There is no doubt that testosterone has an anti-anxiety and energizing effect in the short to medium term. Combine that effect with copious social support and "affirmation" and it's not surprising that a lot of these kids (mostly girls who want to be boys) feel better in the short term. Ten years from now it's going to be a whole other story. The guy who originated frontal lobotomies for psychiatric disorders won the Nobel Prize in 1949. You'd think we would eventually learn to be more cautious in with irreversible procedures in medicine.
A lot of these teenage girls who take T do not understand the long-term ramifications:
1) If they are like many girls (or boys), they have had singing lessons. T drops the vocal register by 5-6 notes. You go from soprano to mid-tenor range, and this is permanent. Once the vocal cords are lengthened, they stay that way.
2) Facial hair is promoted by T. It does not go away.
3) Facial size is increased by T.
4) Once the boobs are removed, they cannot be FUNCTIONALLY replaced. The girl will never nurse her own child.
All of these are permanent changes. When they desist, the realization that they have ruined their bodies sets in. This stuff is NOT part of the "informed consent".
T also causes vaginal atrophy... to the point that it can rupture and bleed after sexual intercourse. Also growth of the clit, which is irreversible. Also painful joints. And infertility of course.
"mostly girls who want to be boys"
This is debatable. The very concept of 'girl' or 'boy' has been so devalued and trivialised by modern (feminist, progressive) culture that's it's not necessarily true they want to be the opposite sex. I've never heard a MTF speak of wanting to shovel snow from their driveway, support a family, ride motorbikes, repair train tracks etc. Instead they often act very girlish and embrace 'transition' much like girls used to embrace goth or emo.
Many live online and not in the real world. There is no gender online. We are all floating in space and can 'be' whatever we set out avatar/ profiles to. This virtual existence is a huge reason why transitioning has gone through the roof. Many detransitioners say if they had not got sucked into various internet subcultures they would never have transitioned.
Often they admit not actually wanting to 'be' a man per se, but just wanting to neutralise the extremes of femininity and occupy a kind of 'limbo' state which his neither male or female, child or adult - something like peter pan.
Testesterone is often used like a baggy jumper - to cover up the distressing and even traumatic effects of puberty and to postpone that maturation into full adulthood. And like a baggy jumper it's often a phase that lasts a year or two and no more. The only difference is that the effects of T cannot be discarded the way a baggy jumper can.
There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that some gender-questioning women are well aware of testosterone's powerful mood enhancing properties and seek out "T" because of it. In my opinion, it's a blurring of the lines between therapeutic and recreational drug use.
The source is a detransitioner who was interviewed on the podcast "Gender: A Wider Lens." Alas, I do not recall the episode number.
NYT is far from unusual in its treatment of so-called "gender affirming" medical alterations of secondary sex characteristics. Every news item I've seen or heard recently about the efforts in some state legislatures to restrict such treatments for minors has featured a testimonial from an enthusiastic parent as to how the troglodytes in the legislature are preventing their child from accessing the "life saving" treatments. There is, of course, not one word about the teenage experts on TikTok coaching the kids in how to threaten suicide, much less about the systematic evidence reviews that have resulted in the recent restrictions on such treatments in European health care systems. I hesitate to attribute malice where ignorance is a sufficient explanation; but the persistence of the journalists' omission of any coverage of the developments in Europe is certainly degrading my trying to assume the journalists' good faith. At some point, the omission of such important and well-known evidence does indicate intentional propaganda, not good faith reporting.
I have had occasion to talk to and listen to the parents who have bought the trans delusional lie. The delusion in these parents is profound. The context that I refer to is the sports context, whiere boys who have the delusion that these boys are female are the topic. The parents say "she". The boy who is a deluded "girl" says "I just want to compete and have fun". There is no recognition of the well-known biological truth of "male advantage both before and especially after puberty". There is a great presumption that "gender identification as female" is all that is needed to "become female".
This trans psychotic delusional lie is damaging a whole generation.
Yes. Every person who participates in the delusion, who decides to ignore the cognitive dissonance, is damaged by it. They become more tolerant of gaslighting, less apt to speak up against lying.
Think of the tremendous psychological pressure (which is terrifying) for parents here:
Your child gets brainwashed by the Big Lie/mass social mania of our time (somewhat akin to when teens in the 70s ran off and joined cults), and is convinced they are really the opposite sex (however impossible) and that if you utter one peep of dissent they will kill themselves;
This narrative is backed up by a tsunami of corporate propaganda, from your breakfast cereal to your favorite TV show, not to mention every school teacher and administrator and every academic from kindergarten teachers to PhDs, who all proclaim that if you don't submit to your child's wishes, you are some sort of evil bigoted hate monster, committing the great blasphemy of our time, standing between a child and their Authentic Self™;
so you go along in fear and confusion, walk on eggshells, consent to calling your boy by a new girl's name and supporting the surgeries that will mutilate and sterilize them, if not worse.
How can you look back and admit you were weak and wrong after all this? How can you admit to yourself that you surrendered the mental and physical health of your child to a mass social mania?
I can understand needing to cling to the Big Lie that duped you in the first place, the alternative—that you helped destroy your own child because you abdicated adult responsibility—would be enough to turn anyone into a post-op Oedipus.
Yes. But really it's insurmountable only for those who 1) lack moral clarity and backbone, which let's be honest is most people, who also 1a) find it too difficult to say "No" and set appropriate boundaries for their kids, which is a sizable chunk of parents. The strong ones do their research and hold the line.
