"And how do we get people like Jennings to see that he not only has the answer wrong, he has the question wrong, too?" Excellent framing, given the context!
Jeopardy’s “top female” player of all time is a biological male. I stopped watching when they chose to affirm his delusion and erase a woman’s hard earned stat.
Perhaps more accurate to say that Ken Jennings knows more trivia that anyone else alive? At some point I read one of his books, and found the shallow glibness to be unbearable. Am very amused by his entry into This Topic.
Exactly. The way you win at Jeopardy is to always give the consensus answer the fastest. It’s not by knowing a topic in-depth, it’s not by having any expertise. It’s agreeing with the majority faster than anyone else.
That this “skill” could lead to such smugness is appalling.
One way to tell that the industry is wrong is the Orwellian-speak that they use.
“Gender affirming care” is nothing of the kind. The experts are quite obviously NOT affirming the patient’s gender. Instead, they are psychologically &/or chemically brainwashing the patient into believing that their body is wrong, it was a mistake, it is a genetic error.
They then diagnosing that the way to fix the mistake is with a lifelong treatment of hormonal drugs & the surgical amputation of healthy organs & appendages.
This isn’t any sort or kind of “affirmation.” It is the conscious decision to inflict mental cruelty & surgical sadism on a patient.
The Orwellian-speak “transitions” to more direct lies when the claim was frequently made that children never received surgeries as part of their treatment. “Never” apparently meaning children regularly receiving “top surgery” at dozens of facilities across the country. Facilities that all lied repeatedly about having conducted these procedures, lied about continuing to conduct these procedures, and some likely still lying about carrying out these procedures.
And, of course, “top surgery” itself being a phrase created to hide what procedure was actually performed. “Top” of what? Your shoulder, skull, hand? Of course not. “Top surgery” is the phrase created to avoid saying out loud that they performed double mastectomies on children.
So, it is their language, code-speak, dedicated effort using made-up phrases to hide what is being done that is the tell, the sign that they are not just wrong, but that they are lying to everyone because they know they are wrong.
Jon Stewart appealed to “experts” too. He did an interview with someone where he mentioned the AMA and all the big medical associations, and then he basically said, “America’s doctors agree that gender affirming care helps young people; why would you disagree with the experts?”
It was several years ago and I don’t remember who he was talking to. I’ve kind of blocked it out because I used to be a Jon Stewart fan.
Oh my God, yes, this was the interview! And yes, he is so smug. So smug as he compares gender dysphoria and cancer. And reiterates his talking points about experts.
Do we have any idea if he’s followed what’s happened since with the medical associations?
Honestly, the disappointment with Jon Stewart was crushing. And then Trevor Noah with that Veronica Ivy interview (“I’m made of biology so I’m a biological woman” or whatever the fuck Ivy said). And Trevor just sat there nodding. It was the living end.
So, years ago, when I was in law school, we had a moot court session. Every student in the program had to get 2 people - family, friends, neighbors - to volunteer as jurors for the trials. Your 2 volunteers would not be at your trial. I got my brother and mother to volunteer. My trial, and the one my brother was on, ended earlier than my mother's trial. We found her trial, where she was involved in deliberations with the other jurors. My mother was telling the other jurors, essentially, experts are just people who know a lot about a subject and have their own opinion. We don't have to agree with what they say. We can draw our own conclusions from the evidence. My brother and I were so proud and impressed with her at that moment because she got it! She knew that experts are just there to guide the fact finders, and that their opinions are just educated guesses.
So, having thus bragged about my mother, who is no longer with us, I will give my 2 cents about why experts might disagree with Singal. They are confused, misinformed by other experts, high on their perceived goodness and/or the powerful ability to re-create a human being, happy to have found a lucrative field where the patients are happy and not sick (at least not before they receive treatments!), and/or simply following orders. These are SOME of the reasons experts might be wrong and disagree with Singal.
In fact, so many people are wrong about this subject for one reason; they failed to think, really think, about what they're agreeing to.
