Academic Freedom and Cancel Culture

[Wahoo Redux]

Well, someone couldn't figure out how to argue that adults shouldn't be allowed to get sexual reassignment in a free society, nor did they have evidence of peeps being "railroaded" into surgical sex-changes, so this someone just moved the goalposts with a big ol' flimsy strawman.

To follow up, someone invented a series of hyperbolic and hysterical hypotheticals that would never happen...so there really was no argument to begin with. 

This is a thread about cancel culture anyway.

[marshwiggle]

And we let the doctor decide what is the best medical and ethical procedure with the parents' consent (as I imagine that is the law).  That's why we have doctors.

So I guess you feel the same way about abortion.

[smallcleanrat]

Maybe it's time to make a new thread RE: the question of how much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about medical care?

That seems to be what a lot of this side discussion is focusing on.

[marshwiggle]

Maybe it's time to make a new thread RE: the question of how much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about medical care?

That seems to be what a lot of this side discussion is focusing on.

It's not really about medical care. It's rather
"How much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about things that are legal for adults but not for children?"

For instance, in most(?) western countries it is illegal to sell

• tobacco
• alcohol
• firearms

to minors, even when all of those things can legally be sold to adults. It is illegal to allow a minor (under some age limit) to drive a car, regardless of supervision by an adult. The implication is that the potential consequences of those decisions is greater than a minor can grasp and evaluate.

To suggest that a minor should be able to unilaterally choose a medical procedure suggests that the decision is less consequential than other things including drinking, smoking and driving a car.

[smallcleanrat]

Maybe it's time to make a new thread RE: the question of how much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about medical care?

That seems to be what a lot of this side discussion is focusing on.

It's not really about medical care. It's rather
"How much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about things that are legal for adults but not for children?"

For instance, in most(?) western countries it is illegal to sell

• tobacco
• alcohol
• firearms

to minors, even when all of those things can legally be sold to adults. It is illegal to allow a minor (under some age limit) to drive a car, regardless of supervision by an adult. The implication is that the potential consequences of those decisions is greater than a minor can grasp and evaluate.

To suggest that a minor should be able to unilaterally choose a medical procedure suggests that the decision is less consequential than other things including drinking, smoking and driving a car.

1) Point about a new thread still stands.

2) Is there really a huge push to to allow a minor to unilaterally choose a medical procedure to the extent you imply in your hypotheticals? You seem to be painting a scenario in which not even the opinion of the medical professionals carries any weight.

A kid walks into a clinic, then demands and is approved for surgery and that's that. Easy as ordering off a restaurant menu. No questions asked. No parents consulted. No specialist referral. No request for medical history or documentation supporting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. No discussion of potential benefits vs. risks. It's completely, 100% up to the demands of the child.

Are you claiming this is already happening? Are you claiming this is what people want when they  advocate for "acceptance" of trans people?

Or is this meant to be a this-is-where-we-are-heading-if-we-let-the-wokeness-go-unchecked scenario?

[ciao_yall]

Maybe it's time to make a new thread RE: the question of how much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about medical care?

That seems to be what a lot of this side discussion is focusing on.

It's not really about medical care. It's rather
"How much autonomy a minor should be granted when it comes to decisions about things that are legal for adults but not for children?"

For instance, in most(?) western countries it is illegal to sell

• tobacco
• alcohol
• firearms

to minors, even when all of those things can legally be sold to adults. It is illegal to allow a minor (under some age limit) to drive a car, regardless of supervision by an adult. The implication is that the potential consequences of those decisions is greater than a minor can grasp and evaluate.

To suggest that a minor should be able to unilaterally choose a medical procedure suggests that the decision is less consequential than other things including drinking, smoking and driving a car.

There is also a level of urgency and well-being that comes with making medical decisions that does not factor into smoking, drinking, or driving. Anything from deciding, without parental permission, to: Get vaccinated. Receive prescriptions for birth control. Have an abortion. Receive treatment for mental health care, whether therapy or medication. 

[Wahoo Redux]

Marshy just likes to argue.

