Apology for the Priesthood Ban / "March of Dimes Syndrome" / "Mission Creep" / "Spencer's Law"

[The Nehor]

47 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I know a very skinny person who identifies as trans fat.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onejoke/

[smac97]

8 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Quote

Ah, well.  Reasonable minds can disagree about such things.

This again. 🤪

Yep.  It is better to acknowledge this than to resort to taunts, insults, logical fallacies, etc.

8 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Do you have anything to actually say

Yes.  I just said quite a bit.

8 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

or are you just throwing out an article list from luminaries such as the National Review and the (LOL) Daily Mail?

Yet another appeal to ridicule.

8 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

This is like a monkey throwing feces and thinking they are now winning a debate.

Ah.  And now the personal insults in lieu of substantive, civil discussion.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

18 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Calling racists racist is an attempt to silence them!!!!!!!

We know, try to keep up with the rest of the class here.

You have a long track record of labeling people you dislike with horrible accusations.  

18 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Also the silencing thing isn’t working so whining about it is really just pathetic.  It leads to weirdos thinking they are being horribly oppressed and that trans people are protected and lauded and lead privileged lives. It is broke-brained thinking.

And the insults in lieu of substance continue. 

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, smac97 said:

And now the personal insults in lieu of substantive, civil discussion.

 

You don’t think accusing others of mutilating children so they can feel better about themselves because they can promote a meaningless cause is insulting?

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[smac97]

48 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Amazon never banned the book.

Target did: Target Pulls Anti-Trans Book from Shelves

The ACLU also weighed in: Some in ACLU Have New Cause: Book Banning

Quote

Abigail Shrier’s new book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, was bound to be controversial.

The book was banned from Target (allegedly after a Twitter complaint), but then reinstated.

But the outcry against the book continues. One of the most shocking (to the extent that anything shocks these days) comments comes from an ACLU officer, who demands that the book be banned. Shrier writes about this in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans,” Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted Friday. “I think of all the times & ways I was told my transness wasn’t real & the daily toll it takes. We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.” Then: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”

You read that right: Some in today’s ACLU favor book banning. Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, went further, tweeting: “I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.”

See also the behavior of the American Booksellers Association and its subsidiary, the oh-so-ironically-named "American Booksellers for Free Expression": 

ABA: ‘We’re Book Banners — But For The Left’

Quote

From the website of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group of independent bookstores (ABFE is a subsidiary):

The American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE) is a sponsor and advocate for Banned Books Week, which celebrates the freedom to read by encouraging readouts, bookstore displays, and community activities designed to raise awareness of the ongoing threat of censorship. Held each year during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982, according to the American Library Association.

The theme of this year’s event is “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us.” This year’s motif is a pair of hands sharing a book, superimposed on a globe. The 2021 theme is intended to be inclusive, emphasizing the ways in which books and information bring people together, help individuals see themselves in the stories of others, and aid the development of empathy and understanding for people from other backgrounds.

Look, they even have a swell graphic:

More:

“Um, Dave? Yeah, I’ve got a free speech emergency here. The bad guy is in the house.”

They’re talking about Abigail Shrier’s massive bestseller Irreversible Damage: How The Trans Craze Is Harming Our Daughters.

Let me remind you that this is the trade association of independent booksellers, yet they believe that simply mentioning a popular book that offends against woke dogma is “a violent incident.”

Shrier has responded:

Quote

The efforts to block my reporting have been legion, starting with staff threats at a publishing house, which quickly reversed its original intention to publish my book. Once I obtained a stalwart publisher, Regnery, Amazon refused to allow that company’s sales team to sponsor ads on its site. (Amazon allows sponsored ads for books that uncritically celebrate medical transition for teenagers).

Because the book tackles an interesting phenomenon, a number of established journalists wanted to review it. The issue of trans-identification has seemed to come out of nowhere with Gen Z, the generation begun in 1995 whose large-scale mental-health crisis already has us so on edge. And the issue has created surprising bedfellows. Religious conservatives are concerned about the trend—but so are lesbians, who look upon the shocking numbers of teen girls transitioning with abject alarm. Many suspect that all this transitioning of girls is effectively euthanizing a generation of young lesbians.

In any case, every major newspaper and legacy magazine summarily turned interested journalists down. Whether they would have reviewed my book favorably or unfavorably, I have no idea—and it doesn’t matter. Kirkus, which reviews 10,000 titles per year, including self-published and obscure works—pretended my book didn’t exist. Its editors, too busy heaping praise on the Trans Teen Survival Guide, When Aiden Became a Brother, Jack (Not Jackie), Rethinking Normal, and of course, Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.

