Calm Posted October 31, 2024 Posted October 31, 2024 (edited) 2 hours ago, smac97 said: I see a difference between the NRA's focus on guns (marksmanship/safety, then later ownership/legislative issues) and activists pivoting from opposing Vietnam to opposing nuclear power, from fighting the Klan to fighting Moms for Liberty, etc. What about March of Dimes…eradicating polio in kids to expanding it to other children’s diseases? It’s about kids’ health (not any larger category imo than guns) just as N.R.A. focused on guns…In fact I would say March of Dimes has been much more consistent given N.R.A. changed from pro significant gun control to pro very limited gun control and has shifted mostly from teaching gun safety and marksmanship to lobbying and promoting on media…iow, becoming a professional advocacy group with nice salaries for the top dogs and lobbyists and advertising company they employ. The very organization the so called syndrome is named for shows more consistency than the NRA, but you don’t see the NRA as an example. Edited October 31, 2024 by Calm
smac97 Posted October 31, 2024 Author Posted October 31, 2024 8 minutes ago, Calm said: Quote I see a difference between the NRA's focus on guns (marksmanship/safety, then later ownership/legislative issues) and activists pivoting from opposing Vietnam to opposing nuclear power, from fighting the Klan to fighting Moms for Liberty, etc. What about March of Dimes…eradicating polio in kids to expanding it to other children’s diseases? Good for them. Tierney's point was not that professional activists cannot pivot, but that they often do quite a bit of damage when they do (March of Dimes seems to be a fortunate exception). From his article: Quote I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”? The March of Dimes did not do any of these things when it pivoted. Quote These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally. If the "new cause" is worthwhile, and if the activists do not engage in harmful behaviors, then I don't think Tierney has a problem with that. Otherwise... Quote For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished. See, this is a point of serious concern for me. "Professional activists" often have a financial incentive to exaggerate, distort, misrepresent, etc. Again, the March of Dimes does not appear to have done this. Other "professional activists," however, have. Quote Consider the current cultural conflicts over gender and sex. As the gay rights movement achieved its initial goals from the 1970s, overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality, the movement expanded to include so many new causes that it required an acronym, LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and more). Its leaders declared a new cause, same-sex marriage, which vanished after the Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015. Five years later, the Court extended civil rights protections to people’s sexual preferences. What were activists to do? Gays could marry in every state, and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class—what more could groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force possibly demand from the government? What would get the attention of crusading journalists? An antigay hate crime would generate a brief publicity and fund-raising burst, but even progressive journalists struggled to sustain the groups’ narrative that America was a homophobic society. The laws against homosexuality had been toppled. The culture that produced those laws has been overthrown, too. Most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House. Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide. Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory. Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual despite never having had sex with a woman. So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for **** sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business. I think these activists have done huge damage to society, including to themselves, to LGBT folks, to children, to families and familial relationships, to schools. etc. Quote Civil rights activists have responded to their movement’s great successes by setting new goals that directly contradict the original mission of integration and “complete equality before the law,” as the NAACP’s 1911 charter declared. After Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black leaders pivoted from demanding equality to demanding special treatment. ... Affirmative action was originally supposed to be a “temporary measure,” as the Supreme Court put it in 1979, but it has become a permanent cause for civil rights activists. So have demands for government money, first for antipoverty programs and later for direct reparations to descendants of slaves. King and other leaders followed up their successes in the 1960s with calls for a “domestic Marshall Plan” and were rewarded with the Great Society programs of the 1960s, the start of a long-running “war on poverty” that has since cost an estimated $20 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars. King predicted that these antipoverty programs would cause a “spectacular decline” in the welfare rolls, but they had the opposite effect and eventually aroused bipartisan criticism. Civil rights groups tried but failed to stop President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress from enacting welfare reform, and they struggled during the 1990s with declining membership, lower revenues, and staff layoffs. The movement had lost its sense of urgency. ... As the civil rights movement searched for new causes, no group shifted as adroitly as the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group launched in the 1970s to offer legal representation to individual victims of discrimination but then switched to filing lawsuits against chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1986, the SPLC’s entire legal team resigned in protest—they’d signed up to help poor people, not sue an organization whose national membership barely eclipsed 10,000. But the Klan made an ideal villain for fund-raising appeals to northern liberals, and the SPLC prospered from the publicity about lawsuits that bankrupted chapters of the Klan. By the 1990s, virtually nothing was left of the Klan to sue, so the SPLC pivoted again. It changed the name of its “Klanwatch” project to “Hatewatch,” and began issuing reports listing a growing number of “hate groups” and “extremists” across America. Scholars, journalists, and nonprofits have repeatedly denounced SPLC’s blacklists, noting that its tallies include many “hate groups” that don’t exist, or are harmless (such as a Confederate memorabilia shop that made the list), or are mainstream conservative and Christian organizations that simply oppose progressive policies. The SPLC’s lists of dangerous “extremists” have included respected conservatives such as Charles Murray, Rand Paul, and Ben Carson. As Tyler O’Neil observed in Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC could itself be called a hate group, given how its irresponsible tactics have smeared political opponents and inflamed partisan rancor. But the organization’s scaremongering, however damaging to public debate in America, has been remarkably lucrative. The SPLC’s appeals to combat a “rising tide of hate” have brought in so much donor money that its endowment has soared above $600 million. Fomenting racial discord and animus so that "professional activists" can make a fortune is a deeply problematic issue. Quote Since overt racism became the ultimate taboo in America, activists and academics have shifted to identifying subtler varieties of prejudice, with limited success. They have decried “microaggressions,” “unconscious racism,” and “systemic racism,” but have struggled to raise money to fight these invisible enemies. Their claims that America was a “fundamentally racist country” became a tough sell after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Considering Obama’s presidency as evidence of a “post-racial America” was a wonderful vision—unless you happened to be a civil rights activist contemplating a post-employment future. Shortly before Obama’s inauguration, however, Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, was fatally shot by a white police officer in Oakland, California, leading to headlines, rallies, and riots—and then more rallies and riots the following year, after the officer was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder. A new cause was born, though it was not until the case of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager fatally shot in Florida in 2012, that it acquired a name: Black Lives Matter. Activists and reporters from around the country flocked to rallies in Florida, and then to more rallies and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, when another unarmed black man was killed by a police officer. After George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis in 2020, Black Lives Matter became one of the largest social movements in American history. Journalists lavished the group with attention, and corporations and donors sent it more than $90 million that year—even though the sorts of deaths that the group ostensibly existed to oppose were rare and unrepresentative. (The number of African Americans fatally shot by police annually constitute only 2.5 percent of black homicide victims, and studies have not demonstrated a pattern of racial bias in fatal shootings by police.) The protests and antipolice hostility produced what became known as the Ferguson Effect: a reduction in police activity that leads to a dramatic upsurge in homicide and other violent crimes—the victims of which are disproportionately black. Black Lives Matter not only failed to save black lives; its antipolice posture arguably led to thousands of additional black deaths. But as a full-employment program for civil rights activists, it was a resounding success. The damage done to whole communities by the race-baiting vilification of law enforcement has done huge damage to society. And much of this race-baiting is directly attributable to professional activists. Quote The March of Dimes syndrome is an ancient social affliction that is especially virulent today and destined to get even worse. Kings, generals, and high priests have always tried to maintain power by declaring new crusades—new enemies to conquer, new sins to extirpate. But it has gotten steadily easier for leaders to rally the public because of another phenomenon, known as Spencer’s Law, named after the Victorian sociologist Herbert Spencer, who observed a paradox in the reform movements of his day to combat poverty, hunger, child labor, illiteracy, and alcoholism. These problems were widespread in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century. Then, as the Industrial Revolution lifted incomes during the nineteenth century, the working classes saw a dramatic improvement in their diets and living conditions. By mid-century, most Britons were literate because children were going to school instead of being put to work. Alcohol consumption fell dramatically. But it was only late in the nineteenth century, after so much progress had already occurred, that reformers captured the public’s attention with campaigns to help the needy, mandate universal education, and pass temperance laws. “The more things improve,” Spencer wrote in 1891, “the louder become the exclamations about their badness.” Spencer’s Law has been reformulated by Stephen Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs: “The degree of public concern and anxiety about a social problem or phenomenon varies inversely as to its real or actual incidence.” Thus, we obsess about racism today more than we did during the Jim Crow era. From 1990 to Obama’s election in 2008, the African American homicide rate fell by 50 percent—and then the Black Lives Matter signs sprouted on lawns across the country. From 1995 to 2010, the rate of sexual violence against women dropped by nearly 60 percent in America—and then began the panic chronicled in The Campus Rape Frenzy, the book by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr., debunking the mythical epidemic of sexual assaults occurring on university campuses. By 2017, corporate America had instituted strict punishments and mandatory training to prevent sexual harassment—and then came #MeToo. Public acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage reached an all-time high in 2023—and then the media breathlessly reported that gay activists had declared a “national state of emergency.” Several factors are responsible for this paradox. First is the negativity effect, or the brain’s innate bias to pay more attention to the negative than the positive. The better that things get, the harder we look to find something bad, a tendency termed “prevalence-induced concept change” by the social psychologists who demonstrated it in 2018, in a study published in