Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015

Gondolinian

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In the spirit of admitting when I am wrong, I would like to say that when /u/Azathoth123/ said that schools were encouraging children to be gay and transsexual, I thought he was being paranoid. I thought that schools were preaching tolerance, and this had been misinterpreted.

I was wrong, and he was right

Also, the strategy of asking children whether any of their friends are trans is bizarre, because (a) if about 0.1% of adults are trans, then you really wouldn't expect any children to be trans unless the population of the school is gigantic, regardless of the school's attitude to tolerance and (b) children should not be discussing their friend's private secrets with strangers.

I have nothing against transexuals, and in fact they seem like obvious allies of transhumanists. But, unlike homosexuality, 'being trapped in the wrong body' clearly causes a lot of psychological distress - otherwise people wouldn't undergo serious surgery to correct it (although this is not necessarly true of people who don't identify as either gender). As long as there is a possibility that it has partially psychological roots (apparently twin studies show 62% heritability), priming people at a young age (10) to induce gender identity disorder is insane.

Edit & clarification:

I think gender identity disorder (of the 'trapped in a body' form, not of the 'not identifying as either gender' form) is a mental disease because it causes suffering. This doesn't mean that transgender people need to feel bad about being trans, because that will just make matters worse. I've met people who are trans and I know people who suffering from other mental illnesses and I hope I'm not coming across as insensitive but I just don't see the point in mincing my words.

Edit 2:

Its been pointed out to me that these claims are allegations made by biased people who can't be trusted, and that even if the allegations are true, I still overstated the case.

Also, I'm defending a statement Azeroth123 made (schools are encouraging kids to be gay - although I'm not so sure about this now) while not endorsing his conclusions, which also might make what I have written seem confusing or even contradictory.

I don't see the encouraging there, other than possible "medical student syndrome". (When uncalibrated people hear "X suggests Y", they are prone to see tiny amounts of X and assume high probability of Y.) For example, a child with no realistic idea about what transsexuality means could mistake a thought "in this situation it would be (in far mode) better to be a boy/girl" for transsexuality; which could cause unnecessary turmoil.

children should not be discussing their friend's private secrets with strangers

Yes, this seemed... (read more)

18gjm11y

I don't understand. Nothing in the article you linked to describes anyone [...] and the article isn't about what schools do, or even about what one school does. It's about what some government inspectors are alleged to have done, and I think a little context might be in order. This is about the inspection of Grindon Hall Christian School. I think it's clear that the inspectors were concerned that the school might be instilling hostility to, and/or ignorance of, various things that conservative Christians commonly disapprove of: other religions, homosexuality, transsexualism. So they asked pupils some questions intended to probe this. The school has issued a complaint about those questions. (This is where the stuff in the Telegraph article comes from.) The inspection report, now it's out, is extremely negative. If the complaint made by the school is perfectly accurate, then it does sound as if the probing was done quite insensitively. Tut tut, naughty inspectors. But it's worth noting that complaints of this sort -- especially when, as one might suspect here, they're made partly in self-defence -- are not always perfectly accurate. And, e.g., if you look at the headmaster's letter of complaint to the authorities and his somewhat-overlapping complainy letter to parents of his pupils, you'll see that he apparently has trouble distinguishing "inspectors asked pupils whether they celebrate festivals of any religions other than Christianity" from "inspectors think the school should be celebrating festivals of other religions". Which is just silly, and doesn't give me much confidence in his ability to describe impartially (or even correctly) what happened in the inspection. I suppose you can argue that even mentioning (e.g.) transsexualism is "encouraging" it in the rather aetiolated sense that children who have never heard of transsexualism are a bit less likely to end up being overtly transsexual. (But maybe correspondingly more likely to have no idea what it is th

3Gunnar_Zarncke11y

If inducing trans and gay were that easy it would be as easy to cure it. It isn't.. Trans is so incurable that despite the side-effects it is considered much easier to change the body than the mind. But I agree with your second paragraph. I'd say that there is such a thing as information hazard. You need anti-memes for such. And best before being exposed to the info-hazard. Kind like an innoculation. At least as a minor when you don't have a sufficiently general mindset to dispose with such ideas easily (stronger immune system).