A similar, though at much larger scale and in more grotesque way, thing in Russia these days - SWAT raids bookstores and publishers and arresting and filing felony charges against them and removing books for any hint of "propaganda of extremism and terrorism" - where even LGBTQ is declared to be extremism by the Russian Supreme Court and is among the main targets of the censorship and the SWAT.
In addition to the books prohibited for their content, any books by "foreign agents" are prohibited too with the "foreign agent" designation assigned directly by the government, bypassing any court, to any minimally public person who disagrees with the government policies.
The new law also prohibits public demonstration (which beside movie theaters also includes websites with more than 100K users) of foreign movies not in agreement with the "traditional values of Russia" (which is whatever the government would declare as such).
Can you explain what you mean? I'm not seeing anything much different from 20th-century gay rights activism – if anything, it's way tamer. Nobody's breaking into broadcasting houses to photo-bomb live television broadcasts, and Pride is rarely a riot.
You might also consider revisiting your history: "GLBT" was a thing long before the "LGBT" ordering became prevalent – since the 70s, at least. Trans people, and queers of all sorts, have always been a part of gay activism, and in many cases were at the forefront of it. "Drop the T" is a recent movement (although the sentiment isn't new).
We're speaking from different cultural backgrounds here, clearly.
In Norway, trans was never part of the gay and lesbian movement. Even bi -- where I fall -- have traditionally been outcasts, often jokingly (or not) described as "the fence sitters". I fall into this category, where given said "fence sitting" I was lucky in that I never felt a need to "come out" because I would just date girls and carefully approach my attraction towards guys. But for a lot of personal experiences it also meant I never quite felt I belonged because I was not gay, nor was I like the majority and completely straight. The gays didn't like "people like me" who "couldn't decide" (something I've heard often, and keep hearing).
Trans just has never been a thing culturally here. For one because we have strict laws of medical interventions on underage people, so the so-called "gender-affirming care" situation has not yet hit us. And most people don't feel this way when they reach adulthood, as it's _typically_ a part of puberty. Not to say gender dysphoria doesn't exist, but there's also no actual solution to it right now. You cannot transition from female sexual organs to functional male ones, nor vice versa. We're not there yet with medical technology, and truthfully I don't think it's likely we ever will. Until then all we can offer are cosmetic changes.
But because of internationalization and the media, trans has been lumped together with the LGB cause which is causing backlash and misunderstandings from the general population.
I realise writing this on a US-centric website is likely to get me ostracised but sometimes I think it's important for different cultures to talk about their differences. We want multiculturalism, right? This is what that means.
I'm not placated by your response here. Whether or not there is good treatment for gender dysphoria, which you seem to think is the key issue, is beside the point. Many trans people don't even want medical treatment, they want the freedom to perform their gender in whatever way makes them feel comfortable (more or less the same way that you want the freedom to perform your sexual orientation in whatever way you feel comfortable).
Trans rights is not about a specific interpretation of the experience of being trans and thus it isn't about hormones or surgery. It is about trying to encourage the world to be open to a broader set of gender expressions and more freedom for people to live out the life that they want.
There are some tough issues here, yes. But the analogy to the gay rights movement is pretty straightforward.
Trans is not just an extension of the gay rights movement -- it's a separate thing altogether. There are so many things that are different. Gay men will not demand others let them into areas exclusive to women _for legitimate reasons_. Toilets, housing institutions, and prisons being some.
Self-identifying as another gender carries with it requirements of others far beyond simple acceptance.
I don't care if I placate you or not. I'm speaking from the POV of someone from a different culture. I don't require you to accept it, just as I respect your different cultural opinions.
Academically, gay rights come from romanticism, and trans rights come from feminism, but they're all part of the same fight: same as anti-racism, class conflict, religious pluralism, pacifism, and environmentalism. Historically, the movements have long been linked: gay folk and trans folk ran in similar circles, being trans was classified as a type of homosexuality by the medical establishment… Now that being gay is "normal", but being trans remains "abnormal", respectability politics has led to a lot of historical revisionism. These fights are a lot more related than you think. It's no coincidence that Norway's legislature has been on the forefront of gay rights, trans rights, and intersex rights wrt legal protections (or would you like to try to explain that?) – though your observations do match the relatively-late protections for bi rights, and Norway's fallen behind on protections for intersex infants.
But I do appreciate your perspective, as a source of information: many things you're saying are factually incorrect, but it's important to know that some people believe them.
I am aware of our legislation but there’s also a cultural component. Many things are technically legal but culturally uncommon. IIRC less than 2000 changed their legal gender in the last decade over here. There’s not that much of a focus on gender because it’s ok to be a feminine male or a woman with masculine traits.
