Mississippi Passes "More Dead Kids Please" bill. Texas responds w/ "hold my beer"

[Elixir]

One's own tendencies are not necessarily a reliable predictor of other people's tendencies.

Is thwarting other people’s tendencies what this is all about? Is the best way to thwart the tendencies of some socially excluded adolescent girl, to stigmatize the segment of the population that she might find attractive? Is it worth it?

 

[Bomb#20]

Why do detransitioners exist, anyway?

One-size-fits-all thinking. My last patient psychologically benefited from transition; therefore my current patient will.

And why do trans activists scorn them?

One-size-fits-all thinking. This patient says he didn't psychologically benefit from transition; therefore he's handing ammunition to our political opponents who claim no one psychologically benefits from transition; therefore he must have psychologically benefited from transition and they've just duped him into being in denial about it.

 

[Bomb#20]

One's own tendencies are not necessarily a reliable predictor of other people's tendencies.

Is thwarting other people’s tendencies what this is all about? Is the best way to thwart the tendencies of some socially excluded adolescent girl, to stigmatize the segment of the population that she might find attractive? Is it worth it?

Why did you write that?

 

[Elixir]

Why did you write that?

Because the post to which I responded seemed to indicate that thwarting the desires of “some socially excluded adolescent girl” was a priority, or at least a desirable outcome.
Maybe it is, which is why I asked. Can you answer?

 

[Emily Lake]

And it's not being pushed. That's trans-panic crap from the QOP. They consider any mention of it to be pushing it--the idea that you can stamp it out by making it socially unacceptable.

If you aren't trans you're not going to have any interest in transition. It's the same as society's acceptance of homosexuality doesn't make anyone gay or lesbian--it only brings some out of the closet.

Can you explain what it means for a person to "be trans"? And how you can be so certain that people who lack that undefined quality will not be interested in transition? And while we're at it, what do you mean by "transition" in the first place?

You're make a whole lot of unspoken assumptions here. I don't think your assumptions bear much of a resemblance to actual reality anymore.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't care if men and women live in the same prison

YOU don't care... but a whole lot of women do care.

Why do you believe that your preference outweighs that of a whole lot of women? Do you think you, as a single individual and a man, are more important than a large number of women?

 

[TomC]

Can you explain what it means for a person to "be trans"?

That's a huge elephant in the room.

Plenty of people who aren't sure what the words "man" or "woman" mean confidently assert what it means to "be trans"
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

It is demonstrably untrue that everybody is male or female. While quite rare, there ARE individuals with both male and female sexual characteristics. There are even one or two documented cases of these individuals reproducing.

This is wrong. Having some characteristics of the opposite sex is NOT synonymous with BEING the opposite sex, nor is it in any way remotely synonymous with not being one's own sex. A male with gynecomastia is still a male. They develop breasts, as a result of a medical disorder. That does not make them somehow "not male or female", it doesn't make them "both" or a "mix". They're every bit a male as any male who doesn't have that medical condition, and they are exactly 0% female. A woman with the medical condition of hirsuitism has a beard, which is considered a male characteristic. But she is still 100% female, and she is 0% male.

Even people with medical conditions that cause some reproductive ambiguity are still either male or female.

I'm getting tired of people insisting that sex is a spectrum and some people are "in between" sexes, when it's obvious that they don't understand evolutionary biology, have no concept of disorders of sexual development, and are working from an entirely pop-culture narrative of what those conditions actually mean.

STOP USING PEOPLE WITH MEDICAL CONDITIONS AS PAWNS FOR TRANSGENDER ACTIVISM.

 

[Bomb#20]

Why did you write that?

Because the post to which I responded seemed to indicate that thwarting the desires of “some socially excluded adolescent girl” was a priority, or at least a desirable outcome.

Your post seems to indicate you have a reading comprehension problem. The post to which you responded did not indicate anything was a priority except valid reasoning.

Maybe it is, which is why I asked. Can you answer?

Have you stopped beating your wife? Can you answer?

