[HN Gopher] It's not Tourette's but a new type of mass sociogeni...
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It's not Tourette's but a new type of mass sociogenic illness
Author : mpweiher
Score : 241 points
Date : 2022-12-06 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (academic.oup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (academic.oup.com)
| screye wrote:
| I wonder how similar this is to (sexy baby) valley girl upspeak &
| vocal fry.
|
| Many young women picked this up from the Kardashians/Paris Hilton
| and now cannot "turn it off". We know this is not their 'natural'
| voice because if you ask them to make weird sounds and then a
| normal voice, then their normal voice sounds completely different
| than the sexy baby voice.
|
| The weird thing is that the women themselves are surprised by
| this sound they're hearing and cannot easily reproduce it because
| the sexy baby voice is so deeply internalized.
|
| Sounds rather similar to these involutory ticks.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| my-god-hn wrote:
| shredprez wrote:
| And deprive the world of instant classics like "valley girl
| accent considered harmful"? Do you hate joy?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Curious: What is the sexy baby voice? And where can I see this
| weird sounds and then normal voice experiment?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| 30 Rock had a good example of the whole act
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm-ZF9AfN40
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Off topic, but Hannibal rules
| yarg wrote:
| Think Marilyn Monroe/Betty Boop.
| screye wrote:
| This is a good place to start -
| https://omny.fm/shows/revisionist-history/from-inside-
| voice-...
|
| Lake Bell asks the person to speak in their highest note and
| then their lowest note and then yodel for a couple of times.
| Then to asks her to just speak, and the voice that comes out
| much closer to what we associate with a 'normal' woman's
| voice.
|
| I guess having to manually change tone to such extremes
| resets the body's ability to recover this incredibly specific
| learnt behavior, and the person momentarily reverts to a
| clean sample of their own voice.
| badRNG wrote:
| > resets the body's ability to recover this incredibly
| specific learnt behavior, and the person momentarily
| reverts to a clean sample of their own voice.
|
| What is one's "own voice?"
|
| Nearly all speech patterns, dialects, accents, patterns and
| phrasing is learned from one's social circle. Speech itself
| is "learnt behavior." It makes sense that those engaged in
| a subculture or online community may take up the way people
| talk in that sphere of social influence. Before hand,
| speech patterns evolved apart from one another due to
| geographic distance. In the modern era, it doesn't seem
| unreasonable that one would have greater influence from an
| online community than a local one.
|
| I don't see any reason to privilege a specific, arbitrary
| way of speaking to be "normal" and one's "own voice" and
| others to be learnt behavior one "recovers" from.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Perhaps that is a difference of definition.
|
| Your 'own voice' refers to the unaugmented tone from your
| vocal cords. It is distinct to you because that is your
| physiology.
|
| To find the tone you can take a deep breath and sigh. You
| can hear your tone. You have to sigh like you mean it
| though and relax, let it out.
|
| Uuuuuuuuhhhhh
|
| Other than the resonance of you oronasal cavity, all
| other aspects are some type of learned
| behaviors/impediments
| smodo wrote:
| Well... In my country there is a well known sociolect
| among well educated females. It also involves speaking in
| a low register. Doctors have found that this causes vocal
| chord scarring for some people. Not all learned behavior
| is favoured by the body, shall we say.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| That's just like a southern california accent at this point,
| even men talk like that somewhat over there [1]
|
| [1] https://www.spreaker.com/user/7768747/california-accent-
| voca...
| coding123 wrote:
| Probably also, gay voice. I'm pretty sure a lot of young (not
| yet gay) men don't have that voice until later in life.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I was friends with a nurse who told a story about a gay man
| who went into surgery. He had a heavy, stereotypical gay
| accent. But when he initially woke up after the surgery it
| was gone, and as the anesthesia faded, the accent slowly came
| back.
|
| I'm sure it varies for each individual, but for at least some
| gay men, some portion of their accent might be an affectation
| (even if it's largely subconscious).
| labrador wrote:
| I picked up a mental weirdness from the internet and now can't
| get rid of it: Trypophobia. I never experienced anything like it
| until Trypophobia was trending a few years back.
|
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21834-trypoph...
| RankingMember wrote:
| It was that awful seed pod boob photoshop image that did it to
| you too, wasn't it?
| labrador wrote:
| Awful doesn't even begin to describe those images. There's a
| another phobia transmitted by the internet, but I'm immune to
| it: Thalassophobia. There's even a reddit group dedicated to
| it:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/thalassophobia/
|
| There's a group allegedly devoted to trypophobia. I say
| allegedly because I refuse to click on the link:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/trypophobia/
| bythreads wrote:
| Reads like ai
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > mass sociogenic illness
|
| > Over the past 2 years, a remarkably high number of young
| patients have been referred to our specialized Tourette
| outpatient clinic
|
| > A large number of young people across different countries
|
| How many exactly? Without numbers, calling it mass-anything is
| blowing this way out of proportion. So called fakeDisorderCringe
| has been a thing for a while, thanks to TikTok. But is there any
| sign that a) it is seriously widespread and b) doesn't "go away
| by itself", when the kids get bored of pretending?
|
| This appears to be nothing more than a short lived cringy TikTok
| / YouTube trend that will be over sooner than later, no different
| from goth culture. God I am glad I will never have children that
| I need to keep from melting their brains with social media.
| HPsquared wrote:
| If it's an unconscious thing which transfers into "real life",
| that seems potentially important. It raises the question of
| what other unconscious behaviours (potentially harmful) are
| picked up in a similar way? Definitely an interesting starting
| point for further research.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > If it's an unconscious thing which transfers into "real
| life", that seems potentially important.
|
| Humans of all ages copy behavior they see in (social) media.
| Not every unusual behavior should be classified as mental
| illness.
|
| > Definitely an interesting starting point for further
| research.
|
| Maybe, but for psychology and sociology, not psychiatry and
| brain science.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| If social contagion can get people to develop serious ticks
| imagine how many things we automatically do or feel or think that
| are a mere result of random social pressures
| dusted wrote:
| My main concern is how to induce specifics in people and start
| profiting from it :D
|
| Wouldn't it just be wonderfully dystopic if we could induce
| ticks in people that made them clean the streets and do the
| grunt work? :D
| pjc50 wrote:
| > how to induce specifics in people and start profiting from
| it
|
| Have you heard of "advertising"?
| kneebonian wrote:
| "A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the
| main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND
| CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's
| motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY." - A Brave New World
| [deleted]
| martyvis wrote:
| Is this different from any other learned behaviour? If a baby
| hangs around English speaking people they are going to learn to
| speak the language with the same accent. Then you see a group of
| kids where every sentence is peppered with the F-bomb, it's all
| the same right?
| t0lo wrote:
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| A sub on reddit has been all over this:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/fakedisordercringe/
| pessimizer wrote:
| The fact that NXIVM could successfully suppress crippling
| Tourette's in a number of cases has to at least mean that
| Tourette's itself (or some subset of what is grouped under
| Tourette's) isn't strictly biological.
|
| It seems this was done through Nancy Salzman's application of the
| NLP voodoo she had used as a chronic pain therapist, and possibly
| boosted by immense pressure to not tic or else be seen as both a
| failure and a PR danger to the cult. However it was done, it was
| clearly successful. Are there any studies about "actual" (non-
| internet video related) Tourette's patients transmitting tics to
| each other?
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/overthinking-tv/20...
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| "they can be viewed as the 21st century expression of a culture-
| bound stress reaction of our post-modern society emphasizing the
| uniqueness of individuals and valuing their alleged
| exceptionality, thus promoting attention-seeking behaviours and
| aggravating the permanent identity crisis of modern man."
|
| There is a tendency to reify aberrations and disorders and to
| identify with them because it gives you another way of attaining
| a _feeling_ of (false) "uniqueness" and exceptionality, or a way
| of trying to manipulate people into showing you "compassion" or
| pity. It's a disease of our age. "The spectrum" seems to be a
| popular example. These are afflictions, not identities. They're
| nothing to be proud of when you have them, _if_ you have them,
| nor are they things to be desired.
|
| There may also be passive-aggressive motives. Personal autonomy
| and the absolute sovereignty of the individual and his desires
| are a superordinate value today. We chafe under any perceived
| constraint or restraint on our desires. What do some people do
| when they don't want to follow some rule they should, but fear
| opposing that rule overtly? They rebel through small, passive-
| aggressive ways. Imagine now you are faced with the internalized
| emotional compulsion or fear to behave or not behave a certain
| way that you don't want to submit to, but fear opposing or
| ignoring for whatever reason. Simulating tics could be an
| interior rebellion against that undesired compulsion. Repeat
| something often enough, and it becomes a habit.
|
| (Curiously, I would attribute the very cause of this inner
| struggle to our disordered attitude toward desire and appetite in
| the first place where the tail is essentially wagging the dog.
| Putting reason before desire and submitting to the truth
| liberates a person from the capricious tyranny of appetite.)
| mfrankpb wrote:
| Previously discussed here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28302725 (August 2021)
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! I missed that. Macroexpanded:
|
| _It's not Tourette's but a new type of mass sociogenic
| illness_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28302725 - Aug
| 2021 (80 comments)
| monkeydreams wrote:
| While this article and many like it suggest a sudden rise in
| cases due to a 2021 Youtube influencer, this was already
| spreading in 2020. Girls in my daughter's social network were
| displaying tic behaviour in the months after the first major
| lockdowns.
| air7 wrote:
| This reminded me of the Dancing Plague[0] that happened in
| medieval Europe.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania
| boringg wrote:
| Is this real? That's bananas.
| CadmiumYellow wrote:
| Wow I thought "choreomania" was just the name of a Florence and
| the Machine song...this is crazy...
| fullstackchris wrote:
| I just experienced this today; I was walking down the street and
| a teenager walking by himself abruptly made this sharp random
| shrieking sound to no one in particular and then kept walking
| along.
|
| Could he actually have Tourette's by traditional clinical
| definition? Certainly. But I'm inclined to beleive that it has
| much more to do with this article's definition and how f***d the
| youth are against the whole social media scene today.
| filoleg wrote:
| Could be many reasons, who knows. Maybe they were looking at
| something on their phone that evoked their reaction, maybe they
| heard something in their earphones, maybe they suddenly saw a
| bird nearby that scared them, or maybe they just remembered
| something which ended up causing it.
|
| The latter happens to me occasionally, and I am fairly certain
| it has nothing to do with Tourette's. Usually it is me walking
| somewhere, then remembering something I forgot that i needed to
| do or having some realization, and I just end up going "oh
| fuck" or "ooooh". Not loudly like a yell, but definitely
| audible to someone within a 5-10 feet range.
|
| It could also be what you are suspecting as well, but without
| actually talking to the person, there is quite literally no way
| to know. So imo it is a rather pointless exercise.
| emptysea wrote:
| I'm guessing they're looking for a reaction. Similar to people
| driving by and yelling out the window
| Centigonal wrote:
| maybe he was going through something
| snorkel wrote:
| Sounds like the mania over Pokemon flashing induced seizures
| werdnapk wrote:
| When I was in high school, one of the "popular" kids used to talk
| a bit odd on purpose and sure, it generated a bit of a chuckle at
| first, but he kept doing it and a lot of kids also adopted a
| similar vocal tic to seem like they were part of the cool group
| as well. Monkey see, monkey do.
| out-of-ideas wrote:
| it sounds similar to how catch-phrases like simpsons and other
| shows become common things for kids to adopt and (over)use. i'd
| say it's hard to break patterns developed when young and seems
| to be what others around you are doing... downward spiral?
| toyg wrote:
| Stop trying to make tourette happen! It's NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
| adolph wrote:
| _The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a
| consciously learned accent of English, fashionably used by the
| late 19th-century and early 20th-century American upper class
| and entertainment industry, which blended together features
| regarded as the most prestigious from both American and British
| English (specifically Received Pronunciation). It is not a
| native or regional accent; rather, according to voice and drama
| professor Dudley Knight, "its earliest advocates bragged that
| its chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it
| unless educated to do so". The accent was embraced in private
| independent preparatory schools, especially by members of the
| American Northeastern upper class, as well as in schools for
| film and stage acting, with its overall use sharply declining
| after the Second World War._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
| extragood wrote:
| Frasier, the TV character played by Kelsey Grammer, uses an
| exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Not Mid-Atlantic, but I've heard that one way to acquire a
| "standard" Mid-Western US accent is to speak along with a
| trained speaker, such as a particular newscaster. And "You
| are supposed to stop before sounding just like that person."
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I worked with a couple of college classmates, who when they
| were taking to each other would use this hurry up to stop type
| of speech pattern. A few really quick words, then a pause, and
| a few more words. For autistic people this is called
| cluttering, but they talked to clients and others and didn't
| talk that way, so I always wondered where it came from.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> with considerable impact on health care systems and society as
| a whole_
|
| (X) Doubt
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| If you delete TikTok does the illness dissipate?
| winReInstall wrote:
| Imagine you start the same trend, but everyone tries for once to
| contribute something science wise original to society, so the
| problem is real, but the potential is greater.
|
| Now comes the part, were advertisers try to create sociogenic
| illnesses that spread theire product/brands information.
|
| We can also skip directly to the part, were we mourn the youtfull
| ideals of a idea, taken over by scammers.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Imagine you start the same trend, but everyone tries for once
| to contribute something science wise original to society, so
| the problem is real, but the potential is greater.
|
| I know you aren't totally serious, but this won't work, most
| likely. The "advantage" of having a tick like that is not just
| that it gives you attention, it's something absolutely low-
| effort and instant gratification. Contributing to science is
| anything but. Plus, even if individuals tried to do so, it's
| quite easy to miss newest research or fall for a fallacy, which
| will make for a net-negative contribution if you are not
| careful.
| dpc050505 wrote:
| >were advertisers try to create sociogenic illnesses that
| spread theire product/brands information.
|
| I can think of a lot of advertising jingles that work this way.
| riskable wrote:
| Plop plop Fizz fizz Oh how like Tourette's it
| is
| secondcoming wrote:
| There was the alcohol drinks company's WASSSUP ad campaign that
| ruined everyone's life for a while.
| mcphage wrote:
| That still lives rent-free in my head, and comes out every
| once in a while.
| dejj wrote:
| Link this with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and
| receive prescribed brand candy/placebos for saying "Arr!" too
| much. Also prosthetics or an assistance bird.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| There's a new Netflix series called Hot Skull around this theme.
| I haven't watched it yet but it looks like the premise is that a
| word virus infects people and they start talking gibberish.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Hey Hiro. You want to try some Snow Crash?
| gnu8 wrote:
| Does it fuck up your brain, or your computer?
| _nalply wrote:
| Somewhere I already read about that. It's a fad. A youtuber shows
| Tourette's symptoms and people copy them. Perhaps it's like
| stimming. And you can't stop fads and stimming. We see that some
| people are annoyed. (shrugs)
| mcv wrote:
| > And you can't stop fads and stimming.
|
| But if they claim it's a disease, and it's clearly spreading
| through social media, then the obvious measure to stop it from
| spreading, is to block the channels through which it's
| spreading.
| lakomen wrote:
| You copy what's fun to you. That said, POMMES!
| bowsamic wrote:
| But when a fad becomes destructive to someone's life to the
| point where they can't voluntarily stop it and seek
| professional treatment for it, it becomes an illness and is
| worth investigating.
|
| > (shrugs)
|
| Those affected by it don't seem to be able to shrug it off.
| It's having a negative effect on their quality of life
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nailer wrote:
| Similarly: https://brightonjournal.co.uk/debate-gender-report-
| brighton-...
| frereubu wrote:
| For those who think this is "just" a fad, there are some
| descriptions of the emotional harm that that it can cause in this
| article from February:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/social-med...
| The semantics of "mass sociogenic illness" aside, there do seem
| to be damaging real-world consequences.
| informalo wrote:
| For anyone looking to be infected by this mass sociogenic
| illness, here is his most popular video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLhaYHJTXmI
| [deleted]
| infradig wrote:
| I've read this before on HN, even some comments. Getting a weird
| deja-vu vibe.
| gadders wrote:
| I don't think this is the only mass sociogenic illness affecting
| young girls currently....
| pessimizer wrote:
| > the only mass sociogenic illness affecting young girls
|
| Is it a mass illness, or a semi-rational reaction to the
| prospect of facing life as a female in our society?
| mathgeek wrote:
| Care to elaborate? As written, your comment can come off as
| rather ageist/sexist, which is a shame if you meant a specific
| trend.
| Veen wrote:
| I imagine many people have a specific phenomenon in mind
| which they will avoid mentioning because it's considered
| impolite and impolitic.
| maxbond wrote:
| Either it is a real issue, in which case, we should have a
| discussion about it.
|
| Or it is not a real issue, in which case, it is not worth
| vagueposting about.
|
| Taking the most charitable interpretation, this creates
| cover for dog whistling while not adding to the
| conversation.
|
| The other possibility is that it _is_ dog whistling in
| order to promote bigotry.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So either discuss it directly and be a bigot, talk around
| it and be a bigot, or silence all discussion about it and
| be a hero.
| maxbond wrote:
| There's no heroes and no villains here, but if someone
| has got something bigoted to say, then they should
| dispose of their waste or surrender the restroom. It
| doesn't make it any more or less bigoted to be
| circumspect, it only makes it difficulty to have a proper
| discussion. If they believe what they have to say isn't
| bigoted, they should take courage in their convictions
| and speak their mind. If they're punished in a way that's
| unfair, then that's something with bringing to the
| community's attention. If they don't actually have
| confidence in their convictions, maybe their ideas need
| some more time to develop before they're comfortable
| sharing them (and maybe the reason they're uncomfortable
| is that there's a problem).
|
| I'm not trying to silence anyone, when people vaguepost,
| clearly there's something on their mind, and I'm inviting
| them to express it.
|
| Do you think that's an unfair position for me to take?
| What I see is that they did say what was on their mind,
| we had a substantive discussion, no one got flagged, no
| one got banned, their comment isn't even gray. The
| reports of HN being hostile to this discussion are
| greatly overstated.
| gadders wrote:
| Fuck it, I'll take the karma hit. I am of course referring to
| young girls identifying as male/non-binary.
|
| I'm sure some of the cases are genuine, but not all. And I'm
| not saying these girls aren't troubled or have other things
| going on that they need help with.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| I think that characterising once thoughts around once
| gender as a social illness is deeply disrespectful against
| those individuals.
| Eumenes wrote:
| It is mass psychosis at this stage. Friend is a teacher in
| a very wealthy suburban area and 50%+ of the class
| identifies as non-binary (apparently). We're supposed to
| believe this is organic and totally normal?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Non-binary simply mean that you do not identify with the
| two currently accepted gender identity or that you do not
| perceive gender as a binary system but as a spectrum.
| That's it. It does not mean that the person suffers from
| gender dysphoria or that they want to transition. For
| many, it's simply a way to describe their existing social
| behavior. It is also an umbrella word that houses many
| other identies.
|
| I'd also challenge the "50%" number you advance.
|
| Canada asked the question in last year's census and it
| was under 1%. 50% would be enormous.
|
| "Younger generations had larger shares of those who were
| transgender or non-binary. The proportions of transgender
| and non-binary people were three to seven times higher
| for Generation Z (0.79%) and millennials (0.51%) than for
| Generation X (0.19%), baby boomers (0.15%) and the
| Interwar and Greatest Generations (0.12%).
|
| Together, over 1 in 6 non-binary people described their
| gender as "fluid" (7.3%), "agender" (5.1%) or "queer"
| (4.1%). Other responses included "gender neutral" (2.9%),
| "Two-Spirit" (2.2%), "neither man nor woman" (1.3%) and
| "gender-nonconforming" (1.1%)."
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Non-binary" is commonly described as a trans identity,
| and the word "trans" is etymologically related to
| "transition". If there really was nothing else to it than
| the truism that "gender is not merely a binary system but
| a spectrum", no one would be talking about non-binary as
| an identity of its own - since this has been a consensus
| POV for decades.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| It is not tran[sition]gender. It is the "trans-" Latin
| prefix meaning "across", "beyond" or "on the other side
| of" + gender.
|
| In other words, people who moved on from the gender
| assigned to them at birth.
|
| Some non-binary people identify as transgender but not
| all of them do. Just like non-binary is both an umbrella
| term and a spicific gender identity, transgender is both
| an umbrella term and a specific gender identity. You'll
| often see the shorthand "trans*" to describe the umbrella
| term and the shorthand "enby" to describe the specific
| gender identity.
|
| Examples of clear gender identities that are not used as
| umbrella terms are: trans women, trans men, genderfluid,
| agender, demigirl, etc.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > In other words, people who moved on from the gender
| assigned to them at birth.
|
| Yes, and the Latin word transeo (nominal form transitio -
| English: transition) means exactly to "go on across", "go
| beyond". Trans ("across, beyond") + eo, it ("I go,
| he/she/it goes") + tio (- English: "-tion"). It's a
| distinction without a difference.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| My point is that they share a source and are siblings,
| but one is not the parent of the other. Being transgender
| is not about the medical or social transition, it is
| about how the person identifies.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > it is about how the person identifies.
|
| What does it mean to "identify" with a claim about what
| society is like - namely that "binary" gender might be
| more of a spectrum, with weird liminal stages in-between?
| You've said that this is what "non-binary" is about. How
| does this even begin to square with all those other
| notions about gender identity being something exceedingly
| clearcut, that someone can base major life decisions on?
| Eumenes wrote:
| That 50% number is anecdotal, from a friend whose a
| teacher in a middle school (norther Virginia) ... My
| guess is 100% of these children are on Tiktok/Snapchat,
| ingesting whatever content is being fed to their
| impressionable minds. Its certainly an internet driven
| phenomenon.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > That 50% number is anecdotal
|
| Then it is meaningless and hazardous to build an opinion
| upon it.
|
| > My guess is 100% of these children are on
| Tiktok/Snapchat
|
| TikTok usage is at 32.2% for children aged 10-19.
| Snapchat usage is at 59% for children aged 13-24. That
| would be unlikely. Those two platforms also share little
| in term of features and functionality. How are they
| relevant here and why single them out?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's pretty easily explained, they think it's cool to say
| they are nonbinary, or pansexual, or genderfluid, or
| something along those lines. One popular/alpha kid says
| it and soon their entire clique gloms on. Adding to the
| allure for teens is that some adults find this shocking.
| They are not really committing to anything, and they know
| it. They're doing it for social karma. Teens have done
| this kind of thing forever.
| astura wrote:
| You appear to confuse sociogenic illness with faking or
| being otherwise "non-genuine."
|
| This is not true. Sociogenic illness, including the one the
| article is about, are very real to those affected. The
| symptoms are real and genuine.
| gadders wrote:
| I think the symptoms they have are very real to them. I
| just don't think that the cure is more likely to be
| psychological then surgical.
| maxbond wrote:
| I appreciate your being willing to speak your mind without
| hiding behind vaguery. We can risk a karma hit together.
|
| You are referring to a myth called "Rapid-Onset Gender
| Dysphoria," which has been debunked. Gender identity is not
| a socially transmitted pathology. I don't believe you meant
| this in a hateful way, but let me explain what the problem
| is with this idea. This is sophistry about how LGBTQ people
| should remain in the closet, or they'll "infect" people,
| and the evidence is that as we tolerate LGBTQ people more,
| more of them come out of the closet. It's a reversal of
| cause and effect, from the same school as "discussing the
| history of racism is racist".
| throwaway27727 wrote:
| > which has been debunked
|
| That is, unfortunately, not an argument. To apply your
| line of thinking to the OP, would you say that "children
| displaying Tourette's symptoms from watching a YouTuber
| is a reversal of cause and effect"? The OP does not make
| that conclusion, and most of this comment section accepts
| that as well. I, like GP, would be interested to hear how
| this would be reconciled.
| maxbond wrote:
| Highlighting a comment that does a better job:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879534
|
| This is a valid criticism. What you have highlighted is a
| shortcoming in my ability to elucidate this topic.
|
| My comment is more an invitation to explore the argument
| yourself. This isn't a formal debate where I've shown up
| prepared with notes, I didn't know I'd be speaking about
| this topic today. If I tell you what I know, you can
| think about whether it makes sense to you, and you can
| use extract search terms to research and learn more. You
| don't have to take my word for anything, but I don't have
| to remember how I learned something to participate in a
| casual forum conversation either.
