>I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a youth with gender dysphoria. And I think that doctors and parents should have full societal support in considering what course of action to pursue when a kid comes in presenting this condition. I think the attempts to ban youth gender medicine are profoundly misguided and a gross interference with the doctor-patient and parent-child relationships.
As someone apparently more empathetic, I would ask you to consider why the practice of "youth gender medicine" is apparently the unquestioned default, when it became so, why it became so, and why, apparently, to you, no amount of data or theory on this particular subject - unlike that of global warming - merits "interference with the doctor-patient and parent-child relationship."
This is odd, to me, because the typical practice of medicine, if you've forgotten, is "first do no harm" - and it usually involves only embarking on treatment programs that have demonstrated evidence of benefit. Yet with this particular medical question, you hold that *not even demonstrated evidence of harm* could affect whether or not this particular treatment program should be considered evidence-based medicine in good standing. As I said, I find that odd. I would expect the null hypothesis to be refraining from serious unstudied interventions until there is - at the very *least* even setting aside all other ethical, moral, & social considerations - evidence that it benefits people. (You may note, however, that Andrew Long Chu's recent article officially declares a break from the notion that evidence of benefit matters in this question - coincidentally, this comes just as evidence of harm, rather than benefit, seems quite rapidly to be emerging.) Thoughts? I would say that at the very least such assertions place these beliefs quite outside & independent of medicine, which is plainly true, and I am in a way glad that it is now being admitted, even if it is in an attempt to bulldoze criticism of (and rational horror at) this set of unevidenced practices.
The conservatives, whose opinions on global warming you bemoan, do, in my experience, on occasion have a more nuanced opinion on the subject than the one you present. Such a conservative might say that no amount of theory or data justifies the attempt to ban or restrict fossil fuels or any particular environmentally harmful technology, as that would be interference with his liberty & pursuit of happiness, a quite serious thing, and your justification for impinging on that right - though I, to be clear, agree with it - is, you must admit, rather more complicated and nebulous, compared to its immediate consequences, which are often simple and concrete.
What I'm saying is, heal thyself, because you're standing on half a leg at best. Here's an interesting thought exercise: When you encounter any material on the subjects you mention at issue on the left, start by highlighting every word, notion or piece of "evidence" invented by, deriving from or related to Psychology & its variety of derivative fields of "study." Go highlighted bit by highlighted bit and look into the origins of that word, notion or piece of "evidence."
This is an important exercise that will help you understand how the purportedly pro-free-speech, pro-civil-liberties "Left" got to where it is today - that is, to direct opposition to those notions where they are perceived to impinge upon the subjects you mention. Most of the "Right" - and certainly the Trumpian "Right" - does not claim to adhere to notions of fairness, equality, or an open and free society, but the "Left" does. So how did they end up where they are? Entirely via the notion of "psychological harm." The things you say must not be said have been declared so because uttering these things "puts people at risk" and is thus "violence." These are their words - from the NYT letter in response to Cotton's editorial, for example, & as I think we've seen, it's the same whenever someone tries to say any of the inconvenient truths you mention.
I don't think the only reason for a doctor-patient relationship and parental authority is to follow evidence. Doctors and parents are also a support mechanism.
They get to make calls in situations where there isn't a study backing them up, because doctors care about their patients and parents love their children, whereas Republican legislators don't.
That right there is a notion that did not exist as a concept until the very moment it was needed to defend this set of practices. Doctors, since you've forgotten, are the people who provide medicine, which is supposed to be a set of evidence-based practices oriented around maximizing human enjoyment of life...that is what doctors are, by the fundamental definition, and that is how the operating principles of medicine are supposed to be - were used to be - determined. They are not "support mechanisms" first and practitioners of medicine second.
What, exactly, by the way, is a "support mechanism"? When did such a concept become a part of our vocabulary? Why are you asserting that such a notion trumps such fundaments of medicine as evidence-based practice & "first do no harm"? If there are no studies on human-cat transformation, and someone says they really want it, is a doctor permitted to just try whatever they think might grow someone hair & pointy ears or whatever else they personally deem to be sort of like a cat? That is literally the set of rules you're suggesting we operate by.
How does this notion of "support mechanism" not enable doctors to do literally anything they want to "consent-capable minors" (a bold concept) for whatever reasons they invent or whatever inventions they decide to accept from a patient (also known as a potential customer)?
