Maybe we need to change the question from "What will it take?" to "What is preventing them?" Is it because they cannot get on board with something perceived as being a conservative/right wing/Trump belief? I think that's a major reason and why I still strongly believe we could have made more progress reaching the left and stopping this with Harris in the White House. Is it because the suicide threats are so terrifying that they don't want to risk it? I am sure that's a huge part and really, we can't blame people for that fear. Data seems too abstract and when you're looking at a real person with real distress. Is it because it just feels too much like a betrayal to the LGBT community to be against it? I think that's also at play because even if there are a few very vocal gay or trans people opposing this, in real life, most of the people in the LGBT community we know support it.
This IS a good question. But if you listen to Pamela Paul's interview about what happened at the NYT, it just seems like they're spineless, afraid of controversy, and are obsessed with virtue signaling their way to power. https://smokeempodcast.substack.com/p/234-pamela-paul-spills-on-her-exit
Yes, thanks for this piece, Lisa. And for pointing the way to the interview with Pamela Paul.
I was trying to recall when NYT decided to go all-in on promoting trans. I recalled it was a mission, not just covering the issues of the day:
From: Dominic Holden, BuzzFeed News Reporter, Posted on May 4, 2015
"The New York Times Launched A Series Of Editorials On Transgender Rights
Advocates for LGBT rights said it's a step toward acceptance and legal protections.
The feature filled the entire envelope of the New York Times editorial board space — normally reserved for three articles. “This generation should be the one that stopped thinking that being transgender is something to fear or shun,” the paper concluded in Monday's installment.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Andrew Rosenthal, the Times's editorial page editor since 2007, explained why he sought to build on the paper's advocacy for LGBT rights. “One of the great things about an editorial page is that you can decide to make a big deal out of something, and we decided to make a big deal out of transgender equality,” he said.
“There has been progress in this area," Rosenthal said in a phone call, "but there is a long way to go. This is not a front-burner issue for people, and we hope to make it one. We want policy makers to read this and think about policies they need to change."
LGBT advocates and readers welcomed the coverage."
"Is it because they cannot get on board with something perceived as being a conservative/right wing/Trump belief?"
Yes.
"even if there are a few very vocal gay or trans people opposing this, in real life, most of the people in the LGBT community we know support it."
Yes--and much of this is due to the media blackout on this topic. There is a trickle now in NYT, but most people in the liberal sphere are uninformed.
Money and careers, obvious.
Also, they know someone who is "trans." Maybe it's their kid, their kid's friend, a niece, a work colleague with a new gender reveal--this is highly influential. People double down in their support (or right-thinking).
I think what is holding them back are two fundamental false premises: 1. that "trans" is a real, innate condition, similar to being gay, and 2. (which is based on premise 1) that being recognized by society as the sex of your choice is a human right. Until they realize these are false premises, they will not understand that what they promote as "trans rights" or "trans equality" are really demands that strive to compel society to participate in a belief system, not the equivalent of civil rights for black or gay people to live free from discrimination. The problem is that the participation of society in the belief system is essential to the "trans" person's self-perception, so merely being free from discrimination is not enough for them. They believe that being recognized as the sex they are IS discrimination, when it is really just people refusing to deny reality.
I think it's that they still believe that "good people" support any "marginalized population" and they don't want to be aligned, or be perceived as aligned, with the bad people or to think of themselves as bad people.
I also think the suicide narrative is valid, but not for the reasons they're claiming. Saying, "The data show that suicide is very rare and reducing suicidality is not tied to medicalization" is risky. This is a destabilized cohort of already vulnerable youth who have been led to believe they are a living, breathing social justice cause. They've been told that suicide is a reasonable outcome to not getting what you were told you needed to survive or to believing the world hates you. I think it's pretty easy to see how this could go — and has gone for far too many kids (meaning any kids).
