Meta Now Lets Users Say Gay and Trans People Have 'Mental Illness'
Meta rolled out a number of changes to its “Hateful Conduct” policy Tuesday as part of a sweeping overhaul of its approach toward content moderation.
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Let's for a second assume it is a mental illness, how does that make the people feel who are experiencing it? Do they feel loved and understood? If you suffered from the same mental illness where the most effective treatment is tolerance and acceptance, how would you like to be treated?
It’s America, love and understanding are not things we do here.
Honestly, I think you'd be surprised. I live in a very red state, and my work participates in the local Pride parades (free rainbow shirts, and a tent), and I see a lot more pride flags in my neighborhood than Trump flags. Granted, my company is in a liberal, but my neighborhood is in a very conservative area (usually 70-80% for the GOP candidate).
Of course, outward displays don't mean as much as actual relationships, but it's a lot better than people make it out to be.
We are pretty far from ideal though, but we're largely moving forward (two steps up and one step back).
They pretend they don't hate gay people but vote for people and policies that are virulently homophobic. It's all performative bullshit so they can pretend they're still good people.
Political party platforms and public opinion are rarely aligned.
For example, there was a ballot initiative to dramatically expand medical marijuana to the point that it was almost recreational (allowed growing your own for personal use), and it passed. The legislature largely rejected it and submitted a much weaker bill and people were pissed. On the flipside, the legislature unanimously passed a ban on conversion therapy, so I guess there's some hope.
People have a lot of reasons to vote the way they do. Most campaigns in my state focus on fiscal issues, and the local Democratic party pushes for things the voters don't want (usually higher minimum wage and education spending), while Republicans push for things voters do want (lower taxes mostly). The Democratic party doesn't even seem to be trying to court the middle, but the one candidate who did won a seat, and then that district was gerrymandered into safety.
Public opinion rarely matches the legislature's agenda. So it's unfair to blame the public for what their representatives do.
Let’s for a second assume it is a mental illness, how does that make the people feel who are experiencing it? Do they feel loved and understood?
"Hate the sin, love the sinner" has been the historical approach far-right evangelicals use to gull parents into conversation therapy for their kids.
Conservatives have adopted much of the same liberalish compassionate language up top and horrifyingly brutal physical, emotional, and sexual abuse on the back end for drug rehabilitation and prison reform.
The American idea of love and understanding is to brainwash them into compliance with social norms, while insisting the torture they're inflicting is a kindness.
“Hate the sin, love the sinner”
The problem is that people don't actually do the second, they replace "love" with "pity." Pity isn't love, it's intolerance. If you truly love someone, you won't care whether they sin or not, you'll just love them for who they are and want them to be the happiest they can be.
Whether homosexuality is a sin shouldn't be relevant at all, sin is between an individual and their god, especially in Christianity.
The problem is that people justify their intolerance by misinterpreting or misapplying phrases like these. They think things like conversion therapy is a demonstration of love, when in fact it's a demonstration of brutal intolerance.
The root of the problem here is intolerance, not the words we use to describe something.
It should be noted that the framing of it as a sin was after the medical community accepted its not a mental illness. Before that it was "you're sick and need help".
I've encountered people disagreeing with ASD ending with D, because people are born, live and die autistic, and also autistic people usually understand each other well enough, it's with non-autistic people where their communication impairment shows, mostly. And rigidity of thought, sensory issues and such can be arguably considered difference, not impairment.
So yes, "mental illness" is an unpleasant thing to say, especially about things which are not developed and treated during one's life.
But this is simply not what the issue is about.
The issue is about moderation of social platforms, that one must choose between "the platform" moderating content by this or that policy.
But in fact this is all gaslighting, bullshit, scam. Because in the era of web forums there were no platforms at all, and moderation was still a thing. Due to bigger load on moderators and those being from the not so huge number of active users of some forum, moderator's rights could be customized very precisely, say, certain kind of discussion certain Alice can be trusted to moderate, and some other kind of discussion not really (due to having a strong opinion), or maybe there's Bob who can be allowed to make warnings and approve new registrations, but can't be allowed to delete messages and ban users.
I’ve encountered people disagreeing with ASD ending with D
But shouldn't it though? According to Webster on disorder:
an abnormal physical or mental condition
And abnormal:
deviating from the normal or average
So something being labeled a "disorder" doesn't mean it's "bad," it just means it's different from average, and in many cases a cause of distress or discomfort. Not all disorders need to be fixed, they can often be treated by simply accepting them and working around any issues it causes.
