I feel this and that are different things. I can't really discuss or debate the hypothetical feelings in this scenario. What is the proposition for addressing these feelings?
Whenever possible, society tends to prefer non-zero-sum solutions. That's a good thing. But sometimes situations are totally or somewhat zero-sum. I believe that many aspects of integrating trans people into society are somewhat or largely zero-sum. It's important to remember that as a society we've had to deal with zero-sum situations before. We come up with solutions, and we largely agree with them. Some examples would be: Very tall or large people have to live in a world not ideally designed for them, to a lessor degree, it's the same for left handed people (of which I am one
), young people have various restrictions placed on them, as do the elderly, and so on.
So the idea that we need to warp all of society to accommodate trans people is dubious at best. So, for example, I'm afraid that trans women should not pursue careers in women's health care.
You said: I can provide any number of studies that show positive improvement in the mental health outcomes from trans youth yes. Extrapolate from that if it was life saving or not.
I said that that's a different question than the suicide question, you disagreed, I think?
I believe these are high stakes options. As I'll expand on in a minute, using transitioning drugs on kids is NOT safe and NOT reversible and NOT without long term negatives. We also do not have much long term data available. So short term mental health improvements must not be extrapolated to being long term benefits. We must weigh al of that when we consider using these drugs.
So certainly, reducing suicides is the highest stakes of all. But given all the life long downsides of these drugs the claims of "suicide prevention" need to be rock solid, and they're not. And short term mental health improvements ARE a different beast.
I don't see in what way bad men cannot take advantage of it already. Again to clarify if this is about bathrooms we can look at the studies on this and there isn't a correlation of trans women and inappropriate bathroom behavior. There is an incredible correlation of violence against trans women in male bathrooms however.
Zooming out for a minute, I've had this conversation many times in the last few months, and my perspective is never addressed. So I wonder whether you'd be willing to take a whack at steelmanning my position here. You DO NOT have to agree with it, but I'm interested to know if you understand it?
And we have discussed that there is a process of talk therapy beforehand. But you disagree that anything beyond that should be allowed. However the evidence says otherwise and the medical standards of multiple countries across the world uphold more or less the same opinion on this. I have also gone through each of the studies that you provided earlier and provided reasoning as to why none of them were a problem for the safety of the hormone blockers.
I think you're conclusions are a bit too black and white. For example, earlier you said:
And on that note there is exactly 0% merit behind the social contagion nonsense.
As I'll show in a minute, that's simply not true. I think it's much closer to the truth that social pressure is acknowledged to be a factor, but we do not yet know the varying degrees to which it is a factor. It seems to me that the effects of social pressure will range from none to extremely high, on a case by case basis.
So in your mind is there any reasonable way ever for a child to prove that they are actually trans and be allowed to have hormone blockers to start transition? Or would you bar every child no matter the circumstances with no wiggle room? Because if its just about revising SOC for stricter requirements on early transition I can understand that. I might not agree with every suggestion but that is something I can sympathize with.
I might have softened my stance a bit on this question, but not much.
I'm going to start a new thread to discuss "The Cass Review", an independent study commissioned by England's NHS and published in Feb. 2022.
I'm going to simplify a bit, but I have been told by many scientists over the years that my explanations tend to be "simplified, but not wrong". A few key takeaways from this study:
- There is NO stable, consistently applied SOC. It's quite dynamic, data collection has been weak, and interventions are all over the map.
- The healthcare industry is overwhelmed in trying to deal with the huge spike in GD.
- Social pressure IS a factor in GD.
- The drugs used on kids to aid GD are not safe and do have long term and irreversible side effects. And this reality is not consistently communicated to families.
- Some kids with GD resolve or "desist" without treatment.
- Even the minimally invasion approach of "social transitioning" is not a side-effect-free approach.
- There are tests that assess a child's ability to grasp complex topics like "gender transitioning". These tests would indicate that many kids who are given drugs do not really understand what they're signing up for.
So my earlier stance of "never use these drugs on kids" might be too strong - but only by a tiny bit. I might now say, something like "only in extremely rare circumstances should we use these drugs on kids". As it stands, I believe we are using these drugs far too often, and that in a few years we will look back and realize what a huge mistake using these drugs on kids was.
