Mr. Rogers sings a song about boys and girls. There's no hint here that a child who doesn't conform to gender stereotypes needs to attempt to change their biological sex (which would be impossible to do).
How did it come to be that conservatives have become the most vocal defenders of traditional liberal values? At Public, Michael Shellenberger describes the challenge facing those of us who embrace traditional liberal values:
For most of the post-war period, liberalism in the United States was defined around freedom of speech, the needs of the working class, and the fight against racism and sexism. It was liberals who defended the right to burn the American flag, and of neo-Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors. It was liberals who fought against corporate power and for the rights of working people. And it was liberals who fought to end racial segregation and to protect girls and women, including in sports.
All of that has changed. Today, it is conservatives who are fighting the racial re-segregation of classrooms and workforces by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) administrators in thrall to Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is conservatives who are defending the right to freedom of expression online from progressives demanding greater censorship by Big Tech and the government. And it is conservatives who are defending the rights of girls and women to female-only spaces and sports from natal males...
A similar dynamic occurred with the natural environment. After World War II, both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, supported industrialization, economic development in poor nations, and nuclear power. Starting in the 1960s, the radical Left turned against industrialization, and started romanticizing peasant life in poor nations, while opposing nuclear energy in rich nations. The result was that Republicans were left holding positions that were once mainstream liberal ones...
As a result, conservatives find themselves in the paradoxical position of defending traditional liberal values like free speech and racial equality from progressives.... A big part of the reason as to why it has been left to conservatives to defend liberalism is because the radical Left, or what is sometimes called the Woke Left, had already defeated traditional liberals, first in major societal institutions and then in Congress, many years and some cases decades ago. [Christopher] Rufo attributes much of the radical Left’s success to its ability to manipulate language and emotions.
Traditional liberals didn’t understand who they were dealing with. The liberal university presidents, the newspaper editors, and the heads of various professional associations were committed to civil dialogue and democracy; the radical Left insurgents were not. The radical Left didn’t hesitate to use illiberal means, including making false accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, against their opponents...
Readers of Public know that I believe that the radical Left’s power stems from being able to offer a complete Woke religion to fill the vacuum left by declining belief in traditional religions ... Into the spiritual void emerged a new religion: victim ideology, or Wokeism.
What are the policy positions of Gays Against Groomers? Many people won’t know because corporate media on the left (I checked the NYT and WaPo) refuse to mention the organization. I recently asked someone who considers herself to be on the political left. She cringed and responded by saying that it sounds like a Republican or conservative group and that there is no grooming going on in America’s schools.
That seems like an answer to the question, but it isn’t. What just happened is subtle, but it is critically important. The person I was talking to completely failed to answer my question. Her answer illustrates Daniel Kahneman’s principle of “substitution,” which he discussed at length in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011).
[W]hen faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.
(p. 12).
In my experience, this is a go-to technique in the culture war conversations. Quite often, when people are asked factual questions about a person or organization they don’t like (or they assume they don’t like), they will substitute an easy question for the more difficult question of detailing the facts. The substituted easy question will often be something like “Do you like this person/organization,” even though that was clearly not the question asked. As Kahneman describes, the new simple question will be unconsciously inserted. With the new simple question substituted in, the answer is also simple. In culture war discussions, it often takes the form of an ad hominem attack. Consider this example:
Q: “What are the policy position of [a particular person/group]?”
This is a factual question that should either be “I don’t know” or it should be a listing of the policy positions of the person/group. If the is about an organization and the answer is anything other than “I don’t know,” it should fairly track the “About Us” page of the website the person or organization.
However, the hard question is often unconsciously brushed to the side and a new easy question is inserted. In my example, if the person thinks they don’t like the person or organization, they could be expected to substitute in a new simple question like this:
“Do you like [the person or group] and what detrimental things can your emotionally generate (e.g., what deplorable person/affiliation/ad hominem label can you reflexively pull out) to express your emotions?”
