Another excellent article. These are vitally important issues and questions you are writing about and mainstream/centrist/liberal journalists and media outlets are failing in their mission and ethics by not faintly and accurately covering this. Ignoring and spinning things is causing real and lasting harm to our children.
If I am remembering correctly, I heard an interview with Grace (one of the detransitioners interviewed by 60 Minutes) where she said she was embarrassed to admit that one of the reasons she rushed into having her breast removed is that trump had just been elected and she believed the frightened rhetoric that Trump would outlaw all surgeries, so she had to get hers while she still had the chance. I really dislike the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” because “derangement” is such a loaded, emotional word that it sends the very people who need to consider the message it’s trying to communicate into defense and retaliate mode. I am someone who wanted Trump out of office from day one, who too often got sucked into the highly emotional, breathless comments verse of everything actually wrong and perceived-to-be wrong that he did. Now with some 20/20 hindsight, I see the idea of Trump Derangement Syndrome is a valid concern that should be calmly and rationally analyzed and discussed (despite its unhelpful name). It has done real harm, and the current medical scandal you are writing about is one of the most painful examples.
the threats (if there were any) could be part of phenomenon of gop becoming more vocal on the issue. gop media consumers act much differenly than other gc peoples. some make threats? who knew? or the threats were fake and generated by gender activists in an effort to malign gc ppl. the truth will come out. we didnt get here overnight. keep up the fight. even vote for a republican or turn off the house wifi to keep kids away from the depths of the internet if necessary. the key to freedom of speach and winning other rights back is to chip away at the propaganda that has been so successful.
I think the most shocking thing here is the fact that nobody is investigating how often gender-affirming care is being offered and to whom. How can that be? I would think that at least some of the organizations which work so hard to promote it would want to know how successful they've been in doing so.
THANK YOU! Thank you for such a comprehensive and fact-driven piece that points out the harms that mainstream contributes to with its "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude. Well done, Lisa!!
"It would be helpful if we could operate with the same set of facts"
Aye, there's the rub - to coin a phrase ... 😉
Thorough and detailed essay again - hat's off to you. However, I kind of get the impression that - regardless of the commendability of your "same set of facts" principle - you are, to some extent at least, barking up the wrong tree.
The fact of the matter is that many of the transloonie nutcases - and their "useful/useless idiots" - have no interest in the facts; they're bound and determined to muddy the waters, intent on sweeping those facts under the carpet of postmodernism, anathematizing them as "transphobic". Not sure if you saw Matt Walsh's documentary or Michael Shermer's review of it, but the latter has a classic quote from the documentary:
"But Grzanka’s dodge is not uncommon in academia today, and in exasperation with Walsh’s persistent questioning in search of the truth, Grzanka pronounces on camera, 'Getting to the truth is deeply transphobic.' ...."
That comment of Grzanka's may well, or should, serve as the epitaph for Academia, at least the Mark I version. Similarly, see this more or less credible essay over at The Quackometer by Andy Lewis:
"We are now undergoing the smooth transition away from seeing sex as having a biological basis to switching the language to be about gender having social origins. We are being set up. Sex is too messy to bother with any more. A mere arbitrary concept."
Seems that the only way to turn that tide is to have an honest discussion about what are the most coherent and rational definitions for the sexes, and what logically follows from them. Sadly, too many so-called biologists are peddling the profoundly unscientific "sociological definitions" that lack any "functional rationale":
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce [present tense indefinite] small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce [present tense indefinite] large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
You - and your other "faithful readers" 🙂 - might be interested in my comments on the Substack of one of those so-called biologists, and my own Substack post about her dogmatic unwillingness to address that deficiency:
Lots of blame to go around - great deal of rot from top to bottom, from left to right, and all points of the compass in between. Transgenderism is, rather sadly, only a symptom, not the "disease" itself.