Like most of you I thought we'd be in a different place by now but I've come to see two main reasons that we aren't moving. One is simply that this issue is different than others because for those who have indulged their children's desire to change sex it is just too painful to entertain the idea that they've been a handmaiden to mutilation of their own child. For those not so viscerally committed it is their sense of themselves as good people that must be jettisoned. We may revise Upton Sinclair's aphorism: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it" to "it is difficult to get a person to change their minds when their sense of themselves as a morally superior person is at stake." The GOP has been masterful in using cruelty to cement our commitment to "being good."
Interesting comparison with the gun lobby. Obvious differences, but no need to pick apart which horror show is worse. I hate to think that Dems will just eternally promote gender ideology the way the Right seems locked into fighting more restrictive (and hopefully smarter) gun policy — that this is something we'll just have to live with. But with Newsom pushing his trans cred, I suspect he's betting that it's safe territory for at least the next 2-1/2 years. That must be based on something and it's very worrisome.
Newsom knows the politics and I'm sorry to say that he's right about it. See the recent Virginia governor's race. Gender ideology is just not a salient issue for more than a single-digit percentage of the voters.
Unfortunately there is too much money involved in the whole transgender craze for the Dems to pivot now. Many of their big supporters are raking in the big bucks from this juggernaut. Only hope is for withholding federal money from hospitals, clinics, and doctors who provide ANY "gender affirming care" to minors. Here in the Bay Area we have a glimmer of hope with Stanford, Kaiser, and now Sutter stopping or limiting services to minors.
Imagine someone walking into a school with the intent to kill where they know there is no one with the capability to stop them. Now change that to walking into the same school knowing that there are a half dozen armed individuals unknown to them who are intent on doing exactly that. After every school shooting gun control advocates make the perfect (in their minds no guns) the enemy of the good. Guns aren’t being banned in the US so the only viable approach to reducing this carnage is to allow school staff who pass the same firearms qualification test as the local police who are called to the scene (too late), to conceal carry their own gun in their place of work. They are always on the scene and should have the ability to defend their students and themselves. A half dozen individuals scattered through the school would provide a considerable amount of security. People with concealed carry permits have been proven to be among the most law abiding citizens in our society and they are around you and your children when you shop at Target. They are of no concern to you there so why not allow them to carry at their place of work? A number of schools in our western states have adopted this approach and I have yet to hear of a shooting at any of them.
I think there is going to be more and more information about outcomes, people are starting to wonder what is going on. And telling me they know kids...who are doing poorly.
On the other hand, if everyone who speaks up gets attacked by *our side* like Gladwell did, and of course also by the "pro-medicalization" activists, perhaps these people whose minds are changed will just keep their thoughts to themselves. Right now, most people on the left are misinformed. If they see they will be attacked for not knowing sooner, when they finally figure it out, they'll just bail and worry about other things. Plenty of other things to worry about.
So that's where I think we need to put our energy--that golden bridge that you've worked so hard to crate, to make sure people don't pull it up. To make sure we keep sounding reasonable, because...well, we are following facts and logic, so we are reasonable!!
“These statements include threatening a parent with their child’s suicide—often by the clinicians treating the kids—in order to pressure them to affirm; prominent gender clinicians arguing that the treatments shouldn’t make a child better; and advocacy groups insisting that the research backs the treatments.”
The juxtaposition of these three statements provides a stark reminder that gender medicine is not based on beneficence (creating benefit) and non-maleficence (avoiding harm). These principles underpin Medicine as a public good and provide the basis for allowing doctors to prescribe powerful medications and perform highly invasive procedures on patients. In any context other than medical practice, such actions would be considered assaults. Instead, gender medicine prioritises patient wants over needs and is ideologically driven.
The quote from Oosthoek et al. is especially revealing, not to mention jaw-dropping.
(By the way, is there be a “have to” missing between “shouldn’t” and “make”?)