Then there are the parents who 2) are narcissists themselves, many of them are big affirmers of their mini-me, or 2a) have huge struggles with them (Nothing can beat narcissist vs. narcissist for epic drama), some of which you can read about in https://pitt.substack.com.
An under-counted sub-demographic are the parents who 3) are undermined by a captured spouse, or 3a) are vulnerable to losing custody or visitation at the hands of an affirming ex.
our "lack[ing] moral clarity and backbone" is one of the main causes of our miserable deranged zeitgeist.
teachers are afraid to make demands of their students, adults prefer to extend childhood until they're eligible for Social Security, parents want to be their kid's "best friend": it seems we've surrended dignity and integrity for a societywide outbreak of "The customer is always right" (especially if the customer plays the victim well).
this makes me think that the soil of modern America is so poisoned, by terminal apathy and a collapse of all values besides money and self-worship, that nothing sane or wise can be grown here.
I concur with this analysis, and will add that it's not just the USA. It's also the case in Canada. No one is responsible for anything because everyone is a victim of something. Maddening.
This is not to say difficult circumstances do not arise in life (they do), but we no longer have anything resembling balance or fair judgment in these issues.
I have heard from some parents that they have been advised by professionals, by websites and by their fellow parents that children should receive positive responses exclusively from their parents. Parents also are not receiving advice that an indispensable part of parenting is to refuse to accept or tolerate inappropriate or bizarre behavior from kids who have the ability to behave better. Some parents express a lack of familiarity with the fact that kids who act weird intentionally need to be disciplined, not accommodated.
During the Eighties there was a popular self-help movement associated with alcohol abuse in families that focused a lot of criticism on "enabling," as a relational stance. "Enabling" became an unpopular way to be, among people in addiction recovery circles and more generally in pop psychology. Whatever happened to that perspective in popular culture. The entire trajectory has reversed and turned into coddling and pandering to children and to adults identified as victims.
Hell of a way to get an athletic scholarship for a mediocre athlete son. My guess is that there are far fewer parents who are all excited about their daughters (whom they call "sons") participating in boxing or football with boys/men.
Not long ago, the Babylon Bee had an article about a formerly male pro basketball star's being signed by a team in the women's league. The innovation was welcomed as promising to make the play in the women's league faster and interesting for a change, leading to better ticket sales and TV ratings, improved sales of team merch, etc., all improving the players' pay and benefits. The Bee's prophetic powers should not be dismissed lightly.
The entire “gender affirming care” movement is logical fallacy wrapped in logical fallacy. On one hand we can’t define what a woman is, yet on the other, a man who feels that he’s a woman must change his body to match what we can suddenly define as a woman’s body. Feelings are much more mutable than the human body, yet we reach for the scalpel.
I thought the NYT article was a very good sign. The rats may not be leaving the sinking ship quite yet but they are making their way to the deck and casually checking out the exits.
It's patent medicine fraud. Victims of patent medicine were actively recruited to give testimonies about the supposed efficacy of quack cures. We have passed this way before.
The author of the trans propaganda, Azeen Ghorayshi, is the prototypical NYT "journalist". Pronouns on her LinkedIn profile. Worked at Buzzfeed for 7 years. Went to UC Berkeley where she researched fruit flies, on her website she chortles that she is "fairly certain I’ve watched more fly sex than you".
"Few deny that many individuals are genuinely satisfied with the results of their hormonal or surgical transition."
Count me among the "few". When someone suffering from a delusion about themselves, who has been coached by their online peers on what to say in order to get the supposed solution they have become obsessed with, whose fragile self-image is utterly dependent on believing that doing what they are doing is helping them, is then asked afterward whether they are happy with it, their response is approximately as valuable as the response anorexics give when asked whether they feel good that they have gotten thinner. Are the anorexics genuinely satisfied by starving themselves?
Are Swifties genuinely in awe of Taylor Swift’s musical talent and songwriting capability, or are they caught in a self-reinforcing, mass delusion that this ultra-wealthy, mediocre, yet very attractive, singer is somehow a victim of every guy she’s dated, and that therefore she is entitled to their empathy, money and time, spent listening to her vapid and trite lyrics?
Victim as a brand identity sells; just look at Jesus.
That's the whole point of my article, that self reports relying on short-term follow-ups are not good evidence of benefit. While many express genuine satisfaction with their procedures after a short time frame, we have no idea of they will feel the same in 10 years. And if they do express satisfaction 10+ years down the road, it is still impossible to know whether GAC *caused* the improvements they cite, or whether similar levels of contentment couldn't have been achieved through less invasive means. And, lastly, patient satisfaction is how we measure the success of cosmetic procedures, not medical ones. We cannot therefore justify GAC on the basis that it is "life-saving" but then simply cite patient satisfaction as our response variable.
So yeah, I think he kids who express satisfaction after their hormones and surgeries aren't lying, but this is not how we measure the success of extreme interventions. It is not evidence-based medicine.
"We cannot therefore justify GAC on the basis that it is "life-saving" but then simply cite patient satisfaction as our response variable."
No we definitely can't! In addition, they cannot say that medical transition is life-saving without explaining how the patient was in danger. If he/she received hormones and surgery, the implication is that the patient was thought to be endangered by the body parts that were removed. The gender affirmative care people have not stated what the life-threatening condition was that necessitated removal of healthy body parts. They don't want to say that there was "something wrong with" the affected person other than a "physical problem." This means that there is no diagnosis, and the treatment team fails to document medical necessity for any type of treatment.
