There's no heroes and no villains here, but if someone has got something bigoted to say, then they should dispose of their waste or surrender the restroom. It doesn't make it any more or less bigoted to be circumspect, it only makes it difficulty to have a proper discussion. If they believe what they have to say isn't bigoted, they should take courage in their convictions and speak their mind. If they're punished in a way that's unfair, then that's something with bringing to the community's attention. If they don't actually have confidence in their convictions, maybe their ideas need some more time to develop before they're comfortable sharing them (and maybe the reason they're uncomfortable is that there's a problem).
I'm not trying to silence anyone, when people vaguepost, clearly there's something on their mind, and I'm inviting them to express it.
Do you think that's an unfair position for me to take? What I see is that they did say what was on their mind, we had a substantive discussion, no one got flagged, no one got banned, their comment isn't even gray. The reports of HN being hostile to this discussion are greatly overstated.
Fuck it, I'll take the karma hit. I am of course referring to young girls identifying as male/non-binary.
I'm sure some of the cases are genuine, but not all. And I'm not saying these girls aren't troubled or have other things going on that they need help with.
I appreciate your being willing to speak your mind without hiding behind vaguery. We can risk a karma hit together.
You are referring to a myth called "Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria," which has been debunked. Gender identity is not a socially transmitted pathology. I don't believe you meant this in a hateful way, but let me explain what the problem is with this idea. This is sophistry about how LGBTQ people should remain in the closet, or they'll "infect" people, and the evidence is that as we tolerate LGBTQ people more, more of them come out of the closet. It's a reversal of cause and effect, from the same school as "discussing the history of racism is racist".
Let's first be clear that gender dysphoria is a real thing, and transitioning has been a very real solution for many people, and has helped people from depression, possibly suicidal, to a much happier state, and that's great. It's vital we don't lose that.
At the same time, it's been politicised; there's a lot of conservative pushback claiming this isn't real, leading to resistance against this pushback, where I wonder if some people may sympathise with transgender people to the point that they also identify as transgender despite a lack of gender dysphoria, and that might create a fad that might cause more people to transition and later regret it.
Gender dysphoria is a serious medical issue, and should not be a fad or a cultural or political issue. Transitioning is effective treatment, and not some fun thing to do like getting a tattoo, nor should it be considered an assault on anyone's cultural, religious or political beliefs.
And if it really is happening more to girls than boys, maybe consider if cultural sexism might cause some women to not want to identify as such anymore. Especially in the face of issues like rape, bodily autonomy, but also acceptable jobs and behaviours. Maybe we should be more tolerant of cross-dressing.
> Let's first be clear that gender dysphoria is a real thing
To be clear, the pain someone is feeling is real but the "reality" of a condition is a bit of an unclear concept. We can't really address this until we try to control for the gendered expectations of the sufferer, their surroundings, and any observers. Suzie Green of Mermaids has said that some of their motivation in transing their son as a toddler was his father's discomfort with some of the toys he was playing with and the homosexual connotations. Likely if the boy had tolerant and unbiased parents he'd be happy as a man, and thus it's unlikely he truly had "gender dysphoria" unless you count whatever his parents conditioned into him.
> and transitioning has been a very real solution for many people
Again, hard to say given that the decision probably was not made in isolation from heavily gendered expectations. There's reason to think that removing those expectations would have made them at least as happy, if not more.
> Transitioning is [...] treatment, and not [...] an assault on anyone's cultural, religious or political beliefs.
For an adult it's a personal choice and we should have pretty wide latitude in things that only impact us. It becomes a societal and political issue when it's brought into schools, or when males are given access to women's spaces and opportunities.
> And if it really is happening more to girls than boys, maybe consider if cultural sexism might cause some women to not want to identify as such anymore. Especially in the face of issues like rape, bodily autonomy, but also acceptable jobs and behaviours. Maybe we should be more tolerant of cross-dressing.
Errr, that's the wrong takeaway. If a woman wasn't going to get promoted then her putting on pants won't help, and if she was going to get abused it wouldn't trick her attacker. We should work to remove or mitigate those problems so she doesn't feel the need to hide her true self.
If a woman is thought to be able to avoid rape by dressing like a man and/or having surgeries to reduce her sexual attractiveness then women will be thought to be asking for it ("How was she dressed? Did she still have her breasts?") for not doing those things.
> Suzie Green of Mermaids has said that some of their motivation in transing their son as a toddler was his father's discomfort with some of the toys he was playing with and the homosexual connotations.
Excuse me, a toddler? A toddler and any kind of sexual connotations? I have no idea what you're talking about, but you're packing a lot of red flags in that sentence.
> > and transitioning has been a very real solution for many people
> Again, hard to say
No, this part isn't hard to say. Whether in some cases strict gender expectations might cause gender dysphoria might be hard to say, but I know too many people for whom transitioning has been a very real solution to think it might be "hard to say" if it really did.
We should definitely reduce restrictive gender expectations, but I don't think that's going to completely eliminate gender dysphoria.
> Excuse me, a toddler? A toddler and any kind of sexual connotations?
Her words: “As a toddler, Jackie always headed for the dolls in toy shops.”
In her Tedx talk, Green says that as soon as her baby boy “got mobile” “he was gravitating to things that you would think are stereotypically female”. [...] “the Polly Pocket and My Little Pony”, she says, and then quickly adds “that was fine – but not for Dad”. Green’s then husband disapproved of his son playing with My Little Pony toys and therefore banned them from the house.
> I have no idea what you're talking about, but you're packing a lot of red flags in that sentence.
Adults projecting their gender insecurities and stereotypes onto children should raise red flags.
> I know too many people for whom transitioning has been a very real solution to think it might be "hard to say" if it really did.
What do you mean by transition? Sex-change operations or "social transition"?
Because if you mean the latter then a main part of it is to act in a way your internalized gender stereotypes wouldn't have let you, so of course kind of by definition you'll feel better. But it's hard to say the transition caused the improvement because they're also changing their expectations for themself at the same time. Could they have simply dropped the regressive stereotypes they were inflicting on themselves without declaring a new identity?
I would save the phrase "it works" for something that we know works better than a null intervention and doesn't introduce any new problems.
Has ROGD been absolutely debunked? Last I checked it was still pretty debated, I see discussions about it all the time still. When I search for papers I see the original [1], criticisms [2], and a correction issued by the original authors [3] which holds to most of their starting claims.
Obviously being cis and childless I don't have a horse in this race, but it seems to me that there's still a fair amount of disagreement in the field, and the ROGD's existence or non-existence isn't really settled. The result found by the original paper may be unpopular, but it's bad science to hide it away solely for that reason.
That is, unfortunately, not an argument. To apply your line of thinking to the OP, would you say that "children displaying Tourette's symptoms from watching a YouTuber is a reversal of cause and effect"? The OP does not make that conclusion, and most of this comment section accepts that as well. I, like GP, would be interested to hear how this would be reconciled.
This is a valid criticism. What you have highlighted is a shortcoming in my ability to elucidate this topic.
My comment is more an invitation to explore the argument yourself. This isn't a formal debate where I've shown up prepared with notes, I didn't know I'd be speaking about this topic today. If I tell you what I know, you can think about whether it makes sense to you, and you can use extract search terms to research and learn more. You don't have to take my word for anything, but I don't have to remember how I learned something to participate in a casual forum conversation either.
That being said, I am starting to make an effort to catalog resources and be able to share them, because I do think it makes my comments better, but this is a work in progress. C'est la vie.
As to how this argument relates to the Tourettes-like symptoms discussed in the article, these are simply different phenomena. It's reasonable to observe this phenomenon and ask, "Does this apply to other phenomena?", and in the case of the increasing number of open trans people in our society, I'm telling you the answer is "no" and doing my best to explain why.