If your sincere goal here is to actually find out what my views actually are, rather than to smear me with your trumped-up ad hominem strawman, then try rewriting your question so it actually asks whatever it is you want to know about me, instead of insinuating that I stigmatize trans people. Otherwise, get lost.

 

[Emily Lake]

Those professionals have a great many sessions with those who claim they are trans and then within 2-4 months start blockers and put their puberty on hold, try actuating on what they say they feel, and then usually give up because it's a lot of work to pretend something like that when it isn't really who they are.

This is bullshit based on your wishes.

My niece never demonstrated any dysphoria or gender nonconformity at all. My nephew *did*. They grew up in the same household, I have had lots of exposure to both of them.

My nephew waited until they were in their early twenties before they even started talking to a therapist about their discomfort. They took their time, did research, and started slowly with hormones.

My niece spent 30 fucking minutes with a "gender specialist" who had NEVER seen her before, and left the office at age 16 with a prescription for high-dose testosterone. Less than a year later, she's looking to get her boobs cut off. She is NOT transgender by any rational sense of the term.

Your baseless declaration of how it works is not reality.

 

[Oleg]

Can you explain what it means for a person to "be trans"?

That's a huge elephant in the room.

Plenty of people who aren't sure what the words "man" or "woman" mean confidently assert what it means to "be trans"
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

It is well established that our kinesthetic senses are the result of particular brain formations, and the shape of the brain absolutely impacts behavior, qualia, and the behavioral outcome of hormones

PHRENOLOGY FOR THE WIN!

I think Jarhyn was talking about microscopic variations at the neuron level of the sort Sigma linked a paper on, not large-scale shape.

Perhaps, but Jarhyn conveniently "forgets" the very specific criteria of that paper - all of the test subjects were androphilic males who had demonstrated a long-term persistent dysphoria. The variations in the brain that were observed were specifically associated with the perception of oneself. It's the same part of the brain that activates for people with other body dysmorphias like anorexia.

And that is not even remotely equivalent to Jarhyn's phrase above.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm intimately familiar by the difference of output generated by subtle differences in the connections and geometry of such networks. It can be the logical difference between an AND and a NOT in a grammar structure

Brains aren't actually computers. Your persistent conflation of them is errant.

 

[Bomb#20]

I think Jarhyn was talking about microscopic variations at the neuron level of the sort Sigma linked a paper on, not large-scale shape.

Perhaps, but Jarhyn conveniently "forgets" the very specific criteria of that paper -

I think it's unlikely he forgot, unless the very specific criteria of that paper were all listed in its abstract.

 

[Toni]

It is demonstrably untrue that everybody is male or female. While quite rare, there ARE individuals with both male and female sexual characteristics. There are even one or two documented cases of these individuals reproducing.

This is wrong. Having some characteristics of the opposite sex is NOT synonymous with BEING the opposite sex, nor is it in any way remotely synonymous with not being one's own sex. A male with gynecomastia is still a male. They develop breasts, as a result of a medical disorder. That does not make them somehow "not male or female", it doesn't make them "both" or a "mix". They're every bit a male as any male who doesn't have that medical condition, and they are exactly 0% female. A woman with the medical condition of hirsuitism has a beard, which is considered a male characteristic. But she is still 100% female, and she is 0% male.

Even people with medical conditions that cause some reproductive ambiguity are still either male or female.

I'm getting tired of people insisting that sex is a spectrum and some people are "in between" sexes, when it's obvious that they don't understand evolutionary biology, have no concept of disorders of sexual development, and are working from an entirely pop-culture narrative of what those conditions actually mean.

STOP USING PEOPLE WITH MEDICAL CONDITIONS AS PAWNS FOR TRANSGENDER ACTIVISM.

FFS, I certainly was not referring to gynecomastia. In fact intersex individuals DO exist. Yes, this is a rare anomaly. I certainly did NOT suggest that there is a spectrum of sexes.

Differences of sex development: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia

Differences of sex development (DSD) is a group of conditions in which there is a discrepancy between the external (outside) genitals (penis, scrotum, vulva, labia) and the internal (inside) genitals (testes,

medlineplus.gov

Intersex - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Emily Lake]

One's own tendencies are not necessarily a reliable predictor of other people's tendencies.

