I saw this in the school I led, especially in young girls. One of them starts cutting, suddenly we have multiple girls cutting. One of them struggles with bulimia, suddenly the guidance counselor is reporting that she has an inordinate number of girls coming in for counselling about bulimia.
I dont think its any different with claiming to be transgender. And my current school counselor contact confirms that - for every one child she sees that she believes may actually struggle with body dysmorphia and she believes may be trans, there are 10 more coming in because its the 'thing' to be. These are usually kids who are troubled and are desperately seeking attention and care, legit needs, but going about it the only way they see that's acceptable. They gain attention, they gain power, and in an odd way, status among their peers for 'being who they are.'
When you showcase suicides on TV you also have upticks in suicides. Same goes for mass shootings, copycat murderers, and even political protests.
When the 101 dalmatians movie was released, there was also an uptick in demand for dalmatians.
I fail to see how this means it's ok to fabricate diseases to downplay the effect that mass media has on people.
I find it interesting that the mainstream is being biased towards believing in natural determinism instead of nurture and environmental influence.
I have seen this firsthand on some acquaintances. Social media has a massive influence on people and there are some persons specifically that have a weaker sense of identity (usually associated with poor development or some mental disorder like schizophrenia, STPD, or BPD), and those persons can be influenced to the point of actually, legit molding their own identity by their own media consumption.
This consumption in most people only plants seeds that will lead to questioning or trying stuff, but won't have a long-lasting impact on their core identity. So for most people this kind of exposition will be something either transitory or will just provide awareness. People grow out of it and it actually it's "just a phase" for many.
So yes people can learn to have a new identity if they don't have a strong core identity formed yet or if it is weak or broken enough.
OTOH, i am unsure what do you mean by a statistical over-representation of GD. There are no bounds set for deviation of the norm for the general population (i.e. normalized rate of growth of % of population that is transgender is not an outlier vs the rate of growth of other emergent behaviors afforded by greater overall inclusion and reduction of discrimination). The places where it is statistically over-represented, like on people within the Autism Spectrum, are under investigation.
In any case the risks of social media brainwashing are not restricted to stuff like disorders but go way beyond and i think the solution to this stuff is, like for many other things, more education and awareness of risks, tradeoffs, what is gender, what is identity, and how they work both intrinsically and within the bounds of social interactions.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/transgender-kids-tend-to...
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...
This is quite clear to me and I do not think gender dysphoria - which is a DSM-5 diagnosis [1] - is the correct term to use. Compared to previous years or decades (or centuries) there is a markedly higher percentage of children/young adults who "self-identify as 'trans'", often clustered and in waves. This did not use to be so but that does not mean similar phenomena did not occur, they just did not get a diagnosis attached to them. It is highly probable (and feed for a dissertation if there is a university which would accept such a politically charged project) that the same character types who now "self-identify as 'trans'" were those who would style themselves as "goth" or "emo" or (in the late 80's and 90's) "metrosexual" or any other androgynous style. The difference is that these earlier style figures did not come with a diagnosis nor were they adopted by any mainstream political movement and as such were taken less seriously. You could be a goth just like you could be a metalhead or a prep and be part of your in-crowd by just wearing the right clothes (and, for some crowds, make-up) and listening to the right bands. It was accepted as a way for children and young adults to "belong" without coming with much baggage.
[1] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphori...
I don't see how you could usefully extrapolate a "real" baseline rate based on what prior generations did. Atypical sexual/gender identities have been taboo for almost the entirety of human civilization, and only as these taboos are now being lifted are people able to express these traits without fear of horrific repercussions.
Just imagine applying that same approach to addicts.
If you mean puberty blockers for trans youth rather than sex reassignment, they have much more support because of their non-permanent nature. We let many teenagers make decisions about things like tattoos and piercings too
We may not be talking about many years by raw count, but as a percentage of the total lifespan of those involved, the first group is ~50% older than the second.
https://accpjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.100...
One is from the "gender is a social construct" post-modernist side, which views the very idea that people are either men or women with some suspicion, and leads to concepts such as gender fluidity, non-binary identities, and the idea that maybe young kids should not be gendered at all unless and until they chose to assume some gender.
The other current is much more conservative, and starts with the simple observation that some people experience extreme gender dysphoria that has only successfully been cured (or at least alleviated) by gender-affirming care (from gender expression to hormone treatments to top/bottom surgery to facial feminization/masculinization surgery and beyond). This current considers it much more clear that humans are generally either men or women, with relatively clear associated characteristics, and simply considers that some people happen to have the "wrong" characteristics. Rather than investigating the philosophical reasoning of why this might be happening and what it means for the concepts woman/man, it is much more concerned with the practical problem of how to make life better for people who feel like this.
My impression is that the second group is much much more prevalent, but also seen as problematic by the first group. The first group is much more extreme, and has much more "interesting" talking points, so it is significantly over-represented in online discussions and media.
My impression is that extreme opinions are mostly from two subgroups of the second group:
- Those who believe that gender is essentially defined by physical characteristics
- Those who believe that gender is essentially defined by social characteristics.
Their inability (or unwillingness) to more deeply consider the concepts of "men"/"women" place them in conflict with each other because each of them want to use a different concept, and neither of them are open to exploring different ones.
The only way I can see this being resolved is by taking an attitude more similar to first group.
However, I believe that the general attitude of the trans community is relatively moderate and easy to accept:
1. Trans people should be able to get the kinds of treatment they need (from therapy all the way to aesthetic surgery), in cooperation with their doctors. Children should be allowed to get some treatment, and their parents should be involved (with some complexity when the parents' bigotry may interfere with the best interest of the child).
2. Other people shouldn't be allowed to ostracize one for being trans, and should seek to accommodate them (such as not referring to them with the wrong pronouns or name); accidental use is easily forgiven, but intentional misgendering is clearly malicious; the problem of "non-passing" trans people complicates this somewhat
3. Trans people should be allowed to use the amenities that correspond to their gender, which will, in the vast majority of circumstances, correspond to their gender presentation; "non-passing" trans people complicate this, as does participation in competitive sports
However, I believe trying to modify society to dispense with the concepts man & woman, or to avoid inoculating them in children - as would be natural if we take the position of the first group too seriously - is way beyond what most people would agree with.
Of course, extreme positions such as trans-medicalists/truscum or people insisting everyone "shares their pronouns" and such are somewhat significant sub-groups, as are people who insist that children should be able to just take hormones without any supervision from doctors or parents if they really think it's right for them (I've seen this exact position on HN before). But while they exist, I think they are still loud minorities, even within the relatively small trans community.
If I say "For me it's a choice" then it undermines the people for whom it is not a choice. Because most of the audience in the bathroom stall aren't doing research to put together a comprehensive understanding of gender, they're just reading what in front of them for that day, and then leaving.
If I say gender can be learned, we can spend days bickering about what "learned" really means.
It's not fun. And I'm sorry that someone else said something you think is contradictory.
You cannot keep the society well-functioning by treating the law and social norms as a bathroom stall or as something that you should mindlessly follow without comprehensive understanding.
The reality is more nuanced—while certain gender roles are purely social constructs, other aspects of gender are hardwired.
That's not true. It would just indicate that the gender dysphoria is socially caused (perhaps by the imposition of strong gender norms) rather than being an unavoidable part of someone's nature.
It does lead to very different policy proposals though: if gender dysphoria is socially caused then it makes sense to prioritise minimising the cause (by widening the scope of acceptable gender expression for each gender) rather than treating the symptom (by allowing people to change their recognised gender).
It seems unlikely to me that social norms alone could cause gender dysphoric people to believe so strongly that their gender identity mismatches their biological sex (i.e. physical body) that they are willing to undergo dramatic, irreversible medical procedures like gender reassignment surgery and other transitioning procedures to rectify the mismatch.
There are plenty of people who strongly defy gender norms yet still strongly identify their gender as being concordant with their biological sex. Gender dysphoria goes far beyond mere nonconformity to gender norms; many trans people explicitly say that they feel like they were born into the wrong body.
I think it's quite likely.
As an analogy, it seems relatively common for people to become so convinced that they are so unattractive that they undergo highly invasive cosmetic surgery. It's also very much the case that there are social groups where this is normalised (and many people in those social groups will choose to have this surgery) and social groups where it is not (and people in those groups are unlikely to opt for cosmetic surgery).