|
| That being said, I am starting to make an effort to
| catalog resources and be able to share them, because I do
| think it makes my comments better, but this is a work in
| progress. C'est la vie.
|
| As to how this argument relates to the Tourettes-like
| symptoms discussed in the article, these are simply
| different phenomena. It's reasonable to observe this
| phenomenon and ask, "Does this apply to other
| phenomena?", and in the case of the increasing number of
| open trans people in our society, I'm telling you the
| answer is "no" and doing my best to explain why.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Has ROGD been absolutely debunked? Last I checked it was
| still pretty debated, I see discussions about it all the
| time still. When I search for papers I see the original
| [1], criticisms [2], and a correction issued by the
| original authors [3] which holds to most of their
| starting claims.
|
| Obviously being cis and childless I don't have a horse in
| this race, but it seems to me that there's still a fair
| amount of disagreement in the field, and the ROGD's
| existence or non-existence isn't really settled. The
| result found by the original paper may be unpopular, but
| it's bad science to hide it away solely for that reason.
|
| [1] https://rogd.fi/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/10/pone.0214157.s001... [2] https://
| journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/003802612093469...
| [3] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/
| journal...
| mcv wrote:
| This is an issue I'm somewhat concerned about.
|
| Let's first be clear that gender dysphoria is a real
| thing, and transitioning has been a very real solution
| for many people, and has helped people from depression,
| possibly suicidal, to a much happier state, and that's
| great. It's vital we don't lose that.
|
| At the same time, it's been politicised; there's a lot of
| conservative pushback claiming this isn't real, leading
| to resistance against this pushback, where I wonder if
| some people may sympathise with transgender people to the
| point that they also identify as transgender despite a
| lack of gender dysphoria, and that might create a fad
| that might cause more people to transition and later
| regret it.
|
| Gender dysphoria is a serious medical issue, and should
| not be a fad or a cultural or political issue.
| Transitioning is effective treatment, and not some fun
| thing to do like getting a tattoo, nor should it be
| considered an assault on anyone's cultural, religious or
| political beliefs.
|
| And if it really is happening more to girls than boys,
| maybe consider if cultural sexism might cause some women
| to not want to identify as such anymore. Especially in
| the face of issues like rape, bodily autonomy, but also
| acceptable jobs and behaviours. Maybe we should be more
| tolerant of cross-dressing.
| aliqot wrote:
| its much more important to young girls to be accepted
| socially than it is to boys.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > Let's first be clear that gender dysphoria is a real
| thing
|
| To be clear, the pain someone is feeling is real but the
| "reality" of a condition is a bit of an unclear concept.
| We can't really address this until we try to control for
| the gendered expectations of the sufferer, their
| surroundings, and any observers. Suzie Green of Mermaids
| has said that some of their motivation in transing their
| son as a toddler was his father's discomfort with some of
| the toys he was playing with and the homosexual
| connotations. Likely if the boy had tolerant and unbiased
| parents he'd be happy as a man, and thus it's unlikely he
| truly had "gender dysphoria" unless you count whatever
| his parents conditioned into him.
|
| > and transitioning has been a very real solution for
| many people
|
| Again, hard to say given that the decision probably was
| not made in isolation from heavily gendered expectations.
| There's reason to think that removing those expectations
| would have made them at least as happy, if not more.
|
| > Transitioning is [...] treatment, and not [...] an
| assault on anyone's cultural, religious or political
| beliefs.
|
| For an adult it's a personal choice and we should have
| pretty wide latitude in things that only impact us. It
| becomes a societal and political issue when it's brought
| into schools, or when males are given access to women's
| spaces and opportunities.
|
| > And if it really is happening more to girls than boys,
| maybe consider if cultural sexism might cause some women
| to not want to identify as such anymore. Especially in
| the face of issues like rape, bodily autonomy, but also
| acceptable jobs and behaviours. Maybe we should be more
| tolerant of cross-dressing.
|
| Errr, that's the wrong takeaway. If a woman wasn't going
| to get promoted then her putting on pants won't help, and
| if she was going to get abused it wouldn't trick her
| attacker. We should work to remove or mitigate those
| problems so she doesn't feel the need to hide her true
| self.
|
| If a woman is thought to be able to avoid rape by
| dressing like a man and/or having surgeries to reduce her
| sexual attractiveness then women will be thought to be
| asking for it ("How was she dressed? Did she still have
| her breasts?") for not doing those things.
| gadders wrote:
| Debunked by whom? Happy to read a paper or two.
|
| I don't think at all that LGBTQ people "infect" people -
| that is your choice of words, not mine.
|
| But it seems strange to think that tourettes, anorexia,
| self-harming and even suicide can be socially transmitted
| but for this one specific condition (for which there is
| no medical test) it's impossible and has never happened.
| maxbond wrote:
| I understand these are not the words you used, or
| necessarily ideas you hold; what I am describing is the
| role it plays in the wider rhetorical space. I should
| have made that more clear, it does look like I was
| calling you out for that. I'll see if I can edit it in a
| better way.
|
| Recommending literature is a skill I am still working on;
| I know things about this or that, but I didn't keep a
| record of how I learned them, and it's been months or
| years now. The Wikipedia article has discussion of
| criticism which may be a good place to start. If you're
| interested in YouTube videos, there is a large community
| of trans people who discuss their experiences in the form
| of video essays. ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube are
| some of the best known; you may or may not appreciate
| their politics, that's not what I'm suggesting, but they
| have a lot of content about what it's like to be a trans
| person, why they're trans, how they became trans, etc.
| that's just very difficult information to come by any
| other way.
|
| I appreciate your good faith and curious engagement with
| me.
| Kye wrote:
| It's honestly enough to remember and point out the whole
| concept is based on a study that only polled parents who
| aren't supportive of their trans kids. Anyone with a
| shred of genuine interest in being fair and accurate
| should be able to see right through the study. It's so
| bad that even prominent transphobes don't seem to talk
| about it anymore.
| vinegarden wrote:
| ROGD is the term given to the phenomenon of teenagers
| with no history of gender dysphoria suddenly announcing a
| transgender identity, typically after spending massive
| amounts of time online, and often after a friend has
| announced that they are trans. Who would be better placed
| to notice this set of circumstances than their parents?
| LeonTheremin wrote:
| >Stop that!
|
| Send them to a submarine trip undersea. If the symptoms disappear
| it is because they were the result of outside electromagnetic
| interference.
|
| Not a medical problem, a criminal problem: computer hacking all
| the way, the human body, a computer, is the victim.
| hanoz wrote:
| Wow. So now that I know that mass sociogenic illness is a thing,
| where do I draw the line in applying that label?
| efkiel wrote:
| Obviously <OUTGROUP_IDEOLOGY> always was, and always will be a
| mass sociogenic illness.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I do wish <OUTGROUP_IDEOLOGY_MEMBERS> could just be rational
| for once and stop falling for demagogues and pseudoscience
| lzaaz wrote:
| dusted wrote:
| I agree with your examples, though they cannot be said..
| Hopefully in a saner future, it becomes possible to have a
| debate about that again.
| maxbond wrote:
| If it's not worth saying, it's not worth vagueposting about
| either.
| lzaaz wrote:
| It's worth saying but if I say it the comment gets flagged
| and no one gets to read it.
| rjbwork wrote:
| I read flagged and dead comments. Vagueposting is now
| getting you flagged and deaded anyway.
| maxbond wrote:
| I always read flagged comments, and I vouch for them when
| I feel they've been unfairly flagged (or when they're
| from banned accounts that are automatically flagged, but
| the comment is unobjectionable).
|
| This is however a tacit admission that what you have to
| say is against the guidelines of this site and that, were
| you to let it compete in the market place of ideas, it
| would be fail completely.
| lzaaz wrote:
| The fact that an opinion is censored by the means of
| flagging means that it doesn't have a chance to compete
| in the "marketplace of ideas".
| maxbond wrote:
| No, that is the idea being assigned a negative value.
| lzaaz wrote:
| If an idea goes against the guidelines of a website that
| doesn't mean it has a negative value, especially if users
| aren't allowed to interact with it at all.
| maxbond wrote:
| They did interact with it. They flagged it. People
| generally don't consult the site's guidelines when
| flagging, but their own set of values.
| throwaway27727 wrote:
| Not all scientific discussion is pleasant to hear, but it
| would be worth discussing, even if flagged and down
| voted, rather than "We were always at war with Eurasia".
| christophilus wrote:
| If it's not worth vagueposting about, it's worth tweeting
| and TikToking about.
| maxbond wrote:
| You are saying, because you are uncomfortable discussing
| it, no one should discuss it? Feel free to correct me if
| I'm misreading you, it sounds like you're more or less
| saying, "things I don't like should go away and stop
| existing."
| reilly3000 wrote:
| This is alarmist BS. Facebook group fodder. "Humans have working
| mirror neurons" could have been the headline.
|
| All of you futurists who have slipped down the slope are worried
| about media spreading "sociogenic illness". Of course media is
| powerful. It always has been. There has been about 75 years of
| fears and schemes about using TV to mass hypnotize its watchers.
| The same with radio before it.
|
| What is happening is mass unstructured clustering by social
| algos, specifically TikTok. Historically content and ad
| algorithms have focused on contextual relevance with structured
| categories. Graphs have extended that to included social context.
| TikTok has novel input parameters about user behavior. There have
| been many reports that this unstructured clustering is surfacing
| niche medical diagnoses regularly.
|
| A lot of neurodivergent traits have historically been under
| diagnosed for the same goddamn ignorance as OP's piece: "it's
| just attention seeking". This type of dismissal by parents,
| teachers, and doctors alike have lead to millions of people
| leading shorter, harder lives. ADHD, Autism, Tourette's, Bipolar,
| schizophrenia, etc are present in larger numbers than are
| diagnosed. Often time these lifelong genetic differences lead to
| 10x+ higher suicide rates, inability to sustain work, and myriad
| health issues. It's really common that mental health issues that
| don't result in property damage just get ignored, downplayed, or
| under treated even if acknowledged.
|
| I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 29. Having that information
| combined with medication, therapy, and exercise has changed my
| life for the better dramatically. If TikTok was the surface where
| I discovered that, I would have likely been dismissed or even
| openly mocked by my doctors, and continued with a life of
| suffering or worse.
|
| By the way, it seems people cited in the article are experiencing
| a form of Tourette's syndrome that is a typical neurological
| trait associated with other pathology. Echolalia has far less
| cultural awareness, but accurate describes the behavior:
| "Echolalia is not only associated with Autism, but also with
| several other conditions, including congenital blindness,
| intellectual disability, developmental delay, language delay,
| Tourette's syndrome, schizophrenia and others." it's not just
| swear words like on TV. My child does this. What happened to
| start as a YouTube ad for "Raid Shadow Legends" turned into a
| joke punchline, turned into a phrase that they cannot stop
| themselves from saying compulsively at odd times, after multiple
| years. It's sub-clinical by itself, but is consistent with the
| diagnosis they do have.
|
| This article is red meat, BS fear bait at best, dangerous at
| worst. To the extent content like this actually promotes
| diagnosis denial, it's complicit in very literal harm of patients
| and those around them.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > these lifelong genetic differences
|
| I'm not aware of convincing evidence that bipolar and
| schizophrenia are of genetic origin (other than that
| schizophrenia sometimes runs in families). There are serious
| people that insist that they originate in childhood trauma. And
| since childhood trauma also sometimes runs in families, family
| histories of schizophrenia aren't that convincing either.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Wiki says "Genetic factors account for about 70-90% of the
| risk of developing bipolar disorder."
| https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/resources-
| support/bipol... says 80%, and says "If one parent has
| bipolar disorder, there's a 10% chance that their child will
| develop the illness. / If both parents have bipolar disorder,
| the likelihood of their child developing bipolar disorder
| rises to 40%."
|
| One of the cited papers is "Family, twin, and adoption
| studies of bipolar disorder". Link that gives only the
| abstract: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14601036/
|
| I haven't dug into the paper yet, but there's a starting
| point.
|
| Edit: The paper says "More recent (and rigorous) studies that
| have compared concordance rates specifically of bipolar
| disorder among MZ [monozygotic] and DZ [dizygotic] twin pairs
| are summarized in table 2." The table shows four studies that
| gave concordances of 0.00-0.08 for dizygotic twins, and
| 0.36-0.75 for monozygotic twins.
| pjc50 wrote:
| (content warning)
|
| It's not commonly discussed, but suicide seems to be a
| "sociogenic illness" in that reporting on suicides as such can
| cause more suicides. You may have noticed this in the reporting
| on celebrity deaths; a young person who "dies suddenly" may be
| suicide, but news reports will tend to avoid saying that out of
| concern for the sociogenic effects.
| screye wrote:
| I have anecdotally noticed this too.
|
| My university went 6 years without a suicide, and then had 3
| highly publicized suicides over the year. They then put in a
| lot of effort to bury it as much as possible, students went
| home for the summer, and the university had a few suicide-free
| years right after
| abfan1127 wrote:
| those suicides could also be Black Swan events, very rare,
| nothing done actually did anything. But human behavior is
| weird, so who knows.
| screye wrote:
| Unfortunately I knew 2/3, and it was well known to be due
| to the risk of failing a course. Now the university makes
| sure that no-one knows if there was suicide note and the
| details of they committed suicide.
|
| The eerie thing was the fact that they all killed
| themselves in exactly the same way. (hanging off a the
| ceiling)
|
| But ofc, the plural of anecdotes is not data. There I agree
| with you.
| Loughla wrote:
| >It's not commonly discussed,
|
| It absolutely is commonly discussed in mental health circles.
| Suicides cluster is a common theme among health experts. When
| you see one suicide among a target population (youth for
| example), you will commonly see multiples.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/resources/suicide-clusters.html
| walkhour wrote:
| For the reason you discuss you should delete your comment.
| Airplanes crashes rise when the media discusses these topics:
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/1746810.
| elil17 wrote:
| It's not clear to me that discussing the effect causes the
| effect. It's an effect that's been specifically documented in
| response to media coverage of suicide. The consensus from
| suicide prevention orgs seems to be that compassionate,
| interpersonal discussions about suicide prevention are
| probably helpful. Not sure if that's backed by research.
| civopsec wrote:
| Can't delete something that has been replied to.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| This comes to mind: "Association Between the Release of
| Netflix's 13 Reasons Why and Suicide Rates in the United
| States"
|
| Relevant studies:
| https://www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567(19)30288-6/fulltex...
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| munificent wrote:
| The "Werther effect" is the name for this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide
| guywithahat wrote:
| hot take: the definition of tourette's will soon be changed to
| include this "sociogenic illness" to avoid offending those who
| develop tics from watching online videos. Otherwise you'll be
| implicitly offending those with it as being less legitimate
| (which they are, but that's besides the point)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Is this what Dawkins originally meant by a meme?
| ccity88 wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that if we're able to accept the idea
| that mass social media-induced illness can be developed just by
| virtue of video watching TikTok or YouTube, then this opens new
| doors to examining the behaviour of other illnesses such as
| gender dysphoria that are statistically over represented. This is
| probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because nobody wants
| to confront the idea that we can _learn_ to want to be another
| gender. But I think there's some interesting parallels to be
| observed here, and discounting that based on "moral virtue" or
| "denying hate speech" or whatever i'll be attacked with is just
| moving the target.
| agileAlligator wrote:
| brnt wrote:
| Recently read the story of a detransitioner and the statistic
| that about a third falls of the radar (and due missing their
| hormones, almost certainly are unhappy about the treatment).
| Social media are implicated in the spread of these ideas (all
| ideas), and the detransitioner pleaded for better info from
| professionals and an end to doctor neutrality for underage
| trans people.
|
| Changed my mind a bit.
| somedude895 wrote:
| Could be part of the Tavistock Center[0] story?
|
| The state of affairs around transsexuality is horrifying.
| Critical discussion is basically not allowed on moral grounds
| and most people who "study" the topic (eg gender studies),
| care for said patients (eg gender clinics), etc are the same
| people who already adhere to that no-criticism-allowed
| agenda.
|
| [0] https://news.sky.com/story/amp/nhs-gender-clinic-the-
| tavisto...
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Less than 1%. That's the number of people who detransition
| simply because they didn't feel it was the right thing for
| them.
|
| Of the less than 2% of detransitioners overall, the vast
| majority names reasons like social pressure, transitioning
| being too difficult, etc.
|
| Dunno what numbers _you_ are talking about, but the ones I
| know certainly underline gender dysphoria being a very real
| thing and not some sort of "social contagion", and my
| personal experience definitely aligns with this as well: I
| don't know a single trans person who seems to regret
| transitioning, but a whole number of trans people who are
| struggling with the constant hate they get, fuelled in part
| by this sort of rhetoric.
|
| And since the article in one of the replies mentioned puberty
| blockers: They are 1. entirely reversible, 2. routinely
| prescribed to cis children for other medical reasons and 3.
| unlike these blockers, puberty is not reversible.
|
| Can I change your mind, even if just a little bit? I don't
| know; but if you really want to change your mind, start
| looking closely into the "statistics" of the right. Their
| misrepresentations are often absurdly superficial. It's all a
| lie, and the parts that aren't, usually aren't that bad.
| brnt wrote:
| > Less than 1%. That's the number of people who
| detransition simply because they didn't feel it was the
| right thing for them.
|
| About 1% who do so through the hospital procrdures. About a
| third just stops showing up for followups and hormones.
| According to the detransitioner, who falls into that
| category, and has found a small community of similar
| people, this is what's wrong with the statistic: it's
| extremely important to not exclude the group that falls of
| the radar. Since they're not getting hormones anymore, the
| safest assumption is that they are stopping their
| transition (because they are) or detransitioning.
|
| A third is a very high amount.
|
| This is the NL btw.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| idk I got a stapled packet of info from my provider and the
| effects are listed on Wikipedia these days for the stuff I'm
| on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminizing_hormone_therapy#
| Eff...
|
| It's a tradeoff. At least we can all agree that adults have
| the right to transition under an Informed Consent model.
| Countries like the UK, without IC, are hellholes for trans
| medical care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8
| brnt wrote:
| This is in the NL. Yes, they got a pile of folders, but in
| retrospect they would have wanted psychiatric care, because
| these issues were not treated and instead channelled into
| gender disphoria.
| djexjms wrote:
| My partner of the last six years is trans. Your post doesn't
| strike me as hate speech, but what Hacker News commenters seem
| not to understand is that making overly general statements
| about entire groups of people can often lead to an
| oversimplified view of the situation (see what I did there).
|
| Let's start with the assumption that people can and do learn to
| "want" to be a particular gender. I am not an anthropologist,
| but I feel like this is a pretty uncontroversial take, and is
| the mechanism for how cis-gendered people learn to follow the
| gender norms of the culture they find themselves in. This is
| the key difference between gender and sex. Gender norms seem to
| be a cultural universal, but the form those norms take is
| dependent on time and place.
|
| What this means is that in any society there are two sets of
| behavioral norms, one for perceived men, and one for perceived
| women. If a person in this society has a strong preference
| about which set of norms they prefer, and if the set of norms
| they prefer doesn't line up with their sex, you have the
| potential for that person to identify with the other gender.
| The term "transgender" is new, but behaviors associated with
| the term go back as far as you care to look.
|
| So you have this potential tension where a person might prefer
| the gender norms of the other sex, but you also have the fact
| that questioning norms of any kind in a society is always
| somewhat taboo. A few very dedicated people would live their
| lives as the other gender. Many more probably would have liked
| to if they were aware that it was an option, but were not (in
| other words, even questioning a social norm can be difficult if
| there isn't already public discussion about it).
|
| So if the sudden perceived increase in trans people seems like
| a sociogenic disease to you, I can see how you might think
| that. I can also see how hurtful it is to many people to frame
| it in those terms. If we take a closer look at the linked
| paper, they hypothesize that one of the drivers of the
| tourettes-like disease is attention seeking behavior. Are there
| people who decide to transition ultimately because they believe
| they will get more attention? I'm sure some do. But thinking
| that is the motivation for most trans people is a very hurtful
| overgeneralization and is unhelpful because it is just wrong.
| The trans people that I am personally acquainted with don't
| want more attention. They want less of it. If you even glance
| at common discussion topics in trans discussion forums, you
| will see that there is a lot of discussion about "passing".
| Passing doesn't seem like attention-seeking behavior to me, it
| seems like the exact opposite.
|
| Does social media have no role to play in explaining the
| increase in people who identify as trans? It probably does have
| some role there. But its only accelerating and amplifying
| trends that already existed. LGBT+ issues in general have been
| getting less and less taboo to talk about for the last several
| decades. The internet and communications technology more
| generally is exposing people to more cultures and norms. My
| hypothesis is that there were many preexisting people who were
| unsatisfied with the gender roles that they were expected to
| fulfill, and that growing acceptance and discussion of LGBT+
| issues made them realize that there was no reason to keep
| putting up with them anymore.
| naasking wrote:
| > then this opens new doors to examining the behaviour of other
| illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically over
| represented
|
| I don't think this is necessarily new. Anorexia seems to
| increase proportionally to public awareness of anorexia. It's
| not just that diagnosis actually improves, it literally appears
| to be a causal connection, as in, hospitalizations for health
| problems due to undereating increase dramatically after public
| awareness about anorexia increases in response to media
| coverage or public awareness campaigns. Pretty wild.
|
| This was discussed in the book "Crazy Like Us: The
| Globalization of the American Psyche".
| mnsc wrote:
| Since there is a school of thought that gender to a great
| extent is socially learned behaviour the idea that you by
| learning more about gender transgression would "create" a
| desire that "I would be more comfortable in 'that gender' over
| there" is not far-fetched although I'm not aware of any
| research. The issue is mostly by those who pathologize that
| state of not being comfortable in ones "gender assigned at
| birth", like saying "...other illnesses such as gender
| dysphoria" and then wanting to "cure" this dysphoria in other
| ways than enabling a safe and informed transition. Like for
| instance banning people talking about their experiences, good
| and bad, in transitioning.
| DSingularity wrote:
| How can there ever be an informed transition with something
| like shifting genders?
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| You can practice presenting differently in safe social
| situations, that's reversible. (e.g. crossdressing)
|
| Trans fem people can remove their facial hair without doing
| other medical transition steps.
|
| The effects of hormone replacement are so slow that you can
| safely "try them out" for a month or two and not have a
| huge permanent burden.
|
| You talk to people and think about it real hard and sleep
| on it for years. It looks sudden from the outside because
| there's such a stigma over saying "Hey I'm thinking about
| trying on a new gender, do you think it would work?"
|
| It's not too different from other body modification like
| tattoos or vasectomies. You can't fully know for sure, but
| there is a point where you decide that the risk is worth
| it, because the potential payoff seems worth it. Then it
| usually turns out it is. Most "de-transition" cases are
| people who couldn't afford the monetary cost or social cost
| of presenting as transgender. It's un-common to transition
| and then find out you're actually cis.
| DSingularity wrote:
| What is cis?
|
| This makes sense except the part about the slow acting
| hormones. If they are slow acting then one wouldn't know
| their effects until later. How much later? And is it
| guaranteed that they will be reversible at that point?
|
| Modulo what is above, in summary: you are saying there
| can be informed decisions because the teenagers can: -
| try out cross dressing - try out the hormone therapy to
| some point before it has non-reversible long term
| consequences
| jackmott42 wrote:
| If you suppose that understanding this well is not
| possible, that would imply you also do not understand it
| well, so perhaps you should leave other people alone to do
| what they will, unless some good reason is revealed not to.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Agreed -- until it starts to harm people. Some are
| suggesting that this is creating harm for minors.
| vinegarden wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of a very interesting interview with
| Dr Az Hakeem, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who set up
| group therapy sessions for gender dysphoric patients:
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ycqNoareUT6Y6s85LrJSF
|
| He would include in these groups people at all stages in
| their transitions, so those considering transitioning further
| could be informed and challenged by those who had gone the
| whole way with surgery and all.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > then this opens new doors to examining the behaviour of other
| illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically over
| represented. This is probably going to get downvoted to
| oblivion, because nobody wants to confront the idea that we can
| _learn_ to want to be another gender.
|
| It's very, very simple. There always have been about 10% of
| people who are left-handed - but for a time in history,
| teachers and society (sometimes brutally) repressed that and
| forced left-handed children to use their right hand. Once that
| relaxed and children were left to freely be who they were, the
| left-handed ratio went back to its historic norm [1].
|
| Obviously, it's been the same for gay, trans and other
| sexuality/gender-nonmainstream people. They have always been
| part of human history - from the old Greeks [2] to early
| Islamic and Hindu ages [3], but as long as there was an heir
| available for a long time many simply didn't bother to care or
| looked away in historic Catholic regions. The repression only
| went really bad with the Nazis, who destroyed the Institute for
| Sexology [4] and later on with anti-LGBT laws still remaining
| on the books for decades, then the anti-gay panic with AIDS,
| and only nowadays public opinion is beginning to relax.
|
| The problem is that Conservatives not just don't get that
| simple historic fact, they actively _deny_ it based on their
| morals, and as a result young LGBT people have shockingly high
| suicide rates (in thoughts, attempts and success [5]).
|
| [1] https://www.truthorfiction.com/the-history-of-left-
| handednes...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greec...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
|
| [5] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096920693/lgbtq-youth-
| though...
| [deleted]
| mrpopo wrote:
| There's no denying that gender dysphoria exists and has
| always existed. OP made the claim that it might be
| statistically over-represented.
|
| Looking at the Hijra example, it looks like the Hijra
| demographics are around 0.5-1% of the population.
|
| In the latest polls [0], the proportion of Gen Z that
| identify as transgender is over 2%.
|
| Is there repression/stigma in South Asia keeping some people
| in the closet? Is the culture difference having an effect on
| gender dysphoria? Is there a gender dysphoria "contagious"
| effect? I don't know, but those are interesting questions.
|
| [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-
| tick...
