I’d like to see the desistance of the bullying and death threats that get lobbed at outstanding journalists & writers like Ben Ryan and Jesse Singal. That to me would be the final proof that “no debate” is over.
I’d also like more people admit to us that they were wrong and stupid on this issue, but that’s a fantastic pipe dream. I’ll settle for the end of death threats!
Of course he does not deserve death threats! Or any "attack" that is not fact based. No one does.
I am simply pointing out that Ryan sides with the autogynephiles when it comes to non-pediatric "trans" issues. He banned me from his substack quite a while ago for saying that Wu is a man.
I am a strong believer in women's sex-based rights to single-sex spaces, events, competitions, etc. Ryan disagrees. He believes that any adult man who claims to be a woman immediately becomes a woman for all legal and social purposes.
He is free to hold that belief, but I will not stop pointing out that he holds it.
Legit. I don’t like it when anyone is scolded for their language. I don’t like it when the TRAs do it, & I don’t like it when Ben does it. But it’s his substack & he can set the parameters of the discussion.
Language policing just stops us from communicating, but we need more communication, not less.
I hope in 2025 there are some articles published about what has happened to families in this. Families who have tried to not medicalize their distressed kids have been tortured. I know you know this Lisa.
What great advice! Thank you! LOL on the Tennessee comment. After listening to some of those politicians at the Supreme Court I started listening to Rocky Top by the Osborne Brothers on spotify and told my husband we have to perhaps look at the Nashville area for retirement. We are in the NYC area right now so also in a blue state.
I fear the backlash. All those schools, college campuses, medical and behavioral health providers and generally uninformed “liberals” will continue to ignore the data and double down on their belief that “gender affirming care” is life saving. The rational, research informed message is still mostly coming from the right, even at the Supreme Court.
Thank you for all you have been doing for so long and congratulations for the great summary article in the Globe a few weeks ago!
Most people I know have no idea that there is any question about gender interventions, and think that if someone feels this way, they go to an MD and that there is a reliable way to determine what help they need (and that if they live in a blue state they'll get the "help" and in a red state, they won't). I'd love something to reach them that is short and sweet, maybe the WP article is the way to go...and then yours, for instance, if they wonder how we got here?
The culture war has to be broken open so that people who think they are on the right side of history but aren't informed (SC judges appointed by my party, for instance!) get a clue. I think many people supporting medical gender interventions a la US approach just have no time to pay attention what is actually going on given everything else going on in the world, and would benefit from some succinct information. For instance, that trans rights does not mean kids should be getting medical interventions on demand, or that an assessment doesn't mean that the person has in fact been determined to be someone who will benefit from interventions. So a quick way to inform....that is my wish list!!
I don’t know how to fix it, but the mental health industry and the educational system need to stop pushing gender ideology and gender identity. More and more evidence is coming out that vulnerable people are being led down this path by therapists and educators.
My wish is that as the damage gradually becomes more evident, those fields revise guidelines, but I fear that like the medical trade organizations (really lobbying groups) they will double down.
First off, thank you, Lisa for all you do. You have long been a voice of reason and a lifeline for so many. I share this concern: “My concern has been that cutting off the affirmation supply ignores the demand built up by the institutionalization of gender identity—in law, psychology, medicine, education, journalism.” Along those lines, I see a lot of promise in the coming year, remarkably enough, for more and more collective and individual action. So many wonderful groups have formed up: the Courage Coalition, WDI USA, PItt Parents, DIAG, ROAR in NYC, M4Women in MA, Glenna Goldis’s newly formed GC Law Society, LGB Alliance USA, ICONS—and I am sure many more. So, I am hoping 2025 in the US, despite the ominous clouds forming on other fronts, will see more and more people joining in, making alliances, working together on concrete projects and calls for action, and generally forming up into a mighty phalanx that might approach what we are seeing in England. We are starting to be heard, and as Kara Dansky often says, “If we can be heard, we will win.”
Thank you for all of this. I'm thrilled about your book. My wish is that the myth that a man can turn into a woman, and a woman can turn into a man, be shattered. If only everyone understood that what is happening is that people are using hormone treatments and plastic surgery to change the appearance and the chemical makeup of their bodies, NOT becoming a person of the opposite sex. I also wish more people understood the impact of medicalizing themselves. No one tells a woman going in for a facelift that she is setting herself up for migraines. No one tells a girl of the consequences of getting a hysterectomy because "the doctor told me that if I did enough testosterone to stop my periods I would destroy my liver." We live in an age of the myth that science and technology can solve all problems, and change everything that bothers us, including ourselves. I wish that myth would be shattered, too.