I don't think at all that LGBTQ people "infect" people - that is your choice of words, not mine.
But it seems strange to think that tourettes, anorexia, self-harming and even suicide can be socially transmitted but for this one specific condition (for which there is no medical test) it's impossible and has never happened.
I understand these are not the words you used, or necessarily ideas you hold; what I am describing is the role it plays in the wider rhetorical space. I should have made that more clear, it does look like I was calling you out for that. I'll see if I can edit it in a better way.
Recommending literature is a skill I am still working on; I know things about this or that, but I didn't keep a record of how I learned them, and it's been months or years now. The Wikipedia article has discussion of criticism which may be a good place to start. If you're interested in YouTube videos, there is a large community of trans people who discuss their experiences in the form of video essays. ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube are some of the best known; you may or may not appreciate their politics, that's not what I'm suggesting, but they have a lot of content about what it's like to be a trans person, why they're trans, how they became trans, etc. that's just very difficult information to come by any other way.
I appreciate your good faith and curious engagement with me.
It's honestly enough to remember and point out the whole concept is based on a study that only polled parents who aren't supportive of their trans kids. Anyone with a shred of genuine interest in being fair and accurate should be able to see right through the study. It's so bad that even prominent transphobes don't seem to talk about it anymore.
ROGD is the term given to the phenomenon of teenagers with no history of gender dysphoria suddenly announcing a transgender identity, typically after spending massive amounts of time online, and often after a friend has announced that they are trans. Who would be better placed to notice this set of circumstances than their parents?
>> "The term "rapid-onset gender dysphoria", coined by Littman, first appeared in a July 2016 notice that was posted on four websites, recruiting parents to respond to a research survey that Littman described as "Rapid onset gender dysphoria, social media, and peer groups".[27] In the title of Littman's poster abstract for the study, published in February 2017, the phrase appeared as "Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria".[28]"
It's not a thing. What is a thing is kids finding language to describe what they experience. Expanding vocabulary and ability to communicate is normally lauded and praised.
Littman's study hasn't been discredited though. It's been robustly critiqued, as one would expect for any research that advances a novel hypothesis.
The main issue that people have with her study is that it challenges the often deeply held belief that a person's gender identity is innate; it hypothesises that there is a population of trans-identifying people who have adopted this identity via sociogenic means. By doing so, it calls into question the affirmation-only clinical approach that has been so ascendant in recent years.
Challenging people's fundamental beliefs and practices on a topic is never going to be popular amongst those who hold such beliefs. This is why her research received such an intense backlash, and why activists are so keen to claim that it's been debunked and discredited, even when it hasn't.
Can confirm - ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube both are excellent resources on the topic, who discuss at length their motivations and experiences.
They're also very entertaining to watch, and extremely well read, particularly in Psychology and Philosophy. 2 of the more educational YT channels, even if you subtract all their material dealing with LGBTQ+ issues.
It is mass psychosis at this stage. Friend is a teacher in a very wealthy suburban area and 50%+ of the class identifies as non-binary (apparently). We're supposed to believe this is organic and totally normal?
It's pretty easily explained, they think it's cool to say they are nonbinary, or pansexual, or genderfluid, or something along those lines. One popular/alpha kid says it and soon their entire clique gloms on. Adding to the allure for teens is that some adults find this shocking. They are not really committing to anything, and they know it. They're doing it for social karma. Teens have done this kind of thing forever.
Non-binary simply mean that you do not identify with the two currently accepted gender identity or that you do not perceive gender as a binary system but as a spectrum. That's it. It does not mean that the person suffers from gender dysphoria or that they want to transition. For many, it's simply a way to describe their existing social behavior. It is also an umbrella word that houses many other identies.
I'd also challenge the "50%" number you advance.
Canada asked the question in last year's census and it was under 1%. 50% would be enormous.