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| According to Gallup's poll, which they present as
| estimates, it is 0.7% in the US. In India, 0.6% people
| self-identified as hijra (Sahastrabuddhe et al., 2012). In
| the 2011 census in India, 0.04% answered with "Other" when
| asked to choose between "Male", "Female" and "Other".
|
| Canada included the question in their latest census. In my
| opinion, a mandatory government census provides data that
| is more accurate than Gallup's phone poll.
|
| "In Canada, 0.2% of the population aged 18 and older was
| transgender in 2021. Belgium (0.5% among people aged 18 to
| 75 in 2021) and New Zealand (0.5% among people aged 18 and
| older in 2020) have also published representative survey-
| based data on their transgender populations."
|
| "The proportions of transgender and non-binary people were
| three to seven times higher for Generation Z (born between
| 1997 and 2006, 0.79%) and millennials (born between 1981
| and 1996, 0.51%) than for Generation X (born between 1966
| and 1980, 0.19%), baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965,
| 0.15%) and the Interwar and Greatest Generations (born in
| 1945 or earlier, 0.12%)."
|
| "Other countries have published 2021 data on transgender
| people using crowdsourcing and non-representative surveys,
| including Ireland (0.6% among people aged 18 and older),
| England and Wales (0.6% among people aged 16 and older),
| and the United States (0.8% among people aged 18 and
| older)."
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And what the fuck would be the problem if GenZ had an
| "over-representation" of LGBT?!
|
| We don't live in the dark ages, almost all Western
| constitutions have some sort of "freedom of expression" on
| their books. Just let people live their lifes however they
| want to do it, as long as they don't harm anybody. Trans
| people or kissing gays on the street don't harm anyone but
| the feelings of some poor Conservatives who are secretly in
| the closet and envious about the freedom today's youth has.
|
| Just look how many of the loud pearl clutching
| Conservatives turned out to be gay or adulterous. It's
| nothing but projection and pure envy.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| One potential danger is that some of the more extreme
| therapies for gender transition are permanent and work
| best when used early. If a person's trans orientation is
| the result of a poorly formed sense of identity, as
| alleged by the article, there's a stronger chance they
| may change their mind later, after irreversible harm has
| been wrought.
|
| In other words, there's a chance that some kids may not
| be "really" trans, but rather attention-seeking or
| mentally ill. And for those kids, transitioning would, in
| fact, be harmful in the long run.
|
| Do we, as a society, have an obligation to prevent these
| children and young adults from harming themselves in this
| way?
|
| I don't have a firm answer because it's a difficult and
| emotional subject, but I think it's extreme to pretend
| this is not an issue, and equally extreme to encourage
| kids for whom it might not be safe to transition.
|
| Perhaps the informal controls we have in place prior to
| gender reassignment surgery are already adequate to
| filter out these vulnerable kids. Perhaps there are other
| interventions I'm not aware of that are already in use.
| But I don't see the harm in discussing and exploring
| whether there is a proportion of the trans population
| that is, in fact, suffering from social or mental illness
| and not actually a more innate form of gender dysphoria.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > One potential danger is that some of the more extreme
| therapies for gender transition are permanent and work
| best when used early.
|
| There is virtually only one, and that's puberty blockers,
| stuff that has been used for _decades_ to treat
| precocious puberty. We know these medicines are safe and
| we also know that nature will run its course again all by
| itself after the medicines are left out.
|
| Genital surgery, the second option, is extremely rare in
| people under 18, and most of it is done on inter-gender
| children shortly after birth which is a grave mistake
| anyway and some countries have banned that as a result
| [1].
|
| And in any case: Puberty blockers are reversible -
| puberty itself is not. Some things (e.g. the growth of
| breast tissue) can be reversed but at a high cost, some
| like the vocal cords changing for hormonal males cannot
| be reversed at all. It is way, _way_ better for trans
| children to not force them through puberty.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-lgbt-
| health-idUSK...
| hijrathrowaway wrote:
| The Hijra cult kidnaps children, forcibly castrates in a
| brutal ritual which many don't survive, and then pimps them
| out. These are not people who voluntarily "identify as
| transgender"; these are people who were violently feminized
| to satisfy others' sexual desires. It continues to amaze
| that people trot such a terrible thing out as some kind of
| positive example.
|
| https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/oct/20hijra.htm
|
| https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-
| report/story/1994...
| bognition wrote:
| Counter hypothesis. For the last several decades society put
| massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With
| these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling
| empowered to explore their sexuality.
|
| Social media is absolutely involved, but we really don't know
| what the base rate would be in a society devoid of this kind of
| pressure.
| throwaway049 wrote:
| 'The last several decades' is an odd specification. Are you
| saying there was a point in the quite recent past when this
| was different?
| niom wrote:
| Yes. Outright bans and persecution of homosexuality is
| relatively new. Effeminate gays were practically
| eradicated, Europe had the Nazis do it, the US had the
| lavender scare (because gay=communist), the Soviets under
| Stalin did much like the Nazis. This is why gays reinvented
| themselves into the hypermasculine leather culture starting
| in the 50s. It's why older gay men have negative attitudes
| towards younger effeminate gays and the reason why the same
| parts of the gay community look down on bottoms who aren't
| vers.
| simiones wrote:
| > Outright bans and persecution of homosexuality is
| relatively new.
|
| In most of Europe at least, homosexuality could not be
| openly practiced for most of the middle ages. There were
| certain exceptions, but it was not generally considered
| acceptable, and it was persecuted by the church or other
| moral authorities, at the very least as ostracism if not
| outright legal punishments - usually seen as a deviant
| sexual act, which were also routinely punished. Since the
| states were far weaker than modern states, it wasn't as
| systematic and universal as the Nazis attempted, but it
| was still happening.
|
| Even in societies we perceive as more open such as
| ancient Rome, homosexual acts were often not explicitly
| accepted as normal, except for some we today would
| (rightly) consider abhorrent - adult men having sex with
| teenagers, but never the other way around.
| niom wrote:
| Ancient acceptance of MSM generally depended on who did
| the penetrating, because in a nutshell penetrating was
| manly and A-OK while being penetrated (orally / anally /
| vaginally) was womanly and hence bad. MSM was an exercise
| of social power.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Upvote.
|
| For anyone else wanting more context, this is an ok
| starting point:
| https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/the-
| hist... (but note that the side of the story from inside
| the gay community is yet another matter, as niom hints
| at)
|
| Basically, before most people knew that "gay" was a
| thing, there was much less pressure on men to be
| performatively straight.
| api wrote:
| This brings to mind one of my rules about conservative
| panics:
|
| If laws against witchcraft are removed and/or witchcraft is
| destigmatized and then all the sudden there appears to be an
| explosion of witches, the explanation is probably _not_ that
| hordes of people are adopting witchcraft.
|
| I'll leave it to the reader to guess the simplest and most
| likely explanation.
| naasking wrote:
| > the explanation is probably not that hordes of people are
| adopting witchcraft.
|
| I don't know how you can a priori gauge this probability.
| If something illegal suddenly becomes legal but is still
| somewhat taboo, that obviously attracts experimentation, at
| least from rebellious youth.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Why not? If something illegal/destigmatized which has some
| advantages becomes legal I would absolutely expect there to
| be an explosion of people who now start adopting that
| thing.
| conchrat wrote:
| I understand your point but I think witchcraft might not be
| the best example. If witchcraft started going viral, I
| would absolutely be tempted to give it a shot lol. Would
| not surprise me if I was not in the minority there
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Sure. Adventurous or curious people might give something
| a try just for the hell of it. For some it will stick.
| For many it won't.
|
| This is what I find so exhausting about those who try to
| drum up some kind of controversy around gender identity.
| Assuming it is all just a fad, who cares? Where's the
| issue when people decide to switch their gender on a
| whim? It's their lives. People do all kinds of things on
| a whim. Adults, teens and children too. Especially
| children, in fact. Sometimes people regret the things
| they did, sometimes they don't. Oh well, it's part of
| life.
|
| I could understand being concerned about a social trend
| if it was causing violent behavior that negatively
| affected other people's lives, but this isn't that. Who
| is it hurting if someone decides to identify as another
| gender? Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's
| only going to affect them at worst. If anything the small
| government/pro-freedom position should be to defend the
| right of those people to live how they want.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Where's the issue when people decide to switch their
| gender on a whim?
|
| The issue, at least for me, starts when we give children
| drugs and surgeries to enable them to switch genders.
|
| There's nothing wrong with little Timmy wanting to play
| with Barbies. He doesn't need hormone injections because
| of it.
| maxbond wrote:
| These same points are made & rebutted in this thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33880094
| dmm wrote:
| > Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's only
| going to affect them at worst.
|
| People are worried about their kids. People are scared
| and the media amplifies the most extreme voices.
| Establishing scientifically the effectiveness of medical
| interventions is difficult in the best of circumstances
| and most psychology is non-reproducible, so it's hard to
| know what to believe is best.
| wwilim wrote:
| Captain Obvious here - the witches were already there, they
| were just closeted
| moffkalast wrote:
| Maybe the real witches were the friends we made along the
| way
| nmadden wrote:
| An explosion of witches is usually down to too much eye of
| newt.
| adolph wrote:
| _The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over
| 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA,
| sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse,
| organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the
| United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts
| of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
| mc32 wrote:
| Well, there were actual cases of it, but it was
| exaggerated in the media.
|
| Just as the media makes it out like the next stop by a
| cop could end up in an execution if you're not the same
| ethnicity as the cop. It's still rather rare, or at least
| not happening at the rate the media portrays it.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yeah, but the ethnicity of cops is blue.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Why can't blue men sing the whites?
| adolph wrote:
| Exaggeration of the actual happens for cause and effect
| alike. It is often hard to tell which side exaggeration
| favors until time passes.
| rendall wrote:
| > _one of my rules about conservative panic..._
|
| _Rule_ implies that it applies to past conservative moral
| panics. Is there a past moral panic in which lots of
| formerly suppressed identities suddenly expressed
| themselves once the moral panic was over?
| pjc50 wrote:
| A lot of people came out after homosexuality was
| decriminalised.
|
| Freedom of religion allowed a lot of people to express
| their religious identity which was formerly suppressed?
| amarant wrote:
| A bit of an obscure example, but: Capoeira was forbidden
| in Brazil for a very long time, mostly because of a moral
| panic(for brevity I'll leave the complexities of this
| situation out of this comment), then when it was
| legalised, and the stigma around it began to disappear,
| it quickly became very popular, both in Brazil and
| internationally!
| cshimmin wrote:
| This seems to be to opposite of the example GP was
| seeking. Unless you mean to say that a great many people
| (both in Brazil and internationally) were already
| practicing Capoeira before it was legalized...
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Left-handed people.
| trelane wrote:
| Most sinister[1] example
|
| [1] See notes on etymology etc. at https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/sinister
| api wrote:
| I bring this one up every time someone brings up
| Chesterton's Fence arguments about stuff like this.
|
| Why was left handedness considered taboo and evil? Do we
| need to figure out a legitimate reason for this before we
| can remove the fence? Could there possibly be a
| legitimate reason for something that clearly absurd?
| tpmoney wrote:
| I mean the point of the argument is to try to find out if
| there is possibly a legitimate reason, not to assume
| there was and not explore removing the fence. Sometimes
| no there was no good reason. Sometimes there was but it's
| no longer applicable.For example lots of religious
| dietary restrictions have reasonable health benefits,
| especially in a society before modern refrigeration and
| food safety standards. So while there was a legitimate
| reason, it's not nearly as applicable anymore.
| Discouraging sexual freedom and promiscuity makes a lot
| more sense in a society without birth control and where
| every additional mouth to feed means someone isn't making
| it through the winter. Less so in a modern society. And
| sometimes there are absolutely legitimate reasons that
| have just been lost to time (most commonly captured in
| the idea that most safety rules and regulations are
| written in blood)
| brookst wrote:
| There could be, but I think the presumption should be
| that it is normal social evolution to stigmatize
| minorities. Red-headed people, Jewish/Semitic people,
| people with cleft palates, on and on.
|
| There seems to be a representation threshold below which
| any observable minority is considered undesirable. To the
| extent there is a "legitimate reason" it is probably
| rooted in evolutionary psychology for avoiding too much
| genetic variation in small tribes. I submit those fences
| are the opposite of Chesterton's fence and can happily be
| ignored in today's society.
| rendall wrote:
| > _evolutionary psychology for avoiding too much genetic
| variation in small tribes_
|
| Hmm. I suspect it's just "other tribes". We humans will
| make tribes out of literally any distinction, even
| athletic team preferences. It's kind of our thing.
| naasking wrote:
| > Could there possibly be a legitimate reason for
| something that clearly absurd?
|
| Yes: https://www.straightdope.com/21343459/in-the-third-
| world-do-...
| cshimmin wrote:
| No comment about Chesterton's Fence but I have heard (but
| never confirmed!) one reason for left-handed stigma is to
| do with hygiene. The idea is that before modern hygienic
| standards (e.g. sinks with soap in every
| bathroom/kitchen), the left hand was reserved for "dirty
| work" (we are also considering a time before toilet
| paper...). So for example when you reach out to shake
| someone's hand, it would be rude to use the left.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Your right hand is your sword hand; by offering to shake
| hands, you demonstrate that you are not about to run your
| counterparty through.
| rendall wrote:
| This is apocryphal
| leephillips wrote:
| For me, the Chesterton's Fence principle doesn't insist
| that there's a good reason for everything that needs to
| be discovered. It says, don't remove the thing until you
| understand why it was put there. If you're sure there's
| no good reason, go ahead. But find out first.
| xd wrote:
| As a parent I have no idea what you are trying to say with
| this idea of pushing "heteronormativity" - I don't and don't
| know any parents that push anything sexual let alone
| encouraging kids to explore sexuality .. they are kids and
| will be kids until they mature and begin to feel the urge to
| explore. This normalising of sexualising of children is
| abhorrent.
|
| Edit: the voting on this comment is crazy.. the number of HN
| users that feel sexualisation of children isn't bad is
| utterly shameful.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You've not noticed the pink for girls/blue for boys
| distinction?
| xd wrote:
| Yes and me and my wife laugh about it but there is an
| obvious distinctive preference for kids male and female
| which will play into sales .. no one is forcing anyone to
| buy anything and even back in the 80s growing up I knew
| kids that would buy toys you'd associate with the other
| gender.
| the_af wrote:
| A societal pressure doesn't mean it's forced. Most
| societal pressures aren't. Instead, they are _strong_
| expectations and in occasions, frowning upon behavior
| that deviates from the expectation. This creates
| tremendous pressure. Just look at teenager social
| dynamics, lots of "unenforced" expectations become
| critical for them.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| How is that " massive pressure on kids to conform to
| heteronormativity"?
| acdha wrote:
| That distinction goes back to decisions made by a few
| department store managers around WWII. It's nothing but a
| cultural norm reinforced everywhere so pervasively most
| of us aren't even aware of the pressure.
|
| https://www.thelist.com/32342/real-reasons-behind-blue-
| boys-...
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| The colors used to be switched in the 1800s. Pink for
| boys and blue for girls.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| That just says that gender norms are malleable, not that
| they don't exist. Both in the 1800s and today there were
| strong expectations in terms of "expected" roles for
| different genders.
| mc32 wrote:
| And before that color was too expensive. But one wouldn't
| say that gender roles did not exist. Color is nothing but
| an added expression like lipstick or horsehair wigs.
|
| For some today black is the macho color, for others it's
| the artistic color.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| My only point is that because of the color switch we can
| see that certain concepts of gender identity preference,
| "color", are social constructs that influence society.
| Macha wrote:
| The assumption that this is inherently sex related is where
| the issue starts. This is why the discussion shifted from
| talking about sexuality to talking about gender nearly 20
| years ago. Ideas like boys cannot wear skirts or play with
| barbies are present from a young age, yet we don't accuse
| people opposed to boys with skirts/barbies of thinking
| about said boys future sexuality.
| Closi wrote:
| > The assumption that this is inherently sex related is
| where the issue starts. This is why the discussion
| shifted from talking about sexuality to talking about
| gender nearly 20 years ago.
|
| Well it was the parent comment that was linking this to
| sexuality - Hetronormativity is inherently about
| sexuality (i.e. Hetro-Normativity - Hetro ->
| Heterosexual: of, pertaining to, or being a heterosexual
| person).
| acdha wrote:
| I think the downvotes are coming because you're insisting
| on treating this as a question of sexualization. Gender is
| distinct and it's reinforced early on - my son is 5 and
| most of his classmates have had things like "pink and
| skirts and dolls are for girls", "trucks and blue and guns
| are for boys" established as the norm for years. That's not
| perfectly reliable - we know more sparkly princesses who
| climb trees and drive race cars than I did at his age - but
| it's _everywhere_, and the religious conservatives who call
| any acknowledgment of LGBTQ people "grooming" would 100% be
| locking and loading if even 10% of that reinforcement
| energy was going into LGBTQ acceptance.
|
| Also note that none of this is about having sex: it's about
| telling kids which archetypes are available for them as
| grownups. If we want to talk about sex, however, look at
| the degree to which girl's clothing mimics the styles of
| adult women even at the expense of practicality for the
| things kids actually do and how many stories even for young
| children revolve around the major life goal being an
| exclusive relationship with a man. Again, the stuff people
| are complaining about now is an order of magnitude less
| than what kids are already getting to reinforce traditional
| gender norms.
| dsiegel2275 wrote:
| I think "pushing heteronormativity" doesn't need to be a
| conscious, deliberate act and it doesn't need to be
| anything related to sex. It can be as simple as a parent
| buying their son a toy truck for their birthday while
| buying a barbie doll for their daughter: a reinforcement of
| socially acceptable gender roles
| xd wrote:
| I've never known a kid to not ask for toys they prefer..
| you make the simple act of giving a child a gift sound
| sinister.. what a world we live in.
| bognition wrote:
| It's not sinister in the slightest, but people should
| understand the larger picture.
|
| Where do those preferences come from? I've seen first
| hand the impact that media, advertising, and social
| pressures at school have had on my children's
| preferences.
| naasking wrote:
| > Where do those preferences come from? I've seen first
| hand the impact that media, advertising, and social
| pressures at school have had on my children's
| preferences.
|
| Sure, but why is that a problem? Our preferences are of
| course sculpted by our environment, and that's not a
| problem as long the people who fall outside of those
| norms aren't punished for it. Assuming those norms aren't
| harmful of course, eg. not good to normalize psychopathy.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| It's basically inevitable that children are going to
| exposed to some normative behaviour, particularly around
| gender. I think the important part is that we're not so
| quick to denounce and suppress any messaging that exposes
| children to the existence of behaviour outside of those
| gender norms, that's when it goes from just existing in a
| society where gender norms exist to maintaining and
| enforcing those gender norms.
| refurb wrote:
| Your use of "heteronormative" doesn't make a lot of
| sense.
|
| Heteronormativity is "heterosexual is the normal state of
| being".
|
| Playing with trucks if you're a girl has nothing to do
| with whether you're hetero or homosexual.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| It ties into a larger concept of gender roles (which is
| probably more applicable to discussion of trans folks
| than sexuality, "heteronormativity" was probably not the
| best word choice)
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _I don 't and don't know any parents that push anything
| sexual let alone encouraging kids to explore sexuality_
|
| I definitely learned before age 13 that being gay/lesbian
| was bad (I'm bisexual and in my mid 40s). I definitely
| learned that I was expected to grow up and get married and
| have kids and if I worked, it was really to help the
| spouse. I remember my parents suddenly getting upset that I
| had male friends and didn't want me spending time with them
| the same way (this was around age 10). No one talked to me
| about attraction and if they did, never explained that I
| might feel that way about women as well as men. This is
| what heteronormativity is. This is pushing sexual
| preferences on youth.
|
| Exploring sexuality isn't about actual sex acts, but more
| about learning who you are and who you are attracted to.
| You know, the sorts of folks you'd like to date and
| eventually, the sorts of folks you want to spend your life
| with. This sort of thing is most definitely encouraged, but
| sometimes the only acceptable option presented is the
| hetronormativity - you know, "biblical" monogamous
| relationships that produce children, and if you are female
| and don't want children, you are broken.
|
| This isn't sexualisation of children.
| maxbond wrote:
| Gender identity and sexual orientation are different
| concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as
| exploring sexuality. Children are constantly exploring
| identity, as I'm sure you have observed. For instance, I am
| a straight man, but when I was a child I sometimes stole my
| mother's lipstick and tried to put it on, or I would play
| with Barbie dolls. I saw that other people incorporated
| these activities in their identities, and I wanted to try
| it. This was no more sexual than when I play acted as a
| soldier or decided I liked to wear cargo pants; I was
| experimenting with who I was or could become, because that
| is what children do.
|
| This is a convenient segue to heteronormativity.
| Heteronormativity is the societal pressure to conform to
| the traditional gender roles of men and women who pursue
| heterosexual relationships. My parents didn't like me
| playing with Barbie dolls; they explicitly told me that it
| wasn't something boys did. This transmits a set of
| expectations about how I should behave, based on my gender.
| Notice that their telling me it was wrong to play with
| dolls was no more sexual than if they had allowed me to
| play with the dolls.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| maxbond wrote:
| This is a straw man.
|
| 1. This is not a good faith representation of what trans
| people are arguing for; no one is saying that playing
| with dolls makes you trans.
|
| 2. Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery.
| Surgeries are not performed for people under the age of
| 18. Trans healthcare for kids largely involves letting
| them choose what clothes they wear, pronouns they use,
| perhaps changing their name. The most that might happen
| is that they take puberty blockers, a reversible and safe
| treatment.
|
| 3. I can see why people would be upset by your straw man,
| were it the reality, but trans people are not an
| abomination, and directing dehumanizing language towards
| a group of people who are frequently targeted for
| violence is profoundly not okay. It's been less than 3
| weeks since a terrorist entered an LGBTQ nightclub in
| Colorado Springs and opened fire, and this has happened
| more times than anyone can count; don't contribute to
| this. And your straw man is just that.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > no one is saying
|
| That's a rather extreme claim, don't you think? There's
| been a significant shift in recent years from "gender
| fluid" behavior being considered a matter of _expression_
| , to it being regarded as an almost mandatory matter of
| identity - either as a sign of identifying with the
| opposite gender, or as being "non binary".
|
| > Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery.
