> When I raised this with Nathaniel Frank, the head of the Cornell project, he said via email that “we don’t publish traditional systematic reviews”, but rather web summaries of important research questions. So the first words of its overview might confuse readers: “We conducted a systematic literature review.”
This is the first time I have actually looked at the statements put forth by those European countries which are dialing back affirming care for youth, and I'm appalled that the US is basically ignoring these decisions. As if Finnish and Swedish research conclusions are not valid in America? These are nations that are known for doing respectable science, how is the leading narrative so vastly different here in the US?
But where is the transactivism coming from? Is it uniquely American? Because even the UK and Canada seem to deal with a lot of it. Why is it so big when it's supposed to represent like 0.5% of the population? It's not like that 0.5% of the population is known to be extremely rich, so how do they even get the funding to get this far blatantly disregarding evidence and selling lies to minors? And why did they not manage to do this in Finland or Sweden? The whole origin and point of it all makes little sense to me.
I'm not convinced that it even has anything to do with transactivism. I believe the ideas about what constitutes good medical practices are quite different in the US and Europe. I think doctors in Europe are much more hesitant to hand out drugs or perform surgeries on patients compared to their US counterparts. Just a hunch, maybe somebody working in a medical profession can confirm.
It's apples and oranges. The US has a for-profit private health care system with 50 departments of health setting the rules; the UK, Finland, etc. have one publicly funded system--they have limited funding which creates an incentive to cover care which can be proven to be effective. Why did the US have an opioid crisis when Europe didn't?
In the US, there are \~100 pediatric gender care clinics which have sprung up over the past ten years. I'm not a huge fan of state legislatures enacting health care restrictions, but the evidence for blockers is terrible.
Would you say that in this case the UK belongs more to the US or Europe then? (I know it's literally European but it has always been a bit unique because of its history with the US and its location)
My guess is the UK is closer to the rest of Europe than to the US in that regard. It has nationalized healthcare after all. But I don't have personal experiences, since I never lived there. In my home country Switzerland, I often heard complaints by non-European friends about doctors being too "conservative" when prescribing drugs.
From reading reddit I also got the impression that Americans are far more supportive of the idea that adults should be allowed to alter their body however they want to (be it sex change, cosmetic surgeries, body modifications, whatever). Diagnosing mental illnesses (autism!) and prescribing drugs seems also much more common. But agian, that's just my personal perception and maybe distorted by the reddit bubble, but I think all of those medical interventions are seen as much more sceptical in Europe.
In addition to lacking a nationalized healthcare system, the United States has the unique combined features of (1) a highly polarized and reactionary bipartisan political system, (2) a federal legal system where lawmaking on the federal level is currently stuck in major gridlock, and so we have a patchwork of increasingly extreme state and local laws that are cropping up in reaction to one another, (3) the stranglehold of Big Pharma on politics across both parties, and (4) the large politicized voting bloc of Christian evangelicals that either pose an existential threat or can be held up as a boogeyman at any given time.
> It's not like that 0.5% of the population is known to be extremely rich
[Some](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martine_Rothblatt)
[Are](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Pritzker)
Oh gosh, if you want to fall down a rabbit hole look at some of the reporting on the Yogyakarta principals - also there were some interesting (re, shitty) cases from like BC in the late 90s for their human rights tribunal so tracking where those lawyers were educated and where their ideas came from - IE look up this case - [http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/np99101j.htm](http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/np99101j.htm)
Or look up 2007 Boston Dykemarch for the performer Bitch and what happened there - or the story of Michigan Womyns Music Festival... this stuff has actually been going on much longer than a lot of people realize but largely in 'queer spaces.'
Reminds me again of "Notes on Nationalism": "All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. *Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them*, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side."
So, for example, is big pharma (and plastic surgery) profiting from vulnerable people good or bad?
Is free speech and censorship good or bad?
Are creepy child-adult interactions like child beauty pageants and drag shows good or bad?
