I am trans and I am a parent of three children, one of whom I carried. Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself. I also have many friends (none of them trans, as it happens) who never had children. I occasionally envy their freedom. They may occasionally envy me my sprawling family. In neither case is the feeling of regret — if it can even be called that — significant or particularly long-lasting. It is, rather, an awareness that life is a series of choices, all of which are made with incomplete information.
Presumably, Gessen has one relationship with each of the children, but it's possible that Gessen really does means to claim multiple relationships with each one. I suppose the grammar was a minor distraction on the way to proclaiming the superiority of a life lived without regrets.
Anxiety about trans people and reproduction, and the laws and rules that it produces, cut both ways...
Puzzling commas again. And why choose a cutting metaphor here? Intentional prodding of our anxiety about surgery?
There's a lot more going on in the article, which was originally titled "The Secret Behind America's Moral Panic." What's the secret? And what are "Democrats... Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights"? This is the most useful passage:
The party’s decision to focus on the issues that matter to most voters, especially reproductive rights, and set trans rights aside is based on a misconception. The two issues can’t be separated, because trans rights don’t just resemble reproductive rights; trans rights are reproductive rights.
I think Gessen means that individuals have the right to choose transgender treatments at the price of reproductive capacity. Would forefronting that idea have helped Democrats?
I rather doubt it, but it makes me think of this famous passage in a Supreme Court abortion opinion:
These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.
Remember, Gessen's concept of the "understanding of life itself" contained the "existence" of children who were born, and Gessen pointed to friends whose meaning of life contained the nonexistence of children. It's about self-definition. The Democrats need to say that out and proud next time around. We'll see how JD Vance and others respond and have a great conversation on the subject... then vote on it. Onward to 2028!
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78 comments:
Not everything is about sex.
Didn't that writer used to be Marsha Gessen, or something?
Does its relationships with each of them involve lots of screaming?
Yep, that's her....uh, them...
No penises in women's bathrooms.
No X chromosomes in women's sports.
Do not sexualize children. Mind your own business.
Again - The Julie Jaman story tells most of it. Not all - but most.
Men in the women's locker rooms - undressing children.
Yeah - the democrat party will scream at you if you dare find that intolerable.
https://x.com/Liberty_Ctr/status/1844420858124923265
They're correct. Raising kids and grandkids definitely influences ones view of the world. This is where I agree with JD Vance that people that don't have kids or not fully engaged in the future of humanity. Real skin in the game.
In my experience, other people do not care about you, or how you define yourself. The discomfort starts when you start to be more in-your-face with others about how you live your life, as if people are somehow wanting by not caring about you. No one is that important. I will be polite to you because good manners dictates that. Good manners do not mean that you acquire importance in my life.
"Not everything is about sex."
Who said that? Gessen said everything is about producing children (or not producing children). Reproduction ≠ sex. You can have sex without reproduction and reproduction without sex. Gessen is saying the obsession and anxiety is over reproduction.
Here's really "What Democrats Are Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights".
Normal people don't hate trans people or have a phobia (fear) of trans people, they just don't agree to pretend that they have actually changed their sex. And that includes not pretending that normal conventions of bathroom use, changing room use, pronoun use, or sport competition use should be changed to accommodate their personal gender identity wishes.
That's it. Nothing else. Have a wonderful life with your chosen identity.
The most important thing to remember, is that her feelings are 'central' and must be kept there for all to admire and elevate. It's all about Me !
While the collective corrupt left whine, wither, lie and spin - there are still not enough Fuck YOUs for democrats in power.
"HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra cannot answer why he placed unaccompanied children with sponsors whose address was a strip club.
He also cannot explain why he allowed them to be pimped out by individuals with no family ties to them.
This is a sickening failure of oversight."
That was a whole lot of nuthing
Not everything is about reproduction.
Also, I am not required to, nor am I going to, participate in this person's mental illness. That's THEIR journey. I hope they enjoy it, but I am going to laugh at them. To their faces if necessary. And if I catch one of them in my daughter's bathroom, I'm going to beat the ever loving sh*t out of them.
Wait till a few of them get sink stomped. They'll stay out for their own safety.
Very hard to have a conversation where we differ fundamentally on the underlying definitions of words.
Everything about the future is about reproduction.
Why does the NYT print stuff written by the mentally ill? I think the answer is that many NYT readers are mentally ill, viz. they thought Harris was a good candidate and thought she could win.
