Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, February 17, 2023
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101 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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From yesterday’s open forum and the discussion about HIPAA, Monala said this:
This is a real concern in clinical research. I had colleagues that studied diabetes and obesity and it could cause certain potentially valuable data to be left out. For example, a county by county study of morbid obesity couldn’t include enough information about patients in the smaller counties to identify them. So if Patient X weighed 623 pounds and was a baker in a rural Montana county, that could be enough to identify them as a specific individual. (I imagine that for certain rare diseases it makes it very difficult to share comprehensive data.) So the requirement to deidentify is not limited to substituting for a patients name. HIPAA requires that an individual patient cannot be identified by the combination of information you provide.
@MarkedMan: Yep. If I’m remembering correctly, New Hampshire stopped reporting town-by-town deaths from Covid for this reason. It was way too easy in a town of 200 people reporting 3 deaths to figure out “oh yeah, that was Bob, Jane, and Frank” and people would post this stuff in the comments section of news articles and POOF, privacy gone.
@MarkedMan: The reason my colleagues and I were discussing de-identification with respect to obesity and diabetes research is kind of interesting. Since no one knows why we are experiencing an epidemic of obesity and the serious health problems associated with it, there are all kinds of areas to explore. At least one researcher was trying to determine if obesity and diabetes “spread” in the way a communicable disease might, which could indicate it is bacterial or viral* in nature. The researcher had some intriguing results that seemed to indicate obesity traveled up through valleys in much the same way measles or the flu does, albeit much slower. But the poor medical records available (“obesity” is not a reportable disease, or it least it wasn’t when the epidemic started) coupled with the sparse population of the valleys that were most likely to show the result made it very hard to get useful data, because de-identifying people in such areas meant being less specific about their locations.
*Yes, that’s a real possibility. Stomach ulcers, which used to be hella common and associated with lifestyle choices and “modern living” turned out to be predominantly caused by a specific bacteria and easily treated
@MarkedMan:
I’ve read the microbiome, in particular the bacteria in the gut, might influence or even control food cravings, and even hunger in some cases.
I’ve not heard anything about infectious bacteria doing the same.
San Antonio’s John Hagee prays over Republican Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign kickoff
Rev Hagee is the senior pastor (and multi-millionaire) of Cornerstone Church, a megachurch (17K membership) here in San Antonio. The fact that he endorsed Haley rather than Trump or Pence can be important to the evangelical crowd. Especially Pence, as he has spoken at the church a number of times. Hagee is known for being a very outspoken supporter of Israel (of course, all the Jews are going to Hell for not accepting Jesus as their Savior). This could be an important signifier for that crowd. We shall see.
Putting this out here with no comment, as I know nothing about this topic:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/nytimes-letter-trans-gender-youth-accountability.html
Probably paywalled so I excerpt a bit:
The opening paragraphs, there is more.
Reading on, maybe I should toss out a bit more:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/nytimes-letter-trans-gender-youth-accountability.html
RIP Tim McCarver.
I don’t follow baseball, but I know guys like McCarver are one of the best things about baseball.
As Barnacle said;
RIP fine man.
@charon:
Background:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html
https://nytletter.com/
That was an update, the original letter very very long.
@charon:
Also these:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/detransition-transgender-nonbinary-gender-affirming-care/672745/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/
@Scott:
Hagee is very extreme and IMO very antisemitic.
IIRC, he is also a believer in death penalty for being gay.
@charon: Yeah, plus he’s an end times preacher who thinks everything is leading the way to destruction which, in his mind, would not be a bad outcome.
@charon:
Further context
@MarkedMan: Again, yep. Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes are increasing, and for a long time it was assumed that type 2 was simply a lifestyle disease (we’ve known for a very long time that type 1 is an autoimmune disease), but there are increasing signs that type 2 might be inherited and/or be caused by some imbalances in gut microbiome.
@Kathy: As with all science, we don’t know what we haven’t learned yet. Regarding bacteria, there’s some speculation that overuse of antibiotics might wipe out the good bacteria in the biome, and limited diets are unable to repopulate the balance, which leads to hormonal imbalances that can affect weight. All speculative right now. Viral illnesses have long been thought to trigger type 1 diabetes, and this link is now being looked at as a possible cause for type 2 as well.
It will be hard to tease all of this out, but worth it in the end if we can figure it out.
