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 April 24 2023 20:36 BlackJack wrote: [quote] 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.
So you guarantee your theory is the correct one based on personal experiences and conversations you've had. That evidence is going to be difficult to refute indeed.
On April 24 2023 21:13 NewSunshine wrote: [quote] 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.
So you guarantee your theory is the correct one based on personal experiences and conversations you've had. That evidence is going to be difficult to refute indeed.
Yeah, sounds familiar, doesn't it? But I'm gonna go ahead and err on the side of not speaking for these people, and demeaning what they are as a social fad or phenomenon. You go ahead and feel whatever you do about it. I see you.
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.
2 million prisoners in the US, roughly 1.5% of the adult population. You only need 1/15 to be performing forced labour before 0.1% of the population are slaves. People overlook how abhorrent the 13th amendment, and therefore America, is.
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'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.
So you guarantee your theory is the correct one based on personal experiences and conversations you've had. That evidence is going to be difficult to refute indeed.
Yeah, sounds familiar, doesn't it? But I'm gonna go ahead and err on the side of not speaking for these people, and demeaning what they are as a social fad or phenomenon. You go ahead and feel whatever you do about it. I see you.
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.
I don't know anyone with gender dysphoria that has had an easy go of things, even here in the San Francisco area. I guess that's why I'm not as interested as everyone else at turning a blind eye to the incidence of it rising sharply.
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.
The total incarcerated population is closer to 1% than .1% (with a bit more than half of them in prison, as opposed to jail), while over a lifetime, closer to 5% (averaged out without consideration for race, gender, or wealth) of the US population will spend some time in prison .
Several states have compulsory labor for $0.00/hr and keep the people doing it in literal cages. That's slavery by most anyone's definition.
If you limit it strictly to people who are being literally forced on threat of torture to work for $0.00/hr and kept in cages, it's probably not quite .1% of the population, but you could also get there without 100% of prisoners.
For me, if you live in the US and tell me you have a company where you let/compel your "employees" out of cages to work for <$5/day with a threat of torture if they don't (not that working means they won't be) and then you lock them back in the cages at the end of their work, I'm going to walk away believing you have slaves.
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?
It shouldn't be up to a layperson to decide what they think is the most plausible theory. It should be easy to go find studies that tell us what is the most plausible theory.
Gender identity is an important issue in society, yet its causative mechanism is poorly understood. The main anatomical differences between males and females are the genitalia and the brain. This paper reviewed the literature to explore the link between genetic influences and brain development, and their impact on gender identity. Investigating these developmental mechanisms could lead to advances in the understanding of gender dysphoria, a condition whereby an individual’s gender and biological sex are mismatched. Exploring the biochemical development of the genitalia highlights the differences between males and females, notably how testosterone elicits the pathways of male development in an embryo. When research has been conducted in people with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a condition where the testosterone receptor is mutated and faulty, and thus cannot function, gender dysphoria is observed as the body is genetically male but anatomically female. It is known that the structure of male and female brains differs; it is found that people with gender dysphoria have a brain structure more comparable to the gender to which they identify. The review of the literature suggests that there is a disparity between the brains of those who identify differently to their assigned gender at birth, highlighting a multifactorial underpinning of the gender identity. Further research is required to shed light on the molecular mechanism of this, allowing for greater education and understanding of this scientific and social phenomenon.
Essentially according to this review there seems to be a biological/genetic component to gender dysphoria, which would certainly throw doubt on the 'social contagion' theory, and definitely undermines the idea that it is the 'most plausible' theory.
I'm sure there are real cases of impressionable teenagers choosing to identify with the opposite gender for social purposes. There is no evidence to suggest that this is widespread, that is, a significant portion of trans people are just identifying as trans in order to advance in their social circles.
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 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.
I don't know anyone with gender dysphoria that has had an easy go of things, even here in the San Francisco area. I guess that's why I'm not as interested as everyone else at turning a blind eye to the incidence of it rising sharply.
