JDefiant

They're treated by transitioning. Everyone who makes this argument seems to act like an armchair psychologist and clearly hasn't done research on the history of trans mental healthcare. Transitioning has always been the most effective treatment of dysphoria, along with social support.

Or there are different treatments for different conditions. Even if two conditions might seem similar, doesn't mean they should be treated similarly. There's nuance to different conditions and rather than making blanket judgements about how to think of all conditions, we should reach an understanding and figure out what works best.

If you know a lot about a subject and read through a lot of arguments online about that subject that use none of the data that already exists out there, you get the feeling that they don't know what they're talking about and they're not using the same data. It has nothing to do with the conclusion and everything to do with the understanding of the subject.

It's fair IMO to say most people will have opinions that aren't based in reading studies and evidence on the topic. I think it's less so a blanket judgement and more so the idea that there are fewer people who are well-read on something that doesn't concern most people like the history of trans health. But they'll still have an opinion on it. I think it's dishonest to suggest that everyone making judgements about trans people (negative or positive) are also well-read about these subjects, because they really aren't.

This is a bogeyman created by right-wingers. Research often goes against their viewpoints and younger generations are more left-wing, so they gotta spread lies against academia to make it seem like it's all post-modern Marxism (which is a contradiction; Marx was a critic of post-modernism). This culture war and the distrust of intellectualism is what actively damages research. Now whenever bad research enters the right-wing information pipeline, it can't be criticized without seeming like the people behind those studies were shut out by academia for being 'free thinkers'. In actuality, their methodology was biased and the study didn't meet the standards of these studies should be done.

I'll respond to each of these points one-by-one. By the way, leftist to me doesn't mean 'liberal/Democrat'. Leftist means anarchist or socialist, while liberals are neoliberals/capitalists. I would describe academia as staunchly liberal. Leftism is underrepresented in academia unless we're talking about conflict theorists and maybe anthropologists. To your points:

1. I do agree on @popipiopit's point about ideological homogeneity in fields like social science, to a point. Assuming you need more conservatives in science to make it less biased is a pretty black-and-white centrist view on fields that often already involve a lot of disagreement. Personally not interested in having more conservative researchers, when conservatives typically cite fringe science or misrepresent data for their viewpoints. I think bias can be checked in other ways, namely circulating studies across other review boards. I would also say any given journal has a reputation to keep. If they're approving flimsy research out of bias and other peer review boards take notice, that's known across academia.

2. The discourse around Marx is so goofed up that nobody even knows his views, so here goes: Marxism describes the world in terms of materialism and class struggle. That classes formed have similar material interests and act to further those interests. Postmodernism throws that out the window and thinks 'nothing can truly be known' and rejects all form of absolutism. This directly contradicts the idea that materialism directly influences the interests of societies. Only someone who misunderstands both ideas would describe anything as post-modern Marxism.

This prompt is so easily confused because when this definition of racism was popularized, it was coming from a sociological standpoint. Different terms have a different meaning, it depends on context. Taken out of context, this idea sounds silly. Like, yeah, duh, black people can be racist towards white people. If a black person doesn't support mixed race couples or hates white people, that would be racist.

If the term racism is viewed from a sociological standpoint, it's a detached categorization to critique power structures/systems and how they treat race. The examples I gave before would be considered prejudice and discrimination, but not racism. This is all conflict theory and it has nothing to do with a black person who doesn't like white people. It's the lens that we understand social systems.

There's a common sentiment that you are "entitled to your opinion" and everyone deserves a platform. I disagree with this sentiment because critical thinking and logic is not something that is intuitive to every person, these are skills that are learned.

If a population isn't granted the necessary philosophical tools to critically examine information and make a proper judgement, then they aren't prepared to discern between good and bad information. They don't know when they are getting tricked by having their biases catered to. IMO, this is why grifters and MLMs are so successful in the US; many Americans aren't educated and they are raised with American ideology that is not consistent with reality.

As such, unless you can formulate an opinion that's strongly based in established facts and logic (not like the right-winger meme, but actual studies to back up an argument), then your opinion should probably not be taken seriously.

More often than not, the pursuit of truth is the pursuit of social equality. This is a loaded prompt.