The Business Model Driving Youth Transgender Treatment

To what extent are confused teenagers being used by profit-seekers? Catherine Karena of the "LGB Alliance," who has studied many other industries that create demand out of thin air, shines a light on what she terms the "Business Model of Youth Transitioning." She describes the products and services associated with transgender treatment as a 5.2 trillion dollar industry. Watching this video reminded me of the heyday of the tobacco industry.

Here is an excerpt from the opening minutes of this video:

I've studied and worked with tech startups for 21 plus years. Startups are different from established businesses they focus on growth and being game changers they look for a new and unique solution to a problem either a new solution to an old problem for example cds or the cassettes. Or they give you a solution to something you didn't even know was a need. For example when apple gave us the iPod. Or they redefiner problems, where they provide a different solution altogether.

The aim of any software startup is to become a unicorn achieving 1 billion revenue in the first year by aggressively opening up markets for a highly scalable product. Although we've heard that the huge increase in the transgender movement is a grassroots movement or social contagion human rights movement or a typical generational youth rebellion, I'll argue here that the heart of this movement is just business.

The gender identity phenomenon has achieved huge growth by creating a killer brand that can be accessed by consuming medical treatments. The target consumers of this product are teenagers who are forming their identities in an identity-obsessed world market demand is developed through viral marketing and underpinned by legal challenges and social advocacy in the background.

In Karena's model, the skyrocketing alleged rates of gender dysphoria are linked to crass money-making. First, consider the statistics regarding the rates of alleged gender dysphoria. I used the modifier "alleged" because gender dysphoria is often self-diagnosed in modern times. Consider that the DSM-5 In 2013, the DSM-5 estimated that about 0.005% to 0.014% of people assigned male at birth and 0.002% to 0.003% of people assigned female at birth were diagnosable with gender dysphoria. It is now 1000 times greater Consider this:

When [author Abigail] Shrier uses the term “craze,” she means it in the scientific sense. Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) is what Dr. Lisa Littman calls a “social contagion,” and it primarily impacts young girls. Just a short time ago, only .002 percent to .003 percent of girls in the U.S. identified as transgender. Now, it is up to 2 percent, and Shrier told me that she believes the rate has spiked by thousands of percentage points (in the UK, the number of girls identifying as trans has risen by over 4000 percent). Most trans-identified youth used to be males – that has reversed. In 2016, for example, girls accounted for 46 percent of sex reassignment surgeries in the U.S. One year later, that number had spiked to 70 percent.

In Littman’s much-maligned 2018 study “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria,” she discovered that a full 70 percent of trans teens belonged to a peer group in which one had already had already come out as trans, and according to parents, a third of these had shown no sign of being dysphoric previously. Despite the insistence of trans activists that this is simply “transphobia” on the part of the parents, 85 percent of the parents surveyed were LGBT-supportive. But for asking questions, for begging their daughters to delay puberty blockers and top surgeries, they are condemned by trans activists as vicious bigots

As with any startup, there are business risks that lead to mitigation strategies.  Karena outlines these in one of her graphics:

This is a 9-minute video that succinctly and sharply questions the motives of those making enormous profits off of the bodies of teenagers, even while the "wait and see" approach resolves teenage concerns between 73-98% of the time.

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Uncle Joe Gets a Lot of Free Passes from the Self-Proclaimed Left Wing Media

Matt Taibbi is working hard to piss off a lot of media cheer-leaders with facts like these:

Obama in other words won a contentious primary against Hillary Clinton by snowing reporters like me into hyping him as the clean hands guy who’d push aside Clintonian transactional politics. Then he turned around a year later and passed his signature program with help from the worst industry actors, paying for it by killing the progressive parts of the plan.

This history — important history — is now being rewritten by people like Klein as an “ideological compromise” inspired by the Obama/Biden White House’s misguided desire to govern with Republican votes. The fact that the Affordable Care Act passed with a grand total of zero such votes is apparently irrelevant, as was Biden’s ignored and erroneous (do we only say “lie” in some cases?) insistence as a candidate last year that he found “Republican votes” for “Obamacare.

. . . .

Reporters and audiences decide what they want to believe now, and get there together. Highlight the facts you want — “JRB” is raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent! Then, downplay stuff that doesn’t fit, like that the Obama/Biden administration once proposed lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 to 28 percent, or that Biden is declining to raise that rate back to pre-Trump levels, and you can argue anything. We don’t know much about Biden’s presidency yet, but it’s crystal clear what narrative they’d like us to believe.

Continue ReadingUncle Joe Gets a Lot of Free Passes from the Self-Proclaimed Left Wing Media

The University of Virginia Medical School Engages in Macroagressions When a Student Questions “Microagressions”

The University of Virginia School of Medicine deserves an "F" for the exercise in Wokeness described below, as reported by Reason.  The article is titled, "A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus."