Kids are genuinely satisfied if they eat a gallon of ice cream. A drug addict is genuinely satisfied by a hit of the drug. In neither case is satisfaction used as an indicator of goodness.
A case study in subtle propaganda. Which I define as writing that supports a conclusion that was reached prior to reporting. (In this case, that this type of medical intervention does more good than harm) Honest reporting investigates the points of view out there in the world, not just the one in the reporter’s head.
"Subtle" is not the word I'd use to describe the propaganda we're seeing and hearing. The gravest danger it presents is that the huge majority of people have no reason to be well informed on these issues, so the propaganda finds an audience all too susceptible to its uncritical acceptance.
Very much so. The saying is "a lie goes three times around the world while the truth is putting on its boots".
For instance, there is a recent article in the biased and inaccurate publication "Scientific American" about the ROGD study that was retracted. The story was written by a journalist with a huge bias, who knows nothing of the issues. SA is a terrible and biased "journal" today, but retains a cachet of respectable science from its articles of 50 years ago. The author who was slandered can only protest, but the damage is done by the original biased publication.
I was pleasantly surprised by the NYT article, although I suppose this is a case of meeting lowered expectations. I felt that Ghorayshi was fair, and wasn't out to discredit Reed, which definitely would NOT have been the case two years ago. Back then, the NYT would have produced a hit piece on Jaime Reed, and concluded that Kids Know Who They Are.
I think the tide is turning, and not a moment too soon.
The New York Times appears to belatedly be making a stealth approach to restoring its journalistic integrity by trading such absurdities as sex "assigned at birth" to babies "identified" as girls (apparently a much trickier task than any of us, anywhere, throughout recorded human history, ever imagined). Lord knows how long it will take them to return to simply describing girls as girls and boys as boys. I am holding my applause.
Yes. They are still running scared of backlash from their younger staff, trying not to trigger them quitting en masse. To be fair to the author of the piece, it's possible she originally used stronger words but was watered down by an editor.
As a retired newspaper reporter, I think ushering out staff of any age who uncritically embrace and regurgitate in the Times' pages the language of gender ideologues would be a great improvement. The Associated Press (one of my former employers) is behind much of this, with their fawning style guide for covering gender identity. Reporting a subject's real name used to be a requirement of accurate, factual reporting; now it's "deadnaming" and taboo on sensitivity grounds.
Using publicly available records, I found the birth name of a trans-identified male convict who won a big settlement from the Minnesota DOC because he wasn't quickly given "bottom" surgery or housed in a women's prison. He has a criminal record decades long; it's plausible that he got himself convicted again so taxpayers would have to foot the bill for his surgery, per "progressive" state law. As far as I know, Twin Cities newspapers did not report any of this which, if true, would be a complete abdication of journalistic responsibility. He is now housed in a women's prison.
they went from mostly straight facts to Orwellian Thought Police with the flick of a switch.
the transformation of journalists into narrative-enforcement agents is one of the most toxic phenomena of our time, and is a great cause of our general social derangement.
will "Trump made us do it" be the epitaph for American journalism?
Your guess is as good as mine. It's hard for me to put Trump into this; it's more "woke" ideology that seems to have captured government, schools, journalism and other formerly sane institutions ...
Trump was the tipping point. Lefties were already increasingly mad about Rush et al., Fox, Bush v. Gore and the resistance to Obama. Trump sent them over the edge. Now they're nearly as crazy and hardcore as the MAGAts. MAGAts fantasize about guillotines and gallows, wokies fantasize about struggle sessions and purges.
I think short-sighted pandemic policies -- which caused great and enduring collateral damage, not least of all to mental health -- were a big contributor. Historically a liberal, I thought the matter poorly handled, a sure recipe to further polarize, politicize and stoke resentment. In short, mandates and shutdowns were a debacle of government overreach that harmed individuals, families and businesses, and overall did more harm than good.
There is no doubt that an important phenomenon here is that the New Left captured the means of cultural production after a 50-year campaign (state subsidized!), and now control every aspect of education, and almost all of culture and journalism.
But this could have been tempered or even chipped away by anything from some Democrats realizing that opposing the fanatics of Theory in our schools could benefit them politically to an onslaught of mockery and satire (why exactly has Woke, which is hilariously stupid, been rendered sacred by all of Hollywood and its actors and comedians?); instead the opposite happened, and Woke has become the sacred belief system of our ruling class and is massively subsidized (and propagandized) by every corporation and billionaire-controlled NGO no matter how many of their projects bomb.
My feeling is that the cultural takeover by a religious movement of dour post-Marxist fundamentalists was the tinder, but Trump was the match. His election gave our ownership class an existential breakdown, and part of their strategy to regain total power is to unleash the campus Red Guard on all its opponents in all spheres, thus tarring all enemies w the broad brush of "Hate" and moving them beyond the moral pale and thus deserving of social banishment.
I agree with Chris Rufo, James Lindsay, and others who say that the woke cult is the ultimate emergence of Marxist activism that has been keep alive in universities since prior to the 1960's. It is apparent, however, that some generations have been much more inclined to respond favorably to Marxist movements and to take them to the streets. Young Millennials and Gen Z people are so inclined, and the elders of their generation have graduated from college, and are moving on to present their lists of Non-Negotiable demands to their employers, their medical schools and so on. It is apparent that these kids' parents and teachers have failed in their responsibility to provide the security of appropriate restrictions and consequences for inappropriate behaviors.
