Why would anyone confident in the truth and evidence of their position pass up the opportunity to defend their position to an audience they believe is in dire need of persuasion?
Yes, that's the only one! And we've designed it that way. Either reject our offer and look like a terrible person who denied sick and injured kids funding, or accept and be exposed as a medical hack.
"I see no real downside for Dr. O’Brien in this arrangement." LOLOL
Witch doctor O'Brien would have to expose his faith-based belief system to that very painful procedure known as Socratic questioning. This procedure can be especially painful for people who've built their social and professional lives, as well as their egos, on a set of beliefs that weren't established by fact or reason (or reality), but because of susceptibility to ideological brain viruses.
Theocrats never debate, as they can only swallow and regurgitate dogma, especially when they still control social and moral high ground. Instead they just hurl anathemas at heretics and blasphemers and hope that if they denounce loudly enough a friendly lynch mob will come along to save them and help them burn the witch in question.
Indeed, theocrats never debate. See Judith Butler who never debates any critics; only calls them "fascists." I wrote an essay "How Does One Become Woke? A Tale of Two Friends" and invited the friend in question--a student and defender of Butler who works for an elite magazine--to a public debate. She declined, and, as answer, started a thread on Bluesky where her many followers told her how great she is. Her reaction--going to the Bluesky to get sympathy and "you are so great" comments exemplifies perfectly who these people are: intellectual dwarves incapable of a rational, sustained debate. Authoritarian, yet insecure minds in need of protection (hence their "safe spaces").
Judith Butler is a fraud and a charlatan and she isn't a scholar with ideas but a guru/politician with dogma and disciples.
America, being the land of opportunity and re-invention, has a rich history of famous charlatans, from Joseph Smith and other entrepreneurial messiahs to snake-oil salesmen and traveling carnivals to 70s cult leaders to 80s televangelists—and these famous frauds and con artists teach us a lot about each era and its beliefs and values.
That Butler and her "gender is performance" ideology (which is somehow both obvious and stupid) is supposedly one of the great thinkers of our time tells us more about modern America than any academic study could—about the marriage (performed in California) of therapeutic self-help and radical politics, about how Leftism has mutated from a concern for workers and wages to an upscale bauble designed to make insecure children feel righteous and holy, to America's bottomless narcissism and our preference for romantic fantasies and imaginary "identities" over facts, to how Utopian politics has become a secular religion based on the worship of a Sacred Victim, and lastly to how our academic and cultural institutions have been captured by alchemists who've never left campus but who think reality can be rearranged by a heavy application of obscurantist jargon imported from France.
Of course these people can't debate—cult members don't debate, they only worship their leader and attack evil outsiders. And none of this changes just because the guru has a PhD from Berkeley and speaks perfect Parisian patter.
America, most especially California, will always have an endless supply of insecure lost souls looking for someone to simply explain the world in black/white terms and to convince them that they're an enlightened cohort chosen to change the world and bring about some combo of Utopia and apocalypse, and there will always be a guru waiting somewhere to gather them into his/her (their?!) flock.
I was a Lit major at a snooty college way back in the 1980s so I've been watching this creature called Theory from the days of its American (re)birth to its current conquest of the globe and almost every Western brain.
If you had told me back then that Crit Theory/Soc Just would be the first great new religion of the 21st century, I would have have never believed it....But never underestimate a committed band of zealots who want power and are determined to get it.
Same here. I would have never imagined in the 90s when "theory" was all the rage in America's elite universities that 3 decades later the fad would take over the entire society and become the new religion--even though the conformism of the theory-oriented people was a warning sign.
GoFundMe has been known to cancel campaigns in the past that were politically disfavored by the company or its employees. The biggest example was when they cancelled the campaign to support the Canadian trucker convoy protest against mandated treatment with the experimental COVID vaccines. This was on the basis of trumped up claims of violence and hate symbols by the Canadian govt that do not comport with first-hand experience of people on the ground there. At first the company was brazen enough not to refund the donations and said they would donate them to other charitable causes, but after public outcry they agreed to refund the funds. Didn't help the donors whose bank accounts were subsequently frozen unlawfully by the Canadian govt.
All it would take in this case is for a motivated group of activists to petition the company to remove Colin's campaign on the basis that it promotes transphobia.
Thanks so much for your explanation Matt. That's pretty disgusting and frightening, but not surprising. I've been a victim of that myself for being transgender critical I've been restricted on XTwitter, Facebook and warned on YouTube for making a critical comment on a Corine Lucas YouTube video "Skin Suit" that calls women b*tches and sympathizes with serial killer of women who skins them. Amazing how they tolerate something like that but not someone questioning why they refer to women as subhuman (b*tches).