The difference seems to be that the people in one social group are telling each other that the appropriate solution to feeling unattractive means that one is unattractive and that surgery to change one's body is an appropriate response to that, whereas in the other social group people might either convince each other that they're attractive as they are, or seek alternative remedies such as changes in clothing, grooming, make-up, etc. Or even therapy, self-esteem coaching or similar.
Similarly, if one is an environment where one is constantly told that men (or women) are or should act/be a certain way, then it is hardly surprising that one might develop the notion that one isn't a man/woman. Such an environment is commonly created by people with traditional notions of gender. But it's reinforced by people suggesting that transitioning might be the solution to not fitting one's gender norms.
Which isn't to say that there aren't people for whom physically transitioning is the right answer (the best solution for them), or that do have an inherent dislike of their body that isn't externally influenced. Likewise, there are people for whom cosmetic surgery is absolutely the right solution (e.g. people with a cleft palate or who have suffered from severe burns). But I question the way it currently seems to being positioned (by some people) as the default response to not fitting in with the norms of one's existing gender, and I also question the idea that it is innate and not socially influenced.
Social media is absolutely involved, but we really don't know what the base rate would be in a society devoid of this kind of pressure.
If laws against witchcraft are removed and/or witchcraft is destigmatized and then all the sudden there appears to be an explosion of witches, the explanation is probably not that hordes of people are adopting witchcraft.
I'll leave it to the reader to guess the simplest and most likely explanation.
This is what I find so exhausting about those who try to drum up some kind of controversy around gender identity. Assuming it is all just a fad, who cares? Where's the issue when people decide to switch their gender on a whim? It's their lives. People do all kinds of things on a whim. Adults, teens and children too. Especially children, in fact. Sometimes people regret the things they did, sometimes they don't. Oh well, it's part of life.
I could understand being concerned about a social trend if it was causing violent behavior that negatively affected other people's lives, but this isn't that. Who is it hurting if someone decides to identify as another gender? Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's only going to affect them at worst. If anything the small government/pro-freedom position should be to defend the right of those people to live how they want.
The issue, at least for me, starts when we give children drugs and surgeries to enable them to switch genders.
There's nothing wrong with little Timmy wanting to play with Barbies. He doesn't need hormone injections because of it.
People are worried about their kids. People are scared and the media amplifies the most extreme voices. Establishing scientifically the effectiveness of medical interventions is difficult in the best of circumstances and most psychology is non-reproducible, so it's hard to know what to believe is best.
Rule implies that it applies to past conservative moral panics. Is there a past moral panic in which lots of formerly suppressed identities suddenly expressed themselves once the moral panic was over?
Freedom of religion allowed a lot of people to express their religious identity which was formerly suppressed?
Why was left handedness considered taboo and evil? Do we need to figure out a legitimate reason for this before we can remove the fence? Could there possibly be a legitimate reason for something that clearly absurd?
There seems to be a representation threshold below which any observable minority is considered undesirable. To the extent there is a “legitimate reason” it is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology for avoiding too much genetic variation in small tribes. I submit those fences are the opposite of Chesterton’s fence and can happily be ignored in today’s society.
Hmm. I suspect it's just "other tribes". We humans will make tribes out of literally any distinction, even athletic team preferences. It's kind of our thing.
Yes: https://www.straightdope.com/21343459/in-the-third-world-do-...
[1] See notes on etymology etc. at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sinister
Just as the media makes it out like the next stop by a cop could end up in an execution if you’re not the same ethnicity as the cop. It’s still rather rare, or at least not happening at the rate the media portrays it.
I don't know how you can a priori gauge this probability. If something illegal suddenly becomes legal but is still somewhat taboo, that obviously attracts experimentation, at least from rebellious youth.
Edit: the voting on this comment is crazy.. the number of HN users that feel sexualisation of children isn't bad is utterly shameful.
Humans come in all forms. Most humans have two legs, but not all. Some are born missing a leg and some lose them from injuries. If we only show two legged characters in Disney films does that mean it's some sinister message of "bipedalnormativity"?
https://www.thelist.com/32342/real-reasons-behind-blue-boys-...
For some today black is the macho color, for others it’s the artistic color.
Well it was the parent comment that was linking this to sexuality - Hetronormativity is inherently about sexuality (i.e. Hetro-Normativity - Hetro -> Heterosexual: of, pertaining to, or being a heterosexual person).
Where do those preferences come from? I've seen first hand the impact that media, advertising, and social pressures at school have had on my children's preferences.
Sure, but why is that a problem? Our preferences are of course sculpted by our environment, and that's not a problem as long the people who fall outside of those norms aren't punished for it. Assuming those norms aren't harmful of course, eg. not good to normalize psychopathy.
Heteronormativity is "heterosexual is the normal state of being".
Playing with trucks if you're a girl has nothing to do with whether you're hetero or homosexual.
This is a convenient segue to heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is the societal pressure to conform to the traditional gender roles of men and women who pursue heterosexual relationships. My parents didn't like me playing with Barbie dolls; they explicitly told me that it wasn't something boys did. This transmits a set of expectations about how I should behave, based on my gender. Notice that their telling me it was wrong to play with dolls was no more sexual than if they had allowed me to play with the dolls.
If your dad has acetylene torches around and your mom has axes around the house you’re going to play with them.
It does not mean or imply or predict that you want to burn the house down or you want to become a butcher or axe murderer. You’re not exploring being a pyromaniac or a murderer. You’re just playing, that’s it.
Same with high heels, smoking pipes, hunting rifles or lipstick. Kids don’t know their meaning yet (context of usage).
I wouldn't see trying on lipstick or playing with Barbie dolls as "exploring a gender identity" as neither of those are exclusive to one gender, even in a heteronormative world.
I think these things were much more gendered at the time, as well. It is crazy for me to look back and remember how there was a time when I hadn't made up my mind about whether gay marriage was okay or not. Things have changed a lot over the past 20 years or so.
While true, to be fair GP was responding to this:
>>> "For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to *heteronormativity*. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their *sexuality*." [emphasis mine]
To muddy the distinction further, there is a small minority of men whose sexual kink is to be perceived as women. These seem to be the people who are making the most trouble for trans women who just want to quietly go about living as women without fuss.
Heteronormativity conflates gender and sexuality; I'd guess (while acknowledging I don't know the content of anyone else's mind) that is what is responsible for their confusion, because they have been raised in a heteronormative society, the distinction doesn't exist in their mind.
While a true statement it's also a non-sequitur. Anglosphere society is roiled with social turmoil about trans-gender identity. One faction would like society to recognize that some people's gender does not fit their sex, and to normalize accommodating these people's gender expression without intrusive and oppressive questioning. Another faction, perhaps motivated by genuine concern, or perhaps by simple hatred of difference and change, throw a spanner into the works by asking hard questions about bathrooms and prisons and athletics and such. If the only people interested in entering women's bathrooms and prisons were genuinely only women who happened to be born in a male body, then everything would be clear and unmuddied. However, the existence of some fraction of men who would happily identify as women in order to gain easier sexual access to women does complicate the simple distinction. Is a trans woman lesbian with a penis really trans, or a predatory man with a kink? Ignoring or dismissing the muddy implications of the question will not make the second faction go away.
I didn't say predatory trans people. I said predatory men. Have you met men? Some men will put on a dress, call themselves trans, and fondle themselves in a women's locker room.
Again, pretending this is about trans people is disingenuous. This is about (some) men.
And, again, whether you genuinely dismiss the concern because you genuinely disbelieve that any man ever would take advantage of the situation, the faction that bring it up do genuinely believe that some men will take advantage of it. This faction will not go away. So, probably best to at least acknowledge their concerns so that trans people can get on with the business of doing their business.
The narrative you have presented is frequently weaponized, specifically by the adherents to the ideology of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, to argue that trans women are "men in dresses" who's real goal is to infiltrate women's spaces in order to assault them (or, in the example you gave, violate their privacy and dignity). In practice this a widespread phenomenon. TERF activists use this narrative to attempt to enact legislation barring trans people from the bathroom of their gender - forcing trans women into men's bathrooms, and I'm sure that, as someone concerned about problematic men and bathrooms, that won't sound like a good prospect to you. I take you at your word this was context you weren't aware of; now that I've brought it to your attention, I hope you'll consider it and see if it alters your thinking.
Indeed. This is both true, and a non-sequitur. Bad-faith arguers exist. Let us acknowledge the fact that some people will reprehensibly refer to every trans woman as a "man in a dress". Let's assume the best about each other.