The NYT is drawing a lot of activist fire for its increasingly better quality journalism on transgender issues. It may still skew positive on some questionable points, but the direction is welcome. A couple of years ago they wouldn't have even commissioned a piece about the allegations around this clinic.
Nevertheless, I still don't get why the NYT gets so much attention and praise for saying not enough, too late. I am not from NY, and I never have felt any adulation for the NYT, so that affects my attitude, but seriously, why do they get so many points for making feeble gestures in a certain direction. The NYT is not a respectable news or opinion source, let alone an admirable one, and why is it important that they survive?
Because we can't have everything exactly the way we want it and therefore it makes sense to celebrate improvement. And because it's giving 'permission' to its reader base to question the most irresponsible 'gender affirming' practices. You and I don't much like the NYT, but a lot of other people take notice of it.
"Because we can't have everything exactly the way we want it and therefore it makes sense to celebrate improvement."
My point was "Why want this?" Of course there are a lot of people who still value the NYT. They don't seem to know or care that it is an invalid source of information and analysis. It is legitimate to question what "a lot of other people take notice of," and I do. If a lot of people still look to the NYT as a central source of their information they are empowering that particular source to control what they can know and what they can't know, even after that source has been revealed to be mostly a mouthpiece for the ruling class's segment of the Democrats.
Gender ideology is prominent locally in medical systems. It is pervasive on every level, to the point that medical staff are boxed into ideological compliance whether or not they are in agreement.
I recently referred a friend to a physician I trust, and the friend, who is politically conservative, called me to report with some concern that the doctor I sent her to is a "they/them." I was very surprised, because the physician has been pregnant a couple times within the past four years, is relatively socially conservative and is a not into healthcare fads. I subsequently learned that, within the large system where the doctor works, the physicians don't necessarily write their own bios. They just give their facts to whomever is assigned to create the doctors' online profiles. If the doctor declines to provide "pronouns" when asked for them by the writer, the writer uses "they/them" when referring to the doctor.
This practice is regarded as a matter of common courtesy among many members of Gen Z and slightly older people. They are normalizing among themselves the social requirement that everyone be given a pronoun that makes a statement about that person's gender, or their lack of knowledge thereof. I think that the level to which these young people are in the drivers' seat of the gender movement is underestimated, or at least is not mentioned much by authors critical of the gender ideology and its relationship to gender affirmative care. Young people are the ones who demand that medical schools be converted into centers for studying and applying critical theory activism. Older and temporarily more powerful people are exploiting the idealistic, moralistic fervor as well as the confusion of young people caught up in critical theory activism, but the younger generations of Americans are in the leadership of woke medical activism.
I hate seeing, thinking, and saying this, but the people who are now Gen Z will be taking over officially pretty soon as well as actually, as they already are. It looks like the students entering medical schools in the U.S. may not be learning much medicine soon. I support and participate in the effort to turn this dreaded trajectory around, but that probably won't happen unless a critical mass of Gen Z turns away from their stated objectives to impose the gender ideology on everyone.
Yes, the younger generations are absolutely drivers of this movement, too. The top-down astroturfing wouldn't have been so effective with previous generations. They were groomed in places like Tumblr and trained to be activists in K-12 education (I've seen much of what the assignments look like--students are endlessly encouraged to take a social justice activist stance in their essay assignments and to find their "voice", which is naturally a breeding ground for an overblown sense of personal importance before achieving anything).
We're in for a bad few generations and I'm seriously worried about what will happen when the competent professionals finally retire.
"The current influx of trans-identified youth, primarily girls with no previous gender-related distress, symbolizes a fresh patient group exhibiting a new and as-yet-unstudied form of gender dysphoria. "
It's called undiagnosed autism and social contagion.
"But if we’d be hesitant to accept these testimonials about how qigong cured some people’s energy imbalance, then why are many political progressives so quick to accept similar testimonials from minors who claim their mind-body imbalance was corrected after undergoing sex-trait modification procedures? Why is such testimony taken as definitive proof of these procedures’ benefits? Ideology couldn’t possibly be the reason—right?"
So-called "gender medicine" is a form of social justice activism rooted in gender identity ideology. So yes, trans "allies" who are desperate to "save trans kids" are predisposed to accept testimonials from children as proof that medical interventions work.
I submit the reason most of the general public acquiesce to claims about gender medicine is because they do not understand the difference between testimony and evidence. Specifically, they do not know that, in the words of the author, "comprehensive long-term-outcomes data and controlled experiments" are required in order to determine whether it was the medical intervention that brought about the successful outcome (is it effective?) and whether the benefits of the treatment outweigh the known risks (is it safe?).
Given the sorry state of science education in the US today, the public can be forgiven for its ignorance. Reporters on the health and science beat cannot.
There is no doubt that testosterone has an anti-anxiety and energizing effect in the short to medium term. Combine that effect with copious social support and "affirmation" and it's not surprising that a lot of these kids (mostly girls who want to be boys) feel better in the short term. Ten years from now it's going to be a whole other story. The guy who originated frontal lobotomies for psychiatric disorders won the Nobel Prize in 1949. You'd think we would eventually learn to be more cautious in with irreversible procedures in medicine.
A lot of these teenage girls who take T do not understand the long-term ramifications:
1) If they are like many girls (or boys), they have had singing lessons. T drops the vocal register by 5-6 notes. You go from soprano to mid-tenor range, and this is permanent. Once the vocal cords are lengthened, they stay that way.
