Canada makes affirming basic biology illegal

What about the nefarious intentions of creepy fcukers who would be “protecting” gender uncertain kids from their “bigoted” parents. You can’t see this going the wrong way?

“Hey send your teenage boy to the church because Father O’Handsy is a safe mentor, right?” You have seen the consequences of this kind of thinking.

That seems like an argument against a whole slew of social services, though. Some children do need protection. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a reasonable approach.

Also I always wonder what the motive is of these shadowy figures determined to trans all the children. What’s their endgame?

Anyway, here’s a less alarmist writeup about the criticism of this new law (which does seem rather badly written), and the genuinely difficult questions around trans identity in children:

Yes. My point being that I’ve recently been in a room with a guy who was proud of manipulating underage girls into thinking they needed his meddling above their parents’ input. There are countless cnuts out there who want nothing more than to weasel their way into a confused kid’s life. With that, I have no problem with post-puberty kids making an informed decision.

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Yeah, there needs to be a process. I can see puberty blockers being a net positive if used carefully, but it should take more than one chat with a doctor to kick that off. Perhaps we’ll get some more sensible laws once everyone calms down a bit about the whole thing.

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Totally agree with @Mithrandir

Puberty Blockers is also Child Abuse, in a very serious way - And it is not reversible

This is just simply wrong on so many levels

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Well there’s a brainless argument if ever I heard one. Just joking :wink:

MRI scans reveal biomarkers of brain anatomy that tend to correlate with chronological age. But unlike the case with brain scans of trans people, there isn’t any research where brain anatomy is shown to 1. Diverge from that which is chronologically typical while 2. Showing features of cerebral anatomy typical of brains of the age with which the subject strongly identifies. Without any evidence of that and without even a likely biochemical explanation there’s no reason to compare your imaginary scenario with actual research on trans brains.

The circumstances in which it might be reasonable to recognise a “ person” as “being” of a different age to their chronological age for legal or other purposes is a different discussion. An 80 year old brain implanted into a 16 year old body? Someone who goes into a coma-like state at 18 and wakes up 50 years later? A 21 year old with the “mental age” of a toddler? A 70 year old woman who claims to feel 30 and has undertaken cosmetic surgery to make her look that age? (Even without citing brain scan research, this last example is not at all analogous to the situation with trans people. Her psychological state would be quite different from that of 30 year olds in all kinds of obvious ways: for instance, she would remember events that happened more than 60 years ago).

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I’m pretty sure there is plenty of research comparing brains of people at different ages even though I haven’t looked for it.

You are saying because a man’s brain looks a bit more like a woman (by what factor, grading etc) then he can claim he is a woman ?

But then what happens if that trans person doesn’t have a brain that is close to the gender they want to trans to ?

What then ? :thinking:

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There is research comparing brains of people at different ages, but not, as I said, research examining brain scans of people claiming age identities different from their chronological age.

A trans woman born with male genitalia and XY chromosomes, with a deep sense since childhood of being a woman in a man’s body, and a brain scan that shows, for instance, a volume of the bed nucleus of the stria terminals typical of chromosomal females. Given what we know about prenatal brain chemistry, wouldn’t this strongly point to that person having been born with a typically female brain? Even if you want (this is a mistake and I’ll come to this next) to make biology at birth the arbiter of whether a person really is a woman or a man, why focus on gonadal and chromosomal biology and ignore the biology of the organ that is the seat of consciousness?

Your addressing a trans woman (for instance) as a woman and considering her as a women in terms of both social presentation and the inner ontology of her personhood wouldn’t necessarily be contingent on her possessing female brain architecture. Why should it matter if her deep-seated female identity was acquired through various environmental factors that don’t show up in current brain scans?

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You’ve argued that all the scientific evidence and social ordering that has led mankind to view sexes in a certain way (the same way we view virtually all mammals) and which virtually everyone agreed upon up until a few decades ago is in dispute partly because there is some evidence which might suggest that men can have female brains and women can have male brains (despite the impossibility of making such categorizations using the new gender theory language). Now you’re saying even if a woman doesn’t have a male brain but thinks she’s a man due to environmental factors (which we know is happening at an alarmingly increasing rate, especially in young girls), that shouldn’t matter. The logic just doesn’t hold water.

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I’m with you on this Mithrandir, and as someone who has read enough books about gender, I can see that you make your arguments like someone who has done the same.

But what I can’t understand is what would possess you to try and argue about this with people on the internet?

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Easy…the abortion thread petered out and I wasn’t ready to start another topic about whether Taiwan should switch to simplified characters.

But seriously, it is probably better to focus more on the insane law in Canada without delving into the obvious contradictions and harms of modern gender theory.

Which ones do you recommend?

That is like walking into a boxing match , saying I am going to throw one punch and jump.out
:joy:

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It’s not that simple Marco. I hope what I have to say makes you reconsider.

It seems growth of the male genitalia is impacted by this and they might not reach the size they would have.

Adults who use androgen deprivation therapy like this often do not recover to normal testosterone levels and need to manage their hormones for life. The longer they were on it, the less likely they are to recover. And I haven’t dug through the data, even low ends of normal is not very good for many men.

It’s simply not true that puberty just starts and it’s all good. There are risks that impact the well being of the person for the rest of their life. Our bodies do not like us fucking with our hormones. Ask any bodybuilder that abused steroid. They are all on TRT. They will never have normal levels on their own.

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There’s no way it can be good.

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Well sure there is.
[Edit: I was probably misreading your comment, and you meant there’s no way stopping them can be good. But I’ll leave this post here in response to the general tenor of the thread]

Treatment with pubertal suppression among those who wanted it was associated with lower odds of lifetime suicidal ideation when compared with those who wanted pubertal suppression but did not receive it.

The young people involved in this study experienced severe gender dysphoria which had persisted into adolescents and the early stages of puberty. The fact that 43 out of 44 of them went on to access gender-affirming hormones is consistent with other studies internationally where the discontinuation rate varies, but is typically in the 2-5% range. However, one young person did stop treatment without progressing to cross-sex hormones.

Despite the rhetoric, the vast majority of people who take blockers benefit from them. Yes, there are serious downsides to changing your mind later, and see my previous comments about caution, but still.

The worthwhile conversation is about requirements for prescribing them, but to have that conversation we need to start with acknowledging the positive outcomes too.

Messing around with kids’ hormones is a recipe for disaster.

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Okay, but what about the 95-98% of kids who took them successfully?

It’s wonderful running such a huge experiment on kids.

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I’d … imagine that’s commonly the case with medicine for kids?