If you're trying to say that everyone is a TERF who points out that some men (again, not trans women) will take advantage, or that only bad people point this out, then you're not addressing the concern, but dismissing it. Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep bad men out.
Anyway, you and I won't litigate this here, so if you have more to add, know that I'll read whatever you have to say but might not reply. Be well.
You're right, I should have done better there. To me, until this comment where you described this as "reprehensible", it sounded like you were employing "just asking questions" rhetoric, because you were asking all the same questions as TERFs, and to me it appeared you were only holding back the transphobic conclusions. However, that I should have done a better job assuming good faith on your part, and I apologize.
> This is both true, and a non-sequitur.
It isn't a non-sequitur though, I'm explaining to you what my issue is. If you were aware of the context around this narrative the whole time, you could addressed it instead of implying I was being disingenuous; the best-faith interpretation I could see was that you didn't understand my objection, so I added more detail. I would like to engage with you presuming the best, but can you see how saying I'm being disingenuous and that my points are non-sequitur (when it seems like you do understand what TERFs are, what bathroom bills are, and what it was I was getting at and how it relates to our discussion) made that difficult for me?
> Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep bad men out.
Happy to listen to what you may propose, but I don't have any thoughts. I certainly empathize with women's feeling of unsafety and the desire to create spaces without men, to the extent I can as a man. But I understand if you are done with this conversation, I myself need to log off for a few hours to attend to things, and of course you don't owe me any of your time.
All the best to you, as well.
Most people are like me: sincerely caring, well-disposed to trans people, understand that trans rights are human rights, bear absolutely zero ill-will and will happily use preferred pronouns. Would be terribly frightened for a trans-woman to be placed in a man's prison, for instance. And, nevertheless, would simply like straight-forward policy proposals to answer those specific concerns.
So far, the only policy proposals that address those concerns have been from conservatives, which are not ideal to say the least, either. From liberals, sadly, have come answers along the lines of "Asking questions like that is TERF territory. You don't want to be a TERF, do you?" Which is clearly not an answer, and concedes the entire policy platform to conservatives.
I mean, it could be that the liberal response is, essentially "Times are changing and the exceedingly minuscule chance of creepy men in womens' locker rooms and women's prisons is a small price to pay for human rights" but that's unconvincing, to be honest. Creepy men who have a right to be in womens' locker rooms and prisons will become a problem unless it's actually addressed in advance. That's nothing to do with trans women. It is, unfortunately, a problem with men.
But no, I don't have answers, here. Before, it seemed to be "Be discreet and make good-faith efforts to pass as your preferred gender and people will generally leave you alone." The "passing" part is not ideal, but at least serves as some kind of costly social signal that this person is really trying to blend in and not make waves. Without that, not sure.
There are millions of trans people in the world but presumably few rapists in dresses. The spurious focus on pointless concerns suggests we ought to harm the dignity of millions for a fictional advantage.
What do you propose to do about a creepy man who hears that all he has to do is self-identify as a woman and now has a right to expose his penis to women? This is not a trans woman, but a man who just will not leave his penis alone in a women's locker room. Women avert their eyes, but he shakes it around, puts tassels on it, gets excited by the turmoil. "This is not a thing that will ever happen" is an answer, sure, but when it does happen, your conservative opposition will use the exceedingly rare incident to exclude trans women from locker rooms. So, what is a better answer that actually addresses the concern?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-...
Same with me, but let me ask you a question. Were you the sort of kid that actually listens to their parents? Because i didn't, and most of my peers didn't, either.
Now, the reaction of my friends when they came over and looked at me funny when I tried to show them my awesome Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders doll (it had wings and could fly if you pulled a ripcord! That's objectively cool. Also, dangerous, especially to taller adults in the area.), that was painful.
For people with that attitude, yes.
but when almost every other friend, relative, other kindergarten/school parents teachers push their own ideas of what is appropriate for girls or boys, my influence ends up being rather small.
i can't push my own ideas here. i can only encourage and protect the diverse interests that my kids develop on their own.
Also I'm not accusing anyone of pushing this on their kids, rather, our society does it in massive doses. Watch most children's TV shows or movies and heteronormativity is abundant.
For a pretty clean example of this check out the movie Up by Pixar. The first 10 minutes of the movie are devoted to Carl & Ellie's relationship and the loss of that relationship serves as a major driver for the movie.
Also there's nothing wrong with showing children this kind of content. It helps them make sense of the world. However, there is an issue with representation. When it's all they see then it constrains their minds as to what is possible.
Yeah, but the comment OP is responding to was explicitly about letting kids "explore their sexuality".
Emphasis mine. The comment is not, in fact, about letting children explore their sexuality, but people. (When you consider the parent of that comment, that still does not add context implying that we're talking about kids.)
The only part of the comment which discusses children is this:
> For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity.
To read this as sexualizing children is misunderstanding the term heteronormativity, but regardless, this is the behavior that is being criticized, not championed.
> For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality.
In a maximally generous interpretation, you could say that the "kids" in the first half and the "people" in the second half of the statement are completely different subjects. I think that is a bit of a stretch, though.
"For years I have been pruning the tomato plants in my garden. Now, I just let the _plants_ grow".
Anyone reading that would assume "plants" refers to the aforementioned tomato plants, not cucumbers.
Consider that, in the example sentence you came up with, you are referring to the same subject, at different times.
They think that because you’re not trying to make them “explore their gender identity” while teaching them ABCs that you are pushing something. It’s absolute projection. I support all people to live their lives how they see fit, but I refuse to use their newspeak or pretend like there is not a natural normal.
It seems to me like you're actually arguing to try and remove words that people have introduced to the language, and to erase the nuances they convey, because you don't find it to be "normal" or "natural". What is normal or natural is entirely subjective, and varies across cultures and across time, and in any case we don't generally yoke ourselves to what is natural (we are, after all, speaking through an artificial medium because we find it advantageous, and though we weren't born with wings we often find it advantageous to fly.)
It might be interesting to give 1984 another read.
Heterosexuality doesn't have to be the default, and indeed, that era is ending. The evidence for it is right here; you feel compelled to go to bat for the notion, not something you'd need to do if it really were mystically natural and inextricably true. Heterosexuality is promulgated as a default because it is key to a power structure called the patriarchy. The patriarchy works by assigning certain gender roles to men and women; these roles allow men to subjugate women, and also allow men to be subjugated by other men. The patriarchy's strength lies in the rigidity of those gender roles, and as the gender roles are loosened the patriarchy gets weaker. Lots of power within our society is expressed through patriarchy, for instance, the idea that men express their agency through violence instead of through emotion and that they should readily throw their lives away in service of a cause is useful for recruiting men as soldiers and police, and soldiers and police are useful in upholding many other power structures (like state power or the power of the rich). So over the last few millenia, many different power structures have come to rely on the existence of patriarchy, and it's been woven into our mythology and the fabric of our society. The fluidity of gender roles is a direct challenge to patriarchy, and people with nonconforming identities have been forced into the closet through violence and social reprisal.
This was a natural series of events in the sense that all of history took place in the context of the natural world, sure. But cancer is natural, we don't have to accept it. In the same way, I reject your heteronormativity. I think it sucks. I don't think people are "naturally" any particular gender, it's a role we learn to play as we're socialized. That doesn't make it bad, there's nothing wrong with being a man or a woman, there's nothing wrong with embracing very traditional views of what that means if that's what makes you happy. I live my life as a pretty traditional man. But that isn't all there is to life, and that's not all it should mean to be human.
Social and cultural norms are beside the point here; in fact, the most traditional societies are those that tend to feature the most salient spaces for same-sex quasi-romantic affection and emotionality, with such things as compadrazgo and sworn brotherhood/sisterhood. So it's just not clear how "heteronormativity" is supposed to be an internally coherent concept.
Heteronormativity isn't an epistemology, there's no burden for it to be consistent. It's a set of beliefs and attitudes, and a label that allows you to critique them. Why would we expect that to be any more consistent than the human behavior it describes (which is to say, only somewhat)? Will this label break down and stop making sense as society changes? Yes, I imagine it will. Will it become unwieldy and eventually fail altogether if we employ it in an analysis spanning cultures with very different conceptions of gender? Absolutely. But you might as well ask whether the concept of pop music is consistent and relate it to the works of Beethoven, if you think that's useful in your analysis than go for it, but if it doesn't work in that circumstance it isn't a condemnation of the idea. The only burden on heteronormativity is to be useful in describing real world behavior, which it clearly is.