We truly are living through sustained information warfare and attempted mind control. Many are dimly aware that the the emperor has no clothes, but only a few are willing to say so publicly. Those that do are currently a small enough minority to police in this way. More of us need to start saying what we really think so that the flood of discourse becomes ungovernable.
I love the challenge!!! One has to wonder if Obrien is the one making "fast bucks" bilking gullible kids and parents? Just today, listening to NPR bemoan some state reducing (cancelling ?) funding for " gender care" and I marvel how so many in the US cling to this debunked scam while many European countries have come to see the problems and wisely moved to greatly reduce their support. How is it so many in the US refuse to acknowledge the medical wisdom of many other countries? I'm baffled.
The money in "gender-mutilation" is big. And if you convince some gullible deluded teen that there is a sex-body mismatch, you have a LIFELONG MONEY MACHINE running.
Indeed. My point was that before ACA, patients & families had to pay for gender interference themselves, which put a brake on these procedures, especially since the payer/providers couldn't cash in on them.
National Propagand Radio any more yet they preen and endlessly congratulate themselves as news people. I no longer support them at all. Listen out of self- defense / know your adversaries and as our only real available station in bush Alaska.
O'Brien is an all-too-typical woke, young (millenial? Gen Z?) who is content to throw criticisms out yet refuses to back up their positions with facts and reasoning. His posts are pathetic and unworthy of a supposed professional. He is only a resident in pediatrics and has a lot to learn.
This sounds like a futile endeavor. He’s lying before any debate even begins and any defense of GAC is impossible without lying. The evidence is not there
If he refuses then he will forever be the doctor who denied sick and injured children thousands of dollars because he couldn't be bothered to defend his medical field. The optics are bad if he refuses, and bad if he actually makes a blundering attempt to defend gender-affirming care. We've made it so that if he refuses the only plausible reason is that he's incapable of defending his field. All the incentives, both personal and public, favor him participating.
Great move. The problem is that shameless people cannot be shamed. And their tribe won't blame them. As far as they are concerned, why debate "fascists"? So, while you have won this non-debate, I'm afraid nothing has changed.
It’s safe for him to rely on not being exposed. The press is terrified of being labeled “transphobic “
Seems like nearly everyone is.
I saw a video about your tenure denial, the “inclusivity” requirement.
Employers are catching on, communicating to each other over ephemeral media (speech) not to hire pronoun people Academia won’t follow suit for some time.
That's already obvious from his Twitter exchanges. Not only no rational case, but he immediately falls back on ad homs, rather than engage with the issues. Other than making him look worse than he has already made himself look, I see no benefit to this kerfuffle.
The tide is turning against drugs & surgery for minors. There was an article in NYT about this with comments enabled. Their readers are fairly leftist but the comments were strongly against it. If you’ve lost them you’ve lost period.
'Debate me bro' - I didn't realize that was a 'bro' thing. I live in this strange world where people who call out others, claiming they are all wrong and believe nonsense are required to substantiate those criticisms. Live debate is a great way to do that. It's sad someone who's a practicing physician doesn't understand how a discussion like this could produce some good outcomes if he's as correct as he thinks he is. But i don't think that's the case, rather, I think it's much more likely he's a garden variety coward.
Of course there's a downside for him: he'll lose the debate!
Yes, that's the only one! And we've designed it that way. Either reject our offer and look like a terrible person who denied sick and injured kids funding, or accept and be exposed as a medical hack.
"I see no real downside for Dr. O’Brien in this arrangement." LOLOL
Witch doctor O'Brien would have to expose his faith-based belief system to that very painful procedure known as Socratic questioning. This procedure can be especially painful for people who've built their social and professional lives, as well as their egos, on a set of beliefs that weren't established by fact or reason (or reality), but because of susceptibility to ideological brain viruses.
Theocrats never debate, as they can only swallow and regurgitate dogma, especially when they still control social and moral high ground. Instead they just hurl anathemas at heretics and blasphemers and hope that if they denounce loudly enough a friendly lynch mob will come along to save them and help them burn the witch in question.
Indeed, theocrats never debate. See Judith Butler who never debates any critics; only calls them "fascists." I wrote an essay "How Does One Become Woke? A Tale of Two Friends" and invited the friend in question--a student and defender of Butler who works for an elite magazine--to a public debate. She declined, and, as answer, started a thread on Bluesky where her many followers told her how great she is. Her reaction--going to the Bluesky to get sympathy and "you are so great" comments exemplifies perfectly who these people are: intellectual dwarves incapable of a rational, sustained debate. Authoritarian, yet insecure minds in need of protection (hence their "safe spaces").