Homosexuals and other transgender spectrum individuals were celebrated through political congruence (e.g. couplets "=" couples), the product of liberal ethical democratic/dictatorial consensual angst.
Abortion past six weeks is homicide by statute in all 50 states and sanctuary jurisdictions, too. Change the criteria of human viability and people who adopt the Pro-Choice religion can legally perform human rites for social, clinical, criminal, political, and climate progress and sequester the "burden" of evidence in darkness.
Gendee (e.g. sexual orientation) liberalism through surgical medical, or psycho-atric corruption, grooming, should not be considered until the target can offer informed consent.
That said, keep women affordable, available, reusable, and taxable, and pedophilia, incest, sadomasochism, and other queer sexual orientations legal under Democratic law. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #HateLovesAbortion
The two issues can’t be separated, because trans rights don’t just resemble reproductive rights; trans rights are reproductive rights
Trans rights is actually the flip side of reproductive rights. A "non-trans" person has the possibility of "generating" offspring. A FULLY trans person (really they are technically the only trans people - all others are cos-play) is not capable of "generating" offspring due to the total loss of their reproductive organs.
As with many things, the left/media/(D)emocrats like to twist words and meanings to blur lines.
Most "trans" people used to be referred to as "cross-dressers". They take on the "show" of the opposite sex, a cos-play. An actual trans person has gone through the "transition" from one sex to another by taking drugs and having surgery to remove the original equipment and replacing it with "constructions" of different equipment, leaving them sterile (no working reproductive organs). So what "reproductive" rights are there to discuss in the context of trans folks?
In a recent poll, 41% of democrats - a plurality - said their ideal candidate for 2028 was still Kamala Harris.
You can't fix stupid.
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."
Believe whatever you want. But the rest of us need not conform to your values. Why must everyone else always have to bend to the will of the least common denominator?
If the Democrats had "focused on trans rights" they would have lost even bigger. The rest of this is just navel-gazing....
Because it's a humiliation ritual. It has nothing to do with their preferred style of existing.
Transgrammar.
Reproduction without sex (e.g. womb farms, sperm banks), gender without sex (e.g. simulation, grooming), diversity in Diversity (i.e. color blocs), life deemed unworthy of life, etc. We live in interesting times.
Pregnant comma.
They can’t say (with any seriousness) that their trans-rights are not about sex but really about producing children. They don’t transition in an attempt to have children (tho some have kids before the transition). Rather, the transition makes it impossible to have children. And they don’t transition to “avoid having children. They can “avoid” 10 different ways to Sunday, and the surgery is amazingly invasive (and over the top) if sterilization is the goal. And it’s not about “reproductive rights” because they have all those rights before the transition. No, this is another subterfuge, a bogus spin, trying to re-position with language people might accept politically.
Dress however you want, present however you want and leave me alone (and I’ll do the same). But don’t enter the women’s room with a penis please. Common sense rules used to be common sense.
cut both ways...
And why choose a cutting metaphor here?
dicks get cut, so do breasts.. it cuts both ways
I'm with narciso on this- That was a lot of gibberish for the minds of AWFL's and libtards to digest. The rest of America is over that Trans BS hysteria. They were given the spotlight and showed themselves to be mentally ill, anti-human assholes. Fag-bashing will be back in style before long if they keep it up.
what is a woman? someone that identifies as a woman.
who is allowed in a women's restroom or shower? someone that identifies as a woman.
who identifies someone as a woman. that person.
SO, a serious question: WHO can deny a woman's access to a women's restroom or shower?
Answer: NO One. NO ONE can be denied access to a women's room
is THAT the hill?
Remarkable, isn’t it, that Russia now endorses Orthodox Christianity and traditional masculinity and family life, and that the U.S. endorses the feminism, abortion, gay and trans religion? This strange religion needs a name.
That is just name recognition effect. Nobody honestly supports her at this point.
Kamala Harris will likely be one of the most unmentioned VP/Presidential Candidates in history. People barely remember who Nixon beat. Mondale and Dukakis and McCain will be her peer group now.
"It's about self-definition." Didn't we already cover that? Slogan for 2028: "Dem is for they/them. JD is for you."
There formerly was a category of human beings who, despite their enviable cognitive agility, were almost universally regarded as nuts. Gessen fits within that category. There's little to be gained by overthinking Gessen's malady.