For people politically on the Left, the answer will often be something like: “That [person/group] is like Hitler, Republicans, Satan, etc.
On this topic of Substitution, here is another excerpt from Kahneman book (p. 101):
The idea of substitution came up early in my work with Amos [Tversky], and it was the core of what became the heuristics and biases approach. We asked ourselves how people manage to make judgments of probability without knowing precisely what probability is. We concluded that people must somehow simplify that impossible task, and we set out to find how they do it. Our answer was that when called upon to judge probability, people actually judge something else and believe they have judged probability. System 1 often makes this move when faced with difficult target questions, if the an¬swer to a related and easier heuristic question comes readily to mind.Consider the questions listed in the left-hand column of Table 1.
These are difficult questions, and before you can produce a reasoned answer to any of them you must deal with other difficult issues. What is the meaning of happiness? What are the likely political developments in the next six months? What are the standard sentences for other financial crimes? How strong is the competition that the candidate faces? What other environmental or other causes should be considered? Dealing with these questions seriously is completely impractical. But you are not limited to perfectly reasoned answers to questions. There is a heuristic alternative to careful reasoning, which sometimes works fairly well and sometimes leads to serious errors.[More . . . ]
In the recent affirmative action decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Jackson made a startling claim:
Dr. Vinay Prasad takes issue with the shoddy study on which Justice Jackson might well have relied upon in good faith. I will assume that neither she nor her law clerks have the necessary expertise for critically analyzing the study she cited for making the claim that Black doctors are twice as good at saving the lives of Black newborns. In this article, Dr. Prasad shows the skepticism one needs to show upon hearing such an extraordinary claim.
The paper in question is catastrophically flawed. First, consider that it is a bold claim that a white doctor is twice as likely to kill a black baby. The effect size (TWICE as likely!) is massive. . . .
Next, in my podcast from Aug 2020 I discuss why this paper is flawed (full podcast is 91 min. but relevant discussion runs from 1:31:00 to 0:52:00 mark). Those notes are also captured here.
Prasad also breaks down a second article claiming that Black doctors are substantially better at saving Black lives: "The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision puts lives at risk."
Prasad sets forth the limitations on this second study, which also makes an extraordinary race-based claim:
Many left-leaning people are currently insisting that we should trust medical organizations to lead the way on public health issues. I disagree. Many of these organizations have been captured by activists and have lost their scientific moorings. An example the AAP's position on transgender issues, as reported by Helen Joyce: "The American Academy of Pediatrics sidelines formal proposal to revise Pediatric Medical Transition policy for the 4th consecutive year: Unfortunately, it seems that U.S. medical organizations have allowed politics to overshadow their commitment to evidence-based medicine." Here an excerpt:
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has, once again, overlooked a formal proposal—its fifth iteration for the fourth year running—intended to amend its stance on pediatric medical transitions. This proposal, known as Resolution #37, was co-authored by 24 pediatricians who are also AAP members. It called for the AAP to align its policy with findings from systematic evidence reviews, universally considered the gold standard of evidence-based medicine.
Resolution #37, titled "Align the AAP Treatment Recommendations for Gender Incongruence and Gender Dysphoria with Findings from Systematic Reviews of Evidence," was submitted on April 1, 2023. The resolution sought a comprehensive review and update of the AAP's current policy on gender-affirming care for trans-identified youth, as stated in the 2018 AAP position paper titled "Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents." The existing policy endorses the view that immediate affirmation through psychosocial and medical interventions is the only appropriate approach for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, a stance that Resolution #37 argues requires reevaluation.
Despite assurances from the AAP in February 2023 that policy statements undergo a review every five years, and thus an update of the 2018 statement is already underway, Resolution #37 states that the AAP is proceeding with the update without conducting a systematic review of the evidence. No AAP committees working on these policy updates plan to perform such a review, and there's no indication that a systematic review related to treatments for gender dysphoria is even being considered.