Personally I think this obsession with making new categories for people who don’t strictly fit some weird resurgence of classic gender roles —- like intersex —- does more harm than good.
Intersex has nothing to do with gender roles, classic or otherwise: the term refers to abnormal sexual development. Intersex rights issues include non-consensual surgical interventions on perfectly-healthy infants, which can cause pain, infertility, and other issues. Norway has not banned this.
If you object to "medical interventions on underage people", then I'd suggest campaigning against this would be a better use of your time than railing against trans rights. Banning consensual, requested gender-affirming treatment that provides clear benefit to children, while allowing injurious cosmetic surgery on literal babies, is doing things the wrong way around. (Even if you turn around and get consensual gender-affirming treatment banned afterwards, that'd still better than the status quo.)
> There’s not that much of a focus on gender because it’s ok to be a feminine male or a woman with masculine traits.
Excellent! I approve. However, that doesn't have very much to do with transgender people.
> this obsession with making new categories
Is a compromise, because in other cultures that have much more rigid conceptions of gender, cultural factors prevent us from abolishing the gender system: drawing new categories around observed clustering and calling them "genders" is somewhat of a hack. (Though not without precedent: many cultures throughout history have taken this approach, usually with 3–5 genders and a lot of them ascribe spiritual significance to the non-binary genders. Orthodox Judaism is an outlier: they have unusually-many genders but ascribe negligible spiritual significance to them.) What you're seeing is probably a side-effect of multiculturalism: in this case, exporting your culture's gender non-conformity more intensely will alleviate it.
I am aware what intersex is. A child cannot consent to anything, so I don’t see a reason to ban medical interventions — there’s procedures involving doctors and parents before such things are considered.
I don't see any reason to do medically-unnecessary cosmetic genital surgery, which may cause infertility, on a child who can't (or doesn't) consent, for the sole purpose of "normalising" their bodies. Generally, this is considered a human rights violation (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12795). Children are people, not playthings.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I am actually considered "intersex" because I was born with one of my testicles located and stuck within my abdomen. As a baby they discovered it, and my mom let them operate and relocate it to my scrotum. While the testicle is believed to be inert, it's otherwise normal and I'm glad she did. And I'm glad she and the doctor had the mental faculties in place to _evaluate individual medical concerns_ properly. Not all cases are simply cosmetic; a dislocated testicle can cause a lot of problems later in life, as you might imagine, since it's not supposed to be where it was stuck.
"Organ in an unhealthy place" is of course a case where intervention is in the best interests of the child ("medically-necessary"). But in many countries (including Norway), medically-unnecessary interventions are frequently approved, or even recommended, by doctors. The existing processes do not provide enough protection against such abusive practices.
I agree there's probably more protections necessary. For example I'm also strongly against any religion based altering of the body of children -- circumcision included -- that isn't medically necessary. Although I guess that's a much discussed topic of its own.
The problem is that drawing this line isn't always simple. Make the law too strict, and you can just as easily end up barring doctors from performing surgeries that by their correct case-by-case judgement is necessary, but the law prohibits because it necessitates, say, medical consensus in general. But make the law too lax and you open the doors to purely cosmetic surgeries which I am absolutely against.
What we cannot have is the ability for children whom cannot legally make medical decisions be allowed to start things like gender-affirming care. Because if we can't trust them with other less life-altering choices, how could we trust them with that? Especially given how easily influenced children are.
Your paragraph 3 is the basic theory around medical gatekeeping: in many societies, children just plain aren't powerful enough to be in a position to give informed consent, unless special measures are taken to rule out undue influence. (In this case, that'd be: a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which involves a psychologist asking you awkward questions for a few hours; and then ensuring all subsequent consent is informed, and in accordance with the psychologist's findings.) That's also why we have the "compromise" of puberty blockers (safe, reversible), but not any permanent treatment until the child reaches Gillick competence (in Norway, age 16).
The trouble I have with this reasoning, though, is it's asymmetrical. We don't allow trans kids access to exogenous sex hormones because cis kids might hypothetically be being influenced by their parents / other authority figures to make a bad decision (e.g. Munchausen syndrome by proxy), but we know there's pressure on trans kids to repress and pretend to be cis (we have statistics about it), so why do we let any children go through puberty? How can we trust them with that? (Yes, this thought experiment is somewhat ludicrous, but why is it ludicrous?)