Judith Butler is a fraud and a charlatan and she isn't a scholar with ideas but a guru/politician with dogma and disciples.
America, being the land of opportunity and re-invention, has a rich history of famous charlatans, from Joseph Smith and other entrepreneurial messiahs to snake-oil salesmen and traveling carnivals to 70s cult leaders to 80s televangelists—and these famous frauds and con artists teach us a lot about each era and its beliefs and values.
That Butler and her "gender is performance" ideology (which is somehow both obvious and stupid) is supposedly one of the great thinkers of our time tells us more about modern America than any academic study could—about the marriage (performed in California) of therapeutic self-help and radical politics, about how Leftism has mutated from a concern for workers and wages to an upscale bauble designed to make insecure children feel righteous and holy, to America's bottomless narcissism and our preference for romantic fantasies and imaginary "identities" over facts, to how Utopian politics has become a secular religion based on the worship of a Sacred Victim, and lastly to how our academic and cultural institutions have been captured by alchemists who've never left campus but who think reality can be rearranged by a heavy application of obscurantist jargon imported from France.
Of course these people can't debate—cult members don't debate, they only worship their leader and attack evil outsiders. And none of this changes just because the guru has a PhD from Berkeley and speaks perfect Parisian patter.
America, most especially California, will always have an endless supply of insecure lost souls looking for someone to simply explain the world in black/white terms and to convince them that they're an enlightened cohort chosen to change the world and bring about some combo of Utopia and apocalypse, and there will always be a guru waiting somewhere to gather them into his/her (their?!) flock.
I've reflected myself on all of the above. Very well said. Yes, you expressed perfectly my own thoughts on this topic.
Thanks!
I was a Lit major at a snooty college way back in the 1980s so I've been watching this creature called Theory from the days of its American (re)birth to its current conquest of the globe and almost every Western brain.
If you had told me back then that Crit Theory/Soc Just would be the first great new religion of the 21st century, I would have have never believed it....But never underestimate a committed band of zealots who want power and are determined to get it.
Cheers!
Same here. I would have never imagined in the 90s when "theory" was all the rage in America's elite universities that 3 decades later the fad would take over the entire society and become the new religion--even though the conformism of the theory-oriented people was a warning sign.
wow great insight - thank you.
wow ! I'd say you smoked him!!
lolol
he's def not gonna do it. next time please use givesendgo. gofundme is a canceller. https://suspensionreport.com/suspensions/other
As I donated, I found myself wondering how long the fundraiser would last on GoFundMe...
What do you mean? Would GoFundMe cancel the fundraiser to protect the trans people?
GoFundMe has been known to cancel campaigns in the past that were politically disfavored by the company or its employees. The biggest example was when they cancelled the campaign to support the Canadian trucker convoy protest against mandated treatment with the experimental COVID vaccines. This was on the basis of trumped up claims of violence and hate symbols by the Canadian govt that do not comport with first-hand experience of people on the ground there. At first the company was brazen enough not to refund the donations and said they would donate them to other charitable causes, but after public outcry they agreed to refund the funds. Didn't help the donors whose bank accounts were subsequently frozen unlawfully by the Canadian govt.
All it would take in this case is for a motivated group of activists to petition the company to remove Colin's campaign on the basis that it promotes transphobia.
Thanks so much for your explanation Matt. That's pretty disgusting and frightening, but not surprising. I've been a victim of that myself for being transgender critical I've been restricted on XTwitter, Facebook and warned on YouTube for making a critical comment on a Corine Lucas YouTube video "Skin Suit" that calls women b*tches and sympathizes with serial killer of women who skins them. Amazing how they tolerate something like that but not someone questioning why they refer to women as subhuman (b*tches).
We truly are living through sustained information warfare and attempted mind control. Many are dimly aware that the the emperor has no clothes, but only a few are willing to say so publicly. Those that do are currently a small enough minority to police in this way. More of us need to start saying what we really think so that the flood of discourse becomes ungovernable.
I tried to like these last three comments but couldn't :(
'gender' critical suspensions are the largest category on the site. women, especially, are taking it from all sides atm.
Yes. Indiegogo will cancel GC women too. I think that’s the one that artist Nina Paley tried to use to fund her excellent comic.
Thanks for this info Jane.
He’ll back out, but I don’t mind risking $20 to find out.