@charon: There is a similar controversy at BJC hospital in STL. All the GOP busybodies in Jeff City are jumping all over it. My first thought was to wonder who the whistleblower is and what her motives. She says she got the job so she could help trans kids.
Yeah. Right. And just exactly what does she think is helping these kids?
Choice of lawyers for whistleblower at St. Louis transgender clinic taints her motive, critics say
One is judged by the company one keeps.
Another R
fabulistliar.Businessman, economist, cop, international sex crimes expert? The stories of Congressman Andy Ogles
What is it with these people?
One big problem with the coverage of trans care is that they go through the specifics of medicine and give the impression that there’s an issue specific to trans care worth focusing on. The Bazelon piece read in good faith gets to the bottom of what—that there are side effects to drugs?That there is uncertainty about the future? How is that different from any other treatment?
The other big problem is that very few trans people seem to have problems with the care they are receiving. The detrans rate is around 2%., for example, and outside of implausible ‘they gave hormones to a minor who asked for directions’ stories there aren’t scandals. I mean, Tavistock closed in England, but the NHS is opening two new regional care centers to provide trans care.
It’s just hard not to see the coverage as a replay of endless ‘objective’ pieces on the Homosexual Situation in America feeding into the hysteria of philistines which then feeds back into the ‘objective’ takes, and with the same dupes falling for the scam.
@Scott:
Nikki probably trying to appear “moderate” to the uninformed while signaling the Christian Nationalists she will give them a blank check, whatever they want.
@Modulo Myself:
@OzarkHillbilly:
It could be that gender dysphoria is being massively overdiagnosed at the same time that Republican bigots are seizing on pretexts for abusive legislation.
@Modulo Myself:
The other key tell for all the people constantly concern trolling trans healthcare is that their proposed solution is never to fund research or to change policies to improve the care, but instead to suggest that all trans care should be banned and trans people forced to de-transition.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Right. Guilt by association, very logical.
@Stormy Dragon:
Total strawman, very much not the links I posted.
Totally not what was in the NYT etc. links I put up.
@charon:
“Gender dysphoria” is increasingly not considered a valid diagnosis to begin with. The preferred model now is “gender incongruence”. And the change is precisely to stop cis people from gatekeeping trans people by wanting to sit around debating whether a particular person has suffered enough to deserve care.
Which is really what all this hand-wringing about trans healthcare is really about. There’s a large number of cis people who think they deserve some sort of veto power over trans people’s life decisions. They think trans people can’t possibly be the best judge of who they are and require a jury of cis people to decide for them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html?unlocked_article_code=cSISBt_mHToNDtS_MnzIDoe8KNgqcgsmJNZHZPp6LgLqN4_vx1UgwwUlSV-XinYSbm1PpAsYiT2TN4dZtpsLV1xZS9QVoem4-HHB9OK7pa-IDZrQxsbC11ff8NBRVLO3M_nMglBWRDUkWOzztM5t7rXNFndn6Xst_S4Bzi5pC_rgiKBWe6IN1v6Wq1I1Vvv3I5cSPdibMuyEEJy_7RPXZU27ZaQ5BDnAJbVdAQBEixPRTTOGkMwts4VfqceijXXh-WbfEvU-ZQCTztvv3bDzLqhYEP_efb2__NoLkI_du7mpf8wxRSOIxQbVS9KBb7KDmVWem47yNkHI&smid=url-share
Gift link (I think), if it works gets you all past the NYT paywall.
@charon:
Then they should write stories about it being over-diagnosed. Instead, the Times gives us stories about some putrid parents who aren’t trusted by their kids and the ‘quandry’ of what to do.
And I suspect that it’s not, because what is the mechanism for over-diagnosing it except politics trumping medicine. And despite what people want to believe about ‘activists’ it just ain’t true. The people who believe this are basically Rod Dreher.
Also, despite the fact that the Times treated this letter as if it were a bomb, I’m guessing they’re going to back off in a subtle way. You have to be pretty unsophisticated to believe most of these scare tactics, and nobody who works for the Times wants to be considered that.
@Stormy Dragon:
We are talking past each other, this is getting kind of pointless.
Today’s GOP and their voters. Birds of a feather and all that. If you want to tell me that somebody who voted for Ken Paxton can be a good person about all I can say is good for what? Because as far as I am concerned, they are a POS.
I can a lot of you have your narratives set, do not want to be confused by any alternate realities. My guess, IMO, not just righties have their epistemic bubble.
