When you see the term Gender Ideology, alarm bells should ring in your head!
Here we go again. Gender ideology. Gender. Ideology. Do you think you know what it means? It’s currently in vogue in the Americas. Bolsonaro put it back in style in Brazil a few years back as did similar conservative South American leaders. If you want a blow by blow history of the term, Sonia Corrêa wrote an outstanding article for the London School of Economics detailing the intricacies.
It’s been a term I’ve been familiar with for much of my life because when I was a teenager, my very own grandfather, was an accused promoter of Gender Ideology. The Brazilian Council of Catholic Bishops made the announcement that offering free birth control to women was an obscene form of Gender Ideology. Gender Ideology in the 90’s meant women would be permitted to not fulfil the natural role ascribed to them by Natural Law — and God himself.
In Andrea Dip’s words for Boell.org
“From his inaugural speech to the inflammatory messages from church pulpits and carros de som, Jair Bolsonaro continues in a supposed “battle of good against evil” and in the fight against “gender ideology”—which is a fantastical and flexible narrative created by the Catholic Church in the 1990s and appropriated by extreme-right politicians, evangelicals, and ultraconservatives throughout Latin America, the United States, and some European nations in recent years.”
Between those periods, the Spanish association of Bishops, decided Gender Ideology was, first and foremost, Gay marriage. This was the act that questioned the very reality of gender. If marriage, unions, weren’t exclusively for procreation then what is the point of being itself? Gays destroy life by destroying the meaning of gender and its unique purpose.
And now here it is, all over again. It makes me sad and I’m tired of fighting this fight, but the fight is evidently not over. Trans people are the new gays. The new targets of the fantastical concept of Gender Ideology. The best I can say at this point to our Trans friends is that Feminists and Gays are still here and fighting, so in all likelihood, you too will make it.
My Mazamet 
Same old, same old. 😦
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And as such, incredibly exhausting
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Sadly, some Feminists seem to hate trans people even more than the Catholic bishops. Human beings really are a shitty bunch.
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I haven’t quite been able to make sense of that phenomena. It’s some strange cognitive dissonance t work.
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I don’t understand it either, Pinky. I guess they just hate men and so transwomen are seen as men muscling in on their turf??? If that’s the case, it shows absolutely no understanding of trans people at all. Or perhaps it demonstrates a total lack of empathy. Whatever the cause, it has turned trans people into pariahs, even amongst those who should be most aware of their plight. Nasty.
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No, now it’s because you have men masquerading as women, even on the ball fields and swim meets, and cycling events taking the womens gold medals. I believe at first feminist were in favor of trans, but now they are facing the tyranny of men lone again, who now claim to be women.
This is actually the first time I’ve heard mention that feminism hates trans. Do you have any examples?
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How many? In how many sports have men displaced women?
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Google transgender cyclist, swimmer, sprinter, basketball, MMA fighter. Even inclusion must have limits.
In the case of the MMA fighter she broke his opponents skull. If the issue here is fairness who is standing for ciswomens rights? They’ve taken it too far and now don’t like the backlash. This is just wrong on every front.
Title 9 was a big victory for women but now once again, men can waltz in and dictate it.
Nobody really opposes rights, until they demand what is physically untrue. They are not women.
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How many in total? How many disputed contests are there?
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Does it matter? I thought you were concerned about the marginalized? These ladies have spent their lives training for some man to take their medal. Whatever the number t’s enough. It’s trending. It isn’t right. Isn’t that enough?
The problem is no matter how blatant an offense, if it doesn’t agree with your bias points you parse it up and dismiss it. This is as easy as it gets, so will you continue this tactic or just agree that it’s going too far?
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Of course the number matters! It’s the difference between isolated incidents which can be treated on a case by case basis, or a pattern grave enough to need alarm or general policy changes. Have changes not already been enacted?
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Your logic is flawed in this case. It only takes one to dominate an entire industry of sport. One tennis player, one futbol player, one sprinter, and one swimmer. And handling it case by case as of now is to cater to the demands of the trans agenda, offending the many for a few.
Maybe your logic should be to treat the isolated incidents of gender euphoria on a case by case basis.
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Lol! Seriously? Is that your take on statistics as a whole? To treat them with euphoria? ☺
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You always get dismissive when you lost your point. 😀
I’m applying a fair standard. Nobody gets special anything. 🔁
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If nobody gets special anything, is the standard a hormone level?
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No, I don’t think so. The standard is your natural level. Some have it some don’t. Not everyone has the same talents or genes. It’s the way it is. But across female and male sexes the levels are competitive.
I was watching Serena talk about mens tennis. She said if she played the men she would lose 6-0 in about 5-10 minutes. The competitive edge of male hormones is unfair to women and is disingenuous to think by claiming a mental state of mind you can actually be a woman. Everywhere but competition sports is this fine. No biggie. Nobody cares. You’d think the sensitive nature of the trans community would be as compassionate as they demand to be treated
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Aren’t you old enough to remember the Billie Jean King match?
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Riggs was 55. Are we going to judge women based on a fringe event that happened once to an old retired tennis player? One of the most skilled basketball players of all time skilled most of the Indiana Pacers during tryouts, but just didn’t have the physical stature and strength. Any decent high school boys team would dominate any wnba team. Same in futbol as that actually did happen to the national team.
This could go on all day, and if I have to convince you this is unfair to women athletes, perhaps your compass is stuck.
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No, not at all! What I’d like to know is if this is a rule? Can trans people compete in the Olympics? NCAA? Meaning, is the outrage honest or an outlier?
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Should it be a rule? I’m asking you.
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In my opinion there should be standards, across the board. Just like feather weight, middle and heavy weight. There’s no reason authorities shouldn’t be able to lay out standards for specific categories. Right?
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I’ve noticed these past few days with the “trans shooter” so labeled by Fox News is being criticized by other agencies for bringing gender label into the school shooting. Which is exactly what the other outlets do when the shooter is white, black, conservative, etc. if he’s liberal he had mental illness, if he’s conservative he’s associated with hate. The truth isn’t even on the table and they go round and round avoiding key words. The truth is I have no idea anymore and people are losing their minds over propaganda. Just depends on which propaganda stations suit our biases.
My pet peeve is unfairness. I wholeheartedly support trans being treated with dignity and fairness. I don’t see it happening yet from the other direction.
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At least some athletes are able to push back against the insanity. Of course, women cheering for females is considered by the authorities of weight lifting events ‘unsafe’ behaviour for the poor men winning these competitions, displacing females, masquerading as ‘victims of hate’. And the believers just gobble this shit up in their rush to elevate the feelings of males masquerading as females over and above the feelings of any females, especially those ‘hatemongers’ who dare to disagree that the displacement is somehow okay.
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Tell me, do you think gender or sexuality plays a role?
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Regarding trans rights (From Kara Dansky)
The US court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had ruled that sex means sex (not “gender identity”) under Title IX and that schools may constitutionally maintain single-sex bathrooms. This was a full court (en banc) ruling, meaning that a majority of that appeals court understands the material reality of sex.
The gist of the ruling was that sex means sex under both Title IX (“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”) and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment (“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall .. deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”).
Gender ideology attacks the very concept of biological sex and with great success in the public’s eye and legacy media but at the cost of muddling the concept to the point where otherwise intelligent and kind people presume and then treat the two terms – gender and sex – are synonyms. They’re not: gender is a cultural expression of masculine and feminine STEREOTYPES, whereas biological sex is physically immutable.
When such truth is believed to be bigotry – as advocated by transactivists and their ‘allies’ – and then applied to anyone who does not go along with the deception, many of these same intelligent and kind people are doing their part to create and fight a nuclear culture war that lays waste to any and all common ground of respect and tolerance of those with differing views because what’s true in reality no longer matters to those who wish to believe in the ideology and who then vilify those who refuse to go along with the faith-based reality denying belief.
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It is a rule and trending now. Trans did compete in the Olympics. Look up Laurel Hubbard.
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There is a radical ‘sect’ of feminists who are very anti-trans. I can’t remember what they’re called though. The really stupid thing is that trans women are not men dressed in drag to ‘fool’ everyone. I know a couple of trans people and they suffered agonies before finally making the transition. Hormones and gender re-assignment surgery is not something any sane person would do ‘for fun’.
