https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/the-day-of-the-witch/
The thesis holds that social media — or, more precisely, “epidemic hysteria” — is causing a widespread increase in transgender identification.
It makes sense to me. If not transgender identification, a wide range of social pathologies today is certainly attributable to a spreading madness of crowds.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
I think your point about a lot of social pathologies is valid.
Before the internet, some people, or maybe a lot more than some, may have felt that “I am weird, or sick or out of whack with the norm”. If there were others who felt the same, it would be a matter of luck and happenstance to meet them. And then if there were enough, then meeting in secret might have been the norm. Big cities were probably a better place for some oddities. Small towns could be brutal for the ones dancing to a different tune.
Now, no matter what the feelings, fetishes or beliefs, there are probably a few million around the world who think the same. “Gosh. I am not the only one with a copy machine fetish.”
And more interestingly, it might be that the oddities were not so odd after all. “Hey, lots of men like ballet enough to learn it…in a tutu.”
Unfortunately, not all fetishes are harmless. Child pornography is the most glaring example. Before the internet, getting such material was difficult I am sure. Now it is so easy and a major problem. I don’t think the drive to have sex with children has increased, just much more open. Child abuse has been around for as long as there were children. In a sense, curbing it when it was hidden might have been more difficult. Every day we hear of people that were abused as children, but told to keep quiet. And, of course, we have the huge scandals with the Church, schools, universities, athletic teams, etc.
Maybe the bright side of this last iteration of internet pathologies is that people are more willing to discuss, report and bring to light a pretty dark segment of humanity.
With regards to transgender issues, I think that if people are miserable in the body of their own birth sex and change makes them happy, that is fine. Call it “cosmetic surgery Xtreme”. Or “when a tummy tuck and nose job are not enough”.
IMHO
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RE: “With regards to transgender issues, I think that if people are miserable in the body of their own birth sex and change makes them happy, that is fine.”
I find that notion horrifying. Gender dysphoria is a recognized and serious mental illness. Sex change treatments are known to be ineffective at curing the sickness. The idea that they are “fine” is barbaric.
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Not every person does well no matter what changes are made. People who think a nose job will make them popular are often disappointed. But if the are unhappy with the way the look and are not looking for a miraculous personality change, rhinoplasty might make them happier.
Sex change is never taken lightly by ethical doctors. Before any irreversible procedure takes place, hormones, dressing, education and lots of psychological screening and counseling are involved.
What is barbaric are those cruel programs to change someone from homosexual to heterosexual. And before that just the treatment of gays in society from shunning, shaming all the way to violence. And people wondered why they suffered from anxiety and depression.
It was not because they were gay, but from society’s rejection. In my opinion, that could very well apply to transgender people.
People need to walk the proverbial mile in the shoes of our fellow citizens who are LGBT. They are people too.
IMHO
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RE: “People need to walk the proverbial mile in the shoes of our fellow citizens who are LGBT.”
Maybe people need to walk the proverbial mile in the shoes of our fellow citizens who are schizophrenic, or ax murderers, or pedophiles, as well. That way we can all be more empathetic.
You are making an excuse by claiming that severe mental illness is just a matter of rational choices. The reality is that mental illness is illness.
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So what’s your point? You don’t agree with transgender decisions?
You want a law that makes it illegal?
Why are you lumping schizophrenia with ax murderers and pedophiles? That seems to be a non-subtle way of lumping gender dysphoria along with Jack the Ripper.
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RE: “You want a law that makes it illegal?”
No. I want it to be generally understood that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, not a social choice or a political identity.
As for the law, I would support outlawing chemical and surgical sex change treatments until medical science can justify them.
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If you don’t want a sex change operation, don’t have one.
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If the change makes them happy, yes. but it doesn’t.
Suicide and depression are just as large a problem for people with gender dysphoria who make the transition as for those who do not.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/
Still, for adults who want to transition, it is their choice.
But I have serious concerns about encouraging prepubescent children to undergo reassignment in light of statistics indicating it will not solve their problems and some things cannot be undone.
Children, especially prepubescent, are very subject to suggestion from peers and parents and that may well be a form of Munchausens by proxy.
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RE: “Still, for adults who want to transition, it is their choice.”
I’m all in favor of liberty, but there is no conceivable social/political arrangement conducive to liberty which would condone the substitution of lies for truth.
In this instance, it is a lie that any human (child or adult) can become the opposite sex. Maybe this will change someday, but at present there is no technology, medical or otherwise, which can make a man a woman, or a woman a man.
At best, idealistic liberty can tolerate an adult’s decision to live a private lie where sex is concerned, but while liberty may promote tolerance, it cannot require deception.
Thus, the acceptance of choice to transition strikes me as insupportable. By analogy, there is no shortage of suicidal people. I can’t imagine a valid concept of liberty which would say suicidal people have a right to kill themselves. Or, more to the social/political point, it wouldn’t be “liberty” to require or expect doctors to help them do it.
Truth has consequences which even liberty must take into account.
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I agree that no surgery or medication will make a man into a woman or vice versa. It is at most an illusion.
And I doubt that the change will bring lasting happiness.
But I can see no principle of liberty that gives me warrant to say ‘no.’
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RE: “But I can see no principle of liberty that gives me warrant to say ‘no.’”
If it were just you or me as individuals, I wouldn’t, either. The problem is that liberty derives from a collective agreement and only persists so long as it is collectively enforced.
This is not to say that the collective rules. It is, rather, to acknowledge that liberty is fragile because it depends on widespread enlightenment, or an aggregate of commonly shared wisdom.
To illustrate: My personal wish to be kind and tolerant toward transgendered adults doesn’t automatically translate into a civic responsibility to devote public resources for the creation of a commons where transgenderism is openly celebrated.
An enlightened perspective would militate against such a thing, just as it would militate against creating a public commons to celebrate suicide.
The transition from the personal to the social changes the calculus in a way that is especially relevant to liberty, which itself requires social support.
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I agree about children. For the same reason that cosmetic surgery for children, unless therapeutic of course, is questionable.
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Meh, the numbers are too small to worry about.
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I wish your post was at the top of the string….
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