Science. In one of the experiments, the psychologists showed people photos of faces and asked them to identify the ones with threatening expressions. As the series of photos progressed, fewer and fewer hostile faces appeared, but the people were so determined to see the negative that they started misclassifying the neutral faces as hostile. “When the world gets better,” explained one of the psychologists, Daniel Gilbert, “we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all.” I think a lot of youth today harbor very bleak outlooks for their lives, much of which is attributable to the doom-and-gloom prognostications of agitators and activists whose livelihood and fortunes are based on peddling such things. Quote As the world gets better—as people become richer, better educated, and longer-lived—we find new things to worry about and have more disposable income and free time to spend curing humanity’s woes, real or imagined. Our instinct to save others is noble, but it risks being corrupted. “As society grows wealthier,” the economist Donald Boudreaux observes, “the need to be saved by others from earthly misfortunes grows steadily less frequent and less dire while the itch to save others from earthly misfortunes grows steadily more frequent and more intense.” This itch explains why journalists and the public keep falling for hoaxers like the actor Jussie Smollett: the demand for racism vastly exceeds the supply. It’s not easy to meet the growing demand from saviors, given a shrinking supply of victims, but the potential rewards have inspired remarkable creativity—and there’s every reason to expect more in the future. I see this happening a lot in our society. A lot. Quote As threats to humanity diminish, the March of Dimes syndrome will lead to increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric, a strategy that environmentalists have already mastered. Last century, they warned that “overpopulation” would cause billions to starve to death, that the “energy crisis” would usher in a new “age of scarcity” as humanity ran out of fossil fuels, and that synthetic chemicals would cause a “cancer epidemic.” Those crises were all bogus, but they did at least involve basic necessities for survival and immediate threats to people’s lives. Today, humans live longer than ever, and we’re not running out of food or energy; yet green doomsayers have escalated to the even more improbable claim that humanity—which has thrived everywhere from the tropics to the Arctic—faces an “existential threat” because global temperatures could rise two to three degrees Celsius by the year 2100. The climate issue has even brought Jane Fonda back in the news and back to Washington, where she has been repeatedly arrested during “Fire Drill Fridays,” the weekly demonstrations that she organizes. Her leadership in addressing the “climate emergency” has been widely praised, though a few of her allies have raised some awkward questions about her activism back in 1979, at that first antinuke march in Washington. Fonda arguably did more than anyone to cripple the nuclear-power industry, by not only leading that initial movement but also by starring in the antinuke movie The China Syndrome. At least partly because of antinuclear activism, utilities switched to coal-burning plants that massively increased the carbon emissions that Fonda is now trying to eliminate. Two years ago, an interviewer with HuffPost gently asked her if she had any regrets about turning people against nuclear power. “No, they took the right message,” Fonda replied, and proceeded to denounce nuclear power yet again. However wrong you might think Fonda has been about nuclear power and climate change, you have to give her credit for a certain tactical brilliance. Plenty of other activists have survived by finding a new problem to solve, but she helped create the problem herself and continues working to prevent the most practical solution. She has taken the March of Dimes syndrome to a whole new level that may deserve a term of its own. Call it the March of Jane syndrome. Yep. 8 minutes ago, Calm said: The very organization the so called syndrome is named for shows more consistency than the NRA, but you don’t see the NRA as an example. I said I would give it some thought. Thanks, -Smac
Calm Posted October 31, 2024 Posted October 31, 2024 (edited) 11 hours ago, smac97 said: Tierney's point was not that professional activists cannot pivot, but that they often do quite a bit of damage when they do (March of Dimes seems to be a fortunate exception) I am not referring to Tierney’s argument, but your use of March of Dimes Syndrome and exempting the NRA while including March of Dimes. It appears inconsistent to me. However, Tierney summarizes his point quite succinctly right after describing the March of Dimes, so it appears he is including the organization in his criticism. If he isn’t, his argument is poorly written. https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-march-of-dimes-syndrome Quote These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally. For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished. Quote See, this is a point of serious concern for me. "Professional activists" often have a financial incentive to exaggerate, distort, misrepresent, etc. Again, the March of Dimes does not appear to have done this. How odd then to use that organization as the foundational example in your critique (by this I mean every time you refer to the “March of Dimes Syndrome” since the organization’s name is included). Edited November 1, 2024 by Calm 4
smac97 Posted November 1, 2024 Author Posted November 1, 2024 17 hours ago, Calm said: I am not referring to Tierney’s argument, but your use of March of Dimes Syndrome and exempting the NRA while including March of Dimes. It appears inconsistent to me. Again, it seems like the NRA and Moms for Liberty have not materially strayed from their original raisons d'être. Again, I see a difference between the NRA's focus on guns (marksmanship/safety, then later ownership/legislative issues) and activists pivoting from opposing Vietnam to opposing nuclear power, from fighting the Klan to fighting Moms for Liberty, etc. Again, I am open to the possibility that "mission creep" / "March of Dimes Syndrome" can and does affect activism of various political stripes. I just don't know that NRA is a good example of that. Again, as regarding March of Dimes: Good for them. Tierney's point was not that professional activists cannot pivot, but that they often do quite a bit of damage when they do (March of Dimes seems to be a fortunate exception). Again, I said I would give it (that the NRA has succumbed to "March of Dimes Syndrome") some thought. 17 hours ago, Calm said: However, Tierney summarizes his point quite succinctly right after describing the March of Dimes, so it appears he is including the organization in his criticism. If he isn’t, his argument is poorly written. https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-march-of-dimes-syndrome I respectfully disagree. He does not seem to find fault with March of Dimes: Quote I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”? These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally. He does not disparage the March of Dimes here, or if he does, it's pretty milquetoast. He does disparage other instances of "professional activists" A) whose focus is primarily about money and influence and notoriety, B) who pivot to a new "project" that is - arguably - substantially less meritorious than the group's original goals, C) whose "activism" ends up having some pretty harmful effects, and so on. He does not say that the March of Dimes has done these things. 17 hours ago, Calm said: How odd then to use that organization as the foundational example in your critique (by this I mean every time you refer to the “March of Dimes Syndrome” since the organization’s name is included). I did not coin the term. Nor, it seems, did Tierney: Quote I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Apparently the term was coined by Addison Del Mastro in 2016: Social Justice Warriors Define Bigotry Down So They Can Stay In Business Quote In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes to combat polio. You read that right. This piece of trivia is not as widely known anymore, because polio was effectively eradicated in 1955 with the widespread introduction of the Salk vaccine. So why does the March of Dimes still exist, now as an organization researching, much more famously, birth defects? Put simply, when faced with the prospect of either closing up shop or changing missions, they chose the latter. An organization changing its mission is hardly surprising. Plenty of foundations and nonprofits whose original purposes or missions have long since been forgotten are still operating. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as an organization that has successfully established itself is likely to be more effective at a new mission. But this phenomenon of organizational self-perpetuation is worth probing. Let’s call it the March of Dimes syndrome. The March of Dimes Syndrome Writ Large Now, the basic idea that people or interest groups seek self-perpetuation—we might also call it “continued relevance”—is also nothing new. We are used to thinking of business activity along these lines: in that field the impulse is called planned obsolescence. The idea is that no product should be so desirable or durable that it erases the need for a new product down the road. There is a built-in incentive against a company satisfying its customers too well. This logic has also often been applied to government, with commentators noting the ease with which lawmakers and bureaucrats start new programs but the difficulty in getting them to end any programs. Milton Friedman’s famous quip that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” neatly encapsulates the idea. It’s somewhat less familiar to claim this same logic and set of incentives—an organizational impulse to “stay in business” and to never quite solve the problem—applies to the philanthropic (or academic) worlds. But the logic applies here too, and here are a few examples other than the March of Dimes itself. Pushing Lies about Victimhood Andrew Sullivan, one of the earliest crusaders for gay marriage and a married gay man himself, has become disaffected by the current LGBT movement, which he accuses of pushing an unjustified narrative of victimhood. He declared at a recent LGBT conference, “These people’s [certain LGBT activists’] lives and careers and incomes depend on the maintenance of discrimination and oppression.” Although we can argue over Sullivan’s particular claim, the basic idea holds: eliminating LGBT discrimination would in fact essentially render the LGBT movement obsolete. This does not mean, of course, that LGBT activists really want to see more oppression, nor does it mean that all the oppression they claim to see is simply made up. It does mean that the LGBT movement collectively has incentives to remain in existence. Defining where true dedication ends and the March of Dimes syndrome begins is unquestionably a gray area, but it is a gray area that exists. One way to “stay in business” is to define down the meaning of discrimination or oppression, so words or behaviors that were once mainstream become verboten. That is partly what Sullivan was talking about, and it’s something we can observe in many activist movements, particularly in civil rights and anti-racism. It is possible to view this cynically: faced with the possibility that racism as previously defined is largely eradicated, the machinery of race activism—the journals, magazines, websites, academic departments, publishing arms, and activist networks—is under quite a strong incentive to remain in business. Changing the definition of racism so enough racism always remains to justify that machinery accomplishes this. Merchandising Fear and Loathing It is worth spelling out, quite apart from incentives, just how similar this process looks to marketing or merchandising. Once, racism was understood as an ideology or law that elevated some races over others, usually expressed with anger or violence. Then racism was largely understood as discrimination based upon race, such as job or housing refusals, or hate crimes. In the 1970s, the definition was changed to focus on society rather than individuals: racial discrepancies were, unless proven otherwise, evidence that the machinery of society operated upon racist principles, regardless of the racial feelings of the individuals involved. That would be “institutional” or “systemic” racism. Today, while that understanding remains, there is even a new kind of racism: microaggressions, or sometimes-unconscious statements that reflect bigotry or discriminatory feelings. It is now increasingly common to claim that racism is actually getting worse, or even that our society is so suffused by racism that it has become permanent. The actual progression of these ideas would not look any different if the conversation inside the offices of anti-racist magazines/academic departments/activist organizations went something like this (and I am not saying that it does): “Drat—we’ve almost reached racial equality. What do we all do then? Quick, someone come up with a new definition of racism. ‘Built into society, can’t be rooted out’? Great! We’ll never go out of business using that definition!” Just because an organization or movement exhibits March of Dimes syndrome does not mean the work it does is without value, or that its grievances are without merit. It does not even mean the syndrome is manifesting itself consciously or cynically, as it would be impossible to know. The point is that there is something other than selfless dedication at work, not only in the business world, but almost everywhere that large networks of people expend great energy and effort toward a common goal. Understanding and recognizing this, far from discrediting such work, will provide it with a necessary moderating and enlightening force. Since the many of the grievances of LGBT Americans, African-Americans, and others are real, that would be an improvement for everyone involved. Thanks, -Smac