The stupidity of the anti-trans movement is beyond belief. 😦
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I agree. My best friends son is currently in the process. It was years of frustration and pain for him. The only issue I have, is in physical competition it should be based on sex, not gender.
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Sport is something I stay out of. I mean, so many athletes take drugs or steroids in order to cheat, I honestly don’t know where you’d draw the line. 😦
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Here is a high-profile recent case to illustrate the issue. A single transgender setting a world record in women’s sports devalues years of hard work and achievement of all women in that sport. There is a reason why women’s sports exist in the first place. Something’s not right here, don’t you agree?
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Here’s an example of that strange cognitive dissonance hard at work, but it’s not coming from outside the trans bubble world and the activists who create and support the bubble world do not have to be foaming-at-the-mouth transactivists… just people going along to get along and pretending the bubble world is a reasonable space in need of special protection:
“Dr John Armstrong, a scholar at King’s College London (KCL), applied to carry out a survey of elite athletes and volunteers on whether trans women, who are born male, should compete in women’s track and field categories and whether they felt they could express their views.”
Well we can’t have that come out, now can we? So the application was denied. Ready for the bubble world reasoning?
“The language is not sensitive and the misgendering of athletes is not appropriate… there is obvious bias in the language and there is very little scientific reasoning underpinning the hypothesis.”
All of which unequivocally is not true. It is a faith-based belief in action.
The core of gender ideology is not about allowing adult individuals to live as they wish nor is tolerance and respect for transitioned individuals the goal. The goal of gender ideology is about privileging misogyny in the public square and creating second class citizens called ‘females’. They are to step aside in every case, be it washrooms, change rooms, rape centers, prison, and yes, even women’s sports. Women must yield or those who support women in women’s spaces be prosecuted for apostacy and treated as blasphemers.
Gender ideology is a bubble world of unreality imported to, privileged in law and policy, and then imposed on the public square as if reasonable. It’s not. It’s deeply misogynistic because it is deceit aimed at displacing females in favour of males pretending to be females. And its supporters will brook no disagreement no matter how powerful nor compelling the evidence from reality evaluating this One True Faith.
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This kinda shit simply infuriates me. I’m so sick of it–people thinking their way of life and of living is the only way and must be imposed on all others by a decree from some made up god. It does make one tired but we must continue to fight against this shit because it hurts people. I’m sick of it.
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It’s exhausting! And in 2023, we should be over it.
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That’s a very touching aside about your grandfather’s high degree of honor in being so right-thinking about contraception.
Catholicism has a hideous track record, getting worse by the day, and I know that from family connections.
Women’s and gay rights can claim many, many victories since the period in which we grew up. There are forces trying to reclaim history and send the world back to the 1600s, but this is a minority of malevolent idiots. A minority with an obscene amount of power and effect, at this moment, yes, so maybe the fighting’s only begun.
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🙂 My grandfather was appalling in many ways, but entirely committed to free contraception for women from when the first contraceptive pill was launched. And yes, it seems the fight has only begun. And we must keep going.
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Yes, my esteemed wordpress friend, birth family complications is a sore subject with me, but I’m paranoid enough to think there are some easy avenues for birth fam members to be kept up to date with social media divulgences. Can’t handle that – yet.
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Ā few decades ago it was “gay ideology”, now it’s “trans ideology” and in a similar vein “neurodiversity ideology”. As if a desire to be accepted as equal but different is both an ideology (really?) and harmful (when it’s the opposite). When will humanity cease treating those who are different from the majority as somehow having “evil” ideology/goals?
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It’s identical anti-gay rhetoric reorganised for the same purposes.
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It does not help the trans cause to have people waving placards advocating the guillotine for TERFs as happened at a demo in Scotland. Hate seems to run both ways.
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It may indeed be. The difference is all trans people are discriminated whereas the rest of us can find some respite in our colour, class, nationality or education. Their differentiation is such a slap in the face they cannot but live in that state of otherness.
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In the field of sport, to me, the matter is clear. If you have passed puberty as a male then even with the reduction in testosterone demanded by some sports bodies you will have physical characteristics which give you an advantage in competition with women. It is for that very reason that we have events for men and for women. I don’t see how one can overcome that.
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That’s simple, though, isn’t it? It means sporting rules new new categories, which seems to me perfectly reasonable.
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I saw your suggestion above wih equivalence to boxing weights, but I think the problm is that development post puberty gives males longer and denser bones, more lung capacity, and more muscle tissue than women, so if developing a scale of fair competition you would need a vast number of factors to be assessed which i cannot see being workable. But if it could work, then you would inevitably end up with trans women only competitions as the weight, height, etc factors build in.
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But couldn’t equivalencies be created? Of people with X bone mass and Y weight?
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The biological differences are vast because the development of human males and females is vastly different.
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Thus making humans unable to calculate?
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Calculating accurately relies on numbers that, in this case, would have to match to reality. Because gender is not real, what is being measured must be SEX differences. And they are vast between males and females starting at conception. Trying to ‘calculate’ the vast differences as there were some way to overcome the physiological advantages males have in athletic sports by means of a ‘gender-based’ spreadsheet will result – if accurate and applied fairly – in that most discriminate of categories: males v males and females v females! And we already know we cannot possibly justify that biased result because it simply doesn’t fit the goals of gender ideology… to blur the boundaries of reality with gender-based terminology so that males can pretend to be females in order to displace girls and women from their protected spaces and do it in the name of ‘trans rights’ and ‘kindness’.
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I don’t know enough to judge, but I suspect that the factors would differ widely from sport to sport and that, as I say, once you go for competition you end up with trans entrants only.
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American Journal of Human Biology:
“Overall, 76%–88% of the strength assessments were greater in males than females with pair-matched muscle thickness, regardless of contraction types (i.e., isotonic, isometric, isokinetic). Additionally, males in the lightest weight division in the IPF largely outperformed females in heavier weight divisions.”
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Which means an equivalence can be accurately calculated?
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Yes, male v male and female v female. That covers your concern about equivalency. Equivalency, however, is not the point. Neither is fairness. It’s about displacing women.
So, sure, why not an open class – so that athletes can compete fairly amongst their peers regardless of sex? Why the moral imperative to displace females only by transitioned men? Where oh where are the transitioned females displacing men? Oh right… only transitioned men are truly women and not transitioned women really men, I guess. At least, not in the athletic world. I wonder why? Perhaps it’s a Deep Mystery that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with physical advantages these transitioned men wish to wield to displace women.
Note that under US Rowing rules, transitioned men can replace any female rowers in female boats they want… so-called rights donchaknow… but then… suddenly!… sex comes to the forefront and female rowers must be of the female sex only to row in mixed boats! Funny that. (Yeah, no misogyny going on here at all! No, really. It must be a complete coincidence because we must believe there can be no bias whatsoever – just kindness – privileging transitioned men.)
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Have you ever heard of a handicap in golf? That adjusts ability and position. Or do they not have that in Canada?
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Ever heard of biological sex or do they not have that in France?
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Do you genuinely mean we can’t organise an equivalence?
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Correct. The differences are too vast and in every way. Again, though, by all means create an open category that is not sex based and that’s fine. Let people compete against other people. But don’t pretend transitioned men are women, displace women and think it’s ‘fair’ or ‘unbiased’ when it is misogyny in action, and call those who want sex-based fairness to remain the standard bigots and transphobes for recognizing these very real and biologically based differences (everything from oxygenation to tendon strength to twitch rate and so on). The truth is that males cannot become females no matter what words one tries to use to alter this reality.
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From a parent of mtf autistic son:
“After taking hormones, your appearance has diminished: weight gain, unflattering looking clothes, and gynecomastia.
Your anxiety persists, and you’ve added depression and fatigue on top of that. You were healthier and more mentally balanced just a few years ago in high school.
HRT destroys sexual function and increases the likelihood of heart attack, blood clot, stroke, and dementia. You have likely sacrificed your fertility—but you could restore sexual function and sidestep health risks if you stop wrong sex hormones.
You are being manipulated and treated cruelly by people who are duping you to believe you can change your sex, and these people pad their bank account with you as a lifelong medical patient.”
Gender ideology is as cruel as it is untrue. And it reduces individuals to believing in stereotypical roles. Move past this. The solution is incredibly simple: just don’t lie. Don’t go along with lies. Don’t be fooled by the substituted and often mandated language and don’t use it. Don’t submit to lying on behalf of gender ideologues thinking yourself as ‘kind’. It’s a honey trap.