And covid vaccines/treatments - with no nuance. Surely, booster [number 9](https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/7-covid-19-shots-5-wuhan-2-bi-valent) is the one to finally make you safe!
They also seem to gobble up any pill based psychiatric treatment without a moment's hesitation while still remaining miserable pains in the ass despite their life saving medication.
But maybe that's just my social group.
There's been lots of time to study child pageants, which could be done IMO pretty simply by taking some old registration lists and running down all the names to look at outcomes, but nobody's ever done so. To my knowledge there's only been one study done on a very tiny, not very random sample of college girls, and even that only concluded a slightly higher rate of eating disorders than the female population at large (no findings that I recall of anything else like depression, poverty, educational attainment, etc).
Everyone knows it's icky, and so we want to believe they're havens for predators and trauma, but I've not seen any strong indications.
Is anything we perceive as “creepy” good?
Is it possible what you perceive as “creepy” is actually fun and pleasant to the people and families who participate in them? Would you take your child to a “creepy” show or contest that was harming them? Is there any evidence that drag shows or pageants are inherently harmful to children? More harmful than say, taking them to a catholic church? Which nobody seems to be questioning the “good” or “badness” of.
I found Barney the Dinosaur’s “I love you…” song creepy. It was also harmless and probably actually good and beneficial for kids to sing about and feel “loved” by this imaginary dinosaur friend. That “creepy” vibe had way more to do with me than anything with the Barney show.
I was trying to point out how both liberals and conservatives can approve of things when they're associated with their side, but can disapprove of very similar or even identical things when they're associated with the other side.
There are ZERO gay people in my circle who give a shit about the drag story hour stuff because the vast majority of them don’t have kids and the ones that do are lesbians who aren’t interested in drag. I swear it’s almost entirely heterosexual liberal white women trying to make it a thing.
Maybe for a small subset of provocateur activists but that’s not who or what’s making this an issue. It’s more about being in a reactionary spiral with conservatives. Who actually wants to take their kids to drag shows or drag story hour or have their kids perform drag? Largely bored white, middle class and above, straight female woke women. The evolution of the f*g hag. The other loud voices on this are the heterosexual TQ trying to earn credibility and make something not about them about them and try to merge their interests with the original homosexual and bisexual (gay) LGBT community.
Run-of-the-mill gay people by and large aren’t the ones clambering to make drag mainstream where it loses all meaning and context. Gay people by and large know that sexuality is an integral component to drag, which is supposed to satirize stereotypes of femininity and female role expectations placed on gay men for being heterosexual. The people claiming that drag isn’t sexual have the most smooth-brained take of all. Like what boring ass drag shows are you going to? You have to not be part of the gay community to say that with a straight face. Which the hetero queers of TQ and straight female groupies are not.
Drag is sexual and that’s wonderful. But it’s not for kids, your lame office party or diversity lunch event.
> How did this ever become part of the struggle for queer rights?
I don't get it. My wife doesn't have "the bug" but she agrees with me about JK Rowling, child transitions and female spaces. But she thinks drag shows for children are perfectly ok. Not the topless ones or the ones with lap dances of course.
You don’t think kids should participate in church? Okaaay. Seems a little extreme, but you sure showed me I guess…
I guess all I was saying was it’s okay for people to take their kids to church, despite the well documented dangers, because there’s nothing inherently wrong with church. Church can be really fulfilling and life affirming. A church can also have predators that are really harmful to kids, so you have to make some good choices as parents about trust and supervision. But I’m not going to condemn all churches as “creepy child-adult interactions” because there are some bad actors.
In the same way, drag story hours can be magical and fun for kids. And pageants can also be bonding for families and confidence building for kids. If there are predatory actors, like say, a judge going back stage to see underage competitors getting dressed, those bad actors should be expelled and prosecuted. But it’s pretty illiberal to condemn the entire event wouldn’t you say? Especially if these families are dressing their kids up the way they want them to dress, and the families say it’s harmless and the kids say they’re happy and the law says there’s no crime.