Popular Post california boy Posted November 1, 2024 Popular Post Posted November 1, 2024 (edited) 17 hours ago, Calm said: I am not referring to Tierney’s argument, but your use of March of Dimes Syndrome and exempting the NRA while including March of Dimes. It appears inconsistent to me. Consider the current cultural conflicts over gender and sex. As the gay rights movement achieved its initial goals from the 1970s, overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality, the movement expanded to include so many new causes that it required an acronym, LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and more). Its leaders declared a new cause, same-sex marriage, which vanished after the Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015. Five years later, the Court extended civil rights protections to people’s sexual preferences. What were activists to do? Gays could marry in every state, and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class—what more could groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force possibly demand from the government? What would get the attention of crusading journalists? An antigay hate crime would generate a brief publicity and fund-raising burst, but even progressive journalists struggled to sustain the groups’ narrative that America was a homophobic society. The laws against homosexuality had been toppled. The culture that produced those laws has been overthrown, too. Most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House. Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide. Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory. Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual despite never having had sex with a woman. So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for **** sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business. How odd then to use that organization as the foundational example in your critique (by this I mean every time you refer to the “March of Dimes Syndrome” since the organization’s name is included). Your quote you uses is claiming that the goalpost has moved for groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force. That is not true and distorts what those organizations were founded for. Both of those organizations were established to demand equal rights for LGBT citizens. While major inroads have been made for LGBT rights, there is still a lot of work yet to be done to achieve equal rights all citizens deserve. Last year 662 bills were introduced across 43 states against transgender rights. (in case you forgot the T in LGBT is for transgenders). 45 bills were past 125 bills are active and 492 failed. There are also sadly still half of the states that allow discrimination in the workplace against LGBT citizens. They can literally be fired just for being who they are. There are still other areas of discrimination against LGBT citizens including discrimination in health care, housing and public spaces. The goals of these and other organizations like them were not limited to gay marriage or having more gay people on television. That is a very shallow interpretation of what equal rights actually means. Your premise is completely false Edit to add. Sorry Calm, I quoted SMAC from your post. The above refers to quotes SMAC inserted, not Calm. Edited November 1, 2024 by california boy 7
smac97 Posted November 1, 2024 Author Posted November 1, 2024 (edited) 7 hours ago, california boy said: Your quote you uses is claiming that the goalpost has moved for groups like the Human Rights Campaign The entity which, per Tierney, "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." 7 hours ago, california boy said: or the National LGBTQ Task Force. That is not true and distorts what those organizations were founded for. From the article: Quote Consider the current cultural conflicts over gender and sex. As the gay rights movement achieved its initial goals from the 1970s, overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality, the movement expanded to include so many new causes that it required an acronym, LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and more). I think this pivot deserves some attention, as I think the endless acronym creates all sorts of challenges, including internecine ones. Quote Its leaders declared a new cause, same-sex marriage, which vanished after the Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015. I think this pivot was a bit more understandable, though I think it addresses the "mission creep" issue quite a bit. For example, here is a link to some comments about the intended effects of re-defining marriage (compiled in 2013) : Quote Death of marriage = "progress" 1. "Opting out of marriage altogether will provide a quicker path to progress, as only the death of marriage can bring about the dawn of equality for all." -- Dr. Meagan Tyler, Lecturer in Sociology at Victoria University Who needs marriage anymore 2. "The real question that should be debated is not whether gay marriage should be allowed, but rather, is marriage really something we need anymore?" -- David Vakalis Redefine the institution 3. "A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. [Legalizing "same-sex marriage"] is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture.” -- Michelangelo Signorile, OUT magazine, December/January 1994 We are advocating destruction 4. "And after all, we are advocating the destruction of the centrality of marriage and the nuclear family unit... ." -- Ryan Conrad Next step: Abolish 5. "But perhaps the next step isn’t to, once again, expand the otherwise narrow definition of marriage but to altogether abolish the false distinction between married families and other equally valid but unrecognized partnerships." -- Sally Kohn, Prop 8: Let’s Get Rid of Marriage Instead! The death of marriage 6. "Wouldn't marriage's death as a state institution, including for straight people, be the best solution? ...Scrap the civil register; make no distinction in the state's eyes between married and unmarried citizens." -- Alex Gabriel, Politics.co.uk Stoke the flames 7. "Marriage is the proverbial burning building. Instead of pounding on the door to be let in... queers should be stoking the flames!" -- National Conference on Organized Resistance Marriage erodes "freedom" 8. "Marriage should not be a goal; it should be a choice. One choice available out of many recognized as valid by society. But it isn’t. Not yet. Right now, as far as society is concerned, you are married or you are not yet married. And as that notion becomes further codified our freedom to make other choices steadily erodes." -- David McGee A moral revolution 9. "The gay movement, whether we acknowledge it or not, is not a civil rights movement, not even a sexual liberation movement, but a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality." -- Paul Varnell, Chicago Free Press Abolish the family 10. "We must aim at the abolition of the family, so that the sexist, male supremacist system can no longer be nurtured there." -- Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto, London, 1971, revised 1978 Transform society 11. “Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. ... We must keep our eyes on the goal ... of radically reordering society’s views of reality." [source] -- Paula Ettelbrick National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Marriage should not exist 12. "... fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there—because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist." -- Masha Gessen, journalist During a pannel discussion at the Sydney Writers Festival (link) "{O}nly the death of marriage can bring about the dawn of equality." "{I}s marriage really something we need anymore?" "A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry ... to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution." "{W}e are advocating the destruction of the centrality of marriage." "Marriage is the proverbial burning building. Instead of pounding on the door to be let in... queers should be stoking the flames!" "We must aim at the abolition of the family." "The institution of marriage is going to change ... I don’t think it should exist." These declarations do seem quite a bit removed from "overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality," and even from same-sex marriage. Quote What were activists to do? Gays could marry in every state, and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class—what more could groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force possibly demand from the government? What would get the attention of crusading journalists? An antigay hate crime would generate a brief publicity and fund-raising burst, but even progressive journalists struggled to sustain the groups’ narrative that America was a homophobic society. The laws against homosexuality had been toppled. The culture that produced those laws has been overthrown, too. Most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House. Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide. Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory. Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual despite never having had sex with a woman. "Most Americans now support same-sex marriage." "The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House." "Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide." "Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory." "Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual." Pride Month. Month. And yet HRC "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023. Quote So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for **** sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business. From overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality to an endless acronym, legalizing same-sex marriage (apparently intended, by some, as part of destroying marriage as an institution) coercing speech (pronouns, cakes, etc.), Drag Queen Story Hour / Drag Shows directed at children, highly questionable medical treatments for gender dysphoric minors, biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, prisons, etc., and on and on. Tierney is, I think, correct: "These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business." 7 hours ago, california boy said: Both of those organizations were established to demand equal rights for LGBT citizens. While major inroads have been made for LGBT rights, there is still a lot of work yet to be done to achieve equal rights all citizens deserve. Exactly. Exactly. As Tierney aptly put it: "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." 7 hours ago, california boy said: Last year 662 bills were introduced across 43 states against transgender rights. (in case you forgot the T in LGBT is for transgenders). 45 bills were past 125 bills are active and 492 failed. I suspect the vast majority of these pertain to A) pediatric sex trait modification procedures/treatments, B) prohibitions against biological males participating in female sports, C) prohibitions against biological males in women's bathrooms, changing rooms, and other sex-specific spaces, D) prohibitions against sex-themed exhibitions catering to minors (Draq Shows, etc.), E) limitations on sexually explicit books directed at minors (often in public libraries), F) defining "sex" to mean what it has always meant until five minutes ago, and/or G) some combination of these. Most of these are, as Tierney noted, "wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement." I suppose you can continue to chalk this opposition to rank bigotry from the same populace that now largely supports same-sex marriage. Personally, I'm not buying into that narrative. The issue, I think, is A) the endlessness that seems to follow this sort of always-pivoting "professional" activism, and B) the pretty obvious overreach at the expense of children and women. 7 hours ago, california boy said: There are also sadly still half of the states that allow discrimination in the workplace against LGBT citizens. They can literally be fired just for being who they are. There are still other areas of discrimination against LGBT citizens including discrimination in health care, housing and public spaces. I like the Utah Compact approach. "Gender identity," though, is likely to be a dealkiller for a lot of people. Denial of biological reality,, compelled speech, men in women's spaces, etc. are several bridges too far. Thanks, -Smac Edited November 2, 2024 by smac97