|
| The heavy medicalization of "trans healthcare" creates a
| rigid path from "affirmation" of the supposedly expressed
| gender, to puberty blockers/hormones, to surgical
| reassignment. There are significant social drawbacks for
| those who choose to stray, since 'community' support is
| conditional on picking the "right" choices at any given
| step.
|
| > I can see why people would be upset by your straw man,
| were it the reality, but trans people are not an
| abomination
|
| The latter is not something I ever said, of course. You
| might be pattern-matching my comment with things that are
| just not there. I agree that most trans people just want
| to live their lives and not be at risk for violence, but
| this much is obvious. In general, the most extreme
| "activism" on either side gets a lot of visibility while
| being unrepresentative of what real people think.
| maxbond wrote:
| > There's been a significant shift in recent years from
| "gender fluid" behavior being considered a matter of
| expression, to it being regarded as an almost mandatory
|
| Who exactly is arguing that it is _mandatory_ to be
| gender fluid? I 've never heard such a thing.
|
| What I do hear trans people arguing for is that they have
| a right to exist, that they are under threat of violence,
| and that the require awareness of their condition and
| protection under the law as a matter of survival.
|
| > The heavy medicalization of "trans healthcare" creates
| a rigid path from "affirmation" of the supposedly
| expressed gender, to puberty blockers/hormones, to
| surgical reassignment. There are significant social
| drawbacks for those who choose to stray, since
| 'community' support is conditional on picking the "right"
| choices at any given step.
|
| You're just kinda putting quotes on things to make them
| sound scary. Do you object to surgery, or surgery being
| performed on children? If teenagers go on puberty
| blockers, and they decide they don't want to pursue
| surgery when they become adults - no worries, no surgery
| was performed. If they become adults, having considered
| the decision for a long time at this point - by what you
| were saying before now, that would seem to be okay; you
| were saying it was an unacceptable to impose a surgery on
| children, are you now saying that this isn't a choice
| you're ever okay with? I'm starting to get the feeling
| maybe you just feel trans people are unacceptable in
| general and that, whatever they did, you would disapprove
| of it.
|
| I'm not deeply involved with the LGBTQ community, but I'm
| confident none of the people I know would bully someone
| who decided against transitioning. And none of the LGBTQ
| communities I've ever intersected with have been stingy
| or withholding of their support; they're happy to discuss
| my feelings about gender with me, for example, though I'm
| a straight man with a "by the book" gender presentation
| (and I have my frustrations with my gender and the
| expectations that come with it all the same, which I'm
| sure many men can relate to).
|
| I'm sure there are toxic personalities within these
| communities, but it is certainly not the norm or
| generally tolerated, as bullying exists in virtually all
| communities but generally is not tolerated.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If I can responsibly say to "object" to anything it's
| people being _rushed_ on a path to gender transition,
| given the heavy costs that this involves in practice and
| the fact that some steps are irreversible (including male
| hormones for those AFAB - though admittedly this might
| also make it more justifiably salient for someone AMAB to
| seek to delay their puberty).
|
| This applies to kids the most (they of course aren't at
| risk for surgery, but the usual notion of a fixed "gender
| identity" is also least sensibly applied to them), but
| people in young adulthood should also be a bit concerned.
| Research seems to show that, by and large, those who
| transition in middle-age are the happiest post-
| transition. I'm not sure how that squares with your
| feeling that someone with my views might just find "trans
| people unacceptable in general"; my concerns are derived
| from real-world practicality.
| maxbond wrote:
| There's no rush, but they're also under no obligation to
| respect _your_ timetable. People make up their own minds
| about these things, there isn 't a conspiracy to trans
| the kids as fast as possible, as you make it sound.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I'm not setting a fixed timetable, but the medical
| establishment sure has their own opinions as to how fast
| people should transition. The "conspiracy" is out in the
| open - and these opinions aren't always comprehensively
| informed by research about good outcomes.
| vinegarden wrote:
| > Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery.
| Surgeries are not performed for people under the age of
| 18.
|
| Unfortunately that is not true.
|
| There are surgeons who perform 'gender affirming' double
| mastectomies on girls as young as 13. This is documented
| in the medical literature.
|
| The former CEO of Mermaids, a UK-based charity for
| children who identify as transgender, had her child
| castrated and given a penile inversion at the age of 16,
| by a surgeon who specializes in constructing
| 'neovaginas'.
| blueflow wrote:
| > My parents didn't like me playing with Barbie dolls;
| they explicitly told me that it wasn't something boys
| did.
|
| Same with me, but let me ask you a question. Were you the
| sort of kid that actually listens to their parents?
| Because i didn't, and most of my peers didn't, either.
| maxbond wrote:
| No, I was stubborn like mule. I wore my parents down
| until they caved. That doesn't mean it didn't have an
| impact though, I certainly picked up what they were
| putting down.
|
| Now, the reaction of my friends when they came over and
| looked at me funny when I tried to show them my awesome
| Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders doll (it had
| wings and could fly if you pulled a ripcord! That's
| objectively cool. Also, dangerous, especially to taller
| adults in the area.), _that_ was painful.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| If it's your parents and your peers and virtually all
| popular media, it's massively naive to think that isn't
| going to have a normalizing effect on people.
| blueflow wrote:
| For people with your attitude, yes.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| To be clear, I'm making a descriptive and not a
| prescriptive statement. I'm not saying that people
| _should_ conform to societal norms, just that right now
| they do (and that doesn 't seem like a trivial thing to
| change).
| blueflow wrote:
| I'm sorry, it should have been:
|
| For people with that attitude, yes.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Gender identity and sexual orientation are different
| concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as
| exploring sexuality._
|
| While true, to be fair GP was responding to this:
|
| >>> " _For the last several decades society put massive
| pressure on kids to conform to_ *heteronormativity*.
| _With these pressures lessening more and more people are
| feeling empowered to explore their_ *sexuality*. "
| [emphasis mine]
|
| To muddy the distinction further, there is a small
| minority of men whose sexual kink is to be perceived as
| women. These seem to be the people who are making the
| most trouble for trans women who just want to quietly go
| about living as women without fuss.
| maxbond wrote:
| Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can
| get turned on by literally anything.
| https://xkcd.com/468/ This doesn't really muddy the
| waters; the concepts remain distinct, and people making
| it a kink to conflate them is kinda like how a joke isn't
| true but is only funny if you know the truth it refers
| to.
|
| Heteronormativity conflates gender and sexuality; I'd
| guess (while acknowledging I don't know the content of
| anyone else's mind) that is what is responsible for their
| confusion, because they have been raised in a
| heteronormative society, the distinction doesn't exist in
| _their_ mind.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people
| can get turned on by literally anything._
|
| While a true statement it's also a non-sequitur.
| Anglosphere society is roiled with social turmoil about
| trans-gender identity. One faction would like society to
| recognize that some people's gender does not fit their
| sex, and to normalize accommodating these people's gender
| expression without intrusive and oppressive questioning.
| Another faction, perhaps motivated by genuine concern, or
| perhaps by simple hatred of difference and change, throw
| a spanner into the works by asking hard questions about
| bathrooms and prisons and athletics and such. If the only
| people interested in entering women's bathrooms and
| prisons were genuinely only women who happened to be born
| in a male body, then everything would be clear and
| unmuddied. However, the existence of some fraction of men
| who would happily identify as women in order to gain
| easier sexual access to women does complicate the simple
| distinction. Is a trans woman lesbian with a penis really
| trans, or a predatory man with a kink? Ignoring or
| dismissing the muddy implications of the question will
| not make the second faction go away.
| maxbond wrote:
| This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare
| out, trans people are not assaulting people in bathrooms,
| and what you're describing is really using the way our
| society is built to be hostile to people who do not fit
| into gender norms as a way to justify further hostility.
| It's saying, oh look, we built bathrooms and prisons in a
| way that reinforces these norms, well, I guess we're
| stuck with them.
| rendall wrote:
| > _This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare
| out..._
|
| I didn't say predatory trans people. I said predatory
| men. Have you met men? Some men will put on a dress, call
| themselves trans, and fondle themselves in a women's
| locker room.
|
| Again, pretending this is about trans people is
| disingenuous. This is about (some) men.
|
| And, again, whether you genuinely dismiss the concern
| because you genuinely disbelieve that any man ever would
| take advantage of the situation, the faction that bring
| it up do genuinely believe that some men will take
| advantage of it. This faction will not go away. So,
| probably best to at least acknowledge their concerns so
| that trans people can get on with the business of doing
| their business.
| maxbond wrote:
| I have heard some men say things about women when they
| weren't around that I find appalling; I've had to work on
| eliminating misogyny from my own thinking, and it is a
| work in progress; I'm well aware of men and the toxicity
| that often goes along with them.
|
| The narrative you have presented is frequently
| weaponized, specifically by the adherents to the ideology
| of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, to argue that
| trans women are "men in dresses" who's real goal is to
| infiltrate women's spaces in order to assault them (or,
| in the example you gave, violate their privacy and
| dignity). In practice this a widespread phenomenon. TERF
| activists use this narrative to attempt to enact
| legislation barring trans people from the bathroom of
| their gender - forcing trans women into _men 's
| bathrooms_, and I'm sure that, as someone concerned about
| problematic men and bathrooms, that won't sound like a
| good prospect to you. I take you at your word this was
| context you weren't aware of; now that I've brought it to
| your attention, I hope you'll consider it and see if it
| alters your thinking.
| rendall wrote:
| > _The narrative you have presented is frequently
| weaponized..._
|
| Indeed. This is both true, and a non-sequitur. Bad-faith
| arguers exist. Let us acknowledge the fact that some
| people will reprehensibly refer to every trans woman as a
| "man in a dress". Let's assume the best about each other.
|
| If you're trying to say that everyone is a TERF who
| points out that some men (again, not trans women) will
| take advantage, or that only bad people point this out,
| then you're not addressing the concern, but dismissing
| it. Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern
| will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and
| keep bad men out.
|
| Anyway, you and I won't litigate this here, so if you
| have more to add, know that I'll read whatever you have
| to say but might not reply. Be well.
| maxbond wrote:
| > [Y]ou're not addressing the concern, but dismissing it.
|
| You're right, I should have done better there. To me,
| until this comment where you described this as
| "reprehensible", it sounded like you were employing "just
| asking questions" rhetoric, because you were asking all
| the same questions as TERFs, and to me it appeared you
| were only holding back the transphobic conclusions.
| However, that I should have done a better job assuming
| good faith on your part, and I apologize.
|
| > This is both true, and a non-sequitur.
|
| It isn't a non-sequitur though, I'm explaining to you
| what my issue is. If you were aware of the context around
| this narrative the whole time, you could addressed it
| instead of implying I was being disingenuous; the best-
| faith interpretation I could see was that you didn't
| understand my objection, so I added more detail. I would
| like to engage with you presuming the best, but can you
| see how saying I'm being disingenuous and that my points
| are non-sequitur (when it seems like you do understand
| what TERFs are, what bathroom bills are, and what it was
| I was getting at and how it relates to our discussion)
| made that difficult for me?
|
| > Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will
| get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep
| bad men out.
|
| Happy to listen to what you may propose, but I don't have
| any thoughts. I certainly empathize with women's feeling
| of unsafety and the desire to create spaces without men,
| to the extent I can as a man. But I understand if you are
| done with this conversation, I myself need to log off for
| a few hours to attend to things, and of course you don't
| owe me any of your time.
|
| All the best to you, as well.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is a meaningless concern. Any man who would put on a
| dress to come assault you in the bathroom could skip the
| dress part and just come in the bathroom and assault you.
| It's like saying some rapists have red hair. It's true
| but its not meaningful because no fruitful thing can be
| derived from the fact nor strategy obtained.
|
| There are millions of trans people in the world but
| presumably few rapists in dresses. The spurious focus on
| pointless concerns suggests we ought to harm the dignity
| of millions for a fictional advantage.
| [deleted]
| throwaway049 wrote:
| Sometimes they are doing exactly that
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2018/oct/11/transgender-...
| mc32 wrote:
| My take is kids play with whatever is around.
|
| If your dad has acetylene torches around and your mom has
| axes around the house you're going to play with them.
|
| It does not mean or imply or predict that you want to
| burn the house down or you want to become a butcher or
| axe murderer. You're not exploring being a pyromaniac or
| a murderer. You're just playing, that's it.
|
| Same with high heels, smoking pipes, hunting rifles or
| lipstick. Kids don't know their meaning yet (context of
| usage).
| refurb wrote:
| _For instance, I am a straight man, but when I was a
| child I sometimes stole my mother 's lipstick and tried
| to put it on, or I would play with Barbie dolls._
|
| I wouldn't see trying on lipstick or playing with Barbie
| dolls as "exploring a gender identity" as neither of
| those are exclusive to one gender, even in a
| heteronormative world.
| maxbond wrote:
| I'm not saying you are wrong, but in the culture of my
| household, my school, and the people I had contact with
| as a child, this was seen as strange and something to be
| discouraged, because these things were seen as gendered.
|
| I think these things were much more gendered at the time,
| as well. It is crazy for me to look back and remember how
| there was a time when I hadn't made up my mind about
| whether gay marriage was okay or not. Things have changed
| a lot over the past 20 years or so.
| rendall wrote:
| I dunno. My social set would never discourage a child
| from this at all. However, of those of us who had
| children, only one (out of, like 50+ children in our
| extended set) was gender non-conforming boy at 3 and
| liked to wear girl's clothes and play with dolls.
| [deleted]
| zztop44 wrote:
| I think you might be missing the forest for the trees.
| Barbies and lipstick are not exclusive to one gender, but
| they are _associated_ with one gender. I don't think it's
| controversial to say that people in general will respond
| differently to a little boy who likes playing with
| lipstick and barbie dolls compared to a little girl.
| simiones wrote:
| Have you never asked or seen others ask your boy(s) what
| girl(s) they prefer at school, or vice versa?
|
| Have you never seen anyone upset if their boys are playing
| with dolls or their girls are playing with toy swords?
|
| How do you think most parents would react if someone bought
| a pink dress as a present for for their 6 month old boy, or
| blue pants for their 6 month old girl?
|
| How would most parents react even today to a children's
| cartoon featuring two little boys holding hands and kissing
| on the cheek, or a story about prince charming saving and
| marrying another prince charming?
|
| Pretending heteronormativity is just some sex related thing
| that no one actually talks about is absurd.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| How many Disney movies has your child watched?
| Heteronormativity is 100% prevalent in nearly all media.
|
| You don't even have to single out Disney, 99% of popular
| media will present heterosexual relationships as the norm,
| and children's media that shows something as benign as a
| same sex couple holding hands or hugging is viewed as
| mildly transgressive or at least newsworthy.
|
| Gender non-comforming behaviour is 100% absent outside of
| maybe a "tomboy" female character (and even that seems less
| present than it used to be).
| iwillbenice wrote:
| em-bee wrote:
| it's not the parents, it's everyone around us. i can buy
| gender neutral toys, clothing and encourage the children to
| explore everything and not just gender conform activities
| as much as i want.
|
| but when almost every other friend, relative, other
| kindergarten/school parents teachers push their own ideas
| of what is appropriate for girls or boys, my influence ends
| up being rather small.
|
| i can't push my own ideas here. i can only encourage and
| protect the diverse interests that my kids develop on their
| own.
| bognition wrote:
| I get it that this stuff is confusing and can be hard to
| make sense of at first, but gender identity and sexuality
| are completely different things.
|
| Also I'm not accusing anyone of pushing this on their kids,
| rather, our society does it in massive doses. Watch most
| children's TV shows or movies and heteronormativity is
| abundant.
|
| For a pretty clean example of this check out the movie Up
| by Pixar. The first 10 minutes of the movie are devoted to
| Carl & Ellie's relationship and the loss of that
| relationship serves as a major driver for the movie.
|
| Also there's nothing wrong with showing children this kind
| of content. It helps them make sense of the world. However,
| there is an issue with representation. When it's all they
| see then it constrains their minds as to what is possible.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > I get it that this stuff is confusing and can be hard
| to make sense of at first, but gender identity and
| sexuality are completely different things.
|
| Yeah, but the comment OP is responding to was explicitly
| about letting kids " _explore their sexuality_ ".
| maxbond wrote:
| > With these pressures lessening more and more _people_
| are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality.
|
| Emphasis mine. The comment is not, in fact, about letting
| _children_ explore their sexuality, but _people_. (When
| you consider the parent of that comment, that still does
| not add context implying that we 're talking about kids.)
|
| The only part of the comment which discusses children is
| this:
|
| > For the last several decades society put massive
| pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity.
|
| To read this as sexualizing children is misunderstanding
| the term heteronormativity, but regardless, this is the
| behavior that is being criticized, not championed.
| dahfizz wrote:
| You chopped the one statement into different "parts".
| Here is the comment in question:
|
| > For the last several decades society put massive
| pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With
| these pressures lessening more and more people are
| feeling empowered to explore their sexuality.
|
| In a maximally generous interpretation, you could say
| that the "kids" in the first half and the "people" in the
| second half of the statement are completely different
| subjects. I think that is a bit of a stretch, though.
|
| "For years I have been pruning the tomato plants in my
| garden. Now, I just let the _plants_ grow".
|
| Anyone reading that would assume "plants" refers to the
| aforementioned tomato plants, not cucumbers.
| maxbond wrote:
| They are different subjects, or if you prefer, the same
| subject at different times in their life. They're
| asserting that societal pressure experienced during
| childhood has an effect on how sexuality is expressed
| during adulthood. I chopped it into different parts in
| order to dissect and analyze it; I ultimately included
| the entire comment (except a sentence neither of us found
| relevant and you yourself didn't include), and I was not
| hiding anything; the entire comment was always available
| to be inspected, the structure and content of the comment
| was not in dispute, only it's interpretation.
|
| Consider that, in the example sentence you came up with,
| you are referring to the same subject, _at different
| times_.
| notadev wrote:
| Terms like "heteronormativity" and "cisgender" are just
| ways they attempt to marginalize normal people and their
| normal sexual development. These people who use these terms
| are objectively and statistically outliers in society. And
| since they can't convince anyone to accept their
| abnormality, they instead try to change language to remove
| the idea of there being a standard/normal baseline.
|
| They think that because you're not trying to make them
| "explore their gender identity" while teaching them ABCs
| that you are pushing something. It's absolute projection. I
| support all people to live their lives how they see fit,
| but I refuse to use their newspeak or pretend like there is
| not a natural normal.
| maxbond wrote:
| Interestingly, newspeak was about removing words from
| language so that certain ideas couldn't be expressed. It
| was explicitly not about adding words to the language,
| and certainly not about adding words to convey additional
| nuance and precision where there was previously none.
|
| It seems to me like you're actually arguing to try and
| remove words that people have introduced to the language,
| and to erase the nuances they convey, because you don't
| find it to be "normal" or "natural". What is normal or
| natural is entirely subjective, and varies across
| cultures and across time, and in any case we don't
| generally yoke ourselves to what is natural (we are,
| after all, speaking through an artificial medium because
| we find it advantageous, and though we weren't born with
| wings we often find it advantageous to fly.)
|
| It might be interesting to give 1984 another read.
| notadev wrote:
| I know it's from 1984, but it's considered a word itself
| as far as I can tell. I was using it as "Deliberately
| ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and
| manipulate the public." Heterosexuality is the norm, it
| is the default. Heteronormativity is some nonsense phrase
| that is used in place of "normal" to try and draw a false
| equivalency between normal and abnormal. It is intended
| to muddy the waters and mislead like most contemporary
| "woke" language.
| maxbond wrote:
| There's nothing ambiguous or misleading, what you're
| actually objecting to is the _concrete_ and _specific_
| use of language to describe ideas you don 't like and
| which you don't want to see proliferate. You aren't
| objecting to people being mislead, you're objecting to
| people understanding. Do give 1984 a read, I think you'll
| find the irony that you are appropriating a term used in
| that book in order to invert it's meaning and to take the
| very actions that the book is criticizing quite amusing,
| and then we can be in on the joke together.
|
| Heterosexuality doesn't have to be the default, and
| indeed, that era is ending. The evidence for it is right
| here; you feel compelled to go to bat for the notion, not
| something you'd need to do if it really were mystically
| natural and inextricably true. Heterosexuality is
| promulgated as a default because it is key to a power
| structure called the patriarchy. The patriarchy works by
| assigning certain gender roles to men and women; these
| roles allow men to subjugate women, and also allow men to
| be subjugated by other men. The patriarchy's strength
| lies in the rigidity of those gender roles, and as the
| gender roles are loosened the patriarchy gets weaker.
| Lots of power within our society is expressed through
| patriarchy, for instance, the idea that men express their
| agency through violence instead of through emotion and
| that they should readily throw their lives away in
| service of a cause is useful for recruiting men as
| soldiers and police, and soldiers and police are useful
| in upholding many other power structures (like state
| power or the power of the rich). So over the last few
| millenia, many different power structures have come to
| rely on the existence of patriarchy, and it's been woven
| into our mythology and the fabric of our society. The
| fluidity of gender roles is a direct challenge to
| patriarchy, and people with nonconforming identities have
| been forced into the closet through violence and social
| reprisal.
|
| This was a natural series of events in the sense that all
| of history took place in the context of the natural
| world, sure. But cancer is natural, we don't have to
| accept it. In the same way, I reject your
| heteronormativity. I think it sucks. I don't think people
| are "naturally" any particular gender, it's a role we
| learn to play as we're socialized. That doesn't make it
| bad, there's nothing wrong with being a man or a woman,
| there's nothing wrong with embracing very traditional
| views of what that means if that's what makes you happy.
| I live my life as a pretty traditional man. But that
| isn't all there is to life, and that's not all it should
| mean to be human.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Heterosexuality being prevalent within the population
| (note that I purposefully avoid idioms like "X is the
| norm" as ambiguous, especially in this context) is merely
| the flip side of LGBTQIA+ folks being a minority. Now, a
| minority can have a robust subculture - and one can
| certainly make that claim about LGBTQ identity today -
| but that doesn't somehow make it into not-a-minority.
|
| Social and cultural norms are beside the point here; in
| fact, the most traditional societies are those that tend
| to feature the _most_ salient spaces for same-sex quasi-
| romantic affection and emotionality, with such things as
| _compadrazgo_ and sworn brotherhood /sisterhood. So it's
| just not clear how "heteronormativity" is supposed to be
| an internally coherent concept.
| maxbond wrote:
| You're conflating heterosexuality and heteronormativity.
| You could have a society where heterosexuality is
| prevalent, without having heteronormativity.
| Heteronormativity encompasses both heterosexuality and a
| specific set of gender roles for men and women; so it is
| not enough for heterosexuality to be prevalent. You need
| to conflate these genders with heterosexuality, prescribe
| them, and marginalize sexual and gender identities that
| do not conform to this.
|
| Heteronormativity isn't an epistemology, there's no
| burden for it to be consistent. It's a set of beliefs and
| attitudes, and a label that allows you to critique them.
| Why would we expect that to be any more consistent than
| the human behavior it describes (which is to say, only
| somewhat)? Will this label break down and stop making
| sense as society changes? Yes, I imagine it will. Will it
| become unwieldy and eventually fail altogether if we
| employ it in an analysis spanning cultures with very
| different conceptions of gender? Absolutely. But you
| might as well ask whether the concept of pop music is
| consistent and relate it to the works of Beethoven, if
| you think that's useful in your analysis than go for it,
| but if it doesn't work in that circumstance it isn't a
| condemnation of the idea. The only burden on
| heteronormativity is to be useful in describing real
| world behavior, which it clearly is.
|
| If you want to know whether heteronormativity is a real
| phenomenon, you need look no further than the comment I
| criticized. It doesn't say, heterosexuality is prevalent;
| it says, heterosexuality is _total_ , that it is
| "natural" and "normal", that it is inseparable from
| gender, and that people living as (or even describing)
| other gender and sexual identities are doing it to trick
| you.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > you need look no further than the comment I criticized.
| It doesn't say, heterosexuality is prevalent; it says,
| heterosexuality is total
|
| That comment actually said "heterosexuality is normal",
| which is of course ambiguous - it could mean either of
| "prevalent" or "not merely prevalent but standard, with
| deviations from it being seen as undesirable".
| Heteronormativity might be a description of the latter
| claim, but to deny that heterosexuality is especially
| common would be mere wishful thinking.
