CNN’s Puff Piece on Transgender Issues

CNN has published an article on transgender that gets one thing right: Many more young adults are claiming to be transgender compared to only a few years ago. The title: “High schoolers may be more gender-diverse than previously thought, new study says.

This is a classic one-sided puff-piece honed to fit the prevailing narrative. Apparently, we can sidestep a well-established medical term “gender dysphoria” by simply asking a CHILD if they are gender dysphoric (ignoring the effects of social media driven contagion). That number of almost 2% number corroborates with what Abigail Shrier stated, when she was excoriated for suggesting that something ELSE was going on when there is a 4000% increase in “gender dysporia” within a few short years (and see here). According to this CNN article, it’s all supposedly very simple:

More awareness, more understanding, more exploration. One is that there is a greater understanding of the naturalness of gender diversity, whether that’s expressed in terms we use to define ourselves, the way we dress, or how we see ourselves in relation to our culture. “Being gender-diverse is a totally normal part of human experience,” [Dr. Kacie] Kidd said.

I have no problem with any adult doing anything they want with their body, sleeping with anyone they want, doing any surgery or hormones. But I am against casually expanding a known and useful medical term that only yesterday applied to only 1 out of 10,000 people, mostly males, claiming that it now applies to almost 2% of high schoolers, mostly girls, shutting off the obvious questions that should be asked about why this is happening. There are no mentions of “contagion” or “Shrier” in this article. There is no mention of the dangers of teenage use of puberty blockers and hormones (including sterility). There is no mention that therapists are being prevented from giving real counseling to teenagers who claim to be transgender based on “conversion therapy” laws. This article has been carefully pruned to make sure that serious pressing questions are not raised.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 11 Comments

  1. Avatar of Katherine V Albers
    Katherine V Albers

    I completely agree with you on this one for sure. Our 18 year old daughter knows five female born fairly good friends who are all trans boys now. We also have several more acquaintances born girls that are now claiming to be boys. I’m not sure what’s going on but it seems pretty crazy.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth

      Kathy, your story is one I’ve heard several times. A parent tells me that transitioning happens within social groups, that many of their child’s friends are declaring themselves to be transgender. That fact, in and of itself, suggests that social contagion is at play. Too bad that so many therapists are afraid to challenge the assertions of 15 year olds for fear of losing their license to practice for alleged violations of conversion therapy statutes.

  2. Avatar of Ruth Henriquez
    Ruth Henriquez

    We live in a consumer-centered society, in which purveyors of products and services are continually providing us with “options” to supposedly enhance our well-being. The notion that having unlimited options might not make us healthier or happier never seems to be considered.

    I wonder if allowing very young people these choices in terms of gender orientation is just another facet of the consumer philosophy, which is that people should always have choices and options, and never ever be made to wait for anything. But sometimes waiting is a good thing, and sometimes the stress that comes with waiting for something is not unhealthy, and might even (I’ll go out on a limb here) help to build character.

    I see no difference between this and the phenomenon of young girls being allowed to change their bodies irrevocably with plastic surgery, in order to enhance a self-concept that may still be in flux. It’s too bad the adults they seek help from cannot counsel waiting, and caution.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth

      Thanks, Ruth. I hadn’t thought of this situation through the consumer lens before.

      Perhaps what frustrates me most about this issue is that large numbers of people (including those with expertise in these matters) are afraid to speak up. Thus, it looks like there is only one side to this story, whereas there is an other opposing side in which teenagers don’t appreciate the dangers overhyped success of the drugs and surgery and don’t appreciate the risk of infertility, as held by the British High Court in the Keira Bell case. Also, God forbid that anyone in the media talk about the many young adults who have buyer’s remorse and the many people who are trying (many with intense regret about what they’ve done to themselves) to detransition. What also comes to my mind Abigail Shrier’s inside peek at what goes on at Planned Parenthood when a teenage girls show up declaring herself to be transgender:

      What was the mood in the waiting room among these friends? “Super cheerful, giggly. It’s a fun thing,” she said, a touch of cynicism whetting her tone.

      I asked her if she and the other nurses and reproductive health assistants didn’t think there was something suspicious about girls’ showing up in groups of friends for treatment—whether it didn’t cross the employees’ minds that peer influence might be at play. “It’s kind of one of those things where you just roll your eyes.” She told me. “The extent of our intervention” was to grant “their requests to start the hormone therapy.”

      Did she ever feel like she was participating in something wrong, I wondered. These were, by her own estimation, a notably vulnerable group of girls: they were on all kinds of medications for anxiety and depression and even anti-psychotics like Abilify and Clozaril. “I’ll tell you, I struggled with the morality and reconciling of our actions in giving these kids testosterone and estrogen and stuff. I struggled with that more than I did being in operating room for like a 20 week abortion. It’s a lot to see these kids, like, interpret their feelings in such a way that they end up being confused about their gender,” she said.

      Did she or other staff members voice their misgivings about whether they were giving these girls the best treatment? “Yeah. Every day,” she said, before adding: “I mean, it would be one of those things that would be a conversation among professionals. You know, we’re nodding our heads, we’re doing this thing. And then we clock out at the end of the day because we cannot bring it up in discussion with management or the clinic directors or anything because they have these directives from administrators upstate.”

      As far as she knew, did any of the girls asking to start a course of testosterone ever get turned down? Perhaps some were sent for psychiatric evaluation before proceeding with testosterone treatment? “None of the girls,” she said. “One of the boys who did confess that he smoked so much weed that he was doubling up on his estrogen… We did end up ceasing his therapy until he saw—I think it was like a substance abuse counselor or something like that. But other than that, we never turned away anybody.”

