Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents, and especially not sensational ideological generic flamewar tangents. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> There is a large and vocal community of “detransitioners”
The "large" part is arguably the attention given to them by conservative news organisations who are dying to put them on air, as their existence justifies their existing views without every having to pay attention to the numbers.
sure, the subject does get a disproportionate amount of coverage (you could argue it is the zeitgeist of the times though). But my point is that you can't battle that by taking an even smaller minority from the already small minority and try to use that to invalidate the claims of the small (greater relative to the smaller of small) minority. This is a tactic that has long been used in media to justify discrimination going back decades so why are we still falling for it?
transition is something for which you are presented the full pros and cons, and given the freedom to choose whether or not you want the effects of it; being born into an amish family is something you have no freedom to choose, and given the things the comment you're replying to is describing as occurring, i think it makes perfect sense to say that the latter is more ethically questionable
respectfully, i have no intentions of listening to jordan b peterson, in the same way i have no intentions of reading a stormfront article. skimming the transcript, it looks like this person was presented with the full list of effects - is this not what i described?
the ground reality is that if you go to your local planned parenthood or family doctor they will tell you all of the side effects you will experience on hrt; i have 3 different packets of information from doing this, all of which stress the ways in which my body will change on hrt
i have no anecdotal proof yet for surgery but i can only assume you get told about possible complications that are reasonably expected
I think your comment would've been stronger without the Stormfront reference. I agree that Peterson is a tiresome character but he's not a Nazi. Putting him in the same box as Stormfront is like putting Bernie in the same box as Stalin.
GP did not put Peterson in a box labeled "Nazis". He put him in a box labeled "people whose opinion I do not care to hear" and stormfront happens to be there too. For all we know Bernie and Stalin could be in that box too.
Bear in mind that the amount of people that are trans are hella tiny and the amount of people that are trans and de-transition are hella tiny of hella tiny. That Jorden Peterson decides to dedicate two entire videos to the subject implies a bit of a bias.
What's interesting is not that there's few de-transitioners.
Rather, what they claim they personally got told before transitioning (very little), what their families were told (unsubstantiated lies about suicide as the alternative to transitioning), as well as how easy and frictionless the formalities of the process were.
> What's interesting is not that there's few de-transitioners.
it is interesting in terms of the amount of press they receive in conservative news feeds.
> Rather, what they claim they personally got told before transitioning (very little), what their families were told (unsubstantiated lies about suicide as the alternative to transitioning), as well as how easy and frictionless the formalities of the process were.
While these examples pose interesting and relevant questions about the seriousness of transitioning I feel like they're often used as a wedge to justify animosity toward the very few, through the bad examples of the very, very few.
When provided without the context of the numbers or any sort of balanced approach it becomes yet another set of misleading angles which have troubling parallels to social outcasts of the past.
> the context of the numbers or any sort of balanced approach
Why is the number of de-transitioners relevant?
If they're too much of a minority to care about, then why is the same not true of the trans community? If, justifiably, you should still care about minorities, then you should care about minorities of minorities too.
de-transitioners aren't the counterpoint to transitioning; they are the counterpoint to dogmatic promotion of transitioning over any caution (or treating any caution as a anti-trans dog-whistle/derailment etc).
The reason this gets a lot of conservative press is that trans is the new weaponized community, so conservatives get accused of transphobia a lot - defensively pointing out hypocrisy in this behavior is all part of the game, but both sides are playing it.
> I feel like they're often used as a wedge to justify animosity toward the very few, through the bad examples of the very, very few
But the "wedge" has its basis in the modus of "the very few", or at least its dogmatic members/allies, otherwise the animosity couldn't take hold. You'll have to explain to me what makes a given de-tranition a "bad examples" versus an inconvenient truth.
Because its often used as a wedge to pour doubt over the process of transitioning entirely which for many transitioners is an effective process.
> then you should care about minorities of minorities too.
Right. We care about people, we care about all of them, so why is it that conservative media over-represents de-transitioners and under-represents people satisfied with their transition? One fits a narrative, the other doesn't, go figure.
> The reason this gets a lot of conservative press is that trans is the new weaponized community, so conservatives get accused of transphobia a lot
conservatives by the very definition of their traditional views of society are often rather transphobic though. I appreciate that its an even harder pill to swallow than homosexuality for traditionalists but you can't pretend that there isn't significant resistance. I appreciate that some trans activists can be rather aggressive online (although that can be said about a lot of twitter regardless), but the suffragette movement also teaches us that simply asking the patriarchy nicely to accept change doesn't necessarily yield results.