The problem here has nothing to do with definitions though, it has to do with harassment and intolerance. Whether being LGBTQ+ or on the autism spectrum is a disorder or not is completely irrelevant, what matters is how we treat each other. If you're harassing another person, you're in the wrong, regardless of what the other person is, has, or has done.
Again, let's go back to Webster about "harass":
to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct
The law (largely irrelevant in SM though, up to a certain point) defines harassment as having real damages and intent to inflict harm. If you say being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness because you know it'll cause harm, then you're guilty of harassment and should be ejected from the platform. If you say it because it's topically relevant and you're not intending to cause harm but it happens, then I argue you aren't guilty of harassment (and you should probably apologize).
The real issue here is intended and actual impact of statements. It doesn't matter if your speech is factual, what matters is the intent and the result of that speech.
I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any form of therapist, so I'm not going to take a hard stance on whether any given thing is a disorder or not, I'm going to stick to answering my above questions. And in my case, accepting LGBTQ+ and people on the autism spectrum costs me exactly nothing and helps improve outcomes for them. So why shouldn't I do that? What harm could possibly come from me being nice?
something being labeled a “disorder” doesn’t mean it’s “bad,” it just means it’s different from average
That's until you start talking about "treatment", at which point you're discussing how to mitigate or correct the "disorder".
And that gets you to Conversation Therapy, which is just medicalized torture.
The end game of "Transgenderism is a disorder" amounts to Gitmo for Trans People.
Conversation Therapy
Ironically, this typo is exactly the therapy LGBTQ+ people need, and probably the therapy that works least well for people on the autism spectrum.
There are a lot of treatments available. For LGBTQ+, the best treatment is probably social acceptance, followed closely by body modification. For people on the autism spectrum, it's finding a lifestyle that plays to their strengths rather than expects them to conform to whatever is "normal."
The problem isn't with definitions, but intolerance. Certain groups refuse to acknowledge that there's more than one way to solve a given problem, and that more effective and compassionate solutions are valid. If we assume that, for example, homosexuality is a "disorder," two possible treatments are:
I'm not even sure the first is possible, but the second is absolutely effective. Why default to the harder, unproven option when the second is so effective? The problem here isn't definitions, but intolerance, but unfortunately tolerance is much harder achieve and changing words is relatively easy.
So something being labeled a "disorder" doesn't mean it's "bad," it just means it's different from average, and in many cases a cause of distress or discomfort.
Being left-handed is different from average and causes discomfort when using right-handed tools. Would you call left-handedness a disorder?
Handedness seems to be genetic, so no.
In psychology a disorder is not merely a deviation, but it requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain. That's why it's a disorder to have extremely low intelligence but not to have extremely high intelligence. And that matters crucially here because that's why homosexuality isn't a mental illness. Similarly transness isn't a mental illness in large part because it possesses a different character and by calling it one they would be leading people to respond to it in the wrongest way according to research on how to make the individual affected most able to live a happy and functional life.
You're right that it's important how we act. But it's also important that we push back because it's manufacturing consent to strip rights.
requires it to also impair your daily life and functioning or cause discomfort or pain
According to this article, LGBTQIA+ people experience:
That's a lot of discomfort, impairment to daily life, etc. Yes, this largely comes from external stimuli, but that's also largely true for people with lower intelligence (i.e. won't be considered for better jobs they could do due to discrimination). Some of it is also internally sourced (why am I different from my peers? What's wrong with me??), especially for people experiencing gender dysphoria (why doesn't my body match how I feel?).
AFAIK, we don't have a link between genetics and LGBTQIA+ people like we have for something like handedness or intelligence (jury is out on the latter for how much it contributes though). Research is obviously ongoing though, which is why it's important to keep the discussion open. Our determination of disorder vs unique trait is pretty arbitrary, so I think it's important to keep the discussion open around it.
That said, my overall point here is that the label itself doesn't really matter. People will discriminate against those who are different from them regardless of the terminology we use. The focus should be on that discrimination and intolerance, not on tweaking the terminology we use. We should be considering people who are LGBTQIA+ the same way as people with anything else that needs adjustments to social behavior (left-handed gloves/scissors, wheelchair ramps, interpreters, etc). In most cases, it means not doing anything different, as in not telling someone they can't use a given restroom, or that certain (otherwise sufficiently modest) clothing is unacceptable to wear at school.
IMO, the fight over the words we use distracts from the more important issue of protecting individuals from harassment. As long as social media moderation accomplishes that, it doesn't really matter what form it takes.
Getting it removed from classification as a mental illness was vital to reducing our systemic oppression back in the day so this is absolutely not a point we should cede
It's still classified as a mental disorder, we just dance around the topic a bit. The real change was research indicating that conversion therapy and whatnot don't work and are actively harmful.
