Well, this woman’s defense of trans “rights” seems to be coming from the same place as so many other liberals: she knows some “trans kids.” And of course one must defend the children.
The invention of the “trans child” might have been the key to building support on the left. When it was just cross dressing men, maybe it didn’t feel as urgent a civil rights issue.
We just finished “Stranger Things” and the part that struck me was when they realize that Vecna needs the children because they are the easiest to manipulate and he goes for the lonely children because they are the most vulnerable - well, that sums it all up right there.
Another irony is that in the past right wingers who opposed gay teachers, for example, were accused of blindly trying to protect children in a moral panic. Today left wingers are claiming to protect the children and this time they accuse any one of questioning gender medicine as engaging in a moral panic.
It's a bit of target confusion, isn't it? There are so many people out to do harm to these kids, and this woman has confused the attackers with the rescuers. The "trans child" does need badly to be protected - but it's from the trans medical industry, the creepy teachers and peers egging her on, the perennially indicted nonces who run youth groups, and the prying, leering strangers on the internet. The kid doesn't need rescuing from the few people trying to tell her the truth.
Gender-"affirming" "care" is throwing these kids under the bus. Giving kids interventions that cause lifelong bodily harm (and that not even the proponents, who get status and money from it, can produce data that shows it reliably helps) is throwing them under the bus.
We need a short way to say this. One essay recently pointed out (apologies to whoever pointed it out, I cannot remember who it is!) that it is such a big lie that people can't believe it is a lie. Acknowledging that is important, too.
Right now people are overwhelmed with the chaos in the world, and know this is complicated, and don't know much, but some are curious. Doors are cracking open.
“…And even if these MAGA people don’t understand what transgenderism is?” Lady, it’s clear from this interview that you yourself don’t even understand what transgenderism is and what the deal is with those “trans kids in Oklahoma.” Another talking head from the “be kind” crowd wants you to sit down and shut up and just take her word for it. DON’T QUESTION IT. Nothing to see here, no manipulation going on whatsoever!
That line stood out to me as well. It's from the same playbook as "Republicans are obsessed with trans issues", i.e. they question what must not be questioned. To her, "understanding transgenderism" is accepting the claim that there is this special category of human beings whose inner soul makes them feel at odds with their body, a condition that must not be questioned and must be validated. Questioning the underlying causes of such feelings equals "failing to understand". That's how they can continue to feel superior to and dismiss anyone who exhibits common sense and engages in critical thinking with regard to progressive articles of faith.
The New Yorker is a lost cause. I’m surprised Remnick gave her as much pushback as he did on the Rahm Emmanuel interview. I saw the recent 100th anniversary documentary for the magazine on Netflix, and when they get to the “vaunted fact-checking department,” it’s clear they’ve got at least one bearded lady 🧔♀️ working there (a woman doping with T). If that’s who’s checking “facts,” then as they say in New Jersey: fuggedaboutit.
I'm a fact-checker for a different magazine, and I always wonder if I should accept an assignment, were it ever given to me, that deals with a transgenderism-related topic... It could be very interesting, but it could also cost me my job.
I completely understand the difficult position so many people are in. As one guy at NPR said re DEI training, “I can’t say anything. I still have two kids to put through school.”
But wow, what a damning statement — not damning of him but of NPR. These Maoist-style re-education trainings are as nuts as the trans cult.
Consider building a wall of colleagues around you now/ASAP who you know will back you up. Talk to them about what you’ve learned from the Cass Review & the HHS report on pediatric so-called gender “medicine.” Stay calm & focus on the facts. Ask them to think about their own children’s lives, think about their development, and note that kids can engage in imaginative play without telling them lies about the human body. Ask them why if gender has nothing to do with the body, why are we altering/cutting into children’s bodies? Honestly ask them just to sit and think for 10 minutes & remember how childhood was before 2010 should do the trick. (If the suicide risk is real, where are the piles of dead adolescents before 2010? How did your parents handle your distress when you were a teen? Etc.)
Problem is the US equivalent to the Cass review, the one recently released by HHS, will be dismissed as a right-wing, er, trump job. Not sure that partisans are open to considering facts. Would be good but expecting fact checkers to commit career hara-kiri is a bit much to ask.
If you do this, it might embolden you to take on a gender topic at work. This will only work if your colleagues are decent people & know that you’re a caring person, not a bigot. If you’re in a vipers’ den or know that someone is gunning for you, it may not be worth the risk.
I work remotely, so I don’t get an opportunity for casual interactions like that. But I doubt I’ll ever face this situation anyway, because gender isn’t really my beat. I was just imagining what I would do if it happened.
i've been saying some things in new jersey lately. my podcast/show is up to five, count 'em, five whole subscribers. you'd think i'd have more, considering i've interviewed david sedaris, peter thiel, and elon musk, but i guess salt of the earth podcast listeners really aren't dazzled by big names.
apropos of this article, i'm trying to figure out how to take a hammer to the ferris wheel. or perhaps an axe.
