Who advocate for their rights or interests
The barrister is fuming.
But it’s not “for trans children” versus “the hate campaign.” People who think it’s not healthy or useful for teenagers to take drugs that block puberty don’t think that because they “hate” those children – they think it because there are good reasons to think it. People who think it’s wonderful for teenagers to take drugs that block puberty don’t think that because they are “for” those children but because they are “for” the ideology that has built up “being trans” to a permanent, easily detectable and impossible to make a mistake about state of being that is inherently progressive and enlightening.
It’s not hatred to think that we are our bodies, it’s not hatred to think there’s no such thing as a “gender identity” that makes people the opposite of their bodies, it’s not hatred to think it’s better and simpler and easier and healthier to get used to our bodies and how they change over time than it is to take drugs to stop normal changes.
It’s also peculiar that the barrister thinks advocating to protect children from puberty blockers is not advocating for their interests while insisting that puberty blockers are necessary for trans children is.
The joint statement seems a remarkably ill-advised move by the charities, bizarre in both substance and timing. Have they given up on safeguarding? Do they hope to influence the judges? Because if they do, it can only be negatively.
Interestingly, as far as I can see the Children’s Society and NSPCC haven’t tweeted the statement, Barnardo’s did so on the BarnadosNews account (4,009 followers) but not on their main account (190.3k followers), and I only discovered that because the National Children’s Bureau retweeted it. It’s almost as if they don’t want their ordinary supporters to take much notice of what they’re up to.
Still, it will make it easier to decide where to buy this year’s Christmas cards.
I think it’s both. The framework — a child who knows their own truth being insulted, ignored, and dismissed by regressive people who won’t listen to or believe them — just plucks crescendos at their heartstrings. They think of a father shouting “No son of mine is gay!” They think of a mother saying “Nonsense, that nice Father Flanagan would never do such a thing, you must have imagined it.”
Bad enough to be cruel to a transgender adult — but to stunt a little child! Never! Let’s block the puberty which is wrong for them and give them the puberty which is right.
I just had a TRA tell me that thinking that a child going through puberty naturally is better than taking puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones — “to prefer endogenous hormones to exogenous one, to prefer the kind of puberty generated by endogenous hormones to the kind generated by exogenous ones” — is the Naturalistic Fallacy.
You would think Jolyon, a barrister, would know some things about the burden of proof. In the case of medications, the burden lies with the people claiming it to be safe to prove that it is. In the case of accusations against people being financed by the religious right, it is on the accuser. Maybe Jolyon is just a shit barrister?
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#2 Sastra
“I just had a TRA tell me that thinking that a child going through puberty naturally […] is the Naturalistic Fallacy.”
There seems to be surge in people calling things fallacies without realising a statement needs to meet a certain extremely basic formulation “A because B” in order to be an argument at all; before it can be declared a fallacious argument, it must first be an argument. And so it is extremely common lately for people to declare that any insult in a comment renders the entire comment an ad hominem argument, irrespective of whether the insult was relied upon in making an argument, or if the insulting thing was a conclusion of the argument rather than being a premise of it, or if the comment made an argument at all.
This seems to be part of a broad trend in TRA arguments – words and terms have simply lost their original meanings. Trying to set the record of a conversation straight, regarding who said what and when, with references to comment numbers and direct quotes? Gaslighting. Pointing out someone’s abusiveness? Sea Lioning. Responding to abuse in kind? Ad hominem. Explaining the difference between infer and imply, because someone leapt to an idiotic conclusion and called that lunacy a ‘direct implication’ of what I said? Intent is not magic.
And so on throughout arguments with TRAs on the usual topics… I have been told, in a discussion about the origins of public toilets being sex rather than gender segregated, bringing up the history of toilets is an Appeal to Tradition fallacy. I have been told, in a discussion about the meaning of the words ‘woman’ and ‘man’, pointing out that word meanings in natural languages arise from common use is an Appeal to Popularity. Oh and forget about etymology in a discussion of historical words meanings and their changes, that’s just another Appeal to Tradition.
Any specious argument or catechism will do, if it is convenient in the moment.
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