The trans issue is part of something bigger, part of a perspective, a way of seeing and being in the world. Progressivism reifies personal choice, the absolute freedom of each individual to choose and choose, more and more: from what religion or political thought one has (which almost amounts to what one is), to what job one will have (breaking with familial tradition), to where one will live (which may or may not be where one's ancestors lived) to whether one will have a mate, what sex that mate should be, whether one will have children (our own, or conceived using purchased gametes, or gestated in someone else's womb...)... And the final frontier of freedom is our body, our sex, our very self. Saying, one can choose anything and everything, but not your sex, because that is a biological fact, biology limits you, one is saying, "there is a limit to your freedom of choice: you are not entirely free, you cannot really choose anything and everything". Once one accepts that freedom of choice has certain limits, other limits might creep up, breaking the line of "progress" that has consisted in an increasing and constant erosion and elimination of limits. One's family sets limits, one's society sets limits, one's religion sets limits, and one's body sets limits: why break all others, but keep the latter?
Agreed that trans is part of a worship of transgressing boundries - maybe in an effort to be constantly assuring one of their own power in the world? It seems to be symptomatic of a lack of faith. I say this as someone who isn't devoutly religious but I do think people need to cherish something other than their own will to power. The serenity prayer always seemed like it offers a lot - especially when a compulsion to break limits sets in.
I don't think it has to do with power per se, for the most kind-hearted, but with choice (which is, indeed, related to power, for when one cannot choose, one could think that one is powerless), which is believed to be a fundamental right of individuals after the Enlightenment: choosing one's path, one's destiny, began with choosing one's religion (no longer forced to be Catholic) and continued with one's place of living and one's employment (no longer determined by parentage, or class; no more serfdom)... This was only for men, at first, of course... In any case, when we think of these kinds of choices, we are all for them. One's parents' life should not 'determine' one's own life... It's really a very difficult conundrum: the wisdom needed to know this is rare, and when one's faith lies in precisely eliminating anything and everything that limits individual freedom of choice, wise counsel against such freedoms feels like intolerance, fundamentalist and backwards-looking anti-progress... For progressives, technology makes it possible to renounce the need to serenely accept that which we cannot change, because that does not exist: we can change anything and everything that we choose.
It's a misplaced faith in the progress of humanity, an unreal, abstract humanity composed of individuals that can be independent, autonomous, unbounded and untethered, whose happiness depends upon their ability to make themselves (self-made men and women), for whom any limit or boundary is a violation of their fundamental right to choose who and what they want to be, and what (and who) they want (to consume)... It's a faith that views itself as science, because technology uses scientific methods. But it's still a faith, an ideology, an ethos.
I am an atheist and a sort of materialist: it is evident that humans are not unbounded, are not and cannot be independent: we are in networks of love and affection and need, and believing that being free of those networks will make us happy simply sets most of us up for misery and sadness and anxiety... We are an animal species, and adopting "species non-conforming" behaviors will not make us happy or free. The limit set by the very fact that we are an animal species is rejected in favor of absolute choice and absolute freedom... I do not think progressivism can turn back. Even if it stops championing transness, its entire ethos is that of increasing the availability of choice for humans. That is its faith:
What you are describing sounds like Martine Rothblatt, the transgender transhumanist biotech CEO, who aspires to uploading his consciousness and (he hopes) living forever. And as Jennifer Bilek has written, transgender is the on ramp to transhumanism. Check out Bilek and Rothblatt, whose books are available on Amazon. Bilek is also accessible on Substack.
Thanks! I have read Bilek, yes! But the most influential writer for me has been Mary Harrington. Through her, Ivan Illich. And transhumanism is, indeed, the destiny that many do not see or do not think they're espousing, but that they are, indeed, running towards with glee...
The psychological phenomenon at issue is accommodation versus assimilation. When people receive information that goes against their opinions or draws them into serious question, particularly on important matters, they have a choice. Either change the opinion to take the new information into account (admitting that mistakes were made), or find a way to make the information align with their opinion. It's always easier to do the latter than to actually admit a mistake.
I believe this accounts for a lot of what ails society today (and throughout history). Rather than adjust to new information, and have to realize they might have been wrong, people just find ways to make the new information mesh with their existing opinions, and it then takes way longer than necessary for destructive opinions to change.
This parallel is sharper than most people want to admit. Both cases show what happens when evidence takes a backseat to ideological commitments. The Dickey Amendment strategy of restricting research mirrors the current refusal to seriously engage with systematic reviews on pediatric gender medicine. When policy becomes identity-based rather than outcome-based, any critique gets read as betrayal. Saw this firsthand in advocacy circles where questioning methodolgy got treated as questioning peoples' humanity, which isn't remotely the same thing.
I disagree that it is as hopeless as the US gun disagreements, though I see one parallel--
those who don't want stricter gun laws often do not want anyone to have a record of who has which guns, which would be very useful to getting better data for safety, I think. And for noticing if someone is stockpiling or something. At least this could be explored.
Similarly, many in the trans community want no record of who is getting which treatment. The fear seems to be that they will be targeted??
If we had records of who was getting these interventions, which are experimental, we could find out who is doing well, poorly, stopping the drugs, whatever. We don't know how many people are taking them, how many stop, anything.
If this comparison is as true an insight as I must admit it seems to be, it's utterly depressing and discouraging. Years and years more of this damage to children and to women's rights? And personally, no social circles where I can feel comfortable? In my small city, I am the only liberal TERF that I know. History is a wrecking yard of such intractable political positions which create tragedies in the lives of real people from stupid, power-driven and emotionally driven bad policies. Yesterday, I met the Republican chair of the county in which I live. Why in the world did I meet him? Going to his house apparently was the ONLY way for me to sign a petition in my state to sign a ballot initiative ensuring girls' sports are for girls. He was a nice man, and we obviously agree about this issue. Every time I meet these Republicans who I agree with on GI, I tell them the same thing: you have to understand that unless "the left" and the Democratic party gets this and pivots, this actual problem will not go away! I say, the Democrats handed this to you on a silver platter. Fine, good for you. But if you really and truly care about women's rights and the well-being of kids, you should also care about the left pivoting. Because they still have power in half the states. And your guy in the White House is tanking in the polls, they may be able to kick him and your party out of there, reversing all the executive orders. They very well may prevail in the mid-terms in one chamber. Unless the Democrats pivot, kids will keep being harmed. I don't know if my speeches to them make any difference. Probably not. What a dismal situation.
Until Democrats disavow this notion of transistioning children and cultivating this mind virus in schools they can NEVER be trusted to lead the country.
One other thing, the Dutch who wrote your quotation have the best long term follow up data on young people who get these interventions all the way through surgery. They are talking about it but not everything has been published. Or outcomes are published but mixed up (e.g. different stages before puberty blockers all combined).
But having those data right in front of them, knowing what they show, even though we don't, they are saying....hey, improvement is so "limited"....?
Now it seems the aim is to protect the treatment, not the kids with GD. If you want just something based on autonomy, that provides short term happiness, I bet some kids would be very happy to stay home from school or not do homework anymore. Very happy. Eat candy all day. Smoke. Whatever! Would they be satisfied that they got these "treatments"? Yes!
As a reminder, you quoted this:
“Feminist and queer affect theory offers tools to explore how affective experiences are shaped by cultural, social, and political forces. This framework provides a useful lens for understanding the persistence of negative feelings throughout and beyond gender transition, challenging the dominant view of GAMT as a linear, teleological process aimed at achieving alignment between one’s gender identity and body, ultimately leading to a coherent sense of self. This prevailing narrative is shaped by the expectation that transition should lead to improvement, implying that each step in the transition process mitigates negative feelings, ultimately “curing” gender dysphoria and improving the well-being of the TGD individual.”
Maybe we need to change the question from "What will it take?" to "What is preventing them?" Is it because they cannot get on board with something perceived as being a conservative/right wing/Trump belief? I think that's a major reason and why I still strongly believe we could have made more progress reaching the left and stopping this with Harris in the White House. Is it because the suicide threats are so terrifying that they don't want to risk it? I am sure that's a huge part and really, we can't blame people for that fear. Data seems too abstract and when you're looking at a real person with real distress. Is it because it just feels too much like a betrayal to the LGBT community to be against it? I think that's also at play because even if there are a few very vocal gay or trans people opposing this, in real life, most of the people in the LGBT community we know support it.
This IS a good question. But if you listen to Pamela Paul's interview about what happened at the NYT, it just seems like they're spineless, afraid of controversy, and are obsessed with virtue signaling their way to power. https://smokeempodcast.substack.com/p/234-pamela-paul-spills-on-her-exit
Yes, thanks for this piece, Lisa. And for pointing the way to the interview with Pamela Paul.
I was trying to recall when NYT decided to go all-in on promoting trans. I recalled it was a mission, not just covering the issues of the day:
From: Dominic Holden, BuzzFeed News Reporter, Posted on May 4, 2015
"The New York Times Launched A Series Of Editorials On Transgender Rights
Advocates for LGBT rights said it's a step toward acceptance and legal protections.
The feature filled the entire envelope of the New York Times editorial board space — normally reserved for three articles. “This generation should be the one that stopped thinking that being transgender is something to fear or shun,” the paper concluded in Monday's installment.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Andrew Rosenthal, the Times's editorial page editor since 2007, explained why he sought to build on the paper's advocacy for LGBT rights. “One of the great things about an editorial page is that you can decide to make a big deal out of something, and we decided to make a big deal out of transgender equality,” he said.
“There has been progress in this area," Rosenthal said in a phone call, "but there is a long way to go. This is not a front-burner issue for people, and we hope to make it one. We want policy makers to read this and think about policies they need to change."
LGBT advocates and readers welcomed the coverage."
"Is it because they cannot get on board with something perceived as being a conservative/right wing/Trump belief?"
Yes.
"even if there are a few very vocal gay or trans people opposing this, in real life, most of the people in the LGBT community we know support it."
Yes--and much of this is due to the media blackout on this topic. There is a trickle now in NYT, but most people in the liberal sphere are uninformed.
Money and careers, obvious.
Also, they know someone who is "trans." Maybe it's their kid, their kid's friend, a niece, a work colleague with a new gender reveal--this is highly influential. People double down in their support (or right-thinking).
No thoughtcrimes allowed.
I think what is holding them back are two fundamental false premises: 1. that "trans" is a real, innate condition, similar to being gay, and 2. (which is based on premise 1) that being recognized by society as the sex of your choice is a human right. Until they realize these are false premises, they will not understand that what they promote as "trans rights" or "trans equality" are really demands that strive to compel society to participate in a belief system, not the equivalent of civil rights for black or gay people to live free from discrimination. The problem is that the participation of society in the belief system is essential to the "trans" person's self-perception, so merely being free from discrimination is not enough for them. They believe that being recognized as the sex they are IS discrimination, when it is really just people refusing to deny reality.
I think it's that they still believe that "good people" support any "marginalized population" and they don't want to be aligned, or be perceived as aligned, with the bad people or to think of themselves as bad people.
I also think the suicide narrative is valid, but not for the reasons they're claiming. Saying, "The data show that suicide is very rare and reducing suicidality is not tied to medicalization" is risky. This is a destabilized cohort of already vulnerable youth who have been led to believe they are a living, breathing social justice cause. They've been told that suicide is a reasonable outcome to not getting what you were told you needed to survive or to believing the world hates you. I think it's pretty easy to see how this could go — and has gone for far too many kids (meaning any kids).
Like most of you I thought we'd be in a different place by now but I've come to see two main reasons that we aren't moving. One is simply that this issue is different than others because for those who have indulged their children's desire to change sex it is just too painful to entertain the idea that they've been a handmaiden to mutilation of their own child. For those not so viscerally committed it is their sense of themselves as good people that must be jettisoned. We may revise Upton Sinclair's aphorism: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it" to "it is difficult to get a person to change their minds when their sense of themselves as a morally superior person is at stake." The GOP has been masterful in using cruelty to cement our commitment to "being good."
💯
Interesting comparison with the gun lobby. Obvious differences, but no need to pick apart which horror show is worse. I hate to think that Dems will just eternally promote gender ideology the way the Right seems locked into fighting more restrictive (and hopefully smarter) gun policy — that this is something we'll just have to live with. But with Newsom pushing his trans cred, I suspect he's betting that it's safe territory for at least the next 2-1/2 years. That must be based on something and it's very worrisome.
Newsom knows the politics and I'm sorry to say that he's right about it. See the recent Virginia governor's race. Gender ideology is just not a salient issue for more than a single-digit percentage of the voters.
Unfortunately there is too much money involved in the whole transgender craze for the Dems to pivot now. Many of their big supporters are raking in the big bucks from this juggernaut. Only hope is for withholding federal money from hospitals, clinics, and doctors who provide ANY "gender affirming care" to minors. Here in the Bay Area we have a glimmer of hope with Stanford, Kaiser, and now Sutter stopping or limiting services to minors.
Oh no. Terrible news
Sutter backtracked:
"After backlash, Bay Area’s largest hospital pauses plan to end care for transgender kids"
https://sfstandard.com/2025/12/16/sutter-trans-youth-healthcare-reversal/
Imagine someone walking into a school with the intent to kill where they know there is no one with the capability to stop them. Now change that to walking into the same school knowing that there are a half dozen armed individuals unknown to them who are intent on doing exactly that. After every school shooting gun control advocates make the perfect (in their minds no guns) the enemy of the good. Guns aren’t being banned in the US so the only viable approach to reducing this carnage is to allow school staff who pass the same firearms qualification test as the local police who are called to the scene (too late), to conceal carry their own gun in their place of work. They are always on the scene and should have the ability to defend their students and themselves. A half dozen individuals scattered through the school would provide a considerable amount of security. People with concealed carry permits have been proven to be among the most law abiding citizens in our society and they are around you and your children when you shop at Target. They are of no concern to you there so why not allow them to carry at their place of work? A number of schools in our western states have adopted this approach and I have yet to hear of a shooting at any of them.
https://youtu.be/0r_xc09q9vo
I think there is going to be more and more information about outcomes, people are starting to wonder what is going on. And telling me they know kids...who are doing poorly.
On the other hand, if everyone who speaks up gets attacked by *our side* like Gladwell did, and of course also by the "pro-medicalization" activists, perhaps these people whose minds are changed will just keep their thoughts to themselves. Right now, most people on the left are misinformed. If they see they will be attacked for not knowing sooner, when they finally figure it out, they'll just bail and worry about other things. Plenty of other things to worry about.
So that's where I think we need to put our energy--that golden bridge that you've worked so hard to crate, to make sure people don't pull it up. To make sure we keep sounding reasonable, because...well, we are following facts and logic, so we are reasonable!!
“These statements include threatening a parent with their child’s suicide—often by the clinicians treating the kids—in order to pressure them to affirm; prominent gender clinicians arguing that the treatments shouldn’t make a child better; and advocacy groups insisting that the research backs the treatments.”
The juxtaposition of these three statements provides a stark reminder that gender medicine is not based on beneficence (creating benefit) and non-maleficence (avoiding harm). These principles underpin Medicine as a public good and provide the basis for allowing doctors to prescribe powerful medications and perform highly invasive procedures on patients. In any context other than medical practice, such actions would be considered assaults. Instead, gender medicine prioritises patient wants over needs and is ideologically driven.
The quote from Oosthoek et al. is especially revealing, not to mention jaw-dropping.
(By the way, is there be a “have to” missing between “shouldn’t” and “make”?)
