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I too share your sentiments about the upcoming generation(s). The other thing I notice about them is that they're overall far more accepting about differences in race, sexual orientation, gender, etc.

I would broadly agree with your characterization, with a specific painful exception. In certain very left leaning American communities there is a guilt about or bias against cishet identities. The eager diagnosis of gender identity issues along with irreversible hormone and surgical treatments (great discussion from a former gender identity counselor in this Triggernometry interview [1]) constitute child abuse and medical malpractice in some instances.

I’m a happy cis adult male. I liked painting my nails a lot as a kid. I’m glad my parents just set me up with nail polish and ventilated area instead of bringing sexual identity into it.

[1] https://youtu.be/gbuGMbqjsSw

> I would broadly agree with your characterization, with a specific painful exception. In certain very left leaning American communities there is a guilt about or bias against cishet identities.

No matter what topic, I always hear this, but I never see it. Could you share a few examples?

> The eager diagnosis of gender identity issues along with irreversible hormone and surgical treatments (great discussion from a former gender identity counselor in this Triggernometry interview [1]) constitute child abuse and medical malpractice in some instances.

But let's not forget the other side: the banning of gender-affirming care with irreversible puberties also constitutes child abuse and medical malpractice in some instances. The question is: which happens more often? And I have yet to see any data suggesting that your description is applicable in more than a handful of cases.

>> bias against cishet identities.

> I always hear this, but I never see it. Could you share a few examples?

Jobs. There are too many white, asian, and Indian males in my company, we're told. So we have to hire others preferentially now to balance out our numbers. Yet if a white male identifies as a woman there's a space for them.

That sounds like an anti-"cishet" and racial bias.

"It is no news that women are underrepresented in the tech industry and even more so in open source. That’s why we are proud to announce the news of the first-ever all-women Open Source Program Office (OSPO). The Comcast OSPO is a geographically, culturally, and technically diverse team of members who identify as women, and who are accelerating in open source leadership, community, compliance, and security. This presentation will discuss the challenges women face in open source and the dynamics of an inclusive team."

Also like really shitty women's lib.

> the banning of gender-affirming care [...] constitutes child abuse and medical malpractice in some instances.

This is where the problem is; what's being banned, the stuff we're told never happens?

Nobody is trying to stop appropriate surgery for children with developmental sexual disorders. Generally the DSD (Intersex) community knows what's appropriate treatment (or appropriate lack of treatment in many cases) for their specific conditions.

The problem is happiness/depression issues being turned into surgical modifications.

> irreversible puberties [...]. The question is: which happens more often?

Puberty isn't child abuse. Pretending that there's an option to puberty is.

Dr Marci Bowers - a leading pediatric gender doctor and surgeon says that - “every single child who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2 has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it’s really about zero.”

> I have yet to see any data suggesting that [the eager diagnosis of gender identity] is applicable in more than a handful of cases.

Would you consider it proven if doctors routinely ignored pre-existing mental health issues such as autism, major trauma such as child sexual abuse and loss of a parent, and signs of existing issues such as "cutting", and anorexia.

How about if the child's initial gender-identity contact admits to homophobia being their reason to seek transition? Susie Green CEO of Mermaids, "Jack’s favorite outfits were the tutu and the snow-white costume [...] that was fine but not for Dad [...] the conclusion of the sort of years up until she was about two was that I had a very sensitive quite a feminine little boy who was probably gay but Jack’s dad did not approve of our child’s effeminate behavior [...] at six she asked when she could have the operation to make her really a girl".

We forget that children often asked to go to gay-conversion therapy, because they'd been brainwashed into thinking they were failed people with a horrible sinful condition that needed fixing. Jack Green was bullied into thinking that he had to make himself a girl if he wanted to choose his own interests. He "freely chose" to have cosmetic genital surgery to be allowed to be himself.

> Jobs. There are too many white, asian, and Indian males in my company, we're told. So we have to hire others preferentially now to balance out our numbers. Yet if a white male identifies as a woman there's a space for them.

Isn't it weird how this doesn't seem to be predicated on them being hetero? Could the bias you see have other reasons, given it's not purely predicated on sexual identity?

