[pryce]

It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.

There is considerable overlap between those who subscribe to the "trans people are a contagion" moral panic of writer Abigail Schrier, and the "ban social media" advocates in AU who were instrumental in creating this legislation.

[heavyset_go]

> It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens.

Lawmakers in the US have said this explicitly[1] concerning laws like KOSA[2]:

> A co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to protect children from the dangers of social media and other online content appeared to suggest in March that the measure could be used to steer kids away from seeing transgender content online.

> In a video recently published by the conservative group Family Policy Alliance, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture” should be among the top priorities of conservative lawmakers.

A bill that implements mass surveillance, chilling of free speech and the hurting of marginalized kids is really killing two birds with one stone for some legislators.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/sena...

[2] https://www.stopkosa.com/

[nuggets]

There's not really any plausible explanation as to why referrals to pediatric gender clinics became so skewed towards girls who want to be boys, other than social contagion.

The sticking point is that it's politically controversial to point this out because of progressive beliefs about gender identity as an unquestionable facet of someone's being.

[yosame]

I'm pretty sure this take is incorrect on multiple accounts. Trans demographics tend to skew towards trans women by about a third, not trans men - at least in all the research I've come across.

And regardless, increased acceptance and awareness of different gender identities can very plausibily explain increased numbers, not "social contagion". Calling it a contagion is pretty indicative of your underlying beliefs here.

[yearolinuxdsktp]

No plausible explanation? I disagree.

It’s about the social safety of transitioning. The paper you referenced is from the UK, which is famously a TERF island (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). In the TERF island, it’s much less safe to be a trans woman than a trans man. Adolescents can sense the risk of being a trans woman is much higher, so many trans women stay in the closet and don’t come out.

[pryce]

To claim there are not really any other candidates for a skew (in that direction or the other) you would have to (like Shrier herself) go out of your way to not bother to talk to trans people, or their doctors, or their families, or sociologists, or talk to any of the people who spend their lives researching gender, what it means, how it affects us, what assumptions we make, whether those ideas stack up when confronted with empirical research, etc etc. I'm not really interested in discussing further with a 30 minute old account.

[heavyset_go]

There's not really any plausible explanation as to why so many left-handed students tend to skew towards boys, rather than girls, other than social contagion.

When my parents were kids, there were no left-handed kids. Social contagion is the only explanation for as to why there are suddenly so many left-handed kids today, especially since many of them are boys and not girls.

[pseudalopex]

People assigned male at birth come out later than people assigned female at birth on average. Trans men and trans women receive different stigma. Many AFAB children and adolescents referred to gender clinics identify as non binary. AMAB non binary people reported less acceptance in LGBT circles even. And biology could be a factor.

[nxor]

You are correct. And when they try to undermine you they prove your point. There are more mtf people than ftm people because until recently, the it was not a trend among teen girls.

[badc0ffee]

On the contrary, that has nothing to do with the LGB. Shrier believes the T concept, specifically, is a social contagion like anorexia.

[pryce]

A wall street journal opinion columnist - Shrier- with zero medical training wrote a book to create a moral panic in the public about trans teens, based on the discredited ideas from Lisa Littman's ROGD "research", where in this case the word "research" actually means: reports from parents recruited from well-known anti-trans websites.

[pseudalopex]

Their comment did not attribute to Shrier any view of sexual orientation. People who consider gender identity illegitimate and people who consider sexual orientation illegitimate overlap.

[holbrad]

I thought it was pretty settled that it was social contagion similar to other mental illnesses in the past.