If you want to know whether heteronormativity is a real phenomenon, you need look no further than the comment I criticized. It doesn't say, heterosexuality is prevalent; it says, heterosexuality is total, that it is "natural" and "normal", that it is inseparable from gender, and that people living as (or even describing) other gender and sexual identities are doing it to trick you.
Heteronormativity is just heterosexuality as a normative element of social structures (not merely prevalent in society, but where deviation from it is viewed as transgressive.) In modern societies, it is typically tied to patriarchy (a particular normatige structure of gender roles, in which social power is attached to male roles), cisnormativity, and, in particular societies, it may be attached to things like White supremacy that are superficially farther from sex/gender dynamics, but these are nevertheless distinct if linked elements of the cultures they appear in.
But we certainly agree that heteronormativity is different than society having a majority heterosexual orientation.
Note that by this standard, much of LGBTQ+ culture might well be described as heteronormative, since glorifying social transgression as such (not merely inasmuch as it might inevitably follow from having a non-majority gender or sexual orientation) has long been a staple of that particular identity.
That comment actually said "heterosexuality is normal", which is of course ambiguous - it could mean either of "prevalent" or "not merely prevalent but standard, with deviations from it being seen as undesirable". Heteronormativity might be a description of the latter claim, but to deny that heterosexuality is especially common would be mere wishful thinking.
The claim that gender and sexual orientation are linked would've been quite recognizable to ancient cultures including classical Greece and Rome, where heterosexual behavior was not normative and other sexual arrangements were often celebrated (though their dark, exploitive side, linked to the ubiquity of rape culture as purposeful male domination, was not unrecognized either; and this later fed into Christian condemnation of such practices). So it makes little sense to view that as "heteronormative" either.
I make no claims about heteronormativity in Greece or Rome (I do say that the patriarchy is several millennia old, so this could be read as an implicit claim that patriarchy existed in Greece and Rome [and I wouldn't take issue with that claim], but I don't think you'd find this disagreeable, given the "rape culture as purposeful male domination" you reference, and that the definition of patiarchy I provided specifically calls out the domination of men), and gender and sexual identities certainly are linked in the sense that certain combinations are more common than others - they just aren't synonyms. As I noted, there is no burden for this concept to translate to other cultures and time periods in order for us to accept it as a useful model for the purposes of our discussion; I've not seen a counterargument from you on this, so I don't see why I would accept these observations of Greece and Rome as being deleterious to my point, anyway.
I’m neither of these. I’ve never experienced sexual attraction to anyone. Every relationship I have is happily platonic. I have several good, close friends, so I capable of deep emotional bonds to people of any gender.
This would have been fine if I didn’t have a high sex drive. But I do. You’re not supposed to have a high sex drive while being completely uninterested.
I’ve wondered most of my life why I was broken. It was extremely isolating to be constantly surrounded by messages telling me there is something wrong with me.
Then I found out what asexuality is. That’s what I am. Romantic attraction can be completely devoid of sexual attraction. Someone’s sex drive can be independent of a person’s sexuality.
It hasn’t been any less isolating, but at least I know there is nothing wrong with me as a person.
Have you never seen anyone upset if their boys are playing with dolls or their girls are playing with toy swords?
How do you think most parents would react if someone bought a pink dress as a present for for their 6 month old boy, or blue pants for their 6 month old girl?
How would most parents react even today to a children's cartoon featuring two little boys holding hands and kissing on the cheek, or a story about prince charming saving and marrying another prince charming?
Pretending heteronormativity is just some sex related thing that no one actually talks about is absurd.
You don't even have to single out Disney, 99% of popular media will present heterosexual relationships as the norm, and children's media that shows something as benign as a same sex couple holding hands or hugging is viewed as mildly transgressive or at least newsworthy.
Gender non-comforming behaviour is 100% absent outside of maybe a "tomboy" female character (and even that seems less present than it used to be).
The voting on your comment is crazy because your ignorance on the topic is showing and it’s dangerous and insulting.
Educate yourself.
They literally do not say "kids are empowered to explore their sexuality."
Kids grow up into adults.
xd is the one that brought up sexualizing children. No reasonable person here would assume anyone is talking about sexualizing children unless they explicitly said as much.
Somehow you and xd are thinking "people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality" explicitly means "kids" in this context. Why you are thinking that, I don't know.
He talks about society putting pressure on kids to be straight and then talks about people and sexuality in the same damn paragraph; are you being purposefully obtuse?
Also note that none of this is about having sex: it’s about telling kids which archetypes are available for them as grownups. If we want to talk about sex, however, look at the degree to which girl’s clothing mimics the styles of adult women even at the expense of practicality for the things kids actually do and how many stories even for young children revolve around the major life goal being an exclusive relationship with a man. Again, the stuff people are complaining about now is an order of magnitude less than what kids are already getting to reinforce traditional gender norms.
I definitely learned before age 13 that being gay/lesbian was bad (I'm bisexual and in my mid 40s). I definitely learned that I was expected to grow up and get married and have kids and if I worked, it was really to help the spouse. I remember my parents suddenly getting upset that I had male friends and didn't want me spending time with them the same way (this was around age 10). No one talked to me about attraction and if they did, never explained that I might feel that way about women as well as men. This is what heteronormativity is. This is pushing sexual preferences on youth.
Exploring sexuality isn't about actual sex acts, but more about learning who you are and who you are attracted to. You know, the sorts of folks you'd like to date and eventually, the sorts of folks you want to spend your life with. This sort of thing is most definitely encouraged, but sometimes the only acceptable option presented is the hetronormativity - you know, "biblical" monogamous relationships that produce children, and if you are female and don't want children, you are broken.
This isn't sexualisation of children.
Only decades? You mean for all of history, where there are distinct roles mostly because of anatomy.
In fact, it was only in recent decades with birth control that was there even an option for most women to take a different role for extended periods.
I'll say the opposite is true, the last several decades did a great job and removed the notion of heterogenomativity. We are just going so far past that into the illogical now.
Reliable birth control methods are sixty years old. And of course there have always been non-reproductive sex acts since the birth of time.
As far as "all of history" goes, ancient Greece for example tolerated a particular kind of "homosexuality", but not one we should try and emulate - it matched neither of two conditions in "consenting adults", for example.
While it's true that few if any societies other than "modern Western" would score as high as ours on Stonewall's diversity index, there were definitely ups and downs if you plotted things over time.
Go back several generations in the USA or Western Europe and it's absolutely normal for straight men to have close and emotional friendships for life; when photography was first invented, it was a thing that male BFFs had photos of themselves taken that I bet anyone today, if shown without context, would immediately pattern-match to "gay couple". I'm going to quote the "art of manliness" site, of all places, on this: https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/bosom-bu... (warning: images may be considered NSFW at your place of work, despite being absolutely non-pornographic as far as I can tell)
Some of these men were undoubtedly gay in the sense we understand the term, but the idea of having a close emotional bond with another man was certainly open to straight men too (and to some extent, also expected).
But then, to quote "The History of Male Friendships" linked on that page,
> First, men were free to have affectionate man relationships with each other without fear of being called a “queer” because the concept of homosexuality as we know it today didn’t exist then. America didn’t have the strict straight/gay dichotomy that currently exists. Affectionate feelings weren’t strictly labeled as sexual or platonic. There wasn’t even a name for homosexual sex; instead, it was referred to as “the crime that cannot be spoken.” It wasn’t until the turn of the 19th century that psychologists started analyzing homosexuality. When that happened, men in America started to become much more self-conscious about their relationships with their buds and traded the close embraces for a stiff pat on the back.
> [...]
> The man friendship underwent some serious transformations during the 20th century. Men went from lavishing endearing words on each other and holding hands to avoiding too much emotional bonding or any sort of physical affections whatsoever. Fear of being called gay drove much of the transformation. Ministers and politicians decried homosexuality as being incompatible with true manhood. And like most deviant behavior in the 1950s, homosexuality was associated with Communism.
So, once "gay" appeared on people's radar, heteronormativity shot through the roof and men were expected to be performatively straight, to prove themselves that they were not "tainted" by this new "affliction". That's where a lot of this pressure came from, it was definitely not constant throughout all of even relatively modern history.
Maybe it's more accurate to say Western (and in particular American) culture has fragmented, and one of those cultures has increasingly put stricter and stricter norms around acceptable heterosexual male behaviour to the point where it's nearly parody.
This is patently untrue. Since the 60s, western society has been increasingly accomodating to the non-gender-conforming. Especially with the rise of the internet, people who once felt isolated with whatever made them different were able to find others like themselves.
