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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A Woman Biologist Defines “Woman”

Heather Heying offers this precise definition of woman in her article, I am a Woman and a Biologist. Here's an excerpt:

Women are adult human females.

Adults are individuals who have attained the average age of first reproduction for their species. They have reached the age of maturity. The term adult applies across many species, and is used to distinguish them from juveniles, who are not yet capable of reproduction.

Humans are members of the genus Homo. Our relatives in the genus Australopithecus, now extinct, are sometimes categorized as human as well. Every individual Homo sapiens is a human.

Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).

It’s the definition of that last word—female—that will be difficult for some to accept.

Some people imagine that, because words are a social construct, so too, inherently, are the concepts that they describe. Some words do describe social constructs: offended, justified and controversy, for instance. These things have no reality in the physical universe, or if they do, that reality can be negotiated by social means.

Many words, however, do describe an underlying reality. Words like bulldozer, grasshopper, and woman.

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Amy Eileen’s Hamm’s Quest to Affirm the Reality of Biological Sex

It is so disheartening to see stories like this accumulate. Amy Eileen Hamm's career has been threatened because she will not budge from the believe that biological sex is real. Here's an excerpt from her story at Quillette, titled "I’m Being Investigated by the British Columbia College of Nurses Because I Believe Biological Sex Is Real":

In November 2020, the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) informed me that I was under investigation for my “off-duty conduct.” My disciplinary hearing is scheduled to take place from May 30th through June 3rd, and my career as a nurse hangs in the balance. I have been working throughout, apart from a stress leave and various sick days that I have taken to protect my mental health.

The BCCNM is a regulatory body whose stated purpose is to protect the public from harm, and to ensure that nurses and midwives meet defined standards of care and professional responsibilities. It issues a license to practice; and without it, you can’t work as a nurse in British Columbia. I’d never thought too much about the BCCNM before this investigation was announced. I did my job, and believe I did it well. I paid my license fees each year—that was it.

My troubles started when the BCCNM informed me that two members of the public had complained to the organization, to the effect that I am transphobic and so might be incapable of “provid[ing] safe, non-judgemental care to transgender and gender diverse patients.” One of the complainants is a social worker named Alex Turriff, who self-describes as “a passionate social justice advocate … interested in structural violence and oppression [and] influenced politically by Marxism.” The other has been awarded the privilege of remaining anonymous, even as he or she has attempted to ruin my career: The BCCNM apparently agreed with the anonymous person’s belief that I might “retaliate” if I knew who they were.

In my decade-long nursing career, I have never had a patient complaint, or otherwise received any type of workplace discipline. To the contrary, I loved my job and worked my way into leadership roles. I have worked with countless transgender patients. I am not transphobic by any reasonable or defensible definition of that word. Yet I now could lose my job because activists claim that I am a bigot.

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