Which brings to my one critique of this essay. You note that only a "small number" of kids who receive so-called "gender-affirming care" are actually sterilized, and, therefore, state that "gender-affirming care" is not necessarily abusive, so Paxton went too far in making that statement. However, not only are the numbers of people who receive these interventions that are sterilized higher than "a small number," if you consider that long-term use of these chemicals will eventually lead to sterilization, in addition to those who have the surgeries, and/or who go right from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones, but it must be noted that it is abusive to lie to people and tell them that their bodies are their enemies and must be changed for them to ever be happy, messing with their sense of reality. That is psychological abuse (gaslighting) that causes wholly unnecessary anxiety, causes body hatred, causes confusion, causes social problems, and, of course, causes the decision to chemically and/or surgically alter their perfectly healthy bodies to ultimately be less functional and/or less healthy over time. When you truly think about what's being said to these children and teens, it can be nothing other than abusive. I understand that many who believe in it are not "abusive" in their intentions, but they are abusive in the result - and that includes the "garden variety" affirmers. At least that's my opinion.
I completely agree on the abuse question. Thank you for stating it so clearly. I understand Lisa's goal is not to alienate those she is trying to convince, but sometimes the truth just hurts, and it still needs to be said. I see a similar dynamic with the hesitation about the use of the word "mutilation". Cutting off healthy breasts or giving a boy a micro-penis by putting him on puberty blockers is mutilation, full stop. I don't care that the intention is not to harm but to help. The result is still mutilation.
Yes. I am always hesitant to use the word mutilation because detransitioners surely don't want of feel "mutilated," but alas you are correct. We just need to destigmatize the term "mutilation," rather than pretend that's not what this is.
When Jennings was referring to an obviously female contestant as “They” it really tainted my view of him. Here’s a guy who’s been made famous by knowing facts and now he’s denying the truth of something that’s right in front of him.
What he is doing in that photo is kissing the bank balance and share value of big pharma, the commercial surrogacy industry and plastic surgeons. Oh, and all the big investment firms like Blackrock and State Street that funnel money in their direction.
Has anyone investigated Jennings' investment portfolio?
This creates a similar problem to the uninformed actors flinging the genocide charge at Israel or wearing their "Save the dolls" or "Save trans kids" t-shirts. One doesn't have to be into boycotts to be turned off enough to stop watching the show or buying tickets at the multiplex.
It is important to note that not all "uncertainty" is the same. Here's a good explanation from Ray Yuan Zhang, one of the HHS Report coauthors:
"So, putting Chapters 5, 6, and 7 together, the HHS review provides an answer that the overview alone cannot: the evidence on benefits is uncertain because the available studies are biased, while the evidence on harms is uncertain because there has been no real effort to assess harms—and, based on mechanisms, harms are expected."
I don't know that you can get him to realize the error of his ways. He may be a True Believer.
There is nothing more important than our self-image. Anything that threatens that must be destroyed. People are even will to destroy their spouse, their children, anything to preserve one's self-image. Admitting one was wrong, that one was dupped and manipulated by clever fetishists and social justice ideologues is too painful to ponder. Like the Creationists, he may well go to his grave swearing to himself he was doing the Lord's Work, preventing children from killing themselves in an era that followed thousands of years of civilization where kids almost never expressed a desire to actually *be* the opposite sex and threatened suicide if they weren't allowed.
I don't have an answer, but I want to point out that we saw the exact same thing happen during Covid. Credentialism ruled the ostensibly "liberal" mind. I do have a great deal of respect for real expertise, but ever since I have seen how easily it is corrupted by political allegiance and personal interests, and also, as was a factor during the pandemic, by fear for one's life or health, I have lost the trust I once had.
Observing this dynamic during Covid is how I first started paying attention to and became interested in the trans issue. Both of these issues have shown how easily evidence - and with that, free discourse - will be sacrificed for personal and tribal gain. Most normal people, unfortunately, are not critical thinkers because that's exhausting and uncomfortable. They will always choose belonging over truth.