[Update: I have attached key legal filings from this lawsuit, because the details demonstrate that the thought process of the Administrators is pathological - - thoroughly Woke infested. Do this university really think that the students they admit to their medical school are this fragile? I want to believe that people generally act in good faith, but the University's positions in these pleadings are not credible. The faculty and administrators of UVA have completely fallen off the rails regarding the educational mission.

Doc 33 - Amended Complaint

Doc 112 - Defendants' Motion to Dismiss

Doc 113 - Deft Memo in Supp of MTD

Doc 115 - Plaintiff Memo in Opp re MTD

Doc 129 - Court Ruling on Deft MTD

Doc 132 - Order that Discovery may proceed.]

But first, what is the purpose of a college? I fully embrace the definition offered by Heterodox Academy: "We aspire to create college classrooms and campuses that welcome diverse people with diverse viewpoints and that equip learners with the habits of heart and mind to engage that diversity in open inquiry and constructive disagreement. We see an academy eager to welcome professors, students, and speakers who approach problems and questions from different points of view, explicitly valuing the role such diversity plays in advancing the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, growth, innovation, and the exposure of falsehoods."

Here's what UVA did to one of its medical students:

Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand. Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya's question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus.

Why are schools firing professors and kicking out students who question Woke orthodoxy? It's simple. They don't have good answers for the questions being asked by the professors and students. Many schools are now acting like churches, excommunicating rather than intellectually engaging. For more, see John McWhorter's new book, The Elect, in which he explains how Wokeness is not like a religion. Rather, it is a religion. Instead of engaging with good faith intellectual inquiry, the Woke tell people to "Shut up!" They do this through ostracization, expulsion and infinite varieties of ad hominem attacks.

Notice the irony: The crime was "microaggressions," whereas the remedy is physical expulsion, a classic macro aggression.

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A few links regarding "microagressions":

The theory behind microaggressions—unintentional insults based on race, sex, or another protected status—is woefully inadequate and lacks scientific rigor. Scott Lilienfeld, a clinical psychologist at Emory University, took a close look at the core assumptions that undergird the academic understanding of microaggressions and concluded that there should be a "moratorium on microaggression training."

From "Oberlin College Is Hiring Students to Be Social Justice Activists, Host Microaggression Training"

"There is insufficient justification for concluding that the potential benefits of microaggression training programs outweigh their potential risks, including a substantial increase in the number of false-positive identifications of statements as microaggressions," he wrote.

From New Discourses:

[According to the Woke] there is no way to mistakenly identify a microaggression, as the victim’s perception is considered absolutely authoritative (see also, lived experience). Because of the reliance upon the perception of the recipient of alleged microaggressions, there is reason to be concerned that critical theories of identity can teach people to become more sensitive to and aware of slights that might even be being read into the situation, with no way to make a determination on the matter (see also, critical consciousness and woke). This problem has been noted by lawyer Greg Lukianoff and psychologist Jonathan Haidt in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, as a kind of “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy” where people are taught to become more and more sensitive to (and less resilient against) slights and minor insults (see also, victimhood culture).

An excerpt from Wikipedia, demonstrating that the concept of microaggressions is controversial:

A number of scholars and social commentators have criticised the microaggression concept for its lack of scientific basis, over-reliance on subjective evidence, and promotion of psychological fragility. Critics argue that avoiding behaviours that one interprets as microaggressions restricts one's own freedom and causes emotional self-harm, and that employing authority figures to address microaggressions (i.e call-out culture) can lead to an atrophy of those skills needed to mediate one's own disputes.[7] Some argue that, because the term "microaggression" uses language connoting violence to describe verbal conduct, it can be (and is) abused to exaggerate harm, resulting in retribution and the elevation of victimhood.[8]

Continue ReadingThe University of Virginia Medical School Engages in Macroagressions When a Student Questions “Microagressions”

Another College Professor Takes a Hit for Expressing Her Opinions at a Compelled “Anti-Racism” Session

In an April 5, 2021 article at Reason, Jesse Singal reports on an incident at Lake Washington Institute of Technology, a Washington State public institution with 6,000 students. Newly tenured professor Elisa Parrett was labeled insolent, insubordinate and disruptive for having the gall to stand up at a compelled and segregated "anti-racism" college assembly based on the preachings of Robin DiAngelo and stating the following:

