Personally, I don't like that this had to come to state-level bans and litigation and whatnot, but the upside is that more people feel empowered to speak openly against gender ideology--and are secure in doing so. The power of the gender jihadists to take away people's jobs, housing, and educational opportunities, although still too strong in my mind, is waning. The more of us who can express opposition, the fewer of us who will suffer censure for doing so.
And that's how I want the future to look. Robust discussion and examination, subjecting gender ideology to the scrutiny that should have been applied fifteen years ago. Late is better than never.
Litigation gets a bad rap because of the cartoon version ("ambulance chasers" "jackpot justice" etc) that dominated politically in the 90s-early 2000s, but there is a strong record of litigation as a gap-filler when legislation fails. Legislation is supposed to anticipate harm, regulate risky behavior, and update rules through societal and technological changes. In practice, this can fail because of things like regulatory capture, political paralysis, lack of foresight or unintended consequences, failure to respond if something changes rapidly, or perverse incentives not to act. Civil litigation can jump into the vacuum and become the mechanism for surfacing invisible or ignored harms, forcing disclosure through discovery, or incentivising changed behavior prior to formal regulation. This is exactly what happened with asbestos, tobacco, defective medical devices, unsafe cars, and—yes—scalding coffee. Btw, the documentary Hot Coffee is excellent and makes this point. Anyway, this is my long-winded college professor-y way of saying that I think the coming wave of litigation over pediatric gender medicine is going to cause a tidal shift, and will ultimately result in legislation.
Along with litigation, I wish that we didn’t even need legislation. I wish that scientists and doctors and teachers hadn’t been cowed into silence or going along to get along. I wish that a culture of open debate and looking at the facts and ethics had resolved this before legislation was needed. Here we are.
WHO is doing all this cowing? WHERE can we find this circe who has escaped her island? WHY were they all so ready to mop and eat grass? HOW can we ever trust any of them again? WHEN are we going to realize this?
THESE are the questions my teachers taught me two ask, in particular two who are now dead, which to me goes a long way toward explaining why THIS has all happened, because THEY would not let it pass.
i am so done with it like just say it we need a new everyone.
I'm not knocking litigation in general--Obergefell, anyone?--but I'd prefer if Americans could get closer to a consensus rather than just conflict. I realize that consensus is even harder to achieve than compromise, but I can hope.
While I hope, though, I don't mind using the courts. Gender ideologues certainly haven't shied away from them.
The problem is, those lawsuits cost us money instead of the medical and mental health professionals who screwed over the kids. We all pay the bill, either in higher co-pays or higher insurance costs.
I'd rather have a direct feedback to the individuals who choose to participate in that despicable industry. Maybe there's some way we can legislate that medical malpractice not cover these elective sex mimicry surgeries.
Great observation, and litigation as "gap-filler" is a great way to put this. Ultimately, of course, we do need to replace misguided laws (and in some cases, as in NY, constitutional provisions) and restore norms that greased the wheels of our society but have now been broken. It's going to be a long-term project.
There have been many moments in my personal/professional life, and in history, where I wish I had gone to law school and become a lawyer. This is one of them.
i want to subject every single person at every university and hospital in the country who stamped their stamp on research or medical forms related to this business to a scrutiny as sharp as a scalpel, and as hot as an infection.
My perspective is shaped by five years of intense clinical work with trans identifying teens, young adults, and their parents. Another very important aspect of my work has been in teaching and mentoring other clinicians who are willing to do this work but haven’t had the kind of support that it takes to sit in extreme tension with these very fragile (and brittle) kids day in and day out.
What I think of as “traditional” psychotherapy (neither gender affirming nor gender critical, but rather inviting and embracing complexity) requires ongoing study, supervision, and peer support. The mental health professions need to take a serious look into how and why these supports eroded because when vacuums get filled by ideologies the most vulnerable people end up paying the price.
As the parent of a 20-year-old TID who has essentially been thrown under the bus by both extremes of this mess, I am grateful for your work, Dr. Goldsmith. My vulnerable kid is currently paying the price - a year and a half on hormones courtesy of a clinic (thank you, informed consent) with no medical or mental health background check. Experiencing signs of early menopause and more, and no improvement in mental health. Like many of her peers, she felt more compelled to seek out the medicalization because of fear instilled by the all out bans being put in place in so many states.
It makes so much sense for mental health professionals to examine why a more complex, comprehensive and self-exploratory approach has been abandoned, but how does this happen in a climate where the choice seems to be limited to two sides?
Therapy ideally should be neither affirming nor negating, but acknowledging
Changing gender (and biologic characteristics) to match is highly consequential. Kids and young adults who are gender distressed or contemplating transition need to be aware of this consequentiality.
A therapeutic relationship that doesn’t imply “you should do this” or “you shouldn’t do this”, but instead “if you do this (or don’t do that), here are the likely implications) probably helps gender distressed kids and their care givers make better decisions.
I am concerned that in an effort to be neutral much of the field of psychology, and mental health services “forgot” all that was known about child development. Perhaps the allure of medications as a solution to internal emotional problems opened the door within the field?
since youre in the field, could you tell me -- why do you think psychology was so ripe to be a medium for the entrance of this business into medicine? the quality of research in psychology is notoriously poor. to anyone familiar with it, really, the business which is the subject of this article is not surprising. it is just the most shocking example of an unchecked profession. can you explain why we should trust anything else passed along to medicine via the profession of psychiatry, if this business was rubber-stamped along its whole merry way? you will have to be slow with me because, i still don't understand why we are medicating schoolchildren who would, as far as I have ever been to tell, just much rather be running around.
Your question deserves a much more detailed and thorough response than I have the capacity to offer in a comment. Rather than scratching the surface here I would direct you to research the evolution of the DSM. Simply put, most people don’t understand what the document is and what it isn’t. Therein lies the key.
that is the non-est non-answer i have ever gotten lol
i know it must be difficult to accept the fact that the "field" you've devoted your life to is a literal fiction -- at the best of times -- which has now taken the seom-would-say-inevitable term into being grievously harmful and used to perpetrate torture, mutilation and genocide. those who would say "inevitable" would say so because letting say-so and appealing fiction infiltrate science has always gone this way.
i do not, however, have much sympathy, or any, because i took one class in your pseudoscience and laughed myself out of the room. it is not science. the standards are not scientific. this is obvious from day 1 of a freshman class. anyone who takes it seriously for more than a second is inherently a nitwit or has a case of arrogance so bad they something something shit from shinola -- and as a result, anyone who proceeds in such an obvious farce of a "field" is one of the few dumb or arrogant enough to fall for it. that, to me, explains why all of you are the way you are, and why this business happened so quickly, mediated almost entirely by you.
like, my god. your field came up with the idea "let's castrate children for their health. sounds right." no it is not on ME do to any god damn research in your gobbledygook book as to how that happened. it is for YOU to explain why, that having happened, we should trust a single other thing you or your ilk say. i know you CAN'T, because we SHOULDN'T, but i'd like to see you at least try, and you won't even do that. you are pathetic, ignorant, and PART OF THE PROBLEM.
burn your fake diploma and stop calling yourself a doctor. that'll be step 1 of rejoining serious society. good day.
I wish that people could listen to each other more deeply. Find someone you disagree with and start a real conversation. In person if possible. Of even find someone you mostly agree with and talk to and listen to them - because you probably don't agree on everything and talking about it and listening would be healthy for both of you. There is so much of taking sides on this issue and all the issues...and meanwhile families are struggling to navigate treacherous waters without any boats or life vests or anything at all. I speak from personal experience here. So many folks have strong opinions about what should and shouldn't happen with teens and gender. But very few people have been available to help me and my kid and our family navigate the day to day situations we are dealing with. And part of that was how little time there was for deep listening and so much time taken up with telling my family what we "ought" to think. And this was from people on both sides/opposite sides of the issue.
So please consider starting to be a more careful listener. You never know what might happen from there...
If someone who was anorexic came to you and insisted she was overweight, would you "affirm" her? Would you trust a physician or therapist who did so? Would you try to "listen to both sides" in that case? Or would you try to get that obviously distressed girl some help?
I find it gobsmacking that people can see the danger, the harm, in other body dysmorphic delusions but not in the "transgender" delusion.
Both small-L liberals and small-c conservatives share an interest in bringing some sanity to the gender debates, and are experiencing different levels of exhaustion in managing the extremists on their own side.
There needs to be a forum and venue for people who aren’t pro-transition or anti-transition, but who are focused on better understanding what type of guidance and regulation will lead to the greatest chanve of each child experiencing gender distress to reach their maximum level of thriving through the remainder of their adolescence and well into adulthood.
So many of our discussions are bound by our attachment to process (Transition good!!Transition bad!!) that we lose sight of the goal, which is to release adults into the world who can have solid, productive lives that bring them fulfillment and which allow them to contribute to the betterment of their communities and to society.
