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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who thinks it's incredibly toxic and anti-science when campaigners for transgender rights attempt this kind of censorship and deplatforming?

If people can't even question the science, treatments or effects on children then it feels like a political ideology is at the wheel.

I've noticed this online in traditionally liberal-leaning forums. There's no room for nuance in discussion without being the recipient of vicious attacks, deplatforming or bans. If the case for transgender rights is so strong, you should not need these tactics to make your case. Make your case, don't attack those who respectfully question the policies and science.

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I agree, I've got nothing against transgender people. I've got a problem with transgender activists going after people like J.K. Rowling, and trying to deplatform her, for her completely reasonable opinions. Fortunately in her case, she's too successful to deplatform, no publishing company is that stupid to turn her away.

I'm also deeply horrified what's happening to young girls especially where they are deciding they're trans and transitioning when much of the time they're simply confused teenagers. You merely have to look at how it clusters in friend circles like a contagion of the mind for proof it's a social phenomenon and not a biological one. Adults who should know better are encouraging them to do irrevocable harm to their bodies. I don't care where you fall on trans rights, that's going to be looked upon as a terrible tragedy down the road that we allowed this to happen.

Wow dude, being trans is not a "contagion of the mind". This is wildly and dangerously hateful.

It isn't hateful if it's true.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6095578/

And if it's true it's dangerous to deny.

Oops, you "forgot" this part of the study:

>Notice of republication

>After publication of this article [1], questions were raised that prompted the journal to conduct a post-publication reassessment of the article, involving senior members of the journal’s editorial team, two Academic Editors, a statistics reviewer, and an external expert reviewer.

The reassessment doesn't invalidate the original study at all.

This is probably the time to plug this wonderful extension [0] that directly warns you, whenever a link to a scholarly article is posted, that said article has had comments on its PubPeer entry.

For those who don't know, PubPeer was designed as a kind of forum where people can discuss articles after they're published (with or without a pseudonym). Of course, it almost instantly turned into a place for anonymous whistleblowing and call-outs for fraud, replication failure, etc. So while it's not an absolute rule, an article having one comment or two on PubPeer is usually a middling red flag for that article being generally dubious.

The reason I'm talking about all this is that the parent's link has twenty-five (25) comments on PubPeer. See for yourself, read the discussion and make of that what you will.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/pubpeer/

That's not what the GP said. Let's try to be fair.

I actually explained why this is often, but not always, a contagion of the mind. I'll spell it out for you "dude":

If there's some property "being trans" which functions like we think "being gay" does, either set biologically or early on in life or some combination of those, then you expect this property to be relatively randomly distributed in the population.

What you see instead is one teenage girl transitions and then her friends are far more likely to also transition. The effect clusters around social relationships. Hence it's a social contagion of the mind.

Again not in all cases, I'm not denying there are real trans people out there who benefit from transitioning.

Dr. Debrah Soh lays the argument out in much greater detail and with supporting citations in her book: https://www.amazon.ca/End-Gender-Debunking-Identity-Society/...

This whole second paragraph is FUD, as should be obvious from the phasing "irrevocable harm to their bodies". Dismissal as a "social phenomenon" is naive in the extreme, as is the author's revealed ignorance of mainstream medicine's approach to transgender minors.

Actually, there's evidence some of the hormone blocking drugs given to children are not reversible and have serious side effects in some cases, including the loss of bone density. [1]

It's my understanding that multiple studies have affirmed this. So your claim of FUD is unfounded in this case.

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5647/rr-0

If they want to transition back, they can’t do it fully since they won’t be able to have children anymore. So technically it is irrevocable harm to their bodies.

You think taking male hormones as a teenage girl is harmless - you know it can make them sterile right? How about a radical double mastectomy?

This has real, irreversible effects. Shame on the adults for pushing parents or forcing parents to accept this, and shame on you for dismissing my very valid concerns as FUD.

The mainstream approach is blockers not HRT.

Hes reasonable with his stance . It's not extreme or radical in any way, and backs it up with personal experience + studies hes read. Oh well

> If people can't even question the science, treatments or effects on children

People absolutely can do this. Research is done and presented in journals regularly without controversy. It is just that not all criticism is valid. "I'm criticizing the research" is not an invincible shield that one can hide behind. The research must be methodologically sound and dispassionate. The specific transphobic guests that Rogan has brought on have not done this kind of research.

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