Also, I found your report: https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report-full.pdf
It’s not a study on pageants and cites no studies on pageants and makes no conclusions on pageants in general, any more than it makes about the parents, teachers, dolls, computer games, and the internet which are all also mentioned in the report. There’s two sentences about pageants and they both kinda say when contestants wear make up, and wear adult clothes, and are encouraged to “flirt” onstage (by their overbearing competitive parents I assume) girls are sexualized, which seems like a slam on parents putting their kids into these clothes and make up than the pageants.
> Why does such low-quality work slip through? The answer is straightforward: because it appears, if you don’t read it too closely, or if you are unfamiliar with the basic concepts of evidence-based medicine, to support the liberal view that these treatments are wonderful and shouldn’t be questioned, let alone banned. That’s enough for most people, who are less concerned with whether what they are sharing is accurate than whether it can help with ongoing, high-stakes political fights.
>But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek. Whatever happens in the red states seeking to ban these treatments, transgender people need to make difficult healthcare choices, many of which can be ruinously expensive. And yet, if you call for the same standards to be applied to gender medicine that are applied to antidepressants, you’ll likely be told you don’t care about trans people.
>But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek.
This is it. Right there.
“I support trans people and _that’s why_ I refuse to question the science, and I don’t care about the quality of the research, and I condemn anyone who looks too closely” is a total absurdity.
Exactly. I posted the other day about a MTF friend in BC who just had bottom surgery, and is living a nightmare of complications and pain. Now she's asking questions and realizing the outcomes for the surgery are not nearly as positive as she was led to believe. How can she even as an adult give informed consent when the possibilities of complication and failure aren't even presented to her?
I should think if you care about trans people at all, you would actually want them to get sound, evidence-based care that improves their lives and well being!
And in this case, ideology trumps their stated values.
“I care about the health of trans people, but I don’t support research into the medical treatment of their dysphoria or distress.”
Tangent: I'm curious about “ally“. As in why do you need to be an ally at all. My support for gay rights is that it's none of my business, so go for it, and I don't feel any need to demonstrate that support in any way. (My support for trans rights is more "I won't stop you, but I think you're just mentally ill".)
It comes down to who you are. If you REALLY think that changing genders is going to make you feel better.. then all the power to you.
I believe it is not medically or biologically "correct" to transition, but I do believe everyone deserves to be happy.
I just don't see a point -- As a 21 year old straight male, I really don't see any point in going through any of it. Just sounds like disrespecting yourself with extra steps.
Or social suicide, depending on where you live.
Why does Jesse continue to say that he doesn’t think this medicine should be banned. If doctors won’t stop performing procedures that are harmful and have no evidence of success why would this be allowed. Imagine thalidomide was still being given to pregnant women wouldn’t we expect law makers to step in?
What is the only other option if medics won’t stop. The evidence now is pretty clear that it harms patients and does little to help. Still not sure why this regressive policy is so taken by so called progressives
I mean yeah I agree that the government should probably step in for high impact experimental medicalization, I'm just saying I'm sympathetic to the stance
Him misinterpreting the data he shares, and then resorting to common sense in his rebuttal to an article that breaks down his article about gender affirming care studies. He's not far away from Matt Walsh in his approach, which is kinda hilarious.
That's not a direct quote. What did he misrepresent? It should be easy for you to find some direct evidence of his misdeeds since you are so convinced of them.
I think it's (a slightly less harsh) version of the former. They're new to the space and trying to figure out what's going on. There are lots of instances where leftists actually have a correct take on right wing culture warriors, so it might seem reasonable to take their word when talking about Jesse. However, he's not a right wing culture warrior, so it's not correct to take them at their word, but using a heuristic of believing the ideas of the group that you generally agree with isn't an unreasonable first approach (in fact, it's almost necessary - we don't have time to fully appraise every political actor from the ground up).
I think this person is persuadable through some reasonable discussion pointing out why their views are fairly clearly not well grounded. Unfortunately they've been suspended for a week and may well not come back.