[marshwiggle]

2) Is there really a huge push to to allow a minor to unilaterally choose a medical procedure to the extent you imply in your hypotheticals? You seem to be painting a scenario in which not even the opinion of the medical professionals carries any weight.

A kid walks into a clinic, then demands and is approved for surgery and that's that. Easy as ordering off a restaurant menu. No questions asked. No parents consulted. No specialist referral. No request for medical history or documentation supporting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. No discussion of potential benefits vs. risks. It's completely, 100% up to the demands of the child.

Here's some guidelines from the NHS in the UK. (I believe they're kind of on the bleeding edge of the curve on this.)

2.1 NHS Outcomes Framework Domains & Indicators
Domain 1 Preventing people from dying prematurely

Domain 2 Enhancing quality of life for people with longterm conditions

Domain 3 Helping people to recover from episodes of ill health or following injury

Domain4 Ensuring people have a positive experience of care

Domain 5 Treating and caring for people in a safe environment and protecting them from avoidable harm


The service will impact on the domains in the following ways:

Domain 1: Preventing people from dying prematurely
Experiencing GD can be associated with acute distress. The service will seek to reduce the
distress of clients by providing high quality psychological and medical support, including
physical interventions, as required on an individual basis.

(I believe some of the came from "Irreversible Damage". It's primarily about the recent rise in autistic girls claiming to be trans.)

When kids go online looking for information/support the trans activists tell them that saying "I'm going to kill myself" is the magic ticket to getting medical interventions. From the guidelines above, it suggests that a person in greater apparent distress, e.g. suicidal, should be fast-tracked to "medical support, including
physical interventions".

This is contrary to pretty much every other kind of situation, where people in highly emotional states are considered less capable of making rational judgements, and the goal is to help them calm down before taking actions with long-term consequences. The only way it "makes sense" in this situation is if it is already assumed that the outcome is known.

[mahagonny]

It's not just physicians who get a boost to their business and/or stature when more people are changing genders. It's gender research folks too.

[smallcleanrat]

Responding to marshwiggle:

1) Could you clarify this point: "(I believe some of the came from "Irreversible Damage". It's primarily about the recent rise in autistic girls claiming to be trans.)" You believe some of the what came from that book?

2) I just read the NHS guidelines link you posted and I still don't see how this is "on the bleeding edge" of your hypothetical scenarios. There are other sections of the document worth highlighting.

--There are multiple criteria to qualify for gender affirming surgery, including being at least 18 years of age.
--The very next phrase after Domain 1's "...medical support, including physical interventions" is "as required on an individual basis."
--I don't think it's clear from the text for Domain 1 that "acute distress" is a criterion for fast-tracking to "physical interventions," skipping all the steps for assessment, consultation, etc... I think the statement is meant to imply that the "high quality psychological and medical support" is aimed towards helping prevent people getting to the point of "acute distress." It's not very clear in that little blurb, but reading the rest of the document detailing the process involved RE: hormonal treatments gives me the impression they are talking about prevention.

Throughout the rest of the document, which exhaustively lists how various criteria inform recommended practices, there is a strong emphasis on including the family in consultations and therapy, ongoing counseling, consideration of the patient's history (not just what they're saying now), and delaying hormone therapy if there is a mental health issue. If hormone treatment has already begun, displaying signs of mental illness is one of several "stop" criteria (and monitoring physical and mental health throughout treatment is also one of the guidelines, which includes patient input on whether or not they want to continue).

Patient and family education of options and risks is emphasized, as is assessment and consideration of the patient's ability to understand the various treatment options and make an informed decision. You might still argue that teens still shouldn't be considered competent to make these types of decisions for themselves, but this is still a far cry from your hypothetical in which the minor has all the power.

I'm sure there are doctors/clinics who act against guidelines and make hasty, under-informed decisions (which is hardly a problem limited to issues of gender identity), but I'm not seeing this rashness in the guidelines themselves.

[smallcleanrat]

Continuing to respond to marshwiggle:

My local library has a waiting list for Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, so I only managed to read the Foreword and part of the first chapter on Amazon and a few snippets quoted in reviews.