Yes! Approaches that offer nuance are desperately needed. Otherwise it will continue to be extremists from both ends of the spectrum (often with little skin in the game) screaming at each each other -- with the kids as political footballs in the middle.
I am so glad you have brought this up. I am sure that it will have to be a multi pronged approach and there is much that we can do while the world catches up to what has happened. On a broad level I believe we would need to tailor what will be most beneficial based upon who we are addressing. Educational systems, the political sphere, the medical profession, therapists, parents and the young people who have fallen under the spell.
I am going to give this some serious thought. I am a parent of a young person whom I hope will wake up. I often think about how much money is behind all of this and how much goes unseen by all of those around me. When I try to envision the counter to the situation I often feel that if we could find a few powerful and perhaps wealthy people to contribute their voices and resources to this that we could accomplish so much. In the meantime the more of us that start thinking about this the better!
In my community my thoughts go to gathering information on what the exact situation is in the schools in my county; the exact narrative, what teachers are disseminating, the approach the guidance counselors currently take. Then putting together a reasonable up to date program or educational material that takes into consideration their distorted beliefs and offering a path out that will be palatable to them.
I like this idea. I am a former teacher and this area interests me the most. When I was teaching (over 20 years ago) I was never taught, nor approached with, the notion of socially transitioning a child. Now I have teacher friends who are expected to go along with a young child's social transition, no questions asked. This goes even further when teachers and school administrators are actively socially transitioning a student behind parent's backs. Add in the teaching of gender as a fact with books (the same teachers mentioned above were expected to read "I Am Jazz" to their first graders) and curriculum, and it is a real mess. Unfortunately we already have the next generation of teachers who were taught this in college and think it is the caring thing to do.
Another multi-pronged approach- the teacher's colleges and the schools themselves.
How do we gather momentum to start implementing on this? I like your thinking here, Lisa!
With the reclassification to "gender incongruence" assuring access to "gender affirming care", there is no hope for change, beyond limiting access of minors, unless the medical associations (and insurances) change their guidelines.
"Gender incongruence has been moved out of the “Mental and behavioural disorders” chapter and into the new “Conditions related to sexual health” chapter."
So a prepubescent child with "gender incongruence" now has a sexual-health condition, despite being years away from any sexual activity (one hopes).
I thought we'd been told that gender identity/dysphoria/incongruence was completely separate from sexuality.
“Boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways.” That's a good start. I think teens should be treated as young adults who are contemplating significant issues. A multi-grade well-grounded curriculum on the sexual biology of humans, including the many roles of natural hormones in not only secondary sexual characteristics but also regulation of many physical systems. A clear and honest understanding of the risks vs. benefits of supplemental hormones and how they alter the natural scheme of things. The impact of surgery and the need for lifelong after care. All the risks and benefits.
Another piece would be wise counseling for confused or distressed individuals. There are so many styles of counseling; when I was 17 I saw a freudian analyist (not knowing at the time) who just wanted to talk about the father-son competition for my mother's attention. I fired him. But I would also say that standard CBT is not the end-all either. Trauma counseling such as Somatic Experiencing, Grief Education (for any losses due to irreversible decisions), and many other styles should be explored to sort out what is the most helpful for a teen. A piece on the process of sorting out one's sexual identity that stresses that this does not signal a problem: it's normal. And clearly defined boundaries where counselors don't push clients in one direction or the other about life decisions.
I think that the constant framing of natural versus unnatural is deeply problematic, largely unscientific, tends to exaggerate side effects or infer that the hormone receptors are themselves different. They are not.
and is the kind of rhetoric that also leads to people fearing vaccines and antibiotics and GMOs and isn’t a far cry from scaring people against anything but heterosexual missionary sex either.
Indeed this appeal to nature fallacy seems to be coalescing around anti vaccine and anti trans narratives.
I love your idea of a well-grounded curriculum on the sexual biology of humans. I can't imagine it ever being implemented. I haven't been able to convince two of my female friends that there are only two sexes and males have physical advantages over females. One is a scientist and both are very intelligent.
The new discourse I keep seeing more and more of is that there are fanatics on both sides of this issue. That some people take their anti-trans views too far. That we need moderation.
Very interesting. Is anyone else seeing this?
The older I get, the more I see people re-writing the past. To shape a sane future, I think we need to tell the truth and be accurate about the past.
So the premise of your book was that society doesn't have room for gender non-conforming children?
Maybe I grew up in some Canadian Shagri-La, but there were plenty of non-conforming kids in the 80's and 90's and we all just called them gay. Which they mostly were.
I really think people need to realize that unsupervised internet access is child abuse. There is nothing a kid needs on there that they cannot get from a book.
I also think the gay rights movement needs to go away. We can stop celebrating gayness. Why?
I have no problem with my gay friends, but I am tired of honouring gayness for a month every year.
They didn't survive the holocaust or get sold into slavery for goodness sakes. Kids dont need to hear a single word about it.
The pediatric gender medical industry is on its back foot—many tools are available to reduce its size (laws, insurance, federal subsidies, torts). I’m optimistic about that.
But one source of the demand for PGM is being generated and sustained in our educational system. Let’s say a child develops a trans identity online or via social groups or from school curriculum. That identity is more durable and long lasting if the school changes her name, gives her binders, sends her to special counselors, etc. It’s harder to back out of it.
Because our educational system, like our medical system, is not centralized, it’s harder to make changes except state by state. I would like to see more activism to pressure state legislators to remove gender curriculum altogether.
I don’t agree we should teach the controversy (I see that as akin to teaching about flat earthers). Just delete it from curriculum.
It will remain out there in the culture like many other ideas, but if it’s not mentioned at school, if schools don’t affirm, then the demand for PGM might gradually decline.
A long shot, maybe, but that’s what I would hope for.
At DIAG, we're putting together a discussion with teachers on the front line, who see what's going on, who are appalled by the curricula they're being forced to teach, who can reveal the extent of the indoctrination, which is profound.
Our X Space hasn't been scheduled yet, but it's coming in the next few weeks and will be posted at DIAG's website and also on Substack. It'll be live, like all our X Spaces, so people can participate.
Yes, and since many school districts are now hiding curriculum from parents, reaching out to teachers is key. As the Mahmoud case showed, schools move the curriculum around and/or bring outside consultants in, making it harder to know it’s happening. I do think getting this out of schools will be more challenging than changing the medical practices!
I homeschool my kid and we switched to Khan Academy for math this year. The math instruction is really good. But I started noticing that in the word problems, it’s about one third “he” one third “she” and one third singular “they.” Yesterday’s word problem also referenced “the year Latinx debuted in English was 2006.” Enough already.
Yep. I’m a Spanish-speaker and it’s the dumbest word I’ve ever heard. I’m also from a very progressive US city and I will say this— I do know a few Latinos here who will use Latine for a non-binary word. At least it sounds ok in Spanish.
Well, yeah, it sounds ok in Spanish, but it’s still silly. None of the Latinos I know — and there are many of them here in Baltimore — use “Latine”. Only self-absorbed, sanctimonious academics do.
We definitely should not be teaching the controversy in elementary or middle school! Maybe older teenagers. Before that, a simple “boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways” as Lisa puts it, and then, if there are follow-up questions or comments from any side, “Families have different beliefs. You can talk to your parents about this.” This is a standard response that used to be common-sense, back when I was a teacher (not that long ago!) when a kid had questions about religion, etc.
I don’t get how people think this would work. Kids can know that they can act and behave a certain way, and maybe they even live in a place where that is legitimately accepted by peers and teachers. Not often, since the places with the most rigid gender role expectations are the most religious and conservative communities that are leading the charge against trans anything.
But in reality, they are going to be very aware that there is no substitute for being a man or woman in society and for the rest of their lives. Even if you account for sexual orientation.
A straight woman and a gay man do not have the same lives or bodies or futures, even ignoring reproduction itself. Same for a lesbian woman versus a straight man.
The genie is out of the bottle, and the fact you feel the need to completely hide the medical power of early medical transition so that they don’t get their hopes up, is inherent proof that this is real and not an illusion. You can’t say “you can’t change sex” and think they will believe that whatever arbitrary argument about a chromosome or gametes will be convincing. In real life they know that sex is and always has been about phenotype. Invisible traits aren’t important and the kind of sophistry that works online is ironically not successful at all to 12 year olds.
No young natal male who sees himself as female and expects to grow up and live as a woman will be able to be told “you can just be a feminine man!” as if that’s any kind of substitute. They can look up all the “dolls” who transitioned early and are obviously existing as women in a real sense, who can leave transness behind at their discretion, and know that this is an entirely different life and future than one where they can’t transition.
I get that FtM rapid onset issues are not the same, in some cases, and so this isn’t all easy. But it’s naive to think that gender nonconformity is a substitute for which sex class someone belongs to. You can’t substitute clothes for a body.