Is thwarting other people’s tendencies what this is all about? Is the best way to thwart the tendencies of some socially excluded adolescent girl, to stigmatize the segment of the population that she might find attractive? Is it worth it?

Nobody wants to stigmatize a population. What we want is to avoid false positives, when the cost of false positives is very high, and the cost of false negatives is relatively low.

Some people had childhood traumas that they had repressed. But a whole lot of people who did NOT have repressed memories went through memory recovery therapies and came up with false memories of childhood abuse. There were a whole lot more people with false memories than there were with real memories. And the cost of those false positives was big - it destroyed families.

Teenagers are known to be susceptible to social contagion. Call it peer pressure if you want to make it seem softer. It's more prominent in teenage girls than in boys, but the tendency is present in both sexes. We've seen it over and over again. We see clusters of girls who all start cutting themselves when the media starts talking about cutters. We see clusters become anorexic when the media starts talking about anorexia. We see increased volumes of suicidality when media starts talking about suicide in teens.

And we are seeing clusters of teens, especially girls, identifying as trans or nonbinary, at rates that are well above the volume we think exists in the general population. My goddaughter watched 5 girls in her class of 30 in middle school all come out as trans within a couple of weeks of each other, and they were all friends. This isn't indicative of social acceptance - trans people simply aren't 16% of the population! The odds of 16% of one classroom all being genuinely transgender, within a very short time period, and all within one friend group is virtually nil.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why did you write that?

Because the post to which I responded seemed to indicate that thwarting the desires of “some socially excluded adolescent girl” was a priority, or at least a desirable outcome.
Maybe it is, which is why I asked. Can you answer?

When the desire of that socially awkward excluded adolescent girl results in medical harm, high likelihood of sterility, and a growing number of teens getting double mastectomies Yes, I rather think that thwarting their desire to do things that cause them permanent harm should be thwarted.

Don't you think that the harmful desires of adolescents should be thwarted by adults?

 

[Elixir]

One's own tendencies are not necessarily a reliable predictor of other people's tendencies.

Is thwarting other people’s tendencies what this is all about? Is the best way to thwart the tendencies of some socially excluded adolescent girl, to stigmatize the segment of the population that she might find attractive? Is it worth it?

Nobody wants to stigmatize a population. What we want is to avoid false positives, when the cost of false positives is very high, and the cost of false negatives is relatively low.

Some people had childhood traumas that they had repressed. But a whole lot of people who did NOT have repressed memories went through memory recovery therapies and came up with false memories of childhood abuse. There were a whole lot more people with false memories than there were with real memories. And the cost of those false positives was big - it destroyed families.

Teenagers are known to be susceptible to social contagion. Call it peer pressure if you want to make it seem softer. It's more prominent in teenage girls than in boys, but the tendency is present in both sexes. We've seen it over and over again. We see clusters of girls who all start cutting themselves when the media starts talking about cutters. We see clusters become anorexic when the media starts talking about anorexia. We see increased volumes of suicidality when media starts talking about suicide in teens.

And we are seeing clusters of teens, especially girls, identifying as trans or nonbinary, at rates that are well above the volume we think exists in the general population. My goddaughter watched 5 girls in her class of 30 in middle school all come out as trans within a couple of weeks of each other, and they were all friends. This isn't indicative of social acceptance - trans people simply aren't 16% of the population! The odds of 16% of one classroom all being genuinely transgender, within a very short time period, and all within one friend group is virtually nil.

That discrepancy is vexing, I agree. I don’t see a viable solution in forcible repression though. If a bunch of teen girls do sterilize themselves, at least the “harm” (if that is what it is*) is isolated to that group.

Don't you think that the harmful desires of adolescents should be thwarted by adults?

No. Not as a blanket remedy to all harms caused by adolescent desires. Maybe I am biased, having rejected all adult intervention in my own behavior as a 15-17 year old, having survived the resulting hardship and eventually having thrived despite the knowing judgement of my elders assuring me that I would not.

