|
Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today. |
11th April 2023, 04:41 PM | #1 |
Muse
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 562
|
It's Time to Protect Children from Inappropriate School Interference
The articles below discuss two recent cases where public school officials encouraged two girls, ages 11 and 13, to change their gender without their parents' knowledge. Neuroscience tells us that a child's brain does not fully develop its reasoning ability until later in life, until about ages 21 to 25. The reasoning part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, does not fully develop its connections with the rest of the brain until about ages 21 to 25:
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyc...ContentID=3051 https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families...aking-095.aspx https://paradigmtreatment.com/teens-...developed-age/ Young teens are not equipped to make such enormous decisions. In addition, at their age, they can be strongly influenced by peer pressure and/or by non-family adult authority figures. Young teens are simply not equipped to deal with such pressure and influence, especially when it comes to making a decision about elective surgical alteration of their bodies. I think we need laws to protect children from school personnel who would engage in such conduct. I also think we need laws to prohibit gender-transition surgery for anyone under the age of 21. https://www.foxnews.com/media/maine-...on-no-accident https://www.foxnews.com/media/califo...nsition-gender https://www.foxnews.com/media/califo...ders-knowledge |
11th April 2023, 04:43 PM | #2 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sacramento
Posts: 60,375
|
DId'nt you just post you want to get rid of Public Schools altogether?
BTW, using Fox News as your only source is not a good move around here when ti comes ot your creditbility. I think it's time to protect kids from a bunch of religious fanatics determined to make this coutnry a theocracy. |
__________________
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
|
11th April 2023, 04:56 PM | #3 |
Muse
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 562
|
So. . . . Uh. . . . You're okay with school officials persuading young teens to get gender-transition surgery without their parents' knowledge or consent? You think doctors should be allowed to perform such surgery on children whose brains haven't even fully developed yet?
This has nothing to do with "religious fanatics determined to make this country a theocracy." What a ridiculous argument. This is about protecting children from being pressured into making serious life-and-body-altering decisions before they are capable of doing so and without their parents even knowing about it until after the fact. Speaking of credibility, you might want to learn how to spell and punctuate before you attack people for using one of the most widely watched and read news outlets in the country. |
11th April 2023, 05:06 PM | #4 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 14,971
|
|
__________________
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice Unlike the rest of you squares. Tom Lehrer - Folk Song Army |
|
11th April 2023, 05:54 PM | #5 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Dharug & Gundungurra
Posts: 16,809
|
|
__________________
...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015 |
|
11th April 2023, 06:04 PM | #6 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 14,971
|
When I read something in, say, the Guardian I will usually try to check it with a more conservative source, or with other evidence.
And if I read something in, say, The Australian I will usually check it against a more liberal source or with other evidence I know some here openly call me irrational for doing this, but really it is always best to find all the available facts before reaching a conclusion. It may be that the existing laws are sufficient to deal with matters like this. |
__________________
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice Unlike the rest of you squares. Tom Lehrer - Folk Song Army |
|
11th April 2023, 06:08 PM | #7 |
Penguilicious Spodmaster.
Tagger Join Date: May 2005
Location: Ponylandistan Presidential Palace (above the Spods' stables).
Posts: 45,218
|
|
11th April 2023, 06:22 PM | #8 |
Nasty Woman
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 96,386
|
This is laughable MikeG. Think we don't know when a student stretches out a paper with filler?
You have some unreliable Fox News sources and you think by adding 3 sources on the development of teenage brains that somehow backs up the unreliable Fox News source? This is the same Fox News that had to admit in several sworn depositions that they lie in their news programs. |
11th April 2023, 06:34 PM | #9 |
Evil Fokker
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 14,806
|
Fox News as his primary source. Mikey faceplants again.
|
__________________
www.spectrum-scientifics.com <- |
|
11th April 2023, 07:01 PM | #10 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sacramento
Posts: 60,375
|
|
__________________
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
|
11th April 2023, 08:53 PM | #11 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 14,971
|
It's strange that, when I was in school, my peers, parents, government and church were all pressuring me to be straight. Not a single voice telling me it was ok to be gay.
