Better Than Nature – Puberty Blockers

A tweet by James Lindsay of New Discourses:

I struggle to understand the willingness of prepubescent teenagers to take hormone blockers in light of the high physical and emotional risks (other than social contagion and need to please one's social network). What follows is an excerpt from Irreversible Damage, by Abigail Shrier:

“So first of all, the studies show that when a kid is put on puberty blockers, almost 100 percent will go on to do cross-sex hormones.” This is true, though the reasons are not entirely clear. One possibility is that a young person would only go on puberty blockers in the first place if she was reasonably certain of wanting to lead a transgender life. Another is that, after years of socially identifying as a person of the opposite sex, the social costs of taking it all back are quite steep. It’s hard to change your mind about something you’ve been insisting on for so long— even if you might wish you could.

But it was the next thing she learned that sent Katherine [the mother of a teenager] spinning. “When you’ve stopped puberty with puberty blockers and go straight to cross-sex hormones, you absolutely guarantee that you will be infertile.” When the gender clinicians pushed Katherine to start her preteen child on hormone blockers, they were proposing that she put Maddie on a path toward infertility. Her faith in the gender therapists fell apart.

Katherine could not understand how psychologists would encourage this, how doctors would allow it, or why medical professional standards would permit parents to consent to eliminating such a vital human capacity on behalf of their minor children. And yet, right in front of her, schools were encouraging it, parents were going along with it, the media was celebrating it, and everyone was acting as if this were perfectly kosher.

Continue ReadingBetter Than Nature – Puberty Blockers

Racial Progress in a Wealthy Neighborhood Association in Seattle

Perhaps someday people will learn that, sooner or later, they need to draw a line in the sand and say no to Woke insanity. If they fail, things like this will multiply:

Dear PhinneyWood Community,

We have a few updates to share with you about our on-going commitment to anti-racism and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) at the PNA.

You are probably familiar with the neighborhood tradition of the winter holiday monkeys. For the last five years, these LED-lit metal monkeys hung in the windows of businesses and organizations along the Phinney-Greenwood corridor. The monkey project was initially spearheaded by the PNA Business Group with the intent to bring a spirit and tradition unique to the PhinneyWood neighborhood. They chose monkeys as a complement to Woodland Park Zoo WildLights, perhaps as “escaped” animals from that display.

However, the PNA did not properly take into account the extended history of monkeys being used as a racist symbol, with Black people being derogatorily referred to as monkeys symbolically and in language. We do not want to cause any hurt or harm to our Black community members or visitors nor reinforce this symbolism, so the Board of Directors voted on July 21 to permanently retire the monkey project. This is just one step in our work of dismantling systemic racism.

We recognize that losing this winter tradition could be disappointing, but we hope you will stand with us in our efforts to become an anti-racist organization. We are committed to working with the Business Advisory Group to research, develop, and implement an alternative PhinneyWood tradition to unite business and community. We will engage local businesses and the community with ideas and feedback in the planning process. To pass on ideas to the Business Advisory Committee, please email Chris at chrism@phinneycenter.org.

In addition to the monkey symbolism, it came to our attention that a water fountain in the Phinney Center presented to some community members as a legacy or symbol of segregation and caused discomfort and pain.

As background, our Blue Building was built in 1904 as a Seattle Public School and remained in operation as a school until 1981. The small water fountain in the lobby was the only fountain on that level until 2012, when PNA installed a modern ADA accessible water fountain and bottle filler as part of a larger accessibility and conservation project that included an elevator and other building improvements.

When the new fountain was installed, PNA decided to keep the old fountain as part of the building’s historic character, and for easier use by smaller children. We did not realize at the time that the presence of the two separate fountains could bring up imagery of racial segregation.

Facilities staff first heard about the second water fountain making some community members uncomfortable on July 8, 2020. After brief consultation with PNA leadership, maintenance staff removed the fountain on July 10, 2020. We have a little cosmetic work to finish, but are glad to have addressed the concern as soon as we became aware of it.

Last, but not least, at the July 21 meeting, the Board passed a resolution to formalize the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee. This will make sure this work permanently remains part of the fabric of the organization.

Continue ReadingRacial Progress in a Wealthy Neighborhood Association in Seattle

ACLU Attorney Joins a Nationwide Effort to Ban Abigail Shrier’s Book: Irreversible Damage

In today's WSJ, Abigail Shrier describes the environment into which she released her book, Irreversible Damage:

Social contagions exist, and teen girls are particularly susceptible to them. The book takes a hard look at whether the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls is yet another social contagion to befall girls who, in another era, might have fallen prey to anorexia or bulimia . . .Many transgender adults, including some I interviewed for the book, agree that teen girls are undergoing medical transition too fast with too little oversight. Others disagree and have written books. Amid a sea of material unskeptically promoting medical transition for teenage girls, there’s one book that investigates this phenomenon and urges caution. That is the book the activists seek to suppress.

The WSJ article is titled:  "Does the ACLU Want to Ban My Book?"

Despite the importance of Shrier's book, it is being treated as though it an attempt to harm teenage girls when it is actually providing critically important information aimed at protecting teenaged girls as well as encouraging a much needed conversation.