This part of the author's premise is certainly plausible: that some teens claiming a trans identity are doing so due to relatively recent increase in positive attention given to people coming out as trans and sharing their stories, and not genuine gender dysphoria. Or they may feel unsure about their identity, so they latch on to a label they think will help them feel more at ease with themselves and grant them access to a supportive community. An uptick in self-diagnoses or outright fakery depending on what's getting a lot of media attention certainly isn't new.

Her focus is on teens who supposedly didn't give any outward indications of gender identity issues until post-puberty, making their claims suspect. Ok.

But, as an argument that such cases represent the norm for people assigned female at birth wanting to transition (and the best explanation for why more youths are identifying as trans than in the past), this book seems like a mess.

She provides illustrative anecdotes based on interviews she conducted, which is not a problem in itself. But a huge red flag is the fact that she writes in detail about people she never interviewed at all. For some stories, she relied entirely on accounts from the parents lamenting how their daughters were caught up with a social trend which ruined their lives.

The teens are portrayed as troubled, rebellious, and irrationally angry about the lack of validation from their families. The parents are portrayed as loving, reasonable, and nothing but supportive. Color me skeptical the reader is getting an accurate representation.

Any teen claiming they had been unhappy at younger ages, but hadn't felt they could express this to their families, is apparently lying to back up their gender identity story. If you only have the perspective of the parents observing the kid, you can't know internal thoughts like this. And parents can have selective memories and biases and skewed perspectives. Parents can be in denial ("Oh, not my kid. She was always such a happy little girl until the trans cult indoctrinated her and took her away from us.")

One teen cut contact with their parents (after years of conflict over their gender identity) and began transitioning when they turned eighteen and moved out. The story ends with the parents getting info from "someone who's been able to snoop in on her" reporting their kid had posted online about how happy they were post-surgery. This is supposed to be a story about someone who isn't really trans and was greatly harmed by being supported in their transition? It's only the parents insisting they know their kid better than he knows himself in this one.

The other anecdotal evidence she lists to show the teens are wrong to claim a male identity are...eh...less than compelling.

She opens chapter 1 with: "If you're an American born before 1990, the words 'teenage girls' likely invoke a clutch of young women giggling at the mall...To understand the contemporary trans epidemic among teenage girls, we'll need to explore just how far girlhood has departed from this picture."

Her reasons for dismissing teens' claims to be transmen:
--They don't start lifting weights and watching sports
--They are attracted to boys, not girls
--Most do not opt to undergo phalloplasty (she refers to "the male appendage" as "a defining feature of manhood")

Maybe the rest of the book does better at supporting her thesis, but it's not a promising beginning.

[mamselle]

I agree to the need for a new thread.

Mods?

I just wish my music student would come out to his mom if he's really decided he's trans and stop playing with her in a cat-and-mouse sort of way.

She's just about guessed, and would be fine with it, but he's created this oppositional scenario in his head that needs conversation to normalize.

A class on Romanticism in 19th c. Music Theory yesterday set him off, and he kept teasing out the understandings of 'romantic' as self-referential, which they're not, without listening to the non-eroticized explanations the class was looking at.

Fun times....

M.

[marshwiggle]

Continuing to respond to marshwiggle:

My local library has a waiting list for Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, so I only managed to read the Foreword and part of the first chapter on Amazon and a few snippets quoted in reviews.

This part of the author's premise is certainly plausible: that some teens claiming a trans identity are doing so due to relatively recent increase in positive attention given to people coming out as trans and sharing their stories, and not genuine gender dysphoria. Or they may feel unsure about their identity, so they latch on to a label they think will help them feel more at ease with themselves and grant them access to a supportive community. An uptick in self-diagnoses or outright fakery depending on what's getting a lot of media attention certainly isn't new.

The real point is that the rise in the proportion of girls claiming to be trans has risen drastically, and that one of the biggest predictors of a girl coming out as trans is having friends who have come out as trans, i.e. it is a social contagion.

