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Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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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.
Yes, this seemed very wrong to me, too. Even if the idea of teaching about sexuality was to increase tolerance, outing someone is wrong, and it could also inspire bullies to expand their arsenal of labels for their classmates.
But to put things in context, I still think the religious education is more harmful on the average, so it seems funny when people with cute ideas like "if you explore your sexuality, the sadistic omnipotent alpha male will torture you for eternity" complain about possible harm to children's sexuality caused by improper education.
Well, they also wanted the school to teach how to have lesbian sex, which is certainly encouraging homosexuality. I'm not saying this is a bad thing though.
The idea seems to be to counter homophobic religions by forcing them to teach how lesbians have sex. I think it would be a better idea just to shut the religious schools.