Alternative media rushed in where legacy media feared to go. Joe Rogan hosted me on his show, and for two hours, we explored why a growing number of researchers believe social contagion is at play when clusters of girls suddenly announce, as if as one, that they are boys. Gender dysphoria has always existed, but until recently, afflicted males almost exclusively. While gender dysphoria has always been vanishingly rare among females, social contagion has not. These are the same high-anxiety, depressive (mostly white) girls who, in previous decades, fell prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder. Now it’s gender dysphoria, sometimes along with some or all of those other conditions. Parents are being presented with the seductive idea of transition as a utopian cure-all.

After the podcast aired, I was overwhelmed with messages from parents—and even transgender adults—who reached out to thank me for the episode. But at Spotify, which now hosts Rogan’s podcasts, employees threw a fit. They threatened to walk out over the interview, calling it transphobic, and demanding that it be deleted from the platform. Both Rogan and I were also called transphobes by Media Matters and Men’s Health. Spotify staff reportedly held 10 separate meetings in an attempt to mollify activist-employees who demanded an editorial veto.

“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

48 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

{Amazon} did cancel a marketing campaign on the site for it.

Oh.  That's all.

Amazon Enforces ‘Trans’ Orthodoxy

Quote

If you write a book celebrating troubled teenage girls suddenly coming out as “transgender” in friend groups, pursuing a regimen of cross-sex hormones and surgeries—Amazon will happily promote it. But if you write a book that points out the risks of this gender journey, Amazon wants nothing to do with you.

This is the lesson my publisher, Regnery, learned last week when Amazon informed it that Regnery wouldn’t be permitted to run a sponsored ad for my book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.” Amazon’s stated reason for barring the ad—a simple picture of my book’s cover—was this: “It contains elements that may not be appropriate for all audiences, which may include ad copy/book content that infers or claims to diagnose, treat, or question sexual orientation.”
...
What sorts of ads does Amazon believe are “appropriate for all audiences”? Chest-compression garments for girls who want to appear more masculine. The medical risks of broken ribs, shortness of breath and deformation of breast tissue are, apparently, unobjectionable to the world’s largest retailer.

Amazon also apparently has no qualms running sponsored ads for a host of books promoting social and medical transition among adolescents. Some of the books with sponsored ads insist that when a teen girl decides, out of the blue, that she might be “transgender,” the job of the parents is to accept her new name and pronouns, agree and “affirm.”

So, yeah.  Good amounts of efforts at suppression of viewpoints going on here.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited October 8, 2024 by smac97

[smac97]

10 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

And now the personal insults in lieu of substantive, civil discussion.

You don’t think accusing others of mutilating children so they can feel better about themselves because they can promote a meaningless cause is insulting?

I did no such thing.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

23 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I did no such thing.

Thanks,

-Smac

I believe it was Teddy who used the term “mutilation”.  What would you call unnecessary surgery?  You are claiming the surgeries are unnecessary, are you not?  Did you not post an article with “grisly truth” as part of its title, labeling it “worthwhile”?

The mission creep idea being applied to this topic suggests you see the cause as something created to feel the void that a previous cause filled.  What purpose does this serve in your view?

Why do you believe that “[f]or career activists, success is a threat”?

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

22 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Good amounts of efforts at suppression of viewpoints going on here.

So if a business refuses to promote a particular viewpoint, say by pulling a book or refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding, this is not free speech, but a suppression of a viewpoint in your view?

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[The Nehor]

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Target did: Target Pulls Anti-Trans Book from Shelves

Good for them.

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The ACLU also weighed in: Some in ACLU Have New Cause: Book Banning

Some in ACLU means one person affiliated with the ACLU spoke passionately and shortly after retracted their statement.

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

See also the behavior of the American Booksellers Association and its subsidiary, the oh-so-ironically-named "American Booksellers for Free Expression": 

ABA: ‘We’re Book Banners — But For The Left’

Which was not a ban at all but somehow they are book banners now? Okay, good job propagandists. Pulled the wool over smac’s eyes!

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Shrier has responded:

“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

Cool, she is scum out to hurt my friends. Don’t care.

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Oh.  That's all.

Amazon deciding not to accept certain ads is not censorship.

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Amazon Enforces ‘Trans’ Orthodoxy

So, yeah.  Good amounts of efforts at suppression of viewpoints going on here.

It is not a viewpoint. It is a lie. The book was not banned or censored. The book was controversial because it presents lies as truth. The controversy led to increased book sales.

Lying is profitable. We already knew that though. No one was suppressed. Anyone who wanted to read it could do so.

SO MUCH WHINING!!!!! Especially coming from people who think everyone else is falsely claiming to be victimized. Once again: It is always projection.

15 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Thanks,

You’re not welcome.

[The Nehor]

41 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Yep.  It is better to acknowledge this than to resort to taunts, insults, logical fallacies, etc.

I choose neither of these options.

41 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Yes.  I just said quite a bit.

Nope.

41 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Yet another appeal to ridicule.

You are presenting tabloids as support for your argument and think ridicule is the problem?

