What Limits to Parental Influence?

I'd personally have been satisfied to learn that the "Hetracil" site was a hoax and left it at that, but Julian Sanchez manages to utilize the spoof to raise some thought provoking questions (and in so doing, he shows why even seemingly outlandish thought-experiments aren't without their uses).

Presumably not many people would object to an adult's deciding, for whatever reason, to change his orientation. I imagine that, if it were reversible, not a few people might be interested in seeing how the other half (or the other four percent) lives for a while. But what about giving the drug to kids or adolescents?

There are really two distinct questions: What do we think of it morally, and what do we think the law ought to permit? You might think it's an appalling thing for a parent to do to a child, but that government nevertheless ought not step into the parent/child relationship by making it illegal. We might just as much, after all, think it's appalling to fill children's heads with the sorts of religious doctrines that cause them to feel tormented by their own sexuality, but we don't intervene in those cases ... On the other hand, someone might conceivably think that people shouldn't be gay—so there's a sense in which, from that perspective, parents who give their child Hetracil are conferring a benefit—but that (maybe because autonomy is important) everyone ought nevertheless to have to make the choice for himself after reaching the age of reason—or at least legal majority.

There's a lot more to Sanchez' argument than this, of course, so I suggest reading it in toto.

At any rate, those inclined to think the issues he raises are necessarily restricted to the question of homosexuality can easily rephrase it in terms of, say, race: if there were some set of magic pills or some miraculous medical process which could change a child's racial features and thereby spare him or her a lifetime of second-class treatment in everything from school to work to dating, and if the intervention could occur early enough in life so that hardly anyone would know about it, how would one feel about African or Asian parents making use of such an option to make their children fit the "Nordic" ideal, especially if the process were irreversible? As fantastic as this scenario may seem, it isn't really that much of a stretch when one considers that in certain Asian countries parents are getting plastic surgery for their children, many not even school-aged.

As Julian Sanchez points out, it will not suffice to simply say that parents shouldn't make irreversible choices for their children, as that is what parents do all the time when they commit them to vaccination, music practice, living in one city rather than another, etc., nor does the argument that because making such choices implies something negative about being of a certain race or sexuality, it is therefore wrong for parents to make them on behalf of their children: as an individualist I don't accept that one ought to sacrifice one's children's happiness on the altar of group solidarity, and in any case such thinking is easily seen to be absurd if we consider what it means for, say, immigrants' rights to give their offspring Anglo-Saxon names, or the freedom of African-Americans to teach their children to engage in "white" pursuits.

My own personal inclination is to leave aside my own strong personal feelings about the "ickyness" of it all and say that parents should have the right to make such decisions for their children, just as long as the decisions they make have no negative health consequences for their offspring. If I wouldn't object to the parents of a child with a facial deformity or even jug-ears having the problem fixed, why should I interfere if parents want their children to look like Heidi Klum or Pierce Brosnan? If taking some pill would ensure that a child grew up straight but otherwise had no side-effects, what concern of the state's is it to stop parents from getting it prescribed? Even considering this issue strictly from an ethical rather than a political viewpoint, it still isn't clear to me that parents are morally bound to refrain from making such choices for their children, particularly if delaying such decisions greatly raises their cost later on: if a parent's duty is to fit his or her child for a happy and fulfilling life free of the threat of discrimination and marginalization, there is a strong argument to be made that in such circumstances it is even a duty for parents to take such decisions for their wards as soon as they possibly can.

Of course I'd be more than happy to change my mind on all this if someone can offer a convincing enough argument to make me reconsider (for one thing, I certainly don't consider being anything other than white and straight some kind of moral failing); I just don't buy the superficial "But what about [Group X] pride?" line people usually proffer when such scenarios are put before them. Is it is possible to do better?