The comment you are responding to was specifically about how schools should handle it, where I said basically they should stay out of it and leave it to families to communicate their beliefs about metaphysical matters.
But you wrote a lot of interesting things here, although they don’t seem to relate to my comment.
One thing that caught my attention was this line: “They can look up all the “dolls” who transitioned early and are obviously existing as women in a real sense, who can leave transness behind at their discretion, and know that this is an entirely different life and future than one where they can’t transition.” Don’t you think it’s strange that the word “dolls” is being used to refer to these humans? Isn’t it dehumanizing to call them something that is a word for toys, for playthings? Do you think that female people think of ourselves as dolls?
Another was this line: “You can’t substitute clothes for a body.” No, you can’t. You also can’t substitute a medicalized male body for a female body. And I don’t think we should be telling kids that you can. It sets them up for a big letdown when they get to the end of it all (well, in truth it never ends) and realize the two are not the same, and that they have sacrificed so much and will be on lifelong medical support because adults did not tell them the truth when they were young.
I was only using that dolls term because it’s a common one. It is obviously a fraught term depending on the meaning, but “be a doll” and “guys and dolls” are different meanings than “plastic barbie” and I suspect it’s one of those weird phrases that has taken on its own life in its own context.
That said I don’t think your last comment is right at all. Someone who transitions at that stage has very much a female body. There is no essence of sex that is larger than what medicine and surgery can change, and at any level of real life inspection they won’t be different than other women. I think GCs ignore the real life scale of bodies of that out of a desire that it be true rather than its truth.
There is no weird GC argument about sex that is more real than the bodies people can medically achieve in real life.
In real life, in material reality, it is impossible to change sex. Medicalized male bodies may look the same but they do not function in the same ways as female bodies. Insisting that there is no difference in real life is silly. I have sympathy for people who want to live their lives appearing as the opposite sex. But when you insist they are the same, you lose me.
I don’t see how that is true or why GCs think it is true. Any difference is minuscule, e g between any number of sterile women or who have had total hysterectomies. And in what real life situations are any of the nanoscopic differences actually relevant? I don’t get it.
Absolutely both in the same category of female in any meaningful or useful ways. I find it actually baffling to the point of confusion that this is disputed so strenuously by GCs
Thanks Lisa. We hope it’s not quite as bad in the UK as it seems in the USA. Making positive change happen begins with bewailing a problem. As you say that’s easier but not going to change anything — especially when that news isn’t aired widely as it should be. Yet the plan you suggest couldn’t be simpler for schools: get back to basics. I agree teachers need only know and teach that: “Boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways.”
And I agree that longer-term solutions lie in reviving the unavoidable basics of “viewpoint diversity, critical thinking, free speech, and constructive disagreement.” I’ve found it calms and helps me to read and learn the history of how we have grown that whole social justice culture thing. I very much recommend this more thorough (than social media offers) old-fashioned way forward.
It’s not just been a decade with gender identity but 60 years of race and gender. You can even track back 200 years of broad growth of cultural socialism (Eric Kaufman) before the taboo or sacred trio of race,gender and sexuality solidified into a secular religion. Aka the identity synthesis (Yascha Mounck) or symbolic capitalism (Musa al-Gharbi). That uncovers a valid starting concern for all good people but then turns into “hypocritical social justice” (my term!) as we find that the kinds of solutions proposed are very faulty. Well intended but they just don’t work; they often make it worse.
So I suggest to achieve those broad view (!) aims, it’s important for us activists to read up from and apply these careful evidence based moderately worded texts. Then to get the world to learn about the history and evidence of what doesn’t work and what works better. As you say, the specific topics and arenas like education, health, gender, race etc should fall back more naturally from this repairing of the foundations. All of that requires activist hard work in academia, professional bodies, higher education and mainstream media. Not easy!!
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody
If you want a really thorough history and social science of it, you can join Eric Kaufman’s wonderful course at Heterodox Centre and pay for access to his 15 full lectures, the power-points, and the reading material remotely without the classes.
Some more thoughts here. I think that asking how to change a culture raises other questions about campaigning that cannot easily be resolved in a comment thread. Most of us, even the most brilliant academic minds, are total clutzes and amateurs when it comes to professional campaigns. As an innovating MH professional all my life it is only in old age that I've realised that there are very different skills to building a new approach or culture change. My own learning came through helping build an effective campaign to change the unfit global culture of sending separating families to legal systems as the necessary, best and (therefore) only option instead of creating a new culture of earlier health-based supportive systems for this known high stress event. (See https://twowishes.org to see the result so far).
The skills are more like great product marketing campaigns - like Nike or Apple adverts that focus on an inspiring vision but hardly mention the product or the shoe or smartphone's special qualities. A more common example of positive naming is in calling them "health services" when the truth is they are more like "illness services" or at least "healing services".
I find I only have a few skills that fit this purpose of fresh campaigns. So, as the critical social justice and trans activists MUST have done to be so successful, a network of highly skilled (rich) campaigners must have built and funded such a campaign to become as globally successful as they have been. Across the whole of our society and every one of its institutions as well as with the public and political opinion too, their campaign has worked like a successful cult does to pull us in to "being kind" and then to get activists into positions and committees to push through such "kind" policies with hidden iron fists and blindly unkind methods and results. Luckily, as we catch up with their brilliant but invalid campaigning, we can now show the poor reasoning and failing outcomes of the proposed solutions. The books I list give us a way to talk about the failures and to find more sympathetic, less belligerent words to make our case.
Underneath a fresh campaign you need a widely agreed policy platform for its skilful strategy, rhetoric and organisation to create cultural change and influence decision-makers. A huge army of diverse bloggers alone can never do the bigger job of creating change, "winning the war". But in some ways, we here are not needing to start afresh: we're reviving what we know already. We don't need the fully fledged campaign for a totally new idea. We're campaigning for an old continuing idea that most people have not lost from ordinary lives. We're pushing and pulling at an open door. Aren't we?
Though we are facing powerful forces that are blocking that door, I like to hope that the definite opening up of debate and discussion of the last few years will continue to put this crazy era behind us as other crazy eras have been left behind before. Maybe all we need is indeed to keep doing what we're doing already: 100s of us in every way and place we can, to read, speak, write, support and share what we think is "good stuff". If that is true, then the "broad view" you have repeated here is all the policy platform we need. We took it too much for granted. Reason and evidence left the "ship's bridge" as it has in political elections. We do need in future never to forget how badly we needed it!
In case you're wondering, you'll find the authors I like below.
To bring us down to earth about the challenge of campaigning, I present my own, this week's, failed attempt to get discussion going in mainstream media. Trying a more light-hearted "starter for ten" into the topic, I submitted this self-explanatory letter to a weekly UK-based publication, The New World. In other respects, I think they do a fine job.
I note that I could have but didn't attack the appalling jounralistic failure to meet even their most basic standards of intelligent journalism on the topic of trans: that is, when covering a topic, say "old age", to do more than talk to a few aged neighbours and edit their complaints into an article with a total absence of wider evidence, policy and context than the journalist I reply to did for the topic of transgender. Another senior staff member (an ex-spindoctor) in TNW dismisses trans topics because of his wife and daughter's strong views on the subject. WTF?! Here's what I wrote:
<< _Letter to the Editor, The New World_
Subject: We Need to Talk About Trans
The mixed reaction to Marie Le Conte’s troubled trans friends (TNW 469 Letters) points us to learn and talk some more. TNW seems a good place for that. I offer a “starter for ten” into what is a big complex field. A short fun video and a few questions for Marie, her trans friends and everyone else to answer and discuss.
In 2021 the finance officers of the UK department store John Lewis (JL) approved a considerable budget for one of their famous long adverts. It was for home insurance. Soon after its launch they withdrew the ad. It’s a great tongue-in-cheek dancing-diva style video that follows a boy’s gay rampage as he trashes the family home. Mother and sister watch on as his amused audience. The concluding message is: Let Life Happen. So why did they pull this delightful ad? JL said that customers might claim on their home insurance, taking JL’s advertisement for self-inflicted vandalism too seriously, when that is not covered by their insurance policies.
Watch for yourself the 60 second advert on YouTube [https://youtu.be/gJ3dua4F8T0]. It is great fun. But there are some other serious questions to ask. Apart from JL’s creativity and the nerdy specs, what licences the boy’s funny rampage? Does the ad also mean to celebrate gender nonconformity? If so, apart from the fun that they’re not having, how well do Marie’s trans friends think the ad represents them and that cause? Is this a world they want to see in people’s homes?
Given that JL themselves couldn’t rely on people seeing the funny side, is there anything worth celebrating for those who might take this rampage seriously? Would letting this life happen to any child or family ever be good for anyone? The nerdy delinquent diva wears lipstick and some girl’s clothes. It’s just a bit of fun but which, if any, gender identity befits this display of junior machismo? Do Marie’s trans friends approve at all, or ever behave like, this cheery JL version of their gender identities? Do they know that a day of delinquency is not the most harmful destiny some activists are intently offering gender questioning children?
