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First, let me say that I fully support one’s right to take steps that allow them to feel more comfortable in their own skin. I can’t pretend to understand everything transgender people are going through, but as a man who also identifies as bi, (something that took me 20 years to acknowledge) I could not be more supportive.
With that said, I worry about how far the pendulum has swung for issues like this. Too many topics now fall into this category that “if you’re not 100% embracing every aspect of the thing and throwing all other viewpoints away, you’re against that thing and should not be listened to”. This is wrong and dangerous.
It’s generally accepted that teenagers are not fully mature, and some activities are disallowed (drinking, smoking, driving, sex) until a certain age.
But for some reason, on this topic, people lose their minds.
I don’t know what the right answer is. But we need to be having more open conversations about these things, not censoring “dissenting” views altogether.
> But for some reason, on this topic, people lose their minds.
Not people. A section of the elites. Even with nearly a total propaganda war against the people, most people are not buying what they are selling. It's why they are so desperate to censor.
> I don’t know what the right answer is
Free speech. Buy the book if you can or donate it to the library. I know many libraries accept "banned books"/"persecuted authors" and even have "banned book" promotions. As far as I know, public libraries haven't gotten as flaky as news/big tech/etc.
> But we need to be having more open conversations about these things, not censoring “dissenting” views altogether.
Yeah, but you'd be banned from almost every social media platform if you try to have a discussion. All authoritarians love to ban "hate" speech - the chinese authoritarians, islamic fundamentalists, nazis, etc.
Haven’t read the book, but what procedure is she talking about? I thought the standard procedure was puberty blockers until people were old enough to make decisions.
Allowing children to present as whatever gender they wish seems pretty low risk unless we are talking about surgical interventions.
puberty blockers and other endocrine drugs have profound effects on a developing body. puberty isn't an even that the body likes to postpone, the biological clock continues to mark time even if you go to great effort to keep a different schedule.
Teenagers are heavily influenced by their peers. If there is legitimate data that shows that girls in peer groups are all deciding to transition together or even mostly deciding to regardless of the size of the group then I would think that would be an important topic to explore. The desire to transition was very rare as far as I understand.
I feel that teenagers and young adults like to explore subjects that are known taboos. It seems reasonable to me that for every good there is a bad so we have to decide as a society to what degree making transitioning mainstream should outweigh the number of individuals who are harmfully transitioning.
> The desire to transition was very rare as far as I understand.
The survival rate of openly transgender people was very low, too. As society has grown more accepting, the cost/benefit analysis changed. Saying that as somebody who lived in the closet for decades until that calculus became more favorable.
inb4 someone posts that actually this is good and fine because she has Bad Opinions™ — as if it weren't obvious to the point of being banal that controversial and/or unpopular opinions are the ones that get censored first and most vigorously
Odd to post about censorship now the big tech is fully own board with censoring views they don’t like.
why is it odd for people to criticize views that "big tech" holds?
There will be Nuremberg-like trials for doctors, guardians, and members of the establishment who have enabled this.
Even for completely apolitical checked-out "normies", enabling and in many cases encouraging minors to permanently alter their bodies with hormones and surgery is a bridge too far.