PS: It's just occurred to me where I've seen arguments of a similar flavor to the one laid out here most often in the past - within the American deaf community, which has witnessed a longstanding controversy over whether congenitally deaf people who marry each other have a right to intentionally bring more deaf children into the world, or are instead obligated to make use of genetic testing to ensure their offspring don't bear the same disability they do - or at least to refrain from purposely skewing the odds in favor of deafness. Now, I think it's great to be proud of what one's able to accomplish in life in spite of being deaf and all, but I don't get why one should wish to impart such a handicap to others despite having a choice in the matter, and it's the same reasoning which tells me that doing so is wrong here which impels me to say that there is probably even an obligation for parents to make use of medical developments which can spare their children the stigmata of belonging to groups which are discriminated against - children aren't simply ego-boosting activist props for their parents, and it is unfair to unnecessarily burden them with one's own obstacles in order to simply "celebrate" one's mode of existence.

Comments

[L33tminion]

I don't have a detailed argument worked out, but here's what strikes me: While such protection from "marginalization" might be a boon to an individual child, such a practice becoming widespread could be horrible for society. (Of course, there's a group that would view the elimination of homosexuality as a great thing for society, and even if they thought that drugging away temptation might be bad, they'd still want the drug for their children. Thinking about this makes me very glad indeed that Hetracil is fictitious.)

[Abiola Lapite]

"While such protection from "marginalization" might be a boon to an individual child, such a practice becoming widespread could be horrible for society."

Even if it could be shown that this were true, as I've already noted, the idea that one should sacrifice the happiness of one's own child for the sake of a vague collective entity named "society" strikes me as thoroughly unconvincing. To the extent that parents owe "society" any responsibilities where their children are concerned (as distinct from the obligations they owe the children themselves), it consists solely of trying to keep them from engaging in crime or doing harm to others: would you allow your child to remain deaf or suffer some other treatable disability out of a desire to prevent "society" from looking down on such shortcomings? To choose the most extreme possible example, what would you make of, say, Jewish parents who had the option of altering their children's features to be more "Aryan" so they could survive the Nazi era Solomon Perel style ("Europa, Europa"), but chose to pass up on it for the greater good of German society? I'd say they were not only fools but outright murderers myself.

If there's a solid argument against allowing or even positively encouraging parents to do such things, I've yet to encounter one coming from anyone else, and I certainly can't think of one of my own accord.

[Julian Elson]

Yikes! The Korean plastic surgery article scared me when it talked about cutting of pieces of the kids' tongue frenulums, because I was thinking of a different body part called a frenulum. Though, I suppose surgery on either one can't be too pleasant.

I saw this on Notes from the Lounge, and have been thinking about it a bit. I think that objections to the "Hetracil" hypothetical do have a sound moral basis, but it isn't in parents making choices for their children before they can make them themselves. The hypothetical popularity of hetracil depends on two things:

1. Widespread bigotry against gays, whether from parents or from broader society, which parents anticipate.
2. Parents making choices for their juvenile children which reflect the parents' own values and/or attempt to put the children in a more advantages position for life.

Hetracil requires both. I think we all object to 2) when it's taken to certain extremes, like when Christian Scientist parents refuse to give their children medical treatment for easily treatable diseases (whether we think it warrants state intervention or not, I suspect virtually everyone here finds it objectionable morally), but the Hetracil example falls short of the limits of 2). If parents influencing their kids' sexual orientation with no ill side-effects is pernicious, what about parents influencing their kids' taste in music, politics, religion, and sports? We can't -- and shouldn't -- hope to stamp out parental influence on their children in all spheres, obviously.

The real objection to Hetracil is 1): the bigotry against gays (or non-whites, in your examples) that creates the demand for it. Some of the discussion you and Sanchez give this topic seems to be implicitly phrased something like, "taking our society's bigotry as a given, is Hetracil acceptable?" The answer is probably yes, but people don't like the "taking our society's bigotry as a given" part, and we shouldn't take it as a given.

BTW, that blog, "Keep Choice Legal!" is ingenious. I'm not sure the ACLU is best advocate of banning Hetracil (maybe NGLTF), but other than that, it's really great. Whoever writes it has a real talent for deadpan satire.

