Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On May 17 2023 21:24 gobbledydook wrote: I think that it is a tremendous waste of everyone's time and bandwidth talking about issues that affect far less than 1% of the population. It is sad that nowadays the right find nothing better to do than make waves on a topic that is overall so insignificant in terms of impact.
But that is the rightwing playbook.
Find a minority to punch down so you get votes from angry assholes. Use those votes to push through stuff that hurts the people who vote for you and helps the rich people who pay you. Get paid by those rich people. As the lives of the angry people get worse, they want to punch down at minorities even more.
In a sane world, all of this would not be a relevant topic, because we could just leave people alone.
But then, in that sane world people would probably start wondering why there are billionaires who literally couldn't spend all of their money even if they tried, people who have to work three jobs and still can't make ends meet, and starving homeless people at the same time. And why those billionaires pay less taxes then the people working for them at minimum wage.
And the sad thing is that it works, because one cannot just ignore it. It is essential for a free society that the rights of minorities are protected. So if the right just keep on attacking minorities, we have to deal with that, instead of dealing with the issues that we could deal with if we didn't have to constantly fend of rightwing nonsense.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
Others are reflecting my opinion on this already, but I wanted to address this particular paragraph. Occam’s Razor doesn’t work that way. It’s not about cutting the number of explanations, it’s about cutting the complexity of a given explanation. Cutting one complex, monistic explanation for a variety of different issues into many, more specific explanations relevant to their respective issue is exactly what Occam’s Razor does.
EDIT - Watched the video. I’ll try and sum it up for people who don’t have the time…
- Anorexia in Hong Kong was essentially unheard of until the first widely reported case from a teenage girl starving herself to death there in 1993. Around the time Internet became a thing as well. Since then, went from 1-2 cases per year to dozens.
- Refers to anorexia as a “culture-bound syndrome” that became more prevalent in the 1970s, on the same category as hysteria in Freud’s era. What she means by this is the concept that people would sometimes “feel” a certain uncomfortable way (stress/anxiety) not explainable by a cold or other disease, and conversations with doctors would put words/ideas to this “feeling” and its causes. Historically it’s been doctors that have shaped this mental health narrative, but that has gradually shifted to the media as time has gone on and the media has become more prevalent in people’s lives. People started “self-diagnosing” themselves and relying on their views of others around to prescribe their own treatment.
- She goes on to talk about stress/anxiety-inducing gender-dysmorphic experiences (basically experiences that don’t match the stereotype of your given gender), such as being gay, erotic cross-dressing, and autism (this was a stretch for me, her argument is that they feel unsure of themselves socially in general, so more likely to search for other answers e.g. “Maybe it’s because I’m not a man.”), and for women she argues that since the stereotype of women is so hypersexualized, any woman not conforming to that is very likely to be having a gender-dysmorphic experience.
- She then talks about 2012 Tumblr era and Tik-Tok with a Lord Of The Flies reference to make the point that nowadays children/adolescents are using these platforms to shape their mental health narratives with each other, and that being trans is an explanation being thrown around a lot in that circle that neatly addresses gender-dysmorphic experiences the kids are having, and is also supported by schools and their faculty (makes some comment about schools transitioning kids behind parents backs while referencing stats from a previous speaker, I didn’t hear him).
Anorexia in Hong Kong was essentially unheard of until the first widely reported case from a teenage girl starving herself to death there in 1993. Around the time Internet became a thing as well. Since then, went from 1-2 cases per year to dozens.
The logic falls apart already here. That something is not registered does not mean it does not exist.
I don't view being genderfluid or homosexual as a psychological problem either. If someone should receive major gender altering surgery or medication, it should obviously be considered very carefully, but that is not a political issue but a medical one.
Conservatives turning this political is pure bad faith identity politics.
On May 17 2023 08:50 Sermokala wrote: I'm curious what critical functions to life that top surgery removes from someone.
