Colin Wright Warns of the Danger Posed by Innocuous-Seeming Requests for “Pronouns”

I have no business telling any adult what to do with his or her body. That is their own business. It's a different story with children. We need to make sure that our children (and their parents) are not being given false information that leads to irreversible physical damage to their bodies (cross-sex hormones and surgeries), in many cases leading to sterility. There are real cases of gender dysphoria but, historically speaking, they have been rare (1/10,000) and they have overwhelmingly been boys. Today, almost 2% of teenagers are claiming to be transgender and they are overwhelmingly girls who tend to fall into social clusters, which would not be expected if dysphoria were truly a medical condition.

What is going on and why should be be concerned? Much of the left-leaning news media cheerleads for those who promote gender ideology and totally ignore the numerous and growing cases of those teenagers who detransitioned--who permanently altered their bodies, often through double mastectomies then, years later, declared that they were, indeed, the sex aligning with their chromosomes, their gametes and their sex organs readily apparent at birth. It's not rocket science to figure out the sex of most people (intersex cases are extremely rare). These stories by numerous detransitioners are extremely difficult to read. They are stories of deep regret, stories of how these teenagers got caught up in a fad encouraged by their peers, and enabled by well-meaning activist school teachers and counselors, as well as almost instant access to cross-sex hormones, often at Planned Parenthood. The parents are often concerned that they must allow their children to transition based on commonly touted but false statistics and unsubstantiated claims that suicide is the only other option.

Biologist Colin Wright recently wrote "How to Make a Trans Kid." It is well-written and accurate upon my own extensive readings. I recommend reading Wright's entire article. Here is an excerpt:

Most people understand the terms “man” and “boy” refer to adult and adolescent human males, respectively, and that “woman” and “girl” refer to adult and adolescent human females, respectively. These are not “identities,” but terms that describe objective facts about one’s age and biological sex.

Gender ideology, conversely, is a belief system asserting that what makes someone a woman or a girl, or a man or a boy, has nothing whatsoever to do with their sex, but is based entirely on the social roles and stereotypes with which they “identify.” Therefore, a person who identifies with feminine roles and stereotypes is a girl or woman, and a person who identifies with masculine roles and stereotypes is a boy or man—regardless of their biological sex. According to gender ideology, people who do not identify with the social roles and stereotypes typically associated with their sex are considered “transgender.”

That’s Gender Ideology 101. If it comes across as completely insane, that’s because it is.

Gender ideology has therefore proven to be a hard sell for many adults who rightfully view such ideas as regressive and sexist. After all, this worldview entails that a woman who does not fully embrace femininity is not actually a woman, and a man who does not embrace masculinity is not actually a man. If this sounds similar to the regressive and oppressive system that women’s and other human rights groups fought for decades to overcome, that’s because it is. But it’s actually much worse, since it also promotes the idea that a “mismatch” between one’s sex and “gender identity” can be medically “corrected” with hormones and surgeries.

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Continue ReadingColin Wright Warns of the Danger Posed by Innocuous-Seeming Requests for “Pronouns”

Reporters Who Keep Us in the Dark so that They can be Popular with their Peers

Freddie DeBoer points out one of the biggest stories that is not being reported. It is a story that affects (and often corrupts) ALL the big stories. It appears that reporters think of themselves as being back in high school and it appears that their need to be seen as admirable by their peers affects whether they will ask serious questions or whether they will pursue a story at all.

DeBoer is an excellent writer and I subscribe to his Substack. This is a critically important story that is kryptonite to all of the "news" reporters out there with misplaced priorities--in other words, the many "news" reporters who would rather be popular than do the difficult job of being real journalist. Here's an excerpt.

In the fifteen years I’ve written for public consumption, this is the topic I’ve returned to most. I have argued that people who work in the media are in great majorities unduly concerned with being popular among their peers, and that this desire distorts our newsmedia and what it covers in destructive ways. I also believe that the most important site of this kind of social conditioning is Twitter. A corollary to this is that the industry, which will give the most trivial subjects immense amounts of coverage (like, say, the “Try Guys”) avoids talking about the powerful impact of the desire to be popular, a kind of within-industry omerta that prevents anyone from looking too closely at how the sausage gets made. I told this story my first year of writing, I’ve told it most every year since, and I’m telling it again now. Because nothing ever changes.

There are, of course, many people of both talent and integrity within the industry who do their best to avoid this social capture. Many of them are open-minded about who they read and what they’ll engage with. Indeed, the median writer is (unsurprisingly) more thoughtful and willing to challenge consensus than the crowd. But even the most independent of them tend to at least maintain the code of omerta, refusing to publicly question the in-crowd dynamics even if they won’t play into them with their own behavior. And I do get it; they have to live and work in that industry and coexist alongside the peers that they might be criticizing in aggregate. It would, though, make me feel slightly less crazy if more people would say, even occasionally, “people in the industry really want to be well-liked, and they change their public personas and their work to remain so.” What’s frustrating for me is that, while they may not share my level of disdain for this condition, many individual writers have privately conceded the broad contours of what I’m saying. But they don’t do so publicly. Like I said. Omerta.