2) Facial hair is promoted by T. It does not go away.
3) Facial size is increased by T.
4) Once the boobs are removed, they cannot be FUNCTIONALLY replaced. The girl will never nurse her own child.
All of these are permanent changes. When they desist, the realization that they have ruined their bodies sets in. This stuff is NOT part of the "informed consent".
Male pattern baldness also affects women who take T and who are susceptible to that type of hair loss under the influence of it.
That one I had not heard of.
It’s very common in trans men.
T also causes vaginal atrophy... to the point that it can rupture and bleed after sexual intercourse. Also growth of the clit, which is irreversible. Also painful joints. And infertility of course.
"mostly girls who want to be boys"
This is debatable. The very concept of 'girl' or 'boy' has been so devalued and trivialised by modern (feminist, progressive) culture that's it's not necessarily true they want to be the opposite sex. I've never heard a MTF speak of wanting to shovel snow from their driveway, support a family, ride motorbikes, repair train tracks etc. Instead they often act very girlish and embrace 'transition' much like girls used to embrace goth or emo.
Many live online and not in the real world. There is no gender online. We are all floating in space and can 'be' whatever we set out avatar/ profiles to. This virtual existence is a huge reason why transitioning has gone through the roof. Many detransitioners say if they had not got sucked into various internet subcultures they would never have transitioned.
Often they admit not actually wanting to 'be' a man per se, but just wanting to neutralise the extremes of femininity and occupy a kind of 'limbo' state which his neither male or female, child or adult - something like peter pan.
Testesterone is often used like a baggy jumper - to cover up the distressing and even traumatic effects of puberty and to postpone that maturation into full adulthood. And like a baggy jumper it's often a phase that lasts a year or two and no more. The only difference is that the effects of T cannot be discarded the way a baggy jumper can.
There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that some gender-questioning women are well aware of testosterone's powerful mood enhancing properties and seek out "T" because of it. In my opinion, it's a blurring of the lines between therapeutic and recreational drug use.
The source is a detransitioner who was interviewed on the podcast "Gender: A Wider Lens." Alas, I do not recall the episode number.
Interesting.
Party drug?
https://www.reddit.com/r/trans/comments/15d0soc/my_friends_roommate_gave_me_a_shot_of_t_at_a/
NYT is far from unusual in its treatment of so-called "gender affirming" medical alterations of secondary sex characteristics. Every news item I've seen or heard recently about the efforts in some state legislatures to restrict such treatments for minors has featured a testimonial from an enthusiastic parent as to how the troglodytes in the legislature are preventing their child from accessing the "life saving" treatments. There is, of course, not one word about the teenage experts on TikTok coaching the kids in how to threaten suicide, much less about the systematic evidence reviews that have resulted in the recent restrictions on such treatments in European health care systems. I hesitate to attribute malice where ignorance is a sufficient explanation; but the persistence of the journalists' omission of any coverage of the developments in Europe is certainly degrading my trying to assume the journalists' good faith. At some point, the omission of such important and well-known evidence does indicate intentional propaganda, not good faith reporting.
I have had occasion to talk to and listen to the parents who have bought the trans delusional lie. The delusion in these parents is profound. The context that I refer to is the sports context, whiere boys who have the delusion that these boys are female are the topic. The parents say "she". The boy who is a deluded "girl" says "I just want to compete and have fun". There is no recognition of the well-known biological truth of "male advantage both before and especially after puberty". There is a great presumption that "gender identification as female" is all that is needed to "become female".
This trans psychotic delusional lie is damaging a whole generation.
“The boy who is a deluded "girl" says "I just want to compete and have fun".”
By all means, yes! Sports are very important for children. But do it against other natal males.
Yes. Every person who participates in the delusion, who decides to ignore the cognitive dissonance, is damaged by it. They become more tolerant of gaslighting, less apt to speak up against lying.
Think of the tremendous psychological pressure (which is terrifying) for parents here:
Your child gets brainwashed by the Big Lie/mass social mania of our time (somewhat akin to when teens in the 70s ran off and joined cults), and is convinced they are really the opposite sex (however impossible) and that if you utter one peep of dissent they will kill themselves;
This narrative is backed up by a tsunami of corporate propaganda, from your breakfast cereal to your favorite TV show, not to mention every school teacher and administrator and every academic from kindergarten teachers to PhDs, who all proclaim that if you don't submit to your child's wishes, you are some sort of evil bigoted hate monster, committing the great blasphemy of our time, standing between a child and their Authentic Self™;
so you go along in fear and confusion, walk on eggshells, consent to calling your boy by a new girl's name and supporting the surgeries that will mutilate and sterilize them, if not worse.
How can you look back and admit you were weak and wrong after all this? How can you admit to yourself that you surrendered the mental and physical health of your child to a mass social mania?
I can understand needing to cling to the Big Lie that duped you in the first place, the alternative—that you helped destroy your own child because you abdicated adult responsibility—would be enough to turn anyone into a post-op Oedipus.
Yes. But really it's insurmountable only for those who 1) lack moral clarity and backbone, which let's be honest is most people, who also 1a) find it too difficult to say "No" and set appropriate boundaries for their kids, which is a sizable chunk of parents. The strong ones do their research and hold the line.
Then there are the parents who 2) are narcissists themselves, many of them are big affirmers of their mini-me, or 2a) have huge struggles with them (Nothing can beat narcissist vs. narcissist for epic drama), some of which you can read about in https://pitt.substack.com.