Right... But your rhetoric is making gender dysphoria worse, not better, which is what some of us are pushing back on. We know that helping to make the body match the brain is one way to relieve gender dysphoria, and another way is to provide social acceptance of gender identity. When you criticize gender-affirming surgery or supportive gender education, you're perpetuating the stigma attached to the trans community and removing the tools that alleviate gender dysphoria.
As noted earlier, gender-affirming care tends to have incredibly positive effects. If we're comparing two experiences that a child is subject to - one where a teacher explains that it's okay to have a gender that doesn't match your sex, and another where a different adult says you're fucked up if you don't fit cleanly into the identity boxes that they want you to fit in - these two experiences are not equally aggressive, equally contributing to a culture war, or equally cause for concern. One is helpful and one is harmful, much like an experience where a medical professional works with a trans individual to make sure they're getting the hormone therapy or surgery that they truly want vs. an experience where some random social conservative tells the trans person that the trans person's feelings are immoral or shameful.
There is at least one consequence for the human race: trans people generally do not procreate and so cannot ensure the continuation of the human species. Whether that is important or not is another story.
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 April 24 2023 20:36 BlackJack wrote: [quote] 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.
I don't know anyone with gender dysphoria that has had an easy go of things, even here in the San Francisco area. I guess that's why I'm not as interested as everyone else at turning a blind eye to the incidence of it rising sharply.
Right... But your rhetoric is making gender dysphoria worse, not better, which is what some of us are pushing back on. We know that helping to make the body match the brain is one way to relieve gender dysphoria, and another way is to provide social acceptance of gender identity. When you criticize gender-affirming surgery or supportive gender education, you're perpetuating the stigma attached to the trans community and removing the tools that alleviate gender dysphoria.
So we can’t question if there is a social contagion aspect to gender dysphoria because that rhetoric is harming trans children? Is this like your argument that we shouldn’t question the efficacy of COVID vaccines because it might cause people to not take them? How do you expect anything to get done about things if you can’t even talk about them? Nevermind, I take that back. It’s probably even easier to get things done if people are not allowed to question you.
As noted earlier, gender-affirming care tends to have incredibly positive effects. If we're comparing two experiences that a child is subject to - one where a teacher explains that it's okay to have a gender that doesn't match your sex, and another where a different adult says you're fucked up if you don't fit cleanly into the identity boxes that they want you to fit in - these two experiences are not equally aggressive, equally contributing to a culture war, or equally cause for concern. One is helpful and one is harmful, much like an experience where a medical professional works with a trans individual to make sure they're getting the hormone therapy or surgery that they truly want vs. an experience where some random social conservative tells the trans person that the trans person's feelings are immoral or shameful.
So our only two options are to teach every child they can be any gender they want or both or neither… or… teach them they are a fucked up evil sinner that Jesus will surely send straight to hell. Do you think maybe you are offering a false dichotomy?
On May 18 2023 12:42 gobbledydook wrote: There is at least one consequence for the human race: trans people generally do not procreate and so cannot ensure the continuation of the human species. Whether that is important or not is another story.
A trans lesbian and a cis lesbian could reproduce. Or two trans people of opposite gender. Also it’s an absurd point anyway. Humans are doing fine, if we get down to a few hundred of us left we’ll address that then. If the argument against it is that it’s a form of birth control then you better have already made much stronger arguments against condoms.
On May 18 2023 12:42 gobbledydook wrote: There is at least one consequence for the human race: trans people generally do not procreate and so cannot ensure the continuation of the human species. Whether that is important or not is another story.
This fucking argument again.
Humanity is excessively multiplying, has been doing that for centuries, and has shown to multiply to fill any available space and consume any available amount of food.
1%, or 10%, of people not procreating will not change that. We have yet to see a situation where the total amount of humans on the planet does not constantly increase since the industrial revolution at least. Not even WW2 could really change that, even while it lasted.
But moreover: Why do you care? Why do conservatives care so much about what other people do with their genitals? If anything, you should be happy if people you don't like don't procreate. Fuck your tradwife, have 10+ offspring, brainwash them in your churches, and be happy that you win in the end.