Perhaps these cultural questions show a disconnect between what gender identity activists have achieved and what sensible trans people and their allies want and stand for? Do Marie’s friends see the potential for being badly represented by activists’ campaigns that are carried out with grimly serious intent under a gay rainbow and through worthy institutions like JL? Do they see how JL were blinded to reality by a smiling gift-wrapped activist ideology? Do they understand why robust challenges to this kind of ideological activism are called for?
But John Lewis were right, weren’t they? We do need fun. And we also need to stop short, start afresh, get serious, work and talk across all parties, get mainstream media to do its job, and all of us to keep a better grasp on realistic good sense. There are serious adverts to be made for the kind of life we do want to happen.
Nick Child, Edinburgh >>
As I say, that failed to get published or change the world at all. So it's there as a template that, at the least, needs improving. :-(
I wish I knew. Of course I have some ideas, but right now, I don’t see the path forward to any semblance of a sensible landing place. I’m participating in a small study group, reading Carol Tavris’s The Mismeasure of Woman, which she wrote in 1992. Given when it was written, it is part historical record, yet strongly resonant in countless ways with what we are encountering today. Her incisive probing, often prescient, astounds me on every page.
I don’t know whether this will bear out, but what I am musing on right now is the phases of women’s struggles to gain full participation in public life. In “my time,” in the early 70s, we laid down what we hoped was a sturdy foundation. Carol’s wonderful book, written 2 decades later, offered valuable reassessments of how we saw the issues in those earlier days, building on those gains. It was a productive discussion, and further progress in changing both laws and norms were achieved.
Today, in stark contrast, we are no longer building on what was learned in all those decades. Instead, all that history has been lost, and some of the worst offenders among those with historical amnesia are women themselves.
To get back to a reasonable starting point on which to rebuild is going to take several generations of work. Laws have to be overturned and replaced—and as Helen Joyce has often noted, this will take decades.
Harder still, the norms of behavior that guide us, invisible from view, have been shattered. This is why we are constantly having to explain and re-explain why single sex spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms matter to women’s full participation in public life. We never thought about why—we didn’t have to—the accommodations to differences between women and men were a given, understood without any need to think about them at all.
It will take a profound cultural shift, over time, to restore those norms—and to the extent necessary, for norms to shift, quietly, under the surface, to reflect changed cultural circumstances.
Given my age, I likely won’t be around to see any of this happen—which is “interesting” to contemplate as well.
If it is true as some ( many?) believe that Big Pharma did not just jump on / capitalise on an emerging ( now cemented ) ideological bandwagon started on US campus , but in fact deliberately funded many, many small LGBTQi+ lobbying groups over the last decade in order to create brand new life long markets for their drugs / surgeries then the root problem is not trying to have respectful “ debates” abt beliefs but rather a root and branch reform of the power structures , lack of transparency , accountability and regulation in US and beyond … I’m sure the powerful are content while we wrangle with viewpoints and ideas instead of the more difficult task of holding our representatives and their chums to account at the ballot box and in the courts
Schools: “Boys and girls can look and act all different ways.” If a kid expresses different beliefs (whether conservative or progressive): “Families believe different things. You can talk to your parents about what you all believe.” (I used to be a teacher and this was a common response to all kinds of religious/ political/ personal beliefs. How did this change!?)
Medicalizing kids: “There is no evidence to support this, so we have stopped this practice. We can offer therapy to help you sort out your questioning, confusion, and distress.”
Sports: “Male and females are different, males have physical advantages and that’s why we have different categories. You are free to try out for the team that corresponds to your sex. We do not discriminate based on how you dress or what you call yourself.”
Adult medicalization: “We can offer hormones and procedures to make you appear more like the opposite sex. You will never actually become the opposite sex and you should not expect people to believe you can. Many people will still be able to tell what your natal sex is. There are many side effects which will negatively affect your health if you go this route. This may be a hard road, but if you as a grown adult accept reality and still want to physically alter yourself (and pay for it yourself) then you are free to do so.”
Basically, I would like us to get back to reality, and for adults to tell the truth to each other and their kids, while still holding space for gender-nonconformity. That’s the world I want to live in.
So deny transition when it would be extremely effective at biologically changing sex and making them indistinguishable from the sex they transition to, and then only offer transition care when it’s too late. And pretend that this monstrous set of decisions is somehow neutral.
Herein lies the problem: transition at any time will not biologically turn anybody into the opposite sex. It’s a lie to say so. We shouldn’t lie to kids. Blocking puberty and giving kids opposite sex hormones can make male kids *look* more like females and female kids *look* more like very short males. The MtF kids that most people seem to think are most in need to this will not be biologically female during or after these treatments. They *are* distinguishable from their female peers in that they do not cycle, cannot conceive, cannot experience sexual pleasure with a partner, and need lifelong medical treatment to keep the charade going and deal with its many side effects. I do not believe this is a choice that teenagers are equipped to make, especially under the guidance of adults who believe that looking like the stereotype of a female is the same thing as actually being female.
None of this is really true imho. They very much can and do change sex and life isn’t just fertility for Gods sake. They end up as sterile females. And tons of women on long term birth control or a variety of other issues experience those issues rarely or never.
The sexual pleasure thing is totally false. Where does this come from? Three studies have now shown that sexual satisfaction and orgasm rates for early transitioners are similar to other women and to later transitioners.
And i don’t see what an estrogen pill a day, post op and finished with their transition, poses as some kind of serious bar. I don’t know why so many GCs make these exaggerated arguments.
Medicine is good. Vaccines are good. Antibiotics are good. Surgeries improve quality of life for so many people. People achieve amazing outcomes with medicare and this one is no exception.
It’s not just taking an estrogen pill. It’s dilating, it’s getting surgery revisions because bottom surgery so often fails, it’s dealing with bone loss. It’s not medicine or vaccines or antibiotics, all of which can restore health or prevent disease. It’s using substances and surgeries to achieve a certain look, while creating health problems, all based on a metaphysical belief. If adults want to get a look at that cost, I’m fine with it. But we shouldn’t be telling kids that they can actually change their sex.
Long term bone studies find they remain in the healthy female range.
Post op dilation appears to become minimal or not even needed with semi regular sexual congress.
Sex reassignment vaginoplasty surgery revisions appear primarily to be short term things like granulation treatment rather than the need for major revisions. And PPT vaginoplasty for early transition seems to have very low complication rates overall, and is the same surgery women with some forms of MRKH have.
And I think if you argue thru haven’t actually changed sex, then the real meaning of that argument is that being female or a woman is a meaningless technicality rather than a holistic physical and social reality, because by any even modestly plausible definition those early transitioners are not distinguishable from other women 99.99 situations out of 100.
I will admit that I find denying early hormonal transition to MtF youth to be almost incalculably tragic and brutal.
Incalculably tragic and brutal— I feel the same way about doing these interventions as you do about not doing them. I cannot understand how adults could be so sure about a what is right for gender non-conforming boy, as there is no way to tell so early on. I assert that most of them will probably grow up to be feminine gay men, if left alone. I know I want them to grow up with healthy bodies.
We are going to have to agree to strongly disagree.
I would like to see us hold the liberal media for refusing over and over again to tell the truth about genderwoo. We shouldn't ever let them forget it. When press figures are interviewed--executives at media outlets and so forth--they should be questioned on all they got wrong or failed to tell the full truth, preferring instead a biased narrative. And I would like to see Republicans make good on their campaign threat to open an investigation into kiddie sex changes. So far that ain't happening.
Some considerations: insurance coverage is half to blame. Had academia/„science“ not claimed these interventions to be medically necessary, the numbers of victims, and the movement would have been much smaller. Government didn’t help by requiring all insurance to cover all the same things (i.e. without so much regulation, private insurers could offer policies without gender „care“ coverage. That would put some negative pressure on this industry). The other important thing is that we should not let the backlash restrict speech or expression, as has been happening in some European countries (for example in Hungary). Gender critical advocacy must concentrate on condemning bad actions only, not speech or expression.
Good question!
Personally, I don't like that this had to come to state-level bans and litigation and whatnot, but the upside is that more people feel empowered to speak openly against gender ideology--and are secure in doing so. The power of the gender jihadists to take away people's jobs, housing, and educational opportunities, although still too strong in my mind, is waning. The more of us who can express opposition, the fewer of us who will suffer censure for doing so.
And that's how I want the future to look. Robust discussion and examination, subjecting gender ideology to the scrutiny that should have been applied fifteen years ago. Late is better than never.