california boy Posted November 2, 2024 Posted November 2, 2024 1 hour ago, smac97 said: The entity which, per Tierney, "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." From the article: I think this pivot deserves some attention, as I think the endless acronym creates all sorts of challenges, including internecine ones. I think this pivot was a bit more understandable, though I think it addresses the "mission creep" issue quite a bit. For example, here is a link to some comments about the intended effects of re-defining marriage (compiled in 2013) : "{O}nly the death of marriage can bring about the dawn of equality." "{I}s marriage really something we need anymore?" "A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry ... to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution." "{W}e are advocating the destruction of the centrality of marriage." "Marriage is the proverbial burning building. Instead of pounding on the door to be let in... queers should be stoking the flames!" "We must aim at the abolition of the family." "The institution of marriage is going to change ... I don’t think it should exist." These declarations do seem quite a bit removed from "overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality," and even from same-sex marriage. "Most Americans now support same-sex marriage." "The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House." "Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide." "Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory." "Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual." Pride Month. Month. And yet HRC "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023. From overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality to an endless acronym, legalizing same-sex marriage (apparently intended, by some, as part of destroying marriage as an institution) coercing speech (pronouns, cakes, etc.), Drag Queen Story Hour / Drag Shows directed at children, highly questionable medical treatments for gender dysphoric minors, biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, prisons, etc., and on and on. Tierney is, I think, correct: "These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business." Exactly. Exactly. As Tierney aptly put it: "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." I suspect the vast majority of these pertain to A) pediatric sex trait modification procedures/treatments, B) prohibitions against biological males participating in female sports, C) prohibitions against biological males in women's bathrooms, changing rooms, and other sex-specific spaces, D) prohibitions against sex-themed exhibitions catering to minors (Draq Shows, etc.), E) limitations on sexually explicit books directed at minors (often in public libraries), F) defining "sex" to mean what it has always meant until five minutes ago, and/or G) some combination of these. Most of these are, as Tierney noted, "wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement." I suppose you can continue to chalk this opposition to rank bigotry from the same populace that now largely supports same-sex marriage. Personally, I'm not buying into that narrative. The issue, I think, is A) the endlessness that seems to follow this sort of always-pivoting "professional" activism, and B) the pretty obvious overreach at the expense of children and women. I like the Utah Compact approach. "Gender identity," though, is likely to be a dealkiller for a lot of people. Compelled speech, men in women's spaces, etc. are several bridges too far. Thanks, -Smac There is really something wrong with you. If you think that those who are LGBT were only interested in marriage rights and were willing to give up all their other constitutional rights such as job discrimination health care and a voice in the public square then your sense of what is right and what is wrong is extremely warped. This is like saying black people should be happy that they now can ride in the front of the bus. As far as HRC "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023, did you NOT read the part of my post including the link that "Last year 662 bills were introduced across 43 states against transgender rights. (in case you forgot the T in LGBT is for transgenders). 45 bills were past 125 bills are active and 492 failed. There are also sadly still half of the states that allow discrimination in the workplace against LGBT citizens. They can literally be fired just for being who they are. There are still other areas of discrimination against LGBT citizens including discrimination in health care, housing and public spaces. "? You may think those 662 bills are ok because you don't approve of that behavior, but not everyone agrees with what you think is perfectly fine to pass laws against. If there had been 662 bills brought up for a vote outlawing the rights of Christians, would you not consider that a national state of emergency for Christians? The fact that nothing like this every happens to Christians shows how little you understand what discrimination is. You obviously have lived a life of a straight white male Christian who has never had to fight for the equal rights other citizens enjoy without even realizing those rights. And if you think that gay marriage will always be the law of the land, perhaps you should spend some time reading this Time Magazine article. Not everyone feels as secure about that as you do. Quoting people off the internet that are not involved in any of these battles and wants to pretend that they no longer exist does NOT validate your position. Maybe you should spend a little more time listening to those who are fighting these constitutional rights that you so easily accept as being your white male heterosexual birthright. The ongoing fight for equal rights for LGBT is far from over. Do you even know what the Human Rights Campaign logo looks like? It is an = sign, not a marriage ring. It has always been about fighting for equal rights one step at a time. You may wish the the Human Rights Campaign fold up their tent and move on, but their mission is not finished. You and your Mr. Tierney don't get to decide that their mission is complete. Maybe instead of staying in your little bubble of people who agree with you, and attaching the Human Rights Campaign, you should first spend maybe 5 minutes looking at their web site and reading what their actual goals are? Too much to ask?? Here is part of the very first paragraph outlining their mission statement. Our goal is to ensure that all LGBTQ+ people, and particularly those of us who are trans, people of color and HIV+, are treated as full and equal citizens within our movement, across our country and around the world. 2
SeekingUnderstanding Posted November 2, 2024 Posted November 2, 2024 24 minutes ago, california boy said: There is really something wrong with you. If you think that those who are LGBT were only interested in marriage rights and were willing to give up all their other constitutional rights such as job discrimination health care and a voice in the public square then your sense of what is right and what is wrong is extremely warped. This is like saying black people should be happy that they now can ride in the front of the bus. As far as HRC "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023, did you NOT read the part of my post including the link that "Last year 662 bills were introduced across 43 states against transgender rights. (in case you forgot the T in LGBT is for transgenders). 45 bills were past 125 bills are active and 492 failed. There are also sadly still half of the states that allow discrimination in the workplace against LGBT citizens. They can literally be fired just for being who they are. There are still other areas of discrimination against LGBT citizens including discrimination in health care, housing and public spaces. "? You may think those 662 bills are ok because you don't approve of that behavior, but not everyone agrees with what you think is perfectly fine to pass laws against. If there had been 662 bills brought up for a vote outlawing the rights of Christians, would you not consider that a national state of emergency for Christians? The fact that nothing like this every happens to Christians shows how little you understand what discrimination is. You obviously have lived a life of a straight white male Christian who has never had to fight for the equal rights other citizens enjoy without even realizing those rights. And if you think that gay marriage will always be the law of the land, perhaps you should spend some time reading this Time Magazine article. Not everyone feels as secure about that as you do. Quoting people off the internet that are not involved in any of these battles and wants to pretend that they no longer exist does NOT validate your position. Maybe you should spend a little more time listening to those who are fighting these constitutional rights that you so easily accept as being your white male heterosexual birthright. The ongoing fight for equal rights for LGBT is far from over. Do you even know what the Human Rights Campaign logo looks like? It is an = sign, not a marriage ring. It has always been about fighting for equal rights one step at a time. You may wish the the Human Rights Campaign fold up their tent and move on, but their mission is not finished. You and your Mr. Tierney don't get to decide that their mission is complete. Maybe instead of staying in your little bubble of people who agree with you, and attaching the Human Rights Campaign, you should first spend maybe 5 minutes looking at their web site and reading what their actual goals are? Too much to ask?? Here is part of the very first paragraph outlining their mission statement. Our goal is to ensure that all LGBTQ+ people, and particularly those of us who are trans, people of color and HIV+, are treated as full and equal citizens within our movement, across our country and around the world. Given the lack of any mention of conservative activists and their organizations it’s clear to me that this is just a partisan hack job perpetrated by a partisan hack. What an amazing coincidence that all the activism that has succumbed to this “syndrome” happens to be activism that SMAC is politically opposed to. What are the odds. 🤔🤷♂️ 1
JVW Posted November 2, 2024 Posted November 2, 2024 Hey @smac97 I don't have your research acumen but could you just dig up 5 or 10 conservative activist organizations that fit the "march of dimes" syndrome principle to get these people to quiet down a bit about partisan stuff? I'm sure there's a ton of them. 1
