Compared to the rest of the analysis, the "I don’t think children should make functionally permanent medical decisions until they are an adult" seems superficial and lacking to me. Because either choice (HRT or no-HRT) will be permanent. And in either case, the wrong choice has (potentially) extremely negative effects on the well-being of the patient. I also think you would not stand by that conclusion if a child had a necrotic limb that needs to be amputated. Since I also value genuine freedom quite a bit, that part just seems odd to me.
I mean, it’s a dogwhistle (intentional or not), but the main thing that *isn’t* permanent in the case of transgender children is *delaying* puberty (using hormone blockers).
That said, unlike with an abortion, which in many places a child can get without their parents’ permission (or even knowledge), gender-affirming healthcare (like treating a necrotic limb) almost invariably does involve the parents, so the idea that kids are doing this on their own does not meet the statistical reality.
(There are exceptional cases, of course, where kids get, say, gray-market puberty blockers—which, again, are not permanent!—but this is relatively uncommon among trans kids.)
I've given this essay some more thought, and I've reached the conclusion that what I find frustrating is how you seem to suggest that you're a sort of "voice in the wilderness", when in fact many of the ideas you express here are actually quite uncontroversial among the people you purport to criticize and have indeed been made many times over the decades by queer-identified people, usually with significantly less bile.
The idea that you are expressing an unpopular void of reason more than anything suggests an unfamiliarity with the source material outside of the bubbles of various online social networks, which, as you have described in the past, deliberately cultivate division for profit. And many aspects of the tone you adopt do, indeed, suggest closer familiarity with the rhetoric of "certain people" in the media and on the internet—whether or not you agree with them!
I started putting together a list of examples and references in my head, but I'm hesitant to dive into things because I don't want to flog you to death over this, and, well, your initial reaction before has left me legitimately apprehensive. So please let me know if you'd like me to drop a sort of abbreviated bibliography here; otherwise I shall not trouble you further.
> I don’t think children should make functionally permanent medical decisions until they are an adult and have more life experience building their capacity for critical reasoning
Sounds like a great argument for puberty blockers! (Going through puberty—whether “standard” or “non-standard”—definitely fits the definition of “functionally permanent”, and certainly less so than the relatively minor side effects of puberty blockers!)
If you're asking me to define "permanent," then you're arguing with me. The previous comment passive aggressively made an issue about the word "permanent." If that wasn't intentional, then perhaps consider thinking about why someone would interpret it passive aggressively. Anyways, why not assume it means what it means in the dictionary? If you read this post, you should know I am not "certain people."
My dude. My dude. “Irreversible” is a widely known dogwhistle, and shoving through a thesaurus doesn’t change that. Either you know you’re using a dogwhistle, and you’re playing dumb, or you don’t know you’re using a dogwhistle, and you’re a useful idiot.
In my original comment I was technically agreeing with you. Your response more than anything just reminds me why you don’t have any friends anymore. (You don’t take “yes” for an answer lol.)
Anyway, the reason I’m here is that you scraped my email address from back when I supported you on Patreon in literally 2018, which is to say I’m here because you sent me an unsolicited email, so it’s kind of rich for you to complain about the fact that I’m responding to literal spam after giving you the benefit of actually reading it.
This isn’t Twitter. This is my email inbox. If what you want is to pick fights with terminally online sickos, Twitter is the place for that, not your prelapsarian patrons’ email inboxes.
I'm not picking fights. You are commenting. I literally mean the dictionary definition of permanent, as in a thing that doesn't go back. I could say literally the exact same little Twitter spiel to you.
If it's spam send it to the spambox. I just looked and you liked the post, so I don't think that is the case. Just to clear the air here, I mean the actual, literal definition of permanent. As in the one that comes up in the dictionary. I am not talking about puberty blockers, I am talking about surgeries, which in most states require parental consent anyways. I think that is reasonable.
I actually came back here to make a note specifically going into how Substack is not Twitter. One of the defining features of Twitter is that one can amplify "dunking" on someone in order to marshal harassment in their direction. Substack comments lack this affordance, and, consequently, more or less, my only audience here is *you*.
I myself cannot "go back to Twitter" (from whence I came) because I do not actually use Twitter (or Facebook). I primarily use Discord, and I do semi-regularly run into people who make the similar mistake of projecting Twitter's affordances onto Discord, when Discord similarly lacks amplification and virality. The main effect of this difference is that, if someone on Discord tries to shout you down as if Discord were Twitter, you can, indeed, "post through it". On the Discord servers I frequent, anything I write will only ever be read by a number of people I can count on my hands, and old Discord messages become lost in time, like tears in rain...
Yes, there are other problems with Discord and Substack, but the lack of amplification and virality is, in my opinion, one of their greatest strengths. (And, to be clear, I read Substack blogs mostly via hand-curated RSS, because I am a dinosaur like that.)
I see you edited this comment (which doesn't ping my email like a new comment does).