An under-counted sub-demographic are the parents who 3) are undermined by a captured spouse, or 3a) are vulnerable to losing custody or visitation at the hands of an affirming ex.
our "lack[ing] moral clarity and backbone" is one of the main causes of our miserable deranged zeitgeist.
teachers are afraid to make demands of their students, adults prefer to extend childhood until they're eligible for Social Security, parents want to be their kid's "best friend": it seems we've surrended dignity and integrity for a societywide outbreak of "The customer is always right" (especially if the customer plays the victim well).
this makes me think that the soil of modern America is so poisoned, by terminal apathy and a collapse of all values besides money and self-worship, that nothing sane or wise can be grown here.
I concur with this analysis, and will add that it's not just the USA. It's also the case in Canada. No one is responsible for anything because everyone is a victim of something. Maddening.
This is not to say difficult circumstances do not arise in life (they do), but we no longer have anything resembling balance or fair judgment in these issues.
I have heard from some parents that they have been advised by professionals, by websites and by their fellow parents that children should receive positive responses exclusively from their parents. Parents also are not receiving advice that an indispensable part of parenting is to refuse to accept or tolerate inappropriate or bizarre behavior from kids who have the ability to behave better. Some parents express a lack of familiarity with the fact that kids who act weird intentionally need to be disciplined, not accommodated.
During the Eighties there was a popular self-help movement associated with alcohol abuse in families that focused a lot of criticism on "enabling," as a relational stance. "Enabling" became an unpopular way to be, among people in addiction recovery circles and more generally in pop psychology. Whatever happened to that perspective in popular culture. The entire trajectory has reversed and turned into coddling and pandering to children and to adults identified as victims.
Well said!
Hell of a way to get an athletic scholarship for a mediocre athlete son. My guess is that there are far fewer parents who are all excited about their daughters (whom they call "sons") participating in boxing or football with boys/men.
Not long ago, the Babylon Bee had an article about a formerly male pro basketball star's being signed by a team in the women's league. The innovation was welcomed as promising to make the play in the women's league faster and interesting for a change, leading to better ticket sales and TV ratings, improved sales of team merch, etc., all improving the players' pay and benefits. The Bee's prophetic powers should not be dismissed lightly.
The entire “gender affirming care” movement is logical fallacy wrapped in logical fallacy. On one hand we can’t define what a woman is, yet on the other, a man who feels that he’s a woman must change his body to match what we can suddenly define as a woman’s body. Feelings are much more mutable than the human body, yet we reach for the scalpel.
I thought the NYT article was a very good sign. The rats may not be leaving the sinking ship quite yet but they are making their way to the deck and casually checking out the exits.
Great analogy and imagery!
It's patent medicine fraud. Victims of patent medicine were actively recruited to give testimonies about the supposed efficacy of quack cures. We have passed this way before.
The author of the trans propaganda, Azeen Ghorayshi, is the prototypical NYT "journalist". Pronouns on her LinkedIn profile. Worked at Buzzfeed for 7 years. Went to UC Berkeley where she researched fruit flies, on her website she chortles that she is "fairly certain I’ve watched more fly sex than you".
Here are more examples of cringe "elites" flexing on LinkedIn: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-flex-on-linkedin-cringe-contest
Maybe she went to work at Buzzfeed because she thought it would be more fly sex...
Love what you did there, she must have enjoyed the company of buzzfeed bugmen
Compelling, thoughtful, and thought-provoking as usual. Thank you for this interesting analysis. Sincerely, Frederick
Outstanding article!
Nice to know their are people who are focused on science, not ideology - whether far left or far right!
Science is an ideology these days.
No, but many atheist philosophies act as quasi-religions.
"Few deny that many individuals are genuinely satisfied with the results of their hormonal or surgical transition."
Count me among the "few". When someone suffering from a delusion about themselves, who has been coached by their online peers on what to say in order to get the supposed solution they have become obsessed with, whose fragile self-image is utterly dependent on believing that doing what they are doing is helping them, is then asked afterward whether they are happy with it, their response is approximately as valuable as the response anorexics give when asked whether they feel good that they have gotten thinner. Are the anorexics genuinely satisfied by starving themselves?
Are Swifties genuinely in awe of Taylor Swift’s musical talent and songwriting capability, or are they caught in a self-reinforcing, mass delusion that this ultra-wealthy, mediocre, yet very attractive, singer is somehow a victim of every guy she’s dated, and that therefore she is entitled to their empathy, money and time, spent listening to her vapid and trite lyrics?
Victim as a brand identity sells; just look at Jesus.
And now they're marketing him as non-binary and Bi, the clever bastards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUFqLEk_p9Q
LOL!! Very quick of you!!
Even Colin undercuts himself by shading the truth. It's disgraceful.
That's the whole point of my article, that self reports relying on short-term follow-ups are not good evidence of benefit. While many express genuine satisfaction with their procedures after a short time frame, we have no idea of they will feel the same in 10 years. And if they do express satisfaction 10+ years down the road, it is still impossible to know whether GAC *caused* the improvements they cite, or whether similar levels of contentment couldn't have been achieved through less invasive means. And, lastly, patient satisfaction is how we measure the success of cosmetic procedures, not medical ones. We cannot therefore justify GAC on the basis that it is "life-saving" but then simply cite patient satisfaction as our response variable.
So yeah, I think he kids who express satisfaction after their hormones and surgeries aren't lying, but this is not how we measure the success of extreme interventions. It is not evidence-based medicine.
