Kathleen Stock Dissects “The Family Sex Show” and its Enablers

Kathleen Stock does a deep dive here. What is driving this behavior? Fascinating and disturbing on many levels. And yes, I also wondered whether any of these people have children. An excerpt:

This week a story broke in the UK about a forthcoming theatre production, to be aimed at five-year-olds and older. The somewhat surprising title of this venture was The Family Sex Show. The theatre company responsible had impeccable-looking credentials, with breathless reviews and several awards for earlier productions. This new project, originally commissioned under the auspices of a Leverhulme Arts Scholarship, had been funded to the tune of £82,784 via two separate project grants from Arts Council England, and was developed in a number of prestigious venues including Battersea Arts Centre, the National Theatre, the Southbank Centre, and Theatre Royal Bath. The show’s mission, as described on the associated website, was to provide:
a fun and silly performance about the painfully AWKWARD subject of sex, exploring names and functions, boundaries, consent, pleasure, queerness, sex, gender and relationships.

. . .

Back in reality, there’s only so long that progressives can carry on pretending that the only possible objections to things like The Family Sex Show must come from prudes who don’t like sex, or bigots who don’t like queer people. Supercharged by the internet, contemporary sexual culture is spiralling off a cliff and taking a lot of young people with it, and increasingly large numbers of ordinary parents and teachers are finding this objectionable for very good reason. Some of these even vote Labour - or would do, if they could get a clear sign from their party that it’s prepared to make a distinction in public between its own position and “what Owen Jones thinks is OK”. If it can’t do this, it faces problems at the ballot box. Meanwhile, since nobody votes Arts Council members in or out, for theatre-goers there are still many long evenings ahead, sitting on uncomfortable chairs and watching white people with interesting haircuts talk earnestly about squirting.

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British Authorities Pushing Back Against “Affirmation” as Appropriate Care in Transgender Claims

Meanwhile, in England, experts and authorities are pushing back at the prevailing gender ideology, arguing that children should receive real medical care, not "affirmation." When a child thinks she has an appendectomy (because many of her friends think she should get an appendectomy), doctors don't automatically operate. They do (and should) ask questions and conduct test to determine whether an appendectomy is really needed. Excerpt from the article, "Sajid Javid inquiry into gender treatment for children":

"Vulnerable children are wrongly being given gender hormone treatment by the NHS, Sajid Javid believes, as he prepares to launch an urgent inquiry. The health secretary thinks the system is “failing children” and is planning an overhaul of how health service staff deal with under-18s who question their gender identity . . .

Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, has been leading a review into NHS gender identity services for children. In interim findings last month, she said children were being affected by a lack of expert agreement about the nature of gender identity problems, a “lottery” of care and long waiting lists.

Javid is said to be particularly alarmed by her finding that some non-specialist staff felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach” to transitioning and that other mental health issues were “overshadowed” when gender was raised.

“This has been a growing issue for years and it’s clear we’re not taking this seriously enough,” an ally of the health secretary said. “If you look at Hilary Cass’s interim report, the findings are deeply concerning and it’s clear from that report that we’re failing children.”

The ally said services should have a holistic view of what might be causing problems for that child: a mental health issue, bullying or sexual abuse.

“That overly affirmative approach where people just accept what a child says, almost automatically, and then start talking about things like puberty blockers — that’s not in the interest of the child at all,” the ally said."

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The Conflation Strategy of the Political Far Left

At Real Clear Politics, Batya Ungar-Sargon explains what really going on in the Washington Post's bizarre framing of the Twitter account @libsoftiktok. No, she explains, this is not about Americans trying to gang up on L's, G's, B's or most T's. Here is an excerpt.

The question is why. Why is the left folding in the issues of an extreme minority of transgender activists and teachers into the larger fight for gay rights – one that’s already been won?

It’s a similar case to what’s happened with the conversation of race. After winning the battle against real racism, the left moved the goalpost, redefining what counts as racism to the thing they most like to fight: the exposure of their own privilege.

That’s what’s happening here. A tiny elite that benefits politically and economically from portraying its opponents as bigots is using every tool at its disposal – social media, liberal legacy media, and executive action – to obfuscate the vast distance between their views and the vast majority of middle- and working-class Americans with normal views. Like the view that strangers shouldn’t teach toddlers how to masturbate.

Liberals had many major wins in the past 50 years. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when average Americans in either political party had little appetite for interracial marriage, let alone gay rights. But those days are long behind us. So why is the left pretending we are still in the midst of these fights? Because if you take away the issues that used to divide them from average Americans and no longer do, all you’re left with is what now divides them – the enormous economic, educational, and social capital that sustains the meritocratic liberal elite.

Here's what @libsoftiktok is actually doing: reposting bizarre tiktok videos made by teachers bragging about teaching things to children that are (rightfully) making many parents angry. These are simply completely undoctored reposts and not the tiktoc posters are being shamed for the things they are actually saying online. But they thought they would be left alone in their corner of the world, not thrust into the spotlight for all to see.

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A Modern Approach for Teaching Your Child about Sex at a Public School

For those of you who are parents, is this how you want sex education taught to your first grader? Is there really a medical school class called "Guessing the Sex of New born Babies"? Sex is anchored strongly to biology. That's what doctors care about. They don't care about "gender" except to the extent that gender means "sex" and only one out of 6,000 babies has an intersex condition.  And how is it that when you go to the humane society to adopt a "female" or "girl" dog or cat, they don't look confused?  They know exactly what you mean.  It's the same thing as doctors, who don't "guess" what sex a baby is, except one out of 6,000 times.

Those who hate "Libs of Tik Tok" are pissed that the creator of that account is holding up the mirror to modern incoherent non-scientific insanity.  My kids are now grown, but if I had first graders and I found out that they were being taught this gibberish, I would be outraged. I write these words as a person who has voted almost entirely for Democrats for the past four decades and who has canvassed for Bernie Sanders. If moderate Democrats don't muster up the courage to speak up, they will have earned the red wave that is currently being predicted.

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Not all Transgender “Affirmative Care” Have a Happy Ending

Excerpt from new article by Suzy Weiss (writing at Common Sense, the Substack of her sister, Bari Weiss). The article is titled "The Testosterone Hangover: The Biden administration says transgender kids are entitled to ‘gender-affirming’ medical care. These girls disagree. ‘I have this intense rage in me over the harm that was done to me.’"

Gender-affirming care, the president’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, explained at a recent press conference, was “best practice and potentially lifesaving.” The point was: If trans kids weren’t able to transition, not just socially, but medically with cross sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries, they might well kill themselves.

The Biden policy was presented as commonsensical, but it is out of step with many progressive countries and some leading experts. Countries that have gone down the “gender affirming” road—like Norway, Sweden, France—are now reversing course in the absence of evidence that such care actually improves mental health outcomes for dysphoric children. Pioneering doctors, like Erica Anderson of the University of California San Francisco’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic—herself a transwoman who has helped hundreds of teens through their transitions—are warning of the dangers of this policy. Critics say that even the phrase "gender-affirming" is misleading—a euphemism for something closer to medical malpractice. When else do we trust children to self-diagnose and make lifelong medical decisions?

And then there is the growing chorus of young people, including Chloe, who had come to regret—deeply—the decisions they had made and the gender-affirming care they had received.

In the middle of this story are teenagers who are largely going unheard by a government and a medical establishment that’s plowing ahead. “I don’t think gender affirming care helps kids like me,” says Chloe. “There should be more regard to alternatives in treating dysphoria, especially when it comes to kids.”

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