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HRT has helped women for decades. Ever read about that?
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Post menopausal women, yes, but not developing youngsters. That’s just a large scale experiment elevating significant known risks, guaranteeing sterility and life long medicalization. For what? Pretending to be something one is not.
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It’s just sad. From the time I was small, I never understood hate or controlling people because of one’s own fear of ‘different.’ Later in life in my 40’s, my dad (father of 7) confessed to me that he had always been gay. But born in 1921, he just couldn’t come out. And when he mentioned his special friend, it made SO much sense. Live and let live, people. Come on. Diversity makes the world interesting.
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And he wasn’t alone. I’ve met more men than I could count from that generation. Many (most) married to the end. That’s how society was.
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Sadly yes.
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Yes, alarm bells should go off because you’re about to enter the Twilight Zone of unreality where you will encounter people who actually believe their beliefs can magically alter the reality of physiological differences and development in biological sex. And the first order of business is to alter the meaning of words to make the core idea appear reasonable in theory when it’s batshit crazy in practice.
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Define gender ideology?
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In action? Here.
Oh goodie… a word game! Let’s argue about critical theory definitions, Pink. Or cut to chase and state gender ideology is all about believing that gender is real. That’s the lie: to say or write something that you know is not true.
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You mean gender is not real?
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Yes, gender is not real. It is a belief in the cultural expressions of masculine and feminine stereotypes as if real… you know the VERY stereotypes that were fought tooth and nail by early feminism resulting in ACTUAL civil rights progress towards legal equality. But today’s regressive ‘progressives’ think themselves ever so enlightened and liberal by trying to turn back the clock a century and pretend these stereotypes are now real. It’s bullshit all the way down and requires belief of the religious kind to maintain in the face of reality.
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🙂 So you never heard of Magnus Hirschfeld?
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An early sex researcher is as far as I know. What does this have to do with the delusional belief that gender is real but physiological sex is an ‘assigned’ construct?
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An early sex researcher who already then understood the complexities of gender. Whether we’re talking about stereotypes and if people should or shouldn’t embrace them, that’s ultimately up to them. In regards to children, we’re talking about teenagers who are actively pursuing treatment. Something I’m fairly certain no one takes lightly. There’s no planet in which you’d be able to “influence” someone into going through a gruelling process unless there’s a major impulse to do it. I’ve never questioned my gender. Have you? Your wife? Children? I never considered doing drag after watching the Birdcage or Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert. It
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Humour me, Pink, and presume you have to use a better word than ‘gender’ because it makes zero sense to me.
The SEX researcher you mention is presumably all about GENDER. Not that I’m aware of. I see no connection beyond understanding cultural expressions of masculine and feminine were once much more dominant and discriminatory. Of greater concern were the sexual preferences of people that if made public really did curtail people into certain roles and cause a vast amount of repression and motivated a lot of self harm. I understand all that. That’s as far as I can see with the reference you make here, which was never in question. Equality rights in liberal democracies has progressed to the point where race, SEX, sexual preferences, and so on, are specifically PROHIBITED in law from being used to show discrimination based on this history and understanding. But I fail to grasp any link with today’s practice of gender ideology.
Now, all of a sudden, we’re subject to those who insist we must go backwards in time in order to be kind, in order to be ‘woke’ in the sense of becoming aware of discrimination, and PRIVILEGE race in law and policy, PRIVILEGE gender-substituted-for-sex, PRIVILEGE queer-in-place-of-sexual-preferences, and so on. It’s all critical theory being imposed on all of us through the hostile takeover of the Academy by those who presume post modernism offers to lead society to a better place in the form of Critical Theory that does nothing in reality but motivate people to tear down and destroy all it touches using newspeak to blur the boundaries and take over the language of truth and replace it with the language of puritan ideology. And anyone who calls out those who question this regression to wait one second and collectively THINK about what harm we’re doing to the foundational core principles of liberal democracy from which our rights come, are vilified as Very Bad People who espouse blasphemy and whose words of criticism cause ‘harm’.
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And I don’t think it’s going backward to allow each person to experience whatever they feel they need to experience. I wouldn’t do religion, or dress like it’s the 1950s. I wouldn’t join the Rotary or a golf club. But if someone calls themself a pastor, however meaningless it is to me, I’ll respect their vision that it means something to them.
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You’ve got the concern backwards: nobody should care what someone might wants to be even if it is delusional and not true. That’s not the issue. Under liberalism, one is as free to express themselves as they grant to anyone else. Fine.
The concern, however, is raised when we are being COMPELLED to go along with the belief or lie as if true, as if real. It is a concern when policies and laws and practices are changed to privilege the belief or lie as if true. And the concern becomes even more important when the compelling becomes treated as if a moral virtue, a tribal virtue signal if you will, and those who raise the concern I’ve listed are by this action of immoral and prejudiced character. That is not just anti-liberal; it’s totalitarian.
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How does that work, for example, for Madame la Marquise? Or the King of Tonga?
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How does being compelled work? You’re going to have to clarify what you mean, Pink. Sorry.
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Self identification is a massive part of our lives. I’m all sorts of things based on my vision of myself. And that vision then extends to the circle I interact with. We don’t go around deconstructing other people. If someone says they’re blonde we don’t then lower their pants to check if it’s “natural”. So the word compelled is an exaggeration. We politely accept each other’s right to space.
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No, compelled is the correct term when it becomes the case that not going along with ‘self identification’ delusion by law, policy, and practice involves very real punishments. Notice that the delusion is justified not by reality but by using the newspeak terms of gender ideology. But notice also, please, that this is demanded when it comes to ‘gender’ identification but absolutely rejected if it involves, say, race or ethnicity. You can’t identify outside your race or ethnicity but can identify outside your sexual biology. This special pleading only on behalf of ‘gender identity’ reveals in part the hypocrisy/incoherence of the reasoning that promotes critical theory identity and the associated authoritarianism to sustain it.
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I really don’t see the issue with people identifying in whichever way makes life easier for them. If sports and children were removed from the equation, would you then be at ease?
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I’m a fan of equality rights. And freedom of expression. People can identify however they wish. Not my concern. Just don’t presume it’s a higher moral road to force others – especially regarding children – to go along with a lie. That’s not okay.
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If that’s a yes, then I think you’ve got a much more reasonable proposition.
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If this were a population over the age of 25 and not trying to sell and then act on an ideology that displaces biological reality, then sure.
But this is not the case.
My ease having absolutely no relevance whatsoever, the fact is that medical establishments are assuming their conclusions based on a belief system that is at the very least at odds with reality and then acting on these beliefs in ways that produce way too much harm, especially to THE most vulnerable population that does not possess informed consent.
Just trying to understand what the hell is going on with children and gender dysphoria should be central to any actions taken on behalf of addressing it. Yet here we are, 6 years into a medical transitioning approach, that doesn’t even know this much but is sailing ahead and doubling down on ‘treating’ gender dysphoria the same way: by medicalizing it and making it SEEM like reasonable and rational approach.
Here’s the latest. And already the calls to dismiss this research as ‘hate’ and the authors motivated by ‘bigotry’ causing ‘harm’ to the children seeking lifelong medicalization for a temporary diversion during puberty are gathering steam from the self righteous ideologues who seem unable to brook any diversion from the One True Faith as immoral blasphemy. But if a majority of, say, liposuction clients were DIAGNOSED with anorexia, in what fucking sane universe would people go along with thinking liposuction was the ‘best’ treatment? That’s what we have with ‘gender dysphoria’; the majority of youths who are already DIAGNOSED autistic. AND we know there is a higher success rate dispelling the dysphoria by doing… nothing. But chemical castration, sterility, HRT on developing bodies, surgical mutilations, high risk low yield grafts, and so on. That success rate of not doing any of this, however, is even higher with watchful waiting under medical supervision. So what the fuck are we doing to kids and how can any sane and rational person aware of what’s actually true in reality go along with this medicalized travesty?
Gender ideology is batshit crazy from start to finish. It is regressive and oppressive. It is also a lie. But if some informed adults want to alter their bodies this way, then fine. It’s not my business as long as they don’t make it my business.