I always wonder why I wasn't strongly influenced by them. |
__________________
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice Unlike the rest of you squares. Tom Lehrer - Folk Song Army |
|
11th April 2023, 08:53 PM | #12 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 3,128
|
|
__________________
__________ Hiding from the |
|
11th April 2023, 08:56 PM | #13 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 3,128
|
|
__________________
__________ Hiding from the |
|
11th April 2023, 09:39 PM | #14 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Way way north of Diddy Wah Diddy
Posts: 36,111
|
I'm not going to bother to read the usual rants here, but would suggest that whatever their validity perhaps the order of priorities is not quite right. I would suggest that the first inappropriate school interference we protect them from is being gunned down.
|
__________________
Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
|
12th April 2023, 12:25 AM | #15 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Dharug & Gundungurra
Posts: 16,809
|
|
__________________
...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015 |
|
12th April 2023, 03:57 AM | #16 |
should be banned
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Earth, specifically the crusty bit on the outside
Posts: 19,364
|
|
12th April 2023, 04:00 AM | #17 |
Papa Funkosophy
Join Date: May 2002
Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 34,263
|
I just skimmed your “news” articles. They all follow the same formula. The singular parent’s complaint is gone in to detail but there is little-to-no effort or words spent on context or establishing whether the claims are even true. Nothing even generally about how trans kids are bullied or that students, even young ones, need spaces where they feel safe and, often, that’s at school.
These are stories designed to make you angry and they worked. |
__________________
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." -- Mark Twain, maybe. |
|
12th April 2023, 04:03 AM | #18 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 18,090
|
Hypothetically an emancipated minor could, after consulting with doctors and the courts, get a double mastectomy in exactly the same way they could get breast implants.
But that's not what they're talking about. It's the same nonsense from the 'totally not bigoted just reasonable' people super concerned that the 38th ranked women's swimmer is trans which ruins something something groomers think of the children. |
__________________
Circled nothing is still nothing. "Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong |
|
12th April 2023, 04:25 AM | #19 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: Essex UK
Posts: 1,785
|
|
12th April 2023, 04:40 AM | #20 |
Lackey
Administrator
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: South East, UK
Posts: 113,982
|
Need to be careful about applying such neurological research that has been done across the board in policy decisions. The research so far does not indicate that the brain before full maturity can't make rational, reasoned decisions.
This paper gives a good overview of current research and the pitfalls about using it to inform policy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892678/ |
__________________
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
|
12th April 2023, 04:55 AM | #22 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Feb 2018
Location: Essex UK
Posts: 1,785
|
Interesting article, thanks, I'll read it in full later when I have the time to actually try and process what it's telling me. This sprung out:
"For example, in the policy process, adolescent brain immaturity has been used to make the case that teens should be considered less culpable for crimes they commit; however, parallel logic has been used to argue that teens are insufficiently mature to make autonomous choices about their reproductive health [5]. This apparently conflicting use of neuroscience research evidence highlights...." I'm not sure how the use of the science here is conflicting? |
12th April 2023, 05:27 AM | #23 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,666
|
|
__________________
"The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible." - Salman Rushdie. |
|
12th April 2023, 06:12 AM | #24 |
Дэлво Δελϝο דֶלְבֹֿ देल्वो
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: North Tonawanda, NY
Posts: 11,679
|
When the claim is as obviously a lie as this, no judging of the source is even needed.
|
12th April 2023, 06:17 AM | #25 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 14,971
|
|
__________________
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice Unlike the rest of you squares. Tom Lehrer - Folk Song Army |
|
12th April 2023, 07:37 AM | #26 |
Evil Fokker
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 14,806
|
|
__________________
www.spectrum-scientifics.com <- |
|
12th April 2023, 07:52 AM | #27 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 21,398
|
Hmm, the topic does not seem to match the title of the thread.
