I’ve been catcalled by a group of kindergarteners. It is a part of their culture. Attempted rape by a gay man, and a woman. There are many exceptions. Still it’s different from traditional rape.
My close friend from elementary school went into the woman’s locker room at a gym daily to expose himself to my girlfriend. This was a crime in the 80s. He was unable to become a police officer because of his arrests. This is good right?
From the Conclusions:
An important finding was that the incidence for observed suicide deaths was almost equally distributed over the different stages of treatment. Although the distribution showed that one‐third of the suicides occurred in people who were no longer in active treatment in our center, the other two‐third of the people who died by suicide still visited our center in the previous two years. About half of these last two‐third people were still in active diagnostic or medical treatment, while the other half completed their transition and only came for a medical check‐up. This indicates that vulnerability for suicide occurs similarly in the different stages of transition.
I asked this question earlier about the findings of that Swedish study I posted and I find myself asking it again for this Dutch one. If hormonal and surgical transitioning has no apparent impact on suicidality, where is the evidence that these treatments yield more benefits than costs on a population level? Is there any evidence besides anecdotes?
If we were talking about any other treatment regimen that had results like this, we’d be holding the medical establishment to account.
It shouldn’t be hard, and I don’t think it will be in most cases because I think most gender minorities just want to fit in and not be a nuisance. But my point is that the way inclusive language is being framed is problematic. The message that is coming across is that if your language doesn’t indulge a tiny minority’s sensitivity, then you are oppressing them.
And it’s not the low hanging fruit that is being singled out like “ladies and gentlemen.”
It’s stuff like “female” and “menstrual” and “pregnant women”.
If you are a teacher who wants to do a unit on female anatomy and the menstrual cycle and a student has a list of words they’d like you to use (that they pulled from Twitter) instead of the words you think communicate the most effectively, what’s the appropriate response? Do you oblige them because their feelings are more important than everyone else’s education? Or do you tell them thanks but no thanks? Should you feel moved to meet them half way? Does it matter that the student making the request is neither trans nor nonbinary and neither is anyone else in the clasroom?
It is not that challenging for lots of people to use language that caters to the most sensitive person in the room, especially when the sensitivities are communicated up front. But there are many situations where catering to sensitivities is impossible without folks feeling like they are being held hostage. This is especially true when we’re talking about sensitive young people. So I don’t think it is fair to say this is not that hard. It may not be hard for you (or me), but it will be hard for lots of people, and not all of those people will be old school robots. A lot of them will just be people who want to communicate a certain way and don’t want to have to cater to feelings of people that may not even be in the target audience. No other minority has garnered such ally-driven prescriptive language, so it really isn’t clear how to object to a language request without being perceived as a hater.
It seems to be a common thing for parents to say ‘better a live son than a dead daughter’, or the reverse. If teens are using it as a threat they probably got the idea from social media, not trans literature, but the various advocacy groups do seem to use the spectre of suicide to push affirmation as the only response.
It’s worth pointing out too that we’re seeing an increase in very awkward phrasings that seem more aimed at advancing ideological messaging than aiding in effective communication. I kind of hate the term “virtue signaling”, but I don’t know what else to call this.
The headline below is a good example:
https://jezebel.com/amazon-allegedly-forced-pregnant-people-to-risk-miscarr-1845302182
There is no reason why Jezebel couldn’t have written this as “pregnant employees”. Surely the writer and the editor would know that by saying “pregnant people”, the reader could get the impression that Amazon is using its might to go after anyone who is pregnant, not just those who work for the company. You can tell they are using “pregnant people” to socialize the idea that pregnancy isn’t something that only happens to women. Which is obnoxious and sinister on multiple levels. Journalists cannot be trusted to objectively report on sex-based discrimination if they go out of their way to obscure the sex of those impacted by the discrimination.
I dunno, I think in some ways the modern world encourages dysfunctional social interactions (eg internet rather than face to face) so that might be contributing. But I have seen a rise in people blaming their ‘anxiety’ or just unspecified ‘mental health’ for being unable to do various things. I do get the impression that in these cases it’s more of an excuse than something they are working to overcome.
Plus there’s the whole safe space thing. They have their place, but certain people seem to have the attitude that the whole world should be their safe space, or at least their whole university. Going to university is supposed to be about expanding your mind, not staying inside your comfort zone!
I want the people I care about in my life, whatever condition they may suffer from to receive the best possible treatment. Especially if it’s invasive, irreversible and affects the functioning of their body.
I wonder how health care professionals justify prescribing gender affirmative treatment to themselves based on studies like that. That looks like bad health care to me.
Me too. I wouldn’t want faith or blind optimism or baseless assumptions anywhere in the decision support framework guiding their care. Especially if the person is a child.
Don’t get me started.
I hope I’ve got my neuroscientific facts right, but I think it is commonly accepted that the human brain isn’t considered to be fully developed until roughly the age of 25, particularly when it comes to executive decision brain functions (frontal cortex). So why in god’s name would medical and mental health professionals even consider administrating hormone therapy drugs or performing invasive SRS on people whose brains are not fully developed?