1. Critical functions to life? You’re curious if breasts are a critical function to support life? There’s actually an unbelievable amount of limbs, appendages, organs that can be removed and aren’t a critical function of life. Surely this can’t be news to you.
I mean stone cold how many women mistakenly remove their breasts mean to you vs a trans person killing themselves?
4. What are you asking me here? How many mastectomies mean to me vs a trans person killing themselves?? Like what ratio of women mistakenly removing their breasts is worse than a trans person killing themselves? I don’t know? Is this something I should know? Do you have a number for this? I’ve never been posed the trolley problem with breasts before. Should my answer be in number of breasts or number of women?
Maybe you can just formulate an argument and offer that instead of a hodgepodge of silly questions that I’d rather answer literally so you don’t have an opportunity to add your own interpretations and contexts
1. You're the one complaining about people wanting their breasts removed for whatever reason. I'm asking why you have a problem with it.
2. Sarcasm that incredibly also undermines your position incredible.
3. I'm glad you provide a firm reason why we shouldn't have a problem with gender affirming care or top surgery. Its odd that you're against it but I'm glad you know why you're wrong for being against it.
4. Yes, you seem to have grasped instantly what my argument is and formulated the exact points about it. Now that you've shown an understanding about it please answer it. What ever argument I could provide through text would be lesser than the one that you understand and created yourself.
So please answer the questions that you've asked yourself.
Anorexia in Hong Kong was essentially unheard of until the first widely reported case from a teenage girl starving herself to death there in 1993. Around the time Internet became a thing as well. Since then, went from 1-2 cases per year to dozens.
The logic falls apart already here. That something is not registered does not mean it does not exist.
I don't view being genderfluid or homosexual as a psychological problem either. If someone should receive major gender altering surgery or medication, it should obviously be considered very carefully, but that is not a political issue but a medical one.
Conservatives turning this political is pure bad faith identity politics.
Most gender affirming surgery isn’t related to trans people either. Breast reconstruction after mastectomies is gender affirming surgery, for example. The medical importance of aligning someone’s physical appearance with their gender identity is incontrovertible.
Anorexia in Hong Kong was essentially unheard of until the first widely reported case from a teenage girl starving herself to death there in 1993. Around the time Internet became a thing as well. Since then, went from 1-2 cases per year to dozens.
The logic falls apart already here. That something is not registered does not mean it does not exist.
I don't view being genderfluid or homosexual as a psychological problem either. If someone should receive major gender altering surgery or medication, it should obviously be considered very carefully, but that is not a political issue but a medical one.
Conservatives turning this political is pure bad faith identity politics.
Most gender affirming surgery isn’t related to trans people either. Breast reconstruction after mastectomies is gender affirming surgery, for example. The medical importance of aligning someone’s physical appearance with their gender identity is incontrovertible.
Steven crowder got chest surgery because he didn't like how it made him feel less manly. That would be banned in a few states now.
Anorexia in Hong Kong was essentially unheard of until the first widely reported case from a teenage girl starving herself to death there in 1993. Around the time Internet became a thing as well. Since then, went from 1-2 cases per year to dozens.
Conservatives turning this political is pure bad faith identity politics.
It's either bad faith or they genuinely can't wrap their head around concepts like "pronouns are just part of language and were always there". You can genuinely find conservatives that go either way.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
Others are reflecting my opinion on this already, but I wanted to address this particular paragraph. Occam’s Razor doesn’t work that way. It’s not about cutting the number of explanations, it’s about cutting the complexity of a given explanation. Cutting one complex, monistic explanation for a variety of different issues into many, more specific explanations relevant to their respective issue is exactly what Occam’s Razor does.
I would say my explanation is the less complex one in addition to being singular. I’m open to hearing your theories though.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
Others are reflecting my opinion on this already, but I wanted to address this particular paragraph. Occam’s Razor doesn’t work that way. It’s not about cutting the number of explanations, it’s about cutting the complexity of a given explanation. Cutting one complex, monistic explanation for a variety of different issues into many, more specific explanations relevant to their respective issue is exactly what Occam’s Razor does.