I think this is the key statement for understanding this interview and pretty much every normal Democrat supporting this:
"That’s okay, you don’t have to understand it. But we’re not going to bully them. "
It doesn't matter that this doesn't make sense to them. We can give them data and facts forever and it can make things even more confusing for them about what is really happening, but that doesn't matter because they are literally telling you, "I don't have to understand it. I'm on their side and this is who they say they are and what they say they want. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to let other people bully them." We can talk all day about how it's really the doctors and therapists bullying vulnerable people with the "transition or suffer forever" or "living daughter or dead son" narrative. *They don't see it that way.* They just see their friends' kids who they know and love and their parents that they know and trust. They believe they know who they are. They believe no one would choose this. They genuinely want to protect and support the people they know and protect them from the bullies. And we have to be honest, Trump IS a bully and putting his name and stamp of approval on the other side of this is a problem.
Quote: "And we have to be honest, Trump IS a bully and putting his name and stamp of approval on the other side of this is a problem."
Exactly.
I've been saying this since those EOs (trans and DEI) were handed down. They were correct, but the fact that they came from this administration is just making our fight more difficult.
Completely agree. I may be really wrong about this, but even before the election I thought it might be easier to have people on the left back off of this under Biden or Harris. I fear Trump and his EOs may have energized people on this issue and caused them to dig in even more - the allies, the parents transitioning young gender non-conforming kids, and the teenagers and young adults caught up in the social contagion
i think a lot of people have forgotten that there exist people who aren't either kind of crazy. there sure is a paucity of prominent figures to associate with -- jk rowling and who else, really?
someone who's currently 20 was 10 in 2016. that person's whole post-child experience of american life has been the "trump vs. transgender" years. what is it like to grow up in what genuinely must seem like a "clown world" in every direction?
it is literally up to us, literally us, we few, to be the change. we have to take up the burden of being "sane people in the room." we have to look to ourselves as the only remaining pillar of sense.
that's why i started my podcast/show. while there are some alternative places like this and like blockedandreported, i think they are too nice about what is, in fact, sick shit, and too nice about what is just plain old batshit. if no one else is saying what needs to be said, i guess i will try to stop the buck. put me on rogan and i'll knock him dead. that's a promise.
Trump's actions on the trans issue are a real gift to the radical trans ideologues. Now they can say , "You must be MAGA if you don't agree that trans women are, too, women, you bigot. You probably are in favor of Renee Good's murder, too."
Democratic higher ups are studiously ignoring the findings of the post election polling by the Democratic leaning consulting firm Blueprint that Trump's closing ad campaign "Harris is for they/them ..." apparently was what put him over the top. If Democrats don't pull their heads out of their behinds soon, they're going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.
I have written to all my reps -- state, local, federal -- repeatedly about the trans bullshit and told them I won't vote for them again because of it. I won't vote for the MAGA maniacs either. I will withhold my vote entirely, for the first time in 50 years of voting. They've all either ignored me or sent back boilerplate replies with condescending lectures on the history of civil rights.
Except for the fact that Trump is blowing up the country, which might be the only reason the Dems can pull out a win in the midterms, they're going to keep losing and losing and refusing to wake up.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
I'm afraid I got stuck at the sentence "For him to placate to that narrative" Lisa shares with us from the transcript of the idiot interviewed on that radio show, and I just have to indulge myself by making this comment before continuing to read (& essentially echoing Lisa's rant):
The person who is in the habit of using words whose meanings she doesn't actually know, not only reveals the fact that her supply of confidence is dangerously out of balance with her supply of competence, she also demonstrates (by her obvious unfamiliarity with a vocabulary word one would expect an adult who graduated highschool to have mastered before using it regularly) is how impervious her under-educated mind likely is to complex or nuanced information in general. Likely this woman will never be aware of how much of a fool she's made of herself before a rather large audience, unless it is actually true that the majority of the audience is as ignorant and foolish as she is. [OK, now I've gone back and finished Lisa's essay.]
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So perhaps we should stop expecting intelligence and sanity to carry the day in the public sphere when there are so many examples of this "wine mom" of a public thinker supplying our discourse? Perhaps we all need to adopt the strategy of the main protagonist in that movie, Idiocracy. I just now asked ChatGPT to describe that strategy, and here is its analysis: "Joe Bauers survives not by outsmarting the system in a grand, heroic way, but by using what you might call adaptive minimalism combined with reality-anchored common sense." The movie Idiocracy isn’t really about stupidity—it’s about the collapse of feedback loops. Joe survives because he: 1.) Notices when things don’t work, 2.) Adjusts behavior accordingly, and 3. Privileges reality over narrative "
I won't dump the entire outline of this analysis into this comment; but I encourage folks to maybe pull it up for themselves and give it some thought.
Ha, thanks for harping on her incorrect use of "placate"! I noticed it as well. As a non-native speaker, I never cease to be amazed at the degree to which some Americans, even educated ones, are challenged by their own language.
