Doomsought
Well-known member
That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
Multiple US States Introduce Legislation Targeted At Trans Minors
- Thread starter MenimenLoop
- Start date
Yes, let's sum up morality in trite quotes. That's a great idea. By this logic, the US should tell the Russians every spy it has because revealing the truth is some sort of universal good? Should we tell the stalker where his victim hides her guns? Seriously, this is a stupid argument. Do better.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
You are taking a statement that is intended to apply to philosophical and political arguments, and applying it to other things.
That isn't a good argument. Do better.
I'm using the statement in the same way as he is, to show that the statement doesn't work in this instance, basically comparing like to like. He used the statement to justify outing people, specifically quoting that part of my post, because:
I gave examples of when the randomly revealing truths is a stupid idea.
If you have an issue with people using maxims outside of their context, maybe take that up with @Doomsought.
Meanwhile, back to the actual legislation.
I really do think this is another example of the government sticking its head where it doesn't belong. They are legislating how parents can take care of their kids, but only in one direction. How soon until the opposite bill gets enacted in liberal states, mandating gender therapy for children. This is the problem with government control, it will bit you in the ass. Conservatives especially need to be wary of this, as they consistently lose the culture war.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I don't get your position here.
Parents get to decide whether or not a minor undergoes a given treatment. That is how legal custody of a minor works. Parents get to be informed if a child has a condition, in part because they are the one who decides the treatment. That is how legal custody of a minor works.
The school does not get to make such decisions. No member of the staff at school gets to decide such things. A doctor does not get to decide such things. A doctor's expert opinion may be involved in determining that a parent is exhibiting criminal negligence in how their child is cared for, which may be grounds for removing custody from them, but...
The parent is informed.
And as to Doomsought's remarks, when a parent and child are aware of the truth about 'trans' things, not just the radical leftist propaganda, you are going to see very few to no parents letting their children 'transition.' The position of the hard left on this does not stand up tot he light of the truth, it is 'destroyed' by it, thus his use of the quote is entirely appropriate.
I'm not advocating for the teacher to do any treatment, nor for the doctor to do any treatment, nor for them to do anything else. They should just shut up about it and do nothing with the information, unless the kid asks them to inform their parents. I then follow this with some circumstances under which outing the child could have consequences.
This is based on a lot of evidence that outing children to their parents can end badly, and is not in a predictable way. Kids are tossed out of previously welcoming houses, are beaten by previous non-abusers, etc, because they were outed. Outing can causes sudden, unpredictable affects on a child's wellbeing in their home. Mandating that teachers out kids is thus a bad idea.
But you are mixing up what Doomslayer is saying the truth will destroy. As far as I can tell, Doomslayer is advocating for outing a child using the argument 'That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be'. I come to this conclusion because he specifically quoted me saying:
He is not making some argument that 'if truth can expose transgenderism as fake, it ought to be exposed', he's saying that outing people is a good idea. You don't have to buy into the far left to discard this argument, you could even think that outing is a good idea, and think that the argument is a bad one. This is what I was responding to with my arguments. If I misinterpreted him, and he wants to correct me, that's fine, but that's the clearest reading I can get from this.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
You're asserting that 'outing' people who are 'trans' is a dangerous thing, then building your entire argument on that. Do you have anything to actually back that up?
Actually 'anything' isn't adequate. Do you have statistics that show violent reactions are frequent enough that it justifies a parent's right to know something significant of their child? Do you have statistics showing that this definitively outweighs parents who help their child deal with the problem instead?
Please substantiate your argument.
So I'm going to have to use some proxies, as data on how parents kicking out kids isn't typically volunteered, and there are a limited number of trans people compared to LGBT people.
First, I'm going to use LGBT youth as a substitute for Trans youth. Since LGB is generally more accepted than T, if I can show that it is dangerous to out a LGBT youth, I think it is fair to conclude it's dangerous to out a Trans youth.
Next, I'm going to use youth homeless rates as a proxy to show bad consequences of mandatory outing. This needs some explanation. First, we would expect that homeless youth, if randomly selected from all youth, would have the a similar rate of LGBT members to the general population of all american youth. Here is a good paper about it (link straight to pdf), especially sections II.A and II.C. It references other studies, but it notes that 26% of youth who come out are kicked out (this has probably lessened since the study happened, but not down to a insignificant amount.) In addition, it cites studies that show that 1/3 LGBT youth receive physical violence upon coming out. It also notes the surprising rateas at which parents will confirm that they abuse their kid. One quote specifically on trans kids:
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Yeah, no. You don't get to just conflate a group that is an order of magnitude or two larger with a sub-group. That's not going to fly here, without a lot of support. Further, children who are expressing LGB ideation aren't looking into permanently mutilating their body in ways that will cause health problems for the rest of their life as a part of that. The comparison is not suitable.
