True enough, but I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with making the "Hamas is Good, Actually!" contingent of the Left a load-bearing element of the Democratic coalition.
1. There's a strong possibility that the people pushing this resolution are straightforwardly imbeciles
2. If they aren't, it's one of the ways to do entryism. They won't get close to the levers of power now, or in five years, but 20 or 30? This Preston guy could wind up as the Democratic Jeremy Corbyn some day
As for me personally I’ve said before with this issue there’s no possible way for me to totally separate out my experience in a bluest of the blue jurisdiction.
For me, I see an asymmetry between the Bluest of the Blue jurisdictions and Texas (where Donald Trump pulled 52% of the vote in 2020) or Florida (where he pulled 51%). YMMV, but that's where I suspect a lot of the disagreement comes in--I see Rightward activist capture is much more expansive and pervasive.
This is also true at the national level--I can't think of a thing that Biden's WH that comes close to being equivalent to throwing all the trans people out of the military with a Tweet. This is another thing that I harp on a lot because it was both egregious and completely mainstream on the Right.[1] The people doing well are evidence just that there are indeed people who, for whatever combination of nature and nurture, ended up with such a profound and persistent psychological conflict between mental and physical states that major medical interventions improved their lives.
OK, but once you have the possibility of that variance or conflict, it makes sense to give a name to what it is that's conflicting, and hypothesize that in cis people, the two are aligned. And there is some brain imaging evidence showing that trans women's brains look more like those of cis women than cis men. This may not be conclusive evidence in favor of the gender identity hypothesis, but observing the opposite would, I'd say, argue against it.
[1] Some of this is that I just don't think the activist fringes of the Left have power over the Democratic Party and Democratic governance that matches the activist Right's power over the GOP and its governance.
I am less then serenely confident that the target audience is treating this as advice.
My strong suspicion is that it’s aimed at young men (and in a lot of case like actual boys) who are frustrated with their inability to find or keep girlfriends and reassuring them that those grapes are, indeed, sour.
It's not so different in public health or social science. Like, it's usually not one observation that will do the trick (since most of the theoretical content is statistical in nature) but the basic approach of observation and falsification is generally applicable.
His position is diametrically opposed to Red state bans (much less the abuses of the Texas DFPS directed by Abbot and Paxton):
I don’t see how there’s anything bigoted about saying the government shouldn’t be out trying to eradicate the practice, while still acknowledging that people doing this are taking very serious risks with unproven medical interventions
I do think this is all undeniably true, but that the January 6 insurrection, no matter the precise contours of Trump's legal responsibility for it, sent a much louder message and this is just another echo.
In Trump's case, I'm serenely confident that he has no plan.
In DeSantis' case, I think there's an outside chance that he has a plan that will (only) appeal to major GOP donors and Federalist writers, but is currently going over the PDF with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it doesn't have any sonnenrads in it.
Like, to the point where they should be argued against persuasively rather than with appeals to the ignorance of people who don’t agree.
For what it's worth, I don't think Chip's attempted refutation (of InMD's second point, about reliability) holds much water.
If Chip is reading this, it's not enough to appeal to existence of gender identity to establish that children or teens can assess their own gender identity reliably, or even can do so with clinical assistance.
That doesn't mean I believe that InMD is right--I believe the opposite--but demonstrating that is real work, and real work that I, at least, am begging off from doing in an OT comment thread.
I don't think it's just a tactic from InMD. I disagree with him on the topic but he's a straight shooter.
I do think this is just an absolutely annoying forum for engaging in this kind of communication even at the, "Hey I clicked through a bunch of links, read a bunch of abstracts and discussion sections chased down key references, and my immediate take is ${IMMEDIATE_TAKE}," level.
And pace Chip, I am confident that I have the background necessary to evaluate the literature in question, but that would be a significant investment of time and effort in an absolute sense. Maybe I'll build up the energy and time for it some day, but not today.
If you (or InMD or Dark Matter) want to read this as evasiveness, I find that mildly regrettable but not enough to be mad about it or something.
What do you want to do with wiki claiming more people are inappropriately treated (which presumably means they were gay and not trans) than appropriately treated?