"The person who is in the habit of using words whose meanings she doesn't actually know, not only reveals the fact that her supply of confidence is dangerously out of balance with her supply of competence, she also demonstrates (by her obvious unfamiliarity with a vocabulary word one would expect an adult who graduated highschool to have mastered before using it regularly) is how impervious her under-educated mind likely is."
The New Yorker is 100% aboard the trans train. So you already know going into any interview that David Remnick conducts that he and his guests are going to ride that train.
I happened to have the radio on when his show began and listened to the first 10 minutes. I turned it off because it was the usual supposedly liberal but actually ILliberal pablum that passes for discourse on public radio these days. I didn't listen long enough to hear the "trans" bullshit but am completely unsurprised.
I didn't even have to look this up, I already knew who she was - Jennifer Welch. She had a failed reality show on Bravo a few years ago and I think she is an interior designer? She has a podcast called "I've had It" and it WAS funny when she ripped on the absurdities of human behavior. But she took a turn into political commentary and now she's popping up on CNN and other media and she's the one saying the most absurd and vile things. It pains me that she is getting such exposure just because she's sassy and opinionated. I'm not aware of any other credentials that validate her political influence.
"..in their right mind" does more work than she realizes. She's also accidentally right about what "this journey" isn't. What it is (alas): a male fetish laundered by lonely kids with help from progressive women asking nothing in return but an atta-girl from high-status men.
I had the exact same thought re: "in their right mind". And what a succinct way to phrase what it in fact really is. The innocent kids are used to let the creepy adults have their way, sometimes in more ways than one. )-:
As an editor, there is nothing I like better than clarifying someone else's convoluted, obscure, or patently nonsensical language--
"When I heard him buy into the narrative I don't like--that the left wing is trans-obsessed or bathroom-obsessed because the left are the ones passing laws to benefit the transgenderism lobby by violating women's single-sex spaces, when the right isn't, and the right wing had the nerve to point this out in a political competition. . .
"Well, I don't like that narrative because, although true, it clarifies that the transgenderism lobby is machinating my own LEFT side of the aisle and being opposed by my enemies' RIGHT side of the aisle.
"And for him to admit which side of the aisle supports the transgenderism lobby against women's rights?
"Nobody should EVER admit that.
"And when he said it, I didn’t know he was gonna say it! I felt the adrenaline, like, come up in me.
"BECAUSE I REACT TO THIS ISSUE EMOTIONALLY, WITH MY BRAIN TURNED OFF.
"And I have friends in Oklahoma in the Trans cult. So that makes me angry on behalf of my friends. (Although my friends' personal lives and location have nothing to do with my job.)
"And to go back to what my mother said: Nobody in their right mind chooses to wake up and think, 'You know what? Today, I am gonna F with the conservatives.'
"Although that makes it sound as though liberals are all terrified of the conservatives and have never stood up to them. I'm not sure why my mother thinks that.
" 'I’m gonna switch genders.' Although, in fact, studies show that this is EXACTLY what teenagers are waking up and saying.
" 'And I’m gonna go try to be a DI tennis player,' which, again, is EXACTLY what males who can't win in male sports are doing.
" 'That’s not what this journey is.' EXCEPT that it is.
"So I guess my mother was correct about nobody in their right mind.
"And, for the Democrats, we have to be the party of equality. Not WOMEN'S equality. Just MEN'S equality, which means men's DOMINATION of women. That's what we Democrats have to be about.
"And even if Democrats don't understand why men should suddenly matter to us, but girls and women shouldn't--well, because I'm being duplicitous, that's why.
"And even if these MAGA people don’t understand what transgenderism is--although, considering the propaganda and marketing of the transgenderism lobby over the past 10 years, you'd have to live in a cave not to know.
"That’s okay, you don’t have to understand it. *I* don't understand it, although I'll pretend I do.
It's left-wing extreme misogyny.
That's all you have to know.
"But we’re not going to bully the transgenderist men, including the convicted pedophiles, rapists, and killers of girls and women. No, we're not.
"We're going to bully the innocent girls and women, gay kids, and vulnerable BIWOC trapped in women's shelters, rehabs, and prisons.
"We’re not gonna pick the transgenderist men up and throw them under the bus, not even the convicted pedophiles, rapists, and killers of girls and women. No, indeed.
"We're going to do that to the innocent girls and women, gay kids, and vulnerable BIWOC.
"And the rights that are available for me need to be readily available for those transgenderist men, *especially* the convicted pedophiles, rapists, and killers of girls and women.
"But NOT for innocent girls and women, not even lesbians or vulnerable BIWOC.
"I've decided that I, along with all girls and women, don't need any rights anymore. Only men do.
"And I would even go a step further. Maybe the transgenderist men destroying our rights need a little bit more love and a little bit less throwing under the bus.
"NOT the innocent girls and women, gay kids, or vulnerable BIWOC.
"HELL, NO.
"I'm going to refuse to love THEM and keep throwing THEM under the bus with a vengeance.
"So when I hear Democrats stand up to me over this--when they ask me why I, a Democrat, support the rights of dangerous criminal men over the rights of innocent girls and women, gay kids, and vulnerable BIWOC--it really pisses me off.
"IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF WHEN ANYONE STANDS UP TO ME.
"ESPECIALLY WHEN MY BRAIN IS TURNED OFF SO I CAN BE DUPLICITOUS WITHOUT ADMITTING IT.
"And that’s why the Democrats lose, because average voters sniff duplicity like mine out. And then they want nothing to do with any of us anymore."
Eating two bowls of ice cream after listening to that seems the only intelligent response. Today, I read a piece by Jennifer Rubin, honoring MLK, Jr., in which she slipped a what-should-be-but-unfortunately-is-not-bizarre parenthetical: “And here we are again. An overtly White nationalist Trump regime has ginned up fear of “the Great Replacement,” “wokeism,” immigrant violence, and anti-white discrimination (not to mention fear of changing your child’s gender and of women taking men’s jobs).”
You know, methinks “fear of changing your child’s gender” was not high on MLK, Jr.’s list of wrongs to be righted, and he ought not be invoked in such a cause. Next thing you know, Rubin and others will be invoking FDR in an updated rally cry that “the only thing we have to fear about changing your child’s gender is fear of your child’s gender itself.”
I just had my quota dark chocolate for today, and I am now going to follow your fine example and go back for a second helping.
Long live Lisa Selin Davis, the Empress of Chocolate Ice Cream!
That's what you get, Lisa, for listening to NPR and Remnick. Don't you realize by now all you'll get is another performance of Social Justice Warrior?
It's nonsense like this show that has convinced me that out of simple intellectual honesty and humility, straight people should STFU about transsexual issues. They cannot, in principle, have the least idea of what they are talking about, not any more than they could offer anything interesting in their thoughts about what it must be like to be a bat, spending your days hanging upside down in the dark and the night catching mosquitoes by echolocation to feed yourself.
I have nothing left but contempt for them and their arrogant, abysmal ignorance, leading them to advocate the program of "Let's trans away the gay! At last we can fix these kids so they don't have to suffer growing up that way." They know psychiatry failed. Torture ("aversion therapy") failed. Giving gay men testosterone failed. (It just made them more active.) Chemical castration did have something to be said for it; in the case of the genius Alan Turing, for example, it at least got rid of him by suicide. But now, thanks to some new chemicals and surgical techniques, in conjunction with the right propaganda, we can make their unacceptable same sex attraction into something more socially conforming by turning them into a poor and stunted imitation of the "opposite sex". Age old problem solved! And with the added benefit of enhancing our claim of being advanced, more spiritually elevated thinkers for our advocacy .
John, since I worked there for 12 years (and for local public radio even longer before that), I know how they operate. NPR is totally captured by trans ideology. There ARE people there who aren't, but they've learned to keep their heads down. They have to keep their jobs.
I still listen only to keep tabs on their bullshit. It's intel.
As for "straight people STFU about transsexual issues", I must disagree. I'm straight and have been trying to wake people up about this pernicious ideology for 20 years. Most of my colleagues at DIAG are straight. We won't stop fighting.
You do have some allies among straight people though... I've been trying to explain the trans issue to my gay brothers-in-law, who would probably still be nodding along with this New Yorker story hour, and would never have heard a contrary perspective in their East Village bubble if it wasn't for their straight TERF sister-in-law.
I have to apologize to KareP and Lisa Simeone. I should have been more exact. The straight people I'm so angry with are those who ignore the fact that the huge majority of supposedly trans kids will simply mature into gay teens and adults.
I'm sure a large fraction of these kids are finding their emerging same-sex attraction unacceptable and light on sex change treatments as a way out. The most tragic cases must be the kids who are being sexually abused and see a sex change as an escape from the abuse.
What worries me - and I have to admit, it's based solely on my own experience - is the possibility of kids being horribly confused by what they find themselves feeling about others of their sex, feelings they've never been told were a possible development but intuitively know are not acceptable; and in trying to find some explanation for their predicament , theorize that in some weird, inexplicable way, they're mentally or in some mystical way 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 the other sex. What annoys me about so many of the straight allies of the trans cult is their ignoring the ways a kid's being "trans curious" may be a sign of some serious problem or at least a troubling misunderstanding. Then, to make it worse, it's their arrogant refusal even to think of such problems or to consider any possibility other than the notion that trans people are yet another victim of the cis heteronormative white male European patriarchy.
Well, this woman’s defense of trans “rights” seems to be coming from the same place as so many other liberals: she knows some “trans kids.” And of course one must defend the children.
The invention of the “trans child” might have been the key to building support on the left. When it was just cross dressing men, maybe it didn’t feel as urgent a civil rights issue.
We just finished “Stranger Things” and the part that struck me was when they realize that Vecna needs the children because they are the easiest to manipulate and he goes for the lonely children because they are the most vulnerable - well, that sums it all up right there.
Another irony is that in the past right wingers who opposed gay teachers, for example, were accused of blindly trying to protect children in a moral panic. Today left wingers are claiming to protect the children and this time they accuse any one of questioning gender medicine as engaging in a moral panic.