|
| The claim that gender and sexual orientation are linked
| would've been quite recognizable to ancient cultures
| including classical Greece and Rome, where heterosexual
| behavior was not normative and other sexual arrangements
| were often celebrated (though their dark, exploitive
| side, linked to the ubiquity of rape culture as
| purposeful male domination, was not unrecognized either;
| and this later fed into Christian condemnation of such
| practices). So it makes little sense to view that as
| "heteronormative" either.
| maxbond wrote:
| It isn't ambiguous if you consider the entire comment,
| where they go on to clarify what they mean by invoking a
| naturalism fallacy and contrasting it with other
| identities (which they clearly describe in pejorative
| terms as "abnormal" and "misleading" with an overall tone
| of derision). Of course I acknowledge that most people
| are heterosexual, that's such misrepresentation of what
| I'm saying (including that I've _directly acknowledged
| this point_ already) I can 't suspend my disbelief it
| isn't willful. I've provided definitions for all of this,
| you're choosing not to engage with them.
|
| I make no claims about heteronormativity in Greece or
| Rome (I do say that the patriarchy is several millennia
| old, so this could be read as an implicit claim that
| patriarchy existed in Greece and Rome [and I wouldn't
| take issue with that claim], but I don't think you'd find
| this disagreeable, given the "rape culture as purposeful
| male domination" you reference, and that the definition
| of patiarchy I provided specifically calls out the
| domination of men), and gender and sexual identities
| certainly are linked in the sense that certain
| combinations are more common than others - they just
| aren't _synonyms_. As I noted, there is no burden for
| this concept to translate to other cultures and time
| periods in order for us to accept it as a useful model
| for the purposes of our discussion; I 've not seen a
| counterargument from you on this, so I don't see why I
| would accept these observations of Greece and Rome as
| being deleterious to my point, anyway.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| But what I'm taking issue with is merely your claim of
| heteronormativity as a "set of beliefs and attitudes"
| that one can ascertain in anything like a consistent way.
| If _compadrazgo_ and sworn brotherhood are too exotic for
| you, consider contemporary "bro" subculture; is it
| heteronormative? Some people might certainly claim as
| much, calling it especially misogynistic. Yet it also
| reportedly involves a lot of emotional affection and
| bonding among males. By and large, it just doesn't square
| with what you've been supposing in your earlier comments.
| maxbond wrote:
| If you'd like to explain why we should demand that a
| label describing a set of human behaviors be entirely
| consistent in order to be considered, when the human
| behaviors we're describing are frequently inconsistent
| and contradictory (but still real and worth discussing),
| then I'm happy to respond. I don't see anything wrong
| with your examples, I'm not familiar with _compadrazgo_
| or sworn brotherhood but I 'd be willing to learn more
| (and until such a time as I read up on them am willing to
| take what you say about them on face value), I think bro
| culture is a super interesting thread to tug on and an
| incisive choice on your part, but if you repeat your
| argument without engaging with mine, I don't see what you
| expect me to do other than repeat myself (which I
| respectfully decline to do).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Heteronormativity encompasses both heterosexuality and
| a specific set of gender roles for men and women
|
| Heteronormativity is just heterosexuality as a normative
| element of social structures (not merely prevalent in
| society, but where deviation from it is viewed as
| transgressive.) In modern societies, it is typically tied
| to patriarchy (a particular normatige structure of gender
| roles, in which social power is attached to male roles),
| cisnormativity, and, in particular societies, it may be
| attached to things like White supremacy that are
| superficially farther from sex/gender dynamics, but these
| are nevertheless distinct if linked elements of the
| cultures they appear in.
| maxbond wrote:
| Hmm, pardon, where is it we differ? The word "just" makes
| me think this is a correction, but I agree with all of
| that, and I feel like if you that if you take all of that
| to be true, you get the sentence of mine you've quoted.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I don't see it as a strong disagreement, but there is a
| slight but sometimes important difference between
| heteronormativity _including_ , e.g., cisnormativity and
| patriarchy, versus heteronormativity being distinct from
| them but frequently co-occurring with them.
|
| But we certainly agree that heteronormativity is
| different than society having a majority heterosexual
| orientation.
| maxbond wrote:
| For sure, I can see how I elided some concepts there; I
| think my definition was appropriate to the context of
| this conversation, but I appreciate you keeping me
| honest.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > where deviation from it is viewed as transgressive
|
| Note that by this standard, much of LGBTQ+ culture might
| well be described as heteronormative, since glorifying
| social transgression _as such_ (not merely inasmuch as it
| might inevitably follow from having a non-majority gender
| or sexual orientation) has long been a staple of that
| particular identity.
| [deleted]
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It's pretty simple. I grew up with the social expectation I
| would be some special attraction to girls beyond
| friendship. There were some people shamefully attracted to
| boys.
|
| I'm neither of these. I've never experienced sexual
| attraction to anyone. Every relationship I have is happily
| platonic. I have several good, close friends, so I capable
| of deep emotional bonds to people of any gender.
|
| This would have been fine if I didn't have a high sex
| drive. But I do. You're not supposed to have a high sex
| drive while being completely uninterested.
|
| I've wondered most of my life why I was broken. It was
| extremely isolating to be constantly surrounded by messages
| telling me there is something wrong with me.
|
| Then I found out what asexuality is. That's what I am.
| Romantic attraction can be completely devoid of sexual
| attraction. Someone's sex drive can be independent of a
| person's sexuality.
|
| It hasn't been any less isolating, but at least I know
| there is nothing wrong with me as a person.
| efkiel wrote:
| heteronormativity include sexual behavior, but mostly
| contains other behavior. Like the way you dress, talk or
| present yourself, the activities or kind of play you do or
| like. Parent comment is mostly talking about non-sexual
| heteronormativity, which is often presented as the norm. An
| obvious example would be an adult insisting that pink is
| for girl and blue for boys, and shaming a kid for liking
| what's not the (hetero-)norm.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Heteronormativity isn't sexualizing anything. The only
| person talking about sexualizing children is you.
|
| The voting on your comment is crazy because your ignorance
| on the topic is showing and it's dangerous and insulting.
|
| Educate yourself.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Read bognition's comment. They literally say that kids
| are "empowered to explore their sexuality".
| maxbond wrote:
| This is incorrect, as you and I discuss here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879888
| jasonlotito wrote:
| This comment is a lie.
|
| They literally do not say "kids are empowered to explore
| their sexuality."
|
| Kids grow up into adults.
|
| xd is the one that brought up sexualizing children. No
| reasonable person here would assume anyone is talking
| about sexualizing children unless they explicitly said as
| much.
|
| Somehow you and xd are thinking "people are feeling
| empowered to explore their sexuality" explicitly means
| "kids" in this context. Why you are thinking that, I
| don't know.
| xd wrote:
| "For the last several decades society put massive
| pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With
| these pressures lessening more and more people are
| feeling empowered to explore their sexuality."
|
| He talks about society putting pressure on kids to be
| straight and then talks about people and sexuality in the
| same damn paragraph; are you being purposefully obtuse?
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I have no skin in the overall debate but it's clear that a
| prince and princess running off together in a Disney film
| is heteronormative, while most people wouldn't consider it
| to be abhorrently sexualising for children to watch those
| films.
| refurb wrote:
| I mean, heterosexuality is the predominant form of
| sexuality in humans?
|
| Humans come in all forms. Most humans have two legs, but
| not all. Some are born missing a leg and some lose them
| from injuries. If we only show two legged characters in
| Disney films does that mean it's some sinister message of
| "bipedalnormativity"?
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I never said it was sinister. I just made a statement of
| fact that it shows a heterosexual relationship, but
| doesn't significantly sexualise children. If anything, my
| comment could be construed as defending that sort of film
| rather than attacking it.
| rendall wrote:
| > _For the last several decades society put massive pressure
| on kids to conform to heteronormativity_
|
| This is patently untrue. Since the 60s, western society has
| been increasingly accomodating to the non-gender-conforming.
| Especially with the rise of the internet, people who once
| felt isolated with whatever made them different were able to
| find others like themselves.
| brookst wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's untrue, just incomplete. Kids who
| present as the "wrong" gender are still much more likely to
| be bullied by kids and emotionally abused by parents.
|
| But that isn't a new thing in the past few decades, and
| indeed it does seem to be getting better.
| largepeepee wrote:
| >For the last several decades society put massive pressure on
| kids to conform to heteronormativity.
|
| Only decades? You mean for all of history, where there are
| distinct roles mostly because of anatomy.
|
| In fact, it was only in recent decades with birth control
| that was there even an option for most women to take a
| different role for extended periods.
|
| I'll say the opposite is true, the last several decades did a
| great job and removed the notion of heterogenomativity. We
| are just going so far past that into the illogical now.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > it was only in recent decades with birth control that was
| there even an option for most women to take a different
| role for extended periods.
|
| Reliable birth control methods are sixty years old. And of
| course there have always been non-reproductive sex acts
| since the birth of time.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
|
| As far as "all of history" goes, ancient Greece for example
| tolerated a particular kind of "homosexuality", but not one
| we should try and emulate - it matched neither of two
| conditions in "consenting adults", for example.
|
| While it's true that few if any societies other than
| "modern Western" would score as high as ours on Stonewall's
| diversity index, there were definitely ups and downs if you
| plotted things over time.
|
| Go back several generations in the USA or Western Europe
| and it's absolutely normal for straight men to have close
| and emotional friendships for life; when photography was
| first invented, it was a thing that male BFFs had photos of
| themselves taken that I bet anyone today, if shown without
| context, would immediately pattern-match to "gay couple".
| I'm going to quote the "art of manliness" site, of all
| places, on this:
| https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/bosom-
| bu... (warning: images may be considered NSFW at your place
| of work, despite being absolutely non-pornographic as far
| as I can tell)
|
| Some of these men were undoubtedly gay in the sense we
| understand the term, but the idea of having a close
| emotional bond with another man was certainly open to
| straight men too (and to some extent, also expected).
|
| But then, to quote "The History of Male Friendships" linked
| on that page,
|
| > First, men were free to have affectionate man
| relationships with each other without fear of being called
| a "queer" because the concept of homosexuality as we know
| it today didn't exist then. America didn't have the strict
| straight/gay dichotomy that currently exists. Affectionate
| feelings weren't strictly labeled as sexual or platonic.
| There wasn't even a name for homosexual sex; instead, it
| was referred to as "the crime that cannot be spoken." It
| wasn't until the turn of the 19th century that
| psychologists started analyzing homosexuality. When that
| happened, men in America started to become much more self-
| conscious about their relationships with their buds and
| traded the close embraces for a stiff pat on the back.
|
| > [...]
|
| > The man friendship underwent some serious transformations
| during the 20th century. Men went from lavishing endearing
| words on each other and holding hands to avoiding too much
| emotional bonding or any sort of physical affections
| whatsoever. Fear of being called gay drove much of the
| transformation. Ministers and politicians decried
| homosexuality as being incompatible with true manhood. And
| like most deviant behavior in the 1950s, homosexuality was
| associated with Communism.
|
| So, once "gay" appeared on people's radar,
| heteronormativity shot through the roof and men were
| expected to be performatively straight, to prove themselves
| that they were not "tainted" by this new "affliction".
| That's where a lot of this pressure came from, it was
| definitely not constant throughout all of even relatively
| modern history.
| dahfizz wrote:
| You make a case that gender norms have changed over time,
| not that there were no gender norms in the past.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Indeed. But my argument is specifically that the norms
| around acceptable behaviour for a straight male have
| significantly narrowed from roughly the end of the 19th
| century to the 1960s.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| I'd argue that the trend continued past the 1960s. While
| yes, there is certainly more acceptance of homosexual
| men, there is also a continuing trend towards an
| exaggerated extreme masculinity that would have felt out
| of place in the 1960s.
|
| Maybe it's more accurate to say Western (and in
| particular American) culture has fragmented, and one of
| those cultures has increasingly put stricter and stricter
| norms around acceptable heterosexual male behaviour to
| the point where it's nearly parody.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Tough call since it is also possible a certain number of people
| have always felt this way but only by others "coming out" do
| they now feel comfortable expressing themselves as well.
| fredley wrote:
| This reminds me of the virus in _Snow Crash_ which is spread
| virtually, but affects its victims physically.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| > because nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _learn_
| to want to be another gender.
|
| Because we can't. And trust me, I have tried. Trans people are
| neither "over represented" nor a contagion.
|
| And it's not about "hate speech"; it's about stopping the
| spread of lies and extremist propaganda. The lie that "being
| trans is a choice" is just one little moving part in the
| massive machinery of oppressing, persecuting and killing trans
| people. You don't need actual hate speech to cause harm.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Are there actual people with Tourette's? Yes.
|
| Are there actual people who "learned" to have something
| Tourette's-like? Yes.
|
| If you don't distinguish between the two, then Tourette's is
| absolutely overrepresented.
|
| Denying that this can be the case for gender dysmorphia is
| neither reasoned nor logical and can absolutely lead to harm.
|
| There has to be a way to respect and help people without
| turning off our brains.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because
| nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _learn_ to want
| to be another gender.
|
| Did you _really_ think this was going to be downvoted on Hacker
| News of all places?
| spoils19 wrote:
| The famously 'progressive' HackerNews? Years of reading the
| comments has led me to believe that the GPs assumption is
| mostly correct.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| It could be my own bias, but I don't see HN as a
| particularly progressive place, at least as compared to,
| say, Reddit. Granted, it can be a good or a bad thing, but
| HN has a far wider spectrum of opinions that get upvoted;
| IME trans issues in particular dominate comment threads
| when it comes to LGBT issues.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically
| over represented
|
| Can you explain what it means for an illness to be
| "statistically over-represented"?
|
| I can parse it several ways, but not so it makes sense. E.g.
|
| - Gender dysphoria is more common than influenza
|
| - Gender dysphoria is more common in human societies than in
| gendered alien communities
|
| - Gender dysphoria is discussed by a greater proportion of
| Youtube posters than you'd expect from it's rate in the
| population
|
| I'm guessing you mean the last; but I have no idea how mmuch
| it's discussed on Youtube, and I doubt there are reliable
| figures for its occurrence in the population.
| kome wrote:
| very very good point. and anecdotally, i think it's indeed the
| case for gender dysphoria...
|
| btw, not long ago there was a sociologist from columbia,
| working on the autism epidemics, pointing out how autism is
| "contagious" among parents
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122411399389 - so
| it's not for the first time that we point out at the
| sociogenesis of mental illness
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Hell no it's not. Gender non-conforming people have been a
| staple throughout human history, with examples dating back to
| _at least_ the 2nd century AD [1], and not just in Europe but
| in South Asia as well [2].
|
| The thing is, many societies didn't care for a long time, and
| only in the 20th century repression really took off with the
| rise of ultra-fundamentalist religions. Now we're seeing the
| backlash against that and people obviously are way more free
| to be who they are once again - so neither a surprise nor an
| epidemic.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
| kome wrote:
| i know it has been a staple throughout human history, and
| i'm not contesting that. i just posit that the proportion
| of it, nowadays, might be inflated by social media and
| mimetic behaviors. edit, a very enlightening comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879136
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| This is the direct outcome of "political correctness", and of
| silencing people that disagree with you.
|
| Even suggesting the fact that mass sociogenic illnesses
| (formerly called mass hysteria) primarily affect girls [1] goes
| against the new religion and is vilified immediately.
|
| [1] https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/106/5/420.full.pdf
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Most objections of claims about mass sociogenic illnesses
| that I've seen have to do with people using it to dismiss
| behaviour they don't like, often without any real evidence
| that this is "mass sociogenic illness".
|
| Even this article doesn't really make any attempt to disprove
| a null hypothesis and we basically are required to take these
| people at their word that a) the behaviour expressed is not
| consistent with Tourette's and the patients don't actually
| have it, and b) the source of this is due to the YouTuber
| mentioned. There's no control group or anything to prove
| these two facts beyond the author's opinion.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >then this opens new doors to examining the behaviour of other
| illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically over
| represented.
|
| Don't fall into the trap of assuming that 1950's Western norms
| are a 'baseline.'
|
| History shows us that almost _all_ expressions of gender are
| fluid. The idea of "men and women need to be segregated in
| certain places (particularly when nude) and must dress
| differently' is likely _the cause_ of how prevalent transgender
| people have become. It was always an unsustainable system that
| was only allowed to flourish because a powerful minority wanted
| it to. Like are you a boy that relates primarily to women? Well
| you either endure being separated from them for _a ton_ of
| meaningful developmental activities _or_ you become
| transgender.
|
| I think there are plenty of people who would be fine with their
| biological sex _if it didn 't come with so much societal
| baggage._
| SavageBeast wrote:
| > ... and must dress differently
|
| Operating based on a sampling of women I know - Im going to
| perform an experiment - I have some clothes of mine that I
| (Male with a capital M) no longer wear and Im going to give
| them to some Female friends for their own use.
|
| We'll see what happens but I bet Im going to be met with
| confusing expressions and laughed at - at best.
|
| Men and women do not dress differently on the count of
| societal pressures but rather express themselves differently
| on the count of different imperatives. You can slice it 6
| different ways but outside of a small minority of people with
| non-standard gender ideals, the vast majority of women want
| to "be pretty" in whatever way that means to them and the
| vast majority of men want to "look like a man" for their
| various reasons and in whatever way that means to them.
|
| I realize this is a terribly "incorrect" thing to say these
| days but at the same time its among the most pervasive ideals
| I can think of - right up there with the understanding that
| water is wet. Out side of groups where the word "Patriarchy"
| is thrown around, men are men and women are women and neither
| would have it any other way. This isn't due to societal
| pressure to conform either. This is prevailing behavior of
| both genders at work.
|
| I personally do not understand why a minority of people
| choosing alternative, non-birth gender roles needs to be cast
| into some movement where everyones gender is in question. Im
| not sure I know anyone who has ever so much as questioned the
| "baggage" their bio-gender is supposedly saddled with.
| According to modern psychiatry (which for the purposes of
| this conversation we'll assume is valid since we all agree
| Sociopathy and Eating Disorders are real things too), the
| DSM-5 includes Gender Dysphoria. Psychiatry considers that a
| real thing right next to some other things I think we can all
| agree are real.
|
| > History shows us that almost all expressions of gender are
| fluid.
|
| politely said: CITATION PLEASE
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >Operating based on a sampling of women I know
|
| How big and diverse is _that_ sample?
|
| >You can slice it 6 different ways but outside of a small
| minority
|
| How small is that minority?
|
| >the vast majority of women want to "be pretty"
|
| Are you implying that there's an objective idea of 'pretty'
| as it relates to fashion? That a woman in pants can't be
| 'pretty'? Can I point you to powerful men in high-heeled
| shoes in the 10th Century? Lots of women were attracted to
| _that_ back then, _because of what it meant from a societal
| standpoint_.
|
| _Or_ are you implying that it 's fine for men to dress in
| women's clothes? Because if so then why are we here?
|
| >I realize this is a terribly "incorrect" thing to say
|
| It's not 'incorrect,' it's intellectually lazy.
|
| >I personally do not understand why a minority of people
| choosing alternative, non-birth gender roles needs to be
| cast into some movement where everyones gender is in
| question.
|
| Luckily, that's a strawman so you can stop being confused
| by it.
|
| > History shows us that almost all expressions of gender
| are fluid
|
| Again, are high heels for boys or girls? History's opinion
| will surprise you!
|
| Now listen, outside of snark, I _understand_ its hard to
| see outside of the environment you 've lived for your
| entire life, but this is a forum for _hackers_ so maybe be
| a little bit more open to people questioning and
| challenging things you hold dear?
|
| EDIT: You know what, here's one of many phenomenon that you
| seem to be unaware of:
|
| _Although Europeans were first attracted to heels because
| the Persian connection gave them a macho air, a craze in
| women 's fashion for adopting elements of men's dress meant
| their use soon spread to women and children.
|
| "In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding
| epaulettes to their outfits," says Semmelhack.
|
| "They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that were
| very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel - it
| was in an effort to masculinise their outfits."
|
| From that time, Europe's upper classes followed a unisex
| shoe fashion until the end of the 17th Century, when things
| began to change again.
|
| "You start seeing a change in the heel at this point," says
| Helen Persson, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum
| in London. "Men started to have a squarer, more robust,
| lower, stacky heel, while women's heels became more
| slender, more curvaceous."_
|
| [Citation - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350]
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > The idea of "men and women need to be segregated in certain
| places (particularly when nude) and must dress differently'
| is likely the cause of how prevalent transgender people have
| become.
|
| Have you ever been a parent? Because males and females are
| different, and the sexual pressures on them are immensely
| different too, for both social and physical reasons.
| Similarly, sexual risk (to anyone, but especially children)
| is incredibly lopsided and comes almost entirely from males.
|
| If you ignore sexual differences in other children you will
| let your children be mistreated, if you ignore sexual
| differences in adults you will get them molested.
|
| > It was always an unsustainable system that was only allowed
| to flourish because a powerful minority wanted it to.
|
| Pretty much all women know and are cautious, if not fearful,
| of male violence. They fought for women's sex-based rights
| because of obvious need. This isn't men putting women in
| purdah, these are protections they've achieved for
| themselves. Most men can see the extra work women have to do
| for safety reasons. The need for women's spaces is far from a
| minority opinion.
|
| > Like are you a boy that relates primarily to women? Well
| you either endure being separated from them for a ton of
| meaningful developmental activities or you become
| transgender.
|
| If you truly empathized with women you'd realized that your
| size and strength and biology makes you a risk that another
| woman wouldn't be and you'd socialize with women in mixed-sex
| areas and activities where your presence wasn't an undue
| burden.
|
| > I think there are plenty of people who would be fine with
| their biological sex if it didn't come with so much societal
| baggage.
|
| It's the physical baggage people are wrongly trying to
| ignore.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| > ...if it didn't come with so much societal baggage.
|
| Isn't societal baggage also a perception issue? Take 10
| people with all the same physical traits and the same social
| situation and you will get 10 different perspectives.
|
| Why should I accept there is _any_ baggage as a fact? It may
| just appear so for a massive amount of people, and _that_
| could be fluid.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| So you're telling me that a boy who identifies as a boy is
| fine to change with the girls at PE and do their
| activities?
|
| _OR_ is there 'baggage' to being a boy in this scenario?
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I am just saying many of these things are subjective, and
| just because someone says "it's baggage" doesn't mean it
| is for everyone.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Please answer my question directly.
|
| Is it 'subjective' that many activities are segregated by
| gender in the West?
|
| If a person doesn't like that, how is it not a logical
| response to try to change their gender?
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What boggles my mind is that people who adamantly claim that
| all gender behavior is socially constructed are the ones who
| are the first to denounce the idea that you can learn to want
| to be another gender.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| It's less "learning to be another gender" but more being in a
| society that allows an individual to express their gender as
| something other than their sex.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| And they are absolutely sure that you need a physical
| modification to adapt to a socially constructed norm. And at
| the same time they demand medical procedures while denying
| that it is a medical condition, whose treatment needs to be
| studied with scientific rigor. Instead they say the affected
| persons know their best treatment.
|
| Just imagine applying that same approach to addicts.
| Macha wrote:
| Is it? Transmedicalists (those who belive sex reassignment
| is a required goal) are a minority in trans communities and
| "truscum" was created as a derogatory term for this
| attitude indicating its unpopularity.
|
| If you mean puberty blockers for trans youth rather than
| sex reassignment, they have much more support because of
| their non-permanent nature. We let many teenagers make
| decisions about things like tattoos and piercings too
| smeej wrote:
| There's still a significant ave gap between these two
| populations, though. Tattoos and piercings can be
| obtained by 16-18yos without parental consent, but to be
| effective, puberty blockers need to start near or before
| the beginning of puberty, when children are usually 10-14
| years old.
|
| We may not be talking about many years by raw count, but
| as a percentage of the total lifespan of those involved,
| the first group is ~50% older than the second.
| leephillips wrote:
| The use of puberty blockers to delay the normal onset of
| puberty is experimental and there is plenty of evidence
| that it has irreversible and serious, often tragic,
| effects:
|
| https://accpjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.
| 100...
| [deleted]
| joenot443 wrote:
| Puberty blockers being non-permanent is a misconception,
| it's rather concerning seeing it presented otherwise.
| aliqot wrote:
| puberty blockers are not non permanent, thats just the
| acute effects.
| [deleted]
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| I find it very concerning that anyone would attempt to
| present puberty blockers as "non-permanent".
| Extraordinary claims like that require extraordinary
| evidence.
| simiones wrote:
| I don't think that happens too often. The problem is that
| there are at least two different and often opposing currents
| in pro-trans movements.
|
| One is from the "gender is a social construct" post-modernist
| side, which views the very idea that people are either men or
| women with some suspicion, and leads to concepts such as
| gender fluidity, non-binary identities, and the idea that
| maybe young kids should not be gendered at all unless and
| until they chose to assume some gender.
|
| The other current is much more conservative, and starts with
| the simple observation that some people experience extreme
| gender dysphoria that has only successfully been cured (or at
| least alleviated) by gender-affirming care (from gender
| expression to hormone treatments to top/bottom surgery to
| facial feminization/masculinization surgery and beyond). This
| current considers it much more clear that humans are
| generally either men or women, with relatively clear
| associated characteristics, and simply considers that some
| people happen to have the "wrong" characteristics. Rather
| than investigating the philosophical reasoning of why this
| might be happening and what it means for the concepts
| woman/man, it is much more concerned with the practical
| problem of how to make life better for people who feel like
| this.
|
| My impression is that the second group is much much more
| prevalent, but also seen as problematic by the first group.
| The first group is much more extreme, and has much more
| "interesting" talking points, so it is significantly over-
| represented in online discussions and media.