The US no longer endorses those things. It is now time for the pendulum to swing.
I just wish it would stop in the middle this time.
“The Democrats need to say that out and proud next time around. We'll see how JD Vance and others respond and have a great conversation on the subject... then vote on it. Onward to 2028!”
Maybe I’m misinterpreting this comment. As I see it this is the primary problem with the Democrat Party. Everything is a game to them. Politics is a sport rather than a vehicle to solve our problems.
For Democrats everything is a political football and if they can use vulnerable people to get a win, so much the better. How about focusing on “what unites us rather than on what divides us”. Here is Marco Rubio on Trump’s win and what it means to the future of the Democrat and Republican parties. (First 4 minutes)
“This is not a partisan realignment, it is an American realignment.”
https://youtu.be/rcUBCd6Jd9Y?si=OwKWVw_wQ5DVJMQ5
“I think Gessen means that individuals have the right to choose transgender treatments at the price of reproductive capacity.”
I agree - I think that’s what Gessen means. However, one doesn’t have to be sterilized to not have children. He just informed us of his many friends who are not trans and are childless. So I’m a bit confused why someone would lean on reproductive capacity to argue for gender-affirming treatments.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000009809801/how-trump-won-2024.html
Gessen's appearance halfway through this video clip told me all I need to know about him/her/it.
"That's a very strangely written sentence. . . "
Isn't disorganized writing a sign of disorganized thinking?
Yes, let's have this conversation; but let's be honest and adult enough to not hide the ugly realities behind fancy jargon.
What they want is the right to butcher healthy babies in late term abortions, mutilate normal adolescents going through growing pains, and allow the rape of high school girls in restrooms by boys in skirts.
If you think that's a winning platform that will appeal to most americans, hey go for it.
The AMA is debating the ethical implications of providing uterine transplants for trans women, in the spirit of equity and the alleviation of suffering. Plus they can then also elect to have abortions, again in the spirit of equity. We’ve only just begun.
Achilles, do you mean XX or XY chromosomes?
"Reproductive rights" don't necessarily have anything to do with reproducing. They were more about abortion than anything else but also could include IVF. The new phrase "bodily autonomy" may describe what's being discussed better. It shifts the focus a bit away from IVF, but has the advantage of bringing the tattoos, piercings, and drugs crowd into the tent as well as those who want to resculpt their genitalia or undergo surgery to look more like cats or dogs.
Not sure, but Grayson may also be trying to claim that bringing people's regrets into the conversation about what the right policies are is a move that should be resisted: Regrets, stories about regrets, people who have regrets -- these events may be true but they don't matter.
This controversy is, in its essence, about the best way to treat a mental illness. Discuss.
For extra credit, consider the morality of providing treatment involving irreversible physical changes to minors.
The mentally ill woman who wrote this article resides in a bubble and cannot understand why Harris lost because Harris's campaign ads didn't push trans rights. It's news to her that mutilating children is not the foremost thing that voters want to push. She probably gets her news from the New York Times, a place where you won't learn that Americans aren't that interested in having mentally ill males competing against and sharing locker rooms and bathrooms with their daughters, sisters, and mothers.
Americans are also largely against having their children indoctrinated in this trans bullshits and having it pushed on them by activists in schools who furtively try to transition children without their parents' knowledge.
Is one of the dangers to girls who undergo tranny surgery and treatments sterilization? yes. Is that the main issue? Not at all. That's just one of the very bad things that happen to people who undergo these fraudulent treatments. There are no good things that come of it and the evidence that it is beneficial to its victim is near zero. Feeding people's harmful delusions aren't good for them. They're not good for us.
As for Kennedy's make-it-up-as-I-go definition of liberty, that liberty ends when it interferes with the rights of others. The liberty to be a batshit crazy lunatic doesn't require others to go along with the delusions of a man who thinks he's a woman or vice versa. It doesn't require government to go along with that delusion or fund it. It doesn't require schools to promote it. It doesn't require parents to consent to scam medical procedures that only do harm. It doesn't require the English speaking people on earth to change the language. And it sure as fuck doesn't change the biological truth that a man can't become a woman and a woman can't become a man regardless of what the voices in their heads are telling they/them.
Maybe NYT could get one of those "furries" to explain how important it is to his identity to get down on his knees and suck dick on a leash. He could explain how empowering it is for his kids to watch. You really have to feel sorry for the kids.