The story of Pinocchio.
It's a bit of target confusion, isn't it? There are so many people out to do harm to these kids, and this woman has confused the attackers with the rescuers. The "trans child" does need badly to be protected - but it's from the trans medical industry, the creepy teachers and peers egging her on, the perennially indicted nonces who run youth groups, and the prying, leering strangers on the internet. The kid doesn't need rescuing from the few people trying to tell her the truth.
Gender-"affirming" "care" is throwing these kids under the bus. Giving kids interventions that cause lifelong bodily harm (and that not even the proponents, who get status and money from it, can produce data that shows it reliably helps) is throwing them under the bus.
We need a short way to say this. One essay recently pointed out (apologies to whoever pointed it out, I cannot remember who it is!) that it is such a big lie that people can't believe it is a lie. Acknowledging that is important, too.
Right now people are overwhelmed with the chaos in the world, and know this is complicated, and don't know much, but some are curious. Doors are cracking open.
“No one is born in the wrong body”
“…And even if these MAGA people don’t understand what transgenderism is?” Lady, it’s clear from this interview that you yourself don’t even understand what transgenderism is and what the deal is with those “trans kids in Oklahoma.” Another talking head from the “be kind” crowd wants you to sit down and shut up and just take her word for it. DON’T QUESTION IT. Nothing to see here, no manipulation going on whatsoever!
That line stood out to me as well. It's from the same playbook as "Republicans are obsessed with trans issues", i.e. they question what must not be questioned. To her, "understanding transgenderism" is accepting the claim that there is this special category of human beings whose inner soul makes them feel at odds with their body, a condition that must not be questioned and must be validated. Questioning the underlying causes of such feelings equals "failing to understand". That's how they can continue to feel superior to and dismiss anyone who exhibits common sense and engages in critical thinking with regard to progressive articles of faith.
The New Yorker is a lost cause. I’m surprised Remnick gave her as much pushback as he did on the Rahm Emmanuel interview. I saw the recent 100th anniversary documentary for the magazine on Netflix, and when they get to the “vaunted fact-checking department,” it’s clear they’ve got at least one bearded lady 🧔♀️ working there (a woman doping with T). If that’s who’s checking “facts,” then as they say in New Jersey: fuggedaboutit.
I watched that documentary, too, and had the same reaction as you.
I'm a fact-checker for a different magazine, and I always wonder if I should accept an assignment, were it ever given to me, that deals with a transgenderism-related topic... It could be very interesting, but it could also cost me my job.
I will need to hire a fact checker! (I hope.) please DM me!
Ah, interesting.
I completely understand the difficult position so many people are in. As one guy at NPR said re DEI training, “I can’t say anything. I still have two kids to put through school.”
But wow, what a damning statement — not damning of him but of NPR. These Maoist-style re-education trainings are as nuts as the trans cult.
Consider building a wall of colleagues around you now/ASAP who you know will back you up. Talk to them about what you’ve learned from the Cass Review & the HHS report on pediatric so-called gender “medicine.” Stay calm & focus on the facts. Ask them to think about their own children’s lives, think about their development, and note that kids can engage in imaginative play without telling them lies about the human body. Ask them why if gender has nothing to do with the body, why are we altering/cutting into children’s bodies? Honestly ask them just to sit and think for 10 minutes & remember how childhood was before 2010 should do the trick. (If the suicide risk is real, where are the piles of dead adolescents before 2010? How did your parents handle your distress when you were a teen? Etc.)
Problem is the US equivalent to the Cass review, the one recently released by HHS, will be dismissed as a right-wing, er, trump job. Not sure that partisans are open to considering facts. Would be good but expecting fact checkers to commit career hara-kiri is a bit much to ask.
If you do this, it might embolden you to take on a gender topic at work. This will only work if your colleagues are decent people & know that you’re a caring person, not a bigot. If you’re in a vipers’ den or know that someone is gunning for you, it may not be worth the risk.
I work remotely, so I don’t get an opportunity for casual interactions like that. But I doubt I’ll ever face this situation anyway, because gender isn’t really my beat. I was just imagining what I would do if it happened.
i've been saying some things in new jersey lately. my podcast/show is up to five, count 'em, five whole subscribers. you'd think i'd have more, considering i've interviewed david sedaris, peter thiel, and elon musk, but i guess salt of the earth podcast listeners really aren't dazzled by big names.
apropos of this article, i'm trying to figure out how to take a hammer to the ferris wheel. or perhaps an axe.
I think this is the key statement for understanding this interview and pretty much every normal Democrat supporting this:
"That’s okay, you don’t have to understand it. But we’re not going to bully them. "
It doesn't matter that this doesn't make sense to them. We can give them data and facts forever and it can make things even more confusing for them about what is really happening, but that doesn't matter because they are literally telling you, "I don't have to understand it. I'm on their side and this is who they say they are and what they say they want. I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to let other people bully them." We can talk all day about how it's really the doctors and therapists bullying vulnerable people with the "transition or suffer forever" or "living daughter or dead son" narrative. *They don't see it that way.* They just see their friends' kids who they know and love and their parents that they know and trust. They believe they know who they are. They believe no one would choose this. They genuinely want to protect and support the people they know and protect them from the bullies. And we have to be honest, Trump IS a bully and putting his name and stamp of approval on the other side of this is a problem.