So trying to get to substantive answers on hard questions is inherently suspect?
Contextually suspect.
One thing I've noticed, locally (to OT) and in the broader national conversation, is that the substantive questions--very much including non-empirical ones like, "How much say should parents have?"--are directed with much more force and frequency at the Left.
But the actual implemented policies from the Right are, at best, not obviously less hostile to parental rights than those from the Left. I'm not sure why this is unworthy of comment, notice, or consideration.
Only one person in this conversation has defended the position that parents should have no say in whether their kids receive gender-affirming care, and it's Pinky, not me or Chip!
But look, if the only way you (and Chip) are willing to talk about this is through the partisan analysis then it’s probably going to be hard for us to be productive
I don't know if I'd say it's the only way, but I don't think it's irrelevant. I think my earlier answer about hostility to gatekeeping points out one of the reasons why--if we're interested about activist capture of institutions, especially public-facing ones, we need to consider the possibility that the Rightward activists are going to capture and degrade the institutions as well as the Left!
Especially when we're witnessing Rightward activists capturing and degrading those public institutions in real time!
IMO there is no such objective thing as ‘gender identity.’ For all practical purposes the trans identity is no different than other forms of self expression, maybe with some psychological components involved that science doesn’t yet fully understand. Based on what we have, it seems that some very, very tiny number of people will, on balance, be happier living as the opposite sex for their entire lives and for them the very serious trade offs of medicalization are worth it.
OK, but that small group of people is a key prediction of the "gender identity" hypothesis! Indeed, if they didn't exist, that hypothesis would be falsified, which disposes of your "not falsifiable" hypothesis.
Should any preteen who goes to the doctor be prescribed something like Lupron right away?
No. And literally nobody I've seen has argued the contrary.This is an extreme outlier position.
Do their parents have any say?
Yes. Note: it's the Right that has been far more aggressive in denying parents any say here, and at least one person (Dark Matter) is using your "hard question" approach to defend bans and CPS investigations both.
I'd say that does a lot to justify Chip and my resistance, frustration, and suspicion. Like the same ambiguity that you see on our part in refusing to address "hard questions" we see in the fact that the "hard questions" are, themselves, being used to justify exactly the oppressive state tactics you say we're right to consider bigotry.
As for the rest, I actually am not quite up for a deep dive into the literature at the moment, but I will say that hostility to gatekeeping in general (regardless of whether it would be optimal policy if it were implemented well) is a nigh-universal activist reaction to unreliable or actively malicious gatekeepers who are trying to use the regulatory state in service of ulterior motives.
And pro-trans activists are definitely justified in perceiving that the likes of Ken Paxton and Ron DeSantis are exactly those sorts of gatekeepers, even before you consider the GOP's enthusiastic participation in enacting bad-faith regulatory schemes (with formally identical rhetorical justifications) to hinder abortion rights, back before the GOP finally amassed enough power to just annihilate abortion rights entirely.
I don’t see how there’s anything bigoted about saying the government shouldn’t be out trying to eradicate the practice, while still acknowledging that people doing this are taking very serious risks with unproven medical interventions.
OK, but, like, the government in huge swathes of the country is trying to do that.
Like pretty much every Red state has outright banned gender-affirming care for minors, many have also made it much harder for adults to get that exact same care, and (as I endlessly belabor) at least one Red state is sending CPS after parents for merely having trans kids.
Like the mainstream Right is doing exactly what you're calling bigoted.
And it seems like every time this is raised, it's just brushed aside with a "to be sure..." and then everyone is back to complaining how self-righteous the Left is being... and dude, if we're being self-righteous how the heck should we characterize what DeSantis, Abbot, et al. are doing...?
EDIT to add: And it matters, because this kind of ambiguity about what the actual bounds and stakes of the debate are is extremely toxic to debate and crafting good policy.
I’m fine with the idea that I don’t know enough to make sound judgements.
But the rest of us should just trust that Ken Paxton and Greg Abbot do when they send CPS after the parents of trans kids?
