About the Transgender Treatment Censorship Tsunami

The you remember the inorganic wave of brand new "obvious" things we were all supposed to believe and say about transgender topics? I agree with Greg Lukianoff that it was surreal. I spoke up with questions and concerns that were repeatedly blasted with religious fervor. But here we are now, and it's clear that the transgender religious movement distorted everything around it, including our First Amendment rights. One big moment to upright the ship was the Cass Report. Another was the mass closing of transgender clinics. And now a new Finnish study.

[You can see many many posts on this topic (I published more than 150 articles at this site) here:

Greg Lukianoff:

In my career defending academic freedom and free speech, I never saw anything become as immediately radioactive as views that ran counter to the narrative on trans issues. Papers were retracted, compelled speech was treated as normal, and people were canceled for saying things that would have sounded like common sense just a few years earlier. It seemed to become a kind of secular blasphemy overnight. And usually, that is a sign that the true believers know, at some level, that they are on shaky ground.

Continue ReadingAbout the Transgender Treatment Censorship Tsunami

Jimmy Kimmel’s Litmus Test

Bill Maher (to Adam Corolla):

Jimmy Kimmel, you know he's very mad at me, and I know you're close to him. I help you tell him that, you know I'm sorry that you know he they got bent out of shape. I don't think I did anything wrong. We can have disagreements. I agree you and I don't agree on everything. Look at this clash now, and yet we're cool (Bill Maher and Adam Corolla), like the Republicans are always.

This is the difference between the right and the left. It bugs me so much. My tribe is supposed to be the left, but these are the people who just can't talk to you unless you're exactly there, whereas the Republicans, they always fucking come to my show. John Kennedy from Louisiana, right? was on last week, took his beating like a man, like they all do, and we came across lovingly and smilingly and happily. And we can disagree when you and I aren't always completely on the same page, although we're very close because we're both smart guys. But like, I just don't get that from Jimmy. I'm sorry. Like, I think he is one of the nicest guys. I did a mea culpa when we exchanged emails, not about what he was complaining about, but just saying, like, you know, sometimes I am a little brash about me when they compare me with the other late night guys.

And I'm not like, you guys. I'm not. You could all exchange your monologs, all of you, and no one would know the difference in tone, okay? Whereas me? I'm not there. I don't just buy into the left wing bullshit, and I never stop making fun of the right wing bullshit at all right? If that's not good enough for you, then I think you're the asshole. And I don't think Jimmy is an asshole. No, I think he's a great guy. And it bugs me . . .

Jimmy Kimmel is an excellent proxy for what has happened to many people on the Left. I'm not referring to all people who lean Left, but a significant sub-set. I know many of them. I've been de-friended by more than a few. This subset utilizes a litmus test. If you don't check all of their boxes, they see you as the enemy, as a republican, as a nazi, as a threat.  But time for a reality check: All people disagree with all other people on at least some things and, usually, many topics. It is fantasy to assume that any two people align on every topic and sub-topic of the day. Emphasis on sub-topic here.  Immigration, transgender, foreign policy, public assistance, race relations, social justice and every other "topic" is actually a big complex basket of subtopics.  Every one of these subtopics invites nuanced conversations involving minor or major disagreements.

Take for instance, the big basket of topics falling under the label of "transgender." As I have written often, I think every adult should be allowed to do anything they want with their own body and they must be respected, honored and invited to associate with any other person and to fall in love with anyone they choose. Many people on the Left , however, demand absolute obeisance, telling you that if you don't chant exactly like they do, in unison, exactly when and where they chant, you must be kicked out of the friendship. There are many important sub-issues to transgender that should be considered individually. For instance, A) Whether society should change its language to accommodate the alleged (and perhaps real) pain of other people B) whether people who identify as transgender should be treated equally under the law, C) whether it is OK for grade school math teachers to talk about sex with students without their parents' knowledge and consent, D) whether confused children and adolescents should be subjected to surgeries (including mastectomies), "puberty blockers" and cross-sex hormones that leave them permanently disfigured and/or sterile, E) Whether a minor can meaningfully consent to permanent changes to their bodies that render them sterile, F) The extent and type of psychological counseling a minor should undergo before being allowed to engage in transgender surgeries and drugs, G) the extent to which social contagion accounted for the rise (and more recently the fall) in minors declaring that they are "transgender."  Whether biological males should be allowed to compete in women's sports, H) whether it is biologically true that trans women are women, I) whether it is OK for a state government to take children away from their parents when state employees disagree with parents on transgender issues, J) Should males be imprisoned along with women, even though rapes and pregnancies are now being reported in those prisons (see here)? K) Whether "LGBTQIA+" is a meaningful descriptor for a a singular community, given the the inherent conflict among those referred to by the letters?  I could go on and on.