I would say my explanation is the less complex one in addition to being singular. I’m open to hearing your theories though.
Justifying the social contagion theory to the satisfaction of people besides yourself is more complicated than you think. We're not buying it.
People always end up working harder to cheat on their homework than they would've if they just did the work. Make sure you don't work too hard to find one convenient explanation for everything you don't like in the world.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
I didn't think you were making any "argument" in particular. You listed a few competing hypotheses, and I reflected on them. The video clip brings in anorexia as yet another parallel, so now we're comparing trans identity to Tourette's, POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, and anorexia. I'm still not sure what the point is, here. If you're making an actual argument (not that you have to be, but you're claiming to be arguing something), what is it?
My argument is that there are a lot of people that are convinced that if you have gender dysphoria it was merely something you were born and it may decide to show up whenever. The evidence for that is very weak. Some of us think there is a social contagion aspect and if there is then parents are right to be concerned with what their children are exposed to.
I went to elementary school myself. I'm sure you did too. When I was there I don't remember being taught that I could be a girl if I wanted to. Or I could be both. Or neither. Or that me having a penis maybe means I'm a boy but it could mean anything. I don't remember my elementary school hosting gender resource fairs.
The idea that only one side is leading this culture war is quite wrong. Pushing back against teaching gender ideology to young impressionable children does not make you the de facto aggressor.
On May 17 2023 08:50 Sermokala wrote: I'm curious what critical functions to life that top surgery removes from someone.
1. Critical functions to life? You’re curious if breasts are a critical function to support life? There’s actually an unbelievable amount of limbs, appendages, organs that can be removed and aren’t a critical function of life. Surely this can’t be news to you.
Does a women without breasts become lesser if they decide they are a woman?
2. At least a few pounds less, I would imagine.
Is milk production essential to the human experience in some way?
3. By my estimate about 50% of humans will never make milk, myself included. So I guess you could say it’s not essential to the human experience.
I mean stone cold how many women mistakenly remove their breasts mean to you vs a trans person killing themselves?
4. What are you asking me here? How many mastectomies mean to me vs a trans person killing themselves?? Like what ratio of women mistakenly removing their breasts is worse than a trans person killing themselves? I don’t know? Is this something I should know? Do you have a number for this? I’ve never been posed the trolley problem with breasts before. Should my answer be in number of breasts or number of women?
Maybe you can just formulate an argument and offer that instead of a hodgepodge of silly questions that I’d rather answer literally so you don’t have an opportunity to add your own interpretations and contexts
4. Yes, you seem to have grasped instantly what my argument is and formulated the exact points about it. Now that you've shown an understanding about it please answer it. What ever argument I could provide through text would be lesser than the one that you understand and created yourself.
So please answer the questions that you've asked yourself.
Sure, give your answer first and then I will give mine
On May 17 2023 21:24 gobbledydook wrote: I think that it is a tremendous waste of everyone's time and bandwidth talking about issues that affect far less than 1% of the population. It is sad that nowadays the right find nothing better to do than make waves on a topic that is overall so insignificant in terms of impact.
Just want to point out that, while true that small problems which also affect small groups only can be overblown in an attempt at weaponization, your argument does not stand alone in the more general sense. There are some problems that should get a lot of attention even if they only affect a tiny fraction of the population. If say 0.1% of the population of the U.S. was currently in literal slavery, I think you'd find that topic quite worth discussing and taking action on. If 0.1% of the population was being kidnapped and brought to hostile nations, it'd be an important issue!
There are some issues that only affect one person directly that are even worth discussing in forums like this one.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
I didn't think you were making any "argument" in particular. You listed a few competing hypotheses, and I reflected on them. The video clip brings in anorexia as yet another parallel, so now we're comparing trans identity to Tourette's, POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, and anorexia. I'm still not sure what the point is, here. If you're making an actual argument (not that you have to be, but you're claiming to be arguing something), what is it?