For most people who experience it, gender dysphoria is distressing and hard to ignore. Most cis people can be put in situations where they experience it, and they report the same intense feelings of distress. I doubt you could easily influence many 12-year-olds to push through those feelings – though I'm not sure how one might test this ethically, so I'm not sure what studies to look for. Norway's current approach seems suitably-conservative to me. (And I don't see any advantage, even hypothetically, to forcing trans people into binary classifications: that seems like the "rigid gender roles" problem rearing its head again.)
P.S.: You're considerably more reasonable about this than I initially thought: thinking about the right things, for the right reasons, such that with complete information I'd expect you to come to the right decisions. I long to have people like that for political opponents.
Puberty blockers aren't reversible, because puberty has an end date.
Also puberty is a natural function of the human body. We can only do our best to support children going through it, but it's not even worth contemplating whether we should "let" a child go through it or not. That makes no biological sense. For better or worse, humans are mammals whose offspring require _significant_ amount of care for much longer than any other mammal. We might not like it on a theoretical level, but practically speaking and evolutionarily, parents are responsible for their children until their children come of age.
When it comes to legitimate trans kids the aim should be education of and societal support of parents to be as informed as possible, not to circumvent them if some _other_ adults deem it necessary. A doctor is not the legal caretaker of a child, only the parents are.
Would your heart let you say that to the face of a trans person who got refused hormones or blockers as a teen and ended up being irreversibly mutilated as an adult? I wonder...
Yes, because this is simply a reality of life. It isn’t fair for anyone. We all have genetic and intrinsic shortcomings and weaknesses, illnesses and psychological variables.
Blocking puberty for someone who doesn’t feel comfortable in their body as a child doesn’t guarantee the person will be happy with their now altered body later, medical procedures or not. Most follow up studies seem to indicate the opposite though I’m sure we can cherry pick either way.
Nobody is born their ideal self. It’s a scale and we all suffer from it and have to work on it constantly. There is no magic button to swap someone’s body into their ideal self because at that age they can’t even know what that is; none of us knew before or during puberty. In fact I doubt even adults would know, but at least then you can take legal responsibility and not be manipulated as easily by external influences.
> Most follow up studies seem to indicate the opposite
Where are you getting this stuff? I haven't seen a single study indicating that! Dr Hilary Cass's team tried to find a single such study, and at the time of the Interim Cass Review, they'd failed to find any pretext to refuse such medical treatment. (I haven't read the final Cass Review, because by all reports it's bigoted, pseudoscientific twaddle with recommendations that violate the Nuremberg Code.)
You're completely wrong, here. https://slate.com/technology/2024/02/transgender-youth-healt... says much of what I would've said, better: I've talked to a couple of people who've detransitioned, and can confirm that it was entirely due to social pressures. (Not counting gender-fluid folk who've hormonally transitioned 3+ times, since that's better described as "retransition".)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. (At least until you've learned to distinguish uncomfortable truth from seductive lie.)
Saying puberty has an end date is like saying the flooding caused by the removal of a dam has an end date. It's true, but that end date depends on when you remove the dam. (Although a better analogy would be a pump filling a reservoir, sex hormones being the flow rate, puberty being flooding, and GnRH pulsing being the action of the pump.) It's more accurate to say that puberty has a duration.
> puberty is a natural function of the human body
The onset of puberty is way earlier than it used to be. Per http://www.mum.org/menarage.htm, "In 1860 the average menarche happened at 16.6 years,"; per https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/girls-now-begin-..., "Girls now begin puberty aged 9". Delaying puberty until age 16 could be argued as the more natural stage (though I take such arguments 'round back, and beat them to death, especially if they support my beliefs: the naturalistic fallacy is too seductive to listen to).
> That makes no biological sense.
Biologically, there's no reason* we couldn't make them wait until adulthood to begin puberty. You've not quite identified where the ludicrousness is – though you're close.
Past that point, I think you're doing what I did earlier, and arguing against a position I haven't taken. (Unfortunately, I'm less eloquent than you, so I'd spend several paragraphs if I were to correct you: I'll trust in your ability to work it out.)
> the aim should be education of and societal support of parents to be as informed as possible
A thousand agreements: this is the ideal. All other situations are pathological special-cases – though, like antivax parents, they're special-cases that the medical system does have to take into consideration. (I don't know whether you have a general-purpose equivalent of Gillick competence in Norway, but see https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-protection-system/gillic....)
This isn't a point I've been trying to focus on, since it follows once correct handling of the ideal "everyone's informed and with the child's best interests at heart" case is established.