"We cannot therefore justify GAC on the basis that it is "life-saving" but then simply cite patient satisfaction as our response variable."
No we definitely can't! In addition, they cannot say that medical transition is life-saving without explaining how the patient was in danger. If he/she received hormones and surgery, the implication is that the patient was thought to be endangered by the body parts that were removed. The gender affirmative care people have not stated what the life-threatening condition was that necessitated removal of healthy body parts. They don't want to say that there was "something wrong with" the affected person other than a "physical problem." This means that there is no diagnosis, and the treatment team fails to document medical necessity for any type of treatment.
Kids are genuinely satisfied if they eat a gallon of ice cream. A drug addict is genuinely satisfied by a hit of the drug. In neither case is satisfaction used as an indicator of goodness.
A case study in subtle propaganda. Which I define as writing that supports a conclusion that was reached prior to reporting. (In this case, that this type of medical intervention does more good than harm) Honest reporting investigates the points of view out there in the world, not just the one in the reporter’s head.
"Subtle" is not the word I'd use to describe the propaganda we're seeing and hearing. The gravest danger it presents is that the huge majority of people have no reason to be well informed on these issues, so the propaganda finds an audience all too susceptible to its uncritical acceptance.
Very much so. The saying is "a lie goes three times around the world while the truth is putting on its boots".
For instance, there is a recent article in the biased and inaccurate publication "Scientific American" about the ROGD study that was retracted. The story was written by a journalist with a huge bias, who knows nothing of the issues. SA is a terrible and biased "journal" today, but retains a cachet of respectable science from its articles of 50 years ago. The author who was slandered can only protest, but the damage is done by the original biased publication.
I was pleasantly surprised by the NYT article, although I suppose this is a case of meeting lowered expectations. I felt that Ghorayshi was fair, and wasn't out to discredit Reed, which definitely would NOT have been the case two years ago. Back then, the NYT would have produced a hit piece on Jaime Reed, and concluded that Kids Know Who They Are.
I think the tide is turning, and not a moment too soon.
The New York Times appears to belatedly be making a stealth approach to restoring its journalistic integrity by trading such absurdities as sex "assigned at birth" to babies "identified" as girls (apparently a much trickier task than any of us, anywhere, throughout recorded human history, ever imagined). Lord knows how long it will take them to return to simply describing girls as girls and boys as boys. I am holding my applause.
Yes. They are still running scared of backlash from their younger staff, trying not to trigger them quitting en masse. To be fair to the author of the piece, it's possible she originally used stronger words but was watered down by an editor.
As a retired newspaper reporter, I think ushering out staff of any age who uncritically embrace and regurgitate in the Times' pages the language of gender ideologues would be a great improvement. The Associated Press (one of my former employers) is behind much of this, with their fawning style guide for covering gender identity. Reporting a subject's real name used to be a requirement of accurate, factual reporting; now it's "deadnaming" and taboo on sensitivity grounds.
Using publicly available records, I found the birth name of a trans-identified male convict who won a big settlement from the Minnesota DOC because he wasn't quickly given "bottom" surgery or housed in a women's prison. He has a criminal record decades long; it's plausible that he got himself convicted again so taxpayers would have to foot the bill for his surgery, per "progressive" state law. As far as I know, Twin Cities newspapers did not report any of this which, if true, would be a complete abdication of journalistic responsibility. He is now housed in a women's prison.
what the hell happened to the AP?
they went from mostly straight facts to Orwellian Thought Police with the flick of a switch.
the transformation of journalists into narrative-enforcement agents is one of the most toxic phenomena of our time, and is a great cause of our general social derangement.
will "Trump made us do it" be the epitaph for American journalism?
Your guess is as good as mine. It's hard for me to put Trump into this; it's more "woke" ideology that seems to have captured government, schools, journalism and other formerly sane institutions ...
Trump was the tipping point. Lefties were already increasingly mad about Rush et al., Fox, Bush v. Gore and the resistance to Obama. Trump sent them over the edge. Now they're nearly as crazy and hardcore as the MAGAts. MAGAts fantasize about guillotines and gallows, wokies fantasize about struggle sessions and purges.
I think short-sighted pandemic policies -- which caused great and enduring collateral damage, not least of all to mental health -- were a big contributor. Historically a liberal, I thought the matter poorly handled, a sure recipe to further polarize, politicize and stoke resentment. In short, mandates and shutdowns were a debacle of government overreach that harmed individuals, families and businesses, and overall did more harm than good.
There is no doubt that an important phenomenon here is that the New Left captured the means of cultural production after a 50-year campaign (state subsidized!), and now control every aspect of education, and almost all of culture and journalism.
But this could have been tempered or even chipped away by anything from some Democrats realizing that opposing the fanatics of Theory in our schools could benefit them politically to an onslaught of mockery and satire (why exactly has Woke, which is hilariously stupid, been rendered sacred by all of Hollywood and its actors and comedians?); instead the opposite happened, and Woke has become the sacred belief system of our ruling class and is massively subsidized (and propagandized) by every corporation and billionaire-controlled NGO no matter how many of their projects bomb.
My feeling is that the cultural takeover by a religious movement of dour post-Marxist fundamentalists was the tinder, but Trump was the match. His election gave our ownership class an existential breakdown, and part of their strategy to regain total power is to unleash the campus Red Guard on all its opponents in all spheres, thus tarring all enemies w the broad brush of "Hate" and moving them beyond the moral pale and thus deserving of social banishment.