Litigation gets a bad rap because of the cartoon version ("ambulance chasers" "jackpot justice" etc) that dominated politically in the 90s-early 2000s, but there is a strong record of litigation as a gap-filler when legislation fails. Legislation is supposed to anticipate harm, regulate risky behavior, and update rules through societal and technological changes. In practice, this can fail because of things like regulatory capture, political paralysis, lack of foresight or unintended consequences, failure to respond if something changes rapidly, or perverse incentives not to act. Civil litigation can jump into the vacuum and become the mechanism for surfacing invisible or ignored harms, forcing disclosure through discovery, or incentivising changed behavior prior to formal regulation. This is exactly what happened with asbestos, tobacco, defective medical devices, unsafe cars, and—yes—scalding coffee. Btw, the documentary Hot Coffee is excellent and makes this point. Anyway, this is my long-winded college professor-y way of saying that I think the coming wave of litigation over pediatric gender medicine is going to cause a tidal shift, and will ultimately result in legislation.
Along with litigation, I wish that we didn’t even need legislation. I wish that scientists and doctors and teachers hadn’t been cowed into silence or going along to get along. I wish that a culture of open debate and looking at the facts and ethics had resolved this before legislation was needed. Here we are.
WHO is doing all this cowing? WHERE can we find this circe who has escaped her island? WHY were they all so ready to mop and eat grass? HOW can we ever trust any of them again? WHEN are we going to realize this?
THESE are the questions my teachers taught me two ask, in particular two who are now dead, which to me goes a long way toward explaining why THIS has all happened, because THEY would not let it pass.
i am so done with it like just say it we need a new everyone.
I'm not knocking litigation in general--Obergefell, anyone?--but I'd prefer if Americans could get closer to a consensus rather than just conflict. I realize that consensus is even harder to achieve than compromise, but I can hope.
While I hope, though, I don't mind using the courts. Gender ideologues certainly haven't shied away from them.
The problem is, those lawsuits cost us money instead of the medical and mental health professionals who screwed over the kids. We all pay the bill, either in higher co-pays or higher insurance costs.
I'd rather have a direct feedback to the individuals who choose to participate in that despicable industry. Maybe there's some way we can legislate that medical malpractice not cover these elective sex mimicry surgeries.
But grandfather in the victims… without malpractice insurance, who will be able to compensate them?
Great observation, and litigation as "gap-filler" is a great way to put this. Ultimately, of course, we do need to replace misguided laws (and in some cases, as in NY, constitutional provisions) and restore norms that greased the wheels of our society but have now been broken. It's going to be a long-term project.
There have been many moments in my personal/professional life, and in history, where I wish I had gone to law school and become a lawyer. This is one of them.
i want to subject every single person at every university and hospital in the country who stamped their stamp on research or medical forms related to this business to a scrutiny as sharp as a scalpel, and as hot as an infection.
My perspective is shaped by five years of intense clinical work with trans identifying teens, young adults, and their parents. Another very important aspect of my work has been in teaching and mentoring other clinicians who are willing to do this work but haven’t had the kind of support that it takes to sit in extreme tension with these very fragile (and brittle) kids day in and day out.
What I think of as “traditional” psychotherapy (neither gender affirming nor gender critical, but rather inviting and embracing complexity) requires ongoing study, supervision, and peer support. The mental health professions need to take a serious look into how and why these supports eroded because when vacuums get filled by ideologies the most vulnerable people end up paying the price.
As the parent of a 20-year-old TID who has essentially been thrown under the bus by both extremes of this mess, I am grateful for your work, Dr. Goldsmith. My vulnerable kid is currently paying the price - a year and a half on hormones courtesy of a clinic (thank you, informed consent) with no medical or mental health background check. Experiencing signs of early menopause and more, and no improvement in mental health. Like many of her peers, she felt more compelled to seek out the medicalization because of fear instilled by the all out bans being put in place in so many states.
It makes so much sense for mental health professionals to examine why a more complex, comprehensive and self-exploratory approach has been abandoned, but how does this happen in a climate where the choice seems to be limited to two sides?
This is very wise
Therapy ideally should be neither affirming nor negating, but acknowledging
Changing gender (and biologic characteristics) to match is highly consequential. Kids and young adults who are gender distressed or contemplating transition need to be aware of this consequentiality.
A therapeutic relationship that doesn’t imply “you should do this” or “you shouldn’t do this”, but instead “if you do this (or don’t do that), here are the likely implications) probably helps gender distressed kids and their care givers make better decisions.
I am concerned that in an effort to be neutral much of the field of psychology, and mental health services “forgot” all that was known about child development. Perhaps the allure of medications as a solution to internal emotional problems opened the door within the field?
since youre in the field, could you tell me -- why do you think psychology was so ripe to be a medium for the entrance of this business into medicine? the quality of research in psychology is notoriously poor. to anyone familiar with it, really, the business which is the subject of this article is not surprising. it is just the most shocking example of an unchecked profession. can you explain why we should trust anything else passed along to medicine via the profession of psychiatry, if this business was rubber-stamped along its whole merry way? you will have to be slow with me because, i still don't understand why we are medicating schoolchildren who would, as far as I have ever been to tell, just much rather be running around.
Your question deserves a much more detailed and thorough response than I have the capacity to offer in a comment. Rather than scratching the surface here I would direct you to research the evolution of the DSM. Simply put, most people don’t understand what the document is and what it isn’t. Therein lies the key.
that is the non-est non-answer i have ever gotten lol
i know it must be difficult to accept the fact that the "field" you've devoted your life to is a literal fiction -- at the best of times -- which has now taken the seom-would-say-inevitable term into being grievously harmful and used to perpetrate torture, mutilation and genocide. those who would say "inevitable" would say so because letting say-so and appealing fiction infiltrate science has always gone this way.
i do not, however, have much sympathy, or any, because i took one class in your pseudoscience and laughed myself out of the room. it is not science. the standards are not scientific. this is obvious from day 1 of a freshman class. anyone who takes it seriously for more than a second is inherently a nitwit or has a case of arrogance so bad they something something shit from shinola -- and as a result, anyone who proceeds in such an obvious farce of a "field" is one of the few dumb or arrogant enough to fall for it. that, to me, explains why all of you are the way you are, and why this business happened so quickly, mediated almost entirely by you.
like, my god. your field came up with the idea "let's castrate children for their health. sounds right." no it is not on ME do to any god damn research in your gobbledygook book as to how that happened. it is for YOU to explain why, that having happened, we should trust a single other thing you or your ilk say. i know you CAN'T, because we SHOULDN'T, but i'd like to see you at least try, and you won't even do that. you are pathetic, ignorant, and PART OF THE PROBLEM.
burn your fake diploma and stop calling yourself a doctor. that'll be step 1 of rejoining serious society. good day.
I wish that people could listen to each other more deeply. Find someone you disagree with and start a real conversation. In person if possible. Of even find someone you mostly agree with and talk to and listen to them - because you probably don't agree on everything and talking about it and listening would be healthy for both of you. There is so much of taking sides on this issue and all the issues...and meanwhile families are struggling to navigate treacherous waters without any boats or life vests or anything at all. I speak from personal experience here. So many folks have strong opinions about what should and shouldn't happen with teens and gender. But very few people have been available to help me and my kid and our family navigate the day to day situations we are dealing with. And part of that was how little time there was for deep listening and so much time taken up with telling my family what we "ought" to think. And this was from people on both sides/opposite sides of the issue.
So please consider starting to be a more careful listener. You never know what might happen from there...
If someone who was anorexic came to you and insisted she was overweight, would you "affirm" her? Would you trust a physician or therapist who did so? Would you try to "listen to both sides" in that case? Or would you try to get that obviously distressed girl some help?
I find it gobsmacking that people can see the danger, the harm, in other body dysmorphic delusions but not in the "transgender" delusion.
Hi Lisa.
Both small-L liberals and small-c conservatives share an interest in bringing some sanity to the gender debates, and are experiencing different levels of exhaustion in managing the extremists on their own side.
There needs to be a forum and venue for people who aren’t pro-transition or anti-transition, but who are focused on better understanding what type of guidance and regulation will lead to the greatest chanve of each child experiencing gender distress to reach their maximum level of thriving through the remainder of their adolescence and well into adulthood.
So many of our discussions are bound by our attachment to process (Transition good!!Transition bad!!) that we lose sight of the goal, which is to release adults into the world who can have solid, productive lives that bring them fulfillment and which allow them to contribute to the betterment of their communities and to society.
“Evidence good, vibes bad”
Yes! Approaches that offer nuance are desperately needed. Otherwise it will continue to be extremists from both ends of the spectrum (often with little skin in the game) screaming at each each other -- with the kids as political footballs in the middle.
I am so glad you have brought this up. I am sure that it will have to be a multi pronged approach and there is much that we can do while the world catches up to what has happened. On a broad level I believe we would need to tailor what will be most beneficial based upon who we are addressing. Educational systems, the political sphere, the medical profession, therapists, parents and the young people who have fallen under the spell.
I am going to give this some serious thought. I am a parent of a young person whom I hope will wake up. I often think about how much money is behind all of this and how much goes unseen by all of those around me. When I try to envision the counter to the situation I often feel that if we could find a few powerful and perhaps wealthy people to contribute their voices and resources to this that we could accomplish so much. In the meantime the more of us that start thinking about this the better!