41 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Ah.  And now the personal insults in lieu of substantive, civil discussion.

There is no substantive discussion. Tabloids.

Did you hear about how Bigfoot gave birth to a lizard baby?

41 minutes ago, smac97 said:

You have a long track record of labeling people you dislike with horrible accusations.  

Sounds like something a Nazi would say.

41 minutes ago, smac97 said:

And the insults in lieu of substance continue. 

Says the guy unironically posting Daily Mail articles. Mote and beam.

[smac97]

On 10/8/2024 at 12:39 PM, Calm said:

Quote

Quote

You don’t think accusing others of mutilating children so they can feel better about themselves because they can promote a meaningless cause is insulting?

I did no such thing.

I believe it was Teddy who used the term “mutilation”.  What would you call unnecessary surgery?  

That would depend on the context.  I would generally avoid provocative and conclusory terminology, but "mutilation" might be apt.  For example:

Quote

In 1997, Dr. Robert Smith, a Scottish surgeon saw a patient with an atypical request. He wanted the surgeon to amputate his perfectly healthy left leg. Why the request? The patient argued his left foot wasn’t part of him. “It felt alien.” Dr. Smith had the patient see a psychiatrist. The patient was diagnosed with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Smith performed the operation. At follow-up a couple of years later, the patient reported his life was positively transformed by the operation. Word got out. Smith saw another such patient and performed a similar amputation. And the second patient also reported a positive result.

If a child with serious mental health comorbidities asks a doctor to cut off the child's healthy body parts, whether due to Body Integrity Identity Disorder or some other mental health disorder (such as Gender Dysphoria), and if the doctor complies with that request, then that deserves some real discussion.  That said, labeling this as "mutilation" might be risible and/or conclusory, and may derail the discussion.

On 10/8/2024 at 12:39 PM, Calm said:

You are claiming the surgeries are unnecessary, are you not?

That's where the discussion should evaluate.

On 10/8/2024 at 12:39 PM, Calm said:

The mission creep idea being applied to this topic suggests you see the cause as something created to feel the void that a previous cause filled.  

Where are you getting this "something created to feel the void that a previous cause filled" stuff?  Where did I say this?

On 10/8/2024 at 12:39 PM, Calm said:

What purpose does this serve in your view?

"This" refers to what?

On 10/8/2024 at 12:39 PM, Calm said:

Why do you believe that “[f]or career activists, success is a threat”?

Activists who purported to want to curb or resolve this or that social ailment tend to run into a pretty serious conflict of interest.  Look at all the NGOs in California who are being paid billions of public dollars to address homelessness.  If they succeed at their efforts, they put themselves out of business.  Success, then, "is a threat" to "career activists."

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited November 12, 2024 by smac97

[Calm]

12 minutes ago, smac97 said:

This" refers to what?

The change of mission.  Why do activists change their mission in your view?  Your posting of the mission creep articles which have a critical view suggests you see this as unnecessary and undesirable for some reason.

Are you just accusing the activists who are paid for creating a new issue so they can continue to get funding or do you see those who also promote the causes for nonmonetary reasons as problematic?

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Where are you getting this "something created to feel the void that a previous cause filled" stuff?  Where did I say this?

Where did I say you said this?  I was addressing the context of the topic and its implications.

Even if unspoken, the implications of the conclusions promoted by the thread, including some in the articles you posted, are insulting and it is hardly surprising that someone who holds the position being criticized would reacted in the same way as if they were directly insulted…especially given Teddy made it explicit.

I don’t believe it is helpful to ignore the implications of accusations as if just because words aren’t spoken but just implied, it isn’t insulting.

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[The Nehor]

11 minutes ago, smac97 said:

That's where the discussion should evaluate.

Or we could listen to the majority of experts who work with the people who actually have gender dysphoria and what seems to lead to the most positive outcomes.

Oh wait, that would shoot you dead in the water. Better to pretend that public discussions of the issue are needed and somehow helpful and should continue endlessly to suggest that it is still a massive controversy. Also side benefit that we can continue to victimize transgender people. Oh, and those laws designed to hurt transgender people causing suicides to increase…..we can keep doing those too.

WOOHOO! The system works!

[JVW]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

The book is not “good”. It pushes the notion of ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria) which is the idea that if you fall in with a transgender crowd you will get dysphoria suddenly and completely and want to transition immediately. There is no credible evidence that this happens and no major healthcare institution believes it exists.

Sounds like you've never read the book. Try commenting on the book after you've read it please, or change your comment to "The book does not seem 'good'".

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

It is quack science.

Dude...

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Also on a practical level if you just want to be queer because it is the route to acceptance (LOL) in a peer group there are much easier ways to do that. You just identify as a demiboy and wear masculine jeans and a hoodie or something or identify as heteroflexible and kiss a few girls. Why run to be transgender when it is currently the biggest target of bigots? Teenagers can be very stupid but they aren’t that stupid.

