The costs of trans visibility

So if 9 billion trans people receive treatment and severely improve their mental health/life at the result of one detransitioner, you’re saying you wouldn’t want anyone to get treated over that one person? That’s a moral atrocity to me.

If Crossnerd actually said this, quoted by Hole in Wan above -- I can't see the original post, which may have been deleted on highly advisable second thoughts -- then Crossnerd was factually incorrect and hasn't read Cass, or even the copious press comment on Cass.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/10/what-cass-review-says-about-surge-in-children-seeking-gender-services

the Guardian

What Cass review says about surge in children seeking gender services

https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-co...

See, for instance, Paragraphs 8.45, 8.46, 8.47, 8.48 and 8.49 on p.120 of the Final Report.

How many fingers of innocent children are you willing to cut to save people lives, if a causal effect existed about that?

If you even start counting them you have already lost it.

Utilitarianism is morally horrific and should never be the basis for policy *about people who can't choose for themselves*.

Minors in this case. Saving one non trans minor from unjustified body modifications is more important than treating a infinite number of actually trans minors early.

They can all be treater later.

Adults can make and should be allowed to make their own choices (not with my money though) assessing probabilities by themselves and paying the tradeoff costs themselves.

There were just over 8 billion humans on Earth at the last count, and trans identification is at a very low percentage.

He tried a reduction ad absurdum, doesn't work anyway.

There is no amount of good that justifies mutilating a minor body for no good reason for the minor himself.

He gets it if it's about torturing the 12y son of a known terrorist about the location of his dad, even if the dad hid a nuclear bomb.

He will in due time get it about everything, it generalizes.

You didn’t even ask for my normative theory and are just going off about utilitarianism. I’m not a utilitarian, I’m a threshold deontologist. My intuitions are that we should judge actions based on how they would be able to be universally applied as duties (categorical imperative).

However I think the normative ethics you’ve set up are absolutely absurd and frankly evil. Let’s say there’s an alien species that told you they would destroy all of planet earth including all life in it unless you cut off the finger of a child. Of course you absolutely should do it and anyone that wouldn’t has a moral system that is fundamentally bankrupt. At certain thresholds we definitely need to start considering what the consequences of actions would be or else we are setting up moral imperatives to obliterate civilizations in order to protect the rights of one individual. That’s patently absurd and I reject it.

No you shouldn't cut the finger in your scenario, but it requires you to reason beyond single game iterations and across all universes.

Your morals shouldn't allow you to be blackmailed.

You aren't going to pay only that finger in your case. This doesn't even require a denial of utilitarianism to be honest.

If you cut that finger you will do a lot more things under threat, and you will be worse off because of it.

And what if it is a test of morals by itself by approx omnipotent beings?

If some alien species with the capability of wiping us out appears, we shouldn't bulge in our morality, as it is far better to die with dignity than to live with infamy.

This is what believing in something means btw: whether you are willing to lose your life, and the lives of those you care about, defending it.

"gatekept", "controls", "extra scrutiny", "true trans" - I don't really get any of this rhetoric. I think we can and should be supportive and welcoming and inclusive and accepting of people. For the, uh "true trans" people, all these controls and gatekeeping and extra scrutiny sounds awful. And for the non "true trans", whatever this means, I don't think this helps, I think a really supportive environment where people can talk about how they are feeling and identifying without risk of all the gatekeeping is also going to be beneficial for someone who isn't sure, or who maybe thinks they are trans and tries it out for a bit and realizes it isn't for them. I don't know practically what you mean by any of this gatekeeping language, like how that practically works in the real world, but I don't think its helpful.

by checkraisdraw P

it's a fun anecdote but that's definitely something that would be heavily studied if real

also, under 90 iq is like 20% of the us population and the vast majority of most countries, ie philippines have an average iq of 81 and there's over 100 million people who live there

so no chance that's real and it simply exists because people like to think of themselves as smart and thus read that and be like "wow people are stupid"

It's 16% under 85 (if median is 100), one sigma is 15 points.

The above assessment at reasoning in the abstract works for IQ 100 median populations.

Yes IQ 75 doesn't mean the same if the population median is 100 or if it is 75.

But in general stupid people are far more stupid than normal or intelligent people realize unless they deal with them constantly. It's incredible how limited they are tbh

Sorry, which of these paragraphs says "social contagion" or "rapid onset gender dysphoria"?

I mean it’s pretty telling that you prefer billions to die including all non-human animal life over harming one child’s finger. Actually evil normative ethics.

refusing to act is not preferring the consequences. that's utilitarianism or consequentialism which I reject in full.

I just refuse to do some things no matter what.