smac97 Posted November 2, 2024 Author Posted November 2, 2024 59 minutes ago, california boy said: There is really something wrong with you. And straight to the ad hominem. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: If you think that those who are LGBT were only interested in marriage rights and were willing to give up all their other constitutional rights such as job discrimination health care and a voice in the public square then your sense of what is right and what is wrong is extremely warped. "If" being the operative word. I don't think this. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: As far as HRC "declare{d} a 'national state of emergency' for LGBT people" in 2023, did you NOT read the part of my post including the link that "Last year 662 bills were introduced across 43 states against transgender rights. (in case you forgot the T in LGBT is for transgenders). I did read it. And I responded to it: Quote I suspect the vast majority of these pertain to A) pediatric sex trait modification procedures/treatments, B) prohibitions against biological males participating in female sports, C) prohibitions against biological males in women's bathrooms, changing rooms, and other sex-specific spaces, D) prohibitions against sex-themed exhibitions catering to minors (Draq Shows, etc.), E) limitations on sexually explicit books directed at minors (often in public libraries), F) defining "sex" to mean what it has always meant until five minutes ago, and/or G) some combination of these. Most of these are, as Tierney noted, "wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement." I suppose you can continue to chalk this opposition to rank bigotry from the same populace that now largely supports same-sex marriage. Personally, I'm not buying into that narrative. The issue, I think, is A) the endlessness that seems to follow this sort of always-pivoting "professional" activism, and B) the pretty obvious overreach at the expense of children and women. And you then went directly to personal insults. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: And if you think that gay marriage will always be the law of the land, perhaps you should spend some time reading this Time Magazine article. Read it. Didn't think much of it. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: Not everyone feels as secure about that as you do. You don't know what I think about this issue. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: Quoting people off the internet that are not involved in any of these battles and wants to pretend that they no longer exist does NOT validate your position. Maybe you should spend a little more time listening to those who are fighting these constitutional rights that you so easily accept as being your white male heterosexual birthright. Oh, brother. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: The ongoing fight for equal rights for LGBT is far from over. It will never be over. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." The ambit of "equal rights to LGBT" is infinitely malleable, as evidenced by the fact that we went from overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality to an endless acronym, legalizing same-sex marriage (apparently intended, by some, as part of destroying marriage as an institution) coercing speech (pronouns, cakes, etc.), Drag Queen Story Hour / Drag Shows directed at children, highly questionable medical treatments for gender dysphoric minors, biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, prisons, etc., and on and on. Tierney is, I think, correct: "These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business." 59 minutes ago, california boy said: Do you even know what the Human Rights Campaign logo looks like? It is an = sign, not a marriage ring. It has always been about fighting for equal rights one step at a time. "Equal rights" is a convenient and endlessly elastic rubric. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: You may wish the the Human Rights Campaign fold up their tent and move on, but their mission is not finished. I never suggested that I "wish" this. And their mission will never be "finished. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." 59 minutes ago, california boy said: You and your Mr. Tierney don't get to decide that their mission is complete. I never suggested otherwise. Nor did Mr. Tierney. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: Maybe instead of staying in your little bubble of people who agree with you, I've had thousands of conversations with people who, like you, disagree with me. 59 minutes ago, california boy said: and attaching the Human Rights Campaign, you should first spend maybe 5 minutes looking at their web site and reading what their actual goals are? Too much to ask?? Here is part of the very first paragraph outlining their mission statement. Our goal is to ensure that all LGBTQ+ people, and particularly those of us who are trans, people of color and HIV+, are treated as full and equal citizens within our movement, across our country and around the world. Right. Sounds good on its face. In reality, HRC openly supported pediatric sex trait modifications, Drag Queen Story Hour, biological males in women's spaces (here, here, here), and so on. I think I have a pretty solid measure of what HRC means by their anodyne references to "equal rights." To be sure, some of what HRC is advocating for is good. And a lot of it is pretty terrible and depraved. Meanwhile, HRC talks a nice talk, but it has its flaws. Some examples: 5 Most Disappointing Things We Learned About HRC's 'White Men's Club' Quote "As a woman, I feel excluded every day," says an employee of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT civil rights advocacy group and political lobbying organization, in an internal diversity report released Wednesday. The report was compiled by The Pipeline Project, and commissioned by HRC through focus groups and surveys with employees of the company. The report revealed that the organizational structure of HRC perpetuates sexism, while leaders have failed to establish a "real push for diversity," which has created a "homogenous" leadership culture that is "gay, white, male." ... These are the five findings that struck us most as we combed through the HRC report: 1. Trans staff "frequently feel tokenized." ... 2. Straight women and lesbians experience sexist treatment from gay men. More major firms are dropping Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ+ rights report card amid anti-diversity backlash Quote More than two decades ago, when gay men and lesbians were prohibited from serving openly in the U.S. military and no state had legalized same-sex marriages, a national LGBTQ+ rights group decided to promote change by grading corporations on their workplace policies. The Human Rights Campaign initially focused its report card, named the Corporate Equality Index, on ensuring that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer employees did not face discrimination in hiring and on the job. Just 13 companies received a perfect score in 2002. By last year, 545 businesses did even though the requirements have expanded. But the scorecard itself has come under attack in recent months by conservative activists who targeted businesses as part of a broader pushback against diversity initiatives. Ford, Harley Davidson and Lowe’s are among the companies that announced they would no longer participate in the Corporate Equality Index. Cool! Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ ‘Emergency’ Is All about Money and Politics Quote The Human Rights Campaign, in its words, has “officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.” ... The basis for HRC’s dismay is the enactment into law of more than 75 bills it opposed in state legislatures, a much bigger crop than usual. The great majority of these laws relate to transgender issues, mostly as they arise among minors and in schools. For my part, I agree with HRC’s position on some of these bills. Florida enacted a micromanaging set of bathroom rules that — if they get enforced, which seems unlikely — will hassle many unoffending persons just trying to go about their lives. Tennessee passed a law limiting public drag-show performances that was almost instantly blocked by a conservative federal judge as an unconstitutional restriction on expression. Clearly, states are taking more actions in this area that are dumb, illiberal or coercive. Missouri’s attorney general recently issued a decree meant to restrict gender surgery undertaken by fully grown-up adults, not just minors. All that said, I wish HRC would concede that there are legitimate debates about many transgender-related issues — on matters such as sports competition, intimate privacy, prison management and how, when and whether underaged persons should be given medical therapies. When I took a closer look at some of what HRC calls anti-LGBTQ bills, I had more questions. Idaho passed a law mandating, to quote the Associated Press, that “parents be told of changes in students’ mental, emotional or physical well-being” that manifest at school. The law doesn’t mention gender identity at all, AP says, but critics worry that among those whose struggles will be reported back to parents are kids with gender issues. Should it matter in classifying such a law that it responds on its face to concerns that are widely held by parents and unrelated to gender? But HRC doesn’t like to concede issues might be complicated or involve trade-offs and accommodations. It’s more often 100% or nothing with the group, and if you demur your position might get called one of “hate,” which at least is better than the loose “groomer” talk from some on the other side. ... A final point — as many gays and lesbians have observed recently — is that the L, G and B experiences diverge widely from the T. Pretty much every legal change that gay men and lesbians needed has been accomplished, and cultural barriers have largely fallen as well. Most aren’t besieged, at emergency levels or otherwise. The request that they feel an emergency vicariously, in solidarity, is all about coalition politics. "I wish HRC would concede that there are legitimate debates about many transgender-related issues — on matters such as sports competition, intimate privacy, prison management and how, when and whether underaged persons should be given medical therapies." "Should it matter in classifying such a law that it responds on its face to concerns that are widely held by parents and unrelated to gender?" "A final point — as many gays and lesbians have observed recently — is that the L, G and B experiences diverge widely from the T." "Pretty much every legal change that gay men and lesbians needed has been accomplished, and cultural barriers have largely fallen as well." Yep. What You Need to Know About the Human Rights Campaign Quote In protest of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—which allowed states to protect unborn children from abortion—far-left activist groups reacted by calling for a “summer of outrage,” which the Human Rights Campaign promoted on its site by calling the conservative majority on the Court “a small group of radicals.” Multiple pro-life pregnancy centers were damaged, intimidated, and vandalized by groups promoting the same messaging. Yeesh. Quote Over the years, the HRC’s internal working environment has been heavily criticized, even by other progressives. An outside consultant reported that HRC staff view the working environment as “judgmental,” “exclusionary,” “sexist,” and “homogenous.” In 2021, the Human Rights Campaign fired its first black president, Alphonso David. David served only for two years before the HRC fired him. He then sued the HRC for racial discrimination. Hmm. Quote In 2002, the Human Rights Campaign began rating companies on how their policies and practices serve the “LGBTQ” movement. At first, a perfect score on the HRC’s index meant a company held non-discrimination policies and offered health-care benefits to employees’ same-sex partners. Yet, over the years, as more companies complied with these requirements, the HRC ratcheted up its demands. To earn a perfect score of 100 percent and the coveted “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality” title, the HRC is demanding that companies cover “puberty blockers for youth” in their health-care plans. ... To avoid losing 25 points, companies must not make “charitable contributions … to organizations whose primary mission includes advocacy against LGBTQ+ equality.” As interpreted by HRC, many churches fit that description, as do countless religious organizations, nonprofits, and small businesses that engage in social activity or advocacy according to their religious beliefs about marriage and human sexuality. Yeesh. Thanks, -Smac