"Over the past couple of weeks, a lot has happened," Parrett began. "Protests have occurred, riots have broken out, people have been killed. And across the United States, companies, organizations, and schools have proclaimed their support of a movement called 'Anti-racism'"—here Parrett was referring to the capital-A variety. Parrett went on to complain about the segregated setting of the training and what she saw as the generally closed-minded nature of the nation's post-Floyd discourse. "Democracy thrives on conversations, but what we are seeing happening right now in the United States is not a conversation," she read. "It is a coup. Everyday Americans of all colors, creeds, backgrounds, and beliefs are being held hostage. Zealots are telling us, 'You're either with us or against us, and if you're against us, you're an evil bigot.' They are telling us, 'You're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem.' They are telling us that all people may be classified into two sides: us or them, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, people of color or white, righteous or bigoted, oppressed or privileged. I don't accept such false dichotomies, and I don't accept the ad hominem implications that come with it. Too often, words like 'privileged,' 'defensive,' and 'fragile' are just ways to dismiss what another person has to say. Too often, words like 'racist' are just a way to intimidate someone into silence." Parrett argued that people should work together to solve "real problems like wealth disparity, poverty, job insecurity, unemployment, the high cost of living, or the fracturing of the nuclear family, whatever form that family takes," but are waylaid by those who claim the "real problems" are "racism, sexism, transphobia…[and] hateful words."

"Thank you, Elisa," said the facilitator, cutting Parrett off about three minutes into her remarks. "No, you don't get to cut me off—I'm going to finish what I have to say," she responded. "I'm going to ask that you share the platform with the rest of the 200 nearly people who are here today," replied the facilitator. But Parrett continued for about another minute, telling the all-white attendees of the mandatory, segregated conversation that universities should be places where "ideas could be discussed, explored, debated, and assessed"—and that "this is not that."

Prior to the session, Parrett was bothered by the fact that the college had segregated the attendees of this session, separating the "whites" from the others. The college referred to this technique as "race based caucusing."  Singal quotes another professor who spoke out in an email to senior administrators: a "conference based on segregation by skin color does nothing to build a community of belonging."

The favorite technique by people captured by Woke ideology is the ad hominem attack and Washington Institute of Technology did not disappoint.  Following the struggle session, a college administrator wrote to Parrett, indicating that her: "egregious behavior which has led to substantial harm to hundreds of colleagues on campus." The charge was that Parrett's behavior was "downright scary, startling, and bewildering as she yelled a diatribe."  The college told Parrett that she had used her "new positional power [as a tenured professor] in a very corrupt, insolent and insubordinate manner." She was placed on leave and denied access to her college email account. The President of the college sent an email blast to every member of the college community indicating that she was "disappointed, angry, and shocked" by Parrett's dissent during the training.

Jesse Singal spoke to one of the administrators who criticized Parrett. She said,

a large cohort of professors and academic administrators were so emotionally devastated by hearing someone raise concerns about White Fragility–style diversity trainings that they could no longer do their jobs.

What happened next? A college "investigation" that has so far officially cost $80,000. Unofficially, it's closer to $250,000.

LWTech went to war against a tenured faculty member, launching a cartoonishly over-the-top disciplinary process that included the hiring of a private investigator, dozens of interviews, and claims of widespread trauma.
As you'll see if you read Singal's entire detailed article, the college's arguments comedically and instantly disintegrated when they encounted Singal's mild cross-examination of the administrators, especially after his revelation that he had a copy of a secretly recorded audio file of Parrett's statement at the session.

Parrett kept her job because her behavior was not fire-able, not even close.  On March 26, 2021, the college issued a vague reprimand.  One might be tempted to say that this reprimand was intentionally vague in order to stifle Parrett (and, as an example, others) from speaking up when a college next employs shrill racism as a "remedy" for racism.  Singal comments: "It wouldn't be surprising if this were one of the more expensive written reprimands in community-college history."

The bottom half of Singal's article reviews some of history of similar incidents (with links), mentioning violations by both the political left and right, but expressing concern that the far left is careening into a tailspin.  Much of this is due to the far left's expanding concept creep regarding the definition of "harm." Singal explains:

In this worldview, everything is a harm. There is no such thing as legitimate political disagreement, because we (the progressive in-group) already know the correct answer to every question (even if the answer can sometimes change overnight), and anyone who disagrees clearly—clearly—does so not because of some well-founded political or philosophical difference but because that person wants to harm the innocent people we are righteously hellbent on protecting.

In my writings, I've often asked, and I again ask: Where do you draw your line?  At what point will you say a firm "No" to Woke ideology?  At what point will you take a deep breath and say what you are thinking, that's it's not OK that everything is turning into Evergreen College.  Longstanding social psychological research highlights how important it is for you to be the one to speak up.  You are not alone.  Far from it. Be brave.