Of course, the disciplinary action taken against people who speak the way I am is exactly what you’d expect: insiders accuse critics of insiderism of merely being jealous that they aren’t insiders themselves. It can’t be the case that someone like myself could genuinely, organically observe the ways in which media cliquishness distorts the practices of journalism and commentary and advocate for something better. Any such critics must necessarily merely want to be a part of the hierarchy they criticize, sour grapes. Again, it never changes.

What I never understand is why no enterprising media reporter doesn’t ever try to report this out. There are no industries where insiderism and patronage don’t impact the labor market to some degree, so why not try to explore that influence? How does the insiderism of elite media Twitter influence the industry and thus our national story?

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The Risk of Nuclear War is Skyrocketing and Few Seem to Notice

The Ukraine war began Feb 24, 2020. Based on the above estimates, in only 8 months, the risk of nuclear war has increased somewhere between 400% and 2500%. Shouldn't this threat of annihilation be on the headline of every newspaper every day? Shouldn't the cost-benefit analysis of U.S. involvement have been discussed in open hearings in Congress before the U.S. jacked up the risk that we will all die for a territorial dispute involving a country most Americans couldn't have located on a map one year ago?

Is the problem that I'm in my 60s and I remember the terror we all felt during the Cuban Missile crisis? Is it that we are now a generation hooked on video games and violent movies, such that things always work out in the end (or if not, we hit the reboot button or wait for the next episode)?

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FAIR Responds to AG Merrick Garland on Transgender Issues

I agree with the response by FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) to the recent letter sent by American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and Children’s Hospital Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Here is an excerpt from FAIR's letter:

The topic of best practices in gender-related healthcare is currently the subject of intense debate. In their October 3rd press release, the American Academy of Pediatrics cited a 2018 Policy Statement as the basis for evidence-based gender-affirming care. Now, in 2022, four years of experience has provided a growing body of evidence and patient experiences that do not support the safety and benefits of universal “gender affirming” care as medically established. Recent systematic reviews have concluded that gender affirming care to treat gender dysphoria for adolescence is based on low quality, experimental evidence; ignores underlying mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse disorders, borderline personality disorder, and eating disorders; and may result in irreversible harm—including but not limited to developmental, neurocognitive, psychological, hormonal, and reproductive damage. The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the United Kingdom was recently closed due to these concerns. Moreover, under the gender affirming model, a large new cohort of patients (including the young) are being placed on a lifelong path of medications and dependencies with unknown consequences. It remains unclear whether such treatments will lead to heart disease, cancer, chronic pain, or other serious effects, and whether our healthcare system will be equipped to treat that growing population. Furthermore, a growing cohort of patients are detransitioning and reporting superficial assessments, poor follow-up care, and misdiagnosis of root causes for their gender dysphoria. The opioid epidemic itself was created by “one-size fits all” regulatory mandates to measure pain and treat with opioids, and a political partnership between the AMA and Purdue Pharma which disregarded scientific evidence about the dangers of opioids and prioritized subjective assessments of pain. That approach contributed to the opioid crisis we still grapple with today. Open inquiry and consideration of dissenting voices are imperative to avoid repeating a similar tragedy with respect to gender affirming care.

Any violence or threats of violence should be fully investigated and addressed under the law. But investigating, prosecuting, or silencing those who question or disagree with the still very new and rapidly evolving field of gender affirming care will not only risk violating the First Amendment rights of all Americans, but will prevent the medical profession from determining and providing the safest and most effective treatments for gender dysphoric patients. Rigorous and open debate about the risks and benefits of any treatment—including gender affirming care—must not be suppressed, and to conflate this necessary debate with promoting violence against healthcare workers is deeply irresponsible.

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Criticizing Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians Can Ruin the Careers of Journalists: The Case of Katie Halper

Matt Taibbi interviews Katie Halper, recently fired from The Hill. An excerpt:

The controversy began when Michigan Democrat Rashida Tliab spoke at an online seminar on September 20th and said, “It has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government.” Tliab gave her talk in the wake of the shooting of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in the West Bank City of Jenin in May. Abu Akleh’s family met with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in July, and asked the International Criminal Court to open a case two weeks ago, simultaneous to Tlaib’s seminar.

Tliab’s comments inspired an immediate reaction from the Anti-Defamation League, which deemed them anti-Semitic. CEO Jonathan Greenblatt ripped Tliab for ostensibly telling “American Jews they must pass an anti-Zionist litmus test to participate in progressive spaces.” The ADL reaction got wide play on stations like CNN.

Katie’s “Radar” argues Tliab’s comments laid bare what has long been a source of tension among self-described progressives, who often tiptoe around the subject of occupied Palestine. As you’ll see above, she approached her subject with great care, leaning on statements from groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Agree with her or not, her editorial certainly wasn’t fake news, or flippant, or gratuitous. It’s what the media business normally wants: a decisive, well-argued opinion.

However, the Hill thought otherwise, and what makes the situation unusual is a media company saying the proverbial quiet part out loud. When editors refused to run the “Radar,” Katie asked flat-out if the problem was the subject of Israel. Though there was some hemming and hawing (at one point she was told the problem was that the show’s focus was on domestic and not foreign policy, despite running content about Brazilian elections, Italy’s new prime minister, and multiple Ukraine pieces that week), eventually they just told her that was, in fact, the case. The next day, she was let go via a curt email ending, “We wish you all the best.”

Continue ReadingCriticizing Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians Can Ruin the Careers of Journalists: The Case of Katie Halper