And as you can see, even Hacker News is not immune to this latest moral panic. Sadly, once a moral panic starts, it's nearly impossible to stop. It has to destroy an egregious number of innocent lives before society finally comes to its senses, at which point the panic slowly fizzles out.
I'm a bit surprised at how often it seems to come up in random comment threads. The atmosphere here feels increasingly unwelcoming lately.
Or maybe people feel like they're just having abstract, hypothetical intellectual discussions. But when I read these threads, it just feels like signal after signal that I no longer fit in or have a place here.
I too have noticed some quite transphobic attitudes on HN over the past year or so. It's been a bit shocking at times.
I have considered emailing the admins to state my concerns, or creating an account here to add another voice to threads when things start heading in that direction - but ultimately it seems futile as transphobia seems to have ramped up everywhere recently. It's scary.
Of all the wonderful trans people I know in the real world, very few are getting the medical assistance they need. Those people are fortunate enough to pay for private care, and even then the level of care they are getting is barely acceptable. My other trans friends are approaching their 30s and still on waiting lists.
Many things presented as fact in this thread do not line up with my experiences of trans issues and the wider LGBTQ community. In my opinion many users on HN are truly insightful about tech and programming, but utterly heartless when it comes to social issues.
It's worth noting that most of the people expressing those attitudes here are quite new accounts and/or end up severely downvoted, and often flagged to oblivion. In this discussion in particular I haven't noticed any "regulars" stepping off the deep end. It tends to be less futile to try to keep these things at bay here than most other places, as HN regulars have a low tolerance for heated/controversial political debates at the best of times, even before adding in concern over the specific views expressed, so the threshold for someone to end up flagged over it is pretty low.
If you have concerns that are not resolved by people getting flagged (may take a while for them to reach critical mass of flags) or banned, do e-mail the admins. I'm sure they'll at least listen.
Don't let them drive you away. As I wrote on another comment, most of the people making these comments seem to be new to the site, and while that doesn't make it that much better, most regulars here seem to be pretty accepting people.
Welcome to the world of being a deviant from social norms. I have contamination OCD; it was very mild until mid 2021 when the assholes in charge thought it was a great idea to drop both mask requirements and social distancing requirements at the same time. Then it flared up to moderate OCD and has stayed there ever since.
I live in the SF Bay area and only once overheard a sarcastic comment directed at my mask wearing. But every time I go out shopping in public and see people without masks I feel it. And that's completely discounting all of the articles I've read that favored removing masks and distancing, even from left-wing writers. The few people who are still mask-positive, or at least talk the talk, are nice, but seem less salient before the mask-negative people.
People don't give a shit, even though they know that behaving as normal means that literally hundreds of thousands of people will die each year from disease.
As a person who is not trans, but does have OCD, it's annoying how big a deal the powers that be make being "trans accepting". When at best they just say "tolerate those who continue to wear masks, but don't bother social distancing from them, or wearing your own mask". I think this annoyance (in people who see their own issues not cared about the same) sparks a backlash not necessarily against trans, but against the very large, disproportionately noticeable, social push for not just trans-tolerance, but trans-inclusion.
The main issue with "Trans" is that it covers way too many things these days. Everything from what used to be transvestitism to full-on post-op and hormone transsexualism, and including brand new things such as pronouns. And actions ranging from trans people who still otherwise behave entirely like their birth sex socially, to those who stealth everywhere they can in every way they can, to those who flaunt their transness in various ways. And that's without factoring in the third parties who support transness, and the various kinds of actions they take (such as militantly policing pronouns, or encouraging people to consider whether they're trans without letting the topic arise naturally - which is a definite problem for some people who are on the OCD spectrum [Trans-OCD] as well as people who are suggestible).
And it includes other people who are even more socially deviant (pedophilia, extreme body modification), trying to hitch their wagon to the trans issue, as trans hitched itself to LGB, which brings in the slippery slope arguments.
Basically there's a ton of stuff going on with respect to trans. Various people can be okay with almost all of it, but not with some of it. These people can say what they have a problem with and it can be perceived as blanket anti-trans or "transphobia", when it's not. Or those people can actually become blanket anti-trans because of the one thing they originally had a problem with.
P.S. I found your comment while going back through my thread list and felt the desire to respond.
I recently read the Fate Horror Toolkit. It's a tabletop role-playing book dedicated to writing/improvising horror stories. They try to trace typical horror plots/clichés to the underlying social fears, typically of US society. Very interesting read for people who are into storytelling.
And yes, there are a few paragraphs about transgender fear in horror.