Continue ReadingAnother College Professor Takes a Hit for Expressing Her Opinions at a Compelled “Anti-Racism” Session

The Woke Endgame: Evergreen State College

I didn't want to be spending so much time writing about Wokeness, but it has become clear to me that this is an ideology that reverses many of the hard-earned gains we have made through the Civil Rights Movement and that Wokeness ideology leads to endless societal dysfunction. Because human flourishing important to me, I have no choice but to speak out, at a time where many of my friends and acquaintances have the exact same concerns I do, but are afraid to speak out. Their fears is are based on these things:

1. They don't want to get into yelling matches with activists, which they see as inevitable;

2. They fear being called names like "racist"  for things that are not racist.

3. They fear mobs of people following them, threatening them and their families or damaging their property;

4. They fear loss of their reputations based on false accusations by mobs, and

5. They fear the loss of their jobs and/or careers based upon mass-cancellation techniques.

I realize this all sounds hyperbolic, but my conclusions are based on the many dozens of occurrences on which I have written about at this website, as well as many other articles by many other writers. Common responses to my writings have been A) ad hominem attacks, B) scoldings that I have no right to discuss certain topics, as though only certain people have the right to talk about certain things, and C) Whataboutism - Why am I not writing about something else that they would rather I write about, e.g., white supremacist groups? In response to this last point, I already see widespread ridicule over white supremacy. It is not taking root in any of our sense-making institutions such as schools (including prestigious colleges), media outlets (including STEM journals and magazines) and government offices.

I see the opposite happening with Wokeness, and it seems to be spreading logarithmically with only scattered voices having the courage to stand up and cry out, "Emperor Has No Clothes." Those voices include Andrew Sullivan, Matt Taibbi, Seerut K. Chawla, Glenn Greenwald, Brett Weinstein, Heather Heying, Eric Weinstein, Bari Weiss, Sam Harris, Jesse Singal, Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay, Benjamin Boyce, Jonathan Kay, Claire Lehman, John McWorther, Glenn Loury, Caitlin Flanagan, Heterodox Academy, Colin Wright, Joe Rogan, Buck Angel, Peter Boghossian, Coleman Hughes, Bill Maher, Peter Rufo, The 40 Black Intellectuals who recently spoke out against the racism by Smith College, and the plucky crew at Quillette Magazine. There are others out there and I am not excluding any of them intentionally.  Most of these people lean significantly to the left on many social issues, yet Woke advocates commonly call them "conservatives," which is a modern version of an attempted ad hominem attack.

I want to give special attention to James Lindsay's excellent Woke Encyclopedia at New Discourses, so very helpful in that the Woke onslaught always involves long streams of highly suspect terminology.

What provoked this article?  I just finished watching several episodes of "The Complete Evergreen Story," by Benjamin Boyce.  As described by James Lindsay, 

Benjamin Boyce was a student at The Evergreen State College as it melted down, thanks to the applications of critical race Theory on campus. There, not only did he have a first-person view of the mayhem the campus descended into as it happened, he was responsible for filming and documenting a great deal of the footage that has since come to light and found a home in documentaries. Ever since, he has been on a quest to further understand what happened at Evergreen and to document it in full, not to mention similar issues as they crop up in the surrounding Washington state communities.

Boyce has presented this Evergreen tragedy in 23 chapters. His story covers the destruction of what was, and what could still be, an excellent college. What happened in 2017, however, left Evergreen in intellectual and social shambles and resulted in dramatic reductions in the number of students attending Evergreen.

It turns out that students aren’t clamoring for the privilege of paying for an education in such a hostile environment. Evergreen accepts 97% of applications, but enrollment dropped to 2,854 full-time students last fall, compared to 3,810 the semester of the protests. Enrollment increased over the same period at other Washington universities.

The story of Evergreen College was entirely ignored by most left leaning media powerhouses.  The New York Times has yet to write a single word about the 2017 Woke-triggered implosion at Evergreen College.

I am writing this article to provide the above links to the writers I have found most informative and instructive about the Woke movement.  I am linking to these writers with the hope that those who are fearful of speaking out can read these works as an aid to finding their own voice.  I am also writing this article as a warning and a prophecy that Evergreen State College was not simply an occurrence but a vision for where we are headed unless we all find the spine to stand up and draw a line in the sand.  Unless we do these things together, everything will become Evergreen State.

Here are episodes 1, 2 and 3 of Benjamin Boyce's comprehensive documentary regarding Evergreen State.

I'll end with some deep pessimism. I fear that conversation is no longer productive with the Woke. This is clear in many places today as I have documented at this website. it is abundantly clear in the Evergreen videos, as numerous students demonstrated that they are incapable of having a meaningful conversation with the clear-headed, patient, politically liberal Evergreen College biology professor, Brett Weinstein.


Continue ReadingThe Woke Endgame: Evergreen State College