[Andrew]

Here's a related thought experiment. We already have sex selection of embryos / selective abortion of female embryos/fetuses, especially in countries where there's a huge preference for having sons (India, China). What if there was a pill that could induce gender change? Would it be okay for parents to give their daughters a pill to make them into sons (presumably in infancy to block gender confusion issues)? (Obviously this is implausible, but just for the sake of argument...) Even in the modern West, where sexism has diminished, women make less money than men, are subject to harassment and so on - one could argue that women are subject to discrimination and bias in a similar way that gay people and ethnic minorities are - would it not, in some way, benefit one's daughter to make her a boy so that she would avoid that discrimination and marginalization? And would this not be even more true in places like India and China?

Possible counterargument - huge gender imbalances actually would harm society (excess crime and violence from single young men, fewer children)? But then how do you draw the line between this kind of harm and the harm of "lost diversity"?

[Abiola Lapite]

"the bigotry against gays (or non-whites, in your examples) that creates the demand for it. Some of the discussion you and Sanchez give this topic seems to be implicitly phrased something like, "taking our society's bigotry as a given, is Hetracil acceptable?" The answer is probably yes, but people don't like the "taking our society's bigotry as a given" part, and we shouldn't take it as a given."

The way you phrase the issue makes it seem as if we're faced with mutually exclusive alternatives, but there's no reason why one can't both seek to combat societal prejudice *and* avail one's children of whatever measures can ease their path through life. Let's be realistic here, a single individual can only do so much most of the time - there were many, many people before Rosa Parks who tried the sort of thing she did only to suffer fatal consequences for being "uppity" - and if one had the choice to take measures to help one's children evade the larger society's prejudices, the chances of such measures paying off would be far higher than the odds that even a lifetime of in-your-face activism would make a difference; besides, while one can expend one's own lifespan fighting discrimination, why should one burden one's children with the fight as well?

[Abiola Lapite]

"What if there was a pill that could induce gender change? Would it be okay for parents to give their daughters a pill to make them into sons (presumably in infancy to block gender confusion issues)?"

If the choice is between this and the sort of third-class treatment women far too often get in places like India, China and Korea, I'd have to say the answer is an emphatic "Yes!", whatever the cost to society. The highly skewed sex ratios in all the countries I've mentioned seems to have done absolutely nothing to alter attitudes towards women for the better, and I think it's probably better to spend one's life in such societies even as a man with highly diminished chances of finding a wife than as a woman who's treated all her life as at best an unfortunate accident and a burden to be pawned off to be a wealthy man's housemaid as soon as possible.

[Andrew]

"I'd have to say the answer is an emphatic "Yes!""

Hm, fair enough... re the race analogy, would you take a pill that would give you "white" features, would you have wanted your parents to give you such a pill, and if you have kids someday would you give them such a pill?

[Abiola Lapite]

"re the race analogy, would you take a pill that would give you "white" features"

As long as I'm not planning to be in any sunny climes for long, sure, why not? While I don't have a negative view of my features as they are, I don't see them as being some mark of superiority or anything either - the only thing which could bother me under such a scenario would be worrying over whether I'd continue to be as dashingly good-looking as I currently am ...

"would you have wanted your parents to give you such a pill"

I'd think they did the best they could by me in so doing: being spared however many decades of clutched handbags, condescending treatment, false reports of suspicious behavior and fear of visiting any number of places - all of which I've actually experienced - is worth quite a great deal in my opinion.

"and if you have kids someday would you give them such a pill?"

If it existed and attitudes remained as they are, yes, I would. Whatever I can do to spare my children hardship, I believe I am obliged to do. It isn't for me to use my offspring to further my identity politics.

[Andrew]

Okay, some more thought experiments (I hope you're not find this to be tiresome pestering...I'm finding this very interesting). Suppose you could permanently alter someone's personality through pills (about as plausible as Hetracil, if not more so - Prozac and Ritalin being less extreme examples) - say, along the "big 5" traits (openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Should parents give their kids a "drug cocktail" to make them - whatever? You could make the ultimate "organization kid" (he'd graduate summa cum laude from Harvard and be a CEO by age 28), a religious monk, a laid-back hippie, lazy no-good bum, etc. Would this be any different from subtly adjusting the kid's genetic material either through embryo selection or genetic engineering? How would you decide if the parents' manipulation was harmful? (e.g., the organization kid might end up richer than the laid-back hippie, but would he be happier?) What if you made your kid [insert minority here] but gave him a stoic personality so the slings and arrows of discrimination would slide right off his back? How about the Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons of Brave New World?