california boy Posted November 2, 2024 Posted November 2, 2024 13 hours ago, smac97 said: And straight to the ad hominem. "If" being the operative word. I don't think this. I did read it. And I responded to it: And you then went directly to personal insults. Read it. Didn't think much of it. You don't know what I think about this issue. Oh, brother. It will never be over. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." The ambit of "equal rights to LGBT" is infinitely malleable, as evidenced by the fact that we went from overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality to an endless acronym, legalizing same-sex marriage (apparently intended, by some, as part of destroying marriage as an institution) coercing speech (pronouns, cakes, etc.), Drag Queen Story Hour / Drag Shows directed at children, highly questionable medical treatments for gender dysphoric minors, biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, prisons, etc., and on and on. Tierney is, I think, correct: "These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business." "Equal rights" is a convenient and endlessly elastic rubric. I never suggested that I "wish" this. And their mission will never be "finished. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." I never suggested otherwise. Nor did Mr. Tierney. I've had thousands of conversations with people who, like you, disagree with me. Right. Sounds good on its face. In reality, HRC openly supported pediatric sex trait modifications, Drag Queen Story Hour, biological males in women's spaces (here, here, here), and so on. I think I have a pretty solid measure of what HRC means by their anodyne references to "equal rights." To be sure, some of what HRC is advocating for is good. And a lot of it is pretty terrible and depraved. Meanwhile, HRC talks a nice talk, but it has its flaws. Some examples: 5 Most Disappointing Things We Learned About HRC's 'White Men's Club' More major firms are dropping Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ+ rights report card amid anti-diversity backlash Cool! Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ ‘Emergency’ Is All about Money and Politics "I wish HRC would concede that there are legitimate debates about many transgender-related issues — on matters such as sports competition, intimate privacy, prison management and how, when and whether underaged persons should be given medical therapies." "Should it matter in classifying such a law that it responds on its face to concerns that are widely held by parents and unrelated to gender?" "A final point — as many gays and lesbians have observed recently — is that the L, G and B experiences diverge widely from the T." "Pretty much every legal change that gay men and lesbians needed has been accomplished, and cultural barriers have largely fallen as well." Yep. What You Need to Know About the Human Rights Campaign Yeesh. Hmm. Yeesh. Thanks, -Smac You just don't get it. Not everyone has the same rights to live their lives the way they want to that you do. Not everyone should be forced to live their lives the way you wish to live yours. This country, has from its very founding, discriminated against those that are different. While it has shed off much of that institutional discrimination, there is still work to be done. Activist organizations are not the villains. People who want those organizations mission for equality to be irrelevant are. Just like the Church, they are not perfect, and sometimes they get it wrong. But what they are fighting for, their core mission, is praiseworthy. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr It doesn't happen without someone putting in the work. They aren't infallible, but their work they are doing is just. 3
smac97 Posted November 2, 2024 Author Posted November 2, 2024 (edited) 2 hours ago, california boy said: You just don't get it. Right back atcha. From the article I quoted previously: "I wish HRC would concede that there are legitimate debates about many transgender-related issues — on matters such as sports competition, intimate privacy, prison management and how, when and whether underaged persons should be given medical therapies." My sense is that for you, it's not that I don't "get it," but rather that I don't agree with "it." "It" being terrible things like compelled speech, men invading women's spaces, sexualized grooming of children, highly dubious and irreversible and heavily politicized medical treatments on children, and so on. HRC is in favor of these things. I am opposed to them. Idealogues are the ones who "just don't get it." It's their way or the highway. Individuals have two options: agree with them or be branded a bigot. Alternatively, I think there is plenty of room for reasoned and principled disagreement about pediatric sex trait modifications and "many transgender-related issues." Same goes for same-sex marriage. Alternative to that, drag shows exploiting and sexualizing children are, in my estimation, not within reasonable dispute, and are instead wholly depraved and evil. And HRC is in support of these things. Same goes for compelled speech. 2 hours ago, california boy said: Not everyone has the same rights to live their lives the way they want to that you do. We all should have the same rights and constraints. I think we agree with that general principle. The problem, I think, is that you seem to think "rights" include things like biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, etc. I don't think any such right exists. You may also seem to think that "rights" include compelled speech (preferred pronouns, etc.). I don't think any such right exists. You may also think that "rights" include pediatric sex trait modifications, despite substantial evidence of comorbidities, lack of informed consent, lack of longitudinal data, compromised/politicized evaluations of the best interests of children, and so on. I don't think any such right exists. And so on. 2 hours ago, california boy said: Not everyone should be forced to live their lives the way you wish to live yours. This country, has from its very founding, discriminated against those that are different. While it has shed off much of that institutional discrimination, there is still work to be done. Right. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." 2 hours ago, california boy said: Activist organizations are not the villains. Some of them - such as the Human Rights Campaign - are doing some pretty terrible things. And much of that terribleness arises from the "mission creep" / "March of Dimes Syndrome" under discussion. 2 hours ago, california boy said: It doesn't happen without someone putting in the work. They aren't infallible, but their work they are doing is just. Advocating to the sexualized grooming of children is not "just." Advocating for biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, etc. is not "just." Advocating for compelled speech is not "just." Advocating for pediatric sex trait modifications, despite substantial evidence of comorbidities, lack of informed consent, lack of longitudinal data, compromised/politicized evaluations of the best interests of children, etc. is not "just." Thanks, -Smac Edited November 2, 2024 by smac97
california boy Posted November 3, 2024 Posted November 3, 2024 5 hours ago, smac97 said: Right back atcha. From the article I quoted previously: "I wish HRC would concede that there are legitimate debates about many transgender-related issues — on matters such as sports competition, intimate privacy, prison management and how, when and whether underaged persons should be given medical therapies." My sense is that for you, it's not that I don't "get it," but rather that I don't agree with "it." "It" being terrible things like compelled speech, men invading women's spaces, sexualized grooming of children, highly dubious and irreversible and heavily politicized medical treatments on children, and so on. HRC is in favor of these things. I am opposed to them. Idealogues are the ones who "just don't get it." It's their way or the highway. Individuals have two options: agree with them or be branded a bigot. Alternatively, I think there is plenty of room for reasoned and principled disagreement about pediatric sex trait modifications and "many transgender-related issues." Same goes for same-sex marriage. Alternative to that, drag shows exploiting and sexualizing children are, in my estimation, not within reasonable dispute, and are instead wholly depraved and evil. And HRC is in support of these things. Same goes for compelled speech. We all should have the same rights and constraints. I think we agree with that general principle. The problem, I think, is that you seem to think "rights" include things like biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, etc. I don't think any such right exists. You may also seem to think that "rights" include compelled speech (preferred pronouns, etc.). I don't think any such right exists. You may also think that "rights" include pediatric sex trait modifications, despite substantial evidence of comorbidities, lack of informed consent, lack of longitudinal data, compromised/politicized evaluations of the best interests of children, and so on. I don't think any such right exists. And so on. Right. "For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished." Some of them - such as the Human Rights Campaign - are doing some pretty terrible things. And much of that terribleness arises from the "mission creep" / "March of Dimes Syndrome" under discussion. Advocating to the sexualized grooming of children is not "just." Advocating for biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, etc. is not "just." Advocating for compelled speech is not "just." Advocating for pediatric sex trait modifications, despite substantial evidence of comorbidities, lack of informed consent, lack of longitudinal data, compromised/politicized evaluations of the best interests of children, etc. is not "just." Thanks, -Smac Nevermind. You believe what you want. I do want to say, the things you think I believe and support are not what you think. But it doesn't mean that I don't think organizations can't advocate what they feel are important social issues. 4
smac97 Posted November 3, 2024 Author Posted November 3, 2024 (edited) 2 hours ago, california boy said: Nevermind. You believe what you want. Okay. 2 hours ago, california boy said: I do want to say, the things you think I believe and support are not what you think. I don't know that I told you what you think. You were speaking in defense of HRC, which supports things like biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, etc., compelled speech (preferred pronouns, etc.), pediatric sex trait modifications, and so on. And you have so far not differentiated yourself from HRC's position on these issues. These are the "transgender" issues comprising, I think, the subject of most of the pieces of litigation which you pointed to, apparently with disapproval. Based on these things, my surmise was that you may support HRC as to these matters. And even then I hedged my bets: Quote The problem, I think, is that you seem to think "rights" include things like biological men in women's sports, bathrooms, etc. I don't think any such right exists. You may also seem to think that "rights" include compelled speech (preferred pronouns, etc.). I don't think any such right exists. You may also think that "rights" include pediatric sex trait modifications, despite substantial evidence of comorbidities, lack of informed consent, lack of longitudinal data, compromised/politicized evaluations of the best interests of children, and so on. I don't think any such right exists. These were in response to your comments to me about my perspective on "rights." Again, I think many of the "rights" HRC is fighting for - and here you are speaking on behalf and in defense of HRC - don't exist. And the behaviors and policy positions of many professional activist groups, including the HRC, are often bad, even terrible. In the end, I don't really know what you "believe and support" as pertaining to the topics at hand. You can explain, or not. It won't really change my assessment of HRC. And my thoughts about the "mission creep" / "March of Dimes Syndrome" phenomenon on in the "professional activism" industry will continue. 2 hours ago, california boy said: But it doesn't mean that I don't think organizations can't advocate what they feel are important social issues. Neither Tierney nor I has advocated for the silencing of "professional" activists. This despite the many bad ideas some of them are perpetuating, the terrible damage they are doing to the fabric of society, etc. Thanks, -Smac Edited November 3, 2024 by smac97
Doctor Steuss Posted November 6, 2024 Posted November 6, 2024 On 11/1/2024 at 7:19 PM, smac97 said: In reality, HRC openly supported pediatric sex trait modifications, From the very first result in your link: Quote Transgender children are not undergoing irreversible medical changes. This is a fundamental misunderstanding about what transition looks like for kids, which is primarily about providing social support, using the right name and pronouns, and allowing them to present in a way that is consistent with their gender identity. Therapists, parents and health care providers work together to determine which changes to make at a given time are in the best interest of the child. And: Quote Hormone therapy and surgical care are not offered to young people, but reserved for those who can give truly informed consent. Did you perhaps mean to link something else? 3
