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skeptical_lurker comments on Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (431)
While it is good to acknowledge when one is wrong, this is hardly strong evidence. One has one school in one location making an allegation. There also seems to be a big leap between asking people if they know anyone trapped and pushing people to be gay or transsexual. (I agree though with your points in your second paragraph.)
I suppose that this is only an allegation at the moment, although other similar allegations about the same organisation pushing a left-wing agenda at the expense of education have been made, which makes the whole thing more plausible (plus there is Azathoth's original allegation).
Asking an adult if they know anyone who is trapped is ok. The problem is that asking a 10 year old primes them with a concept they would not previously have had. If there is some sort of train of thought one can go down, which ends with 'help I'm trapped in the wrong body' when they would otherwise not have had this problem, then you do not prompt them to start this train of thought. For mostly the same reason, you don't ask children "do your friends drink vodka?".
Essentially, its conceivably possible that the idea of transsexualism poses an information hazard to children.
Of the same magnitude as the idea of drinking alcohol, shooting guns, or doing stupid things on video..?
I tend to think that in the age of internet-connected smartphones the concept of protecting children from information hazards is... quaint and counterproductive.
Having said that, I would interpret the events which led to this discussion as authorities attempting to shape the kids' value system which is a different and, probably, a more dangerous thing.
Definitely not!
I would say that smartphones should have age filters on them, although I could equally say that in the internet age, the whole idea of sex education, gay or straight, is quaint and counterproductive.
I also agree that the far bigger issue is whether political indoctrination (I'm trying to think of a more positive way to phrase this, but I can't) of this form is justified. The impression I got from the article is that this is partially a reaction against the growth of fundamentalist Islamism in schools, where state funded teacher were caught teaching small children certain things like "Hindus drink their god's piss". Clearly, forcing schools to teach children about how lesbians have sex is going to really annoy the Islamists (although its not obvious whether this will make the problem of Islamism better or worse), but to avoid discrimination the same thing has to apply to Christian schools.
I suppose one could argue that enforcing certain cultural norms (e.g. the belief that all religions and sexual orientations are equally valid) is necessary to prevent society from breaking down into factions engaged in armed conflict with each other, which is far more important than any other issue we have discussed here.
OTOH... well I certainly don't hold either hetrosexuality or cissexuality as terminal values (my argument was purely about avoiding suffering), but I think some people, such as Azathoth, do, and it does seem rather unfair that the state can declare that your values are wrong and demand that your children hold different values.
I'm really not sure how to answer this.
I agree. We should encourage children to develop an interest in anonymous filter-dodging web access systems like Tor, securely encrypting their messages such that they can't be monitored for inappropriate language usage, and other related skills while they're still young.
While your comment does amuse me enough for an upvote, I feel the need to point out that if the children do not have root access to the phone, then they can't install Tor. As I understand it, rooting a phone is not easy, and I suppose once they have reached the age when they are smart & patient enough to root a phone then they are probably mature enough to deal with the internet.
Works by an entirely standard method: download a file from the internet and follow instructions. Easy-peasy :-D
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. I've been able to download and run Tor from plenty of computer user accounts without administrator privileges, so I assumed that you could just download it to a (non-Apple) phone the same way.
Can/should a school teach that different racial groups are morally the same? What about that slavery is wrong? What about "be kind to each other and share your toys"? Is the difference purely that more people disagree with one claim as opposed to the others?
Let's add to that list.
Can/should a school teach that Kim Jong-un is the greatest human being who ever lived and that only his incessant efforts keep the people safe and prosperous? What about "it is the highest moral duty to immediately report all rule-breaking to the authorities"?
I want logical positivist schools that only teach scientifically verifiable truths about objective reality :)
But seriously, you make a good point. I think the number of people who agree with the claim is important, but there is perhaps a second issue in that some people claim that certain information can produce irreversible personality changes. If advocating homosexuality turned people gay (and shared environment does affect the prevalence of lesbians) then this causes a permanent hit to the utility function of a homophobe, whereas if some one wants their child not to share their toys ( because that's communism, maybe?) then the child could still change their mind after they leave school.
I would be opposed to the idea.
Um, as opposed to Christians who drink their god's blood..?
I am sorry, is the goal of the exercise to annoy Islamists..? 8-0
This historically has been argued A LOT. Pretty much every time the question of enforcing cultural norms came up. The funny thing is, those currently in power always argue that the cultural norms which help with keeping them on top are "necessary to prevent society from breaking down".
Really, so children should be able to view extremely violent and other adult things?
I'm guessing the fundamentalist Islamists were pretty scathing of Christianity too. I wouldn't be so bothered about adults saying that, but the important bits include 'taxpayer funded' and 'small children'. Also, communion is an actual part of Christianity, whereas I think "Hindus drink their god's piss" was just a complete fabrication.
