Re: 'Queering' puberty?

Just a few initial thoughts to correct misunderstandings and clarify what I'm arguing, which is not that sick people should not take drugs. No, I don't fault people getting drugs and surgeries for cancer. This is because cancer is a sickness. I take drugs when I'm sick; not when I'm healthy. Gender dysphoria is an illness too - a mental illness (since there is nothing physically wrong with their bodies) - which can have a variety of causes. One of those causes may be biological. How this is treated differs in different societies. Those societies that have allowed something like a third gender have, in my view, dealt with this in a way that is more conducive to human welfare. In any case, I find such societies much more attractive than 'the West'. They are much more the kind of societies I'd like to live in. Well, maybe this is not possible in the West. Maybe, for many American kids, the solution is physical transitioning. But this won't be true for all kids, even in America. Since the number of dysphoric kids has increased markedly in the last few decades (and the numbers of dysphoric girls has shot up in the last few years), in many cases gender dysphoria might be treatable in other ways, such as addressing the social and psychological causes of it. This is the socially progressive response, because it doesn't treat these social forces that are destroying kids' mental health as a given and beyond criticism. Doctors don't cause cancer; but groups prone to capitalist capture can promote an agenda that says that patient self-diagnosis and consumer choice should be the basis for treating gender dysphoria, rather than medical science and patient welfare. This is the voice of neo-liberal reaction, which you are echoing. But actually, I quite agree with you. American society is creating an epidemic of mental illness in youngsters. My solution: change society. Your solution: drug the kids. You say that my solution, for America, is "pie-in-the-sky socialist idealism". I agree. America is too far along a particular trajectory to change now. Capitalist interests are too firmly entrenched. The Historical Movement of the Social has come to an end. As you say, pie-in-the-sky idealism. America will not change this century, just as it won't tolerate pederasty this century. Zero chance of radical change. So maybe you're right. Drug the kids of America. They will then feel better about themselves; and that's the best that can be accomplished. I must insist, though, that American neuroses are not applicable to the rest of world. For the rest of the world, there is still hope. Frankly, who cares about America anyway? (except Americans, obviously.) ((When I first started posting on BC, and you first started your campaign for Meat Lego Gnosticism, which has its roots in a Pythagorean-Platonic dualism of body and spirit, I remember I titled my initial response 'Plato's Pharmakon' - it was actually a (very weak) joke, alluding to Derrida's essay. I wondered whether you might have read it. Now I know that you not only read Derrida but adopted your pseudonym from his essay! Of course, it doesn't in the least matter what either of us think. These issues will be resolved by broader social trends over which we have no say, so what does it matter?))