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I love that you included a study! Any thoughts on the numbers?
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Look at Table 2: mental health issues preceded gender dysphoria. Now look at figure 3: mental health significantly worsened for most after beginning the process.
These numbers indicate most cases today of gender dysphoria is a cultural social contagion correlated with prior mental illness and worsening social dysfunction… for a variety of reasons. What’s important to grasp is the direction of this process to diagnose gender dysphoria: first comes the mental and emotional dysfunction, then comes so-called gender dysphoria diagnoses and then the treatment. If this were true cause and effect, then the treatment should address the mental and emotional dysfunction with a positive correlate. Treating the gender dysphoria should reduce the emotional and mental dysfunction. But parents report it doesn’t. They report a very negative correlate indicating the treatment worsens the mental and emotional dysfunction – usually presented as depression and increased self harm – for which their kids were brought for treatment.
I am impressed by the courage these researchers display, knowing prior to the undertaking that they will be heavily vilified by the trans community and their allies and their careers will be put at high risk for daring to do actual research that produces legitimate questioning of what GD actually is. This research supports a significant element of GD being a social contagion called ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria) for which medical intervention is counter productive to addressing the underlying causes.
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Not exactly. You’re drawing that conclusion. Which is a spectacularly irresponsible conclusion to draw. Speaking from experience, during my entire school days, there was not a single gay person who was out. That number has changed dramatically now. And in fact I can show you how in a precisely parallel sense, the first generations of men who were openly gay suffered enormously from the pressure and discrimination we endured. So I’d suggest you factor that into the equation, then get back to me.
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These findings are similar to the findings of comprehensive reviews not available in the US and Canada and Australia and New Zealand… all of which refuse to do so. Countries that have done comprehensive reviews have significantly altered the delivery model. In the face of rising rates of gender dysphoric youth (now over 5% of the population of teens), we need more information and this is exactly what the medical professions are failing to provide.
So.
This study asks parents whose children have suddenly developed gender dysphoria rather than those who exhibited early onset dysphoria. So the question this study answers is: Are the concerns of these parents legitimate?
“One statistically robust finding was both disturbing and seemingly important. Youths with a history of mental health issues were especially likely to have taken steps to socially and medically transition. This relationship held even after statistically adjusting for likely confounders (e.g., age). The finding is concerning because youth with mental health issues may be especially likely to lack judgment necessary to make these important, and in the case of medical transition permanent, decisions. The finding supports the worries of parents whose preferences differ from their gender dysphoric children. It is consistent with another finding of this study that parents believed gender clinicians and clinics pressured the families toward transition. The finding is particularly concerning given that parents tended to rate their children as worse off after transition.”
Now, YOU might call this conclusion “spectacularly irresponsible” and assign it incorrectly to me, but to me that smacks of blatant denialism by you of what these parents are reporting from their highly painful experiences. No doubt their concerns – their lived experiences – must indicate bigotry, transphobia, and hatred to fit with the faith-based ideology that children are – in ever increasing numbers – born in the wrong body. Or maybe they’re not. That’s I think a very legitimate and rational reason to have caution about children who lack informed consent and err on that side rather than this medical travesty.
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I’m saying that conclusion is irresponsible in itself. Lgbt people, as a constantly targeted minority, are more likely to suffer from mental health issues. That doesn’t mean we’re idiots or incapable of understanding the world around us. Every argument you’ve made has a direct parallel born in homophobia. Gay people suffer more from depression, so why shouldn’t they just not be gay! 🤔
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Pink, it’s not that gender dysphoria leads to depression and autism; it’s the other way around. Also, gays and lesbians don’t have to cut off body parts and take opposite sex hormones for life to ‘align’ their sexuality with reality but this IS what many gay and lesbian kids are trying to do! You are using a false analogy because you have been duped into believing ‘gender’ is as real as ‘sex’. That’s the lie.
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Tildeb, I’m not being “duped” into anything because I’ve got an open mind. What I can tell without equivocation is that when you lay out an argument and the X is Trans, you should be able to, without issue substitute the word trans for gay. If when you do that the statement becomes problematic/homophobic, that means in all likelihood it’s a specious argument.
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This is one of the things that mystifies me: you cannot substitute a biological reality like ‘gay’ (born this way) for a post modern meaningless term like ‘gender’ (believed based on how well feelings match up with stereotypical sex-based behaviour). It’s not the right substitution, Pink. Try, ‘soul’ if you want a legitimate comparison.
The other thing is how advocating for chemical and surgical ‘therapy’ for those who suffer a mental dysphoria with their sex and emotional discomfort of their emerging sexuality IS – literally – a very serious kind conversion therapy AGAINST same sex attraction. It doesn’t get more ‘converted’ than this: physically transitioning! Why gays and lesbians aren’t in open revolt against this crushingly anti-gay movement that turns the bodies of those most likely to be same sex attracted to the ‘other’ sex to try to find ‘alignment’ is a remarkable state of mind to behold: the scope is amazing for self delusion (I mean, this is EXACTLY what Iran imposes on gays and lesbians, which should be a clue) and breathtaking in its denialism that this is really happening in spite of gender clinic staff TELLING us it is happening and detransitioners by their hundreds are saying this WAS their motivation for transitioning!
What’s specious is presuming the conclusion, that T legitimately belongs with the gay and lesbian movement. It doesn’t. It is its antithesis.
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Absolutely not. My definition of X is psycho-sexual identity. That means if gay, then also lesbian, also trans, also asexual. We who have feelings and perceive ourselves as not part of the standardised heteronormative rules.
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Here is Doc Cantor’s review of the AAP policy statement (2018) that directs pediatric ‘gender care’. He’s the guy I relied on to prepare for the inclusion of a transitioned person at the high school where I was teaching (I was one of three assigned this task) back in the early 2000s). Following his advice (because prior to 2014, this guy and his clinic was the world renowned expert and clinic for all things sexually dysphoric youth and children).
Note his final paragraph:
“AAP is advocating for something far in excess of mainstream practice and medical consensus. In the presence of compelling evidence, that is just what is called for. The problems
in Rafferty (2018), however, do not constitute merely a misquote, a misinterpretation of an ambiguous statement, or
missing a reference or two. Rather, AAP’s statement is a systematic exclusion and misrepresentation of entire literatures.
Not only did AAP fail to provide extraordinary evidence, it
failed to provide the evidence at all. Indeed, AAP’s recommendations are despite the existing evidence.
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So you feel your perception should override that of a doctor and their patient? And if so, in which circumstances?
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No, as I also want in education, I want best practices in medicine – including the AAP – based on best evidence. None of that is available under the current guidelines. Don’t you find that bizarre? Or did you miss that lack of credible evidence entirely in the link I provided to address your previous question about dysphoria being a mental/emotional and not physical ailment, which was in response to you trying to equate acceptance for same sex relationships with transitioning, which was addressing your claim that transitioning was like abortion, and so on… while you continue to avoid my responses directly and, instead, present ever more non sequiturs to the fact that children undergoing hormonal and surgical procedures to address some mysterious misalignment of their bodies to their feelings about stereotypical behaviours is rational when it’s not. It’s yet another in a long list of gross misconduct by so-called professionals operating under an ideologically captured governing body. The whole rotten quasi-religious edifice of faith-based post modernism birthing identity politics birthing critical theory birthing incoherent gender ideology is harming real people in real life every day while apologists continue to support the belief in belief in the name of some version of social justice. Some day I hope more atheists will wake the fuck up and realize what they’re actually supporting.. and be deeply ashamed of their complicity.
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Where we go separate ways is that I do firmly believe that doctors, people who dedicate their entire lives to study and service, do go on the best evidence to offer best results. You seem to think they invest a monumental amount of effort and money into their careers so they can go on to convince children t become transgender. That doesn’t seem plausible to me, given all of the available evidence.
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Then you’re simply not paying attention. In the 2018 report I sent you, you can see quite plainly HOW the world renowned expert on childhood sex-based dysphoria points out that the evidence used to support ‘gender care’ is a house of cards built entirely out of ideology and not reality. There’s the activism. The very real problem is that physicians, counsellors, mental health case workers, and especially the staff at gender clinics and wannabe doo-gooders at places like Planned Parenthood, cannot base any of these so-called ‘treatments’ “on the best evidence to offer (the) best results.” And the reason why that is the case is actually exceedingly easy to find: there is NO best evidence or best results possible for these interventionist treatments. It’s not there, Pink. It’s a gaping black hole of ‘we have no clue’. That’s why in every comprehensive review, the findings are always the same: these treatments lack good evidence and compelling efficacy. These treatments and interventions are – at best – completely experimental. And on children. That’s not my opinion. That is the fact of the matter. No gender care staff are working on best evidence.