I don't know.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

It is actually around 2%. Also notable that 35% of that 2% attempted suicide in the last year. Oh, and those suicides go up in states that pass anti-transgender legislation.

Yes, the 2% are unhappy, we aren't debating that.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

There wasn’t a single case of dysphoria a decade or two ago since it was first conceived of in the 1950s? Are you a time traveller? Also dysphoria has been around since….well….forever. You can find its expressions taking different forms in different cultures.

I don't have time to research and polish my posts. By conceived I mean there was a Doctor that coined it, or it was added to the DSM-III or IV. I don't recall the exact dates or details, but it's somewhere around that timeframe when diagnosing was actually a thing that started happening. It's like cancer. People have died historically from cancer, but only relatively recently has it been a diagnosable condition. So we can track it now from the time it became diagnosable and track trends and potential correlations for causes and stuff like that. That's the general thing I'm trying to express.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Again, there is no evidence supporting the idea that there is a large social aspect. There was an attempt to make it the new anorexia but nothing backing it has surfaced.

The Doctor that created the term "gender-dysphoria" and did the first diagnoses and all of that stuff got canceled and I think lost his license because he's against current trans stuff. So the person who may be the world's biggest expert on the condition is taken out of the evidence pool. You say there is no evidence, I think it's safe to say based off of how you write, that you haven't read any evidence supporting anything contrary to your views. And if any evidence ever did pop up you would dismiss it out of hand because it's "harmful" to your worldview and to your friends. The truth can hurt. If you aren't willing to risk being wrong or experience pain you may craft a comfortable perspective, but it will be filled with falsehoods.

The thing about science is that whatever side of an issue you want to stand on, regardless of how big or small the topic is, you can be right and have scientific research to support your viewpoint. If the science is ever "settled" then it is no longer science, it is dogma. The heart of the scientific community is debate, argument, opposing views, and critical thinking. The moment that's shut down or a consensus is reached then it ceases to be a scientific endeavor.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Your daughter is not an extension of you that exists to fulfill all your desires. What if she identifies as lesbian or bisexual and starts to date women? What if she decides she doesn’t want children? Is she trash to be thrown aside for failing you? You want her to be happy and have decided in advance what that will require for her. Go back up to that 35% of those 2% having tried to commit suicide in the last year. Suicide rates are also higher in closeted youth. Creating an atmosphere where she has to hide her feelings will not help her be happy. You want to spare your child pain but all those desires won’t change their desires.

Dude... What kind of conclusions are you jumping to here. You think I don't love my daughter because I wrote one sentence on the internet? Come off it, man.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

No, but believing that being trans means they have no future does.

I have never heard anyone on the pro or against ever express the sentiment that trans people have no future... If a trans person believes that, that's on them, I haven't seen any messaging like that anywhere in the media. Being trans can (in some cases) mean that you can't have biological children anymore, but I don't think that's what you mean here.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

"Bullying doesn't make people suicidal." WRONG.

As a brief example. Blacks are bullied way more than whites, but blacks have one of the lowest suicide rates in the country while whites have one of the highest. I know on an individual level bullying has an impact on mood and is definitely not good, but the issue is a lot more complex than "I'm bullied b/c I'm trans, so I'm peacing out." Way more complex than that.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Of course it is not full of happy, peaceful, content individuals. Do you know what being closeted does to a person? Do you know about what it is like to have to hide part of yourself lest your family think you a monster? It is not fun being an object of ridicule. It is not fun knowing that many of your closest emotional relationships have a big conditional on them. You don’t know how they would react if they knew who you really are. It poisons those relationships. It is awful.

Yes, I know what it feels like. I know what all of that feels like very intimately and for many, many years throughout my childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

I spent a lot of time weeping wishing I was straight because it would be easier. I wasn’t though and I am still not. My opinion was not asked for. I am in my 40s and have accepted what I am for about 20 years now. I am still working through the damage that hiding and self-hatred did to me.

I'm not arguing about gays. Regardless of how gays are, whether there's a gene, or born-this-way, or not doesn't really matter. Trans is not born-this-way, and if anyone is, it is not 2% of girls, or people who lived fine until in their 60s they decided they wanted to be a woman.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Transgender people have it much much worse off than I do. Stop spreading ideas and intolerance that make it worse for them. They suffer enough.

Trans people do not have it worse off than you. Most people are all in the same crap bucket. We all experience feelings of self-hatred, not belonging, feeling misidentified or unaccepted. I feel those feelings when I read your responses to my posts in this thread. We all have things we don't like about our bodies, etc. I would argue that a homeless fentanyl addict has it harder than most trans people, especially any of the white middle to upper-middle class female teenagers in high school. Trans people suffering is not my fault, it is not the governments fault, it is not their parents fault.