And unless you have the resources to educate yourself and appraise the information available to you, in this media environment it is really difficult to figure out what is true and what isn't, and who is trustworthy and who isn't (since you cannot possibly appraise all technical evidence yourself). It's so much easier to just go by degrees and professional credentials, because without that, you are on thin ice. But once you see that degrees and credentials mean little once tribal or personal motives take over, you realize you don't have a choice.
Both Covid and the gender issue are similar in that they both seemingly presented a moral imperative: "protect the vulnerable" is the motto that underlies the response to both of them. That is a powerful motivator for people who like to think of themselves as progressives. The problem is that in both cases, they don't realize that the approach they pushed was/is doing more harm than good, and maybe no good at all. Selfishness comes in, too, on the part of gender clinicians and anybody who already has sunk costs into the idea, and in case of Covid, on the part of anybody who feared the virus. So "protect the vulnerable" often ends up masking (no pun intended) a desire to protect yourself.
I'd offer to take all those in the so-called "Right" out of the argument if the pro-GAC folks don't trust their neutrality. What remain are those who come from a left/liberal perspective who oppose gender medicine for young people, not because of their personal preferences or prejudices, but because they have looked deeply into the evidence. Most have risked their careers and their circle of friends to take this position: their personal interest would push them to go along with trans orthodoxy, but their consciences won't allow it. In contrast, those who are most vocally pro-trans-medicalization are generally either Trans themselves or have participated in the medical transition of young people, or are tied to the Democratic Party. The first two of these groups need medicalization to be a good thing because they are personally invested in these procedures. Democrats are mostly fearful of the trans lobby and funding sources targeting them if they are insufficiently supportive. Self-interested arguments always deserve more intense scrutiny.
Then there are just the general plausibility arguments. How plausible is it that a phenomenon hitherto seen only in older males, most of whom clearly have a disgusting sexual fetish (and I use the word "disgusting" in the technical sense - it triggers disgust in most people), is suddenly exploding in chronically online and mentally fragile young people, and that the answer for ALL of them is that they were "born in the wrong body"? And that it's all perfectly healthy and normal. What are the odds that being "born in the wrong body" so often coincides with being autistic or being same-sex-attracted or being abused as children or having a bunch of friends claiming trans identities, AND that the solution to their distress is to introduce endocrine disease and/or remove body parts? And that this new identity is stable and permanent, in spite of all we know about adolescent development? All you need to do is apply Occam's razor to see that the simpler answer here is that during a turbulent time - both developmental and culturally - these distressed kids are offered a magic bullet diagnosis and solution, and so they grasp at this life raft, which will also bring them attention, the valor of victimhood, and a shiny new "community" that celebrates them.
Arguing both from the "who benefits" perspective and the "simplest answer is most likely the correct one" perspective, the logic clearly favors the critics of gender medicine. And that's before you roll up your sleeves and actually look critically at the studies cited by each side.
As with the other liberal pop culture Smart Guys, I wonder if it's not really at all about facts for them but mostly about knowing well what we're Supposed to be Saying.
"And how do we get people like Jennings to see that he not only has the answer wrong, he has the question wrong, too?" Excellent framing, given the context!
I’ll take “What are regressive sex stereotypes?” for 20.
Jeopardy’s “top female” player of all time is a biological male. I stopped watching when they chose to affirm his delusion and erase a woman’s hard earned stat.
Jennings is obnoxious, too.
And it’s been pointed out that the top actual female identifies as “non-binary.”
Oh god, of course 🤦
“ Nonbinary “nonsense! Shows a lack of the” little grey cells” !
Yes by a “they/them” actual woman who wants to pretend she is something that is nonsensical
I was on Jeopardy and this fact infuriates me. I didn’t even win my episode, but the title of winningest woman should go to the winningest WOMAN.
Perhaps more accurate to say that Ken Jennings knows more trivia that anyone else alive? At some point I read one of his books, and found the shallow glibness to be unbearable. Am very amused by his entry into This Topic.
Exactly. The way you win at Jeopardy is to always give the consensus answer the fastest. It’s not by knowing a topic in-depth, it’s not by having any expertise. It’s agreeing with the majority faster than anyone else.
That this “skill” could lead to such smugness is appalling.
Good point!
One way to tell that the industry is wrong is the Orwellian-speak that they use.
“Gender affirming care” is nothing of the kind. The experts are quite obviously NOT affirming the patient’s gender. Instead, they are psychologically &/or chemically brainwashing the patient into believing that their body is wrong, it was a mistake, it is a genetic error.
They then diagnosing that the way to fix the mistake is with a lifelong treatment of hormonal drugs & the surgical amputation of healthy organs & appendages.
This isn’t any sort or kind of “affirmation.” It is the conscious decision to inflict mental cruelty & surgical sadism on a patient.
The Orwellian-speak “transitions” to more direct lies when the claim was frequently made that children never received surgeries as part of their treatment. “Never” apparently meaning children regularly receiving “top surgery” at dozens of facilities across the country. Facilities that all lied repeatedly about having conducted these procedures, lied about continuing to conduct these procedures, and some likely still lying about carrying out these procedures.
And, of course, “top surgery” itself being a phrase created to hide what procedure was actually performed. “Top” of what? Your shoulder, skull, hand? Of course not. “Top surgery” is the phrase created to avoid saying out loud that they performed double mastectomies on children.
So, it is their language, code-speak, dedicated effort using made-up phrases to hide what is being done that is the tell, the sign that they are not just wrong, but that they are lying to everyone because they know they are wrong.
Maybe it’s just too unfathomable to countenance the possibility that some experts are mostly expert in evidence massage.
Jon Stewart appealed to “experts” too. He did an interview with someone where he mentioned the AMA and all the big medical associations, and then he basically said, “America’s doctors agree that gender affirming care helps young people; why would you disagree with the experts?”
It was several years ago and I don’t remember who he was talking to. I’ve kind of blocked it out because I used to be a Jon Stewart fan.
Maybe it was this extremely smug and dismissive interview with the Arkansas AG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPmjNYt71fk
"Why would the state of Arkansas step in to override parents, physicians, psychiatrists, endocrinologists, who have developed guidelines?"
Oh my God, yes, this was the interview! And yes, he is so smug. So smug as he compares gender dysphoria and cancer. And reiterates his talking points about experts.
Do we have any idea if he’s followed what’s happened since with the medical associations?
Honestly, the disappointment with Jon Stewart was crushing. And then Trevor Noah with that Veronica Ivy interview (“I’m made of biology so I’m a biological woman” or whatever the fuck Ivy said). And Trevor just sat there nodding. It was the living end.
Yeah, I also stopped. Just couldn’t take anymore.
He is probably still in the Ken Jennings camp on this, but I haven't followed him at all in recent years.
An Arkansas politician having a policy stance than Jon Stewart is a rare sight, but broken clocks...
Does make you wonder about everything else Jon Stewart said. And John Oliver. Etc.
When all of this gender nonsense comes crashing down, I think there will be three kinds of reactions from the current gender jihadists:
1) Go down with the ship
2) Step quietly away, memory-holing any evidence that they ever favored gender treatments
3) Claim that they were misled by the experts they once revered.
I predict that Jennings will take Door #3, throwing Jack Turban under the biggest bus that can be found. We'll see, I suppose.
So, years ago, when I was in law school, we had a moot court session. Every student in the program had to get 2 people - family, friends, neighbors - to volunteer as jurors for the trials. Your 2 volunteers would not be at your trial. I got my brother and mother to volunteer. My trial, and the one my brother was on, ended earlier than my mother's trial. We found her trial, where she was involved in deliberations with the other jurors. My mother was telling the other jurors, essentially, experts are just people who know a lot about a subject and have their own opinion. We don't have to agree with what they say. We can draw our own conclusions from the evidence. My brother and I were so proud and impressed with her at that moment because she got it! She knew that experts are just there to guide the fact finders, and that their opinions are just educated guesses.