  3. Avatar of Ruth Henriquez
    Ruth Henriquez

    Wow. . .So they are just being pulled along by the riptide.

  4. Avatar of Sandra
    Sandra

    Thanks for the comments; food for thought.

  5. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    As I re-read the above description of the Planned Parenthood transgender factory and the inner struggles of the employees, I couldn’t help but think of the Milgram experiments at Yale. When the Administrator says to turn up the dial (or hand out the medications), something happens to human animals where they turn off the worries, especially when a paycheck awaits at the end of the week. I know that there are some real cases of gender dysphoria, but I can’t help thinking (as a dispassionate observer) that Abigail Shrier is right that thousands of awkward and confused teenaged girls (who isn’t confused and awkward at that age) age being swept up into something that is harming them. When I claim that I am dispassionate, I make that claim because I have no close friends/family who are thinking of transitioning, though I know many people who have observed that their daughters’ friends are claiming, in flocks, that they were born in the wrong body.

    As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, this is a bizarre claim to my ears, given all of the work we have done as a society making the early core principles of feminism: that a woman can choose and pursue and interest and any career, any lifestyle. Nothing about the female body should limit what a woman can be. It is so incredibly backwards to hear the “reasons” for transgendering relying almost entirely on old stereotypes about what a women is supposed to be. We have now come full circle, unfortunately. If a biological girl “acts like a boy,” she is a boy and needs to change her body with chemicals and surgery? We have taken giant leaps backward. How is it that this sells to teenage girls? There is something deep going on (consistent with Jonathan Haidt’s theory of social intuitionism), because this external logic is palpably deficient–I would call it fraudulent. Is it possible that young girls are still feeling that society still rejects/ridicules/disparages women, leading them to try to escape their female bodies? It is all so tragic, given how unhappy so many of these teenagers seem, given how they cite false statistics regarding suicide, given that all the actors refuse to discuss the increasing waves of girls who are detransitioning, and given how policy-makers refuse to discuss these issues openly.

  6. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    In this hour long talk, Abigail Shrier describes three transgender situations in the U.S., Traditional gender dysphoria is a real medical condition that could, year after year, be identified in about 1 out of 10,000 (typically 2 to 4 year old) children. Now, about 2% of high school girls identify as transgender. Between 10 and 30% of 7th grade girls at elite private schools are now identifying as “transgender.” In 2007, there was one pediatric transgender clinic in the U.S. There are now 300 such clinics, and those clinicians generally practice “affirmative” care; if a girl claims that she was born in the wrong body is is actually a boy, clinicians will affirm that claim and offer treatment in furtherance of that claim. This talk covers traditional (rare) diagnoses of gender dysphoria, the “sudden onset gender dysphoria exploding rates (since 2007), typically in high school girls, and the interaction of transgender women and biological women’s sports.

  7. Avatar of Ruth Henriquez
    Ruth Henriquez

    “Nothing about the female body should limit what a woman can be. It is so incredibly backwards to hear the “reasons” for transgendering relying almost entirely on old stereotypes about what a women is supposed to be.”

    You’re right, and yes schools and employers have made vast changes in favor of women and girls over the past generation. However, the media is still relentless in the messages it transmits to children of both genders.

    For a discussion of this go to https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/past-research-reports and click on the tab for the pdf titled “Children, Teens, Media, and Body Image,” (second from top of the list). You might disagree with some of Common Sense Media’s political positions on media and kids (i.e. the effect of video games); however, this particular paper rings true for me and the research reflects other studies which I’ve read.

    For me the irony is that woke people are obsessed with “colonization” in our schools and workplaces, and by this they mean the imposition of the white value system on non-white people. However, a more menacing colonization that few seem to care about (except for the people at Adbusters) is the colonization of all of our minds by the corporate media. The constant bombardment of our minds with messages (hundreds per day, and some say thousands) cannot fail to have an effect on our internal landscapes. Can those of us who do not intentionally limit these messages even be said to have any freedom of will at all?

  8. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    A self-described “science nerd” nurse, Lynn Meagher, is insisting on real data with regard to many transgender claims. One of those claims is that allowing a teenager to transition will prevent suicide. Here is an excerpt from Meagher’s article, “Can We Have a Little Data, Please?“:

    And then there’s the dreaded 41% number. That’s the projected suicide rate that’s used as a club to beat anyone who dares to question the wisdom of this brave new world. Parents are especially subjected to this one. “would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?” they are asked. But where did this statistic come from? And what exactly does it mean? We are told that it means that if we don’t obey and get our kids the medical treatments they want, they will kill themselves.

    In reality, this is the shadiest “science” ever. This number was arrived at through a survey, taken by convenience sample through soliciting in transgender advocacy groups. The subjects were asked one question. Just one. Have you ever considered suicide? 41 percent said yes. But notice what they weren’t asked.

    The survey didn’t ask if there were other mental health issues present that might also contribute to suicidal ideation. There were zero follow up questions. Were these respondents actually likely to follow through on these feelings? We don’t know, because they weren’t asked. They also weren’t asked why they felt this way. They weren’t asked if they felt this way before they transitioned, or after. Maybe they are feeling suicidal because they deeply regret their transition. We don’t know.

    But we are told, over and over again, that young people are going to kill themselves if they don’t get binders, pronouns, puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. If we don’t stop calling them their birth names, they are going to kill themselves. I don’t quite see the correlating data here. Suicide is serious. Let’s get some actual data here, and stop making false assumptions.

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