Mental illness and religious cults flourish when those around them profit from such behavior. Blame Obamacare 2010 and its expansion of insurance coverage. The Faucian medical psychopaths were quick to demand high profit transgender surgery for all. Never forget the third most evil doctor after Josef Mengele and Anthony Fauci: Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor
“These surgeries are labor intensive, they require a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money,” she emphasized. “They make money for the hospital.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/its-unthinkable-matt-walsh-discusses-shocking-revelation-about-vanderbilt-university-medical-center-with-tucker-carlson
I don’t get the NYT, so I can’t read the article, but is it correct , as I have read elsewhere, that it argues that prohibitions on trans surgery for minors interferes with reproductive freedom of the affected minors? If so, that is vastly different from considering rights afforded to adults, and would have been helpful to know in framing the discussion.
"Moral panic," like anger or disgust or contempt is what motivates one's political opponents. It's never something one admits to oneself.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Is that really something 18th or 19th century Americans would have believed? If they did believe it, would they have applied that concept to the things people apply it to now? Freedom of speech and of the press gave us the right to say and think whatever we want, but 18th and 19th century America wasn't open to all manner of lifestyle experiments, and certainly didn't ask the taxpayer to finance them. Is it perhaps ironic that the quote about everyone being free to define the "mystery of human life" for themselves came from a legal decision that decided some important aspects of that mystery for the whole country?
I almost forgot, they also want to allow the destruction of girl's and women's sports, and are ok with the maiming of women and girls on the sports field by biological males competing with them.
Most people had no problem with "transgenders" until they started pushing for the things mentioned above, that hurt women, girls and children.
And most people are okay with limited abortion rights, but are disgusted by the
concept of no restrictions at all.
When I was in school, back during the post Civil Rights Act days, we heard a lot about how the majority should not be able to step on the rights of the minority. Well, when it comes to trans rights the exact opposite is happening. The majority is being told; "fuck your rights" by a very small minority while the Democrats are standing in the back yelling "Hallelujah!" and "Amen!".
That's what the Democrats are getting wrong on transgender rights.
"Transgender rights" are not just about the individual denying reality -- that isn't any of my business. It is about forcing others to deny reality and accept something that is not true: that a chemist or surgeon can turn a man into a woman, or vice versa. It cannot be done.
RideSpaceMountain
In a recent poll, 41% of democrats - a plurality - said their ideal candidate for 2028 was still Kamala Harris."
I'm sure a similar percentage of Republicans would say that she's the ideal Democratic candidate, too.
Vance could ask, “I wonder how the dads feel,” as this writer gave birth to one child before “transitioning” into a man, presumably, and presumably then became father to two more biologically unrelated children who had real fathers too. Or, “I wonder how that child feels, losing his mother who now says he is the child’s father.” Or, “I wonder how this writer’s mother and father feel, having lost a daughter they raised, who now says she is a man, and a father to the child she was once a mother to.”
We need to ignore these monumentally narcissistic people. Unless they’re being predatory on women or threatening to kill us — another news story today.
[Quoted text: "The party’s decision to focus on the issues that matter to most voters, especially reproductive rights, and set trans rights aside is based on a misconception. The two issues can’t be separated, because trans rights don’t just resemble reproductive rights; trans rights are reproductive rights.]
Follow up in the post:
"I think Gessen means that individuals have the right to choose transgender treatments at the price of reproductive capacity."
That's been my point all along, and it's of a piece with abortion as a 'reproductive right' that is by nature counterreproductive.
"Would forefronting that idea have helped Democrats?"
Not if it highlights the insanity the Party has been peddling.
It's about self-definition. The Democrats need to say that out and proud next time around.
I don't see how making a campaign argument featuring the twisted thinking of the mentally ill will draw the working folks back into the Dem tent. Self-definition is not the problem. Using it as a power play to force everyone else to change their lives in order to accommodate that definition is the problem.
Chicks with a Y chromosome do not belong in the women's locker rooms or bathrooms or sports teams.
- Krumhorn
The multiple relationships with each child intrigues. Deion Sanders is both coach and parent to his son Shadeur.
Trans rights are reproductive rights? I thought they were infrastructure.
What a bunch of useless electronic ink spilled. T
he answer could be stated in one word:
"Everything."
Also there is no such thing as "trans rights."