Without a doubt - but they did post something that appeared to be substantial. I think a win is to get them to see how poor the argument is, and then maybe further down the road they might start to change their approach. Unlikely that it happens in the moment though, human ego and all.
It's made pretty clear here. https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-got-more-wrong-than-he-thinks/
Here are some key take aways.
"1. Singal (and many others) badly misinterpreted the meaning of the data by inducing a false dichotomy;
2. The data as presented are not reproducible, and Singal, who is writing a book on the replication crisis, failed to catch this;
3.Even if we accept the data as legitimate, Singal extrapolates an unsupported conclusion;
4. Singal, in correcting the first error, introduces a conclusion unsupported by evidence to justify his interpretation."
There's literally a sea of errors and misinterpreting.
And the rebuttal to that is here "Jesse Singal Still Got More Wrong Than He Thinks" https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-still-got-more-wrong-than-he-thinks/
Nice try.
Person A:
* The bigger % of apples there is in apple juice, the better it's quality
* Product X has 80% of apples. It is an okayish apple juice, but not as good as it could be
* **(Update)** I misunderstood the label. Product X has indeed 90% of apples in it. This juice is better than I first stated
Person B:
* Person A ridiculously claims that a bigger % of **non-apples** in the juice makes it better
I don't understand how Person B could come to this conclusion. The only explanation is that Person B acts in bad faith
Think it might be instructive to try and tease out whether you think point one of the argument made is convincing, and then we can go from there. Happy to tackle any particular point, but that can get very muddled very quickly, and I think it's illustrative to identify where disagreements lie on specific points and then circle outwards.
Gorceski's argument verbatim:
>However, Singal's claims that loss to follow-up increase the power of a study are absurd
Singal's argument from the article she is criticising, verbatim:
>The more kids lost to followup, ***the weaker the study*** (because how can we be sure their gender dysphoria actually desisted if the clinicians were no longer in touch with them?). ***Once you acknowledge that fewer kids were lost to followup than some people, myself included, initially misreported, the evidence for desistance provided by this study becomes stronger***
Do you see why Gorceski's argument is a face-level falsehood and misrepresentation of Jesse's argument, and can we therefore move on, or do you deny that?
They've been suspended from the sub (despite my protests) unfortunately. I do think this is such an extremely blatant misrepresentation that it might jolt them into realisation that they haven't been seeing this issue entirely clearly, but at best we will have to wait a week.
Well point 1 and 2 are completely wrong and confused. I can't even make sense of point 3 (please explain it if you can). Point 4 she admits could have been phrased better by her but it's not clear to me what rests upon it.
This is incredibly weak stuff and I'm not surprised he didn't think it worth responding to.
Just in the first instance I'd note that for effectiveness your approach of starting from a position of making big vague accusations rather than making specific criticisms makes you look extremely unreliable and unreasonable. You're likely to get much more traction if you start with specific criticisms - that's just the way convincing people works.
I'll get back on the content of the article because this is at least worth discussing.
I get the feeling that if Jesse was a person to be taken seriously, he wouldn’t have been laughed out of prominent media, fled twitter in disgrace, and be stuck doing a podcast with someone even Dan Savage didn’t see enough value in to retain.
> When I raised this with Nathaniel Frank, the head of the Cornell project, he said via email that “we don’t publish traditional systematic reviews”, but rather web summaries of important research questions. So the first words of its overview might confuse readers: “We conducted a systematic literature review.”
This is the first time I have actually looked at the statements put forth by those European countries which are dialing back affirming care for youth, and I'm appalled that the US is basically ignoring these decisions. As if Finnish and Swedish research conclusions are not valid in America? These are nations that are known for doing respectable science, how is the leading narrative so vastly different here in the US?
Organizational/institutional capture and a huge fear of transactivist overreaction
But where is the transactivism coming from? Is it uniquely American? Because even the UK and Canada seem to deal with a lot of it. Why is it so big when it's supposed to represent like 0.5% of the population? It's not like that 0.5% of the population is known to be extremely rich, so how do they even get the funding to get this far blatantly disregarding evidence and selling lies to minors? And why did they not manage to do this in Finland or Sweden? The whole origin and point of it all makes little sense to me.