Quote: "And we have to be honest, Trump IS a bully and putting his name and stamp of approval on the other side of this is a problem."
Exactly.
I've been saying this since those EOs (trans and DEI) were handed down. They were correct, but the fact that they came from this administration is just making our fight more difficult.
Completely agree. I may be really wrong about this, but even before the election I thought it might be easier to have people on the left back off of this under Biden or Harris. I fear Trump and his EOs may have energized people on this issue and caused them to dig in even more - the allies, the parents transitioning young gender non-conforming kids, and the teenagers and young adults caught up in the social contagion
i think a lot of people have forgotten that there exist people who aren't either kind of crazy. there sure is a paucity of prominent figures to associate with -- jk rowling and who else, really?
someone who's currently 20 was 10 in 2016. that person's whole post-child experience of american life has been the "trump vs. transgender" years. what is it like to grow up in what genuinely must seem like a "clown world" in every direction?
it is literally up to us, literally us, we few, to be the change. we have to take up the burden of being "sane people in the room." we have to look to ourselves as the only remaining pillar of sense.
that's why i started my podcast/show. while there are some alternative places like this and like blockedandreported, i think they are too nice about what is, in fact, sick shit, and too nice about what is just plain old batshit. if no one else is saying what needs to be said, i guess i will try to stop the buck. put me on rogan and i'll knock him dead. that's a promise.
Trump's actions on the trans issue are a real gift to the radical trans ideologues. Now they can say , "You must be MAGA if you don't agree that trans women are, too, women, you bigot. You probably are in favor of Renee Good's murder, too."
Democratic higher ups are studiously ignoring the findings of the post election polling by the Democratic leaning consulting firm Blueprint that Trump's closing ad campaign "Harris is for they/them ..." apparently was what put him over the top. If Democrats don't pull their heads out of their behinds soon, they're going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.
John, exactly.
I have written to all my reps -- state, local, federal -- repeatedly about the trans bullshit and told them I won't vote for them again because of it. I won't vote for the MAGA maniacs either. I will withhold my vote entirely, for the first time in 50 years of voting. They've all either ignored me or sent back boilerplate replies with condescending lectures on the history of civil rights.
Except for the fact that Trump is blowing up the country, which might be the only reason the Dems can pull out a win in the midterms, they're going to keep losing and losing and refusing to wake up.
Yeah, blowing up the country is a big negative against him.
I don't think any of us leftist feminists fighting for women's rights are confused about that.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves and/or you TERFs learn to STFU”
🤬
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
I'm afraid I got stuck at the sentence "For him to placate to that narrative" Lisa shares with us from the transcript of the idiot interviewed on that radio show, and I just have to indulge myself by making this comment before continuing to read (& essentially echoing Lisa's rant):
The person who is in the habit of using words whose meanings she doesn't actually know, not only reveals the fact that her supply of confidence is dangerously out of balance with her supply of competence, she also demonstrates (by her obvious unfamiliarity with a vocabulary word one would expect an adult who graduated highschool to have mastered before using it regularly) is how impervious her under-educated mind likely is to complex or nuanced information in general. Likely this woman will never be aware of how much of a fool she's made of herself before a rather large audience, unless it is actually true that the majority of the audience is as ignorant and foolish as she is. [OK, now I've gone back and finished Lisa's essay.]
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So perhaps we should stop expecting intelligence and sanity to carry the day in the public sphere when there are so many examples of this "wine mom" of a public thinker supplying our discourse? Perhaps we all need to adopt the strategy of the main protagonist in that movie, Idiocracy. I just now asked ChatGPT to describe that strategy, and here is its analysis: "Joe Bauers survives not by outsmarting the system in a grand, heroic way, but by using what you might call adaptive minimalism combined with reality-anchored common sense." The movie Idiocracy isn’t really about stupidity—it’s about the collapse of feedback loops. Joe survives because he: 1.) Notices when things don’t work, 2.) Adjusts behavior accordingly, and 3. Privileges reality over narrative "
I won't dump the entire outline of this analysis into this comment; but I encourage folks to maybe pull it up for themselves and give it some thought.
Ha, thanks for harping on her incorrect use of "placate"! I noticed it as well. As a non-native speaker, I never cease to be amazed at the degree to which some Americans, even educated ones, are challenged by their own language.
By the way, does anyone else see this comment truncated? Very recently, really long Substack comments have started to be cut off at the bottom.
Yes, I see the same thing happening on Substack with truncated comments these days.
"The person who is in the habit of using words whose meanings she doesn't actually know, not only reveals the fact that her supply of confidence is dangerously out of balance with her supply of competence, she also demonstrates (by her obvious unfamiliarity with a vocabulary word one would expect an adult who graduated highschool to have mastered before using it regularly) is how impervious her under-educated mind likely is."