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| > My impression is that the second group is much much more
| prevalent, but also seen as problematic by the first group.
| The first group is much more extreme, and has much more
| "interesting" talking points, so it is significantly over-
| represented in online discussions and media.
|
| My impression is that extreme opinions are mostly from two
| subgroups of the second group:
|
| - Those who believe that gender is essentially defined by
| physical characteristics
|
| - Those who believe that gender is essentially defined by
| social characteristics.
|
| Their inability (or unwillingness) to more deeply consider
| the concepts of "men"/"women" place them in conflict with
| each other because each of them want to use a different
| concept, and neither of them are open to exploring
| different ones.
|
| The only way I can see this being resolved is by taking an
| attitude more similar to first group.
| simiones wrote:
| True, a little bit of philosophy can be a dangerous
| thing, since it can lead to a shallow kind of idealism
| that can easily fall into extremism at all.
|
| However, I believe that the general attitude of the trans
| community is relatively moderate and easy to accept:
|
| 1. Trans people should be able to get the kinds of
| treatment they need (from therapy all the way to
| aesthetic surgery), in cooperation with their doctors.
| Children should be allowed to get some treatment, and
| their parents should be involved (with some complexity
| when the parents' bigotry may interfere with the best
| interest of the child).
|
| 2. Other people shouldn't be allowed to ostracize one for
| being trans, and should seek to accommodate them (such as
| not referring to them with the wrong pronouns or name);
| accidental use is easily forgiven, but intentional
| misgendering is clearly malicious; the problem of "non-
| passing" trans people complicates this somewhat
|
| 3. Trans people should be allowed to use the amenities
| that correspond to their gender, which will, in the vast
| majority of circumstances, correspond to their gender
| presentation; "non-passing" trans people complicate this,
| as does participation in competitive sports
|
| However, I believe trying to modify society to dispense
| with the concepts man & woman, or to avoid inoculating
| them in children - as would be natural if we take the
| position of the first group too seriously - is way beyond
| what most people would agree with.
|
| Of course, extreme positions such as trans-
| medicalists/truscum or people insisting everyone "shares
| their pronouns" and such are somewhat significant sub-
| groups, as are people who insist that children should be
| able to just take hormones without any supervision from
| doctors or parents if they really think it's right for
| them (I've seen this exact position on HN before). But
| while they exist, I think they are still loud minorities,
| even within the relatively small trans community.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The question of how many people happen to genuinely be in
| the liminal space between male and female gender expression
| is very much an empirical matter, not about philosophy. In
| the real world, seemingly clear-cut binary distinctions and
| fuzzy, mysterious liminal phenomena are not opposed to one
| another; they can very much coexist.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I would suggest that empirically it's pretty much
| everybody. Almost nobody is entirely masculine or
| feminine. And it seems to me that the world would be a
| better place if we recognised that for everybody not just
| those who especially struggle with a world that places us
| into binary categories.
| Kye wrote:
| Then there's the third one that sees that there probably is
| some biological aspect, but the way it's expressed depends
| on the culture's concept of gender. I favor this one since
| it provides an explanation for the existence of trans
| people of some sort in every society throughout history
| without discounting nature or nurture.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| The trouble is, the Internet is bathroom stall graffiti.
|
| If I say "For me it's a choice" then it undermines the people
| for whom it is not a choice. Because most of the audience in
| the bathroom stall aren't doing research to put together a
| comprehensive understanding of gender, they're just reading
| what in front of them for that day, and then leaving.
|
| If I say gender can be learned, we can spend days bickering
| about what "learned" really means.
|
| It's not fun. And I'm sorry that someone else said something
| you think is contradictory.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| People have been saying "it's just the Internet" since 2007
| or whenever Tumblr appeared. It's a tired defense. Such
| treatment of gender that makes people feel good but only
| makes sense on the superficial level permeates modern
| discourse and invades institutional structures deeper each
| day.
|
| You cannot keep the society well-functioning by treating
| the law and social norms as a bathroom stall or as
| something that you should mindlessly follow without
| comprehensive understanding.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| You've nicely explained why trans-exclusionary radical
| feminists (TERFs) exist. Absolute belief that gender is
| purely a social construct (a core tenet of second-wave
| feminism) is strictly incompatible with gender dysphoria
| existing at all, since gender dysphoria necessarily means
| that our brains are inherently wired to be male or female.
|
| The reality is more nuanced--while certain gender _roles_ are
| purely social constructs, other aspects of gender are
| hardwired.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Absolute belief that gender is purely a social construct
| (a core tenet of second-wave feminism) is strictly
| incompatible with gender dysphoria existing at all, since
| gender dysphoria necessarily means that our brains are
| inherently wired to be male or female.
|
| That's not true. It would just indicate that the gender
| dysphoria is socially caused (perhaps by the imposition of
| strong gender norms) rather than being an unavoidable part
| of someone's nature.
|
| It does lead to very different policy proposals though: if
| gender dysphoria is socially caused then it makes sense to
| prioritise minimising the cause (by widening the scope of
| acceptable gender expression for each gender) rather than
| treating the symptom (by allowing people to change their
| recognised gender).
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >It would just indicate that the gender dysphoria is
| socially caused (perhaps by the imposition of strong
| gender norms) rather than being an unavoidable part of
| someone's nature.
|
| It seems unlikely to me that social norms alone could
| cause gender dysphoric people to believe so strongly that
| their gender identity mismatches their biological sex
| (i.e. physical body) that they are willing to undergo
| dramatic, irreversible medical procedures like gender
| reassignment surgery and other transitioning procedures
| to rectify the mismatch.
|
| There are plenty of people who strongly defy gender norms
| yet still strongly identify their gender as being
| concordant with their biological sex. Gender dysphoria
| goes far beyond mere nonconformity to gender norms; many
| trans people explicitly say that they feel like they were
| born into the wrong body.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > It seems unlikely to me that social norms alone could
| cause gender dysphoric people to believe so strongly that
| their gender identity mismatches their biological sex
|
| I think it's quite likely.
|
| As an analogy, it seems relatively common for people to
| become so convinced that they are so unattractive that
| they undergo highly invasive cosmetic surgery. It's also
| very much the case that there are social groups where
| this is normalised (and many people in those social
| groups will choose to have this surgery) and social
| groups where it is not (and people in those groups are
| unlikely to opt for cosmetic surgery).
|
| The difference seems to be that the people in one social
| group are telling each other that the appropriate
| solution to feeling unattractive means that one is
| unattractive and that surgery to change one's body is an
| appropriate response to that, whereas in the other social
| group people might either convince each other that
| they're attractive as they are, or seek alternative
| remedies such as changes in clothing, grooming, make-up,
| etc. Or even therapy, self-esteem coaching or similar.
|
| Similarly, if one is an environment where one is
| constantly told that men (or women) are or should act/be
| a certain way, then it is hardly surprising that one
| might develop the notion that one isn't a man/woman. Such
| an environment is commonly created by people with
| traditional notions of gender. But it's reinforced by
| people suggesting that transitioning might be the
| solution to not fitting one's gender norms.
|
| Which isn't to say that there aren't people for whom
| physically transitioning is the right answer (the best
| solution for them), or that do have an inherent dislike
| of their body that isn't externally influenced. Likewise,
| there are people for whom cosmetic surgery is absolutely
| the right solution (e.g. people with a cleft palate or
| who have suffered from severe burns). But I question the
| way it currently seems to being positioned (by some
| people) as the default response to not fitting in with
| the norms of one's existing gender, and I also question
| the idea that it is innate and not socially influenced.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| People will do practically anything in order to be
| socially accepted. The followers of the ancient goddess
| Cybele famously underwent ritual gender transition, as
| related most effectively in Catullus 63.
| lukev wrote:
| This is a dangerous rhetorical maneuver, though, because it:
|
| 1. Accepts the existence and influence of social-media-induced
| illness:
|
| 2. Does not rigorously define the condition, it's symptoms,
| scope or mechanism:
|
| 3. Therefore, leaving us free to apply it to gender identity or
| really, anything at all.
|
| Trumpism? SMII. Wokeness? SMII. Pro-union sentiment? You're not
| gonna believe this, also a SMII.
|
| And once you call something a "disease" the implication is that
| it should be "cured" which gets scary quick.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| According to Gallup's poll in early 2022, which they present as
| estimates, 0.7% of the US population is trans. In India, 0.6%
| people self-identified as hijra (Sahastrabuddhe et al., 2012).
| In the 2011 census in India, 0.04% answered with "Other" when
| asked to choose between "Male", "Female" and "Other".
|
| Canada included the question in their latest census and the
| result was 0.2%. In my opinion, a mandatory government census
| provides data that is more accurate than Gallup's phone poll.
|
| "The proportions of transgender and non-binary people were
| three to seven times higher for Generation Z (born between 1997
| and 2006, 0.79%) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996,
| 0.51%) than for Generation X (born between 1966 and 1980,
| 0.19%), baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965, 0.15%) and
| the Interwar and Greatest Generations (born in 1945 or earlier,
| 0.12%)."
|
| Canada's government also adds this under their data
| comparability section: "Belgium (0.5% among people aged 18 to
| 75 in 2021) and New Zealand (0.5% among people aged 18 and
| older in 2020) have also published representative survey-based
| data on their transgender populations.
|
| Other countries have published 2021 data on transgender people
| using crowdsourcing and non-representative surveys, including
| Ireland (0.6% among people aged 18 and older), England and
| Wales (0.6% among people aged 16 and older), and the United
| States (0.8% among people aged 18 and older)."
|
| Being transgender is not a mental disorder or illness, but
| rather a natural variation of human diversity. Everyone has the
| right to express their gender identity in a way that is
| authentic and comfortable for them. I fail to see how the topic
| of a mass social media-induced illness applies here.
| Macha wrote:
| Of course if gender non-normativity can be learned, so too can
| gender normativity (e.g. bro culture is arguably a form of men
| learning to do what their local culture considers male things).
| I don't think all trans people would disagree with that part as
| much as you think (see the "I never knew that could be an
| option" thoughts from some late transitioners reflecting back),
| the bit they'd disagree with is the idea that there is an
| aberration or problem to those who opt to identify with a
| gender other than their identified at birth sex.
| Ord3rChaos wrote:
| Normativity by definition is related to actions/outcomes that
| society deems good/desirable/permissible; non-normativity,
| the opposite. Societal goals are always a moving target, so
| it follows that normativity is as well.
|
| My dad still uses language like "C'mon! Be a man and do {this
| thing}."
|
| Personally, I believe when I'm old and crotchety the winds of
| society will leave my language at something like "C'mon! You
| should do {this thing}." and leave the gender out of it
| entirely.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > "I never knew that could be an option" thoughts from some
| late transitioners
|
| Anedotally, the three people I knew before transition who
| later transitioned have all expressed some form of process "I
| was depressed and didn't understand why" -> "I had these
| thoughts but suppressed them because I felt they were weird /
| unacceptable" -> "I learned what transition is and the pieces
| fell into place".
|
| Edit: over a period of many years, that's why they were late
| transitioners!
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Yeah the reason that the "social contagion" stuff makes my
| blood pressure spike is because it's almost always a prelude
| to some kind of "And they're trying to force-feminize
| everyone and then they're gonna take our children" stuff.
|
| You know like, Quentin Tarantino isn't racist even though he
| said the N word, but if I'm walking down the street and a
| total stranger comes up to me and starts throwing the N word
| around, safe bet they're saying something dumb.
|
| See my comment a few days ago about "The Internet is graffiti
| in a bathroom stall". I could probably have a calm good-faith
| conversation with any of you in real life about gender. But
| not on a web forum.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| I downvoted you because I knew that your comment would prevent
| any discussion about the actual article, and that was in fact
| what occurred.
|
| This whole "I'm going to say [something offtopic and offensive
| to a lot of people]. This is probably going to get downvoted to
| oblivion, because nobody [ridiculous generalization about
| humans]" is feckless and intellectually dishonest. You do this
| _because_ it will be downvoted.
| causi wrote:
| The way we have leapt from one societal belief to the other end
| of the spectrum is, I believe, interfering with objective
| healthcare. We started at "people who believe and behave
| outside of gender norms are perverted freaks" and we jumped
| straight to "you are whatever you think you are." Between those
| two paradigms there are questions it has become very difficult
| to research. Questions like "is it possible we are categorizing
| more than one mental state as _being transgender_ " as an
| explanation for why some people greatly benefit from
| transitioning while others are destroyed by it. Questions like
| "is modifying the body a better treatment than modifying the
| mind at our current level of medical capability?"
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| > "you are whatever you think you are."
|
| You should do some reading on how gender affirming therapy
| and treatment works, because it is absolutely not standard to
| pursue treatment immediately without any process or
| consultation.
|
| Whether transition is the right option is absolutely
| explored, it's just explored in a way that allows the patient
| to come to a decision rather than a doctor making the
| gatekeeping whether this person is "really transgendered".
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| High performance people have been saying this for generations.
|
| Surround yourself with positive, talented people to keep your
| mind clean.
|
| Hell even vogue and trash mags call out 'energy vampires' (lol)
| but it's all the same thing.
|
| I legit decided to not listen to gangster rap in the 90s
| because a dude said to me 'that shit will warp your mind ' but
| I realized all music and influences do that.
|
| So books it was...god I was a nerd!
|
| I cut the cord on much of it early on, mostly because the value
| was terrible (aka music industry in the 90s was just bad
| value).
|
| Now it's the odd anime that had a deep story that pulls me
| in...and lectures..Holy fug I love watching smart people talk
| :)
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Amen. In 2011 I watched a really good anime, Puella Magi
| Madoka Magica, and it helped me realize I'm transgender, and
| now that I've transitioned I love my body and myself more.
| meowfly wrote:
| I still listen to "gangster rap" and I'm doing well enough.
| It's entirely possible to listen to Trap and not drink lean.
| There are plenty of dorks (I use the word affectionately)
| watching anime whose fandom has subsumed their ability to be
| successful. I do think that a person's life trajectory is
| affected by their closest friends, especially in high school.
| Ord3rChaos wrote:
| Can you honestly say that your lived experience hasn't
| changed you? It's clear "gangster rap" doesn't ruin
| anyone's lives like the parents of the 90's thought it
| might. That doesn't absolve it from affecting you in more
| subtle ways (good and bad).
| meowfly wrote:
| Maybe I don't understand the question but of course a
| persons lived experience affects them. It seems like
| you've moved the goal posts.
|
| What I'm pointing out is that OPs moralizing on good
| media "Anime, Books" vs bad media "Rap, Trash Magazines"
| is likely focusing on the wrong things. A person's
| friends are ultimately what matter in prioritizing values
| (as far as values can be shaped by environment).
|
| But the claim about "gangster rap" (a term I don't like)
| was "that shit will warp your mind." is false. Moreover,
| Anime has tons of content that's way darker than anything
| you'll find in rap. But again, I don't think it really
| matters.
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| Lol I'm not moralizing at all, I stated it applies to all
| information regardless and so I cut the cord.
|
| 24 hour news is worse for this than gangster rap and
| turned off both so the same reason, I didn't like the
| messaging coming from it. NWO and Ghetto boys pushed me
| out of the genre, that doesn't the music is bad just
| something I choose to not engage with based off their
| content.
|
| You got super defensive over what should be obvious, the
| content and people you engage with will define your
| character.
| aordano wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am transgender and i have done actual research on
| transgenderism a couple years back.
|
| I have seen this firsthand on some acquaintances. Social media
| has a massive influence on people and there are some persons
| specifically that have a weaker sense of identity (usually
| associated with poor development or some mental disorder like
| schizophrenia, STPD, or BPD), and those persons can be
| influenced to the point of actually, legit molding their own
| identity by their own media consumption.
|
| This consumption in most people only plants seeds that will
| lead to questioning or trying stuff, but won't have a long-
| lasting impact on their core identity. So for most people this
| kind of exposition will be something either transitory or will
| just provide awareness. People grow out of it and it actually
| it's "just a phase" for many.
|
| So yes people can learn to have a new identity if they don't
| have a strong core identity formed yet or if it is weak or
| broken enough.
|
| OTOH, i am unsure what do you mean by a statistical over-
| representation of GD. There are no bounds set for deviation of
| the norm for the general population (i.e. normalized rate of
| growth of % of population that is transgender is not an outlier
| vs the rate of growth of other emergent behaviors afforded by
| greater overall inclusion and reduction of discrimination). The
| places where it is statistically over-represented, like on
| people within the Autism Spectrum, are under investigation.
|
| In any case the risks of social media brainwashing are not
| restricted to stuff like disorders but go way beyond and i
| think the solution to this stuff is, like for many other
| things, more education and awareness of risks, tradeoffs, what
| is gender, what is identity, and how they work both
| intrinsically and within the bounds of social interactions.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Parent might be falsely inferring an over-representation of
| GD from the statistical discrepancy between younger and older
| age groups of those who identify as LGTBQ+.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| IIRC, research also shows that those who identify as trans
| in middle age are much more likely to be happy when they do
| choose to transition, compared to the younger folks.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I don't see anything to support this in the literature.
| The overwhelming majority (94-98%) of youth who
| transition maintain their gender identity many years
| later as adults. [1][2] It's hard to imagine they would
| continue treatment if it was making them miserable.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/transgender-kids-
| tend-to...
|
| [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PII
| S2352-4...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| AIUI, another user ITT has mentioned
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33883438 that this
| is merely statistics of how many transitioners _formally_
| pursue detransition, and that the numbers of those who
| practically desist from treatment are a lot higher than
| that.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| The number of individuals failing to follow up on a study
| or even treatment for any disease at the same medical
| office is high, for example it's approximately 50% for
| _cancer_. [1] You're welcome to extrapolate to your own
| taste, but it's still simply an unknown -- unlike the
| people you _do_ have data for.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29028642/
| zozbot234 wrote:
| But the whole question is why people are desisting from
| treatment that's supposed to help them reaffirm their
| gender. Everyone knows that cancer treatment has very
| uncomfortable side effects; it's not surprising that
| people might neglect that. Gender treatment is literally
| supposed to make you feel good, by treating disphoria.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Lost to follow up is not necessarily discontinuation of
| treatment is the issue. The person may have moved out of
| state or out of country, or simply have moved to be
| treated by a different physician. Consider also the
| perspective of the detransitioning person: in trying to
| reconcile their experience, they project that there must
| be more people out there like themselves and point to a
| known unknown to justify it.
| class4behavior wrote:
| Is there any statistical significance to that. Have the
| emotional baggage and social complexity younger people
| are dealing with and the share of middle aged people who
| did or could not transition been accounted for?
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > OTOH, i am unsure what do you mean by a statistical over-
| representation of GD.
|
| This is quite clear to me and I do not think gender dysphoria
| - which is a DSM-5 diagnosis [1] - is the correct term to
| use. Compared to previous years or decades (or centuries)
| there is a markedly higher percentage of children/young
| adults who "self-identify as 'trans'", often clustered and in
| waves. This did not use to be so but that does not mean
| similar phenomena did not occur, they just did not get a
| diagnosis attached to them. It is highly probable (and feed
| for a dissertation if there is a university which would
| accept such a politically charged project) that the same
| character types who now "self-identify as 'trans'" were those
| who would style themselves as "goth" or "emo" or (in the late
| 80's and 90's) "metrosexual" or any other androgynous style.
| The difference is that these earlier style figures did not
| come with a diagnosis nor were they adopted by any mainstream
| political movement and as such were taken less seriously. You
| could be a goth just like you could be a metalhead or a prep
| and be part of your in-crowd by just wearing the right
| clothes (and, for some crowds, make-up) and listening to the
| right bands. It was accepted as a way for children and young
| adults to "belong" without coming with much baggage.
|
| [1] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-
| dysphori...