smac97 Posted November 8, 2024 Author Posted November 8, 2024 On 11/6/2024 at 10:46 AM, Doctor Steuss said: Quote In reality, HRC openly supported pediatric sex trait modifications, From the very first result in your link: Quote Transgender children are not undergoing irreversible medical changes. This is a fundamental misunderstanding about what transition looks like for kids, which is primarily about providing social support, using the right name and pronouns, and allowing them to present in a way that is consistent with their gender identity. Therapists, parents and health care providers work together to determine which changes to make at a given time are in the best interest of the child. And: Did you perhaps mean to link something else? The Hill: White House says gender-affirming surgeries should be limited to adults Quote The Biden administration said it opposes gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors, deviating from past statements that broadly support gender-affirming health care for youth and angering LGBTQ groups that have backed President Biden in the race against former President Trump. ... The administration’s statement, which was first reported by The 19th News, drew swift criticism from influential LGBTQ organizations and figures who accused the administration of abandoning its commitment to transgender youth and going back on a promise not to insert politics into private medical decisions. “The Biden administration is flat wrong on this,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which has endorsed Biden and poured millions into his reelection. “It’s wrong on the science and wrong on the substance. It’s also inconsistent with other steps the administration has taken to support transgender youth.” The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/biden-administration-transgender-surgeries-minors Quote The Biden administration is reaffirming its support for overturning bans on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors after backlash over a recent White House statement opposing such surgeries. ... The Human Rights Campaign president, Kelley Robinson, also thanked the administration for the clarification. “We appreciate that the administration has clarified that its position on healthcare for the transgender community has not changed – that it opposes any and all bans on access to care, and will continue to fight these bans both in the courts and at the legislative level,” Robinson wrote in a statement provided to the Guardian. “The administration also reiterated what we know to be true: these types of personal healthcare decisions are best left to the families, the patient, and their medical provider–and no one else.” Thanks, -Smac
smac97 Posted November 12, 2024 Author Posted November 12, 2024 I think the wheels are starting to come off the pediatric sex trait modification train: An opinion piece in today's New York Times (!) : As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. Some excerpts: Quote Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy. Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy. “I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex. Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself. "The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself." Surely this is not a healthy narrative for minors struggling with a mental health issue. Quote At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man. At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child. “I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.” Comorbidities. Informed consent. Compromised assessments of the best interests of the child. Irreversibility. Sterilization. Electively removing healthy body parts of minors. Longitudinal studies essentially absent. Lifelong medical regimens. Ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care. Social contagion risks. Risk of financial devastation for the individual (and burden on society). Quite a few of these are ticked off in Grace's story. Quote Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves. But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress. "{C}linicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress." Yeesh. Quote Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns. And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care. Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere. “What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.” Indeed. Extremism sometimes requires political/legal intervention. Quote A New and Growing Group of Patients Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon. Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition. “But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.” "{T}here are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on." Hmm. Quote Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices. “The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals. For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.” Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.” Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said. They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy. In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children. “I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said. Deeply concerning, this. Quote Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned. Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options. Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged. Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.” One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered. Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis. Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person. Wow. Quote ‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’ After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case. The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted. Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.” We have seen people on this very thread deploy this threat-of-suicide rhetoric. Quote Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.” Comorbidities is a very big concern. Quote “I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.” When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.” In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women. That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy. “I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation. “Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats. “I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.” Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies. Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?” Irreversibility. Informed consent. Comorbidities. These are substantial concerns. Quote To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.” “The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.” Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed. Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible. Very troubling. Quote ‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’ At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.” “I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.” She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category. Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues. “It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.” While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.” As to this last point, I am open to it (even though it contravenes some of my religious sentiments), but not as to minors. Quote In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use. Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so. As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed. In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.” But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science. Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.” Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.” Wow. Thanks, -Smac 1
Tacenda Posted November 12, 2024 Posted November 12, 2024 (edited) 8 hours ago, smac97 said: I think the wheels are starting to come off the pediatric sex trait modification train: An opinion piece in today's New York Times (!) : As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. Some excerpts: "The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself." Surely this is not a healthy narrative for minors struggling with a mental health issue. Comorbidities. Informed consent. Compromised assessments of the best interests of the child. Irreversibility. Sterilization. Electively removing healthy body parts of minors. Longitudinal studies essentially absent. Lifelong medical regimens. Ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care. Social contagion risks. Risk of financial devastation for the individual (and burden on society). Quite a few of these are ticked off in Grace's story. "{C}linicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress." Yeesh. Indeed. Extremism sometimes requires political/legal intervention. "{T}here are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on." Hmm. Deeply concerning, this. Wow. We have seen people on this very thread deploy this threat-of-suicide rhetoric. Comorbidities is a very big concern. Irreversibility. Informed consent. Comorbidities. These are substantial concerns. Very troubling. As to this last point, I am open to it (even though it contravenes some of my religious sentiments), but not as to minors. Wow. Thanks, -Smac And this is why it's a good idea that youth get counseling which is usually the process the trans and trans supporters and parents want anyway, not going directly to surgery or medications. That's why the label Trans, makes people jump to conclusions about what's actually taking place. Edited November 13, 2024 by Tacenda
JVW Posted November 12, 2024 Posted November 12, 2024 2 hours ago, Tacenda said: And this is why it's a good idea that the youth to get counseling which is usually the process the trans and trans supporters and parents want anyway, not go directly to surgery or medications. That's why the triggering word Trans, make people jump to conclusions about what's taking place. I don't quite understand your comment because this article gave many stories of different trans people, and every one of them involved one or more therapists. Nobody went straight to surgery or medications, they all worked with therapists as far as I understood what I read (I did start skimming after reading the first 2/3rds of so of the article).
longview Posted November 12, 2024 Posted November 12, 2024 49 minutes ago, JVW said: 3 hours ago, Tacenda said: And this is why it's a good idea that the youth to get counseling which is usually the process the trans and trans supporters and parents want anyway, not go directly to surgery or medications. That's why the triggering word Trans, make people jump to conclusions about what's taking place. I don't quite understand your comment because this article gave many stories of different trans people, and every one of them involved one or more therapists. Nobody went straight to surgery or medications, they all worked with therapists as far as I understood what I read (I did start skimming after reading the first 2/3rds of so of the article). This is the problem. Based on @smac97 's extensive research, an extremely high percentage of referrals are done in a couple of steps with only superficial counselling or analysis. They are processed as if on an assembly line. Sacrificial children of "Baalism" all according to the latest fad of progressivism.
Calm Posted November 12, 2024 Posted November 12, 2024 1 hour ago, JVW said: I don't quite understand your comment because this article gave many stories of different trans people, and every one of them involved one or more therapists. Nobody went straight to surgery or medications, they all worked with therapists as far as I understood what I read (I did start skimming after reading the first 2/3rds of so of the article). I read her comment as meaning long term counseling, not just evaluations and explanations of options, likely outcomes, etc. 3
Tacenda Posted November 13, 2024 Posted November 13, 2024 5 hours ago, JVW said: I don't quite understand your comment because this article gave many stories of different trans people, and every one of them involved one or more therapists. Nobody went straight to surgery or medications, they all worked with therapists as far as I understood what I read (I did start skimming after reading the first 2/3rds of so of the article). I re-read my post and edited it. What I mean't to say is so many people think those steps are skipped sometimes. Sorry for the lame post you had to read. 1
Tacenda Posted November 13, 2024 Posted November 13, 2024 4 hours ago, Calm said: I read her comment as meaning long term counseling, not just evaluations and explanations of options, likely outcomes, etc. I really struggled when I made the post, glad you caught what I was trying to say. 2
JVW Posted November 13, 2024 Posted November 13, 2024 1 hour ago, Tacenda said: I really struggled when I made the post, glad you caught what I was trying to say. I think there is a problem with, and reason why, long-term therapy before drugs and/or surgery. It's that trans is being pushed really hard as a "born this way" or "spirit/body mismatch" thing and not a "mental health" or "DSM-IV mental illness" thing. So therapists default to trying to confirm that it really is a boy trapped in a girl's body, and not why the person feels the way they feel and if there is any underlying trauma that could be underlying their discomfort in their own skin. 1