I follow the issue on the trans thread at a popular progressive news site and I use this as a sort of barometer of where we are. Immediately after the election a new thread opened up about Dems and the Trans issue. A robust conversation, previously missing, ensued followed by the devolution into a shouting match and finally the thread went dead as people tired of the battle. My takeaway: progressives are still not ready to face this issue down. The moral narrative is still largely: GOP Evil / DEMS Good. It is difficult to tell people who think they are doing the right thing on the right side of history that they are embracing a lie. It is difficult for elites to believe that the working class could be correct about anything.
I hope your book does not only treat the gender issue as a medical one. Sure, evidence of what is happening in medical treatment is important. But the thrust of the movement is ontological. That is, it is the idea that there is an "innate gender identity" that reveals a state of being.
I am so grateful for this apparent 'awakening' - hoping 2025 sees the hockey stick graph turn upside down. Although trans is 'in the ether' now - even the most conservative kids accept it as real. There is more work to reclaim the future.
And, sadly, there is much more work to reclaim our children - so embedded in the trans ideology, they won't even look at new information. My fear is that they will suffer as their 'services' become unavailable or uncovered by insurance.
I would like to see: (1) help for detransitioners; (2) cessation of the teaching of the concept of "gender identity" other than as part of a class on cult-like beliefs, and cessation of any school program of social transition, particularly behind parents' backs, but really at all; (3) tons of awareness campaigns, simply alerting the public to the dangers of the chemical and surgical interventions involved in medical transition, especially as they pertain to young people starting on the synthetic hormones at an early age (or puberty blockers), but also as they pertain to adults; (4) a public awareness campaign that social and medical transition is not "life-saving" (and end to the dangerous suicide narrative!) and is not credibly a medical treatment at all, but more of a social and medical experiment that has caused tremendous harm, with the explanation that almost everyone who has a problem with their sex can, with patience and time, and, for some, exploratory therapy, grow to accept their biological reality, and anyone who cannot do so would not know that until they have tried living in their sexed body without disguise well into adulthood, and tried therapy and tried mind-body connective exercises, and those very few adults who have literally tried everything can try the cosmetic procedures to look like the opposite sex, but it still may not help them; (5) an end to the promotion of the ideas of "trans kids" and the opposite of #4 above by schools, universities, government and courts, journalism, entertainment, social media, and, most significantly, hospitals, doctors and psychologists/social workers; and (6) an end to censorship.
I want much more than this, but I don't want to be greedy!
I read a great book "The Occasional Human Sacrifice" about whistleblowers and 20th century scandals, and how there usually isn't an apology and the people who defended the institutions, not the truth, are the ones that succeed.
I want those who knowingly perpetuated this and used other peoples kids to not fail up and be held to account.
For the rest, I want to remind the world that reap science is never settled, and that to constantly test assumptions is a good thing.
I would also like support for detransitioners, and I would like to see state attorney generals start to sue those who perpetuated these lies to pay for helping detransitioners move forward.
Link to Angela's story from Behind the Looking Glass, the documentary on trans widows now 152k views at Lime Soda Films YT channel. Vaishnavi Sundar, the filmmaker, is releasing all 18 of our stories one by one. Angela had to call the police when lingerie wearing husband assaulted her, battery strangulation. He's the father of their 3 children, now living "his true life" on the West Coast with his also male crossdresser boyfriend. They claim to be lesbians. The premier is Sat. Dec 21 and most of us will be in the live chat with Vaishnavi.
Ute, my wife and I watched that documentary shorty after it came out (I recall your appearance in it). It was a difficult watch, but enlightening and informative too. I'm glad I watched it and that these women had a platform to share their stories.
Thanks. I collect the only data in the world on our experiences, through a survey called 20 Questions to Ask a Trans Widow. This information and other reflections are at my channel on YouTube, Trans Widow Ute Heggen.
Lisa, please keep an eye on what the Republicans are going to do with this. Supposedly, they're opening investigations into kiddie sex changes in January. I hope they go after the entire industry after that (the grownups need saving too!)