I love the challenge!!! One has to wonder if Obrien is the one making "fast bucks" bilking gullible kids and parents? Just today, listening to NPR bemoan some state reducing (cancelling ?) funding for " gender care" and I marvel how so many in the US cling to this debunked scam while many European countries have come to see the problems and wisely moved to greatly reduce their support. How is it so many in the US refuse to acknowledge the medical wisdom of many other countries? I'm baffled.
The money in "gender-mutilation" is big. And if you convince some gullible deluded teen that there is a sex-body mismatch, you have a LIFELONG MONEY MACHINE running.
exactly and disgusting that "Drs" are willing to exploit that vulnerability.
and since Obamacare, the third-party payers pay for it.
don't kid yourself. In the end WE pay for it.
Indeed. My point was that before ACA, patients & families had to pay for gender interference themselves, which put a brake on these procedures, especially since the payer/providers couldn't cash in on them.
I listen to NPR
NPR sucks
National Propagand Radio any more yet they preen and endlessly congratulate themselves as news people. I no longer support them at all. Listen out of self- defense / know your adversaries and as our only real available station in bush Alaska.
There is a massive downside he is wrong and he knows it. He would lose all of the income he is making on mutilating children
Q: Why is O'Brien ducking the debate?
A: Because O'Brien is a quack.
QUAAAACCCKKKKKKK!!!
O'Brien is an all-too-typical woke, young (millenial? Gen Z?) who is content to throw criticisms out yet refuses to back up their positions with facts and reasoning. His posts are pathetic and unworthy of a supposed professional. He is only a resident in pediatrics and has a lot to learn.
This sounds like a futile endeavor. He’s lying before any debate even begins and any defense of GAC is impossible without lying. The evidence is not there
If he refuses then he will forever be the doctor who denied sick and injured children thousands of dollars because he couldn't be bothered to defend his medical field. The optics are bad if he refuses, and bad if he actually makes a blundering attempt to defend gender-affirming care. We've made it so that if he refuses the only plausible reason is that he's incapable of defending his field. All the incentives, both personal and public, favor him participating.
Great move. The problem is that shameless people cannot be shamed. And their tribe won't blame them. As far as they are concerned, why debate "fascists"? So, while you have won this non-debate, I'm afraid nothing has changed.
Maybe, cynical, but maybe.
It’s safe for him to rely on not being exposed. The press is terrified of being labeled “transphobic “
Seems like nearly everyone is.
I saw a video about your tenure denial, the “inclusivity” requirement.
Employers are catching on, communicating to each other over ephemeral media (speech) not to hire pronoun people Academia won’t follow suit for some time.
I disagree. Give him an opportunity to state his case. If he refuses, then it is obvious to all that he has no rational case.
Serial fact-checking is not debate..
Sure, give him a chance. But he’s already rejected that chance.
That's already obvious from his Twitter exchanges. Not only no rational case, but he immediately falls back on ad homs, rather than engage with the issues. Other than making him look worse than he has already made himself look, I see no benefit to this kerfuffle.
That’s personal attack, not ad hominem
"ad hominem (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining."
"vicious ad hominem attacks"
It’s not a synonym for insult as everyone uses it.
Example of a real ad hominem:
“You have no right to an opinion on abortion because you were arrested for shoplifting when you were 17.”
Yep, donation coming from NZ. Puberty blockers still prescribed here, I would like to hear it debated please.
Trans (gender bending) Ideology - the more they try and justify it, the weirder it becomes.
Trans Activism also always refuse to state what it is !
This quote from Int Women's Day 2023...
"Trans Activism - A Movement that fails to state what rights it's fighting for on the grounds that it may incriminate itself" H. Staniland
The tide is turning against drugs & surgery for minors. There was an article in NYT about this with comments enabled. Their readers are fairly leftist but the comments were strongly against it. If you’ve lost them you’ve lost period.
'Debate me bro' - I didn't realize that was a 'bro' thing. I live in this strange world where people who call out others, claiming they are all wrong and believe nonsense are required to substantiate those criticisms. Live debate is a great way to do that. It's sad someone who's a practicing physician doesn't understand how a discussion like this could produce some good outcomes if he's as correct as he thinks he is. But i don't think that's the case, rather, I think it's much more likely he's a garden variety coward.
Exactly!
He will not debate. None of these cowards will (Hotez for example), because they have no facts, only ideology.
Thank you Colin. Donation made. Respectful debate is essential--which is what you are proposing.
When you are a pediaquack, actually defending this pile of shit is beyond your limited powers.