[Abiola Lapite]

"Should parents give their kids a "drug cocktail" to make them - whatever?"

Fact is, parents already try to do this day-in, day-out - it's what most parenting arguably consists of - so the drug cocktail scenario hardly seems outlandish to me. The genuinely worrying things about drugs like the SSRIs are the possible side-effects they can have and their unpredictability, not that they alter personality.

"the organization kid might end up richer than the laid-back hippie, but would he be happier"

Here's the real meat of your scenario: the question of whether or not it would make the child's life a happier one. If one could reasonably come to the conclusion that altering the child's personality to make him/her a monk or a slacker rather than a CEO would make for a happier life, then that would be the better way to go - what is the point of a rich but miserable existence?

"What if you made your kid [insert minority here] but gave him a stoic personality so the slings and arrows of discrimination would slide right off his back?"

I think one would have to weigh this against the alternative under which the child didn't have to be in Minority XYZ and didn't need to have a stoic personality: would he or she be able to enjoy an emotionally richer life with greater highs? If stoicism came at the cost of a reduced ability to feel in general, I don't think it would be a price worth paying.

"How about the Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons of Brave New World?"

You say this as if intellect were always an unalloyed benefit: ever heard of William James Sidis or watched "Little Man Tate?" Speaking from experience, I can confidently say that one *can* be too far ahead of one's peers intellectually, and it can make for an entire childhood of plenty of isolation, frustration and almost unbearable tedium, while there is no evidence to show that beyond a certain limit being much smarter than others necessarily even makes for a more financially successful life, let alone a happier one. Wouldn't you say that a bank-manager or even a binman whose family loves him, who enjoys many strong friendships, who is in good health and who has distractions he enjoys tremendously and can afford to indulge, is better off than a Yale math professor who gets tenure at 22 but spends the rest of his life seething with resentment, paranoia and loneliness?

PS: To the degree that what you're talking about is the *crippling* of a child's intellect, then I must point out that this is a diversion from what we're supposed to be talking about, namely alterations which aren't detrimental in any way. I can't endorse any procedure which harms a child even if it's ostensibly carried out for the child's own good.

[Andrew]

If happiness is the final verdict on whether a personality-altering treatment is good for a child, would that require parents to put their kids into Nozick's "experience machines"? The last time we discussed experience machines, you withheld judgment but said people who wanted to be in them should be allowed to. Can/should parents put kids who can't consent into the experience machine? (which is but a more extreme version of Hetracil/Prozac/Ritalin/etc)

[Abiola Lapite]

What guarantee is there that said machine wouldn't be simply unplugged after a month, a year or whatever, at which point the subject is left to die? What if the Architect of the Matrix tires of using human bodies as batteries, decides to turn on the nuclear fusion and then starts feeding in the sleeping humans as fuel for the fusion reaction?

The "experience machine" scenario can't be taken seriously: I don't see how leaving one's child's happiness entirely at the mercy of some machine over which the child will have no ultimate control is in any way a sensible course of action to take, and to the extent that one has guarantees against any such thing, we are back to the same old futile philosophical questions about brains in vats and so forth (if there's no way for me to know I'm just a brain in a vat, there's no reason why I ought to care).

[Andrew]

Well, okay, but this is a thought experiment, after all! What I'm getting at here isn't about the machine per se. You may as well just permanently re-wire the kid's brain so that the brain itself acts as its own experience machine (e.g., the person can survive by going around eating and avoiding speeding cars, but consciously experiences an imaginary blissful paradise). But I suppose I have your answer at the end - if the child doesn't know he's living in a delusion engineered by his parents, he's not really being harmed.