I mean you acknowledge yourself these are very serious procedures. Gender affirming care is not a great approach because we’re pretending there isn’t serious physical and social consequences for being wrong about being trans. Idk what you want to call it when someone transitions and then develops gender dysphoria because they realize they actually prefer their natal body, but that seems at the very least that they were never trans in the first place. So that’s kind of what I mean by “true trans” where you transition, you benefit from transition, and it alleviates your gender dysphoria.

“Refusing to act” is a complete misunderstanding of deontology and is really just moral sloganeering. If you see a baby drowning in a puddle and don’t turn their body over to prevent them from drowning, you haven’t committed a morally neutral act.

Deontology is about the duties you have, and these can sometimes compel you to do certain things you don’t want to do even. For instance, the classic example of a murderer asking you where the person they want to murder is. Kant argued that you absolutely are compelled to tell the murderer because a lie by omission or silence is still a lie.

And situations like the one I outlined in my hypothetical should be very disturbing to you, the way I see it. If you have a situation where you have no mechanism to consider the consequences of your action in determining whether certain thresholds to act become reached, you can justify the murder of entire universes to prevent yourself from doing something else that you want to say “we should never do this!” to.

I mean I admire your commitment to it but I’m also hoping this is not the consensus people have.

I guess I'd advocate for there being zero social consequences for being wrong about being trans. I don't think you really explained what the gatekeeping and controls and extra scrutiny actually practically means, but those things sound antithetical to creating the kind of welcoming and inclusive environment where there is not social consequences one way or the other. I'd hope that parents and teachers and counsellors and everybody else in a young person's social network aren't approaching this through a lens of gatekeeping, but through a lens of supporting young people.

I mean if you think you’re trans, end up getting a neovagina, and then realize you made a mistake, that’s going to have social consequences. Or you end up taking testosterone because you think you’re a trans man and then end up wanting to be a girl again, let alone a double masectomy.

The social consequences aren’t always in the form of social stigma but the fact that human bodies are highly social and presentation is a huge aspect of being a human. Totally agree on destigmatizing detransitioning and nonmedical gender experimentation though. As long as they aren’t setting themselves up as spokespeople for trans people anyway.

Ok. Is this the kind of scenario you are imagining gatekeeping and controlling? Because youth getting bottom surgeries is incredibly rare and sure I’d presume doctors working on those extremes already are plenty gate-keepy. From your earlier posts, it sounded like instead you were worried about a far less extreme but far more common scenario of people experimenting with social transition despite not being “true trans”, to adopt your language. It’s the latter case where Id advocate using a lens of supporting and including people as opposed to a lens of controlling and gate keeping them that is going to be counterproductive for probably just about everyone.

Well in those scenarios I’m saying that we should allow them to experiment and shrug our shoulders as society, but we shouldn’t compel people to use their pronouns and treat them on the same level as people that medically transition. What we are talking about in this context since we’re talking about detrans people is the situation where people actually do medically transition.

And it relates to each other, because if we want to medicalize such people they might go down paths or be set down paths they’re not actually suited for, which is the danger of treating them as the same issue. I thought we were both kind of on board that medical transition is pretty serious in what the medical prescription is and it doesn’t come without physical or social risks.

keep in mind that ITT we got people, including uke iirc, claiming puberty blockers have no permanent effects

yeah but I find it just as absurd to claim that absolutely zero non-trans people are allowed to be hurt in the pursuit of better trans treatments. you just only want to deal with the harm of other people’s positions apparently.

I mean why should you even be allowed to consider harm when you said yourself you don’t care about harm at all?

This seems backwards. Using people's pronouns, names, and generally treating them respectfully as the gender they identity with is the EASY thing. The low bar. That we can do for everyone, regardless of whether they have or have not transitioned medically, regardless of whether your "controls" and "gatekeeping" and "extra scrutiny" say they are a "true trans" person or not. I'd agree with the idea (although not your exact terms) of gatekeeping or whatever for like major bottom surgery in youth, my objection to your gatekeeping lens on trans issues is in the much more common much less sever category of people who are maybe experimenting with social transition or perhaps they'll work up to trying hormones etc. Those are people we should be inclusive and supportive of, not focusing on gatekeeping if they haven't become your concept of "true trans" yet.

You do add the weird "compel", which seems like a red herring. Like is your position we SHOULD compel people to use the pronouns of "true trans" people who have medically transitioned but not compel it for non "true trans" people who haven't? The degree that speech is "compelled" is a totally separate debate - I advocate the use of correct pronouns for sure but that isn't the same thing as compelling.

Uke I have a question for you: there are many languages that do not have gendered pronouns, supposing that English was one of those languages would you still support the right of people to chose their own pronouns?