Heather, this professional editor salutes you.
Where is that giant meteor???
Thank you, Lisa, for always perfectly articulating my thoughts. I mistakenly thought we were on a roller coaster but yes, it’s a Ferris wheel! 😩
The New Yorker is 100% aboard the trans train. So you already know going into any interview that David Remnick conducts that he and his guests are going to ride that train.
I happened to have the radio on when his show began and listened to the first 10 minutes. I turned it off because it was the usual supposedly liberal but actually ILliberal pablum that passes for discourse on public radio these days. I didn't listen long enough to hear the "trans" bullshit but am completely unsurprised.
Remnick was listed among the most culpable EICs by Arty Morty:
https://artymorty.substack.com/p/the-power-of-the-powerful-blame-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1017112&post_id=180146814&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=18v5fm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Yes, thank you. Arty Morty is always great, but that particular essay hit it out of the park!
I didn't even have to look this up, I already knew who she was - Jennifer Welch. She had a failed reality show on Bravo a few years ago and I think she is an interior designer? She has a podcast called "I've had It" and it WAS funny when she ripped on the absurdities of human behavior. But she took a turn into political commentary and now she's popping up on CNN and other media and she's the one saying the most absurd and vile things. It pains me that she is getting such exposure just because she's sassy and opinionated. I'm not aware of any other credentials that validate her political influence.
David Remnick seemed particularly impressed that she uses the word "fuck" freely. Hell, so do I, and I'm no genius.
If all you have to do to be a genius is use the word "fuck" freely, when I was in high school I was the smartest person on Earth.
"..in their right mind" does more work than she realizes. She's also accidentally right about what "this journey" isn't. What it is (alas): a male fetish laundered by lonely kids with help from progressive women asking nothing in return but an atta-girl from high-status men.
I had the exact same thought re: "in their right mind". And what a succinct way to phrase what it in fact really is. The innocent kids are used to let the creepy adults have their way, sometimes in more ways than one. )-:
As an editor, there is nothing I like better than clarifying someone else's convoluted, obscure, or patently nonsensical language--
"When I heard him buy into the narrative I don't like--that the left wing is trans-obsessed or bathroom-obsessed because the left are the ones passing laws to benefit the transgenderism lobby by violating women's single-sex spaces, when the right isn't, and the right wing had the nerve to point this out in a political competition. . .
"Well, I don't like that narrative because, although true, it clarifies that the transgenderism lobby is machinating my own LEFT side of the aisle and being opposed by my enemies' RIGHT side of the aisle.
"And for him to admit which side of the aisle supports the transgenderism lobby against women's rights?
"Nobody should EVER admit that.
"And when he said it, I didn’t know he was gonna say it! I felt the adrenaline, like, come up in me.
"BECAUSE I REACT TO THIS ISSUE EMOTIONALLY, WITH MY BRAIN TURNED OFF.
"And I have friends in Oklahoma in the Trans cult. So that makes me angry on behalf of my friends. (Although my friends' personal lives and location have nothing to do with my job.)
"And to go back to what my mother said: Nobody in their right mind chooses to wake up and think, 'You know what? Today, I am gonna F with the conservatives.'
"Although that makes it sound as though liberals are all terrified of the conservatives and have never stood up to them. I'm not sure why my mother thinks that.
" 'I’m gonna switch genders.' Although, in fact, studies show that this is EXACTLY what teenagers are waking up and saying.
" 'And I’m gonna go try to be a DI tennis player,' which, again, is EXACTLY what males who can't win in male sports are doing.
" 'That’s not what this journey is.' EXCEPT that it is.
"So I guess my mother was correct about nobody in their right mind.
"And, for the Democrats, we have to be the party of equality. Not WOMEN'S equality. Just MEN'S equality, which means men's DOMINATION of women. That's what we Democrats have to be about.
"And even if Democrats don't understand why men should suddenly matter to us, but girls and women shouldn't--well, because I'm being duplicitous, that's why.
"And even if these MAGA people don’t understand what transgenderism is--although, considering the propaganda and marketing of the transgenderism lobby over the past 10 years, you'd have to live in a cave not to know.
"That’s okay, you don’t have to understand it. *I* don't understand it, although I'll pretend I do.
It's left-wing extreme misogyny.
That's all you have to know.
"But we’re not going to bully the transgenderist men, including the convicted pedophiles, rapists, and killers of girls and women. No, we're not.
"We're going to bully the innocent girls and women, gay kids, and vulnerable BIWOC trapped in women's shelters, rehabs, and prisons.
"We’re not gonna pick the transgenderist men up and throw them under the bus, not even the convicted pedophiles, rapists, and killers of girls and women. No, indeed.
"We're going to do that to the innocent girls and women, gay kids, and vulnerable BIWOC.
"And the rights that are available for me need to be readily available for those transgenderist men, *especially* the convicted pedophiles, rapists, and killers of girls and women.