[Frank McGahon]

Very interesting discussion and I've been trying to reconcile my intuition that there's something wrong about this course of action by parents with the apparently logical conclusion that there isn't. The best that I can come up with is:

a) If one redefines a parents' role from moulding/creating an adult to anticipating what the child would wish for himself were he competent enough to decide, the issue doesn't go away but is a little bit less clearcut - if you ask gay adults would they rather have been straight, - would they have taken the pill - you won't get too many saying they would. Of course, it is hard to tease apart what is "genuine" happiness-from-being-gay and a natural tendency to make oneself content with one's lot, or at least the things one cannot change.

b) The logic that parents should prescribe hetracil for their little darlings (so as they would be happier in a society which still attaches a stigma to homsexuality) does also seem to compel parents to arrange clitorectomies for their daughters in societies where a stigma attaches to females who haven't undergone fgm.

c) The last refuge of the philosophical scoundrel - the category mistake. The notion of a pill to "cure" homosexuality (which presumably leaves the rest of the "person" intact) rather assumes that one can identify a platonic essence of "sexual orientation" independent of other aspects of personality in the first place. What I'm thinking of is the types of thought experiments relating to subjective experience - inverted spectrum and the like, which assume there to be such things as a "qualia".

I think that the issue hinges on whether parents do actually create/mould their kids (and whether they should). There does appear to be evidence that parental influence is not nearly so significant as it is popularly taken to be. Newborns up to about a year old are relatively inert things but from then on they do have unique personalities. Given such personalities, it might be that parents ought to seek the best for their child, *based on that child's unique personality* (which I think also includes trying to anticipate what his decision would be) and not on the basis that that personality is infinitely malleable.

[Andrew]

"b) The logic that parents should prescribe hetracil for their little darlings (so as they would be happier in a society which still attaches a stigma to homsexuality) does also seem to compel parents to arrange clitorectomies for their daughters in societies where a stigma attaches to females who haven't undergone fgm."

Not quite - assuming that Hetracil has no negative side effects (ie, no "repressed gayness" or conflicting feelings) and that you're not abandoning your boyfriend by taking it, being turned straight isn't harmful. (And I say this as someone who wouldn't take Hetracil now and probably wouldn't have wanted my parents to give me any when I was a kid either.) Whereas having your genitals chopped off and sewn up so that you can never enjoy sex and have a serious risk of infection is, it seems to me, pretty harmful. (Whether this harm is outweighed by the harm of societal stigma is another matter.)

[Frank McGahon]

[Whereas having your genitals chopped off and sewn up so that you can never enjoy sex and have a serious risk of infection is, it seems to me, pretty harmful.]

The notion of "enjoying sex" seems to assume the sort of society where women are free to do just that and which typically wouldn't be the case in societies where fgm is common. The infection risk is really a side issue unless you're going to argue that fgm isn't a problem so long as it's carried out hygienically in a medical context.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Of course, it is hard to tease apart what is "genuine" happiness-from-being-gay and a natural tendency to make oneself content with one's lot, or at least the things one cannot change."

Indeed, and besides one can't know for sure whether one would be happier living in a state one's never experienced.

"The logic that parents should prescribe hetracil for their little darlings (so as they would be happier in a society which still attaches a stigma to homsexuality) does also seem to compel parents to arrange clitorectomies for their daughters in societies where a stigma attaches to females who haven't undergone fgm."

This I don't see. Giving a hypothetical Hetracil to the child inflicts no injury, and only ensures that future sexual preference is in some particular direction, while female circumcision is an actual physical mutilation [Andrew's already made the same point, I see].

"The notion of a pill to "cure" homosexuality (which presumably leaves the rest of the "person" intact) rather assumes that one can identify a platonic essence of "sexual orientation" independent of other aspects of personality in the first place."

While it's fair to say that one can't neatly separate out any one facet of one's personality from the rest, it's hardly all that much of a stretch to imagine an alternative universe in which one's personality remained substantially the same except for one aspect: our tastes in life do change, and yet others have no problem detecting continuity between our past and present selves (nor do we, unless we're schizophreniacs). To give a specific example, one can picture a person developing a hitherto nonexistent fascination with the beautiful women of Mongolia after a visit there, but otherwise remaining much the same individual in other respects. Those people who make their race or sexuality the centrepoint of their personalities are walking caricatures - I don't see any difference between the average gay or straight guy other than their taste in who they fancy, and I think people who talk about "keeping it real" or "acting white" are morons.