EDIT to add: If you wonder why I keep harping on this, it's for three reasons:
1. It's out of line with the assertion that the science is "unsettled" or "uncertain". It might be appropriate if the science is 100% settled and certain, but even there it's not obvious.
2. It proves that the stated motivation that the anti-trans movement has used to crack down on LGBT students, parents, and teachers throughout Red America--a commitment to "parental rights"--is actually a vicious lie.
First, the number of kids taken away holds steady at zero.
There are families being actively investigated for abuse by Texas CPS now.
Nor would I describe Trump as someone whose behavior & judgement should be copied.
Something like 55% of Republicans disagree with you. So, like, I'm not sure why we're talking about anti-trans discrimination as some sort of weird corner case.
Subtract athletics, where trans-women have serious advantages, and children, where the science seems unclear as to what best practices are, and what’s left?
What's left will have me repeating myself, because somehow the actual implemented policies of Republican governments are irrelevant to political debate around here:
1. Discriminating against adult trans people, which is not only endorsed by the contemporary right, but has been repeatedly been implemented by Republican leaders in a variety of ways, including banning trans people from the military with no more justification than a tweet, and ensuring that doctors and nurses be allowed to deny any sort of medical care to LGBT people.
2. Not sending CPS to take trans kids away from parents, which cannot be justified even on the grounds that the science is "unclear".
Like generally speaking, “nutpicking” the GOP means looking at the statements and record of the party’s most likely Presidential nominee, or of the governments of the largest GOP-run states
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Democratic Weakness”
True enough, but I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with making the "Hamas is Good, Actually!" contingent of the Left a load-bearing element of the Democratic coalition.
"
1. There's a strong possibility that the people pushing this resolution are straightforwardly imbeciles
2. If they aren't, it's one of the ways to do entryism. They won't get close to the levers of power now, or in five years, but 20 or 30? This Preston guy could wind up as the Democratic Jeremy Corbyn some day
"
As for me personally I’ve said before with this issue there’s no possible way for me to totally separate out my experience in a bluest of the blue jurisdiction.
For me, I see an asymmetry between the Bluest of the Blue jurisdictions and Texas (where Donald Trump pulled 52% of the vote in 2020) or Florida (where he pulled 51%). YMMV, but that's where I suspect a lot of the disagreement comes in--I see Rightward activist capture is much more expansive and pervasive.
This is also true at the national level--I can't think of a thing that Biden's WH that comes close to being equivalent to throwing all the trans people out of the military with a Tweet. This is another thing that I harp on a lot because it was both egregious and completely mainstream on the Right.[1]
The people doing well are evidence just that there are indeed people who, for whatever combination of nature and nurture, ended up with such a profound and persistent psychological conflict between mental and physical states that major medical interventions improved their lives.
OK, but once you have the possibility of that variance or conflict, it makes sense to give a name to what it is that's conflicting, and hypothesize that in cis people, the two are aligned. And there is some brain imaging evidence showing that trans women's brains look more like those of cis women than cis men. This may not be conclusive evidence in favor of the gender identity hypothesis, but observing the opposite would, I'd say, argue against it.
[1] Some of this is that I just don't think the activist fringes of the Left have power over the Democratic Party and Democratic governance that matches the activist Right's power over the GOP and its governance.
On “Moral Codes and Alpha Bros”
I am less then serenely confident that the target audience is treating this as advice.
My strong suspicion is that it’s aimed at young men (and in a lot of case like actual boys) who are frustrated with their inability to find or keep girlfriends and reassuring them that those grapes are, indeed, sour.
On “The Democratic Weakness”
It's not so different in public health or social science. Like, it's usually not one observation that will do the trick (since most of the theoretical content is statistical in nature) but the basic approach of observation and falsification is generally applicable.
"
His position is diametrically opposed to Red state bans (much less the abuses of the Texas DFPS directed by Abbot and Paxton):
I don’t see how there’s anything bigoted about saying the government shouldn’t be out trying to eradicate the practice, while still acknowledging that people doing this are taking very serious risks with unproven medical interventions
Emphasis mine, but the comment isn't.