So, having thus bragged about my mother, who is no longer with us, I will give my 2 cents about why experts might disagree with Singal. They are confused, misinformed by other experts, high on their perceived goodness and/or the powerful ability to re-create a human being, happy to have found a lucrative field where the patients are happy and not sick (at least not before they receive treatments!), and/or simply following orders. These are SOME of the reasons experts might be wrong and disagree with Singal.
In fact, so many people are wrong about this subject for one reason; they failed to think, really think, about what they're agreeing to.
Which brings to my one critique of this essay. You note that only a "small number" of kids who receive so-called "gender-affirming care" are actually sterilized, and, therefore, state that "gender-affirming care" is not necessarily abusive, so Paxton went too far in making that statement. However, not only are the numbers of people who receive these interventions that are sterilized higher than "a small number," if you consider that long-term use of these chemicals will eventually lead to sterilization, in addition to those who have the surgeries, and/or who go right from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones, but it must be noted that it is abusive to lie to people and tell them that their bodies are their enemies and must be changed for them to ever be happy, messing with their sense of reality. That is psychological abuse (gaslighting) that causes wholly unnecessary anxiety, causes body hatred, causes confusion, causes social problems, and, of course, causes the decision to chemically and/or surgically alter their perfectly healthy bodies to ultimately be less functional and/or less healthy over time. When you truly think about what's being said to these children and teens, it can be nothing other than abusive. I understand that many who believe in it are not "abusive" in their intentions, but they are abusive in the result - and that includes the "garden variety" affirmers. At least that's my opinion.
I completely agree on the abuse question. Thank you for stating it so clearly. I understand Lisa's goal is not to alienate those she is trying to convince, but sometimes the truth just hurts, and it still needs to be said. I see a similar dynamic with the hesitation about the use of the word "mutilation". Cutting off healthy breasts or giving a boy a micro-penis by putting him on puberty blockers is mutilation, full stop. I don't care that the intention is not to harm but to help. The result is still mutilation.
Yes. I am always hesitant to use the word mutilation because detransitioners surely don't want of feel "mutilated," but alas you are correct. We just need to destigmatize the term "mutilation," rather than pretend that's not what this is.
When Jennings was referring to an obviously female contestant as “They” it really tainted my view of him. Here’s a guy who’s been made famous by knowing facts and now he’s denying the truth of something that’s right in front of him.
What he is doing in that photo is kissing the bank balance and share value of big pharma, the commercial surrogacy industry and plastic surgeons. Oh, and all the big investment firms like Blackrock and State Street that funnel money in their direction.
Has anyone investigated Jennings' investment portfolio?
This creates a similar problem to the uninformed actors flinging the genocide charge at Israel or wearing their "Save the dolls" or "Save trans kids" t-shirts. One doesn't have to be into boycotts to be turned off enough to stop watching the show or buying tickets at the multiplex.
It is important to note that not all "uncertainty" is the same. Here's a good explanation from Ray Yuan Zhang, one of the HHS Report coauthors:
"So, putting Chapters 5, 6, and 7 together, the HHS review provides an answer that the overview alone cannot: the evidence on benefits is uncertain because the available studies are biased, while the evidence on harms is uncertain because there has been no real effort to assess harms—and, based on mechanisms, harms are expected."
From this thread on X: https://x.com/Real_YuanZhang/status/2051412300733747377
I don't know that you can get him to realize the error of his ways. He may be a True Believer.
There is nothing more important than our self-image. Anything that threatens that must be destroyed. People are even will to destroy their spouse, their children, anything to preserve one's self-image. Admitting one was wrong, that one was dupped and manipulated by clever fetishists and social justice ideologues is too painful to ponder. Like the Creationists, he may well go to his grave swearing to himself he was doing the Lord's Work, preventing children from killing themselves in an era that followed thousands of years of civilization where kids almost never expressed a desire to actually *be* the opposite sex and threatened suicide if they weren't allowed.