Another excellent article. These are vitally important issues and questions you are writing about and mainstream/centrist/liberal journalists and media outlets are failing in their mission and ethics by not faintly and accurately covering this. Ignoring and spinning things is causing real and lasting harm to our children.
If I am remembering correctly, I heard an interview with Grace (one of the detransitioners interviewed by 60 Minutes) where she said she was embarrassed to admit that one of the reasons she rushed into having her breast removed is that trump had just been elected and she believed the frightened rhetoric that Trump would outlaw all surgeries, so she had to get hers while she still had the chance. I really dislike the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” because “derangement” is such a loaded, emotional word that it sends the very people who need to consider the message it’s trying to communicate into defense and retaliate mode. I am someone who wanted Trump out of office from day one, who too often got sucked into the highly emotional, breathless comments verse of everything actually wrong and perceived-to-be wrong that he did. Now with some 20/20 hindsight, I see the idea of Trump Derangement Syndrome is a valid concern that should be calmly and rationally analyzed and discussed (despite its unhelpful name). It has done real harm, and the current medical scandal you are writing about is one of the most painful examples.
the threats (if there were any) could be part of phenomenon of gop becoming more vocal on the issue. gop media consumers act much differenly than other gc peoples. some make threats? who knew? or the threats were fake and generated by gender activists in an effort to malign gc ppl. the truth will come out. we didnt get here overnight. keep up the fight. even vote for a republican or turn off the house wifi to keep kids away from the depths of the internet if necessary. the key to freedom of speach and winning other rights back is to chip away at the propaganda that has been so successful.
I think the most shocking thing here is the fact that nobody is investigating how often gender-affirming care is being offered and to whom. How can that be? I would think that at least some of the organizations which work so hard to promote it would want to know how successful they've been in doing so.
THANK YOU! Thank you for such a comprehensive and fact-driven piece that points out the harms that mainstream contributes to with its "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude. Well done, Lisa!!
"It would be helpful if we could operate with the same set of facts"
Aye, there's the rub - to coin a phrase ... 😉
Thorough and detailed essay again - hat's off to you. However, I kind of get the impression that - regardless of the commendability of your "same set of facts" principle - you are, to some extent at least, barking up the wrong tree.
The fact of the matter is that many of the transloonie nutcases - and their "useful/useless idiots" - have no interest in the facts; they're bound and determined to muddy the waters, intent on sweeping those facts under the carpet of postmodernism, anathematizing them as "transphobic". Not sure if you saw Matt Walsh's documentary or Michael Shermer's review of it, but the latter has a classic quote from the documentary:
"But Grzanka’s dodge is not uncommon in academia today, and in exasperation with Walsh’s persistent questioning in search of the truth, Grzanka pronounces on camera, 'Getting to the truth is deeply transphobic.' ...."
https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman-anyway/
That comment of Grzanka's may well, or should, serve as the epitaph for Academia, at least the Mark I version. Similarly, see this more or less credible essay over at The Quackometer by Andy Lewis:
https://www.quackometer.net/blog/2021/07/on-the-sex-deracination-gambit.html
A relevant quote therefrom:
"We are now undergoing the smooth transition away from seeing sex as having a biological basis to switching the language to be about gender having social origins. We are being set up. Sex is too messy to bother with any more. A mere arbitrary concept."
Seems that the only way to turn that tide is to have an honest discussion about what are the most coherent and rational definitions for the sexes, and what logically follows from them. Sadly, too many so-called biologists are peddling the profoundly unscientific "sociological definitions" that lack any "functional rationale":
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce [present tense indefinite] small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce [present tense indefinite] large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
You - and your other "faithful readers" 🙂 - might be interested in my comments on the Substack of one of those so-called biologists, and my own Substack post about her dogmatic unwillingness to address that deficiency:
https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/onfraud/comment/8659099
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/on-being-defrauded-by-heather-heying
Lots of blame to go around - great deal of rot from top to bottom, from left to right, and all points of the compass in between. Transgenderism is, rather sadly, only a symptom, not the "disease" itself.