I think the opposite of “apologetic” is “unapologetic”, though I wouldn’t be surprised if people selectively ignore things.
I was going to use that, but I think (and we agree) it’s pretty much the same outcome.
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I think it’s just a dog whistle for politicians. For people that vote Republican I think generally what they really don’t want is kids being encouraged or allowed to get gender reassignment surgery. I agree with this position.
Socialism was losing its bug a boo status so right wing snowflakes needed a new catch phrase to rile the base. Enter WOKE
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Um, they’re not your kids, so MYOB.
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I remember years ago hearing some complaining about people who “get offended by proxy”.
That was before the term “woke” became a thing
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They’re also by and large dealing with childhood trauma before gender dysmorphia. I don’t think it’s a choice anyone should make before they are 18. We withhold thousands of big decisionss for the 18th birthday. Nothing wrong with keeping this one till 18 too.
If it were my kid, I would likely feel the same way. However their parents and their doctors are much better equipped to help the person make the best decision for individual circumstances than politicians and religious leaders IMO. Not a one size fits all thing, but a one size fits most/many.
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The frequency of surgery is vastly overstated by right wing media and Republicans. It is really quite rare, and is currently illegal in most states before 18. Some states have 16 as the age of medical consent, so a small number of surgeries happen there. There are something like 20 times as many cis teens who get breast implants than there are trans teens who get top surgery, which in turn is 10 times more common than bottom surgery.
The last time I hunted down numbers, 80-90% of teenagers with gender dysphoria diagnoses are transitioning purely socially. Of the minority receiving medical interventions, 95% were receiving either puberty blockers or hormones with no surgery.
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If any state stopped at this, then your argument would have at least some consistency.
I would strongly disagree with it, but at least it would not be a completely dishonest position.
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I don’t personally know anyone who got surgery younger than 22, and I have come to know quite a lot of trans people. I do not know why someone would get surgery before turning 18, but imagine that most who do so must experience incredibly painful gender dysphoria. Without having personally met someone who went through that, I don’t feel that I know enough to know whether or not it makes sense to ban something that is very rare.
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People from the right push this hateful agenda under the guise of “caring for children” is just their newest bullshit misrepresentation of facts. It is the new “partial birth abortions.”
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Something I was thinking about earlier today that is relevant here:
If a doctor had a patient who suffered from severe anxiety and depression, perhaps even suicidal thoughts, and there was a medicine that would cure those symptoms with no side effects, they would use it.
If you suffer from gender dysphoria, then HRT is such a drug. I have tried several medications for anxiety and depression with no success. Being on a very low, starter dose of estrogen, however, is amazing. I’ve had several people comment on how happy I seem in the past couple of days, even though a bunch of stuff in my life is not going smoothly (just finished the biggest cluster fuck ever of a move, and that’s the easy part). HRT has a large number of side effects, but they are almost all actually desirable to people with gender dysphoria.
We have known since the 1920s that HRT dramatically helps people with gender dysphoria. And in the 1960s - 1990s, the medical profession tried pretty much every other treatment under the sun: They tried talk therapy, electro-shock therapy, backwards hormone therapy (i.e., giving trans women testosterone so they would feel more manly and not want to transition). There were doctors who would talk at medical conferences about how they tried to gate keep hormone therapy by only treating trans women that they personally found sexually attractive. None of those approaches worked.
Now we are in a place where teens, with parental and doctor consent, can access HRT. The medical profession is following up on how they are doing and trying to see if this is the right course for them. And they have found that it helps tremendously, see e.g., https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
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I think you’re wrong to assume intentions here for the vast majority of people.
Oh, so you are saying the “vast majority of people” pushing this enhanced anti-trans agenda have no intention to protect kids despite all their grandstanding and are really just vehemently full of hate towards trans people?
I can agree with you on that.
I don’t think those people give one fuck about kids based on their other political moves of defunding health care, education, safety nets and inaction towards school shootings.
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From a no-name candidate for the 2024 GOP primary:
I don’t know. I think I’m just less radical some people. And being so is off-putting on cultural issues.
As stated above, it’s more off-putting to see people who are radical in the opposite direction, but it’s off-putting none-the-less.
And I don’t know, I think it’s less performative-ness, and more that people become fascinated by various political topics. I think that tends to be more true of privileged ‘white knights’ because they (we) have nothing better to do.
Do you have the full text of this article? The summary doesn’t say much here.
This makes sense.
That is a real non-answer to what should be a pretty simple direct question, at least based on your prior stated opposition of “wokeness.”
But, it is additional information that seems to point to you not even truly understand your opposition and it is more of a knee-jerk reaction to keep the status quo for no other reason than youbare comfortable with it. People fear change and push back on it of it threatens their comfort.
Yes, ultimately, I’m probably moderate for emotional reasons. Same reason you are radical.
Logic and knowledge are sort of a first step to our politics, but there has to be some secondary thing going on as well.
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