The trans issue is part of something bigger, part of a perspective, a way of seeing and being in the world. Progressivism reifies personal choice, the absolute freedom of each individual to choose and choose, more and more: from what religion or political thought one has (which almost amounts to what one is), to what job one will have (breaking with familial tradition), to where one will live (which may or may not be where one's ancestors lived) to whether one will have a mate, what sex that mate should be, whether one will have children (our own, or conceived using purchased gametes, or gestated in someone else's womb...)... And the final frontier of freedom is our body, our sex, our very self. Saying, one can choose anything and everything, but not your sex, because that is a biological fact, biology limits you, one is saying, "there is a limit to your freedom of choice: you are not entirely free, you cannot really choose anything and everything". Once one accepts that freedom of choice has certain limits, other limits might creep up, breaking the line of "progress" that has consisted in an increasing and constant erosion and elimination of limits. One's family sets limits, one's society sets limits, one's religion sets limits, and one's body sets limits: why break all others, but keep the latter?
Agreed that trans is part of a worship of transgressing boundries - maybe in an effort to be constantly assuring one of their own power in the world? It seems to be symptomatic of a lack of faith. I say this as someone who isn't devoutly religious but I do think people need to cherish something other than their own will to power. The serenity prayer always seemed like it offers a lot - especially when a compulsion to break limits sets in.
I don't think it has to do with power per se, for the most kind-hearted, but with choice (which is, indeed, related to power, for when one cannot choose, one could think that one is powerless), which is believed to be a fundamental right of individuals after the Enlightenment: choosing one's path, one's destiny, began with choosing one's religion (no longer forced to be Catholic) and continued with one's place of living and one's employment (no longer determined by parentage, or class; no more serfdom)... This was only for men, at first, of course... In any case, when we think of these kinds of choices, we are all for them. One's parents' life should not 'determine' one's own life... It's really a very difficult conundrum: the wisdom needed to know this is rare, and when one's faith lies in precisely eliminating anything and everything that limits individual freedom of choice, wise counsel against such freedoms feels like intolerance, fundamentalist and backwards-looking anti-progress... For progressives, technology makes it possible to renounce the need to serenely accept that which we cannot change, because that does not exist: we can change anything and everything that we choose.
It's a misplaced faith in the progress of humanity, an unreal, abstract humanity composed of individuals that can be independent, autonomous, unbounded and untethered, whose happiness depends upon their ability to make themselves (self-made men and women), for whom any limit or boundary is a violation of their fundamental right to choose who and what they want to be, and what (and who) they want (to consume)... It's a faith that views itself as science, because technology uses scientific methods. But it's still a faith, an ideology, an ethos.
I am an atheist and a sort of materialist: it is evident that humans are not unbounded, are not and cannot be independent: we are in networks of love and affection and need, and believing that being free of those networks will make us happy simply sets most of us up for misery and sadness and anxiety... We are an animal species, and adopting "species non-conforming" behaviors will not make us happy or free. The limit set by the very fact that we are an animal species is rejected in favor of absolute choice and absolute freedom... I do not think progressivism can turn back. Even if it stops championing transness, its entire ethos is that of increasing the availability of choice for humans. That is its faith:
What you are describing sounds like Martine Rothblatt, the transgender transhumanist biotech CEO, who aspires to uploading his consciousness and (he hopes) living forever. And as Jennifer Bilek has written, transgender is the on ramp to transhumanism. Check out Bilek and Rothblatt, whose books are available on Amazon. Bilek is also accessible on Substack.
Thanks! I have read Bilek, yes! But the most influential writer for me has been Mary Harrington. Through her, Ivan Illich. And transhumanism is, indeed, the destiny that many do not see or do not think they're espousing, but that they are, indeed, running towards with glee...
Great analogy.
The psychological phenomenon at issue is accommodation versus assimilation. When people receive information that goes against their opinions or draws them into serious question, particularly on important matters, they have a choice. Either change the opinion to take the new information into account (admitting that mistakes were made), or find a way to make the information align with their opinion. It's always easier to do the latter than to actually admit a mistake.