In my community my thoughts go to gathering information on what the exact situation is in the schools in my county; the exact narrative, what teachers are disseminating, the approach the guidance counselors currently take. Then putting together a reasonable up to date program or educational material that takes into consideration their distorted beliefs and offering a path out that will be palatable to them.
I like this idea. I am a former teacher and this area interests me the most. When I was teaching (over 20 years ago) I was never taught, nor approached with, the notion of socially transitioning a child. Now I have teacher friends who are expected to go along with a young child's social transition, no questions asked. This goes even further when teachers and school administrators are actively socially transitioning a student behind parent's backs. Add in the teaching of gender as a fact with books (the same teachers mentioned above were expected to read "I Am Jazz" to their first graders) and curriculum, and it is a real mess. Unfortunately we already have the next generation of teachers who were taught this in college and think it is the caring thing to do.
Another multi-pronged approach- the teacher's colleges and the schools themselves.
How do we gather momentum to start implementing on this? I like your thinking here, Lisa!
With the reclassification to "gender incongruence" assuring access to "gender affirming care", there is no hope for change, beyond limiting access of minors, unless the medical associations (and insurances) change their guidelines.
https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/gender-incongruence-and-transgender-health-in-the-icd
"Gender incongruence has been moved out of the “Mental and behavioural disorders” chapter and into the new “Conditions related to sexual health” chapter."
So a prepubescent child with "gender incongruence" now has a sexual-health condition, despite being years away from any sexual activity (one hopes).
I thought we'd been told that gender identity/dysphoria/incongruence was completely separate from sexuality.
Sexual health means sexed health, not merely sexual orientation health…
The U.S., on the federal level, no longer works with nor endorses WHO.
However some states are joining WHO from the state-level, in particular so far: California and Illinois.
Clinicians in the U.S. are still using ICD codes to bill insurance companies to get paid.
“Boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways.” That's a good start. I think teens should be treated as young adults who are contemplating significant issues. A multi-grade well-grounded curriculum on the sexual biology of humans, including the many roles of natural hormones in not only secondary sexual characteristics but also regulation of many physical systems. A clear and honest understanding of the risks vs. benefits of supplemental hormones and how they alter the natural scheme of things. The impact of surgery and the need for lifelong after care. All the risks and benefits.
Another piece would be wise counseling for confused or distressed individuals. There are so many styles of counseling; when I was 17 I saw a freudian analyist (not knowing at the time) who just wanted to talk about the father-son competition for my mother's attention. I fired him. But I would also say that standard CBT is not the end-all either. Trauma counseling such as Somatic Experiencing, Grief Education (for any losses due to irreversible decisions), and many other styles should be explored to sort out what is the most helpful for a teen. A piece on the process of sorting out one's sexual identity that stresses that this does not signal a problem: it's normal. And clearly defined boundaries where counselors don't push clients in one direction or the other about life decisions.
I think that the constant framing of natural versus unnatural is deeply problematic, largely unscientific, tends to exaggerate side effects or infer that the hormone receptors are themselves different. They are not.
and is the kind of rhetoric that also leads to people fearing vaccines and antibiotics and GMOs and isn’t a far cry from scaring people against anything but heterosexual missionary sex either.
Indeed this appeal to nature fallacy seems to be coalescing around anti vaccine and anti trans narratives.
I love your idea of a well-grounded curriculum on the sexual biology of humans. I can't imagine it ever being implemented. I haven't been able to convince two of my female friends that there are only two sexes and males have physical advantages over females. One is a scientist and both are very intelligent.
The new discourse I keep seeing more and more of is that there are fanatics on both sides of this issue. That some people take their anti-trans views too far. That we need moderation.
Very interesting. Is anyone else seeing this?
The older I get, the more I see people re-writing the past. To shape a sane future, I think we need to tell the truth and be accurate about the past.
So the premise of your book was that society doesn't have room for gender non-conforming children?
Maybe I grew up in some Canadian Shagri-La, but there were plenty of non-conforming kids in the 80's and 90's and we all just called them gay. Which they mostly were.
I really think people need to realize that unsupervised internet access is child abuse. There is nothing a kid needs on there that they cannot get from a book.
I also think the gay rights movement needs to go away. We can stop celebrating gayness. Why?
I have no problem with my gay friends, but I am tired of honouring gayness for a month every year.
They didn't survive the holocaust or get sold into slavery for goodness sakes. Kids dont need to hear a single word about it.
We will see I guess.
Yes, I do think the 70s and 80s had more wiggle room. I chronicled that in the Tomboy book.
The pediatric gender medical industry is on its back foot—many tools are available to reduce its size (laws, insurance, federal subsidies, torts). I’m optimistic about that.
But one source of the demand for PGM is being generated and sustained in our educational system. Let’s say a child develops a trans identity online or via social groups or from school curriculum. That identity is more durable and long lasting if the school changes her name, gives her binders, sends her to special counselors, etc. It’s harder to back out of it.
Because our educational system, like our medical system, is not centralized, it’s harder to make changes except state by state. I would like to see more activism to pressure state legislators to remove gender curriculum altogether.
I don’t agree we should teach the controversy (I see that as akin to teaching about flat earthers). Just delete it from curriculum.
It will remain out there in the culture like many other ideas, but if it’s not mentioned at school, if schools don’t affirm, then the demand for PGM might gradually decline.
A long shot, maybe, but that’s what I would hope for.
I completely agree, dollarsandsense.
At DIAG, we're putting together a discussion with teachers on the front line, who see what's going on, who are appalled by the curricula they're being forced to teach, who can reveal the extent of the indoctrination, which is profound.
Our X Space hasn't been scheduled yet, but it's coming in the next few weeks and will be posted at DIAG's website and also on Substack. It'll be live, like all our X Spaces, so people can participate.
https://www.di-ag.org
https://diagdemocrats.substack.com
Definitely want to know when that space happens!
Yes, and since many school districts are now hiding curriculum from parents, reaching out to teachers is key. As the Mahmoud case showed, schools move the curriculum around and/or bring outside consultants in, making it harder to know it’s happening. I do think getting this out of schools will be more challenging than changing the medical practices!
I homeschool my kid and we switched to Khan Academy for math this year. The math instruction is really good. But I started noticing that in the word problems, it’s about one third “he” one third “she” and one third singular “they.” Yesterday’s word problem also referenced “the year Latinx debuted in English was 2006.” Enough already.
Oy.
“Latinx” is just one more example of linguistic idiocy. Even Latinos object to it! Yet that hasn’t stopped the wokerati from insisting on it.
Yep. I’m a Spanish-speaker and it’s the dumbest word I’ve ever heard. I’m also from a very progressive US city and I will say this— I do know a few Latinos here who will use Latine for a non-binary word. At least it sounds ok in Spanish.
Well, yeah, it sounds ok in Spanish, but it’s still silly. None of the Latinos I know — and there are many of them here in Baltimore — use “Latine”. Only self-absorbed, sanctimonious academics do.
Yeah it’s definitely niche. And silly.
We definitely should not be teaching the controversy in elementary or middle school! Maybe older teenagers. Before that, a simple “boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways” as Lisa puts it, and then, if there are follow-up questions or comments from any side, “Families have different beliefs. You can talk to your parents about this.” This is a standard response that used to be common-sense, back when I was a teacher (not that long ago!) when a kid had questions about religion, etc.
I don’t get how people think this would work. Kids can know that they can act and behave a certain way, and maybe they even live in a place where that is legitimately accepted by peers and teachers. Not often, since the places with the most rigid gender role expectations are the most religious and conservative communities that are leading the charge against trans anything.
But in reality, they are going to be very aware that there is no substitute for being a man or woman in society and for the rest of their lives. Even if you account for sexual orientation.
A straight woman and a gay man do not have the same lives or bodies or futures, even ignoring reproduction itself. Same for a lesbian woman versus a straight man.
The genie is out of the bottle, and the fact you feel the need to completely hide the medical power of early medical transition so that they don’t get their hopes up, is inherent proof that this is real and not an illusion. You can’t say “you can’t change sex” and think they will believe that whatever arbitrary argument about a chromosome or gametes will be convincing. In real life they know that sex is and always has been about phenotype. Invisible traits aren’t important and the kind of sophistry that works online is ironically not successful at all to 12 year olds.
No young natal male who sees himself as female and expects to grow up and live as a woman will be able to be told “you can just be a feminine man!” as if that’s any kind of substitute. They can look up all the “dolls” who transitioned early and are obviously existing as women in a real sense, who can leave transness behind at their discretion, and know that this is an entirely different life and future than one where they can’t transition.
I get that FtM rapid onset issues are not the same, in some cases, and so this isn’t all easy. But it’s naive to think that gender nonconformity is a substitute for which sex class someone belongs to. You can’t substitute clothes for a body.
