Wokeness Is Here to Stay – Slavoj ŽIžek
compactmag.com
compactmag.com
The recent controversy about the use of so-called puberty blockers concerns another aspect of this same complexity: The Tavistock clinic in London was ordered by higher authorities to restrict the use of puberty blockers that suppress hormones and in this way pause a child’s development of sex-based characteristics, such as breasts. Tavistock was administering these drugs to youngsters between 9 and 16 who appeared not to be able to choose their sexual identity.
But I don’t get how one can justify enabling a person to to switch their gender before the age of consent, or driving license, drinking or voting thresholds. I mean, at least you can stop drinking or voting if you don’t like it, and the age thresholds for those activities are a bit higher than the age of 9.
IF we didn’t impose gender before the age of consent, there’d be no reason for anyone to switch one before such an age.
OTOH, any logic that can justify the imposition can justify the change.
Puberty blockers are not, generally, irreversible (or even permanent-but-reversible, simply stopping taking them usually results in puberty), a fact widely recognized and documented in coverage of their use in delaying precocious puberty, long before ideological activists started attacking them based on a mix of anecdote and fiction because they were also used in treatment of trans kids.
The reality is that there are no long term studies on puberty blockers since in most used cases they are used as an intervention until the underlying medical condition can be resolved including in precocious puberty.
The fact that individuals can be on them for years or even a decade without any significant long term or permanent side effects also isn’t supported by evidence.
A successful HRT becomes much harder after puberty. On the other hand, performing HRT on children is plain unethical, for all the reasons discussed in the rest of this thread. (And btw something the trans community is advocating against - because forced sex reassignment had been standard practice for intersex children for decades. The trans community is demanding to end this practice.)
So to solve this, the idea was to artificially postpone puberty until the person is old enough that they can make a mature, informed decision about the subject.
Of course that logic has its own weak points - e.g. that puberty itself may play a major role in the person finding their identity. So postponing it until the person has settled into an identity would be sort of like trying to outrun your shadow. I'm not sure what the status of science in that regard is though.
The issue is with regards to false positives.
Parents have legal guardianship over children not because they 100% of the time know the correct decision, but as a compromise between children literally just coming into the world and knowing nothing, and not handing complete self autonomy over to the state.
This undersells how sinister underage hormone blockers are, because being a dinosaur is not a normal part of human development. identity confusion, especially during puberty, is normal for a significant percentage of people - millions.
Doctors administrating these blockers cross well past malpractice and into evil. If you are permanently altering children - the people we don't let buy cigarettes or alcohol, vote, or drive - without years of therapy first, you deserve jail time.
Sometimes for a laugh I'll replace the current moral panic word with a moral panic from an earlier age.
You don't say slurs and use someone's preferred pronouns out of politeness; 'woke' is about systemic or deeper issues. Maybe the woke crows has bad takes on these issues -- happy to debate each on their merits in other threads -- but it's disingenuous to couch it in terms of simple social graces.
This post reads like a rich white dude who was able to sidestep these deeper issues via a wink and a nod but without actually engaging with the core issues -- which is how these issues continue to persist. Keep getting your STEM salary and be nice.
Reminds me of Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, who wrote a lot about calming the self, being kind and non-judgemental to others, understanding that they might not be mad at you but at circumstances, etc etc. Meanwhile their entire system ran on institutional slavery and constant subjugation. Yeah they'd crucify people but those Senators sure were polite.
I'm glad it's here to stay.
They are safe drugs that have been used to delay puberty for reasons other than gender dysphoria, and are extremely well-established to be an effective intervention that greatly mitigates the extreme increase in suicidality in trans youth.
Why would it be frightening?
And in the process, you end up fueling right-wing idiocy. Because there are presently two working definitions of "woke."
Reasonable people have defined it as "a modern extreme naive liberalism" and that's fine.
But the right basically uses it as "whatever we disagree with," and often pretty much feels like the n-word.
And conflating these two is causing LOTS of problems.
I wouldn't call opposition to performing irreversible gender transition procedures on children "moral panic".
But the Overton Window shifted and no one really cares if the gays marry.
Trans people are even fewer than gay people and there may be a number of real, or kinda real, arguments to be had there, such as the wisdom of giving younger kids hormones, or if trans athletes should be allowed to participate in gendered sports leagues. They make a fantastic wedge issue, with the benefit that they're 0.3% of the population -- political footballs, with no chance of actually burning a voting block.
"They want to destroy us!"
No, fam, that's not quite what's happening here. None of them (with power) wake up thinking "trans people are a menace that must be stopped." Now, it may be just as bad - but to them you're just a useful pawn, which requires different tactics from "this is exactly like Nazi Germany."
..but again, the Right will happily use this tiny point to drive the wedge to say "TRANS IS BAD ALL THE TIME."
I have no doubt that folks on the right will exploit that, but I'd also argue that supporting irreversible transition procedures on children, often against the wishes of the parents, is not a tiny point as you callously put it. It's THE point.
(However, I do have therapists in my family, and they do have serious concerns that too many parents are encouraging their kids in this direction)
Personally I'd define woke as the toxic mixture of identity politics and cancel culture. Mark Fisher wrote about an embryonic kind of this in "exiting the vampire castle"
You can't do that with e.g. "liberalism" today.