My argument is that there are a lot of people that are convinced that if you have gender dysphoria it was merely something you were born and it may decide to show up whenever. The evidence for that is very weak. Some of us think there is a social contagion aspect and if there is then parents are right to be concerned with what their children are exposed to.
I went to elementary school myself. I'm sure you did too. When I was there I don't remember being taught that I could be a girl if I wanted to. Or I could be both. Or neither. Or that me having a penis maybe means I'm a boy but it could mean anything. I don't remember my elementary school hosting gender resource fairs.
The idea that only one side is leading this culture war is quite wrong. Pushing back against teaching gender ideology to young impressionable children does not make you the de facto aggressor.
To convince other people of your opinion you're going to need more than just "I feel" and finding someone on the internet who agrees with you. Show evidence of a social contagion before you insist that it must be true to others.
Otherwise it's just insulting to these groups to imply that they're just glomming onto a fad, instead of grappling with exactly who they are and what that means to them.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
I didn't think you were making any "argument" in particular. You listed a few competing hypotheses, and I reflected on them. The video clip brings in anorexia as yet another parallel, so now we're comparing trans identity to Tourette's, POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, and anorexia. I'm still not sure what the point is, here. If you're making an actual argument (not that you have to be, but you're claiming to be arguing something), what is it?
My argument is that there are a lot of people that are convinced that if you have gender dysphoria it was merely something you were born and it may decide to show up whenever. The evidence for that is very weak. Some of us think there is a social contagion aspect and if there is then parents are right to be concerned with what their children are exposed to.
I went to elementary school myself. I'm sure you did too. When I was there I don't remember being taught that I could be a girl if I wanted to. Or I could be both. Or neither. Or that me having a penis maybe means I'm a boy but it could mean anything. I don't remember my elementary school hosting gender resource fairs.
The idea that only one side is leading this culture war is quite wrong. Pushing back against teaching gender ideology to young impressionable children does not make you the de facto aggressor.
And the people who do have gender dysphoria and spend their entire elementary schooling (and probably much longer) feeling like there was something wrong with them would probably have been very glad to have been able to talk and/or learn about what they felt.
You don't care for it because you, presumably, don't have those feelings and you (and I) can't begin to imagine what its like to feel that way because we have absolutely no frame of reference for it.
If you truly care about this topic then spend some time reading up on it and the experiences of people who went through it while having no clue what was happening to them. And ask yourself if maybe their lives would have been much much better if they had had some concept of it from an earlier age.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
I didn't think you were making any "argument" in particular. You listed a few competing hypotheses, and I reflected on them. The video clip brings in anorexia as yet another parallel, so now we're comparing trans identity to Tourette's, POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, and anorexia. I'm still not sure what the point is, here. If you're making an actual argument (not that you have to be, but you're claiming to be arguing something), what is it?
My argument is that there are a lot of people that are convinced that if you have gender dysphoria it was merely something you were born and it may decide to show up whenever. The evidence for that is very weak. Some of us think there is a social contagion aspect and if there is then parents are right to be concerned with what their children are exposed to.
I went to elementary school myself. I'm sure you did too. When I was there I don't remember being taught that I could be a girl if I wanted to. Or I could be both. Or neither. Or that me having a penis maybe means I'm a boy but it could mean anything. I don't remember my elementary school hosting gender resource fairs.
The idea that only one side is leading this culture war is quite wrong. Pushing back against teaching gender ideology to young impressionable children does not make you the de facto aggressor.
To convince other people of your opinion you're going to need more than just "I feel" and finding someone on the internet who agrees with you. Show evidence of a social contagion before you insist that it must be true to others.
Otherwise it's just insulting to these groups to imply that they're just glomming onto a fad, instead of grappling with exactly who they are and what that means to them.
I didn't say it must be true. I said I think it's the most plausible theory. On the other hand you are the one that said you "guarantee" that my theory is wrong and yours is the correct one despite offering no evidence yourself. That takes quite a bit of nerve, don't you think?