So time for me to bail, this is just getting tedious.
@charon:
I’m not interested in playing another round of the “I’m just asking questions” game, particularly with a side Jordan Peterson style “you’re not allowed to respond to me until you’ve finished my reading list”.
I don’t care what particular flavor of both-sidsing the NYT decided to serve up today. The paper’s entire approach to the subject is fundamentally flawed. The details of how those flaws showed up in particular articles is irrelevant.
@charon:
Yeah, yeah–maybe just tell the truth and say you’re a bit prejudiced against people who are different rather than blathering about epistemic bubbles and then pretending to be tired of this tedious conversation. It would be better for everyone, including you.
@Stormy Dragon:
To be honest, I think the professional trolls have turned themselves into such pariahs that they’ve become the real victims and not trans kids and adults who are going to have their care banned in whatever idiot state we are talking about. This victimization flows downriver. It’s like cocaine for a certain person and becomes the real point of everything.
@charon: No True Scotsman variation? All objective researchers come up with results I want to hear. If a researcher does not, then they are not objective researchers and therefore their research is wrong.
@Modulo Myself:
You are demonstrating my take. Your opinion has in common with assholes, it stinks.
@MarkedMan:
So mumbo-jumbo, sounding all erudite and sophisticated.
@MarkedMan:
Then point me to a study indicating that current care for gender dysphoria is not working.
The NYT had an article about a study showing 94% of kids receiving care after years still identifying with their new gender, and they suggested, somehow, that it was possible that this might be due to pressure to conform and not the care actually working. No evidence, of course. Just an intuition.
@MarkedMan:
Data Re-identification
One disturbing figure is that birthdate, gender, and five-digiti zipcode is enough information to uniquely identify 87% of Americans
@Stormy Dragon:
It’s similar to how “anonymous” location data is rarely actually anonymous, because most people spend 2/3 of their time in two locations, one of which is their home and one of which is their work place, and once you pick those two out it’s usually quite easy to figure out who the person in question is.
@charon:
Thank you for the link. I’m reading through the original article now.
Maybe JAQing off in public should be frowned upon.
@charon:
I’d like to take issue with this, but without the ad hominem. A priori, I accept this as a possibility that should be considered. Trans people find this idea way too threatening, as it also is a pretext for gatekeeping (See @Beth’s remarks about the Harry Benjamin protocol in earlier discussions), but that’s not an issue for me, so I’m happy to discuss it.
First, where’s the evidence that this is happening? Not tales about how it was “politically incorrect” to do something else. Evidence of increasing detransition rate.
Second, how many people have you ever known to say things like, “I should be a girl” or “I thought I would grow a penis at puberty”, much less walk away from it a year later?
Now, people are, uh, all over the map, and there’s definitely a possibility that some might be mistaken or up to mischief. But I also know that dressing in drag is exhausting (I’ve done it a couple times for the sake of Halloween). It’s a huge relief to get those things back into concordance. If you doubt this try the experiment (even a thought experiment) of maintaining a gender presentation at odds with your internal sense of gender. See how that feels to you. It’s hard.
I know woman, a good friend, who is an accomplished scientist, and solid feminist. When I told her about my daughter’s transition, she was at first worried about telling her own kids, afraid that they might get the notion to transition or something. What I told her is one of the most important and foundational facts about trans people is that they don’t ever change their mind.
@Stormy Dragon:
And to be clear, this is not saying that gender incongruence doesn’t manifest as dysphoria in many trans people, just that the dysphoria itself is not a necessary part of the condition, but rather one of a number of ways people react to it.
@Jay L Gischer:
This is addressed in Bazelon’s original article. It’s not about detransitioning, however. The discussion is about pre-pubescent children who behave or identify as a different gender, and how a significant portion of them later realize that it was their sexuality that was the issue, not their gender. They go on to come out as homosexual or bi, but go back to identifying with the gender of their birth. To the young minds (the therapists are finding) “I like to play with trucks” = “I must be a boy” (about 2/3 of youth transitioning are AFAB transitioning to male).
Switching back after puberty is a very rare occurance.