What alarms me is the likely adverse spillover to gay and lesbian equality. The trans lobby invariably refers to "LGBT..." or some variation such as "LGBTQIA+" (the official White House usage, I think). The practice serves to perpetuate the notion that trans has something to do with gay and lesbian, an idea I suspect is common among most people since they don't have any reason to think carefully about the difference. That is, I'd bet a lot of people still think trans is some sort of, you know, maybe kind of gay.
I don't expect GOP Congress critters to be any better informed than the public or careful to distinguish trans from homosexual when they're beating up on pro-trans witnesses, trying for a sound bite on Fox News. Sadly, neither the witnesses nor the Democrats are likely to correct them. I hope some of the groups trying to preserve the enormous difference between trans and gay and lesbian get an opportunity to make the difference clear.
You may be right, the GOP and Trump will fuck up everything they touch, even when they're doing the right thing. The Team Pride experience should be a lesson to all on the perils of too much 'inclusion'. Heterosexual men never had any place in Pride. They should have stuck to LGB. I know there's been a drive to expel the TQ by some gay activists, like the UK's Mr. Menno. Look at what a bloody mess the Pride flag is now due to out-of-control 'inclusion'. Every narcissist on the planet can get their own stripe. I know some of the GOP wants to roll back gay marriage. And yeah, they can point to this crap as 'evidence' that the gay movement is 'out of control' - which it is. They'd best fix this before the pedos breach the walls. And they're there, waiting, as "MAPs".
I plan to start a Substack to park the WPATH files, which I translated into Spanish and have permission to publish. I found NOOOOO takers anywhere. I thought, "This is how Lisa Selin must feel". Anyway, I would love to translate Rabbit Hole 101!
I’d like to see the desistance of the bullying and death threats that get lobbed at outstanding journalists & writers like Ben Ryan and Jesse Singal. That to me would be the final proof that “no debate” is over.
I’d also like more people admit to us that they were wrong and stupid on this issue, but that’s a fantastic pipe dream. I’ll settle for the end of death threats!
FYI on Ben Ryan, here's what he said today in response to a commenter:
"If you call trans women men again on my page, I will block you."
https://benryan.substack.com/p/the-plot-to-destroy-ben-ryanmy-conversation
I disagree with him on the pronouns, but I don’t think he deserves all of the attacks & even death threats! That’s how the other side behaves.
Aren’t we supposed to be the calm & rational adults?
Of course he does not deserve death threats! Or any "attack" that is not fact based. No one does.
I am simply pointing out that Ryan sides with the autogynephiles when it comes to non-pediatric "trans" issues. He banned me from his substack quite a while ago for saying that Wu is a man.
I am a strong believer in women's sex-based rights to single-sex spaces, events, competitions, etc. Ryan disagrees. He believes that any adult man who claims to be a woman immediately becomes a woman for all legal and social purposes.
He is free to hold that belief, but I will not stop pointing out that he holds it.
Legit. I don’t like it when anyone is scolded for their language. I don’t like it when the TRAs do it, & I don’t like it when Ben does it. But it’s his substack & he can set the parameters of the discussion.
Language policing just stops us from communicating, but we need more communication, not less.
I hope in 2025 there are some articles published about what has happened to families in this. Families who have tried to not medicalize their distressed kids have been tortured. I know you know this Lisa.
What great advice! Thank you! LOL on the Tennessee comment. After listening to some of those politicians at the Supreme Court I started listening to Rocky Top by the Osborne Brothers on spotify and told my husband we have to perhaps look at the Nashville area for retirement. We are in the NYC area right now so also in a blue state.
I fear the backlash. All those schools, college campuses, medical and behavioral health providers and generally uninformed “liberals” will continue to ignore the data and double down on their belief that “gender affirming care” is life saving. The rational, research informed message is still mostly coming from the right, even at the Supreme Court.
They are organizing to fight back. I lurk on a reddit page.
Can you share the link? I'm curious to read this for myself.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cisparenttranskid/comments/1hgdveb/trans_rights_virtual_meeting_by_glad_law_tonight/
Thank you for all you have been doing for so long and congratulations for the great summary article in the Globe a few weeks ago!