So.
How is it we are teaching children at every level of public education that gender ‘feelings’ are true, that there really is this dualistic model that somewhere in the physiology and neurology of children there lies a second being, a kind of driver, responsible for ‘aligning’ these feelings of discomfort with the body – especially during puberty – to the point of claiming as if true that each of us really, really, really, do have this ‘identity’? That’s not best practices. That’s not best results. That’s fucking indoctrination of the religious kind using the same tools of religious extremism to take over the public domain and show legal and institutional privilege for ONE ideology, namely, critical theory. That’s wrong. It’s unethical and immoral. And going along with these lies is not being ‘kind’; it’s aiding and abetting a hostile takeover of liberal values and replacing it with an authoritarian regime of the mind. Doctors and lawyers and teachers are not magically immune.
No doctor to date has been able to provide any of these comprehensive reviews with compelling evidence in favour of these therapies and treatments. Quite the opposite. In fact, they stand in opposition to all evidence that is compelling and aligns with reality that the very best way through discomfort causing bodily dysphoria is puberty itself. That, also is not my opinion. It’s fact. These reviews not only reveal the scope and depth of the ideological takeover in professions charged with offering care but do so CONTRARY to best evidence and CONTRARY to best results because that is what happens in reality. This, then, demonstrates the extent of capture when otherwise reasonable people reject the very grounds upon which they believe supports the make believe world of gender.
But this is true of ALL branches of critical theory, which is why any of them is not only incoherent when put into practice but self defeating when it comes to demonstrating virtue… because any of them cannot draw support from reality to promote its virtue but must substitute belief of the religious kind in its place to accomplish this. And that’s why criticism of any critical theory branch is ALWAYS painted as immoral, in the same way any criticism of religious belief is almost always categorized as blasphemy from immoral people who must be motivated by ‘hate’. This is why we see the same charade, the same tactics, the same apolgetics, the same vilification, played out by gender ideologues that mysteriously turns these wonderful and kind believers into victims when faced by those who question these claims and use reality to arbitrate them. It’s the same game, Pink, which is why atheists like you should know better than go along with the same kind of faith-based charade that inserted the make believe world of religion into every possible nook and cranny of life for the rest of us and why we have to fight back and reclaim that what’s true matters more than demanding everyone goes along with and privileges what we wish were true.
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I don’t think it’s me who’s confused. I laid out a fairly straightforward equation. Who decides on the medical care of teens? Parents, or courts?
The whole rest of your comment is completely irrelevant to this fundamental issue. Who makes medical decisions, whatever their consequences may be?
There is no “gaping black hole” because medical associations aren’t made up of undereducated cretins. Over time doctors compared notes and decided that in an imperfect world this is the best we can do so far. I know you like grandstanding black or white monologues of certainty, but in the real the world everything is quite not that at all. And so each individual or their family’s must get to decide what works for them. No speech, no shows, no woe is me. Just people doing the best they can with what they know and want.
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Three things:
First, you ask who decides, parents, or courts? Where in your equation do children command this decision? That’s what’s going on and you seem singularly unable to recognize why this addition might be such a problem… especially for the kids themselves… especially for gay and lesbian kids. Nowhere do you seem willing to recognize this reality that children ARE commanding this path be followed nor do you address why this is okay and why it’s also okay for institutions like schools play along with a child’s whim while hiding this information from parents. None of this is okay.
Secondly, if you read what I sent you from Cantor, you’d see that the AAP was following recommendations from both WPATH and the national endocrinology society. You’d see how twisted the justifications are using research that often concludes the opposite to what AAP says it supports. You’d then understand why medical practitioners could easily believe they were not just following best practices but assume their governing body had DONE their job and were using best evidence to support best practices. You’d see why this is simply not the case, that CLEARLY there is an ideological approach CONTRARY to the best evidence leading to terrible results excused as being part of ‘informed consent’ when the shit hits hits the fan and another child is mutilated and sterilized.
Thirdly, why not have a comprehensive review? I have high confidence that such a review would reveal the medical malpractice currently be exercised under the guise of ‘best evidence leading to best practices’ because reality – and not my beliefs about it – would be allowed to adjudicate these ideological claims as happened whenever a review was implemented. Sure, call me asking for this review to be “grandstanding black or white monologues of certainty” but why not allow reality the final say? I know why the ideologues don;t want this done and I can understand why people making lots of money from the ideologically driven ‘best practices’ might not want it, but I think children who have no informed consent yet subject to these high risk, life long and sterilized ‘medical’ practices deserve better. Like having access to the truth.
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Ok, let’s go in parts. My suggestion that courts decide what parameters there are for medical decisions of children is primordial in this discussion. All the way up to the point where the doctor asks, do I save the life of the mother or the child if there are birth complications? I had a classmate in my teens who had a breast reduction because she felt uncomfortable with her size. Is that okay? How about an augmentation? How about a mastectomy in cases where there’s a high chance of breast cancer because of genetics? How about abortion? Everything rests on this. Who gets to make the decision, and when. Laws have to be universal, otherwise they are by their nature discriminatory.
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The reason courts get involved is because we’re dealing with legal minors… right up until it comes to implementing this ideology using medical services. All of sudden children gain legal majority. Of course this sudden change must involve the courts, Pink.
The same is not true for the other kinds of life long medical interventions you mention where informed consent matters. One might wonder why this exceptionalism for ‘gender therapy’ alone doesn’t raise a red flag in your mind. I know I do.
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I don’t think you understood what I meant about universality. I mean, for example, would the framework you’re suggesting prohibit mastectomies? Would it prohibit hormone therapies? Would those only be prohibited for one category of people? Or is it a blanket prohibition? Or are you suggesting a prohibition, as some make a distinction between elective procedures versus a procedure to treat a disease?
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I have never, ever suggested prohibition. I can say that with confidence because in extremely rare cases where all the stars align, the distress that causes dysfunction is best alleviated by sex change… even at a relatively young age. I know this. I’ve read case studies. These cases are known to occur (again, I relied on Cantor to offer us a path and so we received well researched and expert advice that worked seamlessly in a very challenging environment) so I’m not going to suggest prohibition. But I am going to demand a comprehensive review to separate the wheat from the chaff, the rapid onset from life long body dysphoria. There is a world of difference between them in reality.
If you replace the term ‘gender’ with ‘distress’ I think the ideological veil can be lifted and we can see what’s really going on and provide better support for those who need it beyond what one can normally find. We can see that the body is merely a selected symptom for this distress and not the root cause of it when we allow reality to arbitrate this claim, a distress which is almost always derived from an emotional, social, or cognitive conflict not in need of chemical or surgical displacement but by working through the distress rather than around it. I think this helps to explain why watchful waiting by these medical facilitators is by far the most effective approach dealing with the distress if – and this is a big IF – the reduction of dysfunction and the distress these can cause is the overriding goal. Take away the gender handcuffs to this distress that medicine today offers and let’s get back to following compelling evidence for best practices. Suggesting as much should not be seen as a transphobic crime but one that any reasonable, responsible, and caring individual should want for those working in any kind of care capacity. Especially for children in distress.
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I like your first paragraph. Of course I agree erring on the side of caution is best. At the same time there have to be degrees of responsibility assigned — and I’m not saying I know what those are. But I lean to a formula where maybe surgeries can only be performed at/after 16, age at which a teen can be legally emancipated. Then there’s the issue of puberty blockers?
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My concern is about erring on the side of natural development so I lean towards 25 after brain development is complete. I really do think we have 5% of the under 30 population claiming to be transgendered (up from .001%, majority male, now majority female). I think this is a case of RODG and not bodily dysphoria but without good research, we don;t know. Yet the medical community is rushing into affirming care and claiming this is evidence based and best practices when I don;t think it is. Hence the need for a comprehensive review. Let’s get these questions answered first.
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You mean a person can volunteer to fight and die at war before transgender treatment?