People believing that masses of children are literally getting surgery, circumcision notwithstanding, is a result of a persistent campaign to cause panic.
And it's the same hucksters selling fear to the same religious reactionaries. New day, new apocalyptic scapegoat.
It's happening regardless of the disingenous "it's not happening" claims. Here's some reading for you. There are many more examples. Cute swipe at religion though.
Children don't receive elective surgery. It's just not a thing, in any medical guidelines or ethics rules, anywhere in the country. Older teens, _extremely rarely_, are allowed to have top surgery, but it's case by case.
Children _can_ receive puberty blockers, which _by definition_ are 100% completely reversible. The process to start treatment is universally difficult and involves multiple years of therapy and concurrence of multiple medical providers over time.
No, puberty blockers are not 100% reversible and they are not harmless, either. Surgeries are not rare, either - at least it is debatable what should be considered "rare".
Risks are comparative, moral panic is not and ignores this. Banning something because it is not 100% harmless is just not something that is done without extra considerations, such as a moralizing. E.g. Pain killers cause significantly more societal harm than puberty blockers but are still widely available.
As to the real risks, time and again it has been shown that the comparative risks of a) receiving puberty blockers vs b) growing up a gender you do not feel you are, strongly points to puberty blockers being a significant net benefit. Those taking puberty blockers rarely regret it; whereas those growing up a gender they do not identify with mostly regret it are are significantly more prone to abuse, mental health issues and suicide.
Kids get fed mountains of acetaminophen every year. Why do you suppose that acetaminophen packages have prominent warnings about not exceeding dosages?
It's because acetaminophen is extremely hepatotoxic at levels not very far above the recommended dosages.
> Hepatic injury and subsequent hepatic failure due to both intentional and non-intentional overdose of acetaminophen (APAP) has affected patients for decades, and [...] remains a global issue; in the United States, in particular, it accounts for more than 50% of overdose-related acute liver failure and approximately 20% of the liver transplant cases.
I would assert that acetaminophen is far more likely to be dangerous to far more children than puberty blockers and yet I don't see any moral panic over children's Tylenol.
Circumcision is one of those things that make me pessimistic about any societal change. It's an unthinkable act in most of the world, and broadly considered medically unnecessary for something like 99.9% of penises. With the exception of some religious nuts, no one does this to their son in countries like mine, but in the US the status quo means that the chance you'll lose your foreskin as a baby is about that of calling heads on the flip of a coin.
It just doesn't seem to be about facts at all.
The apparent fact that the people who are pushing for personhood of embryos and rage against people reading a book in drag seem perfectly fine with male genital mutilation really highlights that this isn't about the welfare of the children at all.
As the father of a young son: damn, people are stupid.
Yep, cultural inertia is a powerful thing. Very little about human decision making is about facts. People largely come to an emotional decision based on group identity, prior bias, etc... and then do post hoc justification with curated "facts" from sources they approve of.
Belief perseverance. For anyone who thinks (like I used to) "but not me, right? I'm rational" [this experiment](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3233529) was done on people with PhDs.
Yes, it is - but that would upend the 'only two genders/sexes' status quo and we can't have that. Imagine the mass panic and moral decay that would ensue.
Why bother loving your kid for who they are when you can just ask the docker to slice them up before they can consent? Or deny them access to Healthcare based on your own feelings because you really like your kids genitals...
You're right, perhaps I phrased that poorly. What I meant was that it's par for the course for the reactionary US political party. Definitely a bad thing
From my perspective the Republicans are the reactionary party and the Democrats are the conservative party. It's just how far the Overton window has shifted. However I do agree that their actions do a lot to harm citizens and the country, more so than D or at least more blatantly and overtly. It's wild how they claim to be the about freedom then do everything they can to restrict it, especially with speech
as a foreigner with some interest in US history it does seem like Republicans are going back to their early philosophy of Republicanism, which is basically the moral and political framework of the USA circa the time of abolition, where as Democrats have adopted a postmodern European worldview
these two worldviews differ very significantly and are in a very deep conflict, and by definition the euro-postmodern view is a lot more comfortable in bureaucracy and the currently much bigger (Federal-) State, is much better at it, and effectively controls it at all levels
this renders Republicans into a reactionary party, especially as the growing trend within it abandons neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism
Democrats look a lot like the old Whig party which existed both sides of the Atlantic but was out of step with the prevailing culture; they also look a lot more like a modern British mainstream party than any major US party has looked before, which IMO it's not a good thing, but European politicians love it