karaddin

I'll do my best to give a response then, but it will take a while.

Genuine question - Are you open to an actual discussion of the issue with the possibility of changing your mind, or Was this the only question you were actually asking? I'm asking separate from the two responses you've already received, I don't want to waste either of our time if that's the only thing you were asking but I'm willing to engage if you're actually interested.

Well let me ask you another one - when did your skepticism around the suitability of trans treatments develop? It certainly predated the release of the Cass review which you seemed to receive as vindicating your skepticism rather than causing it. Have you always felt the research was insufficient and just didn't voice that opinion much until the last couple of years? I ask because I'm human and wind up drawing conclusions based on what I see like everyone else and perhaps those conclusions aren't the whole picture. Based on what I've seen it looks a lot like you became concerned about trans activists strategy of attempting to deplatform TERFs, which you view as deeply illiberal and a threat to free speech on the left. Given I have only seen you posting about trans treatments since then it made me feel this has colored your view of all trans issues since then, but that's obviously a major assumption on my part. Hence this question.

I guessed electricity after reading your post (Brook guessed water so point to her) so I guess there's at least 1 other business that its plausible for.

At this point in my life I only take 1 medication "for being trans" - estrogen. I take a bunch of others for migraine and chronic pain and I'm pretty sure the majority of them would not be allowed for the purpose I take them if this high bar of evidence was a pre-requisite for ever getting to use them. Perhaps the evidence available now would be sufficient, but the years/decades of off-label usage that provided that evidence would not have been allowed which amounts to the same thing. The medications that I have been on or am still on covers two different categories of blood pressure medication, multiple anti-depressants, multiple epilepsy medications*, and botox injections. There's now anti-migraine medications (made for that purpose) in the mix as well which are fantastic, but if I try drop any of the other 3 medications I'm also on alongside them my quality of life and ability to work nosedives very dramatically. This off label usage of medications quite literally makes my life worth living. *Two of the epilepsy medications cause severe side effects for me, and they're judged as high risk - one caused me to become susceptible to seizures and major personality changes, the other had some weird undocumented effect that I think weakened my connective tissue causing most of the major joints in my body to start popping in and out. They were really unpleasant. My doctor informed me of the risks in advance as best as he was able, suggested I loop in my family and trusted workmates to keep an eye out for dramatic personality shifts, and I then consented to try these medications out. Informed consent in practice. Its a bedrock of our medical system for a reason.

It's impossible in the sense that people will know it happened because there will be some reporting, but even just removing mentions of that would be beneficial. It sounds stupid but human psychology is weird.

I don't think it's impossible, there are pretty clear guidelines for media reporting on suicide and I think they should try and apply those as much as possible for this particular form of protest. Or at least those guidelines exist outside the US, perhaps they're not in use there?

On another note - just saw some discussion of the new self immolation protestor which says that you can see his psychology fall apart after his mum died. Perhaps she was the one that got him to take meds and he stopped without her, maybe it was just the shock of losing her that cracked him but either way I'm going to feel sympathy and sorrow for it. I was stuck away from home and completely isolated for a few weeks when I lost my mum and my connection to reality was very tenuous by the time I got to come home. Could certainly imagine it just worsening over time if I hadn't had family to come back to and get grounded. It does speak to the other concern that was expressed after the previous self-immolation protest which I shared, that the coverage of protest like that could serve to encourage others in a vulnerable emotional state to do the same.

He's lost a *lot* of weight for his cheeks to be that gaunt. Gas issues are certainly a possibility from semaglutide, but I feel the weight loss is greater than is typically seen - I guess he could have been on it a long time and we just didn't notice the weight loss for a long time rather than it being over only a few months. What I'm saying is - semaglutide is the most likely explanation, but illness is possible.

Thank god it wasn't restricted to 8eps like almost everything has been lately. Would love more as well, its just fantastic.