From The Atlantic
Cue the No-True-Scotsman two step: Things are meaningful and important only if they happen to true believers. McWhorter is not a true believer. Lloyd mentioned McWhorter without immediately repudiating him, which indicates he is not a true believer. Therefore we can discount his experience, as it is not meaningful and important. And also, his background must be investigated until the age of twelve for any signs of former heresy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/villanova-professor-vincent-lloyd-anti-racism-conversation/673079/
@MarkedMan:
Posting linkies is good manners, lets people see the full context.
@MarkedMan:
It seems to me that McWhorter and Lloyd’s disagreement is more about descriptive terminology than about the subject under examination.
@Jay L Gischer: Since people have started to parse out statements on the topic, I will weigh in to note that gender dysphoria is probably a small enough category that the suggestion of “massive” misdiagnosis can possibly be both hyperbolic and agenda driven in some circles. The solution for the hyperbole factor is to identify the level at which one will stake their reputation on misdiagnosis (yeah, it will be a WAG, but most public space arguments hinge on them) and argue for that level counting as massive.
The agenda driven assumptions will never be found wanting among the fans of the agenda.
@just nutha:
You are right, “massive” was poor wording, and not in the source material.
@charon: As do you. As do we all.
@OzarkHillbilly:
What, in your opinion, is my narrative? Educate me.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I came across the NYmag/Intelligencer piece yesterday, which seemed pretty inconsistent with everything I have been reading on this topic – so I decided to check it out. So now you diagnose me as locked into some “narrative?” Whatever.
So, I’m specifically going to walk away from this today, but I will leave you all with this. Have a nice weekend:
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jonathan-chait-tavistock-and-the-truth
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/pamela-paul-doesnt-know-transphobia
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/nyt-calls-own-contributors-activists
https://defector.com/the-new-york-times-continues-to-make-its-priorities-clear
I expect I’ll regret bringing this up, but I see at Progress Pond Martin Longman agrees with Dr. Taylor on Carville and “white trash”.
However I don’t find Longman’s argument entirely consistent in that a big part of his argument is that Ds sound like a conversation in a faculty lounge. “White trash” is definitely not faculty lounge language. Carville may have been offensive, but he sure got right to the point.
I can readily see the point that it’s offensive language that should be eschewed (heh). But. Biden is making a distinction between MAGA extremists and regular Republicans. Now, I’m not convinced that’s an entirely valid distinction in fact, but politically it seems to be working. Carville’s “white trash” also serves to discriminate between the MAGA extremists and the supposed reasonable Rs. Or R leaning indies.
I fear D’s need to recognize that there is some portion of the population that is not persuadable. Marginalizing them may be a necessary price for getting more of the “educated suburban”, or whatever, R leaning independents. Whether “white trash” is offensive to the gettable R leaners or helps them see a distinction from the extremes is beyond me. Carville may be privy to polling or focus group results. Or not.
I’ll add that I thought the “white trash” post and thread were archetypical “woke”. Carville’s offense was real, but not a major problem. Dr. Taylor’s response was valid and reasoned, although IMHO perhaps a bit disproportionate. And then the whole thing just blew up in comments. Typical “woke” tempest in a teapot. (Please don’t take this as implying there have not been egregious offenses that drew appropriate “woke” outrage.)
@just nutha:
Just a note: The questions of overdiagnosis are coming from medical professionals who primarily, or exclusively, provide medical services to transgender people, or those looking to transition.
My reading of it is similar to the use of antibotics. None of the people directly involved are saying it’s wrong, they’re trying to gain solid data (in a field with too little at the moment) in an effort to make sure that they are providing the right type, degree, and timing of medical care.
This is experts in the field questioning why there has been such a significant change in numbers and decrease in age of onset (that’s not the right word, but I’m brain-farting on the correct one), and wondering if (and arguing about whether) they are doing what’s best for their patients.
I recommend reading Bazelon’s article that Charon linked to above. It’s long, but worth it.
=========
I’ll note that in my reading of the article, I find it well-written, even-handed*, pro-trans, and respectful.
* Discussing internal disagreements, not both-siderism or portraying anti-trans sentiment as anything except bad (“vitriol” is one of the adjectives used).
@Beth: I don’t know if you’ll be around long enough to see this, but I wrote this to you late yesterday on the open thread:
@charon: Educate yourself. I do not know you nearly well enough to say (and never will), but I know you are a human being and have never met one who didn’t have some set narratives. It’s part of the human condition. Thinking otherwise is delusional.
And yet, here you are, down in the mud, wrestling with the pigs. It would seem you enjoy it.