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

The change of mission.  Why do activists change their mission in your view?  

I think a lot of activist organizations "change their mission" because they are, as the article notes, "career activists."  Activism is their source of income, and/or a big part of their raison d'etre.

March of Dimes started out fighting polio, but when polio was cured, it "changed its mission to preventing birth defects."

Opponents of the Vietnam War "change{d} their mission" to opposing nuclear power in the 70s;

"Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new 'epidemic of sexual assault'"?

"Affirmative action was originally supposed to be a 'temporary measure,' as the Supreme Court put it in 1979, but it has become a permanent cause for civil rights activists."

The SPLC "{was} launched in the 1970s to offer legal representation to individual victims of discrimination but then switched to filing lawsuits against chapters of the Ku Klux Klan," and then when the Klan was effectively dead, the SPLC "pivoted again" by "chang{ing} the name of its 'Klanwatch' project to 'Hatewatch,' and began issuing reports listing a growing number of 'hate groups' and 'extremists' across America."  "The SPLC’s appeals to combat a 'rising tide of hate' have brought in so much donor money that its endowment has soared above $600 million."

Quote

Consider the current cultural conflicts over gender and sex. As the gay rights movement achieved its initial goals from the 1970s, overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality, the movement expanded to include so many new causes that it required an acronym, LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and more). Its leaders declared a new cause, same-sex marriage, which vanished after the Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015. Five years later, the Court extended civil rights protections to people’s sexual preferences.

What were activists to do? Gays could marry in every state, and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class—what more could groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force possibly demand from the government? What would get the attention of crusading journalists? An antigay hate crime would generate a brief publicity and fund-raising burst, but even progressive journalists struggled to sustain the groups’ narrative that America was a homophobic society.

The laws against homosexuality had been toppled. The culture that produced those laws has been overthrown, too. Most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House. Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide. Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory. Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual despite never having had sex with a woman.

So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for **** sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business.

"March of Dimes Syndrome" (aka "Mission Creep" aka "Spencer's Law") is, I think, a pretty serious problem in society because the folks who are doing it often end up exaggerating or fabricating social ills to justify their continued "activism."  If there isn't a Big Problem, some self-interested activists may end up ginning one up, and then stoking outrange and anger and social turmoil to bring meaning and notoriety/praise (and money) to their activism.

From the Tierney article:

Quote

Several factors are responsible for this paradox. First is the negativity effect, or the brain’s innate bias to pay more attention to the negative than the positive. The better that things get, the harder we look to find something bad, a tendency termed “prevalence-induced concept change” by the social psychologists who demonstrated it in 2018, in a study published in Science. In one of the experiments, the psychologists showed people photos of faces and asked them to identify the ones with threatening expressions. As the series of photos progressed, fewer and fewer hostile faces appeared, but the people were so determined to see the negative that they started misclassifying the neutral faces as hostile. “When the world gets better,” explained one of the psychologists, Daniel Gilbert, “we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all.”

As the world gets better—as people become richer, better educated, and longer-lived—we find new things to worry about and have more disposable income and free time to spend curing humanity’s woes, real or imagined. Our instinct to save others is noble, but it risks being corrupted. “As society grows wealthier,” the economist Donald Boudreaux observes, “the need to be saved by others from earthly misfortunes grows steadily less frequent and less dire while the itch to save others from earthly misfortunes grows steadily more frequent and more intense.” This itch explains why journalists and the public keep falling for hoaxers like the actor Jussie Smollett: the demand for racism vastly exceeds the supply. It’s not easy to meet the growing demand from saviors, given a shrinking supply of victims, but the potential rewards have inspired remarkable creativity—and there’s every reason to expect more in the future.

As threats to humanity diminish, the March of Dimes syndrome will lead to increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric, a strategy that environmentalists have already mastered. Last century, they warned that “overpopulation” would cause billions to starve to death, that the “energy crisis” would usher in a new “age of scarcity” as humanity ran out of fossil fuels, and that synthetic chemicals would cause a “cancer epidemic.” Those crises were all bogus, but they did at least involve basic necessities for survival and immediate threats to people’s lives.

I think much of the activism in and against the Church is aptly characterized as arising from "March of Dimes Syndrome."

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

1 minute ago, smac97 said:

March of Dimes started out fighting polio, but when polio was cured, it "changed its mission to preventing birth defects."

And why is this a problem?  

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new 'epidemic of sexual assault'"?

 

Are you suggesting this was a created issue and not a result of actual sexual assaults as the “discover”, the “new”, and the quotes around “epidemic of sexual assault” implies?

Especially with this added?

Quote

If there isn't a Big Problem, some self-interested activists may end up ginning one up, and then stoking outrange and anger and social turmoil to bring meaning and notoriety/praise (and money) to their activism.

