I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this guest as she articulated the challenges of navigating controversial topics in her city and schools. Bravo to her for standing up in such a level- headed manner. She is an inspiration to me as I attempt to be able to discuss gender identity with others who do not fully understand the issues at hand. I extend my deepest appreciation to her for taking a strong and reasonable stand.
Interesting guest. And very brave to resist (nicely, as far as I could tell) the trans ideology. But kind of off-putting that she relates such scorn about masking. Yeah, obviously people in NYC were never, or very few and rarely, masking before the pandemic, and no one acted like going to work with a cold was killing people... because we hadn't had a pandemic.
People were not stupid or foolish for pursuing what seemed to be the best practices at the time to avoid spreading a new disease that was killing a lot of people. The guest speaks as if we now all agree that those people and rules were stupid. We don't all agree. And we might need masks or closures for a worse virus in the future, in which case all this lingering derision and resentment will be another hurdle to overcome in order to save lives.
My toddler and elementary - school children didn't mind masking, and I don't know why this guest found the nursery-school teacher's use of a plastic face shield so strange and upsetting. Kids sure didn't care! If they noticed it at all, it probably just made her seem like another Octonaut. It seems the shields did no good whatsoever, but it was a plausible compromise idea until the evidence came in.
All of that to say that, I agree with much of what the guest speaker said about trans-rights policies, and the antagonism she experienced did seem completely unwarranted given what she described having said and done, but the linking to her wholesale antagonism to pandemic health efforts does make me wonder. There were refrigerator trucks full of bodies. If Covid had primarily killed young children, she probably would have felt differently about the justification for the precautions.
Back when I was in hyper woke places, I noticed a disturbing trend of people asking others not to read certain things like JKR's essay or Abigail Shrier's <i>Irreversible Damage</i> because it would be violence for trans people and increase their suicidal ideation. I was close to my peaking moment at that point and was at my limit of being able to reconcile Wokeism with my Rational Empiricist upbringing that valued free speech. Basically I used to worry that my values of free speech was making me a horrible person. So I think people who weren't raised with free speech being a cornerstone belief may not necessarily have that stopgate measure. And even if you were raised to value free speech, just by observing my sister go on a power trip in the trans movement, I think it's very easy to pay lip service to valuing free speech for people on your side of the divide while looking away from how your side has destroyed free speech or justify those erosions as necessary for the greater good because you're being kind to fragile trans people (and directly benefitting from everyone walking on eggshells around you).
The other thing that strikes me is that if you look up common Cognitive Distortions like catastrophization, you see this in extremist movements. The idea that trans people are so fragile that everyone has to shelter them from harmful information or they'll commit suicide is textbook catastrophization. And it's been weaponized and spread among the internet. And then I think about evidence that people who spend more time on the internet are more likely to be mentally ill (which fits my mom and sister who spent a lot of time online). And I wonder if this is some online group manifestation of depressive symptoms and ironically these people think their lived experienced will provide them with the answer to what ails them (everyone make the world a "safer" place for me) but really they're spreading ideas that enable them to continue to be depressed.
Loved this episode. This was a great quote, "I just I think if you had facts and reason on your side, you could tolerate a conversation."
And yes, each of us can get stuck in echo chambers including parents who are not in favor of medicalizing their child. Perhaps that would be less so if we were not censored, belittled, and sometimes excluded from conversation.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this guest as she articulated the challenges of navigating controversial topics in her city and schools. Bravo to her for standing up in such a level- headed manner. She is an inspiration to me as I attempt to be able to discuss gender identity with others who do not fully understand the issues at hand. I extend my deepest appreciation to her for taking a strong and reasonable stand.
Interesting guest. And very brave to resist (nicely, as far as I could tell) the trans ideology. But kind of off-putting that she relates such scorn about masking. Yeah, obviously people in NYC were never, or very few and rarely, masking before the pandemic, and no one acted like going to work with a cold was killing people... because we hadn't had a pandemic.
People were not stupid or foolish for pursuing what seemed to be the best practices at the time to avoid spreading a new disease that was killing a lot of people. The guest speaks as if we now all agree that those people and rules were stupid. We don't all agree. And we might need masks or closures for a worse virus in the future, in which case all this lingering derision and resentment will be another hurdle to overcome in order to save lives.
My toddler and elementary - school children didn't mind masking, and I don't know why this guest found the nursery-school teacher's use of a plastic face shield so strange and upsetting. Kids sure didn't care! If they noticed it at all, it probably just made her seem like another Octonaut. It seems the shields did no good whatsoever, but it was a plausible compromise idea until the evidence came in.
All of that to say that, I agree with much of what the guest speaker said about trans-rights policies, and the antagonism she experienced did seem completely unwarranted given what she described having said and done, but the linking to her wholesale antagonism to pandemic health efforts does make me wonder. There were refrigerator trucks full of bodies. If Covid had primarily killed young children, she probably would have felt differently about the justification for the precautions.
Back when I was in hyper woke places, I noticed a disturbing trend of people asking others not to read certain things like JKR's essay or Abigail Shrier's <i>Irreversible Damage</i> because it would be violence for trans people and increase their suicidal ideation. I was close to my peaking moment at that point and was at my limit of being able to reconcile Wokeism with my Rational Empiricist upbringing that valued free speech. Basically I used to worry that my values of free speech was making me a horrible person. So I think people who weren't raised with free speech being a cornerstone belief may not necessarily have that stopgate measure. And even if you were raised to value free speech, just by observing my sister go on a power trip in the trans movement, I think it's very easy to pay lip service to valuing free speech for people on your side of the divide while looking away from how your side has destroyed free speech or justify those erosions as necessary for the greater good because you're being kind to fragile trans people (and directly benefitting from everyone walking on eggshells around you).
The other thing that strikes me is that if you look up common Cognitive Distortions like catastrophization, you see this in extremist movements. The idea that trans people are so fragile that everyone has to shelter them from harmful information or they'll commit suicide is textbook catastrophization. And it's been weaponized and spread among the internet. And then I think about evidence that people who spend more time on the internet are more likely to be mentally ill (which fits my mom and sister who spent a lot of time online). And I wonder if this is some online group manifestation of depressive symptoms and ironically these people think their lived experienced will provide them with the answer to what ails them (everyone make the world a "safer" place for me) but really they're spreading ideas that enable them to continue to be depressed.
Loved this episode. This was a great quote, "I just I think if you had facts and reason on your side, you could tolerate a conversation."
And yes, each of us can get stuck in echo chambers including parents who are not in favor of medicalizing their child. Perhaps that would be less so if we were not censored, belittled, and sometimes excluded from conversation.
Thank you for this dialog.