From The Onion:
It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible
@Beth:
There was a piece recently at Lawyers Guns and Money recently giving Pamela Paul a good fisking.
@charon:
I’m sure that 7th proud boy is a great guy. The first 6, complete racist shitheads, but the 7th? He might be fine. We should treat them all as individuals and not make judgements.
Fuck that.
Figure out a person’s likely bias by who they hang out with, and keep that in mind. If there is a likely bias, and the work supports that likely bias, check to see if someone lacking that bias can replicate it. At the very least, report the potential bias.
A lot of organizations — particularly The NY Times of late — haven’t been doing that. The NY Times is rather famous for its Cletus Safaris, and their reporting on trans issues has a similar whiff of Cletus.
@Mu Yixiao: I do not appear to have access to Bazelon’s article. But I feel I must ask, is this based on anecdotes, or, you know, data? Reporting frequently ignores data for anecdotes, because that’s what most people relate to.
It is not at all common for any human being, including a child, to think that they are in the wrong body, genderwise.
I don’t necessarily see any big reason to not take your time, when a 7-year-old is involved, for instance, and first concentrate on presentation – dress, hair and mannerisms. At the same time, the likely only medical intervention would be to put them on hormone blockers – not hormones, but blockers – which don’t really have much in the way of permanent effects. I’m not seeing what the harm is in aggressive intervention here is.
@Mu Yixiao: The medical regret rate of gender affirming care is about 1-2%.
The medical regret rate of knee replacements is reported as 10-20% by various sources.
One is a moral panic, the other is a thing that is barely discussed. I’ll tell you this though — if the Good Lord Above wanted these people to walk without pain he wouldn’t have crippled the fuckers. We’re working against God Almighty here.
At the rates of reported medical regret for transition, we are likely leaving far more people in regret of not having medical intervention than regretting having medical intervention.
Wow, this link that Beth dropped is really good:
And, I would add, constitutes direct evidence of the credibility of their desire to transition. They have endured significant wait times without wavering. That seems pretty significant to me.
@Gustopher:
And of the infitesimally small amount of people who regret their transition, the vast majority state they regret their transition due to the lack of support they get afterward.
They aren’t regretting confirming their gender, they are regretting the hate thrown at them afterward.
@gVOR08:
If there is not a difference between MAGA extremists and regular Republicans then we are well and truly fucked.
For the curious, a paywall bypass link to the Pamela Paul piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/opinion/jk-rowling-transphobia.html?unlocked_article_code=oM1zvxdJfZdAeKA7KSPPjN74GYHCKcbZJNr2Nhm5XFICXwztFeDyHd8trQmNGtbg5KL0SkvwBTd2GasMyxMvCgC267szoUhLohUB-pgbObYYVQsy7dUTpT380b9qWJ9NaSYHGSidd5dVg2nJ_jBR7MMV0pR6TZZzMXH7TC4ps80uHyApSMs2YBIpLJY4NhBphQeUhhVgQLpiH2N_LFZ2mMU6Bb0hep3u4KDCEkNPYQzWRD1xPYcyjNMcGEYA6zjRMCACSU2LsYYzO9EEkQb-NgG9zkB_7SQPAJaQc9-VL2DGI86tGdonVjN1yTBCnc0o7a3ODaMedwUmpg2Rw9iKIA&smid=url-share
Paul is Bret Stephen’s ex.
And on a different, and I hope happier, note, congratulations to the Kelso High School cheer squad for placing 3rd at the state competition for cheer squads. A nice accomplishment for an area that ranks in the top 5 in the state for unemployment and poverty.
Those who wish to demean the idea of cheer competitions as the ultimate in white trashy irrelevance may begin. I’ll simply note that the school school across the river with the 2o Spirit Sticks* in their cheerleading trophy case didn’t do as well.
*To the degree that I understand this stuff (mostly from the other school’s trophy case) spirit sticks represent finishing at the top in the end of camp competitions that some schools send their squads to for summer training and conditioning prior to football season. (A guy from my high school a couple of years after I graduated became good enough to be hired to the staff of a national cheerleading camp as a cheerleading professional. No, I didn’t realize that there was such a thing either but have to assume that the existence of summer camps would create the need.)
@Neil Hudelson:
Apples and oranges. You are talking about people who transitioned as adults.
Now there is a lot of transitioning as teenagers, and the numbers transitioning is much larger.