'Gender identity' is a luxury belief.
I don't have an answer, but I want to point out that we saw the exact same thing happen during Covid. Credentialism ruled the ostensibly "liberal" mind. I do have a great deal of respect for real expertise, but ever since I have seen how easily it is corrupted by political allegiance and personal interests, and also, as was a factor during the pandemic, by fear for one's life or health, I have lost the trust I once had.
Observing this dynamic during Covid is how I first started paying attention to and became interested in the trans issue. Both of these issues have shown how easily evidence - and with that, free discourse - will be sacrificed for personal and tribal gain. Most normal people, unfortunately, are not critical thinkers because that's exhausting and uncomfortable. They will always choose belonging over truth.
And unless you have the resources to educate yourself and appraise the information available to you, in this media environment it is really difficult to figure out what is true and what isn't, and who is trustworthy and who isn't (since you cannot possibly appraise all technical evidence yourself). It's so much easier to just go by degrees and professional credentials, because without that, you are on thin ice. But once you see that degrees and credentials mean little once tribal or personal motives take over, you realize you don't have a choice.
Both Covid and the gender issue are similar in that they both seemingly presented a moral imperative: "protect the vulnerable" is the motto that underlies the response to both of them. That is a powerful motivator for people who like to think of themselves as progressives. The problem is that in both cases, they don't realize that the approach they pushed was/is doing more harm than good, and maybe no good at all. Selfishness comes in, too, on the part of gender clinicians and anybody who already has sunk costs into the idea, and in case of Covid, on the part of anybody who feared the virus. So "protect the vulnerable" often ends up masking (no pun intended) a desire to protect yourself.
I'd offer to take all those in the so-called "Right" out of the argument if the pro-GAC folks don't trust their neutrality. What remain are those who come from a left/liberal perspective who oppose gender medicine for young people, not because of their personal preferences or prejudices, but because they have looked deeply into the evidence. Most have risked their careers and their circle of friends to take this position: their personal interest would push them to go along with trans orthodoxy, but their consciences won't allow it. In contrast, those who are most vocally pro-trans-medicalization are generally either Trans themselves or have participated in the medical transition of young people, or are tied to the Democratic Party. The first two of these groups need medicalization to be a good thing because they are personally invested in these procedures. Democrats are mostly fearful of the trans lobby and funding sources targeting them if they are insufficiently supportive. Self-interested arguments always deserve more intense scrutiny.
Then there are just the general plausibility arguments. How plausible is it that a phenomenon hitherto seen only in older males, most of whom clearly have a disgusting sexual fetish (and I use the word "disgusting" in the technical sense - it triggers disgust in most people), is suddenly exploding in chronically online and mentally fragile young people, and that the answer for ALL of them is that they were "born in the wrong body"? And that it's all perfectly healthy and normal. What are the odds that being "born in the wrong body" so often coincides with being autistic or being same-sex-attracted or being abused as children or having a bunch of friends claiming trans identities, AND that the solution to their distress is to introduce endocrine disease and/or remove body parts? And that this new identity is stable and permanent, in spite of all we know about adolescent development? All you need to do is apply Occam's razor to see that the simpler answer here is that during a turbulent time - both developmental and culturally - these distressed kids are offered a magic bullet diagnosis and solution, and so they grasp at this life raft, which will also bring them attention, the valor of victimhood, and a shiny new "community" that celebrates them.
Arguing both from the "who benefits" perspective and the "simplest answer is most likely the correct one" perspective, the logic clearly favors the critics of gender medicine. And that's before you roll up your sleeves and actually look critically at the studies cited by each side.
As with the other liberal pop culture Smart Guys, I wonder if it's not really at all about facts for them but mostly about knowing well what we're Supposed to be Saying.