On “Repeal and Replace, Remix, Repeat”
OETRW that Republican Governor ran against his own plan after becoming the Republican Presidential nominee.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/4/2023”
I do think this is all undeniably true, but that the January 6 insurrection, no matter the precise contours of Trump's legal responsibility for it, sent a much louder message and this is just another echo.
On “What is Nikki Haley’s Strategy?”
Trump is 77 years old and facing a dizzying array of felony charges across multiple jurisdictions.
Haley may just be trying to hang in there in case Trump is forced out of the race by legal jeopardy or the actuarial tables.
On “Repeal and Replace, Remix, Repeat”
In Trump's case, I'm serenely confident that he has no plan.
In DeSantis' case, I think there's an outside chance that he has a plan that will (only) appeal to major GOP donors and Federalist writers, but is currently going over the PDF with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it doesn't have any sonnenrads in it.
On “The Democratic Weakness”
Like, to the point where they should be argued against persuasively rather than with appeals to the ignorance of people who don’t agree.
For what it's worth, I don't think Chip's attempted refutation (of InMD's second point, about reliability) holds much water.
If Chip is reading this, it's not enough to appeal to existence of gender identity to establish that children or teens can assess their own gender identity reliably, or even can do so with clinical assistance.
That doesn't mean I believe that InMD is right--I believe the opposite--but demonstrating that is real work, and real work that I, at least, am begging off from doing in an OT comment thread.
"
Because your position is untenable, and also he agrees with me.
If he agrees with you he should say so, and at least clarify the outline of the debate.
"
That's true of all science.
"
I don't think it's just a tactic from InMD. I disagree with him on the topic but he's a straight shooter.
I do think this is just an absolutely annoying forum for engaging in this kind of communication even at the, "Hey I clicked through a bunch of links, read a bunch of abstracts and discussion sections chased down key references, and my immediate take is ${IMMEDIATE_TAKE}," level.
And pace Chip, I am confident that I have the background necessary to evaluate the literature in question, but that would be a significant investment of time and effort in an absolute sense. Maybe I'll build up the energy and time for it some day, but not today.
If you (or InMD or Dark Matter) want to read this as evasiveness, I find that mildly regrettable but not enough to be mad about it or something.
"
The sense that InMD hasn't addressed any of his hard substantive questions towards you is a form of pushing Ctrl-F a few times.
"
Social science is still empirical!
"
I can't speak for Chip, but discussing actual empirical evidence in OT comments fellates ungulates.
Putting an hour plus into a a well-researched comment just to have it linger in moderation for an indefinite period of time feels pretty bad, man.
"
What do you want to do with wiki claiming more people are inappropriately treated (which presumably means they were gay and not trans) than appropriately treated?
...Read the rest of the paragraph?
"
@in-md:
So trying to get to substantive answers on hard questions is inherently suspect?
Contextually suspect.
One thing I've noticed, locally (to OT) and in the broader national conversation, is that the substantive questions--very much including non-empirical ones like, "How much say should parents have?"--are directed with much more force and frequency at the Left.
But the actual implemented policies from the Right are, at best, not obviously less hostile to parental rights than those from the Left. I'm not sure why this is unworthy of comment, notice, or consideration.
Only one person in this conversation has defended the position that parents should have no say in whether their kids receive gender-affirming care, and it's Pinky, not me or Chip!
But look, if the only way you (and Chip) are willing to talk about this is through the partisan analysis then it’s probably going to be hard for us to be productive
I don't know if I'd say it's the only way, but I don't think it's irrelevant. I think my earlier answer about hostility to gatekeeping points out one of the reasons why--if we're interested about activist capture of institutions, especially public-facing ones, we need to consider the possibility that the Rightward activists are going to capture and degrade the institutions as well as the Left!
Especially when we're witnessing Rightward activists capturing and degrading those public institutions in real time!
IMO there is no such objective thing as ‘gender identity.’ For all practical purposes the trans identity is no different than other forms of self expression, maybe with some psychological components involved that science doesn’t yet fully understand. Based on what we have, it seems that some very, very tiny number of people will, on balance, be happier living as the opposite sex for their entire lives and for them the very serious trade offs of medicalization are worth it.
