If a small child says, "I like this, more!" about some food, I take that literally, because immediate sensory experieces are something any animal is qualified to have an informed preference about. If a small child _in Berkeley where people talk about gender all the time_ says, "I'm sad about being percieved as a boy", I believe the part about being sad, but I'm _much_ more skeptical about the "about being perceived as a boy" part of the description. _Taken literally_, that's a _really abstract_ preference: absent a compelling theory of where all the trans kids were ten years ago, I'm a lot more inclined to chalk it up to, "I dunno, kids say lots of weird things, including on themes they pick up from their cultural environment." (I'm not _just_ being [age-ist](https://ncc-1776.org/tle1997/le970401-10.html) here; I'm _also_ pretty skeptical of a lot of grown-up verbal self-reports of gender identity and gender dysphoria, for specific reasons that are beyond the scope of this document.)
-### 2.4 Interlude: So what?
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-It's possible for someone to broadly _agree_ with the theory set forth in this section as to the _etiology_ of the child's self-reports, while still endorsing the social transition. "Sure," says the adherent of this view, "I agree that if [child] had been raised in the culture of ten years earlier, she would still be [deadname]. But that's social progress—it's _better_ that children be able to choose their gender for reasons _less extreme_ than classical EOGD—or any reason at all, even a whim. And _of course_ that [freedom will result in more trans kids than in the old culture.](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) Why are you being so cisnormative?"
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-In the next section, I will attempt to explain why I think some degree of cisnormativity is advisable.
## 3. Potential Harm Scenarios
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff