" How do we help people understand that puberty blockers are not a harmless medication in the face of so much wishful thinking? (Or, adds Lisa, that trying not to get pregnant is not the same as trying to stave off the maturation of the human brain and body.)"
yup--we don't let teens just take opioids either....
Thank you for the CTV Montreal video! It's sooooo rare to see anything remotely thoughtful and evenhanded coming from mainstream media in Canada, I was seriously shocked the guy was able to say all this! And criticize the idea of a panel of experts because they aren't planning on letting parents be involved - wow! I kept waiting for the lady to cut him off and apologize to the viewers for his transphobic views.... (not that he said anything transphobic, of course)
Another absolutely top of the line update from you Kate--and thanks for the heads up on your upcoming video, too. FYI, on the Canada Million March, our Duty put out its own video: https://youtu.be/MmvUcFonpHU which makes for an interesting watch on the issues Kate poses. Also, from Our Duty, there’s another of what looks to be excellent piece of advocacy aimed at parental rights to see school records here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ourduty/p/parents-do-you-want-to-know-if-the
Just wanted to say thanks to Kate Parker for these roundups--it’s how I learned about the sex and gender conference in Santa Fe that I just returned from, and I never would’ve known about it if not for you! It was a fabulous event.
Oh, I'm so glad, Jean! I listened to some of it on Zoom yesterday and will watch the rest when the videos become available online. When the camera scanned the room, it looked like it was well-attended. I bit my tongue and put nothing in the Zoom chat when some of the presenters were frustrating (ie refusing to define the terms sex or gender) but a lot of Saturday speakers were raising perspectives on topics that I hadn't ever thought of--fascinating.
Yes! My limited time there this morning made it seem like maybe a little over half of the presenters were arguing in favor of sex as binary and salient, while fewer were arguing that it either isn’t or shouldn’t be thought of as binary/salient *anymore*, which was interesting.
Given that the thrust of this conference was how to help at risk boys, it was really fascinating to hear the different takes on how to address boys--or in some ways whether to address them *as boys* at all.
Its so stupid that governments created laws to not report gender change requests by kids in schools to parents. I live in CA, Scott Wiener the ultimate in blindly following the vocal left, it (at this point he's barely human so I'm assigning him the pronoun it) sponsored the law that stated that whether a parent accepts gender can be used in custody hearings. Why does CA government need to meddle in custody hearings. Leave it to the social workers and DCFS. Its all political pandering.
I have also been tell the HRC (the LGBTQ political organization) that I no longer support their inflaming the war on gender with the blind support of the vocal T community. I did succeed in getting them to change their page on T people competing in sports. They had stated that science stated there was no genetic advantage to being a man. It took me 2 minutes to find a government study listing all the genetic difference between biological men and woman. They change the page now to just state that transgender people get health and mental advantages by competing in sports. No one ever was ever against transgender people competing in sports. The question is how to do so without offending and making it unfair for genetic woman.
Bottom line, organizations like the HRC should be facilitating discussion, not just fanning the flames of the vocal left. The organization that is supposed to support the LGBTQ+ community has not successively divided a large part of the LGB and rationale Ts from the vocal left T community.
How did the world get to the point where we're arguing about whether parents should be informed on what their kids are requesting of the schools? Why is the vocal left getting so much momentum?
Lots of good questions here, and good for you going after the HRC on this stuff. FYI, Colin Wright and Zach Elliott are excellent on the biology of sex differences. I thought this recent article from Zach Elliott particularly good and clear: https://quillette.com/2023/09/25/male-female-end-of-list/
On the HRC, the irritation is that they don't respond to me. They have made changes though. I have told them they should be polling the LGBTQ community on where the community stands on the specifics. I'm thinking they are afraid of finding out that the larger community isn't supportive of their far left positions. They get funding by sending out inflaming mail and texts about the latests laws. The HRC has become dysfunctional. From a US perspective, they should be primarily focusing on facilitating discussions. From a politics perspective, they should be focusing on countries where being LGBTQ is illegal.
Excellent point about the role that the HRC should be taking. I wonder if you penned an article for LGB Courage Coalition you could mobilize a bunch of others to write to HRC so you’re not the lone voice?
It’s great to use a variety of strategies and approaches on these issues, if only just to see what sticks. One cautionary note, of course, is that biological fact is not something that can be mediated. There are, however, many excellent solutions to the issue of sports. I happen to like Martina Navratilova’s approach, which is, in post-pubertal sports, to retain the female category as Title IX intended and to have an open category, where anyone can participate, no matter how they identify. Anyway, keep fighting to good fight!
Thank you so much for including Québec in your newsletter! I subscribed today officially and I am pleased to see I won’t be left out, even in my very distinctive, French part of the Americas. I don’t know that there will be place for much debate here though, but I am far from Montreal. The rightists have grabbed the republican discourse and everyone « not a conspiracist » is following blindly to make sure they are not on the wrong side. The gender war will be subtle, because we are too busy talking about batteries the shortage of teachers.
Kate, if you should happen to see this, I want to thank you so much for posting the link to the FAIR parent webinar in which you participated. To all here, every minute of the webinar is well worth the time to watch/listen. Each parent, and the moderator, evinced in every word deep understanding, insight, and most of all lovingness toward their children and toward other parents struggling to keep their own children safe from harm. Toward the beginning, Kate noted, "our children have been betrayed," and toward the end, Kate reemphasized that this is "a societal issue." Kate is so right, on both counts: The huge burden that has been placed on parents and their families by society-wide failures here is beyond unconscionable. I do hope the webinar will be widely viewed and shared.
From the American Anthropology Association's website about why they cancelled their panel talk on "Why biological sex matters...."
"Around the world and throughout human history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy." Gender roles, you fucking idiots. What the hell does that have to do with the reality of biological sex? Make it make sense. Please. No more of this. Just stop.
Kate, do you think there’s a way to find out who actually wrote the AAA press release about cancelling that panel? I believe this needs to be an open conversation that considers those authors’ own framings of sex and gender as ideologically loaded, like all humanities work -- looking at where they’ve made their money and what they’re known for. It’s amazing how much lip service anthropologists give to “standpoint” ethnography and openly vocalizing their own biases and assumptions, and then hide behind anonymous statements that actively harm female scholars *begging to retain* an analytical category, sex, that is and has been crucial to the study of humans since, uh, humans existed. (I can only imagine that, somehow, throwing homosexuals and female people under the bus -- like negating sex does -- might serve these authors’ professional ends.) My website does some analysis like this of the bodies of work of well-known queer theorists, hoping to create realistic and honest discussions about the goals and impacts of academic work. (I started doing it when I realized how Judith Butler turned face on her 1990s work on lesbian sexuality circa 2004, and started referring to homosexuality as a subset of the new analytic category of gender.) I feel like we need that here, sorely.
Suggested topic, "No Sex, Please, Unless You're Talking to Your Oncologist About Your Cancer Diagnosis"
Cancer is treated according to sex. Even now, even in woke Park Slope Brooklyn. I have it on good authority just this week from my guy's oncologist. See, my guy went through his wife's death from breast cancer 15 years ago. He brought up that he saw her waste away. Doc said, "Well, male and female bodies are different, and you might have a better response to the chemo." Which he has to start in 2 weeks, meeting at Memorial Sloan Kettering scheduled.
Medical students, please go into oncology, not "gender" anything. You will have to give bad news to patients. You won't have to look back on your career and realize it was all based on lies.
Peculiarly, it popped in my head that Australian Lesbians should simply organize a cervix pride event for “people who have or had a cervix, and those who have or had a cervix who love them.” If someone feels cervically discriminated and sues it will simply cause laughs out loud. All men and women who qualify can go to the event, no sex or gender discrimination. Throw in menstruation, fallopian tubes, womb, anything that catches attention. Then double back and sue to be exempt. Event entry is guaranteed with proof of having had a Pap smear, say the event is to promote health.
It’s all to atrocious frankly. Why are men so antagonistic. People need to spend more time having pleasurable sex themselves and less time telling other people how and with whom they should be having sex with.
" How do we help people understand that puberty blockers are not a harmless medication in the face of so much wishful thinking? (Or, adds Lisa, that trying not to get pregnant is not the same as trying to stave off the maturation of the human brain and body.)"
yup--we don't let teens just take opioids either....
Thank you for the CTV Montreal video! It's sooooo rare to see anything remotely thoughtful and evenhanded coming from mainstream media in Canada, I was seriously shocked the guy was able to say all this! And criticize the idea of a panel of experts because they aren't planning on letting parents be involved - wow! I kept waiting for the lady to cut him off and apologize to the viewers for his transphobic views.... (not that he said anything transphobic, of course)
Another absolutely top of the line update from you Kate--and thanks for the heads up on your upcoming video, too. FYI, on the Canada Million March, our Duty put out its own video: https://youtu.be/MmvUcFonpHU which makes for an interesting watch on the issues Kate poses. Also, from Our Duty, there’s another of what looks to be excellent piece of advocacy aimed at parental rights to see school records here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ourduty/p/parents-do-you-want-to-know-if-the
Just wanted to say thanks to Kate Parker for these roundups--it’s how I learned about the sex and gender conference in Santa Fe that I just returned from, and I never would’ve known about it if not for you! It was a fabulous event.
Oh, I'm so glad, Jean! I listened to some of it on Zoom yesterday and will watch the rest when the videos become available online. When the camera scanned the room, it looked like it was well-attended. I bit my tongue and put nothing in the Zoom chat when some of the presenters were frustrating (ie refusing to define the terms sex or gender) but a lot of Saturday speakers were raising perspectives on topics that I hadn't ever thought of--fascinating.
Yes! My limited time there this morning made it seem like maybe a little over half of the presenters were arguing in favor of sex as binary and salient, while fewer were arguing that it either isn’t or shouldn’t be thought of as binary/salient *anymore*, which was interesting.
Given that the thrust of this conference was how to help at risk boys, it was really fascinating to hear the different takes on how to address boys--or in some ways whether to address them *as boys* at all.
Thanks for the update.
Its so stupid that governments created laws to not report gender change requests by kids in schools to parents. I live in CA, Scott Wiener the ultimate in blindly following the vocal left, it (at this point he's barely human so I'm assigning him the pronoun it) sponsored the law that stated that whether a parent accepts gender can be used in custody hearings. Why does CA government need to meddle in custody hearings. Leave it to the social workers and DCFS. Its all political pandering.
I have also been tell the HRC (the LGBTQ political organization) that I no longer support their inflaming the war on gender with the blind support of the vocal T community. I did succeed in getting them to change their page on T people competing in sports. They had stated that science stated there was no genetic advantage to being a man. It took me 2 minutes to find a government study listing all the genetic difference between biological men and woman. They change the page now to just state that transgender people get health and mental advantages by competing in sports. No one ever was ever against transgender people competing in sports. The question is how to do so without offending and making it unfair for genetic woman.
Bottom line, organizations like the HRC should be facilitating discussion, not just fanning the flames of the vocal left. The organization that is supposed to support the LGBTQ+ community has not successively divided a large part of the LGB and rationale Ts from the vocal left T community.
How did the world get to the point where we're arguing about whether parents should be informed on what their kids are requesting of the schools? Why is the vocal left getting so much momentum?
Lots of good questions here, and good for you going after the HRC on this stuff. FYI, Colin Wright and Zach Elliott are excellent on the biology of sex differences. I thought this recent article from Zach Elliott particularly good and clear: https://quillette.com/2023/09/25/male-female-end-of-list/
I thought this article was great on sports. Its by a trans person who is sensitive to the issues: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/fairness-is-a-red-herring-what-the-fight-over-trans-athletes-is-really-about. This is the position the HRC should be taking.
On the HRC, the irritation is that they don't respond to me. They have made changes though. I have told them they should be polling the LGBTQ community on where the community stands on the specifics. I'm thinking they are afraid of finding out that the larger community isn't supportive of their far left positions. They get funding by sending out inflaming mail and texts about the latests laws. The HRC has become dysfunctional. From a US perspective, they should be primarily focusing on facilitating discussions. From a politics perspective, they should be focusing on countries where being LGBTQ is illegal.
Excellent point about the role that the HRC should be taking. I wonder if you penned an article for LGB Courage Coalition you could mobilize a bunch of others to write to HRC so you’re not the lone voice?
It’s great to use a variety of strategies and approaches on these issues, if only just to see what sticks. One cautionary note, of course, is that biological fact is not something that can be mediated. There are, however, many excellent solutions to the issue of sports. I happen to like Martina Navratilova’s approach, which is, in post-pubertal sports, to retain the female category as Title IX intended and to have an open category, where anyone can participate, no matter how they identify. Anyway, keep fighting to good fight!
Thank you so much for including Québec in your newsletter! I subscribed today officially and I am pleased to see I won’t be left out, even in my very distinctive, French part of the Americas. I don’t know that there will be place for much debate here though, but I am far from Montreal. The rightists have grabbed the republican discourse and everyone « not a conspiracist » is following blindly to make sure they are not on the wrong side. The gender war will be subtle, because we are too busy talking about batteries the shortage of teachers.
Kate, if you should happen to see this, I want to thank you so much for posting the link to the FAIR parent webinar in which you participated. To all here, every minute of the webinar is well worth the time to watch/listen. Each parent, and the moderator, evinced in every word deep understanding, insight, and most of all lovingness toward their children and toward other parents struggling to keep their own children safe from harm. Toward the beginning, Kate noted, "our children have been betrayed," and toward the end, Kate reemphasized that this is "a societal issue." Kate is so right, on both counts: The huge burden that has been placed on parents and their families by society-wide failures here is beyond unconscionable. I do hope the webinar will be widely viewed and shared.
From the American Anthropology Association's website about why they cancelled their panel talk on "Why biological sex matters...."
"Around the world and throughout human history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy." Gender roles, you fucking idiots. What the hell does that have to do with the reality of biological sex? Make it make sense. Please. No more of this. Just stop.
Kate, do you think there’s a way to find out who actually wrote the AAA press release about cancelling that panel? I believe this needs to be an open conversation that considers those authors’ own framings of sex and gender as ideologically loaded, like all humanities work -- looking at where they’ve made their money and what they’re known for. It’s amazing how much lip service anthropologists give to “standpoint” ethnography and openly vocalizing their own biases and assumptions, and then hide behind anonymous statements that actively harm female scholars *begging to retain* an analytical category, sex, that is and has been crucial to the study of humans since, uh, humans existed. (I can only imagine that, somehow, throwing homosexuals and female people under the bus -- like negating sex does -- might serve these authors’ professional ends.) My website does some analysis like this of the bodies of work of well-known queer theorists, hoping to create realistic and honest discussions about the goals and impacts of academic work. (I started doing it when I realized how Judith Butler turned face on her 1990s work on lesbian sexuality circa 2004, and started referring to homosexuality as a subset of the new analytic category of gender.) I feel like we need that here, sorely.
My guess based on Retraction Watch is that it was a group effort. I wonder when this type of chaotic denouncement crosses the line to professional slander. https://retractionwatch.com/2023/09/27/anthropology-groups-cancel-conference-panel-on-why-biological-sex-is-necessary-for-research/
Same question. Reading Lowrey’s open letter sure presents a stark contrast of who’s being “scholarly” here. Lord almighty, it’s so reasoned.
Suggested topic, "No Sex, Please, Unless You're Talking to Your Oncologist About Your Cancer Diagnosis"
Cancer is treated according to sex. Even now, even in woke Park Slope Brooklyn. I have it on good authority just this week from my guy's oncologist. See, my guy went through his wife's death from breast cancer 15 years ago. He brought up that he saw her waste away. Doc said, "Well, male and female bodies are different, and you might have a better response to the chemo." Which he has to start in 2 weeks, meeting at Memorial Sloan Kettering scheduled.
Medical students, please go into oncology, not "gender" anything. You will have to give bad news to patients. You won't have to look back on your career and realize it was all based on lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1hfe3XhWL4&t=1s
Peculiarly, it popped in my head that Australian Lesbians should simply organize a cervix pride event for “people who have or had a cervix, and those who have or had a cervix who love them.” If someone feels cervically discriminated and sues it will simply cause laughs out loud. All men and women who qualify can go to the event, no sex or gender discrimination. Throw in menstruation, fallopian tubes, womb, anything that catches attention. Then double back and sue to be exempt. Event entry is guaranteed with proof of having had a Pap smear, say the event is to promote health.
It’s all to atrocious frankly. Why are men so antagonistic. People need to spend more time having pleasurable sex themselves and less time telling other people how and with whom they should be having sex with.