I really don't think most people seem to understand that annoying your political opponents serves no purpose and shuts down constructive dialogue.
On second thoughts, I suppose the idea could be to annoy them enough so that the leave the country.
Yes, it is an interestingly convenient coincidence isn't it?
I suspect this is pointing to the Hindu reverence for cattle, which tends to show up in weird ways in Hindu-Muslim disputes from that area. Milk is not urine, and cows aren't treated as gods per se, but it's an allegation that I could see Kevin Baconing its way out of the truth.
I do know of one case of ceremonial consumption of urine, but it's not Hindu -- it's a Siberian entheogenic practice aimed at the still-psychoactive metabolites of compounds found in the A. muscaria mushroom, previously eaten by shamans.
Exactly right! An impressively accurate guess.
Yes. And they do, by the way.
I'm certainly aware that they do. Interestingly, most people arrested for child porn are teenagers sending other teenagers naked pictures.
Certainly those cases exist. Do you have a citation that most arrests are such cases?
Which, of course, is another point of evidence towards the claim that the criminal justice system is FUBAR.
It didn't reach this level of specificity, but I remember similar questions on an allegedly anonymous survey passed around when I was in middle school (age 11 or 12, don't remember which). Along with a number of questions about sex and illegal drug use.
That was about when the War on Drugs and related moral panics were peaking, though.
This entirely depends on which path the causality takes.
Trans folks are much more depressed and tend to have much higher levels of mental illness than the general population.*
Obviously, experiences are different for different people. But most trans people experience extreme discomfort in the gender roles they are expected to perform and have some form of gender dysphoria. I would expect these things to be present regardless if they knew that the label "trans" exists. If this is the reason for the higher rates of mental illness, then encouraging awareness of what trans is will let people do things to help fix some of these issues.
However, if the causal path is that people become aware of the idea of being trans, then realize that they do not fit the gender they were assigned at birth, leading to higher rates of mental illness, that would be a different issue.
Anecdotally, almost all the trans people I know have the experience of learning what being trans is, then having an "Oh! That's I'm feeling" moment. This would be evidence for the first method.
(Side note: The term most trans people use is transgender rather than transexual, because it is the gender that is different. On a similar note, most trans people do not have the surgeries you were talking about.) *I am not counting gender identity disorder as a mental illness, both because I don't think it should be classified that way and because this statement would be pointless if I did.
I think there is a third causal path, which goes:
Thinking about being the opposite sex -> psychosomatic alteration of hormone levels during puberty-> structural differences in the brain -> transgender.
I'm not saying this is plausible, or that I have evidence for it. This is not my field. But AFAIK I cannot rule it out.
I would say that since transgender people are much more depressed, presumably due to being trapped in the wrong body (which, as we both mentioned, doesn't apply to all trans people) then GID is a mental illness because it causes depression and suffering.
This doesn't mean that transgender people need to feel bad about being trans, because that will just make matters worse. I know 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.
Sure, that path seems possible as well.
Although some of the depression could be caused by that, it seems pretty likely that a large portion of it could also because by being treated by society as a gender they aren't, as well as more targeted transphobia. GLB people also have much higher rates of depression, which is probably for that reason and not some third link.
Furthermore, I think we need to go back to diseased thinking about diseases. When we call something a mental illness, it's because we are trying to treat it in some way, or alleviate the effects. This is not something we want to do with trans people, the effects that we're talking about are all other mental illnesses that we do want to treat the symptoms of.
I've heard trans people say that simply having breasts is really disturbing, enough to require unconfortable breast-binding. I've also heard a trans person say that they enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror, because they are turned on by their own body.
Incidentally, are there separate words for 'non gender identifying transgender' and 'trapped in the wrong body transgender'?
Anyway, clearly transphobia is going to make the problem worse.
Well, sex reassignment surgery clearly is a treatment. And the picture isn't clear with certain other mental illnesses either (e.g. autism).
I think what you are going for is non-binary/agender trans people vs. binary trans people.
But, I'm not sure which distinction you're talking about. There are people who fit the classic "trapped in the wrong body," who have a clear idea of what body parts they would/wouldn't like (which could be anything from having a penis and breasts to no genitalia at all). There are other people who are completely fine with their physical body but are uncomfortable with the idea of identifying with the gender they were assigned at birth.
If you're talking about that distinction, then people in the second category don't necessarily identify as agender or non-binary, and people in the first category don't always identify as a binary gender.
Well, I had a transgender friend who said that at a trans meeting two types of people turned up: those that didn't strongly identify as either gender, and those that strongly identified as the gender opposite to their physical body. This is the distinction I am trying to describe.
And "agender trans people" is quite a mouthful.
You can just say "non-binary people" or "agender people." In any case, binary and non-binary are the types you are talking about.