On May 17 2023 08:50 Sermokala wrote: I'm curious what critical functions to life that top surgery removes from someone.
1. Critical functions to life? You’re curious if breasts are a critical function to support life? There’s actually an unbelievable amount of limbs, appendages, organs that can be removed and aren’t a critical function of life. Surely this can’t be news to you.
Does a women without breasts become lesser if they decide they are a woman?
2. At least a few pounds less, I would imagine.
Is milk production essential to the human experience in some way?
3. By my estimate about 50% of humans will never make milk, myself included. So I guess you could say it’s not essential to the human experience.
I mean stone cold how many women mistakenly remove their breasts mean to you vs a trans person killing themselves?
4. What are you asking me here? How many mastectomies mean to me vs a trans person killing themselves?? Like what ratio of women mistakenly removing their breasts is worse than a trans person killing themselves? I don’t know? Is this something I should know? Do you have a number for this? I’ve never been posed the trolley problem with breasts before. Should my answer be in number of breasts or number of women?
Maybe you can just formulate an argument and offer that instead of a hodgepodge of silly questions that I’d rather answer literally so you don’t have an opportunity to add your own interpretations and contexts
4. Yes, you seem to have grasped instantly what my argument is and formulated the exact points about it. Now that you've shown an understanding about it please answer it. What ever argument I could provide through text would be lesser than the one that you understand and created yourself.
So please answer the questions that you've asked yourself.
Sure, give your answer first and then I will give mine
I think we've seen this story before from you more than a few times and no one likes the ending.
On April 24 2023 18:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Tbh I'm guessing many conservative minded people would be opposed if they saw a Sid Vicious type of person in charge of the local library's book reading session, and many of them would indeed be inclined to think 'I'm gonna find some other place instead'.
That something is inappropriate for children and that some people think something is inappropriate for children are distinctly different things. Tbh, the former might actually be influenced by the latter, in some way, but inherently, it's more a question of how people want their children to turn out. Myself I don't really care about the gender identity of my son so if he wants to borrow this tshirt + Show Spoiler +
https://tl.net/staff/LiquidDrone/genderbender.jpg
then I'd be totally happy with that. However I'm a semi-pacifist and would have a hard time with him say, wanting to become a professional boxer or joining some branch of the army not explicitly involved in self-defense, so I'd have a bit of a negative reaction to groups influencing my child towards either of those directions, especially if it's tax-funded. Obviously he gets to live his own life the way he wants to live it, but I think it's plenty normal to have certain idealized futures that you envision and certain futures you don't want.
For a bunch of conservative-y, right-leaning people, there's this visceral reaction to 'men that don't look like men', and even when there's a 'I can accept that these people are like that' (which isn't always present, but sometimes), they're still very likely to have a 'but damn if I want my boy to be like that'.
I do think there should be different expectations for what a teacher can wear and what a performance artist can wear, tbh. I'd generally be discouraged from coming to school like this + Show Spoiler +
but for a person reading the story of the little mermaid, it's entirely on point.
Just from personal experience I can say it’s absolutely crazy now that everyday I meet a new transgendered kid that wants to kill themselves and 5 years ago this did not exist.
Your personal experiences may have changed, but I can guarantee it's not that they didn't exist 5 years ago. Autism isn't on the cusp of consuming humanity, for example, we're just finally diagnosing it more, so the numbers started going up. People who were left-handed, and people who are gay, aren't suddenly increasing in number now that they're allowed to exist.
These people have always existed. Its whether their existence is being acknowledged by others, and whether they feel safe to identify as they are. That's what's changing.
Going to bump this conversation since not much is happening in this thread and I now have some time to lay down some thoughts on this idea that the explosion in transgenderism/non-binary-ism is coming from people that were essentially born that way and society had just been repressing them until now.
“Tourette syndrome symptoms portrayals on highly-viewed TikTok videos are predominantly not representative or typical of Tourette syndrome,” says Alonso Zea Vera, M.D., neurologist at Children’s National Hospital and lead author of the study.