The point I was making in my original comment is that puberty blockers serve precisely the purpose you are describing, namely delaying irreversible bodily changes until a patient reaches adulthood.
I honestly can't remember if I was trying to be clever and write some sort of "gotcha", but if you take what I'm saying at face value, yes, I am agreeing with you!
The odd thing, the point of contention, seems to be that, yes, "irreversible" is a dogwhistle used by people who do not mean it in an intellectually honest capacity. If one takes the concept of irreversibility at face value, puberty blockers serve the precise purpose of mitigating this risk.
As I understand it, yes, most states do require parental consent for most surgeries (of any type), though things become more complicated for teenagers old enough to become emancipated minors (which is its own legal bag of worms). However, the main exceptions to this rule are the increasing number of states which *overrule* parental consent and even criminalize parents consenting to an arbitrary subset of the surgeries available to children, and even beyond that, criminalizing non-invasive medical interventions, too!
Yes, I would agree that we can all RETVRN to our prepubescent selves. (Reject adulthood! Embrace the darkness of your mother’s womb!)
And I would also agree that I haven’t literally blocked you on Substack, yet. Giving someone a chance to demonstrate good faith? I would definitely agree that’s sus.
EDIT: I would also agree that, like you, I opened my Patreon creator console and exported a CSV of all my past patrons and sent them an email blast.
By the way, I was curious, so I googled it, and I'm less than four years younger than you.
So from one literally graying millennial to another, I wouldn't put too much stock into the significance of literal children flipping out online, since, to borrow a turn of phrase, they are not adults—or are barely adults—and they have not had that much life experience building their capacity for critical reasoning.)))
I know I'm hesitant to dump a bibliography on you, but the author Julia Serano has written extensively about her experience of the generation gap in transgender activism, in particular, yes, what she calls "the activist language merry-go-round" (which you can google along with her name if you want).
It's been over four years since I read _Custom Reality and You_, and I honestly haven't followed your work since I largely stopped following YouTube political commentary three or so years ago—woodworking videos being much less stressful and possibly even more politically impactful IRL lol—but FYI my secondhand impression is that in the intervening time you left one "validation gang" and joined another, brutal irony and all that. (Just so you know where I'm coming from.)
Compared to the rest of the analysis, the "I don’t think children should make functionally permanent medical decisions until they are an adult" seems superficial and lacking to me. Because either choice (HRT or no-HRT) will be permanent. And in either case, the wrong choice has (potentially) extremely negative effects on the well-being of the patient. I also think you would not stand by that conclusion if a child had a necrotic limb that needs to be amputated. Since I also value genuine freedom quite a bit, that part just seems odd to me.
Regarding these sorts of manufactuversies:
https://www.truthorfiction.com/anatomy-of-an-inauthentically-organized-campaign/
In general, treating manufactuversies like good-faith arguments just feeds the Spectacle.
I mean, it’s a dogwhistle (intentional or not), but the main thing that *isn’t* permanent in the case of transgender children is *delaying* puberty (using hormone blockers).
That said, unlike with an abortion, which in many places a child can get without their parents’ permission (or even knowledge), gender-affirming healthcare (like treating a necrotic limb) almost invariably does involve the parents, so the idea that kids are doing this on their own does not meet the statistical reality.
(There are exceptional cases, of course, where kids get, say, gray-market puberty blockers—which, again, are not permanent!—but this is relatively uncommon among trans kids.)
I've given this essay some more thought, and I've reached the conclusion that what I find frustrating is how you seem to suggest that you're a sort of "voice in the wilderness", when in fact many of the ideas you express here are actually quite uncontroversial among the people you purport to criticize and have indeed been made many times over the decades by queer-identified people, usually with significantly less bile.
The idea that you are expressing an unpopular void of reason more than anything suggests an unfamiliarity with the source material outside of the bubbles of various online social networks, which, as you have described in the past, deliberately cultivate division for profit. And many aspects of the tone you adopt do, indeed, suggest closer familiarity with the rhetoric of "certain people" in the media and on the internet—whether or not you agree with them!
I started putting together a list of examples and references in my head, but I'm hesitant to dive into things because I don't want to flog you to death over this, and, well, your initial reaction before has left me legitimately apprehensive. So please let me know if you'd like me to drop a sort of abbreviated bibliography here; otherwise I shall not trouble you further.
I should clarify that I mean a literal bibliography, as in books. None of this cyber-interwebs bullshit lol.
> I don’t think children should make functionally permanent medical decisions until they are an adult and have more life experience building their capacity for critical reasoning
Sounds like a great argument for puberty blockers! (Going through puberty—whether “standard” or “non-standard”—definitely fits the definition of “functionally permanent”, and certainly less so than the relatively minor side effects of puberty blockers!)
It seems odd to me to argue with me then, because the word "permanent" has a meaning.
Am I arguing with you? That’s news to me!
Anyway, if “permanent” has a meaning other than the one that, *coughs*, certain people use online, perhaps you should explicitly define it?
And if this definition does not apply to puberty, perhaps you should explain how so?
