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I saw both this episodes with john Oliver and the one with Jon Stewart and as a liberal and progressive myself (I am Norwegian Social democrat) I was disappointed to see how these guys have so completely bought the trans extreme agenda. As readers here will know, in many European countries the tides is shifting (Sweden did a 180 degree turn, Finland the same and in the UK things are changing too). The issue is so polarized in the USA (and Canada) and it seems that liberals in the USA are unable to see that this issue is not as clear-cut as trans-activist are claiming

Saw also the last episodes with Bill Maher and he seems to see things other liberals won't

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo8t86Fi2JQ

(see in the ends about the Canadian trans women with the huge fake boobs which show the madness liberals in Canda and USA are defending)

Democrats in the USA is going to lose in 2024 if this madness continues

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Oct 18, 2022Liked by Lisa Selin Davis

As a retired pediatric physician, I have to disagree with Lisa about wishing that physicians and medical associations should manage these issues and we should keep the government out of the clinic room. There has been a movement to medicalize many controversial social issues in recent decades. Gun violence is an example. Doctors cannot solve the gun problem. Gun ownership is embedded in our Bill of Rights and it is our government authorities that are constitutionally given the responsibility for overseeing public safety. Physicians can document the huge personal and social costs of reckless gun use. Abortion is a profoundly ethical and legal issue. The legal status of the fetus is not a medical decision and should not be left to doctors. Likewise, the aggressive provision of gender-affirming medical and surgical therapies have long-term, as yet inadequately studied consequences. Political influences are clearly playing a role in setting up clinics, urging "peer counselors" and endorsing therapies when there are unsettled medical, psychological and ethical issues that the pediatric endocrinology community has NOT honored with a sober and careful approach.

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Thanks for this balanced article. I believe that if the topic of trans-ID’d kids was discussed like this starting 10+ years ago it would have saved a lot of heartbreak and physical damage while still allowing help to be provided to those people for whom their sex is a stressor. Instead we got ideology combined with activism and huge financial incentives from the medical industry and we are where we are today.

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It's all a gimmick. The inflections in his voice when he's indicating no serious person could possibly be skeptical of trans affirmation. The absolute glee in his own assurance is cringe inducing.

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Oct 18, 2022·edited Oct 18, 2022

Their ilk are the same ones who say that any woman or girl who objects to the trans agenda in the slightest way is an evil, bigoted TERF who has literally committed violence against "the most vulnerable women of all", and therefore any level of harassment, doxxing, and threats, including rape and death threats, is fully justified against us. We earned it, they say. We deserve it. If we just learned to be tolerant and kind, then men who identify as women wouldn't send us pictures of the bayonets they say they are going to rape us to death with, or tell us they are going to beat our heads into the pavement until our skulls "look like a dropped cherry pie", or call/email our employers to get us fired, our friends and social organizations to leave us ostracized and unable to gather together in public, and our families and children to create fear. Just give these "most vulnerable women" what they want, we're told, and then they will be nice to us and everything will be fine. Why are we making so much trouble??!

If nothing else, this has been a very demonstrative lesson about the pervasiveness and depth of woman-hatred coming from everywhere -- left, right, and center. You only have to look at the face of John Oliver or Jon Stewart or any good little "liberal male feminist" whent they talk about "TERFs" and watch their features twist with rage at our noncompliance and our insufficient "kindness", distort with all of the pent-up resentment and contempt that they can finally -- finally! -- unleash toward a permitted female target of abuse, whether it's JK Rowling or Selina Soule or Winsome Sears or Chloe Cole or some other bad, disobedient, "hateful, bigoted", *deserving* woman.

They want to control us every bit as much as a raging incel who is furious about the "sexual marketplace" or a fundamentalist religionist who thinks we are the inferior creation of God that must be managed with an iron hand. It's all the same misogyny dressed up in whatever rhetoric will allow men to oppress and abuse women.

Same shit, different day.

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What a disappointment. John Oliver is normally so good at doing his homework. He didn't this time.

The audience laughter felt like nervous courtesy laughter at times. It was also odd to hear Oliver overcompensate with his pearl clutching toward past attitudes about homosexuality. His overly aggressive digs toward any rational dissent felt designed to shame the audience into compliance, not agreement.

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Obviously the sport issue is partially about fairness but it is more than that. All children should have the opportunity to participate in single sex sports and activities should they choose to do so. We know that having boys on girls teams is unfair, but it also leads to the safety, dignity, and privacy question. Did you hear about the male volleyball player who gave a girl a concussion? In addition, it is unconscionable for athletic organizations to create rules about high school males suppressing testosterone. No child should ever be medicalized like this. I also feel strongly that boys need the chance to play single sex sports as well. They need to be able to develop healthy competitive skills without worrying about possibly injuring a female teammate.