“Although many videos are aimed at increasing Tourette syndrome awareness, I worry that some features of these videos can result in confusion and further stigmatization,” Dr. Zea Vera says. “A common cause of stigmatization in Tourette syndrome is the exaggeration of coprolalia (cursing tics) in the media. We found that many videos portrayed this (often used for a comedic effect) despite being a relatively rare symptom in Tourette syndrome.”
Tourette's is just one of many. There are a slew of other mental health illnesses that supposedly increased dramatically during the pandemic and primarily among adolescents. POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, just to name a few. What you have on TikTok is a place where adults have left the room and teens are diagnosing each other and going down these algorithm driven rabbit holes. Then you can easily doctor shop until you get the diagnosis you want. You can find news stories on the shortage of adderall because a short tele-health zoom meeting can get you an ADHD diagnosis and an adderall prescription.
But why are all these teenagers tripping over themselves to try to get diagnosed with ailments? One theory is that it might be related to society telling us that if you're white you're an oppressor. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think not everyone wants to be identified as a little white privileged racist cunt. If you can go from that to being a victim of genocide or a victim of other able-ist bigotry maybe it's a tempting offer.
Another theory is that some people just want attention and clout. If you're average looking with rather average interests and hobbies literally nobody is going to care about you on social media. Having some illness at least gives you a niche that might be somewhat interesting and create that positive feedback loop of receiving more attention and then playing up your niche even harder and so on.
Or.... we could just use the left-handed theory and just assume that marked increases in these illnesses just come from society no longer persecuting them and people are now finally free to display their tics or change their gender. Sure, a plausible theory. To me it doesn't even seem like the most likely. To me the idea that somebody would be so confident in that theory that they have no hesitation in surgically removing the breasts of young women seems insane.
While tics can be indicative of Tourette syndrome, tics can also come about without that specific mental health diagnosis. Stress/anxiety/nervousness, lack of sleep, withdrawal, and other factors can create motor/facial/verbal tics even without having Tourette's. As someone who has Tourette's, I really appreciate your link elaborating on the fact that most cases aren't the extreme "scream curse words" level of Tourette's that many people think is standard.
I can definitely see how new stressors (like dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic) could potentially lead to tics, and even how some impressionable minds could trick themselves via confirmation bias into thinking they might have mental health issues when they see other people with self-diagnosed problems. That being said, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that people are consciously faking Tourette's en masse, just to appear special.
I also don't know if Tourette's, OCD, or PTSD parallels transgenderism particularly well. For example, if there was an actual cure for my Tourette's - which there isn't - I'd be first in line, but I'm not really experiencing a tremendous amount of social pressure or condemnation or anti-Tourette legislation. On the other hand, I think the trans community is looking more for cultural acceptance and validation, and the opportunity to make their own medical decisions and avoid anti-trans laws.
"Faking it" is not the correct characterization of my argument. I don't think anyone is faking anything to be oppressed or faking anything for clout. I would call these things subliminal incentives or catalysts. Our minds are impressionable indeed, young minds even more so. It's why billions of dollars are spent on advertising. It's why placebos can heal people. It's why people with conversion disorder can be unable to walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs. You wouldn't say that somebody that can't walk despite nothing being wrong with their legs was "faking it."
When you see a bunch of different ailments that are increasing significantly in prevalence and manifesting in ways we don't typically see you need an explanation. Some illnesses that were typically more prevalent in males are now more prevalent in females. Some illnesses that typically first surfaced in early childhood are now surfacing acutely in adolescent girls. Amazing coincidences. Sure you could have a different theory to explain each of these, e.g. less repression of transgendered people means more people feel comfortable coming out and more stress during the pandemic means more people are developing tics, etc. Or you could just have the one theory that explains it all - that this is primarily driven by social contagion related to the rise in Tiktok and social media. Occam's razor applies.