There is nothing hateful in suggesting that most teenagers are not in a good position to approve irreversible alterations to their bodies, particularly if they are suffering from trauma, OCD, depression, or any of the other mental-health problems that are comorbid with expressions of dysphoria. And yet, here we are.

Target removed Irreversible Damage from its shelves this week, until it received an uproar from Twitter supporters of Shrier's right to promote her concerns. This is despite the fact that Robin DiAngelo's blatantly racist book, White Fragility, has been freely available at Target. Amazon has refused to allow Schrier's publisher to advertise her book on its site despite the fact that Irreversible Damage is the #1 book in several categories at Amazon.  Newspapers and magazines are refusing to review Irreversible Damage:

In any case, every major newspaper and legacy magazine summarily turned interested journalists down. Whether they would have reviewed my book favorably or unfavorably, I have no idea—and it doesn’t matter. Kirkus, which reviews 10,000 titles per year, including self-published and obscure works—pretended my book didn’t exist. Its editors, too busy heaping praise on the Trans Teen Survival Guide, When Aiden Became a Brother, Jack (Not Jackie), Rethinking Normal, and of course, Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.

Two days ago, Chase Strangio of the "free speech" ACLU Tweeted that Shrier's book should be censored.

This is the sort of Tweet on posts when one has not actually read Shrier's book.  I am halfway thru her book (and I had seen her lengthy interview with Joe Rogan). Strangio's Tweet completely mischaracterized Shrier's book, which shows absolute deference to the personal decisions of transgender adults. She urges that they should all receive the full protection under the law.

In response to Strangio's outrageously false Tweet, Glenn Greenwald writes:

It is nothing short of horrifying, but sadly also completely unsurprising, to see an ACLU lawyer proclaim his devotion to “stopping the circulation of [a] book” because he regards its ideas as wrong and dangerous. There are, always have been, and always will be people who want to stop books from being circulated: by banning them, burning them, pressuring publishing houses to rescind publishing contracts or demanding corporations refuse to sell them. But why would someone with such censorious attitudes, with a goal of suppressing ideas with which they disagree, choose to go to work for the ACLU of all places?

As far the claim that Shrier is engaging in "hate speech," consider this excerpt from her recent article at Quillette "Gender Activists Are Trying to Cancel My Book. Why is Silicon Valley Helping Them?"

Sean Scott, a member of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), heard of my book in the fall, and shared what he knew with other science writers. He noted that Nature Communications had published a study “to investigate whether autistic traits were elevated in transgender and gender-diverse individuals.” (To no one’s surprise, they are: Autistic children develop all kinds of strongly expressed fixations about the world they perceive.) Then he wrote: “This, along with [Wall Street Journal] columnist [Abigail Shrier’s] recent book on the onset of transgenderism amongst young girls… should hopefully shed some overdue light on a very sensitive, politically charged topic that potentially carries lifelong medical consequences.” Sound like hate speech? I didn’t think so.

This saga will continue with the political Left increasingly embracing its new role as the anti-free-speech party.  The Left is showing an increased willingness cancel good-hearted people based on false pretenses and an exuberant willingness to peddle faux science at least as well as any nut job on the political Right. And perhaps even better than the political Right.

As noted by Shrier in Quillette, she has received much support from parents who are seeing signs of transgender social contagion in their daughters.  The sought to share this information with other concerned parents. GoFundMe quickly shut down these efforts:

Parents who’ve lived through this social contagion—who’d seen it strike daughters who’d never before exhibited signs of gender dysphoria in childhood—became so alarmed at suppression efforts that they dug into their own pockets to promote my work. That’s how I became one of the few authors in the world to have her own billboard in West Hollywood. Other parents started an account on GoFundMe, a website that facilitates fundraising efforts for all sorts of causes. GoFundMe closed the account. The parents started another campaign. GoFundMe closed that account, too. If a mentally fragile 18-year-old wants help removing her healthy breasts, GoFundMe will happily facilitate it. (The site currently hosts over 35,000 campaigns to pay for female “top surgery” alone.) But if you believe your daughter has become caught up in a movement that will leave her angry, regretful, maimed, and sterile, you’re out of luck.

This saga will continue with the political Left increasingly embracing its new role as the anti-free-speech party.  The Left is showing an increased willingness cancel good-hearted people based on false pretenses and an exuberant willingness to peddle faux science at least as well as any nut job on the political Right. And perhaps even better than the political Right.

Where do you draw your line? When are you going muster the courage to speak out against the excesses of Woke culture? Is it when an Attorney for the ACLU actively seeks to ban an important well-researched book by a good-hearted woman? Yes, I'm referring to the ACLU, whose core principle is advocating for free speech. Or is it when there is a concerted nationwide effort (including Amazon, Target and GoFundMe) to refuse to allow discussion of blatantly anti-scientific claims that endanger millions of teenage girls in the U.S.? Not long ago, only 1 in 10,000 people were diagnosed with sexual disphoria. Are we really willing to stand by when 2% of teenagers have now been convinced by activists on social media and disreputable profit-taking healthcare providers that they were born in the wrong bodies?

Continue ReadingACLU Attorney Joins a Nationwide Effort to Ban Abigail Shrier’s Book: Irreversible Damage