On May 18 2023 12:42 gobbledydook wrote: There is at least one consequence for the human race: trans people generally do not procreate and so cannot ensure the continuation of the human species. Whether that is important or not is another story.
I'm very confident in saying that overpopulation is a much greater threat to the continuation of the human species by multiple orders of magnitude.
Conservatives aren't making a big fuss over cis people getting plastic surgery at an alarming rate, and at an increasingly young age, most of it being for cosmetic reasons and not health related. It's only a problem to them when it concerns gender affirmation.
Both types are mostly meant to improve people's mental wellness. One is far more common than the other.
From that I can only conclude that conservatives just don't like transgender people. The bullies among them have found an easy target to push around and villify and they're relentless in their pursuit.
Unlike other people I'm not willing to give conservatives the benefit of the doubt. They're just really really narcissistic about this whole thing, and their arguments are in bad faith.
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 18 2023 08:25 BlackJack wrote:
On May 18 2023 07:32 Gorsameth wrote:
On May 18 2023 06:59 BlackJack wrote:
On May 17 2023 20:10 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On May 17 2023 15:13 BlackJack wrote:
On May 17 2023 11:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On May 17 2023 07:53 BlackJack wrote:
On April 24 2023 21:13 NewSunshine wrote: [quote] 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.
I don't know anyone with gender dysphoria that has had an easy go of things, even here in the San Francisco area. I guess that's why I'm not as interested as everyone else at turning a blind eye to the incidence of it rising sharply.
Right... But your rhetoric is making gender dysphoria worse, not better, which is what some of us are pushing back on. We know that helping to make the body match the brain is one way to relieve gender dysphoria, and another way is to provide social acceptance of gender identity. When you criticize gender-affirming surgery or supportive gender education, you're perpetuating the stigma attached to the trans community and removing the tools that alleviate gender dysphoria.
So we can’t question if there is a social contagion aspect to gender dysphoria because that rhetoric is harming trans children?
You're starting to mix up my responses to your different points, as I never said you can't ask if there's a social contagion aspect to gender dysphoria, so I think we need to regroup for a moment:
Your first few posts laid out that you believe there might be a social contagion aspect to being trans (and having Tourette's and other things), where I responded with: "[the LGBTQ+ community] has been in the closet for a very long time, so it may be hard to figure out how many people who come out as trans (or gay, etc.) are doing so because they had been hiding it but finally feel safe and validated vs. suddenly being convinced that they're not cis or not straight based on seeing others in those communities." I could be wrong, but I think it may be challenging to discern how many people are taking on the trans identity primarily due to your social contagion hypothesis.
In other posts of yours, you criticized gender-affirming care that produce positive results, such as surgery and gender education. In response to your criticisms of these pro-trans actions, I wrote: "We know that helping to make the body match the brain is one way to relieve gender dysphoria, and another way is to provide social acceptance of gender identity. When you criticize gender-affirming surgery or supportive gender education, you're perpetuating the stigma attached to the trans community and removing the tools that alleviate gender dysphoria."
It's unacceptable to retreat back to the position that you're simply asking questions about social contagions, because that's not all you're saying.
As noted earlier, gender-affirming care tends to have incredibly positive effects. If we're comparing two experiences that a child is subject to - one where a teacher explains that it's okay to have a gender that doesn't match your sex, and another where a different adult says you're fucked up if you don't fit cleanly into the identity boxes that they want you to fit in - these two experiences are not equally aggressive, equally contributing to a culture war, or equally cause for concern. One is helpful and one is harmful, much like an experience where a medical professional works with a trans individual to make sure they're getting the hormone therapy or surgery that they truly want vs. an experience where some random social conservative tells the trans person that the trans person's feelings are immoral or shameful.
So our only two options are to teach every child they can be any gender they want or both or neither… or… teach them they are a fucked up evil sinner that Jesus will surely send straight to hell. Do you think maybe you are offering a false dichotomy?