The woman in this video is far more eloquent than I am and I think she makes a good argument. Starts at 15:30 in this video and is about 7 minutes in length
I didn't think you were making any "argument" in particular. You listed a few competing hypotheses, and I reflected on them. The video clip brings in anorexia as yet another parallel, so now we're comparing trans identity to Tourette's, POTS, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, and anorexia. I'm still not sure what the point is, here. If you're making an actual argument (not that you have to be, but you're claiming to be arguing something), what is it?
My argument is that there are a lot of people that are convinced that if you have gender dysphoria it was merely something you were born and it may decide to show up whenever. The evidence for that is very weak. Some of us think there is a social contagion aspect and if there is then parents are right to be concerned with what their children are exposed to.
I went to elementary school myself. I'm sure you did too. When I was there I don't remember being taught that I could be a girl if I wanted to. Or I could be both. Or neither. Or that me having a penis maybe means I'm a boy but it could mean anything. I don't remember my elementary school hosting gender resource fairs.
The idea that only one side is leading this culture war is quite wrong. Pushing back against teaching gender ideology to young impressionable children does not make you the de facto aggressor.
To convince other people of your opinion you're going to need more than just "I feel" and finding someone on the internet who agrees with you. Show evidence of a social contagion before you insist that it must be true to others.
Otherwise it's just insulting to these groups to imply that they're just glomming onto a fad, instead of grappling with exactly who they are and what that means to them.
I didn't say it must be true. I said I think it's the most plausible theory. On the other hand you are the one that said you "guarantee" that my theory is wrong and yours is the correct one despite offering no evidence yourself. That takes quite a bit of nerve, don't you think?
Wrong. Not at all. It comes from years I've spent listening to people who are different from me. Every time, when they manage to talk about their experiences and coming to grips with their reality, there's a constant thread that they didn't feel like they could talk about it or own it sooner. That it's something they've been building up to. There's a constant theme that these people are always around, always have been, and are just finding their words and their footing.
Plus, I don't know, it seems like a simpler, more singular explanation.
On May 17 2023 21:24 gobbledydook wrote: I think that it is a tremendous waste of everyone's time and bandwidth talking about issues that affect far less than 1% of the population. It is sad that nowadays the right find nothing better to do than make waves on a topic that is overall so insignificant in terms of impact.
Just want to point out that, while true that small problems which also affect small groups only can be overblown in an attempt at weaponization, your argument does not stand alone in the more general sense. There are some problems that should get a lot of attention even if they only affect a tiny fraction of the population. If say 0.1% of the population of the U.S. was currently in literal slavery, I think you'd find that topic quite worth discussing and taking action on. If 0.1% of the population was being kidnapped and brought to hostile nations, it'd be an important issue!
There are some issues that only affect one person directly that are even worth discussing in forums like this one.
There is 0.1% of the US population currently in literal slavery. Reread the 13th amendment.
On May 17 2023 21:24 gobbledydook wrote: I think that it is a tremendous waste of everyone's time and bandwidth talking about issues that affect far less than 1% of the population. It is sad that nowadays the right find nothing better to do than make waves on a topic that is overall so insignificant in terms of impact.
Just want to point out that, while true that small problems which also affect small groups only can be overblown in an attempt at weaponization, your argument does not stand alone in the more general sense. There are some problems that should get a lot of attention even if they only affect a tiny fraction of the population. If say 0.1% of the population of the U.S. was currently in literal slavery, I think you'd find that topic quite worth discussing and taking action on. If 0.1% of the population was being kidnapped and brought to hostile nations, it'd be an important issue!
There are some issues that only affect one person directly that are even worth discussing in forums like this one.
There is 0.1% of the US population currently in literal slavery. Reread the 13th amendment.
I think it's a bit of a bold claim that ~100% of prisoners in the USA are slaves in the modern sense of what people mean when they say slavery. Is that the argument you were making? I do agree that the 13th amendment upon inspection does literally say that slavery after conviction is okay.
EPT![[image loading]](https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Drag-Queen-Story-Hour-Youtube.png)