Also looking at this as a question of physical transformation, were I to wake up tomorrow looking like a Waffen SS poster boy I don't see what big difference it would make to who I am: I imagine I'd gradually come to feel a lot less wary about racism lurking behind the experiences I have, but I don't see that it would otherwise alter how I view the seriousness of racial prejudice, cultural trends in Africa or much of anything else - it isn't as if I allow consciousness of my racial background to define my personality all that much as matters stand, it being more of a mental flag warning me as to how my words and actions can be mispercieved than anything else.

"There does appear to be evidence that parental influence is not nearly so significant as it is popularly taken to be."

It isn't, but that's mostly because in modern societies the primary influence on children's personalities is those with whom they spend the most time, i.e. their peer group, which *can* and often *is* selected by parents.

"Given such personalities, it might be that parents ought to seek the best for their child, *based on that child's unique personality* (which I think also includes trying to anticipate what his decision would be) and not on the basis that that personality is infinitely malleable."

Personality isn't *infinitely* malleable, but it doesn't have to be for parents to try to shape it, often successfully. To illustrate, attentive parents usually do a decent job of teaching their toddlers not to give into the selfish impulses we are all born with, which is the main thing that separates those of us who obey the law even when no one is looking from the hoodlums who spend their days going to and fro between the courthouse, the jail cell and the streets. When we express contempt for people who chew noisily with their mouths open or chatter loudly in the cinema we're revealing the manners our parents drummed into us, not aspects of our personalities which just spontaneously emerged.

[Andrew]

"The notion of "enjoying sex" seems to assume the sort of society where women are free to do just that and which typically wouldn't be the case in societies where fgm is common. The infection risk is really a side issue unless you're going to argue that fgm isn't a problem so long as it's carried out hygienically in a medical context."

*Ahem*

http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/femgen/fgm1.htm

[At the time the mutilation is carried out, pain, shock, haemorrhage and damage to the organs surrounding the clitoris and labia can occur. Afterwards urine may be retained and serious infection develop. ... chronic infections, intermittent bleeding, abscesses and small benign tumours of the nerve ... discomfort and extreme pain. ... chronic urinary tract infections, stones in the bladder and urethra, kidney damage, reproductive tract infections resulting from obstructed menstrual flow, pelvic infections, infertility, excessive scar tissue, keloids (raised, irregularly shaped, progressively enlarging scars) and dermoid cysts.

First sexual intercourse can only take place after gradual and painful dilation of the opening left after mutilation. In some cases, cutting is necessary before intercourse can take place. In one study carried out in Sudan, 15% of women interviewed reported that cutting was necessary before penetration could be achieved.]

I've left out the bits that rely on the operation itself being carried out unsanitarily. Even if "enjoying sex" is a non-issue, surely you'd admit that having to *cut yourself open* to have sex is harmful.

[Chuckles]

The whole shit is really icky. I can just imagine some fellow selling IQ boosting drugs to blacks. No Side effects, honest. Hell, I might even start a hoax site of my own along these themes...Black parents - affect the destiny of your kids while they're still young: etc etc etc.

My first inclination was to condemn Parental Choice on the basis of the fact that it hampered the expression of individual volition at a later point in life. But I see Sanchez already dismissed that.

The thing is that all loopholes have been neatly plugged in this hypothetical scenario with the assumption that Hetracil confers no negative health effects: This is a neat plug since whatever social backlash arises from viewing Gayness or Blackness as something that can be cured is neutralized has no physical effects on the individual - or that perhaps the physical effects are lesser than the benefits.

I find the entire Hetracil scenario quite repulsive; but the alternative, to grant the State powers of parenting is even worse. I therefore wish all the children out there Good Luck.

A few things cross my mind:

1. The possibility of reverse stigmatizing -i.e. much like "sell outs" are stigmatized. This would be particularly bad if the ward turned out to average or worse with regards to material success: i.e. the gamble didnt quite pay off and is now irreversible. This would make the parent culpable in a present suffering that would have been unneccesary had the choice not been made. Again, it depends on which way the wind blows. Kinda like a Planet of the Apes scenario - okay, you turn straight - but all the straights die - and now gays are the majority. What then? Although the chances of this happening are pretty low, so I guess its not too much of a risk to most parents.