> I appreciate that some trans activists can be rather aggressive online
This is the crux of the argument, and why there needs to be some "doubt" in the process. The problem isn't that there are a few aggressive activists, but that aggressive activists are leading the movement, setting the agenda.
The notion of the suffragettes not "simply asking the .. nicely to accept change" can equally said of any terrorist group willing to commit to violence etc to "yield results". I can't see how that relates to suppression of de-transition stories.
> but that aggressive activists are leading the movement, setting the agenda.
I think that's much harder to prove. Also its not like these aggressive activists are in a vacuum. The anti-trans lobby (which is conservative in nature) are AS if not more aggressive, especially given their interests in scaling back trans-rights. In many cases they are seeking to remove the equality and liberty of the trans community where in previous decades they've been entirely ignorant of it. The result is an increasing popularity in bigoted trans tropes where MTFs get accused of being perverts and FTMs are patronised and treated like lost lambs.
> I can't see how that relates to suppression of de-transition stories.
I never said we should suppress de-transition stories but rather present them in the context of the numbers. Conservative news feeds tends to present them in isolation without the context of success stories (which are much greater in number) because they feed into the anti-trans narrative and demonstrate the axe of patriarchy that conservative news feeds have a vested interest in grinding.
> In many cases they are seeking to remove the equality and liberty of the trans community
Can you describe what these are? stuff that flew under the radar before aren't defacto rights.
> present them in isolation without the context of success stories
the question is was the also lack of caution in the case of success, it just happened to turn out when. The criticism here is rolling the dice in the first place, not the probability of success.
> The criticism here is rolling the dice in the first place, not the probability of success
Sure, but a principal component of my complaint is that they're being dishonest about the odds by focusing on the 1 in 1000/10000/100000 case and giving limited airtime to the 999/9999/999999.
I agree that both stories need exposure but lets remind ourselves of who the target audience often is. A child wishing to transition and a parent seeking to reject it. Right now I would argue that conservative sources have a strong parental bias in this generational battle. However I share concerns that people might move through it too quickly, this is why ethical transitions tend to have a relatively high bar (e.g. live as your gender for at least a year prior to any transition). This is why a hot topic right now is access to puberty blockers which is a compromise solution to allow adolescents to postpone puberty (but not transition) until they have a clearer understanding of who they are.
> Can you describe what these are? stuff that flew under the radar before aren't defacto rights.
I feel like we only have to look at somewhere like Florida to see the start of discrimination with issues such as access to healthcare (e.g. Medicaid) for transitioning or freedom of expression, in the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act [1] (colloquially known as the "don't say gay" bill). Note how it means that children who have gay or trans parents will be prevented from being able to talk about their home lives and thus; express themselves.
Can you demonstrate this is the case - does showcasing a minority case imply that case is common?
> A child wishing to transition and a parent seeking to reject
It doesn't matter what either parent or child thinks. In other context we are quite happy to say a child cannot consent to important things, even with parental consent. This is entirely about the medical gatekeepers.
> hot topic right now is access to puberty blockers
.. and the new thing is to suggest that there is zero risk with chemically postponing puberty - which mirrors the notion that there is zero risk of regret with transitioning, i.e. total suppression of caution/dissent.
It's all misinformation using some boogeyman as justification: "don't worry about X - that's just a lie spread by transphobes/conservatives/republicans etc". But there can be truth in the panic.
>> Can you describe what these are?
> access to healthcare (e.g. Medicaid) for transitioning
I'm not sure there was a standing precedent for this - there are other forms of healthcare also excluded/discriminated against.
> freedom of expression, in the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act
I don't think that is a FoE issue; there is no such right for anyone to interject into general education, plus there are plenty of topics excluded from education. gay/trans parents can talk to their own children as much as they want - what you are suggesting is they should have free and clear access to other peoples children without any oversight from their parents? Does that mean anti-trans/gay parents get to air their own views in from of their children too?
Exactly! Therapist would never push something like that onto mentally ill person with schizophrenia or autism! And child can give fully informed consent, just like with circumcision!
> I think the decrease in religion and lack of faith in God is a major reason for the pain in modern Western society
I'm never going to agree with you about that. But had you phrased it is "a decline in obvious purpose and a loss of a sense of community (which may once have had religion at its center)", we could maybe find some common ground.