What catchphrase was popularized by the 1976 docudrama All The President’s Men?
Two reasons. Some of the changes of puberty are irreversible, especially male puberty, so if kids are going to transition anyway, they will get a better aesthetic outcome if they do it early. And teens can find going through the ‘wrong’ puberty very distressing, so caring parents and doctors want to relieve that distress. The big questions are whether it’s really in the best interests of the child and whether they can consent to a treatment with such big consequences.
As for over 18s, the push to ‘de-medicalise’ transgenderism means there is no place for gatekeeping or needing a diagnosis. It’s being compared to homosexuality, which used to be considered a mental illness and now is not, but the two are fundamentally different since being gay requires no medical treatment. What’s interesting is comparing how difficult it is for young people to get voluntarily sterilised, because it is assumed they might change their mind later. We do not generally make it easy for people to get their bodies medically modified just as they please in this society.
Just when I think I’m already cynical enough…
So we have medical decision boards/panels that decide who gets the next available organ based on a very well defined series of medical criteria. But no such formal process exists for decisions around gender identity treatment and SRS? Seems to me, given how relatively little is understood about this issue, it would warrant an extra abundance of caution by medical experts.
Maybe, but if we look at the current environment, it doesn’t seem like it’s really causing an abundance of issues. Sure, some people regret transitioning, but that doesn’t seem like something we hear a lot about. My sense is that there would be more issues from blocking early transitioning from kids not being able to deal with their feelings about being in the wrong body. Maybe the line can be drawn at reassignment surgery since that would be very hard to undo. Hormone therapy doesn’t seem as drastic. If it wasn’t the right choice, some of that can be undone.
In large part, the reason this thread has been so long and controversial, is because of the legitimate concerns raised by JKR (among others) with respect to the fact that invasive procedures are being performed on young children who are not in a position to make sound decisions, and so there is reason for concern there.
Back to my organ donation analogy – a liver may not be given to a patient with unrelated health issues/complications. It’s a hard decision to make but it’s made every day. In case of a young child with gender identity issues, is it so unreasonable to delay therapies until they are older and more competent to make that decision. In the case of the liver transplant, it’s a life and death decision. Not so much in the case of gender re-assignment.
It’s not unreasonable, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of great options for kids to deal with these feelings. Therapy is an option, but that doesn’t necessarily have great results. If a kid can grow up in an environment where they feel happy and accepted, that’s probably the most important thing. Many teenage problems don’t really have great solutions, such as cutting, eating disorders, poor self-esteem, anger, etc. Many kids struggle with issues like those and things like therapy are only partially effective. If transitioning makes a miserable kid happy, it’s not such a bad thing even if it ends up being a decision they regret later on.
My understanding was that medical intervention is routinely delayed until at least age 18, with the single exception of blocking puberty – which is reversible.
Once puberty happens, especially male puberty, it’s very hard to ever “pass” as the other sex.
Can you support this assertion?
Gender dysphoria is not a new thing; it’s been known for a while this is fairly frequently experienced by homosexuals growing up. Read this article:
It’s hard to square what you said with the following:
Researchers don’t know why that is, but it appears that in some kids, nascent homo- or bisexuality manifests itself as gender dysphoria. In others, gender dysphoria can arise as a result of some sort of trauma or other unresolved psychological issue, and goes away either with time or counseling. And in still others, of course, it is a sign that the child will identify as transgender for their whole adult life. While the actual percentages vary from study to study, overall, it appears that about 80 percent of kids with gender dysphoria end up feeling okay, in the long run, with the bodies they were born into.
I would relate to that by saying that most people grow out of their teenage problems whatever they are. Dysphoria is like many teenage problems which seem like the worst thing ever at the time–eventually we grow up and stop caring so much about those things. But even if dysphormic kids eventually become okay with their bodies, it doesn’t meant that they felt okay while they were growing up. Teenagers aren’t really good at dealing with issues in productive ways. Whatever the issue, teenagers may choose to deal with it in a destructive way such as drugs, alcohol, partying, inappropriate sexual relationships, running away, suicide, etc. It’s one thing to say that the choice should be delayed until they are older, but the reality is not so easy. The real-life choice is how to get that kid through potentially many years of feeling like they are in the wrong body without having them seek out destructive ways to deal with their feelings. It’s not an easy choice, but I could see allowing my troubled kid to transition if I felt that was the best way for them to be happy. If they end up regretting their decision in their 20’s, they’ll be better able mentally to handle it at that time.
Hmmm… I can see that as being highly problematic. As a parent, we’re required to balance the child’s immediate wants with what’s best over the long term, and making decisions based on the least harm principle. Of course, nobody can tell you what that is for a given situation. Still, if in their 20’s they are better able to process decisions and consquences, I’d be tempted to wait and let them make those decisions when they are better equipped to do so.