On the nuclear proliferation discussion - I think the US invading Iraq was a serious body blow to non-proliferation and Putin using the "you give us your nukes and we promise we won't attack you" treaty as toilet paper put a stake through it's heart. I'll be very surprised if there's no new nuclear powers over the next 20 years. To answer Ty however I'd be extremely shocked if Australia already has some, especially with the below in mind I think there's a pretty clear sign in the AUKUS deal, namely that the nuclear subs Australia will be buying will have the capability to carry and launch nukes, that the US and/or the UK may want Australia to share the load so to speak. I highly doubt we'd develop our own weapons program though, if it happens it will be another somewhat corrupt form of pork barreling where the deal to purchase the weapons is politically a gift to whichever leader is selling them to give a big economic injection to whichever state they need to bribe for an upcoming election. The other possibility is that they simply want to introduce ambiguity into whether Australia has them - if our subs have that capacity and you do a couple of other things to make it ambiguous then you might get some of the value without actually risking another nuclear power. The big thing I'll say is that for now at least this would be extremely unpopular politically in Aus so it's a forward planning thing.

I know the 50s America aesthetic is part of the appeal for some as well. It really puts me off though lol, both just that it doesn't appeal but my brain also really struggles to imagine a technological branch that's done all it has but still doesn't have any screens bigger than 14" by 2077? If the bombs fell in the 1990s/2000s I'd accept it much better since then it's only a few decades of technological divergence rather than over a century. Wasn't enough to stop me really enjoying this though, everything else is more than sufficient to overcome that initial hurdle. It did put me off playing the games though - I gave 4 a try and bounced off.

I guess that's one of the indications Wert was talking about that although they were ready and willing they didn't actually do it themselves in the end.

I missed these signs, would you mind elaborating? Yeah it was fantastic, the last 2 seasons have some of the best episodes of television I've ever seen and it did end quite well. That's definitely a useful word. I'd say there's something along those lines going on with some shows that don't have any genre trappings, Sex Education utilizes elements of it in the setting as part of creating a setting that's kinda both US and UK and neither. I'm sure I've watched something else recently that also had a similar vibe.

Yeah I don't think I worded that the best, I still don't think (or at least hope) escalation to war is inevitable, but if Israel does what you're saying here it will be because that's the course of action they chose/were softly persuaded into - I don't think Biden can force them into backing down if they're set on escalation if this is the rhetoric we're seeing.

The accompanying statement from US officials sounds like they've already resigned themselves to being unable to talk Israel out of it and have switched to mitigating the damage which really isn't promising https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/15/israel-will-respond-to-iran-missile-attack-idf-chief-of-staff I feel like the only message that could actually punch through would be saying you're on your own if you start a full blown shooting war, and backing off on your messaging already really doesn't inspire confidence that you'd hold to that bluff.

Seeing statements from both the Minister of Defense and the IDF Chief of Staff that they'll be retaliating so this is going to be wonderful.

Yes? Much like my opinion on the review asking the wrong questions, I can simply disagree with people. My questions to HoI were an attempt to demonstrate our views are so far apart we functionally don't share a common frame of reference when reading the review.

I mean, my post is right above you - I tried to keep an open mind while reading the summaries and I'm not assuming bad faith or an ideological agenda on the part of Cass. I just think the review fundamentally misunderstands the important questions around this treatment.