Now that I have provided evidence, do you concede that you were incorrect, and that it is a true statement of fact that girls as young as 12 years old are having their breasts sliced off because they say they want to be boys?
again: this is not the norm and not recommended practice. so you are reiterating the exceptional, pathological outlier corner case of medical malpractice.
and you do that in a context which uses this strawman to "justify" hindering and prohibiting well established treatment for severe and medically diagnosed adolescent gender dysphoria, specifically puberty blockers and after a sufficient period of time also cross gender hormones.
and adolescents can consent to that, yes.
why do you argue against this medical best practice like you do?
Are you aware that shortly after the initial publication of SOC8, WPATH issued a set of changes which removed all lower age limits that were previously recommended, including for irreversible surgeries?
the wpath soc is a very accessible document with a very nuanced and careful approach to treatment of adolescents and children, it explicitly deals with the potential fragility of such decisions - and the cases which are very stable early on and benefit from early access, and how to discern them.
they didn't take out the brains or caution. they just took out the inflexible and useless rigid age barriers.
its really worth a read, chapter 6 is the one relevant here
They took out the age limits because they wanted to reduce the risk of those who follow their guidelines being taken to court for malpractice. This is about protecting their own practitioners, not about providing the best care to patients.
These people are harming young children who can't meaningfully consent to such irreversible treatments. And then hiding behind these guidelines so they don't get sued. It's sickening.
they need to protect themselves from the sickening legislation which is threatening medical practitioners with litigation.
religious worldviews drive a legislation to "eradicate transgenders".
the wpath requests a multimodal treatment team to support medical interventions with lasting effects, and the consent of caretakers / parents (unless it's harmful to the dependent adolescent) and age appropriate consent and no measures they are unfit to consent to.
all protection that's needed is in place.
what your attitude is doing is it's forcing gender dysphoric youths to go through the irreversible body changes induced by their puberty.
why? how does getting a beritone voice and a quarterback frame help a trans girl?
how do breasts and a small feminine silhouette help a trans man?
No, they're protecting their members from being sued, as that video revealed.
The "trans child" is a medically and politically constructed entity, that has arisen from the rhetoric of activists. Children cannot meaningfully consent to these "gender affirming" medical interventions that will scar them for life, make them infertile and lose sexual function, and have an impact far beyond anything they can comprehend.
I think you've made your point clear and I think you are not open to have your view changed.
I personally know trans people, living happy lives 20+ years into their transition, and all of them knew early on, and all of them had benefitted from and wished for much earlier access to gender affirming healthcare and back in the days early access simply did not exist, because of the FUD and pseudo protective position you propagate.
Yeah the people who help enable the largest child abuse ring in history are not 'fine' people. They literally support an organization that IS PROVEN to SYSTEMATICALLY protect sexual predictors and have done so for 100s of years.
>Yeah the people who help enable the largest child abuse ring in history are not 'fine' people.
You're right. It's horrible what public school teachers are allowed to get away with...wait, that's not who you were talking about? Better check your numbers again.
Unlike catholic churches, school system had mandatory reporting of sexual abuse for years. And if a teacher was accused of sexual abuse, it was not an actual norm to move him to another position with access to children.
See there's a certain group that just loves to harp on about the catholics (and yes they certainly should be ashamed and given every legal penalty for what they did) but want to give other groups a pass. They like to pretend that this sort of coverup isn't a systematic issue whenever you get a large group. And they like to ignore all the cases where female teachers have "relationships" with their students....
Shall I go on? There are easily hundreds of unique cases that I could link. Somehow though I suspect that you will fall into the usual pattern of dismising these all as being from "bad" sources or say that it's just not the same...somehow.
Catholics actual policy was to move sexual abusers to different parishes and not tell anyone. That is the actual norm. And that was not just a new thing. Catholics as organizations run pretty atrocious institutions (orphanages, schools) where kids were routinely abused.
Yes, catholic church is waaay worst then school system in this regard. And largely for systematic reasons - the expectation of obeisance and expectation that one should protect the institution make them more suspectible to abuse.
The catholic cover ups were not just outliers. They were result of lack of transparency and of impossibility to challenge superiors.
Moreover mandatory reporting within school syatem is an actual law. This alone makes the two system different.
>Yes, catholic church is waaay worst then school system in this regard. And largely for systematic reasons - the expectation of obeisance and expectation that one should protect the institution make them more suspectible to abuse.