I agree with Chris Rufo, James Lindsay, and others who say that the woke cult is the ultimate emergence of Marxist activism that has been keep alive in universities since prior to the 1960's. It is apparent, however, that some generations have been much more inclined to respond favorably to Marxist movements and to take them to the streets. Young Millennials and Gen Z people are so inclined, and the elders of their generation have graduated from college, and are moving on to present their lists of Non-Negotiable demands to their employers, their medical schools and so on. It is apparent that these kids' parents and teachers have failed in their responsibility to provide the security of appropriate restrictions and consequences for inappropriate behaviors.
‘Describing boys as boys.....girls’, possibly via ‘recognising’ them at birth. I’d take that!
The NYT is drawing a lot of activist fire for its increasingly better quality journalism on transgender issues. It may still skew positive on some questionable points, but the direction is welcome. A couple of years ago they wouldn't have even commissioned a piece about the allegations around this clinic.
Nevertheless, I still don't get why the NYT gets so much attention and praise for saying not enough, too late. I am not from NY, and I never have felt any adulation for the NYT, so that affects my attitude, but seriously, why do they get so many points for making feeble gestures in a certain direction. The NYT is not a respectable news or opinion source, let alone an admirable one, and why is it important that they survive?
Because we can't have everything exactly the way we want it and therefore it makes sense to celebrate improvement. And because it's giving 'permission' to its reader base to question the most irresponsible 'gender affirming' practices. You and I don't much like the NYT, but a lot of other people take notice of it.
"Because we can't have everything exactly the way we want it and therefore it makes sense to celebrate improvement."
My point was "Why want this?" Of course there are a lot of people who still value the NYT. They don't seem to know or care that it is an invalid source of information and analysis. It is legitimate to question what "a lot of other people take notice of," and I do. If a lot of people still look to the NYT as a central source of their information they are empowering that particular source to control what they can know and what they can't know, even after that source has been revealed to be mostly a mouthpiece for the ruling class's segment of the Democrats.
I'd rather give credit for improvement than wait for perfection that will never come
Gender ideology is prominent locally in medical systems. It is pervasive on every level, to the point that medical staff are boxed into ideological compliance whether or not they are in agreement.
I recently referred a friend to a physician I trust, and the friend, who is politically conservative, called me to report with some concern that the doctor I sent her to is a "they/them." I was very surprised, because the physician has been pregnant a couple times within the past four years, is relatively socially conservative and is a not into healthcare fads. I subsequently learned that, within the large system where the doctor works, the physicians don't necessarily write their own bios. They just give their facts to whomever is assigned to create the doctors' online profiles. If the doctor declines to provide "pronouns" when asked for them by the writer, the writer uses "they/them" when referring to the doctor.
This practice is regarded as a matter of common courtesy among many members of Gen Z and slightly older people. They are normalizing among themselves the social requirement that everyone be given a pronoun that makes a statement about that person's gender, or their lack of knowledge thereof. I think that the level to which these young people are in the drivers' seat of the gender movement is underestimated, or at least is not mentioned much by authors critical of the gender ideology and its relationship to gender affirmative care. Young people are the ones who demand that medical schools be converted into centers for studying and applying critical theory activism. Older and temporarily more powerful people are exploiting the idealistic, moralistic fervor as well as the confusion of young people caught up in critical theory activism, but the younger generations of Americans are in the leadership of woke medical activism.
I hate seeing, thinking, and saying this, but the people who are now Gen Z will be taking over officially pretty soon as well as actually, as they already are. It looks like the students entering medical schools in the U.S. may not be learning much medicine soon. I support and participate in the effort to turn this dreaded trajectory around, but that probably won't happen unless a critical mass of Gen Z turns away from their stated objectives to impose the gender ideology on everyone.
Yes, the younger generations are absolutely drivers of this movement, too. The top-down astroturfing wouldn't have been so effective with previous generations. They were groomed in places like Tumblr and trained to be activists in K-12 education (I've seen much of what the assignments look like--students are endlessly encouraged to take a social justice activist stance in their essay assignments and to find their "voice", which is naturally a breeding ground for an overblown sense of personal importance before achieving anything).
We're in for a bad few generations and I'm seriously worried about what will happen when the competent professionals finally retire.
"The current influx of trans-identified youth, primarily girls with no previous gender-related distress, symbolizes a fresh patient group exhibiting a new and as-yet-unstudied form of gender dysphoria. "
It's called undiagnosed autism and social contagion.
"But if we’d be hesitant to accept these testimonials about how qigong cured some people’s energy imbalance, then why are many political progressives so quick to accept similar testimonials from minors who claim their mind-body imbalance was corrected after undergoing sex-trait modification procedures? Why is such testimony taken as definitive proof of these procedures’ benefits? Ideology couldn’t possibly be the reason—right?"
So-called "gender medicine" is a form of social justice activism rooted in gender identity ideology. So yes, trans "allies" who are desperate to "save trans kids" are predisposed to accept testimonials from children as proof that medical interventions work.
I submit the reason most of the general public acquiesce to claims about gender medicine is because they do not understand the difference between testimony and evidence. Specifically, they do not know that, in the words of the author, "comprehensive long-term-outcomes data and controlled experiments" are required in order to determine whether it was the medical intervention that brought about the successful outcome (is it effective?) and whether the benefits of the treatment outweigh the known risks (is it safe?).
Given the sorry state of science education in the US today, the public can be forgiven for its ignorance. Reporters on the health and science beat cannot.