The thread claims to be about protecting children from inappropriate interference, but the outrage seems to be that it was done without the parents knowledge. So even taking it at face value, this seems to be a concern about protecting parents' rights, not about what is best for the kids. There is no evidence that schools are doing this against children's wishes or anything, they are doing it against parents' wishes. So be honest. It's not about "protecting children" it's about protecting parent rights to decide on what they want for their kids. Now, I'm not saying that is wrong or anything, and I'm not saying it's right (as a parent of puberty-age kids, I can relate to the situation), but let's not pretend this is about the kids, it's about the rights of parents to treat their kids as their property. |
__________________
Gunter Haas, the 'leading British expert,' was a graphologist who advised couples, based on their handwriting characteristics, if they were compatible for marriage. I would submit that couples idiotic enough to do this are probably quite suitable for each other. It's nice when stupid people find love. - Ludovic Kennedy |
|
12th April 2023, 08:30 AM | #28 |
Papa Funkosophy
Join Date: May 2002
Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 34,263
|
A lie of omission, perhaps. There is probably a kernel of truth here. I have no doubt that a few parents are upset and lawsuits may very well have been filed. It's the complete lack of context and perspective that makes these stories untrustworthy and/or propaganda pushing a one-sided narrative.
I do, however, agree that the OP is not about "protecting children" so much as it is about generating a moral panic over parents' rights. And even then, in all three articles, it is only the objections of a single parent discussed. In all three cases, there is never any discussion or accusation of the school pressing children to have a surgical change. The first article mentions allowing the child to socially transition. The second article is about a student who was merely discussing things with a school councilor, presumably in confidence. The third article, I'm not even sure what the argument is. How would a school prevent a child from telling their parent about transitioning? The fact that the mom is using the wrong gender is a clue that there is more to the story that isn't being told. |
__________________
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." -- Mark Twain, maybe. |
|
12th April 2023, 08:56 AM | #29 |
No Punting
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Not In Follansbee
Posts: 5,781
|
The problem with this is that delaying transition until after puberty has a whole shopping list of undesirable results. The need for transition is quite often clear before puberty and the child suffering torment in a very obvious and dramatic way.
This is not a matter of preference of a child. It is a well established condition that can essentially be cured. Instead, we let people who have no experience with the matter make wild claims that are all based on the idea that these children are weirdos who are making a whimsical choice and doom these children to a life of unnecessary pain. What is essentially being whined about here and reframed in ominous tone is educators identifying a child in obvious distress because a parent is ignoring a significant medical condition. |
12th April 2023, 09:11 AM | #30 |
Orthogonal Vector
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 53,184
|
|
__________________
Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
|
12th April 2023, 12:26 PM | #31 |
No longer the 1
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 30,145
|
|
__________________
As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
|
12th April 2023, 01:20 PM | #32 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: United States
Posts: 32,926
|
The highlighted is a false claim. There was no encouragement to change their gender. One of the teachers accused said "students set the agenda and the teachers were there to provide honest and fair answers to their questions." The children had questions and they were given answers which is what this is really all about. It's why DeSantis and other right-wingers want to, and have, passed laws that keep anything LGBTQ related from being discussed. It's nothing but ignorant "if we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist" bigotry.
You clearly are of the opinion that gender is a choice...that a person chooses to be male or female or neither. That is your basic error. Gender is in the brain, not in a penis or a vagina or breasts or testicles or ovaries. It's how we view ourselves, how we think about ourselves, not what our physical body looks like. But some people, like you, can't, or won't, understand that. Ever heard of a hermaphrodite (aka "intersex")? That's a person with both female and male sex organs. If the sex organs determine gender, then which are they? Male or female?
Quote:
If anyone wants to read a more unbiased article on the (11 year old) case, here's one from the AP. |
12th April 2023, 01:32 PM | #33 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: United States
Posts: 32,926
|
Regarding the highlighted. In neither of the cases you mentioned were the two children encouraged to have surgical alterations to their bodies. One was shown how to use a breast binder which is nothing more a snug garment. They were able to choose the pronouns they wanted rather than the one they were assigned due to their sex organs.
You seem to have the idea that children are being pressured into something they don't want or brought up themselves to teachers/counselors. That the use of male pronouns/ name was being forced onto them rather than their choice. I think this comes from the same mindset that that thinks homosexuals/drag queens, whatever are out to "groom" children. It's rather obvious to me that these children could NOT discuss it with their conservative parents so sought out answers elsewhere. Here is a more accurate article on the 13 year old's case. |
12th April 2023, 01:35 PM | #34 |
Evil Fokker
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 14,806
|
When trying to drum up a good ol’ Two Minute Hate fails.
|
__________________
www.spectrum-scientifics.com <- |
|
12th April 2023, 02:48 PM | #35 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sacramento
Posts: 60,375
|
|
__________________
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
|
12th April 2023, 03:19 PM | #36 |
Muse
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 562
|
I didn't lie. You apparently can't read.