"But NOT for innocent girls and women, not even lesbians or vulnerable BIWOC.
"I've decided that I, along with all girls and women, don't need any rights anymore. Only men do.
"And I would even go a step further. Maybe the transgenderist men destroying our rights need a little bit more love and a little bit less throwing under the bus.
"NOT the innocent girls and women, gay kids, or vulnerable BIWOC.
"HELL, NO.
"I'm going to refuse to love THEM and keep throwing THEM under the bus with a vengeance.
"So when I hear Democrats stand up to me over this--when they ask me why I, a Democrat, support the rights of dangerous criminal men over the rights of innocent girls and women, gay kids, and vulnerable BIWOC--it really pisses me off.
"IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF WHEN ANYONE STANDS UP TO ME.
"ESPECIALLY WHEN MY BRAIN IS TURNED OFF SO I CAN BE DUPLICITOUS WITHOUT ADMITTING IT.
"And that’s why the Democrats lose, because average voters sniff duplicity like mine out. And then they want nothing to do with any of us anymore."
Eating two bowls of ice cream after listening to that seems the only intelligent response. Today, I read a piece by Jennifer Rubin, honoring MLK, Jr., in which she slipped a what-should-be-but-unfortunately-is-not-bizarre parenthetical: “And here we are again. An overtly White nationalist Trump regime has ginned up fear of “the Great Replacement,” “wokeism,” immigrant violence, and anti-white discrimination (not to mention fear of changing your child’s gender and of women taking men’s jobs).”
You know, methinks “fear of changing your child’s gender” was not high on MLK, Jr.’s list of wrongs to be righted, and he ought not be invoked in such a cause. Next thing you know, Rubin and others will be invoking FDR in an updated rally cry that “the only thing we have to fear about changing your child’s gender is fear of your child’s gender itself.”
I just had my quota dark chocolate for today, and I am now going to follow your fine example and go back for a second helping.
Long live Lisa Selin Davis, the Empress of Chocolate Ice Cream!
That's what you get, Lisa, for listening to NPR and Remnick. Don't you realize by now all you'll get is another performance of Social Justice Warrior?
It's nonsense like this show that has convinced me that out of simple intellectual honesty and humility, straight people should STFU about transsexual issues. They cannot, in principle, have the least idea of what they are talking about, not any more than they could offer anything interesting in their thoughts about what it must be like to be a bat, spending your days hanging upside down in the dark and the night catching mosquitoes by echolocation to feed yourself.
I have nothing left but contempt for them and their arrogant, abysmal ignorance, leading them to advocate the program of "Let's trans away the gay! At last we can fix these kids so they don't have to suffer growing up that way." They know psychiatry failed. Torture ("aversion therapy") failed. Giving gay men testosterone failed. (It just made them more active.) Chemical castration did have something to be said for it; in the case of the genius Alan Turing, for example, it at least got rid of him by suicide. But now, thanks to some new chemicals and surgical techniques, in conjunction with the right propaganda, we can make their unacceptable same sex attraction into something more socially conforming by turning them into a poor and stunted imitation of the "opposite sex". Age old problem solved! And with the added benefit of enhancing our claim of being advanced, more spiritually elevated thinkers for our advocacy .
John, since I worked there for 12 years (and for local public radio even longer before that), I know how they operate. NPR is totally captured by trans ideology. There ARE people there who aren't, but they've learned to keep their heads down. They have to keep their jobs.
I still listen only to keep tabs on their bullshit. It's intel.
As for "straight people STFU about transsexual issues", I must disagree. I'm straight and have been trying to wake people up about this pernicious ideology for 20 years. Most of my colleagues at DIAG are straight. We won't stop fighting.
See below
You do have some allies among straight people though... I've been trying to explain the trans issue to my gay brothers-in-law, who would probably still be nodding along with this New Yorker story hour, and would never have heard a contrary perspective in their East Village bubble if it wasn't for their straight TERF sister-in-law.
I have to apologize to KareP and Lisa Simeone. I should have been more exact. The straight people I'm so angry with are those who ignore the fact that the huge majority of supposedly trans kids will simply mature into gay teens and adults.
I'm sure a large fraction of these kids are finding their emerging same-sex attraction unacceptable and light on sex change treatments as a way out. The most tragic cases must be the kids who are being sexually abused and see a sex change as an escape from the abuse.
What worries me - and I have to admit, it's based solely on my own experience - is the possibility of kids being horribly confused by what they find themselves feeling about others of their sex, feelings they've never been told were a possible development but intuitively know are not acceptable; and in trying to find some explanation for their predicament , theorize that in some weird, inexplicable way, they're mentally or in some mystical way 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 the other sex. What annoys me about so many of the straight allies of the trans cult is their ignoring the ways a kid's being "trans curious" may be a sign of some serious problem or at least a troubling misunderstanding. Then, to make it worse, it's their arrogant refusal even to think of such problems or to consider any possibility other than the notion that trans people are yet another victim of the cis heteronormative white male European patriarchy.