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > Compared to previous years or decades (or centuries)
| there is a markedly higher percentage of children/young
| adults who "self-identify as 'trans'", often clustered and
| in waves.
|
| I don't see how you could usefully extrapolate a "real"
| baseline rate based on what prior generations did. Atypical
| sexual/gender identities have been taboo for almost the
| entirety of human civilization, and only as these taboos
| are now being lifted are people able to express these
| traits without fear of horrific repercussions.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| The current wave of "self-identification" was markedly
| absent in the wake of the '68 revolts and the ensuing
| "free love generation" which casts doubt upon your
| thesis. It is far more likely that these current "self-
| identification" trends are emergent properties of the
| availability of direct one-to-many communications media -
| social media and the like - which make it possible for
| these identity groups to emerge and grow rapidly.
| VictorPath wrote:
| > we can _learn_ to want to be another gender
|
| If that is true, then cookie cutter expected gender behavior
| can be "learned" as well. In fact much of it was illegal in the
| US a few decades ago.
| RocketOne wrote:
| This is exactly what I thought of when I saw "social media-
| induced illness": MSMI
|
| I saw this in the school I led, especially in young girls. One
| of them starts cutting, suddenly we have multiple girls
| cutting. One of them struggles with bulimia, suddenly the
| guidance counselor is reporting that she has an inordinate
| number of girls coming in for counselling about bulimia.
|
| I dont think its any different with claiming to be transgender.
| And my current school counselor contact confirms that - for
| every one child she sees that she believes may actually
| struggle with body dysmorphia and she believes may be trans,
| there are 10 more coming in because its the 'thing' to be.
| These are usually kids who are troubled and are desperately
| seeking attention and care, legit needs, but going about it the
| only way they see that's acceptable. They gain attention, they
| gain power, and in an odd way, status among their peers for
| 'being who they are.'
| simplotek wrote:
| > I saw this in the school I led, especially in young girls.
| One of them starts cutting, suddenly we have multiple girls
| cutting. One of them struggles with bulimia, suddenly the
| guidance counselor is reporting that she has an inordinate
| number of girls coming in for counselling about bulimia.
|
| When you showcase suicides on TV you also have upticks in
| suicides. Same goes for mass shootings, copycat murderers,
| and even political protests.
|
| When the 101 dalmatians movie was released, there was also an
| uptick in demand for dalmatians.
|
| I fail to see how this means it's ok to fabricate diseases to
| downplay the effect that mass media has on people.
| leephillips wrote:
| "nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _learn_ to want
| to be another gender."
|
| It's impossible to have the idea that you want to be another
| "gender" unless you have learned to want it. The ideas of
| "gender" and that you can switch yours have to come from
| somewhere; you have to learn them. Just as: you can't want to
| be a doctor unless you've learned that there is such a thing as
| a doctor and that it's something you can be.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Very confident to assert that this act of imagination is
| impossible, that nobody in history has ever spontaneously had
| the idea of trying on another gender's gender-marker clothing
| and worked from there.
| leephillips wrote:
| Did this somebody from history also spontaneously know that
| the clothes were markers of another gender?
| red_admiral wrote:
| I have gender dysphoria myself, and you get an upvote from me
| because I think you are speaking the truth in a way that would
| lead to better outcomes for many of the affected people, if one
| properly thought through the implications.
|
| I understand gender dysphoria (as opposed to body
| dysphoria/dysmorphia in a stricter sense) to be a mismatch
| between someone's own preferences, interests etc. inasfar as
| they touch on categories that society has declared to be
| gendered, and society's expectations of the same - at least
| those of your local bubble of society.
|
| This means there are two non-mutually-exclusive ways to make
| the lives of gender dysphoric people better: (1) let them
| change themselves (many options from pronouns to hormones and
| surgery), or (2) change society's expectations. Out of sympathy
| for people suffering from gender dysphoria, I wish for a bit
| more of (2) in the world.
|
| Even in a vastly improved society, there will be people who
| decide that medical changes such as hormones/surgery are right
| for them, and as far as possible we should support them. These
| people existed, in small numbers, before "trans" was cool, and
| they will still exist when the media interest has picked up
| some new favourite category. (By analogy, Tourette's syndrome
| is also a real thing that existed before the internet, and will
| still exist when this particular media spike has died down.)
| niom wrote:
| The "trans/gay/lesbian is cool now" explanation doesn't hold
| a lot of water to me. If I had the choice to not be gay, I
| wouldn't be. Life would be so much easier, emotionally and
| otherwise. Sex would be lower risk and it would be much
| easier to find a romantic partner. I spent a long time - two
| decades - suppressing it, as hard as I could, and it did not
| go away. Instead I was anxious and depressed. After I started
| to accept myself, those things became a lot better. I look
| forward to the day I come out.
|
| Transitioning is 100x harder. The nonconformity is obvious.
| The antagonism directed at transitioning people is
| unavoidable, strong and potentially deadly - violent and
| lethal attacks on trans people are becoming much more common
| every year. Compulsory sterilization for people legally
| transitioning is still mandated in many countries and was
| only abolished in progressive countries in the last few
| years.
|
| No, nobody is doing any of this because it's "cool".
| red_admiral wrote:
| It is "cool" inside a very small, but very powerful,
| stratum of society. You are right that there are still a
| lot of places where being queer (whether of the LGB or T
| variety) is a huge disadvantage.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Even within that stratum, I'd argue that it's more
| "acceptable" than specifically "cool". Or if it is
| "cool", it's in a superficial sort of way that doesn't
| relay any real benefits or privilege.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I guess one could argue whether getting upvotes, likes,
| views and such on social media counts as "real benefits",
| but that seems to be exactly what's going on with some of
| the Tourettes-on-TikTok people. You get lots of
| validation coming your way, you get to be part of a
| community, and you get +1 armor against trolls who claim
| it's ok to punch as long as you're only punching up.
| YellowStuDregg wrote:
| Could people feel dismissive towards your opinion because it
| sounds like confabulation, rather than a carefully reasoned
| argument based on data that could spawn a good faith
| discussion?
|
| > What's interesting to me
|
| Shower thought, then
|
| > This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because
| nobody wants to confront the idea that...
|
| Alright you win!
| throwaway27727 wrote:
| Or because it's a controversial topic and GP is worried about
| being taken as offensive but still would like to make their
| point.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Our neural networks have learned that people tend to say
| "I'm sure I'll get downvoted" right before or after saying
| some nasty racist or sexist shit. So, maybe avoid the
| phrase if you aren't doing that.
| bsaul wrote:
| Indeed. It seems pretty obvious to anyone that has ever
| witnessed a high school hall that teenagers mimic far more than
| just clothes. Fashion goes way beyond that.
| nathias wrote:
| I think this generation is forced into gender essentialism,
| gender non-conformity used to be much more normal, now it's
| redefined as if really a conformity to another gender ... very
| totalitarian
| blueflow wrote:
| Decades ago, a woman had to do the cleaning chores...
| nowadays you are the women because you do the cleaning
| chores. Its the same sexism thinking, but the path is walked
| the other way.
|
| Always be wary of persons who sort your behavior into 'male'
| and 'female' categories.
| brookst wrote:
| > statistically over represented
|
| Over represented compared to what? The incidence of these
| disorders back when admitting them would get you bullied /
| raped / killed?
|
| An alternative explanation is that reducing the social
| straitjackets that enforced conformity is leading to greater
| diversity of human behavior. Maybe yes, maybe no, but it's at
| least a hypothesis worth considering.
|
| BTW your point would be stronger without the persecution
| complex. And stronger yet with an acknowledgement that, while
| tic-like behavior and multi-year cognitive identity issues may
| have correlations, also they may not.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Over represented compared to what?
|
| In the case of gender dysphoria, the obvious comparison would
| be, compared to a society where one can subvert gender norms
| and be accepted _without_ changing one 's identity. The
| emergence of trans movement has created a space where gender-
| nonconforming people can find more acceptance, but it comes
| with own set of norms and requirements.
|
| One of which is that one must change their identity and, in
| many cases, conform to the norms of your newly chosen
| identity (certainly not everyone in the trans community
| enforces identity-based gender norms, but that's also true of
| general society when it comes to sex-based norms. In my
| experience, they're both about as bad as each other. I've
| lost count of the number of times people have told me that I
| must be a certain way or have had certain experiences because
| of my gender identity).
| brookst wrote:
| I kept waiting for you to support the "over represented"
| claim. Much disappointment.
|
| Over represented compared to what _real_ thing? What should
| the representation be, in terms of percent, compared to
| what we see today?
| nicoburns wrote:
| The "real" thing would be the gender dysphoria present if
| people weren't subject to a society telling them that if
| they don't conform to the norms of <gender> then they
| can't be <gender>, they must be <other gender>. A society
| that conflates wanting to live and present in a certain
| way with wanting a certain body type (these are both
| valid things to want, but they ought to be treated as
| independent phenomena rather than as being linked by an
| abstract concept of gender).
|
| Having such an escape is better than not having it, but
| it's far from an ideal gender free society (where we
| effectively treat everyone as having a non-binary
| gender), in which I suspect we would see a lot less
| gender dysphoria. Allowing people to choose which set of
| gender norms they want to follow is still enforcing
| gender norms if you expect people to choose a single
| identity and don't allow people to freely mix and match.
| totemandtoken wrote:
| >> This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because
| nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _learn_ to want
| to be another gender.
|
| Except this was disproven. Dr. Money and David Rimer is the
| infamous case study I believe
| poulpy123 wrote:
| Didn't a researcher shown that's it was indeed the case ?
| rippercushions wrote:
| That would be the "rapid onset gender dysphoria" controversy,
| which is so politically charged that lay observers (/me
| waves) will have a very hard time separating science from
| ideology.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-
| onset_gender_dysphoria_c...
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| You're already getting swamped but I wanna take this bit in
| good faith:
|
| > illnesses such as gender dysphoria that are statistically
| over represented
|
| If it was true that gender dysphoria had a major "social
| contagion" component, what would you want to do about that?
|
| Censor speech so children can't discuss gender? Like how some
| people think censor sex ed was a treatment for teen pregnancy?
|
| Put up bureaucratic barriers to transition, at the cost of
| hurting people who really are transgender?
| [deleted]
| simplotek wrote:
| > This is probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, because
| nobody wants to confront the idea that we can _learn_ to want
| to be another gender. But I think there's some interesting
| parallels to be observed here, and discounting that based on
| "moral virtue" or "denying hate speech" or whatever i'll be
| attacked with is just moving the target.
|
| I feel you're grossly misrepresenting the issue. It means
| nothing if you believe people can be re-educated to cease to
| identify as a specific gender or repress their sexuality
| throughout their whole lives. That's completely irrelevant. You
| can also argue that you can re-educated men to be ok with being
| impotent or be bald or not need glasses, but somehow the
| conservative side of society is perfectly ok with having whole
| industries devoted to pumping out erectile disfuncion pills to
| circumvent natural health issues.
|
| So you have to ask yourself why do you feel it's ok to repress
| whole segments of society because they don't feel comfortable
| with who they are, while you are perfectly ok with other
| segments pulling nature's cheat codes to achieve the exact same
| thing.
|
| This is exactly the point: the authoritarian motivation behind
| repressing minorities, and the hate speech that goes along with
| it.
| naasking wrote:
| > It means nothing if you believe people can be re-educated
| to cease to identify as a specific gender or repress their
| sexuality throughout their whole lives. That's completely
| irrelevant. You can also argue that you can re-educated men
| to be ok with being impotent or be bald or not need glasses,
| but somehow the conservative side of society is perfectly ok
| with having whole industries devoted to pumping out erectile
| disfuncion pills to circumvent natural health issues.
|
| I don't understand this. The core problem with gender
| dysphoria is that you feel significant discomfort with your
| biological sex. If it were possible to _legitimately_ "re-
| educate" oneself to not feel this discomfort, that would be
| considerably cheaper, less invasive and less problematic
| overall than trying to change one's sex. All surgery carries
| risk of death after all, and lifetime of hormone therapy is
| annoying to say the least.
|
| Being bald is not just a feeling of discomfort with having no
| hair, it has real consequences. Baldness is generally
| considered to be less attractive, and attractiveness impacts
| career and dating prospects, for instance.
|
| Being impotent also has real-world consequences. It impacts
| dating and also impacts your ability to conceive.
|
| Arguably, being trans also has real-world consequences as
| well, so if a solution became available that could eliminate
| the gender dysphoria without changing your sex, I would be
| very surprised if plenty of trans people wouldn't choose that
| option, and not just because of social stigma.
|
| The resistance to such a solution comes from two
| understandable directions: a) terrible gay conversion therapy
| that doesn't actually work, and b) the (mistaken) notion of
| mind-body dualism that many people internalize over their
| lives, that their identity, their mind, is separate from
| their body and has more primacy.
| simplotek wrote:
| > I don't understand this. The core problem with gender
| dysphoria is that you feel significant discomfort with your
| biological sex.
|
| Indeed, and that's why you see people undergoing medical
| treatments to address that problem.
|
| Why anyone in their right mind would be against people
| seeking medical treatments to address their health issues
| is beyond me.
|
| > If it were possible to legitimately "re-educate" oneself
| to not feel this discomfort, that would be considerably
| cheaper, less invasive and less problematic overall than
| trying to change one's sex.
|
| You're desperately trying to avoid the point.
|
| I repeat. You can reeducate an impotent man to stop
| worrying about his erectile dysfunction. You can reeducate
| a man to stop bothering with being bald.
|
| Why is that somehow not targeted by this authoritarian
| belief that you're entitled to force upon others to undergo
| reeducation camps to accept an outcome they don't want nor
| feel comfortable with?
|
| Why is that only minorities vilified by certain religious
| conservative pressure groups should have no say in what
| they can and cannot do regarding their health and personal
| well-being?
| roody15 wrote:
| It reminds me of the old saying "Monkey see .. Monkey do".
|
| An over simplification perhaps but there is no question we
| "mimic" all the time.
| anenefan wrote:
| I think similarly.
|
| I am wondering how they differentiate this specific extreme
| behaviour moving "socially," to other subtle behaviours which
| are copied and mirrored within small tight knit social groups
| - especially kids / teenagers? I found the 9:1 ratio of girls
| to boys intriguing, given the same or very similar mechanism
| might been a huge benefit to females in past ages where they
| might be married into a strange culture.
| boyanlevchev wrote:
| A freaky thing that this paper doesn't mention is that in some
| cases these tics have gotten so extreme, that one patient began
| having almost constant seizures and became wheelchair-bound.
| Imagine being "infected" by watching a video on TikTok! It sounds
| like a horror movie.
|
| From The Guardian: "Over the next few weeks, Wacek noticed that
| she was having tics. "They were just little noises," she says.
| "Nothing to write home about." She would scrunch up her nose, or
| huff. The tics escalated from sounds into words and phrases. Then
| the motor tics kicked in. "I started punching walls and throwing
| myself at things," she says. By July, Wacek was having seizures.
| She had to stop work. "Being a chef with seizures is not safe at
| all," she says. Her GP referred her to a neurologist, who
| diagnosed her with functional neurological syndrome (FND). People
| with FND have a neurological condition that cannot be medically
| explained, but can be extremely debilitating. "In a general
| neurological clinic, around 30% of the conditions we see are not
| fully explainable," says Dr Jeremy Stern, a neurologist with the
| charity Tourettes Action. In Wacek's case, FND manifested in
| verbal and motor tics, not dissimilar from how Tourette syndrome
| appears to lay people, although the two conditions are distinct.
| Wacek has up to 20 seizures a day and currently has to use a
| wheelchair."
|
| Source: https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2021/nov/16/the-
| unknown-is...
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > It sounds like a horror movie.
|
| Might I interest you in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
| Zezima wrote:
| So happy I found this comment! Yes Snow Crash is a mist
| recommendation and insanely relevant to mass hysteria and
| "babbling"
| quux wrote:
| Wow, This reminds me of the virus in Snow Crash
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, I'm surprised on a forum like this people are using it as
| an opportunity to be like "ugh kids these days in $current_year
| seeking attention" and not "holy shit this is fascinating."
| Social media turned "picking up an accent" up to 11 in a way
| that actually manifests in tangible problems.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| This reminds me of "Blipverts" on the 80s TV show "Max
| Headroom". TV commercials that were so stimulating they would
| cause some viewers to explode.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk
| pfortuny wrote:
| The exclamation mark after that (!) is very relevant, @dang.
|
| Thanks.
| OJFord wrote:
| If you edit it, it will save without modification (auto-
| stripping of certain things happens only on first save) -
| though in this case it's probably better just to remove 'stop
| that' altogether?
| bowsamic wrote:
| The "Stop that!" is part of the paper's title
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Sorry, I did not submit it. Was just pointing him to the
| (important) difference.
| incomingpain wrote:
| This is the next big area of research in social sciences. You
| must research this for national security reasons. Early research
| came in with the idea of mirror neurons but it went further.
|
| Statistically you're always going to have 'hot spots' for
| suicide. # per capita etc. So governments trying to help setup
| suicide hotlines. Not much uptake on this. So they advertised the
| suicide hotline and suddenly has mass suicide problems.
|
| Been replicated/reported many times, even on Canadian reserves.
| Cultural, racial doesnt seem to change anything.
|
| Then you have the general crisis in mental health where suddenly
| lots of people think they have some sort of disorder. Lots of
| OCD, when really they dont have anything. But it came from
| advertising and awareness campaigns.
|
| Do the flipside, how about all the motivational speakers who
| abuse this same mechanism but in a good way? Same with
| mentalists.
|
| How about people who are being radicalized into violence? How
| about all the kids suddenly becoming trans? All the same umbrella
| which social sciences is working on.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > How about all the kids suddenly becoming trans?
|
| Please do not repeat this right-wing talking point. It is a
| moral panic, and it causes real harm to kids who need genuine
| mental health support who are instead being dismissed as being
| part of a trend.
|
| "all the kids" are not suddenly becoming trans - the incident
| rates in society are still extremely small.
|
| All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained
| by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same appeared when
| we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all the kids didn't
| suddenly become left-handed, but the ones that were felt
| comfortable no longer hiding it.
|
| And by and large, with some exceptions that get consistently
| magnified by those with an agenda, it is not something you can
| just do on a whim, and generally requires a lot of counselling
| and a lot of effort to pursue hormonal or surgical changes.
|
| There are incidents of detransitioning and those that regret
| it. Those rates are lower than those that regret knee
| replacements.
|
| Happy to answer any other questions if needed.
| vinegarden wrote:
| > All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily
| explained by a more tolerant society accepting it.
|
| This doesn't explain the disproportionate rise in teenage
| girls seeking treatment at gender clinics though.
|
| Here's a fascinating essay by a detransitioner on how she
| began thinking of herself first as 'non-binary' and later as
| male, and ended up being prescribed testosterone medication
| for this: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name.
| She goes into quite some detail about how being exposed to
| gender identity ideology on Tumblr over a period of years was
| what influenced her to transition.
|
| Other detransitioners have described similar online
| influences. It seems likely that this is at least one of the
| factors causing such an increase, and may well explain why
| the rise in referrals to gender clinics are so skewed toward
| female teenagers, who are the primary demographic of sites
| like Tumblr, and who are particularly vulnerable to social
| contagions.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > Please do not repeat this right-wing talking point.
|
| Please do not make this a partisan issue. Some of us have
| been following the sexually regressive trend of calling our
| children's bodies defective and broken because they don't
| match the viewers' sexual stereotypes for quite a while now,
| and there was pretty widespread consensus across political
| and religious ideologies that our kids didn't need surgery to
| be okay.
|
| > It is a moral panic, and it causes real harm to kids who
| need genuine mental health support who are instead being
| dismissed as being part of a trend.
|
| That's circular. They need help because they're caught in a
| trend which ignores the actual issues in _their_ lives
| (bullying, divorce, academics, etc) and provides a one-size-
| fits-all solution of body modification.
|
| > All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily
| explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same
| appeared when we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all
| the kids didn't suddenly become left-handed, but the ones
| that were felt comfortable no longer hiding it.
|
| This sounds compelling but is not accurate. Left-handedness
| is a testable "condition" whereas transgender is some adults'
| interpretation of how people and their genitals should look
| based on how they act, especially with regard to things the
| observer thinks of as sexualized, such as who plays with
| dolls. Society was getting more tolerant, back in the 00s
| you'd never have a teacher scold a child for using wrong-sex
| toys because we'd largely gotten rid of the concept. Now it's
| back and we're telling children their actions and desires are
| wrong, BUT we've got a surgical solution!
|
| Fifteen years ago a boy could have worn a dress to elementary
| and wouldn't have socially risked anything worse than if they
| wore the wrong brand. Now they risk their teachers "helping"
| them make huge life decisions they can't even comprehend, and
| telling them to keep the discussions secret from their
| parents. That's a lot less accepting than it used to be.
|
| > with some exceptions that get consistently magnified by
| those with an agenda, it is not something you can just do on
| a whim, and generally requires a lot of counselling and a lot
| of effort to pursue hormonal or surgical changes.
|
| This isn't true, the fast track (affirmative care) is the
| only one allowed in most schools and clinics and by WPATH
| guidelines. Very rarely do teachers, counsellors, therapists,
| or health care providers pause to help children with
| preexisting issues before literally telling them that they're
| born incorrectly and offering solutions - even if those
| solutions (drugs and surgery) aren't always immediate.
|
| > There are incidents of detransitioning and those that
| regret it. Those rates are lower than those that regret knee
| replacements.
|
| This is not correct. There are no proper studies that follow
| medical transitioners long enough to usefully make that
| claim. The studies that exist have egregious failures such as
| not accounting for dropouts or controlling for comorbidities.
| And knee surgery is widely known to be almost ineffective for
| many people, making it an exceptionally misleading
| comparison.
| beckon69 wrote:
| I appreciated this thoughtful response (rebuttal) to OP. I
| agree with your concept of "back in the 00s you'd never
| have a teacher scold a child for using wrong-sex
| clothes/toys because we'd largely gotten rid of the
| concept". This dovetails into one of the paradox's of the
| trans-adjacent ideology that I haven't been able to square
| in my own head, which is that transitioning genders is
| predicated on strong gender norms existing in a society. In
| other words, it seems less accepting to be a male and
| exhibit feminine traits (and by the way, we are in fact
| acknowledging traditional societal ideas of gender roles
| now, rather than moving beyond them).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Even weirder is how those who don't acknowledge
| traditional societal ideas of gender roles are being
| directed to adopt an identity of their own: "non-binary"
| or "genderfluid". So the strong gender norms have now
| become a thoroughly self-reinforcing cycle: even if you
| disagree with them, you're just treated and reassigned in
| accordance with these same norms.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| You know what else causes "real harm to kids"? Telling them
| that puberty blockers are like, _totes_ reversible and have
| zero side effects.
| LargeTomato wrote:
| >All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily
| explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same
| appeared when we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all
| the kids didn't suddenly become left-handed, but the ones
| that were felt comfortable no longer hiding it.
|
| I think you are repeating talking points from John Oliver. If
| trans identifying people were evenly distributed among the
| population then it would appear a natural phenomenon.
| Unfortunately in some cases this is not true. Groups of young
| girls are coming out as trans together. Trans youth are
| clustered by social circle, not randomly distributed. Being
| trans is a legitimate identity but it is false to say that
| every single person who announces that they are trans is in
| fact trans.
| fock wrote:
| > All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily
| explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same
| appeared when we stopped.
|
| Explained (aka semi-solid empirical experiments - where are
| those?) or imagined (aka ideological beliefs, much like the
| right)?
|
| > And by and large, with some exceptions that get
| consistently magnified by those with an agenda, it is not
| something you can just do on a whim, and generally requires a
| lot of counselling and a lot of effort to pursue hormonal or
| surgical changes.
|
| And yet every other week I see a talkshow on public TV
| discussing this. Prominently hosting a person that thinks the
| rules in place are faaaar to rigid, while most sane people
| would agree they are fine and problems lie in other areas.
| For example, while I agree that in many cases physiological
| "modifications" might be the most economic solution putting
| this solely to the purview of the individual might a) incur
| follow-up costs on society (here, these things are not self-
| paid) and b) raises the question why we don't amputate the
| legs of those who think they have one too many. The latter
| thing is something, which I would really like explained once
| by someone.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| I have to wonder if mirror neurons play a part in this. Perhaps
| there's something that's fundamentally common to both 'real' tics
| and these types of non-Tourette's tics. A person could already be
| predisposed to something like Tourette's and seeing these videos
| could be the thing that ignites the kindling for them.
| jlrubin wrote:
| anecdotally, i had a professor (if you're reading this, hi) who
| would wink in conversation at exactly the right point to add a
| little "isn't the world a funny place" comedy to whatever he was
| saying... wasn't clear if intentional or a tic for when he
| thought he had said something clever. I noticed that habit to
| have transferred to me for a while after, though I think now it's
| faded.
| golemiprague wrote:
| themagician wrote:
| This is South Park: Season 11, Episode 8 (Le Petit Tourette) come
| to life.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| From my reading of the article (which is hard to parse not being
| an expert) it seems there is a German YouTuber with Tourette's
| who _also_ on his YouTube shows displays non-tourette 's tics.
| And these tics are being copied by other young people watching
| his shows, and being presented as Tourette's until they arrive at
| the clinic where these experts go "hang on this kid does not have
| Tourette's but does have tics similar to the German youtuber
| above"
|
| So, the weird thing is not they pick up someone else's tics but
| they cannot get rid of them.
|
| Learnt behaviour, copying, or physical tics that once learnt get
| stuck in the brain?
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Learnt behaviour, copying, or physical tics that once learnt
| get stuck in the brain?
|
| The article itself makes it clear. There's an obvious reward
| for these behaviors. This youtuber got exceptionally popular
| very quickly and was able to turn that into appearances on
| other shows. The other patients are also noted to have their
| "symptoms" express themselves during unpleasant tasks, but to
| be missing during pleasant ones. To the point it gets them out
| of doing the unpleasant work.
|
| We've built a system that rewards this behavior because we
| built a system that also makes this behavior profitable. To me,
| these results shouldn't be a surprise, and I wonder if this
| "new illness" is really just an emergent lower level expression
| of something like Munchhausen syndrome; now given a wider and
| less sophisticated audience to play to.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Faceworms instead of earworms?
| indigochill wrote:
| There may be a relation to military conditioning. I spent just
| a single week at a military academy introductory program in
| high school and when I returned home I was "uncontrollably" (if
| I thought about it I could avoid doing it, but if I was on
| autopilot it happened by itself) squaring my corners and
| calling my family "sir" and "ma'am". The thing was, those
| patterns were my entire life for that week, and they were very
| deliberately drilled into me. Eventually they faded because
| they weren't reinforced outside of the academy (if anything,
| they were "deinforced"), but there may be a connection here.
|
| If someone spends many hours a day watching someone with
| particular quirks, it doesn't seem surprising (drawing
| parallels here to my experience) that those quirks may transfer
| because their brain starts to make those associations through
| observation. I would expect that stopping watching that
| particular person would probably let the transferred tics decay
| over a period of time (I'd give it a month).