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And drive and drink! But not in the sense of a legal right; rather, in the sense of best practices… it’s better to wait if one wishes the best longitudinal results. And this is what I’ve read and heard as ‘important advice’ from many transitioned people over the age of 30. I haven’t heard or read from anyone over this age not making a living from ‘gender care’ that we should lower the threshold to Tanner stage 2. In fact, many (I don’t know, maybe from 10, 12 such people?) seem to me to be appalled at this recommendation knowing just how painful and difficult living a transitioned life really is on a day to day basis. So that’s why I think waiting longer will turn out to have the highest positive results.
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I totally get the turmoil, or “mess” you point to — but at the end of the day people get to decide on their path and it’s long before 30. Should I tell you of my parent’s choices?
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Yes, people get to choose, which is why after attaining adulthood, individuals are granted informed consent – everything from contracts to voting to whatever. But I’m coming at this from best practices, which requires informed consent as a fundamental baseline element to be present as well as offering best evidence of specific results to a clear therapeutic goal. This does not describe what’s happening today.
So adults can seek whatever treatment or body changes they want and I’m fine with that just so long as – like religious belief – they don’t try to insert and/or impose their motivations to be granted status and respect on me, on children, on public institutions, in public policy, in law for privilege and/or special consideration. That’s when I think it’s not just reasonable but necessary for citizens duty bound to supporting equality rights (that includes anyone who thinks he or she should not be discriminated against for immutable characteristics) to stop the incursion and fight against this compulsive demand. You can cut off your legs and insist to be called Shorty, but you cannot compel me or teach children that this is normal or healthy based on the reason that you were born with the wrong legs. And for any medical college to recommend that this approach is best practices based on your feelings I think is in desperate need of a comprehensive review.
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Psychoneuroendocrinology, Volume 87, January 2018 on this issue on the effect of of opposite sex hormones on developing brains (which is MUCH higher in natal males transitioning with estrogen injections than natal females transitioning with testosterone):
“One of the effects of estrogen is to reduce the water content within the glial or “glue” cells called astrocytes and the oligodendrocytes as well as the axons in the brain, thereby reducing the cortical white matter integrity in the brain. This is important because reduced white matter integrity is related to cognitive instability.
By reducing the water content, the estradiol increased the relative concentration of glutamate and glutamine in the brain, an excess of which, as the Cleveland Clinic notes, is associated with such diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s disease.
Estradiol also decreased the brain cortical volume, which has been shown to be positively associated with general intelligence (in other words, a decreased cortical volume will generally predict a lower level of general intelligence). Recent neuroimaging studies (in 2020) have linked lower cortical volume and thickness in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”
Evidence from the real world backs up these findings. In 2020, researchers from the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health presented their findings that showed a 37% higher prevalence of subjective cognitive decline, which is an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease, among transgender and gender nonbinary adults in the US.
Nothing to see here because it’s an ‘irresponsible’ finding, I guess. We wouldn’t want reality to interfere with a much touted, widely implemented, strongly supported and perfectly fine ideology that is ever so kind.
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The link between glial cells and autism is growing. We now know that misbehaving glial cells are the culprit behind a range of conditions, from autism to multiple sclerosis to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Astrocytes play a crucial role in memory formation, consolidating relevant short-term memories into long-term ones. This relates to the parents reporting increasing ‘brain fog’ of their natal boys after starting estrogen. Disorders in astrocytes are related to a wide range of different neuropathologies. There is evidence that malfunctioning astrocytes contribute to mental illnesses like schizophrenia, mood disorders such as depression and anxiety, drug dependence, mental retardation, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
I has been shown that the brains of depressed suicide victims had a markedly lesser volume of astrocytes than healthy brains. So, when estrogen reduces brain cortical volume and increases the relative concentration of glutamate and glutamine, not only do many neuropathologies follow, but the subjects also become depressed and more liable to commit suicide. This is not a “spectacularly irresponsible” association. It is what it is.
So although you would have us believe that depression and suicide among transgender people stems from their marginalization – which is a possibility – research from the past few years provides a more likely cause: after estrogen treatment, the brains of natal males gradually become more susceptible to depression and committing suicide. This aligns with what these parents report and research into brain development and hormones does not refute them.
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The WPATH Standards of Care Guidelines 8 document states in its abstract that its aim is “…to assist TGD [transgender and gender diverse] people…optimizing their overall physical health, psychological well-being, and self-fulfillment.”
If that is indeed its aim, then what we have unfolding is a diabolical failure in each category just with the physiological harms done through hormones and transitioning alone. Add the cumulative risks from hormones and surgeries and the need for life long medicalization, it’s a medical disaster. Add the psychological dissonance and declining mental health associated with the cumulative effects, sterility, disfigurement, and six to seven digit dollar costs, and we’re looking at a tragedy. And all of this comes from believing in and trying to make real a ‘gender’ model that is and remains a fiction, a fabrication, and covers up that founding lie. Nobody is born in the wrong body. And we are our body.
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None of this, whatsoever, is a third party decision. Put the word abortion in your argument and what does it look like? Can abortion be dangerous? Can it make you sterile? Is it controversial? Can it leave emotional, mental and physical sequelae? In what cases should a teenager be allowed access? Medical decisions and their repercussions are uniquely for the individual.
If you want a case to clarify the matter, it should be a legal case against parents who permitted medical transitioning before 18. This would force the courts to lay out the degree of parental responsibility.
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Again, it’s the wrong comparison. Women seeking abortion do so for a variety of reasons that all refer back to the physical treatment of being not emotionally but physically pregnant. They do not have to become medicalized facsimiles of themselves for life nor pretend the reality of their bodies is subject to their contrary beliefs. Women seeking abortions do not have a higher ‘success rate’ aborting the fetus while waiting. You are trying to substitute apples for the oranges of gender ideology. It’s not a physical condition but a mental and emotional state of believing something that simply isn’t true and then medicalizing themselves for life in order to try to convince themselves and others that the lie is ‘their’ truth. It’s insane.
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No, what we’re talking about is who makes the decision?
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You may find this story enlightening.
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Acflory says, “There is a radical ‘sect’ of feminists who are very anti-trans. I can’t remember what they’re called though.”
I think the correct term is ‘females’ who are concerned about being displaced and made subservient in laws and policies and practices to the feelings of males pretending to be females.
Very radical.
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Females like your friend the Arborist?
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I am against two things related to gender change: 1) biological men competing in women’s sports and 2) medical sex change for minors. Do you agree that those two things are problematic?
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Yes, of course.
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Pingback: When you see the term Gender Ideology, alarm bells should ring in your head! – gratismensch
Having a hard time seeing the fairness of biologically born men in woman’s sports.
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That’s a straightforward fix, isn’t it?
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Think they might be sorting it now, just read yesterday a new category was made for trans in one sport organisation…that sounds like a possible fair solution.
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It’s not going to be straightforward considering the debate about acceptable testosterone limits in women’s sports even among biological women. So, even biological women sometimes need to prove that they are “feminine enough” to participate in women’s sports. The whole idea that even biological sex is not binary, but there is a continuous “spectrum”, is an idea. So, I think, there is such thing as “gender ideology”. I wouldn’t label the whole term as bigoted per se. Surely, it is used by bigots a lot. But it doesn’t make the term bigoted.
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This is today’s gender ideology in action in medicine. Contrary to claims of ethical oversight and informed consent, reality tells us a very different story. This is an unfolding scandal. We are literally experimenting on children while the ideologues applaud.
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What do you think is going on, why is it so widespread?
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I think this is more a slow moving social movement. And I blame sociology!
(I’m only half joking here because sociology gained stature in academia by producing group based information used in a myriad of ways and to affect… from advertising to politics to social media algorithms. Very useful.)
So today’s version of Critical Theory – group based belief plus competing power hierarchy – comes from academia. It doesn’t arise from reality but is imposed on it – just like a particular religious belief doesn’t arise naturally from reality but is imposed on it by believers. The problem then as now is that groups were treated by this academic subject as if real things rather than constructs that selected common elements and that the individuals who constituted them were merely cogs of uniformed and homogenous group dynamics.
So you can see immediately why liberalism as a political philosophy justifying democratic rule that forms the basis of today’s Western Civilization – that the individual is the fundamental unit – is such a problem for this group based belief… especially when it comes to political power.