@Gustopher: right. There’s a difference between the company you choose to keep (friends, ideological comrades), and those that you are associated with by birth or circumstance (family, neighbors, coworkers). If enough of the former are bigots and terrible people, it’s not surprising that others may assume you are as well.
I thought I heard someone saying that they were going to leave the conversation. I was hoping that would mean that the quarrel about data points and personalities on both sides of the issue would diminish. I guess I was wrong of both points. 🙁
@just nutha: For what it’s worth, the film “Bring it On” completely changed my mind about the whole cheer ecosystem. I presume you refer to Kelso, WA, and the river in question is the Cowlitz River? I’m from WA, but haven’t ever spent much time in that area.
@Gustopher:
Since the MAGAS seem to regard all Republicans NOT surnamed Trump, Greene, Gaetz, Gosar, Lake, Boebert, or Gibbs as loathsome Communist socialist globalist RINOs, Biden may have a point.
Not that I think this will break through today’s angry sh*tposting, and attempts to reply to same, but, IMO, this indicates increasing desperation.
Alabama is considering using nitrogen for executions.
Nitrogen is funny. Single nitrogen atoms will react with just about anything, including other nitrogen atoms (par for the course for gasses, actually). As an N2 molecule, however, it becomes nearly inert. So much so, you can use it to put out fires.
About 3/4 of the air you breathe is molecular nitrogen, N2, and it does absolutely nothing while in the lungs. So what Alabama is proposing is asphyxia, done by removing oxygen and replacing it with more nitrogen (the rest of the air is argon, an inert noble gas, water vapor, and CO2).
Then there’s this:
That is so not true. Most depressurization events cause no damage at all. Explosive decompression, which is very rare, doesn’t knock you out at once, either. You’d get plenty of air, but too little oxygen to breathe, so you’ll feel like you’re choking to death; which is exactly what would be going on.
What does happen also rarely on aircraft is a slow leak combined with malfunctioning or improperly set sensors or equipment. In such cases, like the accident that killed Payne Stewart, people don’t notice anything amiss, and the drop in oxygen pressure is so gradual they lose consciousness.
You could mimic such a condition, say by injecting air with a gradually lower concentration of oxygen, or by strapping a mask to the person to be murdered and doing the same.
There’s no humane way to kill someone.
@Mu Yixiao:
Clinicians have to explore this for due diligence purposes. We need the data.
I suspect we who labor in the psychological fields will find the increase in trans kids (note: this is still very few kids) is happening for similar reasons the number of kids identifying as left-handed exploded exponentially post-WW2…after John Dewey and his acolytes persuaded schools to end compulsory right-handedness and parents to stop punishing, pathologizing, shaming, and spanking kids for using their left hands.
@Mu Yixiao: It’s a reality that clinical best practices change in fits and starts, and it is frustrating for patients and providers alike. Unfortunately, there are good reasons for this. Clinicians/Patients really want to do the best thing but can get excited by a single new unreplicated study or a series of small-n poorly conducted ones because they match with their theories or what they want to hear. Sometimes it pans out and sometimes it evaporates under more studies and sometimes it results in disaster.
Clinicians who trust a standard-of-care that has resulted in very small numbers of bad outcomes are justified in questioning what will happen when that is set aside and suddenly the treatment is being applied to an order of magnitude more people. It doesn’t help anyone when patients and some media start attacking them simply for trying to understand things more deeply.
Interesting from Ukraine.
BBC Monitoring report: Ukraine says energy situation improving.
No energy deficit in the grid. The trolleybuses are running again in Kyiv.
And this also means Ukrainian industry is probably running flat out again.
Some people seem to think that Ukraine relies exclusively on imported war materiel, ignoring the fact that it’s a major modern industrial economy in its own right.
For instance artillery shells.
Probably not on the scale of Russia, or NATO producers, or anywhere near enough to feed the usage on its own. But probably not trivial either.
And especially useful as there are signs that Russian artillery fire is dropping off.
@gVOR08:
Having escaped from growing up in exurban Georgia, I definitely want to be considered elite — am I off the hook as an unapologetic bourgeois snob?
What’s funny about that whole debate is that the people who get called “white trash” are the white people mostly likely to use the term and least offended by it. But it’s not for me to tell white folk what and what not to call each other.
@Kathy:
What about voluntary euhanasia? Is that cruel and inhumane if the euthanized individual wants it?