2. The Sense of Loss: Look at Male Circumcision for instance. Not very harmful physically - might even be of use against some STDs: Yet, there are males who feel a profound sense of loss that is psychologically impairing, in some instances, not so much as from the procedure - but as from the knowledge of absence (and this isnt even in societies where circumcision is a stigma). It is possible, for the Gay Turn Straight to develop this sense of loss later in life - not quite some much from Hetracil messing up his brains; but from the knowledge of absence. Even in the face of whatever social advancment Hetracilization causes, this sense of loss cannot be guaranteed against: and there is nothing in the formulation that says that this indirect sense might not mess up the fellow more than the neatly plugged negative effects of Hetracil.

3. Abiola's formulation addresses 2nd class treatment and I think there is a loophole here. While an argument may not be made against Hetracilization per se, the justifications for it are unlikely to pass scrutiny. I doubt that either the Korean parents, or the Hetracil wielding Straightifiers can show that such processes of change will exempt their children from treatment that parrallels 2nd class treatment etc etc by this procedure; i.e. returns are not guaranteed. Now, this may be a bit of stretch - and yes I know that there is a color stratification of income and social capital - but in similar situations today; there is a backlash also to "passing" that might be very intense on the individual level (The Human Stain) - and thats simply what Hetracil enables Parents to irreversibly lock their children into. Unless we are guaranteed of complementary changes in society, I doubt that Hetracil is little more than a sophisticated means of "passing" and we know that passing has repercussions at the Individual level - strictly psychological often. Again, this depends on how much the child knows, or doesnt know about its origins - but marginal holistic returns on Hetracil cannot be guaranteed without complementary changes in society. Yes, the child may become rich, and ride in the front of the Bus - but is it locked into a life of psychological torture by the mere fact of knowledge? To make the entire thing work, we need to have more assumptions about society and the personality of the child and the scenario, much more than the notion that Hetracil confers no negative health effects in a physical sense, a la FGM.

4. Now, some of these objections can be raised at some level to any number of Parental Decisions: But I suspect that all of them involve the assumption of a social vaccum, which again, is completely left out of the formulation.

[Frank McGahon]

I don't think the fgm can be dismissed so easily. Forget about the infibulation procedure Andrew mentioned, say it's just your common or garden clitorectomy which involves "just" removing the external part of the clitoris and/or inner labia. It is pretty gruesome, but the primary "negative health effect" involved is "merely" the inability (or extreme difficulty) in achieving orgasm. In a society where women are expected to be clitorectomised - while we're dealing with the world as it is rather than how we'd like it to be - a women who hasn't undergone fgm is likely to be seen as "unclean" and is unlikely to ever get into a position where she can "enjoy" normal sexual relations with a husband. I don't see any major difference between the rationales behind the parents' choice in either case.

[Abiola Lapite]

"say it's just your common or garden clitorectomy which involves "just" removing the external part of the clitoris and/or inner labia. It is pretty gruesome, but the primary "negative health effect" involved is "merely" the inability (or extreme difficulty) in achieving orgasm."

"Merely" or otherwise, what you're talking about is physical mutilation, which is outside of the framework within which we've been working.

"a women who hasn't undergone fgm is likely to be seen as "unclean" and is unlikely to ever get into a position where she can "enjoy" normal sexual relations with a husband."

The point of female circumcision is that she shouldn't be able to enjoy intercourse even *with* a husband, so what's the point of this argument?

"I don't see any major difference between the rationales behind the parents' choice in either case."

The difference is that we've been talking about changes which affect personality or appearance without being detrimental in any way - whiteness, maleness and heterosexuality aren't detriments - while you're talking about physical mutilation of members of one gender. There simply is no equivalence to be drawn between the two classes of scenarios.

[Jim]

""Merely" or otherwise, what you're talking about is physical mutilation, which is outside of the framework within which we've been working."

If gay orientation does have an organic basis, then any drug effective in changing that would have to restructure the brain. Isn't that a physical mutilation?

