Does no one else remember how much they changed between the ages of 18 and 25? lol. God, when my friends and I went through puberty as young girls, we HATED our bodies. We were embarrassed and ashamed by them. At 18, I wanted a nose job and my hair to be bonded and no boobs. At 25, I felt completely the opposite opinion. Chopping off body parts become of strong feelings is not the answer at such a young age.
That's called Body Integrity Identity Disorder. People will be lobbying soon to have limbs removed, or their eyes or eardrums. If it's legal to remove your sex parts for gender dysphoria, why not this too? It's a strange world we live in, and I wouldn't be surprised when this starts happening.
Hey Peter, how about this: we raise the age for drinking to 25 as well. I’m fine with raising the ages for all the things. Voting? 25. Drinking? 25. Transitioning? 25. Totally fine with that.
21-25 seems reasonable for a decision like this. Sovereignty over your body should be conceptualized more as a negative right in that no one should be able force you into something, not a positive right where the government and society have to give you access to whatever intervention you so choose.
I would agree that when it comes to something as drastic as self mutilation and cutting off body parts and things that severe, I would agree that 25 should be the age of consent for this particular thing. Getting a driver’s license, and access to alcohol “may” end up leading to a negative life changing circumstance that can not be reversed, but the percentages are low compared to transitioning. After you chop off your penis, testicles, have a hysterectomy or cut off your breasts, these things can never be reversed, therefore that would be a very good reason to limit transitioning to those who’s brains have fully developed by the age of 25. If this is an indisputable fact, then it needs to be used as the measure for allowing people to transition.
The Netherlands seems to have a fairly reasonable and evidence-based approach to this. Roughly speaking: If a teenager has been expressing gender dysphoria since a young age, but is otherwise mentally healthy, it's probably not a phase. But if they suddenly start expressing those feelings, and they have other mental health problems, it may well just be a temporary symptom of those.
It might be really difficult to determine if a young child is truly feeling that way or if it has a "transhousen by proxy" parent who has brainwashed the child into thinking it is trans. If the child has been utterly and completely brainwashed it might as well seem as the child thinks it really is trans.
@@Mynervas Perhaps, yeah. But there are usually teachers and other children around them from a young age who can give insight into their early-years behaviour. Like I remember befriending a tomboyish girl on holiday when I was about 11. And after we'd been talking for a couple of days she said (slightly sadly) _"You can probably tell: I wish I was a boy."_ So sometimes kids aren't shy about these feelings. If you have a good, unbiased therapist, they can often parse out whether they're just gay, nonconformist, anxious about puberty, or genuinely feeling persistent gender dysphoria.
Regarding not wanting to give a 12 year old a gun, marksmanship used to be a merit badge in the Boy Scouts of America. I was taught how to use a rifle in Scouts, it wasn't at all uncommon in rural America.
Great convo! One thing to note: You can't rent a car until your age 25. You can get a co-signer but you can't do it individually. Also, raise it to age 25 but go after the doctors. This is brutal - if you heavily regulate the doctors, you will see less of it
A pre-frontal cortex that isn't developed fully is very bad at risk-assessment. Teens and young-adults over-estimate benefits and under-estimate fatal risks or even any regret--for good reason--throughout human history. But it leads them to underestimate the risk of drunk-driving, and dismiss that they would ever want to have children themselves later in life. That was what I was waiting to hear from you two.
18 was arbitrarily decided on because that's the age most people are when they graduate high school. You can't rent a car until you're 25. We need to start making decisions based on science, so it should be 25 for everything.
@@thesignalproductionsErin Friday brought up the car rental age last week on his channel. It didn't faze Peter one bit. She cited a of different ages for different things. His counterargument: "Look, we have one universal age for everything, so that be the age for this." (?) On this point, I'm afraid I think Peter is "deranged," to use one of his favorite words.
@@thesignalproductionsalso, the age at which doctors will agree to give women elective surgery for the purpose of permanently preventing conception (tubal ligation, etc.) is much higher. I think late 20s. But somehow it's okay to get sterilized, if that's not the purpose.
Peter just changed my mind! (About the responsibilities of legal adulthood). If doctors (and everyone) stopped lying about the reality of “gender affirming care), i think the numbers of trans identification would drop as people realised how serious medicalisation is. … and now I’ve changed it back and have been convinced by Travis. The reason an age restriction on gender surgery could be supportable is that it doesn’t just effect the person getting altered, it affects women’s rights, children’s safety, crime statistics, women’s sport, family and relationship dynamics, gay rights, and the value of truth in our society…
I think Peter's argument here (sovereignty over your body) assumes that modifying your sex traits is a cosmetic procedure for which you're giving informed consent. I think this is how transition *should* ultimately be treated, but it isn't. You start to touch on this right at the end. Sex trait modification is being sold as a medical treatment for a medical condition. We don't just hand those out to anyone who asks for them. It isn't "sovereignty over your body" to demand doctors give you chemotherapy if you haven't been diagnosed with cancer, for example; so it's weird to hear people talk about access to what is currently considered a medical treatment as if it were analogous to tattoos, drinking alcohol, and buying guns.
Is it body modification, like tattoos and piercings? Or is it more like agreeing to cut off someone's foot who has that mental disorder that makes you believe it's not really your foot?
The fact that we have a minimum age to qualify for The Office of the President has nothing whatsoever to do with epistemology. It was, and is, an extremely effective way to safeguard our republic from the influence of “ruling” families who desire to dominate our political class.
I’m curious that Peter talks about the desire to have your bits removed as a mental health issue - I agree with this but I think it’s a stronger argument for Travis’ position.