But that isn’t a new thing in the past few decades, and indeed it does seem to be getting better.
In most of Europe at least, homosexuality could not be openly practiced for most of the middle ages. There were certain exceptions, but it was not generally considered acceptable, and it was persecuted by the church or other moral authorities, at the very least as ostracism if not outright legal punishments - usually seen as a deviant sexual act, which were also routinely punished. Since the states were far weaker than modern states, it wasn't as systematic and universal as the Nazis attempted, but it was still happening.
Even in societies we perceive as more open such as ancient Rome, homosexual acts were often not explicitly accepted as normal, except for some we today would (rightly) consider abhorrent - adult men having sex with teenagers, but never the other way around.
For anyone else wanting more context, this is an ok starting point: https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/the-hist... (but note that the side of the story from inside the gay community is yet another matter, as niom hints at)
Basically, before most people knew that "gay" was a thing, there was much less pressure on men to be performatively straight.
Trans fem people can remove their facial hair without doing other medical transition steps.
The effects of hormone replacement are so slow that you can safely "try them out" for a month or two and not have a huge permanent burden.
You talk to people and think about it real hard and sleep on it for years. It looks sudden from the outside because there's such a stigma over saying "Hey I'm thinking about trying on a new gender, do you think it would work?"
It's not too different from other body modification like tattoos or vasectomies. You can't fully know for sure, but there is a point where you decide that the risk is worth it, because the potential payoff seems worth it. Then it usually turns out it is. Most "de-transition" cases are people who couldn't afford the monetary cost or social cost of presenting as transgender. It's un-common to transition and then find out you're actually cis.
This makes sense except the part about the slow acting hormones. If they are slow acting then one wouldn’t know their effects until later. How much later? And is it guaranteed that they will be reversible at that point?
Modulo what is above, in summary: you are saying there can be informed decisions because the teenagers can: - try out cross dressing - try out the hormone therapy to some point before it has non-reversible long term consequences
He would include in these groups people at all stages in their transitions, so those considering transitioning further could be informed and challenged by those who had gone the whole way with surgery and all.
https://thepinknews.com/2022/05/22/conversion-therapy-trans-...
First.
Hakeem [...] describes himself as a “gender critical psychiatrist”
Then the "sell"
Hakeem offers “specialist psychotherapy for gender dysphoria”, and says that he “does not try and persuade or dissuade anyone from pursuing physical sex interventions such as hormones or surgery but his role is to provide a neutral exploration space to think about sex and gender”.
Then the reality
“He made it clear from the very start that he was sceptical of my gender and expressed doubt that it could differ to [my] sex,”
So a great example of someone pathologizing trans people and not taking them seriously. I hope that was what you wanted to shed light on! Thanks!
Indeed, it's quite telling that the GMC, who have condemned actual conversion therapy, didn't accept the complaint against Dr Hakeem: https://sex-matters.org/posts/healthcare/conversion-therapy-....
Note also that Pink News' general editorial stance is that unconditional affirmation is the only valid approach, so it's not much surprise they jumped on this story.
I would still recommend giving that podcast a listen, it gives a much richer insight into Dr Hakeem's work than that article.
"I hear and validate your feelings and you have a lot of options in front of you, I'm here to help you to minimize the risk of regret with the irreversible options and that might lead me to ask uncomfortable questions, is that ok?"
Az probably:
"What on earth are you going about love? There's no such thing as gender! Gender is just sex. So you just go into the lavatory and check down your trousers, you see a willy down there? Yeees, then you are unfortunately a female, but a Johnson? Hooray! You are a man, then you can man the fuck up and skip out of here! NEEEEEEXT"
Don't fall into the trap of assuming that 1950's Western norms are a 'baseline.'
History shows us that almost all expressions of gender are fluid. The idea of "men and women need to be segregated in certain places (particularly when nude) and must dress differently' is likely the cause of how prevalent transgender people have become. It was always an unsustainable system that was only allowed to flourish because a powerful minority wanted it to. Like are you a boy that relates primarily to women? Well you either endure being separated from them for a ton of meaningful developmental activities or you become transgender.
I think there are plenty of people who would be fine with their biological sex if it didn't come with so much societal baggage.
Operating based on a sampling of women I know - Im going to perform an experiment - I have some clothes of mine that I (Male with a capital M) no longer wear and Im going to give them to some Female friends for their own use.
We'll see what happens but I bet Im going to be met with confusing expressions and laughed at - at best.
Men and women do not dress differently on the count of societal pressures but rather express themselves differently on the count of different imperatives. You can slice it 6 different ways but outside of a small minority of people with non-standard gender ideals, the vast majority of women want to "be pretty" in whatever way that means to them and the vast majority of men want to "look like a man" for their various reasons and in whatever way that means to them.
I realize this is a terribly "incorrect" thing to say these days but at the same time its among the most pervasive ideals I can think of - right up there with the understanding that water is wet. Out side of groups where the word "Patriarchy" is thrown around, men are men and women are women and neither would have it any other way. This isn't due to societal pressure to conform either. This is prevailing behavior of both genders at work.
I personally do not understand why a minority of people choosing alternative, non-birth gender roles needs to be cast into some movement where everyones gender is in question. Im not sure I know anyone who has ever so much as questioned the "baggage" their bio-gender is supposedly saddled with. According to modern psychiatry (which for the purposes of this conversation we'll assume is valid since we all agree Sociopathy and Eating Disorders are real things too), the DSM-5 includes Gender Dysphoria. Psychiatry considers that a real thing right next to some other things I think we can all agree are real.
> History shows us that almost all expressions of gender are fluid.
politely said: CITATION PLEASE
How big and diverse is that sample?
>You can slice it 6 different ways but outside of a small minority
How small is that minority?
>the vast majority of women want to "be pretty"
Are you implying that there's an objective idea of 'pretty' as it relates to fashion? That a woman in pants can't be 'pretty'? Can I point you to powerful men in high-heeled shoes in the 10th Century? Lots of women were attracted to that back then, because of what it meant from a societal standpoint.
Or are you implying that it's fine for men to dress in women's clothes? Because if so then why are we here?
>I realize this is a terribly "incorrect" thing to say
It's not 'incorrect,' it's intellectually lazy.
>I personally do not understand why a minority of people choosing alternative, non-birth gender roles needs to be cast into some movement where everyones gender is in question.
Luckily, that's a strawman so you can stop being confused by it.
> History shows us that almost all expressions of gender are fluid
Again, are high heels for boys or girls? History's opinion will surprise you!
Now listen, outside of snark, I understand its hard to see outside of the environment you've lived for your entire life, but this is a forum for hackers so maybe be a little bit more open to people questioning and challenging things you hold dear?
EDIT: You know what, here's one of many phenomenon that you seem to be unaware of:
Although Europeans were first attracted to heels because the Persian connection gave them a macho air, a craze in women's fashion for adopting elements of men's dress meant their use soon spread to women and children.
"In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding epaulettes to their outfits," says Semmelhack.
"They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel - it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits."
From that time, Europe's upper classes followed a unisex shoe fashion until the end of the 17th Century, when things began to change again.
"You start seeing a change in the heel at this point," says Helen Persson, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. "Men started to have a squarer, more robust, lower, stacky heel, while women's heels became more slender, more curvaceous."
[Citation - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350]
> Again, are high heels for boys or girls? History's opinion will surprise you!
If transgenderism were only changing fashion trends it wouldn't involve psychiatric or surgical interventions and transition wouldn't be called life-saving, etc.
> Or are you implying that it's fine for men to dress in women's clothes? Because if so then why are we here?
Are you implying that men in women's clothes are just men in women's clothes? Because then yeah, why are we here?
^I realized I'm arguing with one account across many branches of the tree (which is against the spirit of this forum) so might as well just move on
Isn't societal baggage also a perception issue? Take 10 people with all the same physical traits and the same social situation and you will get 10 different perspectives.
Why should I accept there is _any_ baggage as a fact? It may just appear so for a massive amount of people, and _that_ could be fluid.
OR is there 'baggage' to being a boy in this scenario?
Is it 'subjective' that many activities are segregated by gender in the West?
If a person doesn't like that, how is it not a logical response to try to change their gender?
You're conflating sex and gender. If you used the two terms as others do there's no surprise.
Washrooms, in almost the entire world, are sex segregated. They aren't gender-segregated in the sense of transgender because they forbid all males and allow all females, or vice versa.