 

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[smac97]

26 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

March of Dimes started out fighting polio, but when polio was cured, it "changed its mission to preventing birth defects."

And why is this a problem?  

Where the new "mission" is worthwhile, and not a contrived or hyped up or exaggerated or politicized one, I think such pivots might be legitimate.  But activism for the sake of activism, activism to justify the ongoing financial remuneration of activists, can quickly go astray.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited October 8, 2024 by smac97

[Calm]

Just now, smac97 said:

Where the new "mission" is worthwhile, and not a contrived or hyped up or exaggerated one, I think such pivots might be legitimate.  But activism for the sake of activism, activism to justify the ongoing financial remuneration of activists, can quickly go astray.

Thanks,

-Smac

Are you suggesting that all in the list provided by either you or the articles are either contrived, hyped up or exaggerated?

Because it seems odd to use a worthwhile mission as an example in a criticism of mission creep.

[smac97]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

Quote

Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new 'epidemic of sexual assault'"?

Are you suggesting this was a created issue

"This" being "a new 'epidemic of sexual assault?'"  Yes.

Sexual assault is a terrible thing.  It ought not be sensationalized, exaggerated, distorted, politicized, etc. so as to increase the financial gain and other benefits accruing to "career activists."

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

and not a result of actual sexual assaults as the “discover”, the “new”, and the quotes around “epidemic of sexual assault” implies?

If the #MeToo movement did, in fact, discover a new "epidemic of sexual assault," I'd like to see it.

"Epidemic" as in "extremely prevalent; widespread."

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I think a lot of activist organizations "change their mission" because they are, as the article notes, "career activists."  Activism is their source of income, and/or a big part of their raison d'etre.

And are we running out of causes.

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

March of Dimes started out fighting polio, but when polio was cured, it "changed its mission to preventing birth defects."

Good.

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Opponents of the Vietnam War "change{d} their mission" to opposing nuclear power in the 70s;

Made a little more sense back then but nuclear reactors are much safer now.

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

"Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new 'epidemic of sexual assault'"?

Because numbers are still way too high and we were finding new ways rapists were getting away with it.

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

"Affirmative action was originally supposed to be a 'temporary measure,' as the Supreme Court put it in 1979, but it has become a permanent cause for civil rights activists."

Maybe we should fix the underlying problem then.

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The SPLC "{was} launched in the 1970s to offer legal representation to individual victims of discrimination but then switched to filing lawsuits against chapters of the Ku Klux Klan," and then when the Klan was effectively dead, the SPLC "pivoted again" by "chang{ing} the name of its 'Klanwatch' project to 'Hatewatch,' and began issuing reports listing a growing number of 'hate groups' and 'extremists' across America."  "The SPLC’s appeals to combat a 'rising tide of hate' have brought in so much donor money that its endowment has soared above $600 million."

Nice! This is a good thing. The Klan may be gone but their successor groups and ideologies still need to be fought.

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

"March of Dimes Syndrome" (aka "Mission Creep" aka "Spencer's Law") is, I think, a pretty serious problem in society because the folks who are doing it often end up exaggerating or fabricating social ills to justify their continued "activism."  If there isn't a Big Problem, some self-interested activists may end up ginning one up, and then stoking outrange and anger and social turmoil to bring meaning and notoriety/praise (and money) to their activism.

Why is it the same people arguing that we are in some kind of decline that only the deus ex machina of God intervening by literally appearing and taking over can fix it also somehow believe that society is doing great and there is too much activism to try to make things better?

8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

From the Tierney article:

I think much of the activism in and against the Church is aptly characterized as arising from "March of Dimes Syndrome."

LOL! A bunch of bored activists are targeting the Church because they can’t come up with anything better? My, don’t we think highly of ourselves?

[smac97]

39 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Or we could listen to the majority of experts who work with the people who actually have gender dysphoria and what seems to lead to the most positive outcomes.

Would such "listening" include the drastic reversals we are seeing in gender treatment for children in large swaths of Europe?

Opinion: Europe’s example on gender treatment

Quote

When it comes to transgender medical treatments for children, parts of Europe have taken an enviable approach that relies on science rather than politics, advocacy or emotion. The results have been telling.

In recent years, several European countries, including the more progressive nations of Scandinavia, have pulled back on allowing gender-related treatments for minors because some doctors have serious concerns about the risks. As U.S. News reported last year, these changes are being driven by healthcare policymakers and medical professionals, not by lawmakers. This has led to calmer and more rational discussions than what often takes place in the hyper-partisan United States.

In the UK, a report by Hillary Cass, chair of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, authored a report to the National Health Service that documented several flaws to how young people with gender confusion are being treated. Among her findings is that “The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.”

Beyond that, she said, a medical pathway for such distress may not be the best way to proceed for a majority of such young people.