---
*: Biiiig asterisk here: abnormal pubertal timing is associated with health problems (see https://www.endocrinology.org/endocrinologist/134-winter19/f... and citations), but we don't have solid data on the arrow of causation, nor good data on confounders (social attitudes seem to be a problem in the US, and https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-2939 strongly suggests that social/psychological effects have a big impact on onset of puberty), so that would be a separate point. There are no known problems caused by the use of GnRH modulators to postpone puberty (except low bone density, which per https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2022.968485 and https://doi.org/10.1210/jcem.87.2.8202 is temporary and goes away in puberty, and per https://doi.org/10.6061/clinics/2012(06)08 doesn't occur at all – and can be ameliorated with calcium and vitamin D supplementation), and afaik there's no theoretical expectation of such problems (except, again, bone density: I'm not sure that anyone knows why that isn't more of an issue, since it is sometimes an issue when GnRH modulators are used post-puberty – though the patient information leaflets I've read still stress the treatment as extremely safe in adults (with more assurance than I'd have given, but hey, I'm not an expert)). For the sake of the thought experiment, please pretend there are no such issues.
I haven't researched the topic in detail yet, but looking at official data in Norway the _average_ puberty age is 13,2 years and has remained stable for 70+ years. There's a lot of simply intuitive factors to consider with older data: It was, for example, beneficial to _hide_ puberty because of older societal norms about consumption of marriage. I'm not sure we can trust older data.
My instinct tells me that _if_ the age is sliding, then the first place to look is where we've made the biggest human interventions already. Vaccination -- and no I'm not anti-vaccines, but like any medicine, these have various side-effects -- and likely significantly more important, food and additives. In Norway we do not allow growth hormones in feed for livestock that is to be consumed by humans; could that be a contributing factor elsewhere?
Before we even start contemplating compounding these things with even more interventions we have to seriously look at what we've been doing already. This is a fundamental flaw in a lot of western medical practices these days: We see a symptom. We treat the symptom with a new intervention instead of first changing habits like food, activity, etc. The new intervention then has side effects causing symptoms we treat with another intervention. And on and on.
I've experienced this myself, with side-effects of antihistamines being treated with proton pump inhibitors which causes digestive issues that led to other problems. Eventually I just had to read up on everything myself and figure out the root cause because the doctors -- and I went to _many_ -- just kept sending me to new investigative procedures and added more medication. When the solution all along was to just taper off antihistamines at the end of allergy season.
I see the same in my entire family, and with friends. And Norway's healthcare system is apparently among the better of the world, which I find hard to believe.
Funny thing, norway is one of the worst western countries when it comes to trans healthcare. This of course ended up with undermining the future of Norwegian trans people. The world should wonder why the most successful trans people are american.
Some of the most successful everything are American: that's just a sign of rampant inequality. Most of the American trans people I know fear for their lives, and the Stichting Trans Rescue Foundation (a charity set up by former US citizens living in the Netherlands) does not have the resources to help them: see https://transrescue.org/post-election-assistance-to-the-usa.
The things you say were sort of true two years ago, and I'm confident you'll be able to make them true again, but it will be an uphill battle.
The world doesn’t wonder that. We look at the trans treatment in America as a warning. I know that probably sounds cruel to some Americans but we simply do not share your view in this.
> It was, for example, beneficial to _hide_ puberty
No, they accounted for that sort of thing when working out the estimates.
> My instinct tells me
I think your instincts are correct. Available resources seem to be one of the dials by which the onset of puberty is calibrated. Modern children suffer less from malnutrition, which means earlier puberty.
But your instinct is badly-calibrated. You should research the topic in detail, before believing you know anything about it. Vaccines, food, and additives? Growth hormones aren't allowed in feed in the UK, and that's where my "9 years old" figure came from. You're right to speculate, but this speculation is all wrong. Instead, you should look in the direction of plastic additives, which are known to be endocrine disruptors: we don't have much evidence that those are the cause, but that was my first guess after reduced malnutrition, and it's also the guess of the author of the paper linked in my previous comment.
It's fortunate for you that your instincts are broadly correct, since this means you can learn more about the topic without much risk of cognitive dissonance: you can keep your mind open, without risking your worldview. For those of us for whom this is more personal, this knowledge is hard-won. (Sure, after the fact, knowing that reality agrees with what I needed to be true – with a few irritating exceptions –, it doesn't seem like a big deal. Indeed, the fact that I needed these things to be true, without first deciding that, was strong evidence that there was a real phenomenon… but I couldn't afford to take that into account, because couldn't a form of insanity also have caused such a subjective experience? … I digress.)
Point is: research the topic before making claims about what policy should or shouldn't be, especially where persecuted minority groups are concerned. Bigoted sentiment, and lies, that you've picked up from your social environment are not particularly reliable sources of moral guidance.