You linked a thread which aims to summarize the study on cross sex hormone treatment of minors when we'd been talking about puberty blockers which doesn't exactly smack of good faith HoI, but I decided to click through and find the thread summarizing the PB findings from your own source for you https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1779232332508971409 I once again need to give the disclaimer that I haven't read the full report myself, my judgements are based on the summaries that I've read here and in other locations. The Cass review, from those summaries, has utilized fundamentally incorrect metrics for assessing the existing research on puberty blockers and this has been the case in every snippet of it I have seen. The purpose of puberty blockers is not to resolve the gender dysphoria, it is to prevent biological changes that will worsen it and cause undesired changes that will last for life. It's not expected to accomplish a positive outcome, its to prevent a negative one. So a review that looks as these studies and says "there's lack of a clear positive outcome here" has missed the point of them. That thread also discusses findings that indicate a risk of several negative outcomes - damage to fertility, loss of bone density and shorter height. Despite being presented like this is new information, those all strike me as risks that were known and part of undergoing the treatment is accepting the risk of them. Now its possible that the implementation of the process did not adequately inform children and their parents of this risk and that is of course a problem that needs to be fixed - being informed is a central pillar of informed consent. That said the 3rd one is pretty shaky to actually call a negative effect - being taller isn't an objectively good thing, but it obviously is a side effect when it happens. And that's basically the entirety of this thread's summary of the problems with PB treatment - it wants better quality research (which I don't opposite - I just oppose halting treatment while waiting for it) and flagged the above issues. Nothing here is a burning red flag that says treatment needs to be abruptly halted, nor does it say the entire body of research is junk. Its worth noting that some of the aspects aren't included in the studies on trans kids taking them because they're a known factor from initial research on the drug being used full stop - of course you won't expect to see that repeated. So I fail to see how this review proves definitively that I've been "spreading disinformation" and that "ideology has taken over science in medicine", I just see a whole bunch of people trying to help kids that are stuck in shitty circumstances while the doctors have inadequate resources (high quality research to inform their treatment is in a resource doctors use). Oh and from earlier HoI: When I've already conceded that some detransitioners exist, providing the one single detransitioner you know of hardly strengthens your point. I suspect that if we were balancing "trans kids not receiving treatment" vs "cis kids incorrectly receiving treatment" your honest answer would be "all trans kids should be denied treatment if we can't guarantee a single cis kid won't receive incorrect treatment".

If you argue for perfect research to be done before providing treatment when that research is literally impossible to do according to modern ethics guidelines, then you're advocating against treatment.

Oh I dunno, maybe something to do with having lost over a decade of my life and almost killed myself due to lack of treatment that I've now had which fixed all those problems? ETA: I know many of you won't accept my first hand experience as giving me any kind of insight into the question as a whole, but to ask why I'd have this perspective is utterly baffling

Because at no point in the very long history of us talking about this have you ever accepted that the status quo without treatment is grossly harmful, and tragically often deadly, to trans kids. It's a difference in perspective so fundamental that each of our arguments do not make sense to the other. So I'll spare this thread another pages long detail of us arguing past each other. Just wanted to make sure everyone reading the thread understands the context of the claims being made.

I 100% accept there were terrorists in that building who were the target, but that doesn't change the underlying fact that bombing part of a countries consulate is different to engaging in a proxy war and unless you're already in a shooting war - its a massive escalation that is almost certainly going to draw a reprisal. That's more true if you view the country in question as a bad actor, which again is the case with the Iranian regime. Israel knows all of this, any decision to bomb the consulate building under those circumstances factors in an Iranian response as part of the cost/benefit analysis of the decision to bomb it - lets not treat anyone as stupid or incompetent here when there's no indication that was the case. Iran was always going to respond to this, and the way they chose to do so resulted in a single tragic casualty. Unless you do actually want a direct shooting war with Iran, the obvious course of action at this point is to decide you got a win (quote from Biden) and take the win. Iran are awful fucks, they're going to continue to be awful fucks but they're also going to behave in relatively predictable and self interestedly rational ways. I'm not sure what some of you are actually looking for in this thread? Do you think us saying that we don't want to see escalation is somehow praising Iran for being morally good and restrained? Because that sure as hell isn't how I mean it - I mean solely what I said. This action taken was within the bounds of expected state actor behaviour for a direct bombing of their diplomatic facilities in a 3rd party nation and killing of high ranking military personnel, please get off the railroad to a regional war before a whole lot more tragedies happen.

Nothing I've read in your posts explicitly demonstrates confirmed harm. There has been assertions that the safeguards in place as part of the process are inadequate, but inadequate safeguards doesn't actually mean that any (let alone all) children received improper treatment as a result of that. I don't deny that some people do regret and detransition, so I'm sure there are some of them but I haven't seen any solid numbers for that. So a question that is probably illuminating on the difference in our underlying perspectives - how do you prioritize how bad these two scenarios are? Cis kid receives treatment they don't need, and shouldn't have received resulting in permanent damage to their fertility (so we're talking more than simply receiving puberty blockers - I'm giving you a more serious case) Trans kid is refused treatment that they do need, undergoing the wrong puberty and receiving permanent damage to their bodies development