And yet the idea of constructing groups for a variety of reasons really does contain not just a kernel of truth in that categorization but can be used to play out to affect.
So this group based belief that the group is real and individuals an afterthought is the heart and soul of what used to be called Marxism in political theory: absolutely and utterly dependent on the assumption that certain groups – in this case proletariat and bourgeoise – were in fact discrete groups and very real. Hence the ease for genocidal thinking. But the source of the belief goes back much further, of course, to belief in the validity of any kind of tribalism, the fundamental group. And that arises from our social nature and is part of our evolutionary biology, so it’s got legs!)
We now teach subjects at university level that assume groups are real. Especially Teacher Colleges. This has had a HUGE impact spreading the ideology far and wide to entire generation of people now in positions of authority. Gender ideology (2000s) emerges from gender-based identity (1990s) which emerges from group identity (1980s) which emerges from belief that groups are real (1970s) rather than understanding that the selected feature is what forms them and does arise naturally from reality. But we treat groups as if real things. And when this done, very bad stuff happens, from tribal wars to partisan thinking to sub-human beliefs that create the Us-versus-Them belief that allows for terrible treatment causing real harm in real life. Any ideology that promotes an Us v Them and throws in assumptions about power hierarchies is a disaster to e plirbus unum. It’s a disaster for liberal democracy and a guaranteed path to mass tragedy.
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Wish we could all just get on. I don’t care if you have a tail, 8 legs and no nose!
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Precisely. Much of this is fabricated nonsense. I have no say in what anyone else’s medical treatments are or their consequences. Once we get into that territory, things have gone seriously wrong.
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This ‘fabricated nonsense’ is being indoctrinated into children using education to create activists. This is as benign as indoctrinating children into a religious belief to make them good little soldiers of the One True Faith, making it literally impossible to all get along.
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Indoctrination is when people only have access to one point of view. You can’t really say that about developed countries. Here you are giving your dissenting point of view, and people are free to read it.
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This article helps describe why current governmental, medical, and insurance guidelines are such a problem when the entire ‘gender’ playing field is titled only towards transitioning. Those who desist or detransition (remember, the Reuters study indicated upwards of 1- 25% do so… indicating just how little information we have to provide the basis of so-called informed consent) are left completely on their own, basically abandoned by every organization and medical practitioner that ‘helped’ in the transition process (which is horrendously bad health care). These young mutilated people are also responsible for searching out those few practitioners willing help them, and THEN having to pay all the ensuing medical bills personally. Horrendous doesn’t even begin to cover an apt description.
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True, it is horrendous. But I’m afraid I still lean to personal responsibility. At what age do you feel you were more or less responsible for your choices? I was an absolute mess in my late teens and I do feel many bad decisions rest entirely at my own feet.
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Sure, personal responsibility plays a key role making decisions. But decisions are based on best information. Lacking that, decisions are scattershot at best, especially by those who have been led to believe something in a highly biased and/or indoctrinated environment AND who are the most likely to be vulnerable to hoping for quick fixes to discomfiture. This is why teaching gender ideology in education is such a disservice when compelling evidence to balance the belief by reality (like biology) is discarded or made illegal or receives nothing but systemic condemnation and intentional vilification for anyone daring to question the orthodoxy… including medical practitioners. What kind of basis is this for making a reasonably well informed decision?
Hence, the need for a comprehensive review. Is gender ideology a reliable way to guide us towards a more tolerant, respectful, healthy outcome for those suffering body dysphoria? Let’s look at the evidence honestly. Let’s examine the real world outcomes when the ideology informs best practices. Let’s create a basis of compelling evidence on which informed consent plays a central role in decision making.
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Okay. Set all of that aside for a minute. If I told you, as a 15 year old, that taking a Ginsu knife to your little Tildeb was a good idea — what would your reaction have been?
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That you had mistaken me for being a Skoptsy?
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Out of the blue? You were crazy. After a dozen years of indoctrination plus deepening social dysfunction prior to when I was most uncomfortable with puberty combined with difficult or unaddressed mental stresses combined with disturbing feelings of being different because I was finding attraction with the same sex? Okay… you’ve already used the Ginsu; I’m listening. you and hundreds of others now love bomb me and accept me for questioning this suggestion and tell me how a wonderful new life life awaits while gaining undue influence in my esteem? Yeah… this might work.
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You genuinely believe there’s a circumstance you could at any point in your past have been influenced to modify your body in an extreme way? I don’t know, maybe I’m very close minded but I’d never get a tattoo. I think humans, animals in general (certainly all dogs I’ve ever had), have an impulse to maintain every part of us. No?
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Until we learn that sacrifice amplifies meaning.
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And I presumed it went without saying that for every operation to alter/’align’ the body, the same coverage and expertise should be available under best practices to return/’realign’ the body to its natal condition.
Also, notice that the ‘kindness’ meme used by the gender crowd to try to bolster social acceptance for transitioning is not just lacking for desistors and detransitioners but makes them into ongoing targets of what can best be described as hate by the so-called ‘vulnerable’ community of men claiming to be women who love bombs vulnerable kids to get on the transition treadmill as soon as possible. That support – especially from gender-affirming medical practitioners themselves – mysteriously evaporates not because I think each kid matters a tinker’s damn to this cohort of ideologues but because what seems to matter far more is swelling the ranks of the transitioned and staying on message or be emotionally abandoned and then vilified as a traitor to the One True Faith.
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Hmm… has anyone else noticed that in the branch of Critical Theory called gender ideology, biological sex is portrayed as on a socially constructed spectrum (‘assigned’ at birth, you see) but gender is not, that it is somehow an emergent property that only each individual can ‘recognize? In reality, of course, sex is binary with a small amount of intersex conditions (does anyone actually believe all these wishing to transition are themselves part of the intersex cohort used to justify the spectrum?) while gender is in truth based on masculine and feminine stereotypes that is fully a social construct varying by culture.
Now let us consider another major branch of Critical Theory called ‘race’. In this orthodoxy, anti-racism is the ‘cure’ so to speak to recognizing and acting on the hard boundaries that separate people into the appropriate hierarchical power structure. The goal is to achieve social ‘equity’ between them and any disparity of comparative results between these racial groups is evidence of racism. Racism in this orthodoxy is biologically inherited but only in the dominant groups, you see, and then expressed socially by creating ‘inequities’ that must be addressed upon society by anti-racism policies. In reality, of course, race is on a biological spectrum while racism – as expressed so eloquently in the musical South Pacific – must be carefully taught.
The entire social justice movement based on critical theory (I haven’t included Queer Theory which is just an incoherent gobbledygook of post modernism hammered into a Marxist mold to create anarchy and social chaos) is hypocritical even amongst its own branches to create the Just So narrative that must be believed first to then be imposed on reality. And recasting our common language to mean what serves only the orthodoxies is the only tool available. Disbelieve the terms, disbelieve Critical Theory and see the glaring incoherencies and incongruities upon which they are based.
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In other words, on the one hand gender (the construction) is real while biological sex is the construct (in every cell of our bodies no less).
On the other hand biological race is real (truly a spectrum for anyone familiar with DNA in every cell of our bodies no less) while racism is the construct.
The fact that ideologues do not recognize the blatant hypocrisy here demonstrates the lack of coherence in their understanding of what is being believed.
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Can I ask why you feel the need that a theory have your approval? In the sense that, you don’t support communism, right? But it exists and there are people who do. And they have their beliefs, their words, and they often try to convince other people of their ideas. And that’s okay, isn’t it?
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Like any claim, a theory needs arbitration by reality when it is about reality. Finding internal incoherence means the theory is wrong and that those who believe otherwise and then try to impose it on reality are breaking the use of reason to inform the claim and relying on faith. And we know what happens when faith-based belief is allowed privilege. So it falls on every responsible person who respects reason and reality to defend reason and reality against those who would do otherwise. Privileging faith in the name of kindness and/or respect and/or dignity and/or morality never works out well in the long run. But it does cause immense suffering of others in exchange for the believer’s own personal gain.
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That would mean a world where everyone agrees on everything, and it’s simply not that way. Within feminism alone there are 4 very distinct schools of thought. Which one of them should be eliminated or excluded?
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Not at all. We’re still going to have to defend against, say, flat earthers. But it also indicate that teaching children that world is flat does them a disservice and that criticizing it is just.