I believe this accounts for a lot of what ails society today (and throughout history). Rather than adjust to new information, and have to realize they might have been wrong, people just find ways to make the new information mesh with their existing opinions, and it then takes way longer than necessary for destructive opinions to change.
Bingo! But how deeply depressing.
This parallel is sharper than most people want to admit. Both cases show what happens when evidence takes a backseat to ideological commitments. The Dickey Amendment strategy of restricting research mirrors the current refusal to seriously engage with systematic reviews on pediatric gender medicine. When policy becomes identity-based rather than outcome-based, any critique gets read as betrayal. Saw this firsthand in advocacy circles where questioning methodolgy got treated as questioning peoples' humanity, which isn't remotely the same thing.
I disagree that it is as hopeless as the US gun disagreements, though I see one parallel--
those who don't want stricter gun laws often do not want anyone to have a record of who has which guns, which would be very useful to getting better data for safety, I think. And for noticing if someone is stockpiling or something. At least this could be explored.
Similarly, many in the trans community want no record of who is getting which treatment. The fear seems to be that they will be targeted??
If we had records of who was getting these interventions, which are experimental, we could find out who is doing well, poorly, stopping the drugs, whatever. We don't know how many people are taking them, how many stop, anything.
Privacy, though.
If this comparison is as true an insight as I must admit it seems to be, it's utterly depressing and discouraging. Years and years more of this damage to children and to women's rights? And personally, no social circles where I can feel comfortable? In my small city, I am the only liberal TERF that I know. History is a wrecking yard of such intractable political positions which create tragedies in the lives of real people from stupid, power-driven and emotionally driven bad policies. Yesterday, I met the Republican chair of the county in which I live. Why in the world did I meet him? Going to his house apparently was the ONLY way for me to sign a petition in my state to sign a ballot initiative ensuring girls' sports are for girls. He was a nice man, and we obviously agree about this issue. Every time I meet these Republicans who I agree with on GI, I tell them the same thing: you have to understand that unless "the left" and the Democratic party gets this and pivots, this actual problem will not go away! I say, the Democrats handed this to you on a silver platter. Fine, good for you. But if you really and truly care about women's rights and the well-being of kids, you should also care about the left pivoting. Because they still have power in half the states. And your guy in the White House is tanking in the polls, they may be able to kick him and your party out of there, reversing all the executive orders. They very well may prevail in the mid-terms in one chamber. Unless the Democrats pivot, kids will keep being harmed. I don't know if my speeches to them make any difference. Probably not. What a dismal situation.
Until Democrats disavow this notion of transistioning children and cultivating this mind virus in schools they can NEVER be trusted to lead the country.
Why do we have an armed population in this country? What happens to countries who disarm their population? Let’s compare and contrast
One other thing, the Dutch who wrote your quotation have the best long term follow up data on young people who get these interventions all the way through surgery. They are talking about it but not everything has been published. Or outcomes are published but mixed up (e.g. different stages before puberty blockers all combined).
But having those data right in front of them, knowing what they show, even though we don't, they are saying....hey, improvement is so "limited"....?
Now it seems the aim is to protect the treatment, not the kids with GD. If you want just something based on autonomy, that provides short term happiness, I bet some kids would be very happy to stay home from school or not do homework anymore. Very happy. Eat candy all day. Smoke. Whatever! Would they be satisfied that they got these "treatments"? Yes!
As a reminder, you quoted this:
“Feminist and queer affect theory offers tools to explore how affective experiences are shaped by cultural, social, and political forces. This framework provides a useful lens for understanding the persistence of negative feelings throughout and beyond gender transition, challenging the dominant view of GAMT as a linear, teleological process aimed at achieving alignment between one’s gender identity and body, ultimately leading to a coherent sense of self. This prevailing narrative is shaped by the expectation that transition should lead to improvement, implying that each step in the transition process mitigates negative feelings, ultimately “curing” gender dysphoria and improving the well-being of the TGD individual.”