Most people I know have no idea that there is any question about gender interventions, and think that if someone feels this way, they go to an MD and that there is a reliable way to determine what help they need (and that if they live in a blue state they'll get the "help" and in a red state, they won't). I'd love something to reach them that is short and sweet, maybe the WP article is the way to go...and then yours, for instance, if they wonder how we got here?
The culture war has to be broken open so that people who think they are on the right side of history but aren't informed (SC judges appointed by my party, for instance!) get a clue. I think many people supporting medical gender interventions a la US approach just have no time to pay attention what is actually going on given everything else going on in the world, and would benefit from some succinct information. For instance, that trans rights does not mean kids should be getting medical interventions on demand, or that an assessment doesn't mean that the person has in fact been determined to be someone who will benefit from interventions. So a quick way to inform....that is my wish list!!
I don’t know how to fix it, but the mental health industry and the educational system need to stop pushing gender ideology and gender identity. More and more evidence is coming out that vulnerable people are being led down this path by therapists and educators.
My wish is that as the damage gradually becomes more evident, those fields revise guidelines, but I fear that like the medical trade organizations (really lobbying groups) they will double down.
First off, thank you, Lisa for all you do. You have long been a voice of reason and a lifeline for so many. I share this concern: “My concern has been that cutting off the affirmation supply ignores the demand built up by the institutionalization of gender identity—in law, psychology, medicine, education, journalism.” Along those lines, I see a lot of promise in the coming year, remarkably enough, for more and more collective and individual action. So many wonderful groups have formed up: the Courage Coalition, WDI USA, PItt Parents, DIAG, ROAR in NYC, M4Women in MA, Glenna Goldis’s newly formed GC Law Society, LGB Alliance USA, ICONS—and I am sure many more. So, I am hoping 2025 in the US, despite the ominous clouds forming on other fronts, will see more and more people joining in, making alliances, working together on concrete projects and calls for action, and generally forming up into a mighty phalanx that might approach what we are seeing in England. We are starting to be heard, and as Kara Dansky often says, “If we can be heard, we will win.”
Thank you for all of this. I'm thrilled about your book. My wish is that the myth that a man can turn into a woman, and a woman can turn into a man, be shattered. If only everyone understood that what is happening is that people are using hormone treatments and plastic surgery to change the appearance and the chemical makeup of their bodies, NOT becoming a person of the opposite sex. I also wish more people understood the impact of medicalizing themselves. No one tells a woman going in for a facelift that she is setting herself up for migraines. No one tells a girl of the consequences of getting a hysterectomy because "the doctor told me that if I did enough testosterone to stop my periods I would destroy my liver." We live in an age of the myth that science and technology can solve all problems, and change everything that bothers us, including ourselves. I wish that myth would be shattered, too.
I follow the issue on the trans thread at a popular progressive news site and I use this as a sort of barometer of where we are. Immediately after the election a new thread opened up about Dems and the Trans issue. A robust conversation, previously missing, ensued followed by the devolution into a shouting match and finally the thread went dead as people tired of the battle. My takeaway: progressives are still not ready to face this issue down. The moral narrative is still largely: GOP Evil / DEMS Good. It is difficult to tell people who think they are doing the right thing on the right side of history that they are embracing a lie. It is difficult for elites to believe that the working class could be correct about anything.
White pill: the culture has shifted, DOGE will gut HHS and DoE, doctors will be held accountable for castrating 14,000+ children.
Black pill: Dems are still pushing the agenda and are celebrating the first trans congressperson: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sarah-mcbride-seth-moulton-trans-democrat-congress
I hope your book does not only treat the gender issue as a medical one. Sure, evidence of what is happening in medical treatment is important. But the thrust of the movement is ontological. That is, it is the idea that there is an "innate gender identity" that reveals a state of being.
I am so grateful for this apparent 'awakening' - hoping 2025 sees the hockey stick graph turn upside down. Although trans is 'in the ether' now - even the most conservative kids accept it as real. There is more work to reclaim the future.
And, sadly, there is much more work to reclaim our children - so embedded in the trans ideology, they won't even look at new information. My fear is that they will suffer as their 'services' become unavailable or uncovered by insurance.