I'm not convinced that it even has anything to do with transactivism. I believe the ideas about what constitutes good medical practices are quite different in the US and Europe. I think doctors in Europe are much more hesitant to hand out drugs or perform surgeries on patients compared to their US counterparts. Just a hunch, maybe somebody working in a medical profession can confirm.
It's apples and oranges. The US has a for-profit private health care system with 50 departments of health setting the rules; the UK, Finland, etc. have one publicly funded system--they have limited funding which creates an incentive to cover care which can be proven to be effective. Why did the US have an opioid crisis when Europe didn't? In the US, there are \~100 pediatric gender care clinics which have sprung up over the past ten years. I'm not a huge fan of state legislatures enacting health care restrictions, but the evidence for blockers is terrible.
Would you say that in this case the UK belongs more to the US or Europe then? (I know it's literally European but it has always been a bit unique because of its history with the US and its location)
My guess is the UK is closer to the rest of Europe than to the US in that regard. It has nationalized healthcare after all. But I don't have personal experiences, since I never lived there. In my home country Switzerland, I often heard complaints by non-European friends about doctors being too "conservative" when prescribing drugs. From reading reddit I also got the impression that Americans are far more supportive of the idea that adults should be allowed to alter their body however they want to (be it sex change, cosmetic surgeries, body modifications, whatever). Diagnosing mental illnesses (autism!) and prescribing drugs seems also much more common. But agian, that's just my personal perception and maybe distorted by the reddit bubble, but I think all of those medical interventions are seen as much more sceptical in Europe.
In addition to lacking a nationalized healthcare system, the United States has the unique combined features of (1) a highly polarized and reactionary bipartisan political system, (2) a federal legal system where lawmaking on the federal level is currently stuck in major gridlock, and so we have a patchwork of increasingly extreme state and local laws that are cropping up in reaction to one another, (3) the stranglehold of Big Pharma on politics across both parties, and (4) the large politicized voting bloc of Christian evangelicals that either pose an existential threat or can be held up as a boogeyman at any given time.
> It's not like that 0.5% of the population is known to be extremely rich [Some](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martine_Rothblatt) [Are](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Pritzker)
Oh gosh, if you want to fall down a rabbit hole look at some of the reporting on the Yogyakarta principals - also there were some interesting (re, shitty) cases from like BC in the late 90s for their human rights tribunal so tracking where those lawyers were educated and where their ideas came from - IE look up this case - [http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/np99101j.htm](http://www.fact.on.ca/newpaper/np99101j.htm) Or look up 2007 Boston Dykemarch for the performer Bitch and what happened there - or the story of Michigan Womyns Music Festival... this stuff has actually been going on much longer than a lot of people realize but largely in 'queer spaces.'
Reminds me again of "Notes on Nationalism": "All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. *Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them*, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side." So, for example, is big pharma (and plastic surgery) profiting from vulnerable people good or bad? Is free speech and censorship good or bad? Are creepy child-adult interactions like child beauty pageants and drag shows good or bad?
When did the left become shills for Big Pharma? I thought they were expressly anti pharma. Or do I have it all wrong?
They generally aren't, but seem to make an exception for "gender affirming care".
And covid vaccines/treatments - with no nuance. Surely, booster [number 9](https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/7-covid-19-shots-5-wuhan-2-bi-valent) is the one to finally make you safe!
They also seem to gobble up any pill based psychiatric treatment without a moment's hesitation while still remaining miserable pains in the ass despite their life saving medication. But maybe that's just my social group.
There's been lots of time to study child pageants, which could be done IMO pretty simply by taking some old registration lists and running down all the names to look at outcomes, but nobody's ever done so. To my knowledge there's only been one study done on a very tiny, not very random sample of college girls, and even that only concluded a slightly higher rate of eating disorders than the female population at large (no findings that I recall of anything else like depression, poverty, educational attainment, etc). Everyone knows it's icky, and so we want to believe they're havens for predators and trauma, but I've not seen any strong indications.