> Eventually I just had to read up on everything myself
You have something in common with trans people, then. (I swear, the average trans person knows more about endocrinology than the average cis doctor.) The purpose of the medical system is to keep populations in overall good health: it's not great at treating individual issues that aren't immediately life-threatening. (See also: handling acute conditions well, but chronic illness extremely poorly, to the point of denying that it exists at all.)
The medical system is especially not good at dealing with bigotry: the whole system functions on the presumption of good faith, with mechanisms in place to catch specific, individual abuses. Systematic issues, like "let's sterilise the undesirables!" or "let's torture the neurodivergent!" or "let's tell women they're menopausal, or that they need to lose weight, when they present with stroke symptoms", are only addressed once the general consensus is that they need to be addressed. Systematic lifestyle issues, too, are only addressed once there's widespread understanding that they need to be addressed: look at how the "healthy amount of alcohol" keeps getting knocked down a bit, every few years.
But gay men have been and are excluded in some places from places which are viewed as exclusive to heterosexual men (for example, the army). I think you are right that trans rights presents a somewhat more radical case to the public, in the sense that people ask that their gender identity be recognized, but this is hardly either an argument against trans rights nor, really, an argument of a fundamental distinction between gay and trans rights.
For example: some Americans currently deny the existence of gay people (and they view homosexual behavior as purely pathological). Thus, part of the gay rights movement is the demand that the possibility of gayness existing is real and that gayness is legitimate be recognized. This is very concordant with the trans rights struggle.
You probably have heard of NAMBLA. Lots of anti-gay rhetoric focuses/focused on this extreme, frankly absurd, organization. There were elements of the gay community which defended it as well. We can repudiate NAMBLA without repudiating gay rights, but many conservative forces want us to view them as inseparable. When we allow the reactionary right to select the most absurd versions of trans rights and tell us they constitute a total repudiation of trans rights, we fall into what should be an obvious rhetorical trap. Again, if progressive people had fallen into this trap in the 70s, if gay people had allowed this rhetoric to silence them, you'd probably still be in the closet.
And also, I don't know what your talk of cultural differences is supposed to accomplish. I'm an upright liberal minded modern guy, I'm not going to show up with militarized police and force you to change your mind. But cultural differences really do not compel me to respect your opinions. I respect your right to have an opinion, I can still disagree, and vehemently.
I'd be more inclined to support your "multiculturalism" claims, if you weren't using language and rhetoric from a British hate group. Do you really say "LGB" in Norway?
> And most people don't feel this way when they reach adulthood, as it's _typically_ a part of puberty.
Most people don't feel this way in childhood, either – but most people who do feel that way in childhood, also feel that way in adulthood.
> Not to say gender dysphoria doesn't exist, but there's also no actual solution to it right now.
See, I can tell you haven't spoken much to trans folk, because that's not true. The only things we're missing are gonadal function, and natural erectile function in phalloplasties: everything else (including pregnancy, for trans women) is possible with current medical technology, albeit hideously expensive.
Most trans people don't opt for such interventions, because they don't care about them all that much – or because they carry risks, such as vocal surgery. The most common interventions (such as exogenous sex hormones) are extremely effective at alleviating treating gender dysphoria.
> Trans just has never been a thing culturally here.
Trans people are well attested in ancient Scandinavian cultures – way more so than in Ancient Britain, where we only have fragmentary evidence and some etymological fun facts. I know that has little bearing on your current cultural attitudes, which are as I understand quite rigid about the gender binary, but I'm a pedant.
> For one because we have strict laws of medical interventions on underage people,
Norwegian law allows puberty blockers for children in Tanner stage 2, and hormones at the age of 16, subject to medical gatekeeping (which, provided waiting lists are reasonable, isn't so bad). The laws prohibit treatment to non-binary people, which is pretty bad, but they're hardly as you've described them.
Deranged. I cannot believe people can be fooled into blaming trans people, of which there is a vanishingly small number, for a concerted campaign by conservatives and other forces to use them as a political wedge. All trans people are guilty of, as far as I can tell, is not behaving in some impossible way, so that conservatives wouldn't pay attention to them. It is our duty to stand up for progressive values, not to condemn a small number of people for not behaving as ideal minorities in a largely cooked up culture war.
If liberal people in the 60s had the attitude you have now you'd probably still be in the closet.
I'm sympathetic to you, frankly, because the current political environment constantly makes people feel like the problem is that we want a better world and if we had just shut up the barbarians wouldn't have taken over, but that is bullshit. Our side of the "culture war" would be doing a lot better if we had some courage to our convictions.