I’m not being contentious. Just curious.
@Kathy:
I was in an altitude chamber in air force training, we all took our masks off at simulated 25,000 altitude. One trainee was chosen to do that at 30,000 feet simulated, and asked to write something, while we watched the writing degenerate into a scribble.
It’s true, there is no pain, just gradual loss of consciousness.
It’s much like being drunk, alcohol works by inhibiting the brain’s ability to metabolize oxygen.
@Kathy:
People have died in petroleum storage tanks that were flooded with nitrogen, not noticing anything amiss.
@DK:
For my part, as a lower-middle class with an “altternative” sensibility when younger, I’m tending to dressing smarter as I age.
What can be passed off as “nonchalant cool” when a twenty-something, gets perceived more as “scruffy old sod” if you’re on the wrong side of fifty.
🙁
@charon: 80% of trans youth consider suicide and 40% attempt it. (A quick google is not showing success rates)
Suicidal ideation is cut by about half post transition, according to recent reputable studies in JAMA.
(You can find lower numbers in older studies, but be wary that changes in society may have a pretty large effect. Heritage Foundation reports imply a twenty fold increase in suicides post transition, which is clearly bullshit.)
Any discussion of the risks of teenagers having access to gender affirming care that doesn’t include the risk of suicide is just not a serious discussion.
To quote the guidance counselor in the movie Heathers: “whether or not to kill yourself is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.”
Further, if the motivation is to “save the children” why is there a focus on these children, who are a tiny percentage of children?
Things are going very wrong for kids in general. (The headline and link for this WaPo article about the CDC report focuses on girls, but the boys are almost as fucked up)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/13/teen-girls-violence-trauma-pandemic-cdc/
The numbers of kids affected are far higher, and more kids can be helped by addressing the underlying problems in the larger crisis.
This is a bit of whataboutism, and I don’t expect you to answer for every problem kids have before your pet cause, but I would ask that you ponder why it is your pet cause.
Is it because the media you consume is doing a poor job of putting things into proportion? Are they manipulating you for their own agenda?
Even if everything they said and everything you fear about trans kids was true, the numbers are tiny compared to other problems kids face and the harm being done.
@Kathy:
That’s obviously not true.
Inject them with enough morphine that they are high as a kite and don’t even notice. Also cheap and easy. More humane than most natural ways of dying.
I think you mean that state sanctioned killing is abhorrent.
Particularly when the state wants to make sure the person suffers as much as legally allowed as they die.
@JohnSF:
If a trolley is heading towards 3 Ukrainians, but you can flip a switch so it will head down a different track where it will kill 5 Russian invaders…
I know that by my age, this sh!t shouldn’t surprise me, but how TF does this happen in the US??
Food Safety Company Employed More Than 100 Children, Labor Officials Say
Packers Sanitation Services Inc. paid a $1.5 million penalty this week for employing children as young as 13 in dangerous jobs at meat-processing plants.
W.T.A.F.
@CSK:
@Gustopher:
I should have said there’s no way to executes someone humanely.
And I’d just as soon not get into a discussion on euthanasia.
@Gustopher:
Perhaps first tell me what you believe my pet cause is.
I am just an elderly octogenarian who lives alone and have been a widower since 2005. I really don’t socialize, as I am extremely socially awkward, my brain just does not function well at reading people or relating to people.
Bottom line, I do not personally know a single person that I am aware of being any type of LGBTQA+. I have no religious hangups as I do not find magical supernatural entities credible, I sure as hell don’t care what some cranks write in New Testament epistles.
So, please, what is your idea of my hypothetical agenda?
@charon: it’s at least your pet cause du jour.
@Jen: The little fingers are the best at picking out bits of gristle wedged between sharp gears.
@Gustopher:
People have died from Hydrogen Sulfide poisoning and not being aware they were in any danger. The stuff smalls really bad at low concentrations, like rotten eggs, but at lethal concentrations it kills the sense of smell and becomes odorless.
@Gustopher:
Probable response of some Ukrainians I know: “Then you pack the trolleybus with C4 and try to kill 50 of the bastards.”
Quite a few Ukrainians seem to have developed a considerable antipathy toward Russian soldiers, for some reason.
I have followed the whole trans and J. K. Rowling saga for a while now. I am a cisgender woman, with a cisgender teenage daughter who attends a large public high school in a liberal area of the country.
