This is what I find so exhausting about those who try to drum up some kind of controversy around gender identity. Assuming it is all just a fad, who cares? Where's the issue when people decide to switch their gender on a whim? It's their lives. People do all kinds of things on a whim. Adults, teens and children too. Especially children, in fact. Sometimes people regret the things they did, sometimes they don't. Oh well, it's part of life.
I could understand being concerned about a social trend if it was causing violent behavior that negatively affected other people's lives, but this isn't that. Who is it hurting if someone decides to identify as another gender? Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's only going to affect them at worst. If anything the small government/pro-freedom position should be to defend the right of those people to live how they want.
The issue, at least for me, starts when we give children drugs and surgeries to enable them to switch genders.
There's nothing wrong with little Timmy wanting to play with Barbies. He doesn't need hormone injections because of it.
People are worried about their kids. People are scared and the media amplifies the most extreme voices. Establishing scientifically the effectiveness of medical interventions is difficult in the best of circumstances and most psychology is non-reproducible, so it's hard to know what to believe is best.
Rule implies that it applies to past conservative moral panics. Is there a past moral panic in which lots of formerly suppressed identities suddenly expressed themselves once the moral panic was over?
Freedom of religion allowed a lot of people to express their religious identity which was formerly suppressed?
[1] See notes on etymology etc. at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sinister
Why was left handedness considered taboo and evil? Do we need to figure out a legitimate reason for this before we can remove the fence? Could there possibly be a legitimate reason for something that clearly absurd?
There seems to be a representation threshold below which any observable minority is considered undesirable. To the extent there is a “legitimate reason” it is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology for avoiding too much genetic variation in small tribes. I submit those fences are the opposite of Chesterton’s fence and can happily be ignored in today’s society.
Hmm. I suspect it's just "other tribes". We humans will make tribes out of literally any distinction, even athletic team preferences. It's kind of our thing.
Yes: https://www.straightdope.com/21343459/in-the-third-world-do-...
Just as the media makes it out like the next stop by a cop could end up in an execution if you’re not the same ethnicity as the cop. It’s still rather rare, or at least not happening at the rate the media portrays it.
I don't know how you can a priori gauge this probability. If something illegal suddenly becomes legal but is still somewhat taboo, that obviously attracts experimentation, at least from rebellious youth.
If laws against witchcraft are removed and/or witchcraft is destigmatized and then all the sudden there appears to be an explosion of witches, the explanation is probably not that hordes of people are adopting witchcraft.
I'll leave it to the reader to guess the simplest and most likely explanation.