@@razzle_dazzle because we don’t have good evidence that medical transition is going to help those people, and a severe mental health issue is going to make differential diagnosis and informed consent much more difficult. Of course those points are true at any age, so a blanket ban based on age isn’t necessarily the best solution. I might think differently if I were confident that there were good and thorough procedures in place around diagnosis, consent and help for people who regret transition. Is there an example of a severe mental health issue going away by age 25? That’s a broad and complex question, and I’m not a mental health professional so I won’t say too much about it, but my informed guess would be yes, sometimes (and sometimes it’s going to be much more intractable). I think it’s relevant that there are detransitioners who had surgery even later than 25 years old and have profound regret about that decision, as well as physical complications.
@@PlaceboDomingo I'm talking specifically about the people who want to cut their genitals off. To me, that could only indicate one particular mental health condition. What could the differential diagnosis possibly be in those cases? And I think for that population of people, there is good evidence that medical transition helps them. Maybe not for minors who haven't been screened properly, but for people who still want to go through such a procedure when they're adults? Absolutely.
@@razzle_dazzle I wonder if we’ve seen different information on this? I’ve shifted my position over time - I used to think that there was a small population of people who really needed it; as I’ve learned more about it I’ve become less sure of that. But I accept that there are people who are happy with their transition and I wouldn’t want to rule it out in every case. Some further thoughts: Some complicating factors include OCD, trauma, internalised homophobia. I think the consequences of making a mistake are much more serious than the consequences of delaying transition to allow for open ended, exploratory therapy. If after that someone still wants to go ahead, they’re more likely to be satisfied with the outcome. What are your thoughts about someone who was certain that transition was right for them, and later comes to believe that it’s harmed rather than helped them?
If there is a legal cutoff for adulthood at 18, it needs to be applied consistently. There may be some wiggle room in terms of medical ethics and safeguards that medical practitioners need to go through before administering such a "treatment" to someone where it can be shown that their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed, but rendering it illegal is inconsistent with the concept of adulthood.
I disagree with the US drinking age (I think it is an arbitrary limit orchestrated by MADD, who successfully tied Federal Highway funding to states raising their drinking age to 21 to combat drink driving). In my part of the world it is 18 for everything (including joining the military and running for most electoral offices). I agree with Peter's explanation of the reasons behind e.g. needing to be 35 before becoming President. Electoral offices (which have broader implications for society at large rather than the individual) can be subject to different criteria, because they are a different thing. I am not in favour of young people transitioning (at all), but I think that making it illegal as a result of a blanket, bright-line rule is unprincipled. I would plead for case by case assessments (including the doctors taking into account whether the person asking for the treatment has a developed frontal cortex). @@thesignalproductions
Not entirely though. You can't just go to a doctor and say _"I'm pretty sure I've got cancer. Remove my pancreas. No need for any tests. I'm an adult."_ You still have to go through reasonable medical assessment.
Exactly. Yeah, that's why I would argue for medical and ethical safeguards (which would take into account a young person's brain development), rather than some blanket age-based rule. I'm still willing to believe that some people need some kind of physical medical intervention in case of extreme dysphoria, and when all else fails. @@andybrice2711
On another note, I find the analogy with tattoos or cosmetic surgery to be a bit unhelpful. It conflates two things - tattoos etc are not strictly speaking medical procedures - they are purely cosmetic choices that people make (rather than being framed as being some kind of treatment for a medical condition). I think it is important to separate those things analytically.
Would you consider statutory rape up until age 26?. Perhaps you'd start military service eligibility at 26 instead of 25 being the last year one can be drafted. Perhaps the contracts athletes sign should be void until then. Would someone who carjacks someone at age 24 be charged as a juvenile? In conservative jurisdictions, kids who were half that age were charged as adults and given harsher sentences since it was reasoned that they knew what would likely happen and that they showed intent. What the greater situation for transgender patients is what Jordan Peterson brings up where the medical establishment should not be allowed to legally engage in such practices. In more conservative or even mainstream circles, it is considered that adolescents can not consent and adults who want gender transition are mentally ill and doctors should not engage as they are indulging patients. Here's how it will likely play out. Lawsuits will possibly mount since even if 1% regret that's an enormous amount of people. There is a conservative effort to sway opinions so if the medical professional and WPATH doesn't offer clear and firm guidelines, then I think all gender transition will be outlawed and that includes for those who have already transitioned and need maintenance only medication. Furthermore those patients will be banned for other care covered by insurance or Medicaid much like Aids coverage was denied for years. Any ailment will be viewed as a side effect of using gender medicine despite the vast majority of trans-feminine transitioners gaining health advantages. Does anybody else want to debate their civil rights and access to medicine?
Only the very young would think that as an absolute, because not all people suffer severe cognitive decline at age 80, even though most do. On the other hand, no 18 yo ever has had a fully developed brain or has ever experienced what that is like. Wisdom is lived experience. Knowledge without wisdom is just data, and needs wisdom to interpret it. If not actually senile, or deluded, most elder people have the wisdom to delegate if a certain task requires more than they are capable of because they have lived long enough to experience their limits.
There is a cultural incentive to not be LGBT. Do you literally think life easier for these people to acknowledge and live this way? You've watched too much Fox News/Daily Wire.
Don’t worry about it. No pets were featured during the actual debate (apart from normal park life background) so it didn’t distract from anything - the discussion was over already. I personally love dogs and it’s a thumbs up from me. I don’t particularly like babies and would click off if he was doing a baby goo goo sesh at the end, but I wouldn’t bother questioning it.
@@OskarMC-ez8veyou don’t believe neuroscientists? This brain development timeline has actually been recorded, multiple times. You can look up images of scans and see for yourself. It’s a fact.