I wonder why there is so much vehemence about one and not the other? I'll say it softly. Could it be because one is religious and the other is secular? I wonder why the public schools get a pass when they've been doing the exact same things?
Which educated elites? Was there a survey? Did you talk to some? What did they say when pushed on this?
I am concerned that you have formed a view of a fictional person that is an amalgam of newspaper headlines and think pieces that were designed for clicks.
Such stories exist for literally all medical interventions. Do you know how many elderly people deeply regret elective surgeries like hip or knee replacements? How many have tragic stories and want to make sure others don't fall into the same trap?
The major difference between these cases is that the regret rate for transitioning is way, way lower than almost all other medical interventions. This is because we have a long process before anything permanent is done. If you wish to pay so much attention to de-transitioners, will you also look at the data and pay attention to the many, many more people who regret other medical interventions?
The NIH has done a meta-analysis of studies and came up with a regret rate of around 1% with a 95% confidence interval:
> The pooled prevalence of regret among the TGNB population after GAS was 1% (95% Confidence interval [CI] <1%–2%; I2 = 75.1%) (Fig. (Fig.2).2). The prevalence for transmasculine surgeries was <1% (CI <1%–<1%, I2 = 28.8%), and for transfemenine surgeries, it was 1% (CI <1%–2%, I2 = 75.5%) (Fig. (Fig.3).3). The prevalence of regret after vaginoplasty was of 2% (CI <1%–4%, I2 = 41.5%) and that after mastectomy was <1% (CI <1–<1%, I2 = 21.8%) (Fig. (Fig.44).
As a comparison, this study (which is not a meta-analysis, I couldn't quickly find one of those) for knee replacement surgery regret after one year had around 18%:
> Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a common and effective procedure that is expected to be performed in increasing numbers in the future [1, 2]. Previous studies have shown 6–30% of patients are dissatisfied after the surgery, both in the presence and in the absence of postoperative complications [3–12]. In Sweden, about 8% of patients without documented complications are non-satisfied [13–15].
> Of the 348 patients who responded to a letter asking if they were satisfied or dissatisfied with their surgery, 61 (18%) reported discontent.
yes! and of that 1% more than 90% report that the unhappiness is driven by societal factors: rejection and oppression by their families or their faith communities or both, or at the workplace.
no. the "DeTrAnSiTiNinG" narrative is a bogeyman narrative to narrowly get above the 50% needed in first past the post votes, with fake "concern" about "parental rights" which are purportedly "taken from concerned Christian parents". That subreddit is an artificial cesspool to feed that narrative in a context which is much less restrictive in its policies than HN. the trans communities in the US are in panicking paralysis for becoming the scapegoat.
the reality is that treatment of gender dysphoria according to current standards of care is nothing less than a blessing for those few adolescents who happen to fall into that narrow diagnostic corridor. And they get _no_ surgeries if treated in a responsible setting. they get puberty blockers. the adolescent is reviewed and accompanied in the whole family situation to assess for potential psychopathologies (emotional abuse, munchausen by proxy, in simple terms: is this real or are the parents nuts) and _only then_ and after a long period of confidence building the adolescent grows into making permanent decisions about their life, as a then young adult.
those adolescents who are lucky enough to receive such treatment at an early age have the chance to transition into a new life in their identified-with gender as completely inconspicuous well integrated happy adults.
for gender dysphoric youths it's the best thing since sliced bread.
Tens of thousands of people organizing to discuss the life-destroying issue seems pretty large. Considering ranitidine (Zantac) was recalled for a small potential of causing cancer, it's odd that such documented negative experiences has not resulted in a banning of procedures (at least for children) until far more research is conducted. But hey, that's what happens when politics overtakes science.
The mistakes the trans activists made were going after the kids, and demanding access to each and every female-only space for males. If they'd done neither of those things, the conservatives would have nothing to say at all.
Frankly, this is a lie. The only ones going for kids were anti trans activists - because attacking trans kids is easier.
This has nothing to do what trans activists done or not done. This was about conservatives needing an ennemy and feeling disgust over trans people existing.
this is a counterfactual misrepresentation of gender dysphoria and the medical community recommendation for it's treatment in adolescents beyond tanner stage 2.
the misrepresentation is part of Mr. Trump's talking point to "eradicate transgenderism" and it's dividing families from gender dysphoric family members and driving individuals into suicide.