OK, but that small group of people is a key prediction of the "gender identity" hypothesis! Indeed, if they didn't exist, that hypothesis would be falsified, which disposes of your "not falsifiable" hypothesis.
"
Should any preteen who goes to the doctor be prescribed something like Lupron right away?
No. And literally nobody I've seen has argued the contrary.This is an extreme outlier position.
Do their parents have any say?
Yes. Note: it's the Right that has been far more aggressive in denying parents any say here, and at least one person (Dark Matter) is using your "hard question" approach to defend bans and CPS investigations both.
I'd say that does a lot to justify Chip and my resistance, frustration, and suspicion. Like the same ambiguity that you see on our part in refusing to address "hard questions" we see in the fact that the "hard questions" are, themselves, being used to justify exactly the oppressive state tactics you say we're right to consider bigotry.
As for the rest, I actually am not quite up for a deep dive into the literature at the moment, but I will say that hostility to gatekeeping in general (regardless of whether it would be optimal policy if it were implemented well) is a nigh-universal activist reaction to unreliable or actively malicious gatekeepers who are trying to use the regulatory state in service of ulterior motives.
And pro-trans activists are definitely justified in perceiving that the likes of Ken Paxton and Ron DeSantis are exactly those sorts of gatekeepers, even before you consider the GOP's enthusiastic participation in enacting bad-faith regulatory schemes (with formally identical rhetorical justifications) to hinder abortion rights, back before the GOP finally amassed enough power to just annihilate abortion rights entirely.
"
I don’t see how there’s anything bigoted about saying the government shouldn’t be out trying to eradicate the practice, while still acknowledging that people doing this are taking very serious risks with unproven medical interventions.
OK, but, like, the government in huge swathes of the country is trying to do that.
Like pretty much every Red state has outright banned gender-affirming care for minors, many have also made it much harder for adults to get that exact same care, and (as I endlessly belabor) at least one Red state is sending CPS after parents for merely having trans kids.
Like the mainstream Right is doing exactly what you're calling bigoted.
And it seems like every time this is raised, it's just brushed aside with a "to be sure..." and then everyone is back to complaining how self-righteous the Left is being... and dude, if we're being self-righteous how the heck should we characterize what DeSantis, Abbot, et al. are doing...?
EDIT to add: And it matters, because this kind of ambiguity about what the actual bounds and stakes of the debate are is extremely toxic to debate and crafting good policy.
"
I’m fine with the idea that I don’t know enough to make sound judgements.
But the rest of us should just trust that Ken Paxton and Greg Abbot do when they send CPS after the parents of trans kids?
EDIT to add: If you wonder why I keep harping on this, it's for three reasons:
1. It's out of line with the assertion that the science is "unsettled" or "uncertain". It might be appropriate if the science is 100% settled and certain, but even there it's not obvious.
2. It proves that the stated motivation that the anti-trans movement has used to crack down on LGBT students, parents, and teachers throughout Red America--a commitment to "parental rights"--is actually a vicious lie.
"
First, the number of kids taken away holds steady at zero.
There are families being actively investigated for abuse by Texas CPS now.
Nor would I describe Trump as someone whose behavior & judgement should be copied.
Something like 55% of Republicans disagree with you. So, like, I'm not sure why we're talking about anti-trans discrimination as some sort of weird corner case.
"
Subtract athletics, where trans-women have serious advantages, and children, where the science seems unclear as to what best practices are, and what’s left?
What's left will have me repeating myself, because somehow the actual implemented policies of Republican governments are irrelevant to political debate around here:
1. Discriminating against adult trans people, which is not only endorsed by the contemporary right, but has been repeatedly been implemented by Republican leaders in a variety of ways, including banning trans people from the military with no more justification than a tweet, and ensuring that doctors and nurses be allowed to deny any sort of medical care to LGBT people.
2. Not sending CPS to take trans kids away from parents, which cannot be justified even on the grounds that the science is "unclear".
"
Like generally speaking, “nutpicking” the GOP means looking at the statements and record of the party’s most likely Presidential nominee, or of the governments of the largest GOP-run states
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.