Why, in your view, does evidence no longer reign supreme? When did you start to hold such a view? Were you aware, when first you accepted these notions, that you were accepting a departure from evidence-based medicine? Or did you - like so many others - believe there was evidence? And now that the evidence is shown to be nonexistent at best - and likely against you - you, like Andrew Long Chu, say evidence doesn't matter. This script reads an awful lot like a certain prayer.
If one were following the exercise I outlined, "support mechanism" would be a Psychology-derived term to highlight & investigate. Can you offer a consistent logical or legal definition of a "support mechanism"?
Isn't it interesting how you can't discuss this subject without throwing in a random partisan dig - which, by the way, is the furthest possible thing from accurate? Isn't that behavior, you know, funny, in the context of this long & interesting essay you yourself wrote?
It's interesting that Democrats are apparently "expected to say" something that squarely contradicts (checks notes) the public position of the Biden DoEd.
That is nice and snarky but is actually true- repeating the Biden position on women's sports will absolutely get you fired from any number of activist or coalitional spaces, and you will note nobody does it.
A similar dynamic happened with the Obama position on charter schools.
You didn't make an argument about "activist or coalitional spaces," you made an argument about "Democrats." Namely, that they were beholden to activists and felt compelled to repeat their claims. That argument is transparently false because Democrats are not repeating activist claims.
That's an attempt at a "gotcha", not a substantive point. The fact that the President of the United States, if he really wants to, can take any position he wants to even on something activists care a lot about is interesting and maybe worth a Substack of its own (a niice example is that Bill Clinton took the side of the religious right in Washington v. Glucksberg at a time when the entire Democratic Party and activist space supported a constitutionalized "right to die"), but it wasn't the subject matter of this Substack.
"Look at this other point I really want to make" isn't serious argumentation, and it should be perfectly clear to anyone what the point of this piece was.
If you didn't understand the "core argument" here, that's on you.
The piece never talked about the President of the United States, and if you don't understand that the President of the United States stands different and apart from all the other actors in politics (and especially the staffers and activists and pundits who are specifically mentioned in the piece), that's because you decided to deliberately misread the piece.
Now please, go away. You've made your point, you're wrong, and you don't need to make another comment.
It's also interesting that Republicans are apparently "expected to say" something that squarely contradicts (checks notes) the public position of the Trump election department.
>I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a youth with gender dysphoria. And I think that doctors and parents should have full societal support in considering what course of action to pursue when a kid comes in presenting this condition. I think the attempts to ban youth gender medicine are profoundly misguided and a gross interference with the doctor-patient and parent-child relationships.
As someone apparently more empathetic, I would ask you to consider why the practice of "youth gender medicine" is apparently the unquestioned default, when it became so, why it became so, and why, apparently, to you, no amount of data or theory on this particular subject - unlike that of global warming - merits "interference with the doctor-patient and parent-child relationship."
This is odd, to me, because the typical practice of medicine, if you've forgotten, is "first do no harm" - and it usually involves only embarking on treatment programs that have demonstrated evidence of benefit. Yet with this particular medical question, you hold that *not even demonstrated evidence of harm* could affect whether or not this particular treatment program should be considered evidence-based medicine in good standing. As I said, I find that odd. I would expect the null hypothesis to be refraining from serious unstudied interventions until there is - at the very *least* even setting aside all other ethical, moral, & social considerations - evidence that it benefits people. (You may note, however, that Andrew Long Chu's recent article officially declares a break from the notion that evidence of benefit matters in this question - coincidentally, this comes just as evidence of harm, rather than benefit, seems quite rapidly to be emerging.) Thoughts? I would say that at the very least such assertions place these beliefs quite outside & independent of medicine, which is plainly true, and I am in a way glad that it is now being admitted, even if it is in an attempt to bulldoze criticism of (and rational horror at) this set of unevidenced practices.
The conservatives, whose opinions on global warming you bemoan, do, in my experience, on occasion have a more nuanced opinion on the subject than the one you present. Such a conservative might say that no amount of theory or data justifies the attempt to ban or restrict fossil fuels or any particular environmentally harmful technology, as that would be interference with his liberty & pursuit of happiness, a quite serious thing, and your justification for impinging on that right - though I, to be clear, agree with it - is, you must admit, rather more complicated and nebulous, compared to its immediate consequences, which are often simple and concrete.
What I'm saying is, heal thyself, because you're standing on half a leg at best. Here's an interesting thought exercise: When you encounter any material on the subjects you mention at issue on the left, start by highlighting every word, notion or piece of "evidence" invented by, deriving from or related to Psychology & its variety of derivative fields of "study." Go highlighted bit by highlighted bit and look into the origins of that word, notion or piece of "evidence."