There are many other sub-issues to "transgender" topic that I could list. For instance, J.K. Rowling has listed a dozen of these sub-issues in her Sept 1, 2025 post on X. I would bet that many people who lean Left would agree with Rowling on many or most of the issues she lists. Yet she has bee labeled a "terf" and threatened with death on many occasions.

The way the topic of "transgender" splinters into countless sub-issues is true of every political and social issue. Anyone being honest knows that, as a country, we face hundreds, potentially thousands, of sub-issues.

This much is indisputable: Every person disagrees with every other person on many of the countless sub-issues of the day.  It is impossible for any person to lack any disagreement on some of the sub-issues of the day even with their closest and most loyal friends.

During the Great Awokening, we were falsely convinced that when a friend disagreed with us about an issue or sub-issue it was a personal attack, not a mere disagreement. We started disparaging maxims like "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." And this one: "To each his own."  The need to express disagreement is embedded in the Constitutional foundation of the United States. That is why our Founders have a brilliantly devised set of checks and balances for resolving or compromising our inevitable differences.

Anyone currently claiming that they have friends who completely agree with them is not talking about someone they really know.  They are not talking about actual friends. They are referring to a relationship steeped in dishonesty, based on fear of speaking openly.

I challenge anyone reading this to ask themselves this question: Am I willing to keep loving and engaging freely with friends who disagree with me on some topics and sub-topics? If not, you don't have real friends. Instead, you are starring in your own Truman Show, self-imprisoned in a social cage.

Luckily, you've got the key to you own liberation. [More ...]

Continue ReadingJimmy Kimmel’s Litmus Test

Investigating Truth versus Speaking One’s Truth

Stephanie Tyler has written "The Problem with “Speaking Your Truth," pointing out a disconnect I see in many of the comments to my posts on Facebook. For many people on FB, it is not OK to consider competing perspectives, facts that run counter-narrative or even competing interpretations of facts, even when dealing with factually complex situations. Instead, one is expected to jump up and embrace tribally reinforced emotional reactions as though they are morally-infused self-evidence. Whenever someone who is careful and sincere fails to immediately take a knee, people who are decorated with enough credentials that they should know better launch barrages of ad hominems. They will loudly proclaim that they are "good" people you are not. In the end, there will be only heat, no light. Though there might be more words, there is no real conversation. Excerpt from Tyler's article:

"I spent years inside women’s and gender studies classrooms, where language like “lived experience,” “the personal is political,” and “my truth” wasn’t just common, it was foundational. These phrases weren’t offered as rhetorical flourishes, they were treated as epistemology, as a way of determining what counted as knowledge. Experience wasn’t something you brought into the room to be examined alongside evidence, history, or competing explanations. It was something closer to authority. And once it was invoked, questioning it wasn’t framed as inquiry, it was framed as harm.

At the time, I accepted this framework without much resistance. It felt humane, or corrective, like a long-overdue response to voices that had been ignored. Only later did I realize something important had been smuggled in along the way: the idea that subjective experience and shared reality belonged to the same category. They don’t.

Subjective experience is real and it matters. It shapes how people interpret the world and move through it, but it’s also internal, private, and non-transferable. It tells you how something felt to someone, not necessarily what happened, why it happened, or what it means at scale. Shared reality is different. It’s external, it’s negotiated, it’s the space where claims are tested, compared, revised, and sometimes rejected. It’s the reason disagreement exists at all. It’s the thing we argue over precisely because none of us owns it outright.

When those two domains collapse into one another, empathy starts doing work it was never meant to do. And when that collapse becomes moralized, conversation stops working altogether.

Empathy, properly understood, allows you to understand another person’s inner state without surrendering your capacity for judgment. It’s a bridge, not a verdict. But increasingly, empathy is treated as a moral command with only one acceptable conclusion. You aren’t being asked to understand someone else’s perspective, you’re being asked to adopt it fully, or risk being cast as deficient, cruel, or dangerous!

This is where Gad Saad’s idea of suicidal empathy becomes useful, not as a provocation, but as a diagnosis. The problem isn’t that people care too much, it’s that empathy has been detached from reality-testing and limits. When that happens, it stops functioning as a human skill and starts functioning as an epistemic shortcut. Emotional alignment replaces argument and becomes the standard for legitimacy, and feeling the right way becomes proof that you’re right.

Once empathy is used this way, disagreement no longer needs to be answered. It only needs to be pathologized."

Continue ReadingInvestigating Truth versus Speaking One’s Truth