The comment you are responding to was specifically about how schools should handle it, where I said basically they should stay out of it and leave it to families to communicate their beliefs about metaphysical matters.
But you wrote a lot of interesting things here, although they don’t seem to relate to my comment.
One thing that caught my attention was this line: “They can look up all the “dolls” who transitioned early and are obviously existing as women in a real sense, who can leave transness behind at their discretion, and know that this is an entirely different life and future than one where they can’t transition.” Don’t you think it’s strange that the word “dolls” is being used to refer to these humans? Isn’t it dehumanizing to call them something that is a word for toys, for playthings? Do you think that female people think of ourselves as dolls?
Another was this line: “You can’t substitute clothes for a body.” No, you can’t. You also can’t substitute a medicalized male body for a female body. And I don’t think we should be telling kids that you can. It sets them up for a big letdown when they get to the end of it all (well, in truth it never ends) and realize the two are not the same, and that they have sacrificed so much and will be on lifelong medical support because adults did not tell them the truth when they were young.
I was only using that dolls term because it’s a common one. It is obviously a fraught term depending on the meaning, but “be a doll” and “guys and dolls” are different meanings than “plastic barbie” and I suspect it’s one of those weird phrases that has taken on its own life in its own context.
That said I don’t think your last comment is right at all. Someone who transitions at that stage has very much a female body. There is no essence of sex that is larger than what medicine and surgery can change, and at any level of real life inspection they won’t be different than other women. I think GCs ignore the real life scale of bodies of that out of a desire that it be true rather than its truth.
There is no weird GC argument about sex that is more real than the bodies people can medically achieve in real life.
In real life, in material reality, it is impossible to change sex. Medicalized male bodies may look the same but they do not function in the same ways as female bodies. Insisting that there is no difference in real life is silly. I have sympathy for people who want to live their lives appearing as the opposite sex. But when you insist they are the same, you lose me.
I don’t see how that is true or why GCs think it is true. Any difference is minuscule, e g between any number of sterile women or who have had total hysterectomies. And in what real life situations are any of the nanoscopic differences actually relevant? I don’t get it.
Absolutely both in the same category of female in any meaningful or useful ways. I find it actually baffling to the point of confusion that this is disputed so strenuously by GCs
Thanks Lisa. We hope it’s not quite as bad in the UK as it seems in the USA. Making positive change happen begins with bewailing a problem. As you say that’s easier but not going to change anything — especially when that news isn’t aired widely as it should be. Yet the plan you suggest couldn’t be simpler for schools: get back to basics. I agree teachers need only know and teach that: “Boys and girls can look and act all kinds of ways.”
And I agree that longer-term solutions lie in reviving the unavoidable basics of “viewpoint diversity, critical thinking, free speech, and constructive disagreement.” I’ve found it calms and helps me to read and learn the history of how we have grown that whole social justice culture thing. I very much recommend this more thorough (than social media offers) old-fashioned way forward.
It’s not just been a decade with gender identity but 60 years of race and gender. You can even track back 200 years of broad growth of cultural socialism (Eric Kaufman) before the taboo or sacred trio of race,gender and sexuality solidified into a secular religion. Aka the identity synthesis (Yascha Mounck) or symbolic capitalism (Musa al-Gharbi). That uncovers a valid starting concern for all good people but then turns into “hypocritical social justice” (my term!) as we find that the kinds of solutions proposed are very faulty. Well intended but they just don’t work; they often make it worse.
So I suggest to achieve those broad view (!) aims, it’s important for us activists to read up from and apply these careful evidence based moderately worded texts. Then to get the world to learn about the history and evidence of what doesn’t work and what works better. As you say, the specific topics and arenas like education, health, gender, race etc should fall back more naturally from this repairing of the foundations. All of that requires activist hard work in academia, professional bodies, higher education and mainstream media. Not easy!!
The top three authors and books I’ve valued are:
Yascha Mounk:
The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time
Eric Kaufmann:
Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution
Musa al-Gharbi:
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
Have to add one more book —
James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose:
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody
If you want a really thorough history and social science of it, you can join Eric Kaufman’s wonderful course at Heterodox Centre and pay for access to his 15 full lectures, the power-points, and the reading material remotely without the classes.
https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/courses/occasional/woke/
Some more thoughts here. I think that asking how to change a culture raises other questions about campaigning that cannot easily be resolved in a comment thread. Most of us, even the most brilliant academic minds, are total clutzes and amateurs when it comes to professional campaigns. As an innovating MH professional all my life it is only in old age that I've realised that there are very different skills to building a new approach or culture change. My own learning came through helping build an effective campaign to change the unfit global culture of sending separating families to legal systems as the necessary, best and (therefore) only option instead of creating a new culture of earlier health-based supportive systems for this known high stress event. (See https://twowishes.org to see the result so far).
The skills are more like great product marketing campaigns - like Nike or Apple adverts that focus on an inspiring vision but hardly mention the product or the shoe or smartphone's special qualities. A more common example of positive naming is in calling them "health services" when the truth is they are more like "illness services" or at least "healing services".
I find I only have a few skills that fit this purpose of fresh campaigns. So, as the critical social justice and trans activists MUST have done to be so successful, a network of highly skilled (rich) campaigners must have built and funded such a campaign to become as globally successful as they have been. Across the whole of our society and every one of its institutions as well as with the public and political opinion too, their campaign has worked like a successful cult does to pull us in to "being kind" and then to get activists into positions and committees to push through such "kind" policies with hidden iron fists and blindly unkind methods and results. Luckily, as we catch up with their brilliant but invalid campaigning, we can now show the poor reasoning and failing outcomes of the proposed solutions. The books I list give us a way to talk about the failures and to find more sympathetic, less belligerent words to make our case.
Underneath a fresh campaign you need a widely agreed policy platform for its skilful strategy, rhetoric and organisation to create cultural change and influence decision-makers. A huge army of diverse bloggers alone can never do the bigger job of creating change, "winning the war". But in some ways, we here are not needing to start afresh: we're reviving what we know already. We don't need the fully fledged campaign for a totally new idea. We're campaigning for an old continuing idea that most people have not lost from ordinary lives. We're pushing and pulling at an open door. Aren't we?
Though we are facing powerful forces that are blocking that door, I like to hope that the definite opening up of debate and discussion of the last few years will continue to put this crazy era behind us as other crazy eras have been left behind before. Maybe all we need is indeed to keep doing what we're doing already: 100s of us in every way and place we can, to read, speak, write, support and share what we think is "good stuff". If that is true, then the "broad view" you have repeated here is all the policy platform we need. We took it too much for granted. Reason and evidence left the "ship's bridge" as it has in political elections. We do need in future never to forget how badly we needed it!
In case you're wondering, you'll find the authors I like below.
To bring us down to earth about the challenge of campaigning, I present my own, this week's, failed attempt to get discussion going in mainstream media. Trying a more light-hearted "starter for ten" into the topic, I submitted this self-explanatory letter to a weekly UK-based publication, The New World. In other respects, I think they do a fine job.
I note that I could have but didn't attack the appalling jounralistic failure to meet even their most basic standards of intelligent journalism on the topic of trans: that is, when covering a topic, say "old age", to do more than talk to a few aged neighbours and edit their complaints into an article with a total absence of wider evidence, policy and context than the journalist I reply to did for the topic of transgender. Another senior staff member (an ex-spindoctor) in TNW dismisses trans topics because of his wife and daughter's strong views on the subject. WTF?! Here's what I wrote:
<< _Letter to the Editor, The New World_
Subject: We Need to Talk About Trans
The mixed reaction to Marie Le Conte’s troubled trans friends (TNW 469 Letters) points us to learn and talk some more. TNW seems a good place for that. I offer a “starter for ten” into what is a big complex field. A short fun video and a few questions for Marie, her trans friends and everyone else to answer and discuss.
In 2021 the finance officers of the UK department store John Lewis (JL) approved a considerable budget for one of their famous long adverts. It was for home insurance. Soon after its launch they withdrew the ad. It’s a great tongue-in-cheek dancing-diva style video that follows a boy’s gay rampage as he trashes the family home. Mother and sister watch on as his amused audience. The concluding message is: Let Life Happen. So why did they pull this delightful ad? JL said that customers might claim on their home insurance, taking JL’s advertisement for self-inflicted vandalism too seriously, when that is not covered by their insurance policies.
Watch for yourself the 60 second advert on YouTube [https://youtu.be/gJ3dua4F8T0]. It is great fun. But there are some other serious questions to ask. Apart from JL’s creativity and the nerdy specs, what licences the boy’s funny rampage? Does the ad also mean to celebrate gender nonconformity? If so, apart from the fun that they’re not having, how well do Marie’s trans friends think the ad represents them and that cause? Is this a world they want to see in people’s homes?