For the sake of good argumentation, I'll have a look at your presented source anyways.
The opening lines of this use far-left buzz-words, calling its reliability into question right off the bat. I'll look further in anyways. Second paragraph is using leftist language conventions as well.
...And it's quoting stuff that is blatantly partisan/activist identitarian leftist stuff...
On page 7, it's already giving different numbers than it did earlier on. It's not outright contradicting itself, but 'over a million' and 'almost two million' are not terms you should be seeing in opposition to themselves in a scholarly article. Which this isn't, it's clearly an advocacy piece by an activist.
Now we get into some actual interesting numbers. Of those 'almost two million,' 99% eventually return home. 380,000 are gone for more than a week, and 131,000 are gone for more than a month.
I'll be blunt, going and staying with a friend or relative for a while because your immediate family reacted poorly to you 'coming out,' while not ideal, and could probably be called a crisis of some kind, it's not an existential crisis. When I was 17, my dad threatened to kick me out of the house if I didn't stop arguing theology with him. Specifically, kick me out to a different continent.
Now we get to the critical number. 26% of gay teenagers are kicked out of their homes upon coming out or being outed...
...But the footnote is functionally useless. 'Id. at 2.' it says. What the heck does that mean? In fact, spending some time searching the document, it looks like 'Id' appears as a reference 76 times, and nothing ever explains what that means. Maybe I'm unaware because I'm not a part of this 'field,' fortunately another one of the footnotes references something...
...But the article it's linking to can't be found on ThinkProgress, the site it was supposed to be on.
BTW, having looked through the footnotes like this, there are a lot of clear partisan resources being used.
So, given the key claim references something I can't actually check, I'm not going to put much veracity on this right now. If you can explain to me what that 'Id' reference is supposed to mean, maybe we can get somewhere.
That said, what if that 26% figure is accurate?
In that case, you're denying 3/4ths of parents their rights, because 1/4th is reacting poorly. And that's without distinguishing between runaways and those actually being kicked out.
Now let's count that with the 'actually away for a week or more' proportion the article gives itself (if any of the numbers in the article can be trusted at all), that's 380,000 gross out of 'almost 2 million,' gross. So, around 1 in 5.
Now we're down to 5.2% of parents having a conflict like this that lasts out to a week or longer, and punishing the other 94.8% of parents for what they did. Again, we don't have an actual percent here on how many ran away, vs how many were kicked out. Maybe the actual proportion is further in the paper, but frankly, I've spent as much time wading through it as I care to at this point.
Then we get to the '99% of children eventually return home' element.
So, yeah. You don't get to take away the rights of all parents to know that their children have a very serious medical condition, because according to your own reference (at most) 26% of parents react badly enough the child ends up out of the house. And this is within the frame presented by this article, which I don't actually trust in the first place.
To be clear, I'm not saying these kids aren't having it rough. I'm not saying that they deserve to be treated poorly. I'm not saying their parents shouldn't be loving to them regardless of their circumstances. Parents absolutely should be loving to their children regardless of their circumstances.
But because a quarter of parents are being mediocre to horrible parents, does not justify taking away the rights of all parents across the board. If that was acceptable argumentation, I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel the human race, because some people did bad things.
Lumping totally different things under a single label and talking about them as if they are all the same thing is not a path to good understanding - it's muddled thinking at best.
It's also a tactic we see a lot of from people pushing agendas that cannot stand clear scrutiny.
For the purposes of understanding family reactions to LGBT people, these are remarkably similar populations. Also, note that I'm not really combining LGBT people, but instead combining households of kids who come out as LGBT. I think it is very fair to assume that a household that would kick out a gay kid would also kick out a trans kid. This is a quite reasonable proxy, and I stand by it.
Id means the same. What it means in practice is that it is citing the paper right above it, so in this case:
cite 46 would refer to Random Book, page 7.
You are correct about the leftist bias of the source. I know its not great, but here is a wikipedia article on LGBT homelessness, which has itself a number of sources. These should at least back up my claim that LGBT homelessness is wildly disproportionate to their population.