Choosing to abase oneself to a destructive fad/cult/grift does not entitle nor entail you special "rights."
"Cuts" not "cut." Subject-Verb agreement is an issue here as well.
they also want to allow the destruction of girl's and women's sports, and are ok with the maiming of women and girls on the sports field by biological males competing with them.
But we're assured that these are very rare edge cases - if they happen at all (still a lot of people out there who don't know that these cases do happen). And therefore there's no need to legislate about this issue. It's rare!
As is serial murder, thankfully. But we still agreed to make it illegal.
The problem is that not all trans people are created equal, so to speak. There are gay men who, because they're femme, decide to present as female, whatever that means, and go to varying lengths to do so, from clothing all the way to life-altering surgery. There are socially awkward or depressed young girls and women who go trans because it's a fast track to the popularity their ordinary lives were not affording them, who may make it to hormones and stop because, frankly, they're not that interested in being any more "like a man" than just not having to deal with ciswomen as friends or cismen as romantic partners - it's much easier for them to interact only with other queer folk. There are - possibly - a fraction of a percent of people whose mental distress from gender dysphoria is so severe that going trans really is the treatment that provides the greatest relief.
And there are (male) autogynophiles (I've wondered whether they even understand that people without autogynephilia, or - if it exists - autoandrophilia, don't get turned on by seeing themselves in a mirror) who become trans women and, these days, appear to be demanding that women participate in their disorder (or kink, if you prefer), and these are the ones we women are most concerned about. The rest don't constitute nearly as great a threat to our safety and privacy.
Although I should add that the sterilization of emotionally troubled young people and the erasure of gay people ought to concern us all as a human rights matter.
It's not a moral panic. If you want to amputate parts of your anatomy, expand parts of your anatomy, tattoo yourself purple, or join the Communist Party, it's up to you. Don't make me pay for it, don't make me sympathize with you or respect you, and don't demand special victim rights. I'm allowed to think that you are a freak show, and that you deserve the simulacrum of a human body that you have chosen to inhabit for the rest of your sad empty existence.
And under no circumstances should it be allows to happen to CHILDREN and by children I mean if you are too young to legally drink you are too young to get your breasts or d*ck removed. I would even go so far as to say no hormone treatments either. That sh*t can be unreversible if taking too long and/or too early.
“Gessen said everything is about producing children (or not producing children).
To say that everything is about producing X or not producing X is a vacuous tautology.
“Reproduction ≠ sex. You can have sex without reproduction and reproduction without sex. Gessen is saying the obsession and anxiety is over reproduction.”
But you can’t have reproduction without sexes (without further advances in cloning.) And the anxiety is over men in women’s bathrooms and sports, not reproduction.
Respectfully disagree. Without sex (the different genomes of men and women), there is no reproduction. At least, not yet.
Exactly.
Achilles said...
"No X chromosomes in women's sports."
From what I heard, the WNBA was progressing pretty well towards no Xs in the viewership - until Caitlin Clark showed up.
A thought occurred to me a while ago. Someone on facebook put up a meme where a pro-trans guy said that people shouldn't care so much about who they're in the bathroom with. But shouldn't this apply to the trans people, too? Why do the trans people care so much about who is in the bathroom with them? It's because they want to make using the bathroom a statement about their gender identity rather than using the bathroom as just the bathroom. It's the trans people who are caring too much about who is in the bathroom with them and making a lot of people uncomfortable by doing this.
Yeah, I was trying to puzzle out wat that sentence "You can have sex without reproduction and reproduction without sex" was supposed to mean. Since I was thinking biologically it took a while. "Sex" is being used to refer to rumpety-pumpety and/or related activities that are considered fun. But as a biologically proposition reproduction without sex is ridiculous - except for asexual reproducers which humans definitely are not.
Sex in the rumpety pumpety sense is ephemeral and unimportant. Though fun. Sex in the biological sense - ie how we make babies - is of eternal significance. Eternal in the sense of .... until we go extinct.
I confess I find all this obsession with LBGTQWERTYUIOP strangely trivial. Who cares what bits of yourself you choose to stick into other (willing) folk, or vice versa, , or whether you enjoy rubbing yourself up against a tree trunk ? Or whether you consider yourself Man, Woman, Earth Spirit, or Colonel in the Coldstream Guards ?
Babies are what matters. They're real.