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Oct 18, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022

A little news: Ute Heggen YouTube channel now up. All about healing in nature, with mind/body movement.

From my perspective as a trans widow, discovery of then-husband's cross-dressing diaries exactly 30 years ago, I know I'm on solid ground stating unequivocally that the early working of the medicalization was based on extremely small sample sizes, and the stance on the participants was that they likely would not live long. Thus, whatever John Oliver is extrapolating from is a sand castle.

The Dutch studies also have terrible flaws, including this one for the final stretch of the post-op data: questions in the survey for natal males were given to females who ideated they were male and questions designed for natal females (including regarding menses) were given to post-op males ideating to be female. Links to extended critiques of the Turban and Dutch studies at:

https://wordpress.com/post/uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com/4879

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"Viewing Asian Americans as an ideal minority is actually white supremacism." I'm paraphrasing, but it was when John Oliver presented that illogical argument that I stopped watching his show. Shortly after that he evidently did an entire show on black hair. Wokeness does bizarre things to the human mind.

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Thank you! It was so disappointing that he did not do his homework. Thank you for spelling it out for him!!!

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Other than a handful of extremists on the right, I don't believe that there are or have been threats against these institutions that are castrating and mutilating minors. Every single time that an extreme leftist/Marxist position is questioned or called out, then those defending these questionable/immoral positions/activities cry "threat." Why do you automatically believe them? These ones who cry "threat" are the same who claim that speech is "violence."

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I have a hard time imagining why Lisa admits that the Democrats are dreadfully wrong on trans yet are still the guardians of democracy. Note to liberals: If your party is for compelled speech and for taking people's kids away and destroying livelihoods for accepting biological reality, that party is pretty disconnected from anything that can be called "democracy."

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Oliver's been a dumb hack for a long time. I remember watching his godawful takes on healthcare economics when he discussed that and being blown away by how staggeringly terrible his/his staff's understanding of it was. I also saw snippets of him talking about the harmless glory of sex work (yeah right) and was shown this week his oh so brave but very creepy "if you don't like BLM please choke on my dick and die" (highly mature, appropriate, and persuasive)

But what blew me away about how bad this segment was wasn't the "anything that says anything about transgender ideology isn't 100% the way, the truth, and the light" attitude and dismissal or deliberate ignorance of the mountain of evidence of its faults and inconsistencies, it was the two sources he chose for his support.

Kai Shappley is a literal child. He showed a ~7 year old kid, who has clearly been put through way too much and way too absurd of a struggle and should probably stop getting cameras shoved in his face and used as a pawn in this movement so he can live slightly normally, and said "this kid thinks he can't be president and it's all your fault bigots!" I'm amazed by the fact that five years ago, I would've been told by any leftist "WE'RE NOT SAYING THERE ARE TRANS KIDS, THAT'S RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA" and now I'm to take notes from this "trans" child (as if this kid is an evolutionary biologist). But moreso than that, it's the fact that this kid's mother is on video saying that she was afraid that he was so feminine that he might be gay, that they tried to BEAT IT OUT OF HIM, and when that wouldn't work, they transitioned him. Just transed the gay away. When I think about social justice, rarely do I think "we should be more like the Iranians."

But the other piece of evidence was citing Serano. Serano, the "I became a woman because I was fantasizing about being sold into sex slavery and used as an object by strange men, and my forced feminization kink is what this is really all about" dude.

The lecture is so aggressively homophobic and misogynistic that he sounds more like Rush Limbaugh than whatever paragon of progress he imagines himself to be.

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THANK YOU! Scream it from the Rooftops that JO is officially unhinged!!

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A good start in highlighting Kai Shappley's case and then you abandoned the trail.

Why are so many mothers eagerly facilitating the mutilation of their daughters? How many of these cases are at least partially complicated by parents in the midst of divorce fighting over the bodies of their children?

Why are so many children claiming to be trans also claiming to be autistic? What's behind this explosion in purportedly high-functioning autistic girls?

Seems to me every journalist attempting to do deep investigations into transgender children leaves out the beginning, in almost every case, and jumps to the political struggle. Why?

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Oct 19, 2022·edited Oct 19, 2022

Before I read this article, I wouldn't have known John Oliver from a hole in the wall. So I clicked on the link to his latest episode on you tube. That humorless show was like nails scraping across the blackboard. Can that awkward, physically unattractive, and clumsy schlub really be what passes for a nationally known comedian today?

John Oliver, who personifies the nerdy political stooge, twists facts and repeats any lie to advance the morally and scientifically bankrupt "transgender" cause. And his annoying hand-waving histrionics underlines the emptiness of his arguments. Watching him is like attending an old fashioned, Communist struggle session. No. Not funny, not funny at all.

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