about themselves and we will go to great lengths to invent and propagate narratives which do not paint ourselves as dupes.
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Surely there is a potential for burning credibility depending on how directly one tells a lie.
The best kinds of public reasons are ones where you don't lie about factual information but rather construct an argument that follows from your interlocutors or audiences ethical premises to the conclusions you prefer. I think the potential for backlash in this kind of situation is low. You (hopefully) really did convince them their beliefs entailed your preferred outcome, even if it's not the argument that convinces you personally.
Being deceptive about facts is trickier. On the one hand you can blatantly and obviously lie and then you probably do not even succeed at getting them to endorse your preferred conclusion. On the other hand maybe you overstate certainty in some facts you are less certain about. The potential for backlash on credibility depends on how conclusively the falseness of the factual premise can be demonstrated. If I wanted to salvage the argument above, for example, I might argue that one's inability to change one's orientation or gender identity by will is sufficiently similar to race or sex that they ought be treated similarly, even if they are not as literally biologically unchangeable.
This was pretty clearly presented as a factual question with a claimed factual answer. You were anti-science if you even thought that maybe it wasn't an obviously true brute fact about the world. This is why I think the potential for backlash is much higher and potentially more damaging to the already-abysmal state of our discourse. It's a meme at this point that when the left wants a political victory, they are not opposed to just making up facts, stamping them with the label
PravdaScience (TM), and anyone who disagrees is just too stupid to read a book. It poisons society's truth-seeking mechanisms and does, in fact, lead people to just throwing up their hands and thinking that if Science (TM) is this bloody wrong all the time, they might as well just never listen to it. The even more recent, tangible example was the "masks don't work" noble lie. It took almost no time at all for everyone to realize that it was a straight factual lie, and the discourse never recovered. People simply turned their back on the whole concept that we could make factual conclusions based on solid evidence and that they could guide our decisions. Once you realize you've been duped, rational or not (depending on your definition of rationality), an extremely common game-theoretic response is to simply raise a middle finger to anything and everything the lying liars ever say again and simply reject the validity of their claimed methods outright.This wasn't really the argument, though, because it probably wouldn't have led them to the same political victory. Everyone knew that this was never the standard and wasn't going to be the standard going forward, because there are all sorts of desires/beliefs/what-have-you that people have that they can't seem to just change by will that we don't sacredly protect via pseudo-Constitutional magic. They had to enough of the bald factual lie out there in people's minds... this was "critical", the article says... in order to force through what they had so desired.
Does any of this expected backlash ever happen? The reason we have these bold backlash-tempting movements given prominent placement is that since the left controls culture and counter-culture and the media and basically all of the artificial incentive systems, there can be no backlash except directly from reality. And we're rich enough that we're well-insulated from that at least in the short and medium terms.
Child vaccination rates are falling since the rollout of the Covid vaccines. Here are a few sources: CNN SciAm NYT
Funnily enough in the SciAm piece they mention that polio was nearly eradicated except for Pakistan and Afghanistan. What they don't mention is that in those places confidence in public health was harmed by the CIA using vaccination sites to try to track down bin Laden via family DNA. Public health types are happy to point the finger in this instance though. Public health institutions aren't implicated, after all.
The NYT piece mentions a stunning 43% child vaccination rate in the Philippines, and partially attributes it to a dengue vaccine that turned out to cause more harm than benefit.
None of those pieces even hint at pushing the Covid vaccine for kids as a source of general mistrust of all vaccination. I can't find any mainstream media source that even tries to compare costs and benefits of this vaccine for kids, not even one that stacks the deck in favor.
Virus, or to be more precise, the response to the virus, really did a number on many areas in which human well being was improving. Today PISA, a standardized test organized by OECD, scores for 2022 were released. In reeding and maths they show a general decline in achievement of fifteen year olds. Finnish government says this is "unprecedented".
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I don't know, but I don't think @Gillitrut's response will be, "I'm not worried about it, because my team controls everything."
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