I would like to see: (1) help for detransitioners; (2) cessation of the teaching of the concept of "gender identity" other than as part of a class on cult-like beliefs, and cessation of any school program of social transition, particularly behind parents' backs, but really at all; (3) tons of awareness campaigns, simply alerting the public to the dangers of the chemical and surgical interventions involved in medical transition, especially as they pertain to young people starting on the synthetic hormones at an early age (or puberty blockers), but also as they pertain to adults; (4) a public awareness campaign that social and medical transition is not "life-saving" (and end to the dangerous suicide narrative!) and is not credibly a medical treatment at all, but more of a social and medical experiment that has caused tremendous harm, with the explanation that almost everyone who has a problem with their sex can, with patience and time, and, for some, exploratory therapy, grow to accept their biological reality, and anyone who cannot do so would not know that until they have tried living in their sexed body without disguise well into adulthood, and tried therapy and tried mind-body connective exercises, and those very few adults who have literally tried everything can try the cosmetic procedures to look like the opposite sex, but it still may not help them; (5) an end to the promotion of the ideas of "trans kids" and the opposite of #4 above by schools, universities, government and courts, journalism, entertainment, social media, and, most significantly, hospitals, doctors and psychologists/social workers; and (6) an end to censorship.
I want much more than this, but I don't want to be greedy!
I read a great book "The Occasional Human Sacrifice" about whistleblowers and 20th century scandals, and how there usually isn't an apology and the people who defended the institutions, not the truth, are the ones that succeed.
I want those who knowingly perpetuated this and used other peoples kids to not fail up and be held to account.
For the rest, I want to remind the world that reap science is never settled, and that to constantly test assumptions is a good thing.
I would also like support for detransitioners, and I would like to see state attorney generals start to sue those who perpetuated these lies to pay for helping detransitioners move forward.
Link to Angela's story from Behind the Looking Glass, the documentary on trans widows now 152k views at Lime Soda Films YT channel. Vaishnavi Sundar, the filmmaker, is releasing all 18 of our stories one by one. Angela had to call the police when lingerie wearing husband assaulted her, battery strangulation. He's the father of their 3 children, now living "his true life" on the West Coast with his also male crossdresser boyfriend. They claim to be lesbians. The premier is Sat. Dec 21 and most of us will be in the live chat with Vaishnavi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Zqmmx6IRE
Ute, my wife and I watched that documentary shorty after it came out (I recall your appearance in it). It was a difficult watch, but enlightening and informative too. I'm glad I watched it and that these women had a platform to share their stories.
Thanks. I collect the only data in the world on our experiences, through a survey called 20 Questions to Ask a Trans Widow. This information and other reflections are at my channel on YouTube, Trans Widow Ute Heggen.
Lisa, please keep an eye on what the Republicans are going to do with this. Supposedly, they're opening investigations into kiddie sex changes in January. I hope they go after the entire industry after that (the grownups need saving too!)
What alarms me is the likely adverse spillover to gay and lesbian equality. The trans lobby invariably refers to "LGBT..." or some variation such as "LGBTQIA+" (the official White House usage, I think). The practice serves to perpetuate the notion that trans has something to do with gay and lesbian, an idea I suspect is common among most people since they don't have any reason to think carefully about the difference. That is, I'd bet a lot of people still think trans is some sort of, you know, maybe kind of gay.
I don't expect GOP Congress critters to be any better informed than the public or careful to distinguish trans from homosexual when they're beating up on pro-trans witnesses, trying for a sound bite on Fox News. Sadly, neither the witnesses nor the Democrats are likely to correct them. I hope some of the groups trying to preserve the enormous difference between trans and gay and lesbian get an opportunity to make the difference clear.
You may be right, the GOP and Trump will fuck up everything they touch, even when they're doing the right thing. The Team Pride experience should be a lesson to all on the perils of too much 'inclusion'. Heterosexual men never had any place in Pride. They should have stuck to LGB. I know there's been a drive to expel the TQ by some gay activists, like the UK's Mr. Menno. Look at what a bloody mess the Pride flag is now due to out-of-control 'inclusion'. Every narcissist on the planet can get their own stripe. I know some of the GOP wants to roll back gay marriage. And yeah, they can point to this crap as 'evidence' that the gay movement is 'out of control' - which it is. They'd best fix this before the pedos breach the walls. And they're there, waiting, as "MAPs".
I plan to start a Substack to park the WPATH files, which I translated into Spanish and have permission to publish. I found NOOOOO takers anywhere. I thought, "This is how Lisa Selin must feel". Anyway, I would love to translate Rabbit Hole 101!