These changes lend credence to voices within the U.S. that are calling for a halt to some gender-related treatment for minors. Most recently, a coalition of health policy and conservative groups known as the American College of Pediatricians and “Doctors Protecting Children” issued a strongly worded statement opposing the progressive-driven policies of associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association.

The coalition says U.S. medical associations — including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry — should follow the science the way many in Europe are doing.

This would mean to “immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex,” the group said.

“Instead, these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria.”

The website for Doctors Protecting Children includes references to several academic studies. Among these is one from the Dutch University of Groningen, which followed 2,772 children as they grew from 11 to 22-26 years of age. At the beginning, 11% reported being unhappy with their reported gender. By about age 26, only 4% expressed such concerns, demonstrating, as the group contends, that most thoughts and feelings that are at odds with a person’s gender at birth resolve themselves over time.

The group also believes a person’s sex is an innate trait that occurs at fertilization. “This genetic signature is present in every nucleated somatic cell in the body and is not altered by drugs or surgical interventions.”

But of course, this affirmation, together with the call for a reduction in gender-related treatments among minors, has been lost in much of the American political spectrum that, for too many people, takes precedence over science, or over what science currently suggests in other developed countries.

Everyone ought to agree on one thing, however, and that is that we can’t afford to get this matter, which affects the lives of so many children, wrong. Science is clear that the brain, while full-sized by early adolescence, continues to form and mature until a person is well into his or her 20s. The National Institute of Mental Health says the prefrontal cortex is the last part to mature. “This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions,” its website says. Recognizing this, a host of laws and policies keep people from making certain decisions, or being able to engage in certain behaviors, until they reach a certain age. Certainly, life-changing decisions concerning gender should wait until such maturing takes place.

Utah lawmakers passed a bill last year that outlawed gender-reassignment surgeries for those under the age of 18, and that placed an indefinite moratorium on hormonal treatments for children and teens not already undergoing treatment for gender dysphoria. So far, 25 states have passed such laws. To no one’s surprise, lawsuits have arisen. And while the U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a ruling allowing Idaho to enforce its ban on treatments for minors, it didn’t rule on the constitutionality of such bans. Some experts believe a case challenging Tennessee’s ban may provide some clarity. That case involves a 15-year-old transgender girl and two other families who have filed anonymously. However, the high court has yet to decide whether to hear the case.

Not all European countries are adopting policies limiting gender treatments, and because many countries are relying on health-care policies, and not laws, to guide medical decisions, it would be inaccurate to say they have banned the practice. Research is ongoing and may further change these policies. The attitude in Sweden is typical of this approach.

The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden allows treatments for minors only “within a research context” and for “exceptional cases.” It adds that the “risks of puberty suppressing treatment … and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits.”

Much of that concern is based on the results of a 2022 study commissioned by the government.

U.S. News reported that Mikael Landén, a professor and chief physician at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and co-author of the report, wrote in an email, “From the lack of evidence follows that a conservative approach is warranted.”

Policymakers in the United States should at least acknowledge the need for more data. Children deserve as much.

Good points, these.

39 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Oh wait, that would shoot you dead in the water.

Not at all.  I am very much in favor of the recent trends we have seen in relation to this issue.

39 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Better to pretend that public discussions of the issue are needed

I'm not pretending.  Public discussions of these issues are needed.  Even when demagogues are trying to shout down such discussions by calling their participants bigots, nazis, etc.

39 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

and somehow helpful

Public discussions of these issues are helpful.  

39 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

and should continue endlessly to suggest that it is still a massive controversy.

Apparently the controversy is still ongoing.  Here you are, denigrating people who disagree with you as nazis for the crime of . . . disagreeing with you about medical gender treatment of children.

If the issue were unimportant or resolved, I don't think you would be trying so hard to stifle viewpoints with which you disagree.

39 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Also side benefit that we can continue to victimize transgender people.

And the slanders and accusations continue apace.

From the above article:

Quote

Everyone ought to agree on one thing, however, and that is that we can’t afford to get this matter, which affects the lives of so many children, wrong. Science is clear that the brain, while full-sized by early adolescence, continues to form and mature until a person is well into his or her 20s. The National Institute of Mental Health says the prefrontal cortex is the last part to mature. “This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions,” its website says. Recognizing this, a host of laws and policies keep people from making certain decisions, or being able to engage in certain behaviors, until they reach a certain age. Certainly, life-changing decisions concerning gender should wait until such maturing takes place.

I think this point merits discussion.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

24 minutes ago, smac97 said:

the #MeToo movement did, in fact, discover a new "epidemic of sexual assault," I'd like to see it.

Weren’t you paying attention, smac?  There was nothing new about the sexual assaults that women were reporting, including a number on this board. Iirc, a majority of the women posting when we discussed this reported they had been sexually assaulted at sometime in their lives and if not assaulted, definitely harassed. 

It’s a very old epidemic.