> If a person doesn't like that, how is it not a logical response to try to change their gender?
The washroom isn't actually gender segregated, it's sex segregated and you can't change sex. The words you're using are chosen to subtly obscure the situation.
> So you're telling me that a boy who identifies as a boy is fine to change with the girls at PE and do their activities? OR is there 'baggage' to being a boy in this scenario?
It sure feels like there's baggage to being a girl - being an object for you to shower next to, not a person with their own privacy rights.
Have you ever been a parent? Because males and females are different, and the sexual pressures on them are immensely different too, for both social and physical reasons. Similarly, sexual risk (to anyone, but especially children) is incredibly lopsided and comes almost entirely from males.
If you ignore sexual differences in other children you will let your children be mistreated, if you ignore sexual differences in adults you will get them molested.
> It was always an unsustainable system that was only allowed to flourish because a powerful minority wanted it to.
Pretty much all women know and are cautious, if not fearful, of male violence. They fought for women's sex-based rights because of obvious need. This isn't men putting women in purdah, these are protections they've achieved for themselves. Most men can see the extra work women have to do for safety reasons. The need for women's spaces is far from a minority opinion.
> Like are you a boy that relates primarily to women? Well you either endure being separated from them for a ton of meaningful developmental activities or you become transgender.
If you truly empathized with women you'd realized that your size and strength and biology makes you a risk that another woman wouldn't be and you'd socialize with women in mixed-sex areas and activities where your presence wasn't an undue burden.
> I think there are plenty of people who would be fine with their biological sex if it didn't come with so much societal baggage.
It's the physical baggage people are wrongly trying to ignore.
Unfortunately, even weak males are a physical threat to females. The difference in upper body strength is that stark. So if you're trying to split society along some line to reduce the problem of physical aggression, gender is not a bad place to do it.
(Add more lines, and you'd end up with a system more akin to boxing weight classes, which would be more than a bit ridiculous. It's way better to invest in enforcement of very rigid norms against physical abuse.)
Being gay has nothing to do with child abuse. You're gay-baiting, conflating transgenderism with homosexuality. This is one of the issues the LGB Alliance was founded to address.
> the insane amount of male-on-male sexual violence that occurs among children in the current system.
Yes, from men. That's my point. As a parent you need to know the sex of those who are interacting with your children.
> Again, then why do we let young boys change in the same room as grown men? Is the problem really just about biological sex?
We let them change with either parent because presumably their parent can keep them safe with active supervision. Generally though, other parents would recommend that young children use the womens' facility with another woman if neither parent is available.
> Wait until you find out how gay men feel!
Men are men, straight or gay. Women are smaller and not as strong.
> Sure, and what exactly is the reason behind why a vagina is the definition of who is a woman deserving of protection?
Having a vagina is not the definition of a female, but they do strongly correlate.
Everyone deserves protection but women's protection is largely achieved by providing sexually segregated spaces.
> There are plenty of weak men who empathize with women who are very at risk for physical and sexual violence.
Hopefully most males empathize with women but even if the risks were justification for a man to leave male spaces they aren't a justification to invade female spaces.
> IS the only solution to say who cares you were born with a penis?
Why is your solution to take away all women and children's safety to provide questionable safety to some males?
If you can't stop abusive men in the men's room how do you plan to stop them from following you into the women's washroom using the same legal exception written for you?
> Buddy, would you be willing to believe I have less than zero interest in women?
Would you believe that this isn't relevant? It's not "Women's spaces, and anyone else who swears they don't like vaj".
Women's spaces don't work if there are exceptions, they only work if they can be used to instantly exclude any male who tries to enter. You being there lessens the effectiveness of the system even if you are pure of heart.
Changed my mind a bit.
The state of affairs around transsexuality is horrifying. Critical discussion is basically not allowed on moral grounds and most people who "study" the topic (eg gender studies), care for said patients (eg gender clinics), etc are the same people who already adhere to that no-criticism-allowed agenda.
[0] https://news.sky.com/story/amp/nhs-gender-clinic-the-tavisto...
It's a tradeoff. At least we can all agree that adults have the right to transition under an Informed Consent model. Countries like the UK, without IC, are hellholes for trans medical care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8
Of the less than 2% of detransitioners overall, the vast majority names reasons like social pressure, transitioning being too difficult, etc.
Dunno what numbers you are talking about, but the ones I know certainly underline gender dysphoria being a very real thing and not some sort of "social contagion", and my personal experience definitely aligns with this as well: I don't know a single trans person who seems to regret transitioning, but a whole number of trans people who are struggling with the constant hate they get, fuelled in part by this sort of rhetoric.
And since the article in one of the replies mentioned puberty blockers: They are 1. entirely reversible, 2. routinely prescribed to cis children for other medical reasons and 3. unlike these blockers, puberty is not reversible.
Can I change your mind, even if just a little bit? I don't know; but if you really want to change your mind, start looking closely into the "statistics" of the right. Their misrepresentations are often absurdly superficial. It's all a lie, and the parts that aren't, usually aren't that bad.
About 1% who do so through the hospital procrdures. About a third just stops showing up for followups and hormones. According to the detransitioner, who falls into that category, and has found a small community of similar people, this is what's wrong with the statistic: it's extremely important to not exclude the group that falls of the radar. Since they're not getting hormones anymore, the safest assumption is that they are stopping their transition (because they are) or detransitioning.
A third is a very high amount.
This is the NL btw.
A minor side note: Stopping hormones does not mean someone has stopped transitioning or is detransitioning. It just means they've stopped taking hormones.
Second side note: Detransitioning doesn't mean the person isn't trans either, it just means they've stopped transitioning.
Third side note: Just stopping hormones without talking to your doctor about it is a reeeeally bad idea. I'd be surprised if the number of these "under the radar" people was even on the same level as known detransitioners.
Nobody argues trans people should be stopped, but it is argued that mental healthcare preceding such a proces must be significantly improved. A lot of teens are transitioning, and their bad self image and self hate, inflamed by heavy social media use and the extremely well documented adverse effects on mental health of social media, are, it seems, too often channelled into this solution leading to regret later.
Improving care is an all-round benefit to them.
[1] https://www.hpdetijd.nl/2022-10-31/de-transitie-heeft-mijn-l...
Do you have any actual data to look at?
My dad still uses language like "C'mon! Be a man and do {this thing}."
Personally, I believe when I'm old and crotchety the winds of society will leave my language at something like "C'mon! You should do {this thing}." and leave the gender out of it entirely.
Anedotally, the three people I knew before transition who later transitioned have all expressed some form of process "I was depressed and didn't understand why" -> "I had these thoughts but suppressed them because I felt they were weird / unacceptable" -> "I learned what transition is and the pieces fell into place".
Edit: over a period of many years, that's why they were late transitioners!
You know like, Quentin Tarantino isn't racist even though he said the N word, but if I'm walking down the street and a total stranger comes up to me and starts throwing the N word around, safe bet they're saying something dumb.
See my comment a few days ago about "The Internet is graffiti in a bathroom stall". I could probably have a calm good-faith conversation with any of you in real life about gender. But not on a web forum.
Even suggesting the fact that mass sociogenic illnesses (formerly called mass hysteria) primarily affect girls [1] goes against the new religion and is vilified immediately.
[1] https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/106/5/420.full.pdf
Even this article doesn't really make any attempt to disprove a null hypothesis and we basically are required to take these people at their word that a) the behaviour expressed is not consistent with Tourette's and the patients don't actually have it, and b) the source of this is due to the YouTuber mentioned. There's no control group or anything to prove these two facts beyond the author's opinion.
I don't think this is necessarily new. Anorexia seems to increase proportionally to public awareness of anorexia. It's not just that diagnosis actually improves, it literally appears to be a causal connection, as in, hospitalizations for health problems due to undereating increase dramatically after public awareness about anorexia increases in response to media coverage or public awareness campaigns. Pretty wild.
This was discussed in the book "Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche".
An over simplification perhaps but there is no question we “mimic” all the time.
I am wondering how they differentiate this specific extreme behaviour moving "socially," to other subtle behaviours which are copied and mirrored within small tight knit social groups - especially kids / teenagers? I found the 9:1 ratio of girls to boys intriguing, given the same or very similar mechanism might been a huge benefit to females in past ages where they might be married into a strange culture.
Over represented compared to what? The incidence of these disorders back when admitting them would get you bullied / raped / killed?
An alternative explanation is that reducing the social straitjackets that enforced conformity is leading to greater diversity of human behavior. Maybe yes, maybe no, but it’s at least a hypothesis worth considering.