You said that the pro-trans community was also contributing to a (presumably negative) culture war - that it wasn't just the anti-trans community. I pointed out two examples (literally the two pro-trans examples that you criticized) that provide net benefits vs. two anti-trans examples that provide net harm, to show that not everyone involved in the trans discussion is equally to blame for negative fallout. I was not creating a dichotomy and asserting that everyone must either accept the first position or accept the second position, but merely listing multiple positions that are taken by some people who are generally pro-trans and some people who are generally anti-trans, to show that the positions aren't equally dangerous. There are other positions that people take, and I'm sure that not everyone can be grouped perfectly into a pro-trans or anti-trans bucket.
"COVID" 1. Do you really need to bring in another parallel? You've tried making so many analogies with regards to being trans, and they've only caused more confusion and more annoyance for others. 2. Not sure why I still live rent-free in your head after all these months, but maybe keep your embarrassing covid accusations in the covid thread?
On May 18 2023 17:56 Magic Powers wrote: Conservatives aren't making a big fuss over cis people getting plastic surgery at an alarming rate, and at an increasingly young age, most of it being for cosmetic reasons and not health related. It's only a problem to them when it concerns gender affirmation.
Both types are mostly meant to improve people's mental wellness. One is far more common than the other.
From that I can only conclude that conservatives just don't like transgender people. The bullies among them have found an easy target to push around and villify and they're relentless in their pursuit.
Unlike other people I'm not willing to give conservatives the benefit of the doubt. They're just really really narcissistic about this whole thing, and their arguments are in bad faith.
I think this is a weird misreading to twist conservatives into bad faith.
There is certainly a deeper and bigger suspicion of transgender people as predatory, but I think conservatives have usually been pretty clear that they are opposed to the hypersexual culture and especially when it is targeted at children. Like I think conservatives also disapprove of hypersexual culture in rap culture (e.g. Cardi B's WAP), but this song is clearly not meant for children because there are clean versions for the general public.
I think the counterargument to what you are saying is that nobody would encourage young children to get cis plastic surgery, especially not to enhance or alter their genitals. The FDA has minimum age requirements to get breast or penile implants, for instance.
So I don't deny that there is bad faith in the way that conservatives demonize transgenderism and exaggerate its influence and impact, but plastic surgery is not a good example.
On May 18 2023 17:56 Magic Powers wrote: Conservatives aren't making a big fuss over cis people getting plastic surgery at an alarming rate, and at an increasingly young age, most of it being for cosmetic reasons and not health related. It's only a problem to them when it concerns gender affirmation.
Both types are mostly meant to improve people's mental wellness. One is far more common than the other.
From that I can only conclude that conservatives just don't like transgender people. The bullies among them have found an easy target to push around and villify and they're relentless in their pursuit.
Unlike other people I'm not willing to give conservatives the benefit of the doubt. They're just really really narcissistic about this whole thing, and their arguments are in bad faith.
I think this is a weird misreading to twist conservatives into bad faith.
There is certainly a deeper and bigger suspicion of transgender people as predatory, but I think conservatives have usually been pretty clear that they are opposed to the hypersexual culture and especially when it is targeted at children. Like I think conservatives also disapprove of hypersexual culture in rap culture (e.g. Cardi B's WAP), but this song is clearly not meant for children because there are clean versions for the general public.
I think the counterargument to what you are saying is that nobody would encourage young children to get cis plastic surgery, especially not to enhance or alter their genitals. The FDA has minimum age requirements to get breast or penile implants, for instance.
So I don't deny that there is bad faith in the way that conservatives demonize transgenderism and exaggerate its influence and impact, but plastic surgery is not a good example.
If we'd ask every conservative who's against transitioning, I'd bet a whole lot of them are in favor of plastic surgery for cis people for cosmetic reasons. It would very much surprise me if not. And some of them I'm sure would even be in favor of it for kids. I doubt they'd even oppose growth hormone treatment. I'm 100% convinced it's a double standard. Their outrage over transitioning is them wanting to exert control over a minority, not because they make valid points but simply because they can.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Drag-Queen-Story-Hour-Youtube.png)