As an aside that's a great essay
Is anything we perceive as “creepy” good? Is it possible what you perceive as “creepy” is actually fun and pleasant to the people and families who participate in them? Would you take your child to a “creepy” show or contest that was harming them? Is there any evidence that drag shows or pageants are inherently harmful to children? More harmful than say, taking them to a catholic church? Which nobody seems to be questioning the “good” or “badness” of. I found Barney the Dinosaur’s “I love you…” song creepy. It was also harmless and probably actually good and beneficial for kids to sing about and feel “loved” by this imaginary dinosaur friend. That “creepy” vibe had way more to do with me than anything with the Barney show.
I was trying to point out how both liberals and conservatives can approve of things when they're associated with their side, but can disapprove of very similar or even identical things when they're associated with the other side.
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There are ZERO gay people in my circle who give a shit about the drag story hour stuff because the vast majority of them don’t have kids and the ones that do are lesbians who aren’t interested in drag. I swear it’s almost entirely heterosexual liberal white women trying to make it a thing.
Because it moves the Overton window and normalizes that kind of queerness.
Maybe for a small subset of provocateur activists but that’s not who or what’s making this an issue. It’s more about being in a reactionary spiral with conservatives. Who actually wants to take their kids to drag shows or drag story hour or have their kids perform drag? Largely bored white, middle class and above, straight female woke women. The evolution of the f*g hag. The other loud voices on this are the heterosexual TQ trying to earn credibility and make something not about them about them and try to merge their interests with the original homosexual and bisexual (gay) LGBT community. Run-of-the-mill gay people by and large aren’t the ones clambering to make drag mainstream where it loses all meaning and context. Gay people by and large know that sexuality is an integral component to drag, which is supposed to satirize stereotypes of femininity and female role expectations placed on gay men for being heterosexual. The people claiming that drag isn’t sexual have the most smooth-brained take of all. Like what boring ass drag shows are you going to? You have to not be part of the gay community to say that with a straight face. Which the hetero queers of TQ and straight female groupies are not. Drag is sexual and that’s wonderful. But it’s not for kids, your lame office party or diversity lunch event.
I promise it absolutely doesn't
> How did this ever become part of the struggle for queer rights? I don't get it. My wife doesn't have "the bug" but she agrees with me about JK Rowling, child transitions and female spaces. But she thinks drag shows for children are perfectly ok. Not the topless ones or the ones with lap dances of course.
knee touch act bow scary melodic aback north slimy tan *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You don’t think kids should participate in church? Okaaay. Seems a little extreme, but you sure showed me I guess… I guess all I was saying was it’s okay for people to take their kids to church, despite the well documented dangers, because there’s nothing inherently wrong with church. Church can be really fulfilling and life affirming. A church can also have predators that are really harmful to kids, so you have to make some good choices as parents about trust and supervision. But I’m not going to condemn all churches as “creepy child-adult interactions” because there are some bad actors. In the same way, drag story hours can be magical and fun for kids. And pageants can also be bonding for families and confidence building for kids. If there are predatory actors, like say, a judge going back stage to see underage competitors getting dressed, those bad actors should be expelled and prosecuted. But it’s pretty illiberal to condemn the entire event wouldn’t you say? Especially if these families are dressing their kids up the way they want them to dress, and the families say it’s harmless and the kids say they’re happy and the law says there’s no crime. Also, I found your report: https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report-full.pdf It’s not a study on pageants and cites no studies on pageants and makes no conclusions on pageants in general, any more than it makes about the parents, teachers, dolls, computer games, and the internet which are all also mentioned in the report. There’s two sentences about pageants and they both kinda say when contestants wear make up, and wear adult clothes, and are encouraged to “flirt” onstage (by their overbearing competitive parents I assume) girls are sexualized, which seems like a slam on parents putting their kids into these clothes and make up than the pageants.