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| I love "deinforce" as an antonym to "reinforce". The standard
| way to say it would maybe be "deemphasised", but it lacks the
| symmetry of "deinforced".
| elliottkember wrote:
| In behavioural psychology the antonym is "punish". There
| are positive/negative axes (whether a stimulus is added or
| removed) and reinforcement/punishment axes (whether the
| consequence is desired).
|
| Negative reinforcement is what boot camp uses. If you
| square your corners, you won't get shouted at. The
| "negative" aspect relates to the lack of shouting, and the
| reinforcement relates to the fact that the shouting is
| unpleasant.
|
| At home, positive punishment would be making fun of the
| tendencies, and negative punishment would have meant
| receiving no validation for the behaviour.
| labster wrote:
| I think GP meant deinforce to be a complimentary antonym,
| where you gave the gradable antonym.
| CognitiveLens wrote:
| @elliottkember is giving the correct complimentary
| antonym to "reinforce" in behavioral psych - "punishment"
| reduces the frequency of a behavior, "reinforcement"
| increases the frequency. There's a spectrum, but the
| terms only refer to the opposing effects on behavior
| rates. In the GP's comment, "deinforcement" appears to
| also mean "actively reducing the frequency of the
| behavior".
| albert_e wrote:
| I read about "mirror neurons" where humans watching others do
| physical activity also have some of the same neural pathways
| fire.
|
| (V. S. RAMACHANDRAN)
|
| The author/researcher says he believes that is one of the
| main mechanisms of human learning (babies look at adults and
| imitate. Adults look at other adults and imitate.
| Subconsciously)
|
| What you are describing sounds very similar.
| boole1854 wrote:
| When I was raising my first child, I discovered a strange,
| apparently innate instinct which presumably is related to
| the mirror neurons:
|
| At some point the child gets old enough that you start to
| feed them 'baby food' on a spoon. The child isn't used to
| eating off of a spoon so for many weeks the process is
| messy. The initial challenge is getting them to open their
| mouth wide enough for the spoon to enter. And telling them
| 'open your mouth' is not particularly useful since they
| don't understand English at that age.
|
| Instead, the following instinct kicks in: as you approach
| their mouth with the spoon, _your own mouth opens_. They
| see your mouth open and then open theirs. The crazy part is
| that your own mouth opening happens involuntarily at the
| moment you want their mouth to open. It is _physically
| difficult_ to suppress it, even if you try.
|
| I've also noticed the reverse. When the child gets a little
| older, they at some point want _you_ to open your mouth,
| because they want to feed you something or they are curious
| about the inside of your mouth (this is a phase they go
| through). They seem to also involuntarily open their mouth
| wide when they want you to open yours.
| adolph wrote:
| After your first sentence I thought the next would be
| "uncontrollably dropping two f-bombs for every noun and one
| for every verb" but the classic hallway "at ease, make way"
| is good fun too. It was hilarious how it could travel in
| waves up a hall ahead of the drill like a preceding shadow.
| My floor was enthusiastically and maliciously conformant and
| loud about it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
| kuhewa wrote:
| The article says that one thing differentiating these kids
| from acutal Tourette symptoms is that instead of symptoms
| waxing and waning, they only deteriorate. So that definitely
| squares
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Reminds me of how Americans spend a couple of months in the
| UK and return with an affected British accent.
|
| Before social media, there were movies that molded society.
| Bollywood and more recently K-dramas/K-pop have influenced an
| entire generation.
|
| Often these were used for shaping a younger generation as a
| long term strategy for a desirable adult demographic. To a
| certain extent, it is happening in our American public school
| system. Everyone who comes through it are kind of identical.
| It may not be apparent to those who have never stepped out of
| the States, but it is obvious to those outside or have known
| other cultures.
|
| With social media impacts, its effect is like an oil spill.
| Even if you can contain it, it will be messy, expensive and
| traumatic for years and years. This is a Faustian bargain we
| have made.
| bawolff wrote:
| I feel that might be overstating things. Otherwise we would
| all be speaking in a transatlantic accent.
| filoleg wrote:
| > Reminds me of how Americans spend a couple of months in
| the UK and return with an affected British accent.
|
| As someone who moved to the US in his mid-teens (from a
| non-english-speaking country), that's quite literally me
| with British movies.
|
| After watching a few over a weekend, Mondays are usually
| rough, as I end up saying random words in British accent
| and immediately correcting myself.
| rubidium wrote:
| All behavior is total behavior, so it doesn't really matter.
| Article makes the point that this is attention seeking behavior
| and often used as an excuse to avoid unpleasant tasks. Whether
| the teens are aware they are choosing the tic, eventually it
| becomes habitual and they "can't stop". Except they can after
| meeting with a trained phycologist. Get to the root of the
| behavior and usually the behavior goes away.
| amelius wrote:
| Many OCD sufferers will not agree.
| elil17 wrote:
| I think they were referring to behaviors associated with
| mass psychogenic illness, which is probably a lot more
| curable than many OCD cases.
| lisper wrote:
| It's plausible [1] [2].
|
| I am by all accounts neurotypical (except perhaps for a touch
| of Aspergers) but I have an involuntary tic. Every now and then
| (like once or twice a week) a memory of some incredibly stupid
| thing that I once did -- sometimes decades ago -- will pop into
| my head and before I can re-establish conscious control I'll
| make a vocalization that sounds like a cross between a whimper
| and a sneeze. It's kind of embarrassing, but usually I cover it
| up with a cough afterwards. I don't think anyone has ever
| actually noticed except me.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought
| snapcaster wrote:
| Holy shit, I thought this only happened to me. Hey fellow
| weirdo! Glad to know i'm not alone
| wussboy wrote:
| I had a significant tic, and found profound relief through
| Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I strongly recommend
| "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life".
| [deleted]
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I am wondering if you've tried EMDR after the event happens?
| So you have the thought that triggers the tic and then you'd
| focus intensely on the event and do the EMDR stuff. That may
| reduce the intensity of the past event and reprogram your
| nervous system to not trigger so intensely on it.
| lisper wrote:
| See my response here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=33887467
| HEmanZ wrote:
| Happens at least twice a day to me, sometimes a lot more. My
| wife finds it bewildering so I'm not sure it's totally
| normal, but I know it's not uncommon either.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I have SAD and this happens to me several times a day. Though
| it's not so much that it pops into my head, more that my
| train of thought leads me there by association.
|
| In a lot of ways SAD feels like a form of PTSD where instead
| of a single extremely traumatic experience, or many extreme
| experiences(known as complex PTSD), it's a huge amount of
| slightly traumatic ones. So it's sort of like a flashback.
|
| One of the things I've noticed is that when I'm on SSRIs and
| they're working(which has never been a long-lived state of
| affairs, unfortunately), this phenomenon is drastically
| reduced or even gone altogether.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Are you talking about Seasonal Affective Disorder? Or can
| you define what SAD is if not?
| Scarblac wrote:
| From context my guess is Social Anxiety Disorder.
| geocrasher wrote:
| That makes more sense. Thanks.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Sorry, forgot about seasonal affective disorder, which I
| also have, ironically. But I was referring to social
| anxiety disorder.
| geocrasher wrote:
| I too have issues with these kinds of thoughts that very
| nearly cause a whole-body shudder, followed by a kind of yell
| just to get it out of my system. It doesn't happen often, but
| hearing others talk about this gives me hope that I'm not a
| total weirdo... even though I know I am in many other ways
| LOL!
|
| I've also wondered if my ADHD somehow factors into it, but
| that I don't know.
| ljf wrote:
| As a someone who recently realised/accepted that I have
| loads of adhd traits, I can see the connection. I
| personally think that the fact my mind is never really
| "calm" means I/we have more opportunities to play over
| these things when doing other tasks.
|
| I get the impression those without adhd can just
| concentrate without a mind full of fluff - I can't imagine
| what that must be like!
| evilos wrote:
| I think this is a bit different from a tic though that's an
| unqualified opinion.
|
| This happens to me as well, but usually I just kind of mutter
| 'damnit' under my breath or 'ugh'. Maybe shake my head a
| little.
| Lochleg wrote:
| EMDR therapy may help with something like that.
| lisper wrote:
| EMDR looks mighty hinky to me.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11393607/
|
| "In sum, EMDR appears to be no more effective than other
| exposure techniques, and evidence suggests that the eye
| movements integral to the treatment, and to its name, are
| unnecessary."
| theGnuMe wrote:
| That research is likely out of date.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Is this not totally normal and very common though? This exact
| thing happens to me all the time, with some specific memories
| linked to seemingly random acts like shaving the left side of
| my neck.
| twic wrote:
| Yes, loads of people get this. A couple of random reddit
| threads:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/hzgm1n/how_t
| o...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/2nnff4/how_t
| o...
|
| I do it. When i'm alone, and one of those thoughts hits,
| me, i often vocalise a bit. If i'm in company i just wince
| (if i made a noise in front of other people when i thought
| of something embarrassing, that would be embarrassing, so
| that would lead to a sort of embarrassment Kessler
| syndrome).
| cscheid wrote:
| > embarrassment Kessler syndrome
|
| Thank you, this is a genuinely great turn of phrase.
| lisper wrote:
| I have no idea if it's common or not. It might be. It's not
| the sort of thing people generally discuss. This is the
| first time I've ever talked about it.
| tgv wrote:
| A (long) time ago, I noticed something not dissimilar in
| my behavior. I've never noticed it in others, so it quite
| likely that your behavior goes unnoticed too.
|
| But what I did was tell myself to not react like that
| again next time. Of course, that didn't work, but it made
| me notice it better. And after repeating that for some
| time, I had timely control over the reaction (not over
| the stimulus that provoked it). If your tic is light and
| annoys you, you could try that. Your subconscious is
| capable of picking up more than you think, and it is
| (somewhat) malleable.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I have this happen to I've always assumed it was an anxiety
| response. The interesting things is I am able to control it
| to some extent, I used to hit myself, now I mutter
| profanities. Anyone else do something like this?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rjbwork wrote:
| Yup. I just say fuck and shake my head. Apparently this is
| rather normal behavior...
| sgu999 wrote:
| According to who? I have the same issue and it's
| annoying.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Well, there are a bunch of us in this thread, and I've
| heard many people talk about it over the years both IRL
| and elsewhere on the internet. Maybe "normal" is the
| wrong word, but it does seem to be exceedingly common.
|
| https://img.ifunny.co/images/81b1345612c2c66153ac111e99d4
| 1b2...
|
| https://www.thecut.com/article/how-to-stop-reliving-
| embarras...
|
| https://harleytherapy.com/blog/posts/cringe-attacks
| Levitz wrote:
| Well sure? Remembering embarrassing stuff is annoying.
|
| I've found that sitting with the thought for a little
| while and processing the emotion prevents it from coming
| up again. You can't just remember that girl in first year
| of uni that made an effort to hug you every day and flee
| the thought every time, painful as it is. You have to sit
| there and go through it. Yes I was young and stupid, but
| the reason I even cringe thinking about it is because I
| am now better. And that is ok.
| dEnigma wrote:
| I also do that from time to time, though less regularly,
| maybe once a month. But then I also sometimes talk to myself
| (not excessively, just occasionally when I take a walk or
| while at home, replaying some conversation or imagining a
| possible situation). I thought this was rather normal, or at
| least not too far from normal.
| ljf wrote:
| This is me to a tee! I either get a neck spasm when my chin
| gets brought down (also happens spontaneously, but often with
| a cringe worthy thought from the past), or I'll 'almost' same
| something out loud while replaying something.
|
| Assumed it wasn't just me who did this but glad to know there
| are others.
| somedude895 wrote:
| It's the mere suggestion that they might have those tics, but
| the article says:
|
| > Fourth, in some patients, a rapid and complete remission
| occurred after exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette syndrome.
|
| It also mentions other examples of MSI, where symptoms across
| the group would subside after a couple weeks or months. So
| yeah, in most cases all it needs is someone to say Stop That!
| You're imagining things
| kuhewa wrote:
| > First, all patients presented with nearly identical movements
| and vocalizations that not only resemble Jan Zimmermann's
| symptoms, but are in part exactly the same, such as shouting
| the German words Pommes (English: potatoes), Bombe (English:
| bomb), Heil Hitler, Du bist hasslich (English: you are ugly)
| and Fliegende Haie (English: flying sharks) as well as bizarre
| and complex behaviours such as throwing pens at school and
| dishes at home, and crushing eggs in the kitchen. > Fourth, in
| some patients, a rapid and complete remission occurred after
| exclusion of the diagnosis of Tourette syndrome.
|
| To a first approximation, the kids are 'faking it'. The third
| point I didn't quote was that symptoms appear when it will
| preclude then from doing a tedious task, and then disappear
| when they are doing something they want to do.
| [deleted]
| rocketbop wrote:
| Link is 403 Forbidden for me.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ZhKaL
| lynx23 wrote:
| So, these people are trying to convince us that SnowCrash is
| basically a realistic story, and no, modern society is not fed up
| with what happened in the recent years. I believe neither.
| "Outbreak" your a*!
| cnity wrote:
| Ironically categorising this as an outbreak of illness
| legitimises the attention-seeking behaviour which is firmly
| predicated on being perceived as a sufferer of illness.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I don't think it does. I understand the implication here being
| the people affected are suffering from Tiktokitis, i.e.
| symptoms of a different disease, but caused by social media
| exposure. Suffering from that isn't going to earn you much
| compassion or street cred, particularly when the cure is to
| spend less time on social media.
| 01100011 wrote:
| This sucks as someone who has had movement disorders(essential
| tremor, tics) for decades. It also sucks because the covid
| booster, like a flu shot years ago(only one, I get them every
| year) caused a dramatic worsening of my tics for a few months.
|
| I didn't realize the whole 'covid tic hysteria' was even a thing
| until I googled 'covid vaccine tics' after personally
| experiencing a dramatic worsening of symptoms.
| teekert wrote:
| It almost feels like gpt created literature when you start to
| read it, seemingly linking unrelated issues and concepts. But
| later in I became convinced it's real and very interesting. Very
| meme-like, in the original definition of meme that is. A "virus"
| of the mind.
| gary_0 wrote:
| It read like parody to me at first, but I verified the
| domain[0] and it's not.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Press
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| This has been a thing for a while.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/fakedisordercringe/
|
| It's status as illness though, let alone mass-illness is
| dubious at best.
| bowsamic wrote:
| If you can't voluntarily stop it and it's causing negative
| effects to your quality of life then why can't it be called
| an illness? These people aren't going to get professional
| help just for the fun of it
| tedunangst wrote:
| > Third, patients often reported to be unable to perform
| unpleasant tasks because of their symptoms resulting in
| release from obligations at school and home, while
| symptoms temporarily completely disappear while
| conducting favourite activities.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That makes no comment about whether the symptoms are on
| purpose, or unconscious. Ask any ADHD or OCD person about
| "symptoms that arise around unpleasant tasks"
| bowsamic wrote:
| How does that imply that it's voluntary?
| astura wrote:
| These illnesses appear to be very real, even if
| sociogenetic in origin.
|
| Someone researching the same thing has this to say
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/nov/16/the-unknown-
| is...
|
| >Olvera's research has not gone down well in some quarters.
| "I'm frustrated," she says. "I've tried to stop reading a
| lot of what is written out there." She's received "lots" of
| angry emails. "My colleagues have had a positive response
| to my research," she says, "but I don't know if it's been
| perceived appropriately by the public. The last thing I
| would want is for my patients to walk away from this
| thinking that their disorder is fake or not worthwhile."
|
| >Much of the controversy arises from the misapprehension
| that doctors are accusing young people of faking Tourette's
| for attention, or arguing that TikTok is giving people
| Tourette's. Neither claim is true. "What the media has
| boiled it down to," says Olvera, "is that if it's not
| Tourette syndrome, it's fake. But just because it's not
| Tourette syndrome doesn't mean it's fake. This is a real
| condition. Even though it's not typical Tourette's, it's
| very disruptive and stressful."
| bowsamic wrote:
| A lot of the responses in this thread demonstrate the
| same dismissal that she discusses
| ejolto wrote:
| The last sentence of the abstract felt especially unnatural:
|
| > since spread via social media is no longer restricted to
| specific locations such as local communities or school
| environments spread via social media is no longer restricted to
| specific locations such as schools or towns.
| DanSmooth wrote:
| The whole sentence could use some more punctuation marks,
| like so:
|
| A large number of young people across different countries are
| affected, with considerable impact on health care systems and
| society as a whole. Since spread via social media is no
| longer restricted to specific locations such as local
| communities or school environments, spread via social media
| is no longer restricted to specific locations such as schools
| or towns.
| indigochill wrote:
| The second sentence both says the same thing twice and
| actually doesn't make any sense when you parse it.
|
| > Since spread via social media is no longer restricted to
| specific locations such as local communities or school
| environments, spread via social media is no longer
| restricted to specific locations such as schools or towns.
|
| The sequence "spread via social media is no longer
| restricted to specific locations" appears in exactly that
| sequence twice in that sentence. If you cut the redundancy
| down to "spread via social media is no longer restricted to
| specific locations", that doesn't make sense either since
| social media was never restricted to specific locations.
|
| I'm not saying it's definitely written entirely by GPT, but
| mindlessly repeating sequences is very GPT-like behavior.
| Maybe academics are using GPT to pad their word count? Or
| maybe the authors and their editors just need more coffee?
| caf wrote:
| Yes, I too got to that sentence and thought "Are we being
| pranked by a GPT-written academic article?"
| bowsamic wrote:
| As someone in academia, that reads just like a sentence that
| wasn't peer reviewed by a native English speaker.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's just missing a comma.
| mahathu wrote:
| A comma would help, but it's not just that.
|
| They used the phrase "spread via social media" and pointed
| out that spread isn't locally restricted anymore twice for
| no reason. They're also using circular reasoning. A more
| concise way to phrase this would have been:
|
| > since [the images and videos] are shared via social
| media, spread is no longer restricted to specific locations
| such as local communities or school environments.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I think someone's just been steeped in academia a little too
| long.
| goda90 wrote:
| Stuff like this makes me wonder if taboo and stigma "evolved" in
| societies as defense against the spread of behavior that could
| cause a breakdown of social order. For example, if something like
| dancing mania[0] got out of hand, then important jobs could be
| left undone and people starve or whatever. So if the notion that
| such behavior is bad is drilled into everyone's mind before being
| exposed, then they are more likely to avoid "catching" it.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania
| ttpphd wrote:
| Taboo and stigma are also what drive irrational prejudices, so
| I'm not sure about the rush to judgment about, ummm, "important
| jobs" which definitely were not how society was organized
| during the vast majority of our evolution.
| fncivivue7 wrote:
| I've been starting to think the bible and other religions have
| their place due to this. Plot people on a bell curve, that's a
| lot of people that can't grasp basic nuance and critical
| reasoning.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| There's no need for convoluted explanations. A good taboo,
| understood as a restriction on certain kinds of behavior or
| speech at least in certain circumstances, exists to protect
| some good. It's the same reason (or one of the reasons) we
| partition our houses into rooms by purpose. Human flourishing
| requires certain limits, not letting it all hang out. The
| latter is more akin to the liberal notion of freedom understood
| as "do what thou wilt" and limitless indulgence of the
| appetites and desires. The classical understanding of freedom
| is the ability to do what you ought. Guess which leads to
| happiness and which leads to misery.
| el_nahual wrote:
| "limitless indulgence of the appetites and desires" has a
| different word. That's not _freedom_ , that's called
| _debauchery_ and has absolutely nothing to do with
| "liberalism" in the political science meaning of the term.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > There's no need for convoluted explanations.
|
| I don't see how it's at all convoluted. If anything, it's too
| reductive.
|
| Taboos, traditions, etc., don't need to exist because of a
| reason that's explicit. Sometimes, they do, but that doesn't
| explain the taboos that don't make obvious sense. A taboo can
| be more or less a form of "cultural neuron" that doesn't have
| an explicit purpose but incidentally changes the balance of
| the system towards something that society at a given time may
| benefit from without even knowing it. A religion featuring
| more ornate hats than others may have more true believers, or
| perhaps the other way around for all we know. If that's at
| least plausible, if not true, that wouldn't necessarily mean
| a reverend at one point decided to declare a certain kind of
| hat wearing because of the "good of the church."
|
| The inverse can also be true. Take for instance the taboo of
| _sexism_. Makes sense, right? Given modern western
| principles, why should culture allow for discrimination based
| on sex? On the other hand, there 's evidence that many women,
| regardless of their political positions, actually appreciate
| men who are "benevolently sexist." It's a phenomenon
| compelling enough that even Psychology Today, a publication
| heavily biased against anything unflattering to women, has
| reported on it more than once. By making sexism a taboo, and
| far more taboo as of late, society has raised the bar for
| just how confident a man has to be to attract a woman. We
| really don't need a study to demonstrate that, on average,
| women are attracted to confidence. An effect of making sexism
| taboo is it changes the signal to noise ratio, allowing women
| to better identify which men they'll actually be attracted
| to. Maybe there were some people arguing against sexism with
| this in mind, but I imagine they are an extreme minority.
| Most anti-sexists probably weren't thinking along those
| lines.
|
| At least that taboo makes some reasonable sense in isolation,
| and even the fashion of religious garb can be made sense of,
| but what about a taboo that makes no sense? What about merely
| making a mouth-noise that comes out sounding like "shit?"
|
| It makes little explicit sense that saying the word "shit" be
| a faux pas. You can say poop, doodie, scat, dung, and even
| crap, but shit is considered a curse word. It's really pretty
| stupid.
|
| Except I would argue that having any form of taboo can have a
| positive effect, even if it barely makes sense. By having
| cultural limits of any kind, it puts the society on the same
| page and creates a mindset where individuals try to at least
| maintain some level of basic class as a mindset. Personally,
| I like saying the word shit, but adding virtually any
| variable to a chaotic system can have effects that weren't
| explicitly predicted.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Oh yeah definitely. It's easier to just have a general learned
| feeling of a taboo than to have to explain to everyone the
| historical and societal consequences of it to every person.
| It's a learned behavior that helps perpetuate a higher survival
| rate not because the thing itself is bad if done a handful of
| times but because it can get out of hand and be done by the
| whole population.
| wahern wrote:
| > It's a learned behavior that helps perpetuate a higher
| survival rate
|
| Taboo is the learned behavior, _shame_ would be the
| evolutionary corollary, though both of those words are doing
| alot of work. IMO, until we figure out the evolutionary
| mechanics of how human social behavior evolved, I 'd be
| cautious discussing survival rates; it only begs the question
| of who's survival rate--the group or the individual?
| Presumably _at_ _least_ the individual, but it 's definitely
| still an open question. And without properly resolving the
| question (really, a whole host of questions, many of which we
| probably can't even articulate, yet) there are many other
| evolutionary phenomena we can't or shouldn't imply, not to
| mention cultural phenomena we won't be able to fully
| understand.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| There is also the same thing with Dissociative identity disorder
| that had (have ?) a boom after some people from tiktok started to
| pretend have it
| azangru wrote:
| This passage from the abstract:
|
| > Moreover, they can be viewed as the 21st century expression of
| a culture-bound stress reaction of our post-modern society
| emphasizing the uniqueness of individuals and valuing their
| alleged exceptionality, thus promoting attention-seeking
| behaviours and aggravating the permanent identity crisis of
| modern man.
|
| is rather peculiar. I didn't expect that this is how neurologists
| and neuroscientists would speak these days. "Our postmodern
| society", "permanent identity crisis of the modern man" - these
| sentiments sound like they've been transplanted from a humanities
| paper.
| damagednoob wrote:
| Yes this struck me too. I wouldn't describe the language used
| as 'neutral'.
| CognitiveLens wrote:
| This language style is a bit more common in academic writing
| outside of the Anglo tradition that is most commonly reported
| in the English-speaking world. British and American university
| training emphasises more clinical language, for better and
| worse.
| quonn wrote:
| This reminds me of analytical (formal) vs continental
| philosophy which is similar.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I agree. It is a bit weird to see such subjective takes and
| cultural pessimism in an article like this. Hadn't noticed it
| the first time around, probably due to my own biases. So thanks
| for pointing it out.
| boomchinolo78 wrote:
| Surely not the vaksine
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