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I think a topsy turvy world is just how it is. There are people into Chinese medicine, reiki, people who thought learning esperanto was clever. When I was a kid learning Japanese was brilliant because they were going to be the next super power. Turns out the right answer is Chinese ☺ In the end people will have their paths and that may mean a ginsu knife if one is so inclined.
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I can live quietly with a tipsy turvy world and let people believe whatever they want. That’s all fine. But I have to draw the line when institutions drink the Kool Aid and substitute some unevidenced belief as orthodoxy and mandate best practices on it. That’s what we have with all avenues of Critical Theory implemented institutionally, not least of which is taking a figurative Ginsu knife to children because they’ve been supposedly ‘assigned’ the wrong sex for their natal bodies if they encounter discomfort during puberty. And we teach this shit as if true, setting up children for this mental dysfunction. This is just batshit fucking crazy.
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I guess that’s where we’re in disagreement. I think for the most part, in most of the world, there are robust protections in place. I can tell you that in the French media, Spanish media, both of which I read every day – you rarely even hear the word transgender. In the anglophone media it seems to be up there with the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine.
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It’s the protections I am advocating for… reasonable precautions based not on orthodoxy but on best evidence to inform best practices. And I think the way there is for a systemic and comprehensive review that, as you say, puts medicine at the forefront.
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I agree with that 100%. For the sake of succeeding in it, I would suggest proposing a straightforward framework that takes into account all your concerns. And being honest in it. Is 15 too early? Possibly. 16? I don’t know. Put everything on the table.
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An article well worth reading AND comprehending (I’ve dropped the references). It explains how sex differences through the evolutionary process IS binary and matters so much in understanding the importance of physiological development which has been crafted by evolution. When it comes to conflating sex and gender, gender ideology (like belief in creationism and just as ‘insightful’… meaning not at all) is fundamentally anti-evolutionary and deeply anti-scientific. It’s a belief unmoored from reality and just as immune from reality’s arbitration of it when doing so is called hate and bigotry and transphobic.
Consider (if you have the courage):
“The rhetorical contortions and inscrutable jargon required to assert that gender and sex are nothing more than chosen identities and deny what every parent knows require increasingly complex and incoherent arguments. This not only subverts the public’s rapidly waning confidence in science, but it also leads to extreme exaggerations designed to silence those who don’t agree, such as the claim that discussing biological differences is violence. The lengths to which many previously trusted institutions, such as the American Medical Association, go to deny the impact that hormones have on development are extraordinary. These efforts are also likely to backfire politically when gender-neutral terms are mandated by elites, such as the term “Latinx,” which is opposed by 98 percent of Hispanic Americans.”
So what? Well, consider what it means when children are indoctrinated by ‘intelligent design’ called ‘curriculum’ into this anti-scientific, evolution denying orthodoxy by a dozen years of intentional, mandatory instruction that demands activism from students to demonstrate their learning and understanding of it to receive a passing grade!!!!!!
“When children are taught that all sex differences are entirely grounded in mere identity (whether self-chosen or culturally-imposed) and are in no way the result of biology, more “masculine” girls and more “feminine” boys may become confused about their sex, or sexual orientation, and harmful stereotypes can take over. The sudden rapid rise in the number of young girls diagnosed with gender dysphoria is a warning sign of how dangerously disoriented our culture can become.”
Ya think?
How can anyone be surprised at this turn of events except by going along with an orthodoxy… not because it’s true but because it’s socially useful on a personal to believe in these lies… while simultaneously excusing, rationalizing, or perhaps simply not caring about the damage in real lives left in its institutionalized wake?
And the threat to gays and lesbians believing in the lies? It’s VERY real. And, like reality-denying religious claims where being seen to believe is the socially useful element, belief in gender identity and acceptance of it as if a virtue regardless of how developing bodies are mutilated in its name, causes immense harm. Irrevocable harm. As I’ve tried to explain, body discomfort for boys and girls who may be same-sex attracted, or who suffer the discomfort of mental and emotional dysfunction, being directed to gender clinics as if medically appropriate is actually an insidious kind of widespread conversion therapy that far too many adult gays and lesbians are championing as if it were anti-conversion therapy, as if it were a protection from abuse… all under the delusion that children self diagnosing themselves is a human right!
“Pathologizing gender nonconforming behavior often does the opposite of what proponents intend by creating stereotypes where none existed. Boys are told that if they like dolls, they are really girls trapped with male organs, while girls who display interests in sports or science are told they are boys trapped with female organs and born in the wrong body. Feminine boys, who might end up being homosexual, are encouraged to start down the road towards irreversible medical interventions, hormone blockers, and infertility. Like gay conversion therapy before, such practices can shame individuals for feeling misaligned with their birth sex and encourage them to resort to hormone “therapy” and/or surgery to change their bodies to reflect this new identity. Can that be truly seen as progressive and liberating?”
Only if one accepts the belief (of the religious kind) that gender is biological but sex is a social construct, that scripture is true but evidence to the contrary from reality is wrong. Such belief is a guaranteed way for us to fool ourselves and thinking we are being virtuous – and progressive – doing so.
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Tipsy? I mean topsy, although the faux pas is not entirely wrong.
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Why is a systemic review of gender-based health care so vital to the health and welfare of children?
“While the efficacy of medical intervention for improved outcomes is dubious, we do know there are serious consequences that include, among other things, reduced growth in height and bone strength and impaired cognitive function and development. One study found that drugs used for suppressing puberty in transitioning adolescents impaired long-term spatial reference memory in animals.61 For all these reasons and more, as SEGM has noted, England, Finland, and Sweden’s leading hospital, the Karolinska, “have all stopped or sharply curtailed medical transition of minors” recently. “They cited the results of systematic reviews of evidence that showed very low certainty of the benefit, the potential for harm, and an unclear risk/benefit assessment of the interventions.”
The ‘unclear risk/benefit assessment’ is based on slowly emerging data, that “transgender women were 2.6 times as likely to die of cardiovascular disease, 3.1 times as likely to die from lung cancer, 8.7 times as likely to die from infection, and 6.1 times as likely to die from non-natural causes as cis women. For
those suffering from cardiovascular disease, heart attacks were 3 times higher in “transgender women.” The mortality risk from HIV
was also 47.6 times higher for “transgender women” in comparison to “cis women.” Similarly, a recent survey of seven cities—Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle—by the CDC found 42 percent of “transgender women” had HIV.68 Contrary to popular belief, sex work and poverty do not account for this alone. A driving factor behind this is obvious if politically incorrect: the world of transgenderism, of unrestrained sexual gratification,
features higher rates of risky behavior, like condomless receptive anal intercourse, which is especially prevalent among “transgender women.” The CDC has reported that although the annual number and rate of diagnoses of HIV infection decreased between 2014 to 2018, the number increased in transgender adults and adolescents, with the largest percentage in 2018 found among male-to-female individuals.”
So why do we keep pushing this transitioning acceptance to ever younger and younger people? Well, the short answer is money.
This review (The Transgender Leviathan) does a very good linking why gender medicine and public acceptance for it is such a huge money maker that crosses the political spectrum and explains why we encounter from once-trusted institutions obvious lies, deceit, misinformation, disinformation and, prevarication, and an imposed ‘affirmation only’ model to force the ideology in otherwise professional services where good evidence for its effectiveness is missing entirely. Why we teach children to believe in this counter-reality ideology is truly a question for the ages that will rank, I predict, as worse – far worse an experiment – than eugenics or thalidomide or vaccines-cause-autism. This is a medical tragedy. For an in depth understanding, this report is a good starting point. The review, however, is not short but contains excellent footnotes.
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https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/feb/09/brazilian-butt-lift-worlds-most-dangerous-cosmetic-surgery
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Wow.
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Right? The statistics for many of these procedures are terrifying. The FDA’s safety equation is 1 in 1 million. If you only kill one in a million, that’s okay — but that only counts for medication.
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If you’re genuinely interested in a loving catholic approach to same sex attraction, you might find this article and episode interesting https://pintswithaquinas.com/what-to-do-if-your-child-comes-out-as-gay/
I think if you’ve had a personal negative experience with the church or religious family members, that can tempt you to become bitter and reject even the idea of a loving god, but that’s not the only way.
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