I don't see a reason to reply to the rest of your comment, given how you're starting with obvious fallacious rhetoric.

> Could the bias you see have other reasons, given it's not purely predicated on sexual identity?

It's cis-phobic and het-phobic. Cishet. That's partly sexuality and partly identity.

They were cishet men, they became lesbian transwomen, it's unclear what of that got them hired.

When you are in a privileged position, equality feels like suppression. I say this as a cishet guy myself.

The simple truth is: on average, people from social minorities are statistically significantly under-represented both in well-paying industries as well as in positions of power, which we see in the real world by the over-representation of people from outside these minorities. Can you explain to me how this split could be removed in a different way?

Or is your solution for those minorities to just suck it up and to accept they are forced to stay on the social bottom rungs?

Like the OP, I was also abused as a child. Both of my parents would verbally and physically abuse me. My mother would constantly yell at me and occasionally hit me. My father would verbally abuse me, beat me with a rolling pan, and sometimes my mother/sister when they stepped in between. We have plenty of broken bones and scarring between us. The beatings only stopped when I was old enough to physically fight back.

Video games and reading were my only solace, so I didn't exactly turn out normal. I'm a male who spends all day indoors, has trust issues, and never really embraced gender norms.

This experience builds a thick layer of skin, but it's still pretty shocking to see how easily parents are persuaded to obtain prescription medication and gender affirming surgery for their teenage kids. Sure, many of them may benefit from the medication/procedure. But for those who make a mistake with their gender transition, they will end up carrying more baggage than me.

> In certain very left leaning American communities there is a guilt about or bias against cishet identities.

This is true, but only for a veery tiny minority.

Unsubstantiated non-measurable opinions are not true in any valid sense. The words you are looking for are: "not even wrong" !

> In certain very left leaning American communities there is a guilt about or bias against cishet identities. The eager diagnosis of gender identity issues along with irreversible hormone and surgical treatments

That's certainly something that you can assert. Using hyperbolic and thought-terminating language - "child abuse" - in the following sentence is also something you can do, but I am not sure how useful that is, if you want others to get an accurate representation of reality.

> But I'm kind of glad to see so many of my friends being awesome parents, really caring for and listening to their kids.

Hmm, thats kind of reaching. Let the kids grow up and decide whether their parents were really up to snuff. Otherwise it is like wearing "I am awesome" T-shirt and then using it as proof that I am awesome.

I down voted at face value but how?

I agree, it sounds a lot like saying the majority of kids are above average. The Lake Wobegon effect of signalling.

Or maybe that's just my increased skepticism of throwaway accounts talking after LLMs became popular.

> My pet hypothesis is this will also why the current/next generation is much more open about sexuality / gender / identity, and I expect this to get only more nuanced as science understands more and as people learn to express more. But that's just something I cooked up. Anyone else feel this way?

I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it's something I hope, certainly.

At the same time I think a lot of people are stuck in cycles of abuse that they inherited, and which they themselves are going to pass down to the next generation. And I think to some extent this reflects the inhospitality of the societies we live in.

Anyways, I also wanted to say that I felt a lot of the same things you did reading this. Thank you for posting. I hope you will feel more peace as you get older.

Hey, OP here. I'm really touched that you read the entire piece. I poured a lot of myself into it, so thanks from the bottom of my heart.

I had a different problem with relationships. I opened up quickly enough, but my partners grew up with happy families and didn't understand the level of abuse I had experienced. I felt incredibly alone. If I didn't get extremely lucky and meet a partner who understood how deeply people could be abused, I probably would be single.

In my personal experience, my dad was trying his best but simply couldn't know better. When I think about the challenges he faced -- growing up in the aftermath of the WWII and the communist Revolution, his parents were poor, he immigrated to the US by himself practically penniless, being disdained by white people for being Asian -- I feel overwhelmed by how much he had on this plate. This being said, I am still mourning the happy family I did not grow up with.

I think the current/ next generation better understands that 1.) there is such a thing as trauma 2.) We can work through them so we don't keep harming ourselves and others. I am hopeful that more people can end the cycles of violence they grew up in.