Life is reproduction. Everything else is a hobby.
Sometimes, a bathroom is just a bathroom?
Translation: trannies happily conscript their children into the gender cult in order to justify their kink. The kids' life-long welfare barely registers.
Parenting brings out the odd in a lot of moms, dads, and others.
If you want to reduce someone asserting the importance of "bodily autonomy" to frothy self-contradiction, just ask "Does 'bodily autonomy' mean being able to decline a medical procedure, like a vaccination* without being penalized in some way?"
Which is too bad for them, because the pro-abortion, pro-hormones, pro-surgery people might be able to get the votes they are lacking by compromising around a 'bodily autonomy' law that allowed people--especially parents--to opt out of any and all medical treatments with an answer of 'None of your business.'
What instead is almost surely coming, as we descend into financial crisis and, simultaneously, the loudest and craziest people make themselves more and more obnoxious to normals, are backlash regulations or laws that cause insurance companies and Medicaid to stop paying for hormones and cosmetic surgery for trans people. Insurance doesn't pay for steroids for body-builders, TRT for aging men, or implants, lipo, and other cosmetic surgery for the many people who aren't satisfied with their looks, even if they subjectively experience great distress about them.
When you combine the steep increases in health insurance that were held back due to the election but will soon come due and deepening skepticism among the general public, you have a recipe for a revolt against paying for extremely expensive treatments.
The past 8 years are likely to turn out to be a run of tactical victories that produce a strategic disaster for T's that could very easily also end up doing a lot of collateral damage to the LGB's as well. This sucks for all the trans-people (100% of those I know personally) who AREN'T creepy, violent, misogynistic fetishists.
*A treatment that doesn't give full immunity against a disease is actually a prophylaxis, not a vaccination, or it was before unelected bureaucrats decided they could change the definitions of words.
Women may find that unless they make choices, they will have a life that is constrained in certain ways in comparison to men. Kamala the idiot said it is hard to think of laws controlling the bodies of men in comparison to those controlling the bodies of women. Of course in the U.S. men, but not women, have to register for the draft.
So: for women to have as much autonomy as possible, they have to deal with the ravages of puberty and the Curse of Eve. Whether to accept normal fertility or not. (The burdens of birth control fall more on women than men; hysterectomy is a bigger deal than a vasectomy). Having accepted it, whether to control the number of children, both for the freedom of the parents and so as to have fewer pieces of the family pie of resources to divvy up. It seems logical to say gays should have autonomy when it comes to sexual orientation and coupling. Is trans "medical treatment" just another version of the same thing?
Is anyone truly stuck with their born body any more? How much plastic surgery and other kinds of correction are being done? How many kinds of battle against aging? Not only can the fertile become infertile, but to some extent the infertile can become fertile. It's a bit odd that the Trump Republicans, at least somewhat opposed to radical individual autonomy, somewhat inclined to tell us to accept nature, winners and losers and so on, tend to be heavily re-made and made up. Kamala Harris, as far as I can tell, has allowed herself to age naturally and beautifully.
Why shouldn't trans kids enjoy the kind of freedom to change themselves that is now mainstream? I guess because in many cases we are encouraging children and adolescents to make metaphysical decisions in a way that coincidentally benefits professionals and other adults. The adults who show "leadership" either supposedly demonstrate an arcane knowledge of who is an appropriate candidate for treatment, and who is not (if not biology, then it must be a pure assertive self), or some kind of special love or care for others, a moral superiority; or both. These can be temptations to do terrible things.
If we are autonomous individuals, then we retreat from others to make more or less arbitrary choices, like Caesar meting out life and death, as if we are in a nihilistic void--no one cares much about us, so we need not care much about anyone else. Then because we feel a need for some society, we come back after our fateful decisions to "relationships" if not community. Shakespeare sometimes has people go "out" into the woods for a while, take part in wild, fun, potentially dangerous activities, and then come "back" to conventional life, prepared to re-consider it, but also able to be grateful for good things that it provides. Somehow with post-modern people there is a temptation to go wild and stay wild, with convention being purely for show. Perhaps as if Lear stayed on the moors, going crazy, and the young followed him. The journey is more important than any destination; it can always be interpreted as a noble adventure. Surely there is a horrible fascination with junkies who somehow survive, like Bobby K. They have made choices, and demonstrated (in a somewhat slavish way) their autonomy.
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