This is an important exercise that will help you understand how the purportedly pro-free-speech, pro-civil-liberties "Left" got to where it is today - that is, to direct opposition to those notions where they are perceived to impinge upon the subjects you mention. Most of the "Right" - and certainly the Trumpian "Right" - does not claim to adhere to notions of fairness, equality, or an open and free society, but the "Left" does. So how did they end up where they are? Entirely via the notion of "psychological harm." The things you say must not be said have been declared so because uttering these things "puts people at risk" and is thus "violence." These are their words - from the NYT letter in response to Cotton's editorial, for example, & as I think we've seen, it's the same whenever someone tries to say any of the inconvenient truths you mention.
I don't think the only reason for a doctor-patient relationship and parental authority is to follow evidence. Doctors and parents are also a support mechanism.
They get to make calls in situations where there isn't a study backing them up, because doctors care about their patients and parents love their children, whereas Republican legislators don't.
That right there is a notion that did not exist as a concept until the very moment it was needed to defend this set of practices. Doctors, since you've forgotten, are the people who provide medicine, which is supposed to be a set of evidence-based practices oriented around maximizing human enjoyment of life...that is what doctors are, by the fundamental definition, and that is how the operating principles of medicine are supposed to be - were used to be - determined. They are not "support mechanisms" first and practitioners of medicine second.
What, exactly, by the way, is a "support mechanism"? When did such a concept become a part of our vocabulary? Why are you asserting that such a notion trumps such fundaments of medicine as evidence-based practice & "first do no harm"? If there are no studies on human-cat transformation, and someone says they really want it, is a doctor permitted to just try whatever they think might grow someone hair & pointy ears or whatever else they personally deem to be sort of like a cat? That is literally the set of rules you're suggesting we operate by.
How does this notion of "support mechanism" not enable doctors to do literally anything they want to "consent-capable minors" (a bold concept) for whatever reasons they invent or whatever inventions they decide to accept from a patient (also known as a potential customer)?
Why, in your view, does evidence no longer reign supreme? When did you start to hold such a view? Were you aware, when first you accepted these notions, that you were accepting a departure from evidence-based medicine? Or did you - like so many others - believe there was evidence? And now that the evidence is shown to be nonexistent at best - and likely against you - you, like Andrew Long Chu, say evidence doesn't matter. This script reads an awful lot like a certain prayer.
If one were following the exercise I outlined, "support mechanism" would be a Psychology-derived term to highlight & investigate. Can you offer a consistent logical or legal definition of a "support mechanism"?
Isn't it interesting how you can't discuss this subject without throwing in a random partisan dig - which, by the way, is the furthest possible thing from accurate? Isn't that behavior, you know, funny, in the context of this long & interesting essay you yourself wrote?
> get these folks to support tax cuts that will grow the economy
Whether it does that or not, the rich folks primary concern is of course that it cuts _their_ taxes.
Well written good sir
It's interesting that Democrats are apparently "expected to say" something that squarely contradicts (checks notes) the public position of the Biden DoEd.
That is nice and snarky but is actually true- repeating the Biden position on women's sports will absolutely get you fired from any number of activist or coalitional spaces, and you will note nobody does it.
A similar dynamic happened with the Obama position on charter schools.
You didn't make an argument about "activist or coalitional spaces," you made an argument about "Democrats." Namely, that they were beholden to activists and felt compelled to repeat their claims. That argument is transparently false because Democrats are not repeating activist claims.
That's an attempt at a "gotcha", not a substantive point. The fact that the President of the United States, if he really wants to, can take any position he wants to even on something activists care a lot about is interesting and maybe worth a Substack of its own (a niice example is that Bill Clinton took the side of the religious right in Washington v. Glucksberg at a time when the entire Democratic Party and activist space supported a constitutionalized "right to die"), but it wasn't the subject matter of this Substack.
"Look at this other point I really want to make" isn't serious argumentation, and it should be perfectly clear to anyone what the point of this piece was.
If you didn't understand the "core argument" here, that's on you.
The piece never talked about the President of the United States, and if you don't understand that the President of the United States stands different and apart from all the other actors in politics (and especially the staffers and activists and pundits who are specifically mentioned in the piece), that's because you decided to deliberately misread the piece.
Now please, go away. You've made your point, you're wrong, and you don't need to make another comment.
It's also interesting that Republicans are apparently "expected to say" something that squarely contradicts (checks notes) the public position of the Trump election department.
There is no such thing as a federal "election department," so I do not know what you are talking about.