I didn't pretend he said anything. I asked him if he was okay with school officials persuading young teens to get gender-transition surgery without their parents' knowledge, and if he believed that doctors should be allowed to perform such surgery on children before their brains have fully developed. I asked him these questions because he ducked both of these issues. The same liberals who always blather about "science, science, science" when they think science is on their side seem determined to ignore the long-established science about the development of the brain's reasoning capacity. As for this attempt to turn this into a supposed case of religious zealots trying to impose their views on schools and children, there are lots of secular people who oppose allowing adolescents and young teens to "transition." I personally know a number of very secular people, people who are not the least bit religious, who strongly oppose allowing young children and teens to have gender-transition surgery. Yes, I realize that the children in the cases cited in my OP did not actually change their gender. You cannot change your gender. That's what makes the whole transgender agenda so absurd. There are scientifically established differences between males and females--in bone density, bone structure, muscle mass, and neural pathways. A male who becomes a "transgender female" is still a male, no matter what surgery he has, no matter what his testosterone levels are, and no matter how many hormones he takes. I think most people have enough common sense to understand that young teens, not to mention preteens, are not mentally equipped to make such an enormous decision as to have gender-transition surgery, or to start taking transition hormones, or to start self-identifying as the opposite gender. I can't count how many young adults I've mentored who deeply regretted getting prominent tattoos, and/or nose piercings, and and/or sexual organ piercings when they were teens. They frequently make comments such as "I wish someone had stopped me. I didn't fully realize what I was doing at the time." And what in the devil are school "counselors" doing even talking about this stuff with children without their parents' knowledge? Finally, yes, I'm all for protecting kids from getting shot by psychos at school, which is why I favor reasonable red-flag laws and greatly increased school security. |
12th April 2023, 03:25 PM | #37 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Way way north of Diddy Wah Diddy
Posts: 36,111
|
Right you didn't actually say he said it, only implied that the subject of the question is the subject of the thread. Similar, usually lesser, sins of extrapolation have in the past been condemned, more often by the right, as "the rule of so." Don't forget to ask too if he's stopped beating his wife yet.
|
__________________
Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
|
12th April 2023, 03:42 PM | #38 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 18,090
|
Even if one doesn't care about trans gender people (or has convinced one's self that it's a competing interest that can be disregarded for whatever rationalization one has adopted), the things that would have to be in place to 'deal' with the 'inappropriate' gender affirming care wouldn't just impact trans gender youth. It wouldn't even just impact the intersex population.
Most gender affirming care is applied to cis gender people. Besides breast alterations, that eighteen year old who joins the military and gets IED injuries at 20 can't drink alcohol already and limits on funding for 'gender affirming' care might in the future stop him from getting penis reconstruction. But don't worry, he can get a predatory loan for whatever replaced the Charger as the base car. Oh, but those are different because having the right sized breasts or replacing a penis is restorative...sometimes...maybe. Letting doctors pick the appropriate standards of care is by far the best default. Hiding behind either 'think of the kids' or 'the kids can't think' is a feeble dodge. |
__________________
Circled nothing is still nothing. "Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong |
|
12th April 2023, 03:43 PM | #39 |
Nasty Woman
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 96,386
|
Cite one case of either implants or a mastectomy that isn't to treat cancer.
Except after childbirth no 13 or 14 yr old is granted emancipation. They would be assigned a guardian and probably placed in foster care. Exactly. Doctors aren't stupid (most of them anyway). This is just like the anti-abortionists claiming liberals want a law that allows an abortion right up until the due date. It's lies and mistruths underlying hyperbole because they can't make their case without lying. |
12th April 2023, 03:48 PM | #40 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 18,090
|
There has been more than one study on it. The first one I recalled was this one.
It is the grain of truth in the 'doctors are butchering kid's genitals' lie. Except that it isn't butchering and breasts aren't genitals. EDIT: Oh yeah, and argumentation. "Nearly 320,000 breast augmentations were performed in 2011, with adolescents under 18 years of age accounting for 4,830 procedures (1.5%)." EDIT 2: Only now did I think of the impact on my Google search history of 'teenage breast augmentation rates'. |
__________________
Circled nothing is still nothing. "Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong |
|
Thread Tools | |
|
|