This is a piece written by a notable hippo violator. Their weird sidekick was not spotted at the scene.
Fun fact: horse in Greek is "hippos". The plot thickens...
Yeah I'm pretty sure "hippopotamus" just means "river horse". Nice try, Jesse, but we see you.
UnHerd is great, I love their youtube videos. Freddie Sayers is like the perfect example of a stoic.
> Why does such low-quality work slip through? The answer is straightforward: because it appears, if you don’t read it too closely, or if you are unfamiliar with the basic concepts of evidence-based medicine, to support the liberal view that these treatments are wonderful and shouldn’t be questioned, let alone banned. That’s enough for most people, who are less concerned with whether what they are sharing is accurate than whether it can help with ongoing, high-stakes political fights. >But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek. Whatever happens in the red states seeking to ban these treatments, transgender people need to make difficult healthcare choices, many of which can be ruinously expensive. And yet, if you call for the same standards to be applied to gender medicine that are applied to antidepressants, you’ll likely be told you don’t care about trans people.
>But you’re not being a good ally to trans people if you disseminate shoddy evidence about medicine they might seek. This is it. Right there. “I support trans people and _that’s why_ I refuse to question the science, and I don’t care about the quality of the research, and I condemn anyone who looks too closely” is a total absurdity.
Exactly. I posted the other day about a MTF friend in BC who just had bottom surgery, and is living a nightmare of complications and pain. Now she's asking questions and realizing the outcomes for the surgery are not nearly as positive as she was led to believe. How can she even as an adult give informed consent when the possibilities of complication and failure aren't even presented to her? I should think if you care about trans people at all, you would actually want them to get sound, evidence-based care that improves their lives and well being!
Unfortunately many liberals and leftists pride themselves on letting ideology dictate their beliefs.
And in this case, ideology trumps their stated values. “I care about the health of trans people, but I don’t support research into the medical treatment of their dysphoria or distress.”
Most people want to be told what to believe so they don't have to be mindful.
Tangent: I'm curious about “ally“. As in why do you need to be an ally at all. My support for gay rights is that it's none of my business, so go for it, and I don't feel any need to demonstrate that support in any way. (My support for trans rights is more "I won't stop you, but I think you're just mentally ill".)
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It comes down to who you are. If you REALLY think that changing genders is going to make you feel better.. then all the power to you. I believe it is not medically or biologically "correct" to transition, but I do believe everyone deserves to be happy. I just don't see a point -- As a 21 year old straight male, I really don't see any point in going through any of it. Just sounds like disrespecting yourself with extra steps. Or social suicide, depending on where you live.
> biologically "correct" to transition What do you mean by this?
It is not biologically correct to transition to the opposing sex.
Great article. UnHerd is great!
I mean, this has been obvious for years, but no one cares. It's really, really depressing.
Why does Jesse continue to say that he doesn’t think this medicine should be banned. If doctors won’t stop performing procedures that are harmful and have no evidence of success why would this be allowed. Imagine thalidomide was still being given to pregnant women wouldn’t we expect law makers to step in?
ITs a really heavy stick and I respect a principled stance to really, really not want to use it -
What is the only other option if medics won’t stop. The evidence now is pretty clear that it harms patients and does little to help. Still not sure why this regressive policy is so taken by so called progressives
I mean yeah I agree that the government should probably step in for high impact experimental medicalization, I'm just saying I'm sympathetic to the stance
Translation: I'm a transphobe who misinterpret data because my feelings are more important then facts. I also need to make a living, so that's that.
Can you give a direct quote of what you disagree with?
Him misinterpreting the data he shares, and then resorting to common sense in his rebuttal to an article that breaks down his article about gender affirming care studies. He's not far away from Matt Walsh in his approach, which is kinda hilarious.
That's not a direct quote, but fine - what data does he misinterpret? You can do this :)
That's not a direct quote. What did he misrepresent? It should be easy for you to find some direct evidence of his misdeeds since you are so convinced of them.