[Julian Elson]

Chuckles, do you mean "selling skin-whitening drugs to blacks" or "selling IQ-boosting drugs to everyone," or did you actually mean to write "selling IQ-boosting drugs to blacks?" (I suppose black fans of Charles Murray -- all three of them! -- might have more interest in IQ-boosting drugs greater than most whites or asians)

To clarify, I don't think people have an obligation to spend their lives as crusaders for social justice. I was merely attempting to reconcile our intuitive queasiness with the Hetracil concept with our view that it's not out of bounds because it violates a child's rights in some ways that the ordinary transfer of values, tastes, etc, from parent to child don't. Abiola and Julian were basically looking at it from the perspective of parents' rights to raise their children as they want, and I think both found themselves "icked out" by the idea, but couldn't find anything morally objectionable about it from the parental rights vs. child autonomy perspective. That's because, in my view, the queasiness we feel about the Hetracil concept isn't about parental rights or child autonomy: it's about anti-gay bigotry. Of course, anti-gay bigotry would be objectionable if Hetracil didn't exist too. Or rather, it is objectionable, given that Hetracil doesn't exist, and wouldn't become more so if it did exist. The idea of Hetracil brings our discomfort with anti-gay prejudice in our society to the surface, and I think we're mistaking that discomfort for discomfort with parental violation of child autonomy or something.

[Abiola Lapite]

"any drug effective in changing that would have to restructure the brain. Isn't that a physical mutilation?"

Not unless every last bit of sensory input which flashes through your synapses is a physical mutilation. Restructuring is the brain's stock in trade, and heterosexuality is not the equivalent of a lesion in Broca's area.

"the queasiness we feel about the Hetracil concept isn't about parental rights or child autonomy: it's about anti-gay bigotry"

Yes, exactly.

"it is objectionable, given that Hetracil doesn't exist, and wouldn't become more so if it did exist."

Agreed. Hetracil (or Caucasafil, or Masculovine ...) is just a handy tool to force closer examination of the issue - for one thing, I don't believe that there is such a thing as a "gay gene" or a "gay switch" in the brain which any conceivable medical procedure will ever be able to flip.

That said, even though no Hetracil lookalike is ever likely to be sold in anybody's local pharmacy, I do think future advances in biomedicine are going to bring forth dilemmas which aren't too far from it in spirit: the genes which affect "racial" phenotype are few enough that I can definitely envision a time only a few decades down the line when it will be possible for couples to have their designer embryos altered to match some prepackaged "look"; two Chinese parents could come in and order the Rutger Hauer Aryan special or the Richard Rowntree Beefcake combo and still enjoy the comfort of knowing that the child would otherwise be almost entirely theirs genetically speaking. Even if every last person in a given society went for the exact same look, I don't see how such a thing would be as bad for "society" as the present reality in which boys outnumber girls 2-to-1 amongst fourth children born to Korean families.

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/ssn/feat/1Q95/feat.html

If the technology to realize the vision I've laid out becomes cheap enough soon enough, I expect that within my lifetime Asia will one day be home to more 6'2" blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan types than there are in all of Europe!

[Chuckles]

[...I suppose black fans of Charles Murray -- all three of them! -- might have more interest in IQ-boosting drugs greater than most whites or asians...]

No, I meant selling IQ boosting drugs to blacks. As far as I see it, the premises are the same. Telling me my black child is likely to be more successful materially if he were white and thus inducing me to change is no different from telling me he is likely to be more successful if he stayed black but had a higher IQ (however that might be measured), or were a boy, or were straight, or spoke English perfectly, or were handsome, or isnt fat etc. There are several factors that correlate with increased material abundance, and I suppose any of them is open to change - with several of them stereotypically attached or dis-attached from certain groups. Certainly, "Intelligence" is just another aspect of a person's personality.

Even if the child were of normal intelligence, there's nothing wrong with boosting him a couple of points and given him an edge.

The Hetracil premise relies on the notion that a certain class of people have a certain disorder (perhaps social in context), which, if corrected, will bring greater health, happiness and stigma free living. My IQ boosting drug will rely on the same premise and is sure to be a run away success.

Even if no disorder was involved, who doesnt want to be more Intelligent?