I have to say, some of the things that are claimed by folks who are “just asking questions” about trans issues seem to be beyond what I see happening. My daughter has two friends that came out as trans in high school. That did not lead to others in their friend groups suddenly declaring themselves as trans. Also, since my daughter has known these kids for years, I know that those two kids are happier and more confident than they were prior to the transition. Because they’re in high school, they’ve already gone through puberty, and although I don’t know for sure, I doubt that they’ve had any sort of surgery or even hormones. They just seem to socially transitioned. And from what my daughter tells me, their parents aren’t very supportive.
So this whole thing about people pressuring kids to declare themselves trans, or parents or teachers rushing them to a gender clinic as soon as they say anything like that, doesn’t seem to be what I see happening from my viewpoint.
About JK Rowling— the saga played out like this: a few years ago, she liked the tweet of an anti-trans activist. When people criticized her, she said she liked the tweet by mistake. Many people gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Then in 2020, she wrote a tweet mocking an article that referred to “people who menstruate.” She insisted that they should’ve called him women. But the article was about the challenges for people who menstruate during the pandemic lockdowns, including access to menstrual products, and for some parts of the world, access to clean water for hygiene. The article was not relevant to all women, since all women do not menstruate, and it was very relevant to some people who do menstruate but are not women, including girls, who may be as young as nine or 10, and trans men.
In response to the backlash that she received that Tweet, she wrote an essay in which she affirmed her support for trans people, and wrote that was really important to her was just making sure that women and children were protected.
Since that time, however, JKR has gotten considerably nastier in her anti-trans rhetoric, and it’s also started to associate with some of the worst misogynists and bigots on the right. So anyone defending her by only referring to that 2020 essay is really missing out on why people have come to feel strongly that JKR is trans phobic
@Monala:
There is a form of argument that I find particularly annoying that I refer to as “the dictionary fallacy” where someone will say “I do not believe X, I merely believe blah blah blah blah” where “blah blah blah blah” is basically a much longer definition of what “X” means (e.g. “I do not like eating vanilla ice cream, I am just particularly fond of frozen colloidal emulsions of cream, ice, sugar, and air that have been flavored with distillates of the planifolia orchid”), and then will treat this as proof that it is unfair to characterizing as believing in X.
Many transphobes until recently fell into this pattern, claiming to support trans people while being clearly hostile to any effort that would make it easier for trans people to obtain treatment or to function in society.
All that’s really changed now is a lot of them are dropping the pretense.
@Jay L Gischer: That would be correct. The more interesting thing about Kelso, though is that it spans the river in some places but not in others so there are places where Kelso and Longview share a boundary that is on a street, not mid-stream.
Finally, many of the arguments, don’t seem to be in good faith. For instance, there’s the often repeated claim that trans people are saying there’s no such thing as sex, or biology, or that folks like Rowling are being criticized for insisting that sex and biology are real.
That’s nonsense. No one that I know of in the trans community or among their allies is saying that sex and biology aren’t real. Rather, they are saying that it’s more complicated than a simple binary. There are many more combinations of sex chromosomes besides XX and XY, and no one knows how widespread they are, because there has never been any large scale sex chromosome typing of humanity. Scientists now believe that sexuality is formed from a combination of genes, hormones, and in utero environment. There’s no reason not to think that the same is true for sex and gender identity.
I do think that there aren’t easy answers for some of the concerns around trans women in sports or women’s prisons, but much is a rhetoric around it is not in good faith. In addition, they are probably assholes in the trans community just as there are in any community, and death threats against anyone should always be condemned.
Sorry for the typos above. I was rather heated and typing fast, and of course, the edit button is nowhere to be found when you need it.
What is happening here?
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1626628669476114432
https://twitter.com/UROCKlive1/status/1626664169683701760
@charon:
Clarifying text:
Strange movements
Current mood: Feeling cute and cuddly at another -30 this morning. Might go get in a bar fight just for the fun of it. Fireball? Hell yes, fireball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th4Czv1j3F8
@charon: Argon is an even more efficient killer than nitrogen.
I posted this link way upthread before getting around to reading it myself.
It’s very long but well worth a read, lots of perspective on this stuff. (And I now better understand why I got so viciously attacked as some sort of supposed bigoted anti-trans activist – lot of examples in the link of similar behavior).
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/
Tiny excerpts, there is way more.
snip