If you're asking me to define "permanent," then you're arguing with me. The previous comment passive aggressively made an issue about the word "permanent." If that wasn't intentional, then perhaps consider thinking about why someone would interpret it passive aggressively. Anyways, why not assume it means what it means in the dictionary? If you read this post, you should know I am not "certain people."
My dude. My dude. “Irreversible” is a widely known dogwhistle, and shoving through a thesaurus doesn’t change that. Either you know you’re using a dogwhistle, and you’re playing dumb, or you don’t know you’re using a dogwhistle, and you’re a useful idiot.
In my original comment I was technically agreeing with you. Your response more than anything just reminds me why you don’t have any friends anymore. (You don’t take “yes” for an answer lol.)
Anyway, the reason I’m here is that you scraped my email address from back when I supported you on Patreon in literally 2018, which is to say I’m here because you sent me an unsolicited email, so it’s kind of rich for you to complain about the fact that I’m responding to literal spam after giving you the benefit of actually reading it.
This isn’t Twitter. This is my email inbox. If what you want is to pick fights with terminally online sickos, Twitter is the place for that, not your prelapsarian patrons’ email inboxes.
I'm not picking fights. You are commenting. I literally mean the dictionary definition of permanent, as in a thing that doesn't go back. I could say literally the exact same little Twitter spiel to you.
If it's spam send it to the spambox. I just looked and you liked the post, so I don't think that is the case. Just to clear the air here, I mean the actual, literal definition of permanent. As in the one that comes up in the dictionary. I am not talking about puberty blockers, I am talking about surgeries, which in most states require parental consent anyways. I think that is reasonable.
I actually came back here to make a note specifically going into how Substack is not Twitter. One of the defining features of Twitter is that one can amplify "dunking" on someone in order to marshal harassment in their direction. Substack comments lack this affordance, and, consequently, more or less, my only audience here is *you*.
I myself cannot "go back to Twitter" (from whence I came) because I do not actually use Twitter (or Facebook). I primarily use Discord, and I do semi-regularly run into people who make the similar mistake of projecting Twitter's affordances onto Discord, when Discord similarly lacks amplification and virality. The main effect of this difference is that, if someone on Discord tries to shout you down as if Discord were Twitter, you can, indeed, "post through it". On the Discord servers I frequent, anything I write will only ever be read by a number of people I can count on my hands, and old Discord messages become lost in time, like tears in rain...
Yes, there are other problems with Discord and Substack, but the lack of amplification and virality is, in my opinion, one of their greatest strengths. (And, to be clear, I read Substack blogs mostly via hand-curated RSS, because I am a dinosaur like that.)
I see you edited this comment (which doesn't ping my email like a new comment does).
The point I was making in my original comment is that puberty blockers serve precisely the purpose you are describing, namely delaying irreversible bodily changes until a patient reaches adulthood.
I honestly can't remember if I was trying to be clever and write some sort of "gotcha", but if you take what I'm saying at face value, yes, I am agreeing with you!
The odd thing, the point of contention, seems to be that, yes, "irreversible" is a dogwhistle used by people who do not mean it in an intellectually honest capacity. If one takes the concept of irreversibility at face value, puberty blockers serve the precise purpose of mitigating this risk.
As I understand it, yes, most states do require parental consent for most surgeries (of any type), though things become more complicated for teenagers old enough to become emancipated minors (which is its own legal bag of worms). However, the main exceptions to this rule are the increasing number of states which *overrule* parental consent and even criminalize parents consenting to an arbitrary subset of the surgeries available to children, and even beyond that, criminalizing non-invasive medical interventions, too!
(EDIT: accidentally pressed "post" too early...)
Yes, I would agree that we can all RETVRN to our prepubescent selves. (Reject adulthood! Embrace the darkness of your mother’s womb!)
And I would also agree that I haven’t literally blocked you on Substack, yet. Giving someone a chance to demonstrate good faith? I would definitely agree that’s sus.
EDIT: I would also agree that, like you, I opened my Patreon creator console and exported a CSV of all my past patrons and sent them an email blast.
By the way, I was curious, so I googled it, and I'm less than four years younger than you.
So from one literally graying millennial to another, I wouldn't put too much stock into the significance of literal children flipping out online, since, to borrow a turn of phrase, they are not adults—or are barely adults—and they have not had that much life experience building their capacity for critical reasoning.)))
I know I'm hesitant to dump a bibliography on you, but the author Julia Serano has written extensively about her experience of the generation gap in transgender activism, in particular, yes, what she calls "the activist language merry-go-round" (which you can google along with her name if you want).
It's been over four years since I read _Custom Reality and You_, and I honestly haven't followed your work since I largely stopped following YouTube political commentary three or so years ago—woodworking videos being much less stressful and possibly even more politically impactful IRL lol—but FYI my secondhand impression is that in the intervening time you left one "validation gang" and joined another, brutal irony and all that. (Just so you know where I'm coming from.)