"Younger generations had larger shares of those who were transgender or non-binary. The proportions of transgender and non-binary people were three to seven times higher for Generation Z (0.79%) and millennials (0.51%) than for Generation X (0.19%), baby boomers (0.15%) and the Interwar and Greatest Generations (0.12%).
Together, over 1 in 6 non-binary people described their gender as "fluid" (7.3%), "agender" (5.1%) or "queer" (4.1%). Other responses included "gender neutral" (2.9%), "Two-Spirit" (2.2%), "neither man nor woman" (1.3%) and "gender-nonconforming" (1.1%)."
"Non-binary" is commonly described as a trans identity, and the word "trans" is etymologically related to "transition". If there really was nothing else to it than the truism that "gender is not merely a binary system but a spectrum", no one would be talking about non-binary as an identity of its own - since this has been a consensus POV for decades.
It is not tran[sition]gender. It is the "trans-" Latin prefix meaning "across", "beyond" or "on the other side of" + gender.
In other words, people who moved on from the gender assigned to them at birth.
Some non-binary people identify as transgender but not all of them do. Just like non-binary is both an umbrella term and a spicific gender identity, transgender is both an umbrella term and a specific gender identity. You'll often see the shorthand "trans*" to describe the umbrella term and the shorthand "enby" to describe the specific gender identity.
Examples of clear gender identities that are not used as umbrella terms are: trans women, trans men, genderfluid, agender, demigirl, etc.
> In other words, people who moved on from the gender assigned to them at birth.
Yes, and the Latin word trānseō (nominal form trānsitiō → English: transition) means exactly to "go on across", "go beyond". Trāns ("across, beyond") + eō, it ("I go, he/she/it goes") + tiō (→ English: "-tion"). It's a distinction without a difference.
My point is that they share a source and are siblings, but one is not the parent of the other. Being transgender is not about the medical or social transition, it is about how the person identifies.
What does it mean to "identify" with a claim about what society is like - namely that "binary" gender might be more of a spectrum, with weird liminal stages in-between? You've said that this is what "non-binary" is about. How does this even begin to square with all those other notions about gender identity being something exceedingly clearcut, that someone can base major life decisions on?
That 50% number is anecdotal, from a friend whose a teacher in a middle school (norther Virginia) ... My guess is 100% of these children are on Tiktok/Snapchat, ingesting whatever content is being fed to their impressionable minds. Its certainly an internet driven phenomenon.
Then it is meaningless and hazardous to build an opinion upon it.
> My guess is 100% of these children are on Tiktok/Snapchat
TikTok usage is at 32.2% for children aged 10-19. Snapchat usage is at 59% for children aged 13-24. That would be unlikely. Those two platforms also share little in term of features and functionality. How are they relevant here and why single them out?
I’m sorry, but if you think TikTok and Snapchat have little overlap in their user base and feature set, you shouldn’t be speaking so confidently about teens issues because your perspective is woefully outdated.
I worked at Snapchat. Nearly every new feature we made was to compete with TikTok and drag eye ball time back from them into Snap. It sounds like you just googled “TikTok usage teens” and are using that to advance your (very shaky) argument about gender ideology.
I have teenage sisters and we talk frequently about how different discourse has become in their classrooms than it was 10 years ago when I was in high school. The 50% anecdote claimed doesn’t surprise me at all, after what I’ve heard.
Yes, just as Facebook and Instagram are also chasing a piece of the TikTok pie.
But they are not the same, they just share some features that have been added as updates. They are used by the same demographic, which is why I provided the stats for both. I wrote them in response to the claim that 100%, not 50%, of the class uses them which is unlikely. The 50% figure refers to the claim that 50% of the class identifies as non-binary, which is even more unlikely.
Ultimately, we are debating anecdotal exaggerations. Your response to that? You add another anecdote from a third party. Again, this has little value before actual polls and censuses.
You're also confusing two parts of this conversation: one is about gender identities, the other is about app usage. The two topics were brought into the picture with bogus statistics, so I brought them both up. However, they have little to do with each other.