The only people I can find online using the phrase “new epidemic of sexual assault” are those being dismissive of the Me Too movement. 

Edited October 8, 2024 by Calm

[smac97]

13 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

And are we running out of causes.

And therefore activists are incentivized to exaggerate, distort, fabricate, politicize, etc.  From the Tierney article:

Quote

As the world gets better—as people become richer, better educated, and longer-lived—we find new things to worry about and have more disposable income and free time to spend curing humanity’s woes, real or imagined. Our instinct to save others is noble, but it risks being corrupted. “As society grows wealthier,” the economist Donald Boudreaux observes, “the need to be saved by others from earthly misfortunes grows steadily less frequent and less dire while the itch to save others from earthly misfortunes grows steadily more frequent and more intense.” This itch explains why journalists and the public keep falling for hoaxers like the actor Jussie Smollett: the demand for racism vastly exceeds the supply. It’s not easy to meet the growing demand from saviors, given a shrinking supply of victims, but the potential rewards have inspired remarkable creativity—and there’s every reason to expect more in the future.

Yep.

13 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Quote

The SPLC "{was} launched in the 1970s to offer legal representation to individual victims of discrimination but then switched to filing lawsuits against chapters of the Ku Klux Klan," and then when the Klan was effectively dead, the SPLC "pivoted again" by "chang{ing} the name of its 'Klanwatch' project to 'Hatewatch,' and began issuing reports listing a growing number of 'hate groups' and 'extremists' across America."  "The SPLC’s appeals to combat a 'rising tide of hate' have brought in so much donor money that its endowment has soared above $600 million."

Nice! This is a good thing.

People who label anyone they dislike as a "nazi," and then endorse extralegal physical violence against anyone so designated, may well like the SPLC's tactics.  I think plenty of other people take a less rah-rah view of the SPLC.  From the Tierney article:

Quote

Scholars, journalists, and nonprofits have repeatedly denounced SPLC’s blacklists, noting that its tallies include many “hate groups” that don’t exist, or are harmless (such as a Confederate memorabilia shop that made the list), or are mainstream conservative and Christian organizations that simply oppose progressive policies. The SPLC’s lists of dangerous “extremists” have included respected conservatives such as Charles Murray, Rand Paul, and Ben Carson. As Tyler O’Neil observed in Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC could itself be called a hate group, given how its irresponsible tactics have smeared political opponents and inflamed partisan rancor. But the organization’s scaremongering, however damaging to public debate in America, has been remarkably lucrative. The SPLC’s appeals to combat a “rising tide of hate” have brought in so much donor money that its endowment has soared above $600 million.

See also here: The Truth About the SPLC

Quote

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a discredited and scandal-ridden group that one of its own employees described as “a highly profitable scam,” and which has been lambasted by progressives as “everything that’s wrong with liberalism.”

In the mid-1980s, the SPLC made a conscious choice to become a fear mongering, money-raising machine, resulting in the resignation of its entire legal department in 1985.

In time, the SPLC’s infamous “hate map” was born. The SPLC realized that the more “hate” they could gin up, the more money they could raise. Eventually, their definition of hate included huge swaths of well-respected, mainstream, conservative America. In truth, the only reason SPLC considers many of these groups to be “hate groups” is that they disagree with the SPLC on hot-button cultural issues.
...
In an article titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Everything that’s Wrong with Liberalism,” Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, carefully scrutinized SPLC’s “Hate Map” and concluded that it is an “outright fraud” and “a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC.” And former SPLC employee Bob Moser wrote that “it was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.”
...
SPLC’s Senior Fellow Mark Potok, former editor-in-chief of SPLC’s Intelligence Report, said: “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on…. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” SPLC has never renounced this statement.
...
Mark Pulliam observes that SPLC’s hate label results in “dissent [being] de-legitimatized, and political foes [being] demonized.” Megan McArdle criticizes SPLC for lumping “principled conservatives” with “bigots” and observes: “Given the increasing tendency of powerful tech companies to flex their muscle against hate groups, we may see more and more institutions unwittingly turned into critics or censors, not just of Nazi propaganda, but also of fairly mainstream ideas.” Karl Zinsmeister said, “Taking people and groups with political views different from your own and lumping them with villains and gangsters is the mark of a bullying organization that aims to intimidate and even criminalize philosophical opponents.” And Politico questions whether “[a]t a time when the line between ‘hate group’ and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation.”
...
Floyd Corkins cited SPLC as motivation for his attempted mass murder at the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012. He told investigators that he “had chosen the research council as his target after finding it listed as an anti-gay group on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center” and that he “planned to stride into the building and open fire on the people inside in an effort to kill as many as possible.” In addition, students cited SPLC as a reason they rioted and assaulted a female professor at Middlebury College in 2017.

Nehor: "This is a good thing."

Thanks,

-Smac