BTW your point would be stronger without the persecution complex. And stronger yet with an acknowledgement that, while tic-like behavior and multi-year cognitive identity issues may have correlations, also they may not.
In the case of gender dysphoria, the obvious comparison would be, compared to a society where one can subvert gender norms and be accepted without changing one's identity. The emergence of trans movement has created a space where gender-nonconforming people can find more acceptance, but it comes with own set of norms and requirements.
One of which is that one must change their identity and, in many cases, conform to the norms of your newly chosen identity (certainly not everyone in the trans community enforces identity-based gender norms, but that's also true of general society when it comes to sex-based norms. In my experience, they're both about as bad as each other. I've lost count of the number of times people have told me that I must be a certain way or have had certain experiences because of my gender identity).
Over represented compared to what real thing? What should the representation be, in terms of percent, compared to what we see today?
Having such an escape is better than not having it, but it's far from an ideal gender free society (where we effectively treat everyone as having a non-binary gender), in which I suspect we would see a lot less gender dysphoria. Allowing people to choose which set of gender norms they want to follow is still enforcing gender norms if you expect people to choose a single identity and don't allow people to freely mix and match.
I feel you're grossly misrepresenting the issue. It means nothing if you believe people can be re-educated to cease to identify as a specific gender or repress their sexuality throughout their whole lives. That's completely irrelevant. You can also argue that you can re-educated men to be ok with being impotent or be bald or not need glasses, but somehow the conservative side of society is perfectly ok with having whole industries devoted to pumping out erectile disfuncion pills to circumvent natural health issues.
So you have to ask yourself why do you feel it's ok to repress whole segments of society because they don't feel comfortable with who they are, while you are perfectly ok with other segments pulling nature's cheat codes to achieve the exact same thing.
This is exactly the point: the authoritarian motivation behind repressing minorities, and the hate speech that goes along with it.
I don't understand this. The core problem with gender dysphoria is that you feel significant discomfort with your biological sex. If it were possible to legitimately "re-educate" oneself to not feel this discomfort, that would be considerably cheaper, less invasive and less problematic overall than trying to change one's sex. All surgery carries risk of death after all, and lifetime of hormone therapy is annoying to say the least.
Being bald is not just a feeling of discomfort with having no hair, it has real consequences. Baldness is generally considered to be less attractive, and attractiveness impacts career and dating prospects, for instance.
Being impotent also has real-world consequences. It impacts dating and also impacts your ability to conceive.
Arguably, being trans also has real-world consequences as well, so if a solution became available that could eliminate the gender dysphoria without changing your sex, I would be very surprised if plenty of trans people wouldn't choose that option, and not just because of social stigma.
The resistance to such a solution comes from two understandable directions: a) terrible gay conversion therapy that doesn't actually work, and b) the (mistaken) notion of mind-body dualism that many people internalize over their lives, that their identity, their mind, is separate from their body and has more primacy.
Indeed, and that's why you see people undergoing medical treatments to address that problem.
Why anyone in their right mind would be against people seeking medical treatments to address their health issues is beyond me.
> If it were possible to legitimately "re-educate" oneself to not feel this discomfort, that would be considerably cheaper, less invasive and less problematic overall than trying to change one's sex.
You're desperately trying to avoid the point.
I repeat. You can reeducate an impotent man to stop worrying about his erectile dysfunction. You can reeducate a man to stop bothering with being bald.
Why is that somehow not targeted by this authoritarian belief that you're entitled to force upon others to undergo reeducation camps to accept an outcome they don't want nor feel comfortable with?
Why is that only minorities vilified by certain religious conservative pressure groups should have no say in what they can and cannot do regarding their health and personal well-being?
This whole "I'm going to say [something offtopic and offensive to a lot of people]. This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because nobody [ridiculous generalization about humans]" is feckless and intellectually dishonest. You do this because it will be downvoted.
> illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically over represented
If it was true that gender dysphoria had a major "social contagion" component, what would you want to do about that?
Censor speech so children can't discuss gender? Like how some people think censor sex ed was a treatment for teen pregnancy?
Put up bureaucratic barriers to transition, at the cost of hurting people who really are transgender?
Canada included the question in their latest census and the result was 0.2%. In my opinion, a mandatory government census provides data that is more accurate than Gallup's phone poll.
"The proportions of transgender and non-binary people were three to seven times higher for Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2006, 0.79%) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996, 0.51%) than for Generation X (born between 1966 and 1980, 0.19%), baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965, 0.15%) and the Interwar and Greatest Generations (born in 1945 or earlier, 0.12%)."
Canada's government also adds this under their data comparability section: "Belgium (0.5% among people aged 18 to 75 in 2021) and New Zealand (0.5% among people aged 18 and older in 2020) have also published representative survey-based data on their transgender populations.
Other countries have published 2021 data on transgender people using crowdsourcing and non-representative surveys, including Ireland (0.6% among people aged 18 and older), England and Wales (0.6% among people aged 16 and older), and the United States (0.8% among people aged 18 and older)."
Being transgender is not a mental disorder or illness, but rather a natural variation of human diversity. Everyone has the right to express their gender identity in a way that is authentic and comfortable for them. I fail to see how the topic of a mass social media-induced illness applies here.
Always be wary of persons who sort your behavior into 'male' and 'female' categories.
It’s impossible to have the idea that you want to be another “gender” unless you have learned to want it. The ideas of “gender” and that you can switch yours have to come from somewhere; you have to learn them. Just as: you can’t want to be a doctor unless you’ve learned that there is such a thing as a doctor and that it’s something you can be.
I understand gender dysphoria (as opposed to body dysphoria/dysmorphia in a stricter sense) to be a mismatch between someone's own preferences, interests etc. inasfar as they touch on categories that society has declared to be gendered, and society's expectations of the same - at least those of your local bubble of society.
This means there are two non-mutually-exclusive ways to make the lives of gender dysphoric people better: (1) let them change themselves (many options from pronouns to hormones and surgery), or (2) change society's expectations. Out of sympathy for people suffering from gender dysphoria, I wish for a bit more of (2) in the world.
Even in a vastly improved society, there will be people who decide that medical changes such as hormones/surgery are right for them, and as far as possible we should support them. These people existed, in small numbers, before "trans" was cool, and they will still exist when the media interest has picked up some new favourite category. (By analogy, Tourette's syndrome is also a real thing that existed before the internet, and will still exist when this particular media spike has died down.)
Transitioning is 100x harder. The nonconformity is obvious. The antagonism directed at transitioning people is unavoidable, strong and potentially deadly - violent and lethal attacks on trans people are becoming much more common every year. Compulsory sterilization for people legally transitioning is still mandated in many countries and was only abolished in progressive countries in the last few years.
No, nobody is doing any of this because it's "cool".
> What's interesting to me
Shower thought, then
> This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because nobody wants to confront the idea that...
Alright you win!
1. Accepts the existence and influence of social-media-induced illness:
2. Does not rigorously define the condition, it's symptoms, scope or mechanism:
3. Therefore, leaving us free to apply it to gender identity or really, anything at all.
Trumpism? SMII. Wokeness? SMII. Pro-union sentiment? You're not gonna believe this, also a SMII.
And once you call something a "disease" the implication is that it should be "cured" which gets scary quick.
Except this was disproven. Dr. Money and David Rimer is the infamous case study I believe
You should do some reading on how gender affirming therapy and treatment works, because it is absolutely not standard to pursue treatment immediately without any process or consultation.
Whether transition is the right option is absolutely explored, it's just explored in a way that allows the patient to come to a decision rather than a doctor making the gatekeeping whether this person is "really transgendered".
If that is true, then cookie cutter expected gender behavior can be "learned" as well. In fact much of it was illegal in the US a few decades ago.
btw, not long ago there was a sociologist from columbia, working on the autism epidemics, pointing out how autism is "contagious" among parents https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122411399389 - so it's not for the first time that we point out at the sociogenesis of mental illness
The thing is, many societies didn't care for a long time, and only in the 20th century repression really took off with the rise of ultra-fundamentalist religions. Now we're seeing the backlash against that and people obviously are way more free to be who they are once again - so neither a surprise nor an epidemic.
It's very, very simple. There always have been about 10% of people who are left-handed - but for a time in history, teachers and society (sometimes brutally) repressed that and forced left-handed children to use their right hand. Once that relaxed and children were left to freely be who they were, the left-handed ratio went back to its historic norm [1].