Given that JL themselves couldn’t rely on people seeing the funny side, is there anything worth celebrating for those who might take this rampage seriously? Would letting this life happen to any child or family ever be good for anyone? The nerdy delinquent diva wears lipstick and some girl’s clothes. It’s just a bit of fun but which, if any, gender identity befits this display of junior machismo? Do Marie’s trans friends approve at all, or ever behave like, this cheery JL version of their gender identities? Do they know that a day of delinquency is not the most harmful destiny some activists are intently offering gender questioning children?
Perhaps these cultural questions show a disconnect between what gender identity activists have achieved and what sensible trans people and their allies want and stand for? Do Marie’s friends see the potential for being badly represented by activists’ campaigns that are carried out with grimly serious intent under a gay rainbow and through worthy institutions like JL? Do they see how JL were blinded to reality by a smiling gift-wrapped activist ideology? Do they understand why robust challenges to this kind of ideological activism are called for?
But John Lewis were right, weren’t they? We do need fun. And we also need to stop short, start afresh, get serious, work and talk across all parties, get mainstream media to do its job, and all of us to keep a better grasp on realistic good sense. There are serious adverts to be made for the kind of life we do want to happen.
Nick Child, Edinburgh >>
As I say, that failed to get published or change the world at all. So it's there as a template that, at the least, needs improving. :-(
I think Europe's (perilous) experience with GD treatment with hormones and surgery, which began 15 or so years earlier than in the US?, should be part of our community understanding. See Evidence of Harm and Lack of Evidence of Improved Health Brings Down Pre-Pubertal Transitioning in Europe at https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/evidence-of-harm-and-lack-of-evidence?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=kggb0&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I wish I knew. Of course I have some ideas, but right now, I don’t see the path forward to any semblance of a sensible landing place. I’m participating in a small study group, reading Carol Tavris’s The Mismeasure of Woman, which she wrote in 1992. Given when it was written, it is part historical record, yet strongly resonant in countless ways with what we are encountering today. Her incisive probing, often prescient, astounds me on every page.
I don’t know whether this will bear out, but what I am musing on right now is the phases of women’s struggles to gain full participation in public life. In “my time,” in the early 70s, we laid down what we hoped was a sturdy foundation. Carol’s wonderful book, written 2 decades later, offered valuable reassessments of how we saw the issues in those earlier days, building on those gains. It was a productive discussion, and further progress in changing both laws and norms were achieved.
Today, in stark contrast, we are no longer building on what was learned in all those decades. Instead, all that history has been lost, and some of the worst offenders among those with historical amnesia are women themselves.
To get back to a reasonable starting point on which to rebuild is going to take several generations of work. Laws have to be overturned and replaced—and as Helen Joyce has often noted, this will take decades.
Harder still, the norms of behavior that guide us, invisible from view, have been shattered. This is why we are constantly having to explain and re-explain why single sex spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms matter to women’s full participation in public life. We never thought about why—we didn’t have to—the accommodations to differences between women and men were a given, understood without any need to think about them at all.
It will take a profound cultural shift, over time, to restore those norms—and to the extent necessary, for norms to shift, quietly, under the surface, to reflect changed cultural circumstances.
Given my age, I likely won’t be around to see any of this happen—which is “interesting” to contemplate as well.
If it is true as some ( many?) believe that Big Pharma did not just jump on / capitalise on an emerging ( now cemented ) ideological bandwagon started on US campus , but in fact deliberately funded many, many small LGBTQi+ lobbying groups over the last decade in order to create brand new life long markets for their drugs / surgeries then the root problem is not trying to have respectful “ debates” abt beliefs but rather a root and branch reform of the power structures , lack of transparency , accountability and regulation in US and beyond … I’m sure the powerful are content while we wrangle with viewpoints and ideas instead of the more difficult task of holding our representatives and their chums to account at the ballot box and in the courts
Schools: “Boys and girls can look and act all different ways.” If a kid expresses different beliefs (whether conservative or progressive): “Families believe different things. You can talk to your parents about what you all believe.” (I used to be a teacher and this was a common response to all kinds of religious/ political/ personal beliefs. How did this change!?)
Medicalizing kids: “There is no evidence to support this, so we have stopped this practice. We can offer therapy to help you sort out your questioning, confusion, and distress.”
Sports: “Male and females are different, males have physical advantages and that’s why we have different categories. You are free to try out for the team that corresponds to your sex. We do not discriminate based on how you dress or what you call yourself.”
Adult medicalization: “We can offer hormones and procedures to make you appear more like the opposite sex. You will never actually become the opposite sex and you should not expect people to believe you can. Many people will still be able to tell what your natal sex is. There are many side effects which will negatively affect your health if you go this route. This may be a hard road, but if you as a grown adult accept reality and still want to physically alter yourself (and pay for it yourself) then you are free to do so.”
Basically, I would like us to get back to reality, and for adults to tell the truth to each other and their kids, while still holding space for gender-nonconformity. That’s the world I want to live in.
So deny transition when it would be extremely effective at biologically changing sex and making them indistinguishable from the sex they transition to, and then only offer transition care when it’s too late. And pretend that this monstrous set of decisions is somehow neutral.
I do not pretend that this is neutral. I assert that it is child safeguarding.
Herein lies the problem: transition at any time will not biologically turn anybody into the opposite sex. It’s a lie to say so. We shouldn’t lie to kids. Blocking puberty and giving kids opposite sex hormones can make male kids *look* more like females and female kids *look* more like very short males. The MtF kids that most people seem to think are most in need to this will not be biologically female during or after these treatments. They *are* distinguishable from their female peers in that they do not cycle, cannot conceive, cannot experience sexual pleasure with a partner, and need lifelong medical treatment to keep the charade going and deal with its many side effects. I do not believe this is a choice that teenagers are equipped to make, especially under the guidance of adults who believe that looking like the stereotype of a female is the same thing as actually being female.
None of this is really true imho. They very much can and do change sex and life isn’t just fertility for Gods sake. They end up as sterile females. And tons of women on long term birth control or a variety of other issues experience those issues rarely or never.
The sexual pleasure thing is totally false. Where does this come from? Three studies have now shown that sexual satisfaction and orgasm rates for early transitioners are similar to other women and to later transitioners.
And i don’t see what an estrogen pill a day, post op and finished with their transition, poses as some kind of serious bar. I don’t know why so many GCs make these exaggerated arguments.
Medicine is good. Vaccines are good. Antibiotics are good. Surgeries improve quality of life for so many people. People achieve amazing outcomes with medicare and this one is no exception.
It’s not just taking an estrogen pill. It’s dilating, it’s getting surgery revisions because bottom surgery so often fails, it’s dealing with bone loss. It’s not medicine or vaccines or antibiotics, all of which can restore health or prevent disease. It’s using substances and surgeries to achieve a certain look, while creating health problems, all based on a metaphysical belief. If adults want to get a look at that cost, I’m fine with it. But we shouldn’t be telling kids that they can actually change their sex.
Long term bone studies find they remain in the healthy female range.
Post op dilation appears to become minimal or not even needed with semi regular sexual congress.
Sex reassignment vaginoplasty surgery revisions appear primarily to be short term things like granulation treatment rather than the need for major revisions. And PPT vaginoplasty for early transition seems to have very low complication rates overall, and is the same surgery women with some forms of MRKH have.
And I think if you argue thru haven’t actually changed sex, then the real meaning of that argument is that being female or a woman is a meaningless technicality rather than a holistic physical and social reality, because by any even modestly plausible definition those early transitioners are not distinguishable from other women 99.99 situations out of 100.
I will admit that I find denying early hormonal transition to MtF youth to be almost incalculably tragic and brutal.
Kristin, we are talking past each other.
Incalculably tragic and brutal— I feel the same way about doing these interventions as you do about not doing them. I cannot understand how adults could be so sure about a what is right for gender non-conforming boy, as there is no way to tell so early on. I assert that most of them will probably grow up to be feminine gay men, if left alone. I know I want them to grow up with healthy bodies.
We are going to have to agree to strongly disagree.
I would like to see us hold the liberal media for refusing over and over again to tell the truth about genderwoo. We shouldn't ever let them forget it. When press figures are interviewed--executives at media outlets and so forth--they should be questioned on all they got wrong or failed to tell the full truth, preferring instead a biased narrative. And I would like to see Republicans make good on their campaign threat to open an investigation into kiddie sex changes. So far that ain't happening.
Some considerations: insurance coverage is half to blame. Had academia/„science“ not claimed these interventions to be medically necessary, the numbers of victims, and the movement would have been much smaller. Government didn’t help by requiring all insurance to cover all the same things (i.e. without so much regulation, private insurers could offer policies without gender „care“ coverage. That would put some negative pressure on this industry). The other important thing is that we should not let the backlash restrict speech or expression, as has been happening in some European countries (for example in Hungary). Gender critical advocacy must concentrate on condemning bad actions only, not speech or expression.