This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
First, this is utterly predictable. Patients won't read 10 pages of medspeak, especially when they've already made up their minds.
I want to zero in on that last bit; I'm pretty sure everyone who shows up at a gender clinic in 2024 AD knows what they want, when they want it. Parents who aren't sure about transitioning their kid won't take them to a gender clinic. Everyone knows the outcome of stepping into that building. And doctors know it too, and they also know that saying "no" just means the patient gets hormones anyways, just from an abortion doctor instead because planned parenthood can't resist jumping into something left coded for any reason, ever. I'm not sure what exactly that means here; I'm 100% sure that trans isn't real and the medical treatment these people need is for mental illness, but the idea that the medical system can self-regulate in a culture war heavy topic is also risible.
Second, this is utterly predictable. "The experts" tm being firmly on the left of the culture war for anything controversial and willing to misrepresent their theoretical area of expertise if not outright lie about it shouldn't be a shock to anyone who lived through Covid. Trans is pretty central to the culture war.
Third, and going for variety here, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone. Everything we know about trans people should point to them being difficult patients at the best of times; they disproportionately have additional mental illnesses, lots of them don't trust non-trans people, high percentages of them are unemployed/underemployed people who get on poorly with their families and thus have insurance difficulties which make everything more complicated, and most of them are literal teenagers who probably have a higher rate of lying to begin with. In that environment of course it's going to cause this type of problem.
WPATH is confirming things we already knew. It's a valuable confirmation, but there's not a lot of new information there other than that WPATH knew about the obvious problems and was choosing not to say anything, which was already my assumption- they're ideologically motivated, not stupid.
What's the working definition of real here? Do you believe that mental illness is real?
I think that the median case of, at the very least, depression, ADHD, and most anxiety disorders are just med-seeking or munchausens, yes, and I think all three of those things have a closer correspondence to reality than the claims trans adherents make about themselves.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This may be an exercise in throwing stones in glass houses, but you need to log off. Plenty of people know next to nothing on the issue, and when their kid says they're trans they just go "welp, better make an appointment with the psych / doctor". Funnier still, even psychologists and family doctors tend to know next to nothing on the issue, and just refer.
It was also my assumption, but I wouldn't describe it as "what we already knew". "Suspected", yes, and only for a given value of "we". And other than the confirmation being valuable, it also shows that, like I keep insisting, the vibe has shifted on this issue.
Or they are pushed to go by the kid's school.
More options
Context Copy link
Trans is a hot topic. Everyone in America in the 2020’s has an idea of what it is which at least rounds to trans.
There are people who don’t think they know how to respond to it, sure, but those types know full well that the medical system will respond with transition, everyone knows that. Maybe not the finer details, but once you add on that ‘trans kids’ pretty much all come from well off blue tribe families- ‘non-affirming’ parents or parents who have a willingness to be skeptical of the official narrative do not seek medical treatment for their trans kid, they pull the kid’s pants down and say ‘look at how God made you and get used to it’.
+1 to Jiro's "no they don't". I'll add that even in the event they actually have an opinion on trans care, paradoxically it's the "allies" that may be to most vulnerable here, because they will tend to assume that the talk of lack of guardrails is a right-wing moral panic. But the majority simply have not followed any of the back and forth.
More options
Context Copy link
No they don't. They may think "well, I don't know if trans is correct for my kid, I'm sure the doctor can figure it out". They'll assume that the doctor would act like a professional and diagnose based on objective standards that might say yes, but might say no.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you may be typical-minding. Countless people on Maury have denied fathering a child for absurd reasons like “we only had sex one time.”
There’s plenty of people sleepwalking through life seemingly without ever making an informed decision. “I didn’t know I couldn’t orgasm after removing my penis” sounds absurd but I would be more surprised if it didn’t happen.
More options
Context Copy link
This has been a general problem with mental health disorders in general and especially ones that you get a prescription for. The difference between someone who’s sad and someone who’s depressed is ten minutes with a psychiatrist. And adhd tends to work this way as well. If you’re seeking help for something that doesn’t leave physical evidence, the way to get what you want is to insist that it be given.
More options
Context Copy link
I'd be more careful with absolutes.
My burning hatred for presentism and general displeasure towards technocrats and their solutions to human problems can't be overstated; but they do all have a point in that the phenomenon behind "trans" is a real thing that has existed for pretty much all of history in some form or another.
The present obsession with it and its political implications helps nobody, but let's not pretend the problem doesn't exist. It's not just a symptom of other mental illnesses.
Call it its own type of mental illness if you will, we certainly used to, but it's real and we don't really understand the cause of it.
It is this ignorance that's the fertile ground for would be experts to push convenient solutions they swear have no drawbacks. The way out isn't more willfull ignorance. The flawed frame of understanding that is leading to the present problems must be replaced with the truth, whatever that may be. Not a different sort of convenient lie.
FWIW I agree with both @hydroacetylene and you here, and I expect that he'd agree with you too. What I would mean, and what I expect he means, by "trans isn't real" is that none of the people being classified as "trans" are "born into the wrong body" or "assigned" the wrong gender, nor are they "really" (in some sense) the opposite sex -- that it's not just a matter of overdiagnosis and a classification of some people as "trans" who aren't, while there is still some smaller subset who are "really trans" and where that the most appropriate treatment is the constellation of "gender-affirming" (what a euphemism!) treatments of hormones/surgery/social transition/etc.
I do agree that there is a separate mental illness (probably more than one) which correspond to "trans" -- that it's not just depression or anxiety or whatever that causes boys/men to want to be girls/women (or vice-versa), or to be unhappy because they aren't, or to (at times) convince themselves that they "really are" what they want to be. And I get that there are some people who don't believe that and think that the entirety of "trans" is just some current-day-cultural nonsense. But I do think that there is a meaningful and important sense in which "trans isn't real" is true, and I think that's what he's getting at.
Yes I doubt we all disagree very much, but some things deserve to be stated at least inasmuch as it allows us to map things out.
The story we've all been told (i.e.: there are people born with brains that correspond to the other sex and bringing their bodies in line with their brain heals them) has many problems, not least of which the fact that it has incredibly little to no evidence supporting it. In this at least, "trans isn't real". But the problem is the alternatives, like Blanchardism, are really no better on that front.
There's a deep irony in the fact that learning more would require pretty wild experimentation that would and has been suppressed by a political movement that is hell bent on large scale experimentation but only of a very specific kind.
If there's one thing we ought to learn from this it is that building identities around specific medical treatments is a terrible idea. And it's a mistake we keep making. See the weirder parts of the deaf community for another example.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link