* it’s another discussion, but I don’t see elective decisions not to procreate as a necessarily bad thing. We have plenty of people.

 

[Emily Lake]

FFS, I certainly was not referring to gynecomastia. In fact intersex individuals DO exist. Yes, this is a rare anomaly. I certainly did NOT suggest that there is a spectrum of sexes.

Differences of sex development: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia

Differences of sex development (DSD) is a group of conditions in which there is a discrepancy between the external (outside) genitals (penis, scrotum, vulva, labia) and the internal (inside) genitals (testes,

medlineplus.gov

Intersex - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

People who have intersex conditions are NOT in-between sexes. They are all still either male or female.

Don't be misled by poor terminology. "Intersex" makes it sound like these are people who are somehow both sexes, but they aren't. They have ambiguous development of their reproductive organs - something went wonky in development. But none of them is actually both sexes, and none of them are an "in between" sex.

Honestly, read your own links! The wikipedia page lists the various DSDs colloquially called intersex, as well as specifying WHICH SEX is affected by them. The few that say "none" refer to conditions that can affect both males and females, but that in no way at all means those individuals are neither male nor female, nor does it mean they are both.

My goddaughter has a DSD. I know several people with various DSDs. To imply that they're "in between" or some other sex is generally viewed as an insult by them. These are real medical conditions that have very real impacts on people's lives. The politicization of their medical conditions by the transgender activists is really not okay.

Their conditions get used in bad faith to push an entirely different issue, and I find it despicable. The argument generally goes "(1) Well, you can't say male and female are completely different categories, because intersex people exist. (2) The existence of intersex people demonstrates that sex isn't binary, it's a spectrum. (3) Because sex is a spectrum, nobody can actually know for sure who is male and who is female and who is in-between. (4) Since nobody can tell what sex anyone is, we have to rely on their gender identity to prove who they really are. (5) Therefore transwomen are literal women and transmen are literal men"

The problem is that (1) is false. People with DSDs certainly exist, but their condition does NOT make them "in between" the two sexes of male and female, no more so than the existence of people who congenitally lack and arm makes humans have a "spectrum" of arm numbers as a definitive approach. It just means that they have a medical condition that has caused their reproductive anatomy to develop in an unusual or atypical fashion, sometimes producing visually ambiguous genitalia. But they are still, in actuality, either male or female.

Because (1) is false, and relies on the term "intersex" providing a false implication, everything else after that is also false. Because people with DSDs are NOT "in between", it does NOT follow that sex isn't binary - sex is very much binary. There are only two gametes, there are only two sexes. That some members of one sex or the other are atypical in their development does not imply that there are more than two sexes, or that sexes are a spectrum... there are still only two gametes, and there are still only two sexes.

Sex isn't a spectrum, sex is a binary. The entire evolutionary result of sex is reproduction, and reproduction in mammals ABSOLUTELY cannot happen without one of each sex being involved. Reproduction ABSOLUTELY requires two - and only two - sexes among mammals. And while some few people are androgynous in appearance, this is quite rare, and humans are extremely good at determining the sex of other adult humans. We're very close to 100% accurate, even without social cues like hairstyle and clothing. Our faces alone are dimorphic enough that we can determine the sex of an un-augmented person from their faces with so close to 100% accuracy that it's really quite amazing.

The entire basis of this current discussion about people with DSDs is here because their medical conditions are being used to push a false narrative that a person's subjective view of themselves with respect to social roles is somehow more "reliable" than their actual sex.

 

[Emily Lake]

That discrepancy is vexing, I agree. I don’t see a viable solution in forcible repression though. If a bunch of teen girls do sterilize themselves, at least the “harm” (if that is what it is*) is isolated to that group.

The solution is pretty easy, and it's a solution we use with minors on all sorts of other topics with no hesitation whatsoever. We do not allow minors, who lack sufficient information to make a truly informed decision, from doing things that have permanent consequences. We forbid them and prevent them from doing so.

Why on earth do you think that sterilization should be an exception from all of the other rules we have in place that prevent children from the future consequences of their bad decisions?