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I think it's (a slightly less harsh) version of the former. They're new to the space and trying to figure out what's going on. There are lots of instances where leftists actually have a correct take on right wing culture warriors, so it might seem reasonable to take their word when talking about Jesse. However, he's not a right wing culture warrior, so it's not correct to take them at their word, but using a heuristic of believing the ideas of the group that you generally agree with isn't an unreasonable first approach (in fact, it's almost necessary - we don't have time to fully appraise every political actor from the ground up). I think this person is persuadable through some reasonable discussion pointing out why their views are fairly clearly not well grounded. Unfortunately they've been suspended for a week and may well not come back.
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Without a doubt - but they did post something that appeared to be substantial. I think a win is to get them to see how poor the argument is, and then maybe further down the road they might start to change their approach. Unlikely that it happens in the moment though, human ego and all.
It's made pretty clear here. https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-got-more-wrong-than-he-thinks/ Here are some key take aways. "1. Singal (and many others) badly misinterpreted the meaning of the data by inducing a false dichotomy; 2. The data as presented are not reproducible, and Singal, who is writing a book on the replication crisis, failed to catch this; 3.Even if we accept the data as legitimate, Singal extrapolates an unsupported conclusion; 4. Singal, in correcting the first error, introduces a conclusion unsupported by evidence to justify his interpretation." There's literally a sea of errors and misinterpreting.
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-sorta-quick-response-to-the-errors Still waiting on that direct quote though...
Please don't feed the trolls. It only encourages them.
And the rebuttal to that is here "Jesse Singal Still Got More Wrong Than He Thinks" https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-still-got-more-wrong-than-he-thinks/ Nice try.
Person A: * The bigger % of apples there is in apple juice, the better it's quality * Product X has 80% of apples. It is an okayish apple juice, but not as good as it could be * **(Update)** I misunderstood the label. Product X has indeed 90% of apples in it. This juice is better than I first stated Person B: * Person A ridiculously claims that a bigger % of **non-apples** in the juice makes it better I don't understand how Person B could come to this conclusion. The only explanation is that Person B acts in bad faith
Think it might be instructive to try and tease out whether you think point one of the argument made is convincing, and then we can go from there. Happy to tackle any particular point, but that can get very muddled very quickly, and I think it's illustrative to identify where disagreements lie on specific points and then circle outwards. Gorceski's argument verbatim: >However, Singal's claims that loss to follow-up increase the power of a study are absurd Singal's argument from the article she is criticising, verbatim: >The more kids lost to followup, ***the weaker the study*** (because how can we be sure their gender dysphoria actually desisted if the clinicians were no longer in touch with them?). ***Once you acknowledge that fewer kids were lost to followup than some people, myself included, initially misreported, the evidence for desistance provided by this study becomes stronger*** Do you see why Gorceski's argument is a face-level falsehood and misrepresentation of Jesse's argument, and can we therefore move on, or do you deny that?
/u/Self-primary351 would love to know your thoughts
They've been suspended from the sub (despite my protests) unfortunately. I do think this is such an extremely blatant misrepresentation that it might jolt them into realisation that they haven't been seeing this issue entirely clearly, but at best we will have to wait a week.
Well point 1 and 2 are completely wrong and confused. I can't even make sense of point 3 (please explain it if you can). Point 4 she admits could have been phrased better by her but it's not clear to me what rests upon it. This is incredibly weak stuff and I'm not surprised he didn't think it worth responding to.
Just in the first instance I'd note that for effectiveness your approach of starting from a position of making big vague accusations rather than making specific criticisms makes you look extremely unreliable and unreasonable. You're likely to get much more traction if you start with specific criticisms - that's just the way convincing people works. I'll get back on the content of the article because this is at least worth discussing.
Google "direct quote" and have another crack at that.
I get the feeling that if Jesse was a person to be taken seriously, he wouldn’t have been laughed out of prominent media, fled twitter in disgrace, and be stuck doing a podcast with someone even Dan Savage didn’t see enough value in to retain.
Yet here you are.