Obviously, it's been the same for gay, trans and other sexuality/gender-nonmainstream people. They have always been part of human history - from the old Greeks [2] to early Islamic and Hindu ages [3], but as long as there was an heir available for a long time many simply didn't bother to care or looked away in historic Catholic regions. The repression only went really bad with the Nazis, who destroyed the Institute for Sexology [4] and later on with anti-LGBT laws still remaining on the books for decades, then the anti-gay panic with AIDS, and only nowadays public opinion is beginning to relax.
The problem is that Conservatives not just don't get that simple historic fact, they actively deny it based on their morals, and as a result young LGBT people have shockingly high suicide rates (in thoughts, attempts and success [5]).
[1] https://www.truthorfiction.com/the-history-of-left-handednes...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greec...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
[5] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096920693/lgbtq-youth-though...
Looking at the Hijra example, it looks like the Hijra demographics are around 0.5-1% of the population.
In the latest polls [0], the proportion of Gen Z that identify as transgender is over 2%.
Is there repression/stigma in South Asia keeping some people in the closet? Is the culture difference having an effect on gender dysphoria? Is there a gender dysphoria "contagious" effect? I don't know, but those are interesting questions.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...
We don't live in the dark ages, almost all Western constitutions have some sort of "freedom of expression" on their books. Just let people live their lifes however they want to do it, as long as they don't harm anybody. Trans people or kissing gays on the street don't harm anyone but the feelings of some poor Conservatives who are secretly in the closet and envious about the freedom today's youth has.
Just look how many of the loud pearl clutching Conservatives turned out to be gay or adulterous. It's nothing but projection and pure envy.
In other words, there's a chance that some kids may not be "really" trans, but rather attention-seeking or mentally ill. And for those kids, transitioning would, in fact, be harmful in the long run.
Do we, as a society, have an obligation to prevent these children and young adults from harming themselves in this way?
I don't have a firm answer because it's a difficult and emotional subject, but I think it's extreme to pretend this is not an issue, and equally extreme to encourage kids for whom it might not be safe to transition.
Perhaps the informal controls we have in place prior to gender reassignment surgery are already adequate to filter out these vulnerable kids. Perhaps there are other interventions I'm not aware of that are already in use. But I don't see the harm in discussing and exploring whether there is a proportion of the trans population that is, in fact, suffering from social or mental illness and not actually a more innate form of gender dysphoria.
There is virtually only one, and that's puberty blockers, stuff that has been used for decades to treat precocious puberty. We know these medicines are safe and we also know that nature will run its course again all by itself after the medicines are left out.
Genital surgery, the second option, is extremely rare in people under 18, and most of it is done on inter-gender children shortly after birth which is a grave mistake anyway and some countries have banned that as a result [1].
And in any case: Puberty blockers are reversible - puberty itself is not. Some things (e.g. the growth of breast tissue) can be reversed but at a high cost, some like the vocal cords changing for hormonal males cannot be reversed at all. It is way, way better for trans children to not force them through puberty.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-lgbt-health-idUSK...
Canada included the question in their latest census. In my opinion, a mandatory government census provides data that is more accurate than Gallup's phone poll.
"In Canada, 0.2% of the population aged 18 and older was transgender in 2021. Belgium (0.5% among people aged 18 to 75 in 2021) and New Zealand (0.5% among people aged 18 and older in 2020) have also published representative survey-based data on their transgender populations."
"The proportions of transgender and non-binary people were three to seven times higher for Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2006, 0.79%) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996, 0.51%) than for Generation X (born between 1966 and 1980, 0.19%), baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965, 0.15%) and the Interwar and Greatest Generations (born in 1945 or earlier, 0.12%)."
"Other countries have published 2021 data on transgender people using crowdsourcing and non-representative surveys, including Ireland (0.6% among people aged 18 and older), England and Wales (0.6% among people aged 16 and older), and the United States (0.8% among people aged 18 and older)."
Because we can't. And trust me, I have tried. Trans people are neither "over represented" nor a contagion.
And it's not about "hate speech"; it's about stopping the spread of lies and extremist propaganda. The lie that "being trans is a choice" is just one little moving part in the massive machinery of oppressing, persecuting and killing trans people. You don't need actual hate speech to cause harm.
Are there actual people who "learned" to have something Tourette's-like? Yes.
If you don't distinguish between the two, then Tourette's is absolutely overrepresented.
Denying that this can be the case for gender dysmorphia is neither reasoned nor logical and can absolutely lead to harm.
There has to be a way to respect and help people without turning off our brains.
Let's start with the assumption that people can and do learn to "want" to be a particular gender. I am not an anthropologist, but I feel like this is a pretty uncontroversial take, and is the mechanism for how cis-gendered people learn to follow the gender norms of the culture they find themselves in. This is the key difference between gender and sex. Gender norms seem to be a cultural universal, but the form those norms take is dependent on time and place.
What this means is that in any society there are two sets of behavioral norms, one for perceived men, and one for perceived women. If a person in this society has a strong preference about which set of norms they prefer, and if the set of norms they prefer doesn't line up with their sex, you have the potential for that person to identify with the other gender. The term "transgender" is new, but behaviors associated with the term go back as far as you care to look.
So you have this potential tension where a person might prefer the gender norms of the other sex, but you also have the fact that questioning norms of any kind in a society is always somewhat taboo. A few very dedicated people would live their lives as the other gender. Many more probably would have liked to if they were aware that it was an option, but were not (in other words, even questioning a social norm can be difficult if there isn't already public discussion about it).
So if the sudden perceived increase in trans people seems like a sociogenic disease to you, I can see how you might think that. I can also see how hurtful it is to many people to frame it in those terms. If we take a closer look at the linked paper, they hypothesize that one of the drivers of the tourettes-like disease is attention seeking behavior. Are there people who decide to transition ultimately because they believe they will get more attention? I'm sure some do. But thinking that is the motivation for most trans people is a very hurtful overgeneralization and is unhelpful because it is just wrong. The trans people that I am personally acquainted with don't want more attention. They want less of it. If you even glance at common discussion topics in trans discussion forums, you will see that there is a lot of discussion about "passing". Passing doesn't seem like attention-seeking behavior to me, it seems like the exact opposite.
Does social media have no role to play in explaining the increase in people who identify as trans? It probably does have some role there. But its only accelerating and amplifying trends that already existed. LGBT+ issues in general have been getting less and less taboo to talk about for the last several decades. The internet and communications technology more generally is exposing people to more cultures and norms. My hypothesis is that there were many preexisting people who were unsatisfied with the gender roles that they were expected to fulfill, and that growing acceptance and discussion of LGBT+ issues made them realize that there was no reason to keep putting up with them anymore.
Did you really think this was going to be downvoted on Hacker News of all places?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_c...
Can you explain what it means for an illness to be "statistically over-represented"?
I can parse it several ways, but not so it makes sense. E.g.
- Gender dysphoria is more common than influenza
- Gender dysphoria is more common in human societies than in gendered alien communities
- Gender dysphoria is discussed by a greater proportion of Youtube posters than you'd expect from it's rate in the population
I'm guessing you mean the last; but I have no idea how mmuch it's discussed on Youtube, and I doubt there are reliable figures for its occurrence in the population.
Surround yourself with positive, talented people to keep your mind clean.
Hell even vogue and trash mags call out 'energy vampires' (lol) but it's all the same thing.
I legit decided to not listen to gangster rap in the 90s because a dude said to me 'that shit will warp your mind ' but I realized all music and influences do that.
So books it was...god I was a nerd!
I cut the cord on much of it early on, mostly because the value was terrible (aka music industry in the 90s was just bad value).
Now it's the odd anime that had a deep story that pulls me in...and lectures..Holy fug I love watching smart people talk :)
What I'm pointing out is that OPs moralizing on good media "Anime, Books" vs bad media "Rap, Trash Magazines" is likely focusing on the wrong things. A person's friends are ultimately what matter in prioritizing values (as far as values can be shaped by environment).
But the claim about "gangster rap" (a term I don't like) was "that shit will warp your mind." is false. Moreover, Anime has tons of content that's way darker than anything you'll find in rap. But again, I don't think it really matters.
24 hour news is worse for this than gangster rap and turned off both so the same reason, I didn't like the messaging coming from it. NWO and Ghetto boys pushed me out of the genre, that doesn't the music is bad just something I choose to not engage with based off their content.
You got super defensive over what should be obvious, the content and people you engage with will define your character.