One point regarding the purported high suicide rate of trans youth without support: If gender dysphoria is a medical condition, rather than a social one, then its incidence through history and across cultures should be relatively static. In addition, the suicide rate ought to be higher is societies where it is not recognized and/or supported. Of course in societies like that the suicides will not be attributed to gender dysphoria, but the overall teen suicide rates should be elevated relative to accepting societies. The professed risk of suicide due to gender dysphoria suggests that teen suicide should be relatively easy to look for in other cultures.

[onthefringe]

Continuing to respond to marshwiggle:

My local library has a waiting list for Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, so I only managed to read the Foreword and part of the first chapter on Amazon and a few snippets quoted in reviews.

This part of the author's premise is certainly plausible: that some teens claiming a trans identity are doing so due to relatively recent increase in positive attention given to people coming out as trans and sharing their stories, and not genuine gender dysphoria. Or they may feel unsure about their identity, so they latch on to a label they think will help them feel more at ease with themselves and grant them access to a supportive community. An uptick in self-diagnoses or outright fakery depending on what's getting a lot of media attention certainly isn't new.

The real point is that the rise in the proportion of girls claiming to be trans has risen drastically, and that one of the biggest predictors of a girl coming out as trans is having friends who have come out as trans, i.e. it is a social contagion.

Or, knowing someone who successfully acknowledged their transness encourages people who are trans to publicly acknowledge their own gender. For example, I seriously doubt the underlying rate of gay/homosexual people has changed in the past 40 years, but the rate of gay/homosexual people who publicly  acknowledge their sexuality has risen dramatically.

One point regarding the purported high suicide rate of trans youth without support: If gender dysphoria is a medical condition, rather than a social one, then its incidence through history and across cultures should be relatively static. In addition, the suicide rate ought to be higher is societies where it is not recognized and/or supported. Of course in societies like that the suicides will not be attributed to gender dysphoria, but the overall teen suicide rates should be elevated relative to accepting societies. The professed risk of suicide due to gender dysphoria suggests that teen suicide should be relatively easy to look for in other cultures.

But, and this is important, suicide rate also varies dramatically based on access to firearms. Being a residential college student is a significant  protective factor for suicide, and our best guess is it's because of the reduced access to firearms. It's not straightforward to compare across cultures.

This study compares outcomes in people who received gender affirming surgeries and people who desired gender affirming surgeries but did not receive them and supports the idea that gender affirming procedures promote mental health.

For the vast majority of trans kids under the age of 16, the major intervention is puberty suppression. Despite the rare and generally mild negative side effects, I would think that people who think trans identity is "just a phase" would support this intervention, since it is largely reversible.

[smallcleanrat]

Continuing to respond to marshwiggle:

My local library has a waiting list for Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, so I only managed to read the Foreword and part of the first chapter on Amazon and a few snippets quoted in reviews.

This part of the author's premise is certainly plausible: that some teens claiming a trans identity are doing so due to relatively recent increase in positive attention given to people coming out as trans and sharing their stories, and not genuine gender dysphoria. Or they may feel unsure about their identity, so they latch on to a label they think will help them feel more at ease with themselves and grant them access to a supportive community. An uptick in self-diagnoses or outright fakery depending on what's getting a lot of media attention certainly isn't new.

The real point is that the rise in the proportion of girls claiming to be trans has risen drastically, and that one of the biggest predictors of a girl coming out as trans is having friends who have come out as trans, i.e. it is a social contagion.

One point regarding the purported high suicide rate of trans youth without support: If gender dysphoria is a medical condition, rather than a social one, then its incidence through history and across cultures should be relatively static. In addition, the suicide rate ought to be higher is societies where it is not recognized and/or supported. Of course in societies like that the suicides will not be attributed to gender dysphoria, but the overall teen suicide rates should be elevated relative to accepting societies. The professed risk of suicide due to gender dysphoria suggests that teen suicide should be relatively easy to look for in other cultures.

I was directly addressing points you thought were important enough to include in your posts.

You seem to keep making new "real" points whenever your previous points are challenged.

You're completely ignoring every question and critique I raised related to the two resources you used to support your statements.

If accuracy of statistics doesn't matter, accuracy of anecdata doesn't matter, and consideration of alternate explanations for the statistics and anecdata doesn't matter, what does matter?