Homelessness among LGBT youth in the United States - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
But that isn't your core argument. Your core argument is that Parents ought to know everything their Teacher knows about their kid. But rights have limits when they conflict with other rights, and I think this is one, as kids also have a right to safety. If teachers could predict with accuracy when a family would react badly, then you might have a point. And it turns out, they sort of can: parents who don't already know will act badly. Why? because the child had a feeling that telling their parents would be a bad idea.
EDIT: And what is up with this forum. I keep having to argue for the left, which is weird as all hell?
Lanmandragon
Well-known member
The teachers fears aren't relevant because it's not thier call. They exist to teach math etc. not to be a secret keeper or even friend. Teachers should be required by law to report any non standard behavior. Not worth arguing though I'll just keep using private schools.
LifeisTiresome
Well-known member
If people aged 18 or above want to pump themselves full of chemicals and hormones as well as cut their breasts or penis off? I say they are free to do so. But this should not be allowed to anyone below 18 years.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
The thing with legally-mandated outing is that a lot of it comes down to the notion of informed decisions: The trans youth in question, bluntly speaking, have a medical condition. Whatever way you look at it, there's some mismatch between mind and body causing significant duress, and the solutions are all highly involved. The "secondary transsexuals" have need of intense therapy, as that condition is overwhelmingly transient, while the suggested treatment for the "primary transsexuals" has always been medically-assisted "sex change" operations, which is a very intense matter with little-studied health consequences.
Personally, I'd have it be that the parents would be informed in the event of suggesting treatment, not in the event of the diagnosis, specifically because it's a contentious matter that has limited surface-level significance (in that most of the time, it's effectively morbid depression or severe anxiety with an unusual treatment). The supposed 25% prevalence of week-long or more ejection from the home is sufficient grounds to restrict the informing to where medically and legally relevant, that being when treatments are to be discussed, as this is the point where the purpose of legal guardianship becomes applicable.
Personally, I'd have it be that the parents would be informed in the event of suggesting treatment, not in the event of the diagnosis, specifically because it's a contentious matter that has limited surface-level significance (in that most of the time, it's effectively morbid depression or severe anxiety with an unusual treatment). The supposed 25% prevalence of week-long or more ejection from the home is sufficient grounds to restrict the informing to where medically and legally relevant, that being when treatments are to be discussed, as this is the point where the purpose of legal guardianship becomes applicable.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
For the purposes of understanding family reactions to LGBT people, these are remarkably similar populations. Also, note that I'm not really combining LGBT people, but instead combining households of kids who come out as LGBT. I think it is very fair to assume that a household that would kick out a gay kid would also kick out a trans kid. This is a quite reasonable proxy, and I stand by it.
Id means the same. What it means in practice is that it is citing the paper right above it, so in this case:
cite 46 would refer to Random Book, page 7.
You are correct about the leftist bias of the source. I know its not great, but here is a wikipedia article on LGBT homelessness, which has itself a number of sources. These should at least back up my claim that LGBT homelessness is wildly disproportionate to their population.
Homelessness among LGBT youth in the United States - Wikipedia
But that isn't your core argument. Your core argument is that Parents ought to know everything their Teacher knows about their kid. But rights have limits when they conflict with other rights, and I think this is one, as kids also have a right to safety. If teachers could predict with accuracy when a family would react badly, then you might have a point. And it turns out, they sort of can: parents who don't already know will act badly. Why? because the child had a feeling that telling their parents would be a bad idea.
EDIT: And what is up with this forum. I keep having to argue for the left, which is weird as all hell?
If you can demonstrate that in a specific instance, the parents have made statements intending violence or similar to people who identify as trans, that's acceptable grounds for withholding information, in that specific instance.
You don't get to blanket take away 100% of people's rights because 26% (or more likely less) have not exercised them morally. Guilt by association, especially when that association is so broad as 'is a parent,' is not legal grounds for basically anything.
Economist actually had an article about US States banning puberty blockers and had a generally measured tone in it in regards to the use of puberty blockers in pre-teen children, mostly based on studies showing that around five percent of those who are treated actually didn't want to undergo the gender transitioning.
www.economist.com
It's behind a paywall and I used up my Economist articles this month already and I'm not feeling the desire to type out a paragraph or two of the article from print... yet. Maybe I'll hit the bookstore and look it up again unless it's been rehosted elsewhere.
A new push to ban medical treatments for transgender children
State legislators are seeking to make puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery illegal
It's behind a paywall and I used up my Economist articles this month already and I'm not feeling the desire to type out a paragraph or two of the article from print... yet. Maybe I'll hit the bookstore and look it up again unless it's been rehosted elsewhere.