smac97 Posted December 5, 2024 Author Posted December 5, 2024 On 10/25/2024 at 11:58 AM, smac97 said: Since @Analytics has touted World Professional Association of Transgender Health ("WPATH") as one of the organizations he deems to have "a vested interest in the wellbeing of their patients," let's talk about that. See, e.g., this article: See also this very recent (October 2024) amicus brief of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some excerpts: I realize that this brief is written in an adversarial context, but the evidence it cites is pretty solid. A state attorney general submitting an amicus brief to SCOTUS is going to bring a lot of evidence to the table, and this above brief does that a lot. Look at the links starting on page 3 of the PDF. Back to the brief: I think this is pretty clear evidence that WPATH is ideologically/sociopolitically compromised. I find this very troubling. WPATH "suppressed publication" about pediatric sex trait modification, some of the Standard-of-Care authors "opted to conduct no systematic evidence reviews precisely because doing so would 'reveal[] little or no evidence and put[] us in an untenable position in terms of affecting policy or winning lawsuits,'" a political appointee - Rachel Levine - then "demanded that WPATH remove from the guideline all age limits for {pediatric sex trait modifications}," and WPATH complied. This sure sounds a lot like "ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care" and "compromised assessments of the best interests of the child." Analytics has repeatedly referenced a long list of medical organizations endorse the proposition that "affirming medical care is evidence-based best practice when working with transgender individuals." I wonder how many of these groups have adopted similar "circular" approaches, that is, just rubber-stamping and adopting what WPATH has said. Huh. Boy, WPATH sure seems compromised. Suppression of medical findings. Finding a lack of evidence about PSTM "helpful." The mind reels. Irreversibility. Informed consent lacking. Longitudinal data lacking. And so on. WPATH, perhaps the lynchpin to Analytlics' "consensus" argument, looks to be pretty obviously compromised and corrupt. Wow. The authors of WPATH's guidelines seem to be ideologically compromised. I am curious if Analytics is still comfortable with deferring to WPATH anyway. Again, Analytics is telling us to defer to the guidelines from WPATH. Perhaps, given what we are uncovering, we ought to be discussing the wisdom of that idea. "{P}ressure from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) tipped the scales when it threatened to oppose SOC-8 if WPATH did not remove the age minimums." "{Dr. Wouman was} 'surprised that a ‘reputable’ association as the AAP is so thin on scientific evidence." "'AAP was “a MAJOR organization,' and 'it would be a major challenge for WPATH' if AAP opposed SOC-8.79 WPATH thus caved and 'agreed to remove the ages.'" "WPATH removed the age minimums 'without being presented any new science of which the committee was previously unaware.'" "{A}s Dr. Bowers explained in a similar exchange, 'it is a balancing act between what i feel to be true and what we need to say.'" @Analytics, is any of this giving you any pause or grounds for reconsidering your deference to WPATH, AAP, etc.? Like abortion, same-sex marriage, and a few other hot-button topics, pediatric sex trait modification treatments have, for me, a pretty important moral/ethical dimension. Thanks, -Smac The foregoing post pertained to various issues and concerns regarding WPATH, the "World Professional Association for Transgender Health," which may well be the lynchpin for the supposed "consensus" about pediatric sex trait modification treatments and procedures. @Analytics, who had previously seemed to rely heavily on the credibility and prestige of WPATH, did not respond to or otherwise address any of the references I linked to regarding it, saying only "tl;dr." That is, of course, his right. I think WPATH needs to be discussed, since the U.S. Supreme Court may well likely give some attention to it. See here: Quote Oral argument is underway at this hour at the Supreme Court in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti, in which the Biden Administration is seeking strike down a Tennessee law restricting transgender treatment of minors. The case will be argued along the traditional lines of whether minors suffering from “gender dysphoria” constitute a “protected class” under civil rights law, and related questions of whether “strict scrutiny” review applies, etc. I’ll leave those aspects to other legal analysts to dissect. But interested readers might wish to take in the Amicus brief filed in the case by the American Principles Project. In addition to arguing the civil rights and scrutiny angles, it also reveals the corruption of the main advocacy organization behind so-called “gender-affirming” care (GAC), the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH). From the brief, starting around p. 22: WPATH itself is a problematic source for standards regarding minor GAC interventions. As one journalist and researcher notes: “Despite its grand title, WPATH is neither solely a professional body – a significant proportion of its membership are activists – nor does it represent the “world” view on how to care for this group of people. There is no global agreement on best practice … What’s more, NHS England has made it clear that WPATH’s views are irrelevant to its core recommendation that puberty blockers will no longer be available as part of routine clinical practice.” In fact, NHS has expressly distanced itself from WPATH’s positions, having cited WPATH negatively; i.e., as a group upon which NHS does “not” base its treatment standards: “NHS England does not commission based upon guidelines or treatment protocols eg WPATH 8.0 …” Last, Dr. James Cantor, Ph.D., opines that the WPATH commissioned study failed to study minors’ safety; it contained “discrepancies” and “misleading ambiguities;” and WPATH guidelines are really not “evidence-based” at all. An earlier amicus brief at the appellate court level was even more blunt about the broader issues. Here’s the able summary: I. Scientific research shows that children with gender incongruence or dysphoria almost always have significant mental health struggles and adverse childhood events that contribute to if not cause their dysphoria. And multiple studies show that these children almost always grow out of or desist from such gender incongruity while going through puberty. II. Yet when children are placed on puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones, they almost always proceed to “gender transition” surgeries with life-long adverse consequences. Just as alarming is that these children—often 11 years old or even younger—are incapable of making such life-altering decisions. When it comes to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and “gender transition” surgeries, moreover, there are no long-term, reliable studies on the benefits from starting a child on this pathway. What is known is that children show minimal mental health improvements in the short-term and significant mental health issues in the long-term. It is also clear that such hormonal and surgical interventions do nothing to treat the underlying mental health struggles these children face, even as the “treatments” themselves create severe adverse health consequences. . . III. Tennessee’s law is also consistent with sound medical practice: Rather than push a pre-teen to drugs and permanent body-altering surgery, the appropriate medical treatment is to address the child’s underlying mental health issues while allowing the child to go through natural puberty. That is what their bodies were meant to do. And, upon reaching adulthood, the vast majority of children who were not “affirmed” in a gender-incongruent identity will no longer feel any distress in their sex. And there is no way to know whether a child aged eleven is going to be the exceptional case of someone who doesn’t simply “grow out of” his or her adolescent gender dysphoria. Later in the brief, guess who shows up: As for WPATH, leaked emails reveal that, during the preparation of the current version of its Standards of Care (SOC 8), HHS officials in the office of Rachel Levine, HHS Assistant Secretary for Health, and the Administration’s most prominent transgender person, successfully directed WPATH (over WPATH member objections) to remove all age limits from SOC 8 because HHS feared any age limits could support state laws restricting gender-transition procedures for minors. These emails show that Levine spoke to WPATH and was “very eager for [the SOC 8 guidelines’] release—so to ensure integration in the US health policies of the Biden government.” WPATH emails show that WPATH complied with HHS’s charge: “[W]e heard your [Dr. Levine’s] comments regarding the minimal age criteria for transgender healthcare adolescents; the potential negative outcome of these minimal ages as recommendations in the US [* * *] Consequently, we have changes to the SOC 8 in this respect.” Similarly, emails revealed that WPATH commissioned studies from Johns Hopkins University and then attempted to stop Johns Hopkins from publishing its findings because the studies found little to no evidence about transitions for children and adolescents. WPATH thus pushes a narrative, not the medically appropriate treatment for minors. Indeed, with its membership plummeting and its abandonment of evidence-based guidelines, WPATH has been discredited as a medical organization. See also APP’s report, “The Gender Industrial Complex.” Excerpts from the “The Gender Industrial Complex” publication linked to above: Quote A landmark Finnish study published in February showed that providing adolescents and young adults with drugs and surgeries related to transgenderism did not appear to have any meaningful effect on suicide rates.15 ... 15 Sami-Matti Ruuska et al., “All-Cause and Suicide Mortalities among Adolescents and Young Adults Who Contacted Specialised Gender Identity Services in Finland in 1996–2019: A Register Study,” BMJ Mental Health, January 1, 2024, https://mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e300940. Mitigating suicide and suicidal ideation is almost the sine qua non rationale for pediatric sex trait modification, yet PSTM apparently has "{no} meaningful effect on suicide rates." In fact, among adults it seems to exacerbate suicide risks: Quote {A} California study published in 2021 found that the attempted suicide rate among trans-identified men who underwent a vaginoplasty was twice as high during the post-surgery period compared to the pre-surgery period.16 “Patients undergoing [gender-affirming surgery] with a history of prior psychiatric emergences or feminizing transition are at higher risk and should be counseled appropriately,” the authors noted. ... 16 Kai Dallas et al., “MP04-20 Rates of psychiatric emergencies before and after gender affirming surgery,” The Journal of Urology, 206 (Supplement 3). https://doi.org/10.1097/ju.0000000000001971.20. The piece also specifically addresses WPATH, much vaunted by our @Analytics: Quote Nevertheless, medicalized transitioning has gained legitimacy with the help of medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society. The aforementioned WPATH is another key organization. Its standards of care provide treatment guidelines for others to follow around the world and are also used to justify insurance coverage and gender medical interventions. Yet even WPATH has been forced to concede that there is a dearth of studies behind the long-term effectiveness of these treatments for adolescents with gender dysphoria. Its latest guidelines, published in September of this year, state that “the number of studies is still low, and there are few outcome studies that follow youth into adulthood.”17 WPATH also makes the remarkable admission that “a systematic review regarding outcomes of treatment in adolescents is not possible.” The organization was recently embroiled in controversy when leaked messages obtained by Environmental Progress revealed that WPATH members “demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments.”18 Specifically, they “show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions.” ... 17 E. Coleman et al., “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, Informa UK Limited, August 19, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895 269.2022.2100644. 18 Mia Hughes, “The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults,” Environmental Progress, March 4, 2024, https://static1. squarespace.com/static/56a45d683b0be33df885def6/t/6602fa87597 8a01601858171/1711471262073/WPATH+Report+and+Files111.pdf. The Endocrine Society does not fare much better: Quote Like WPATH, the Endocrine Society acknowledges that behind its recommendations for “gender-affirming hormone treatment” and surgery, “the quality of evidence is usually low.”19 In 2009, the society’s influential journal recommended treating “transsexual adolescents” with puberty blockers that are mainly manufactured by Endo International and AbbVie Inc.20 To date, these drugs are prescribed off-label, meaning that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved them to be used in gender care for children. Their only approved use in that regard is for treating central precocious puberty—when a child begins to go through puberty too early. But they have been controversial from the start. ... 19 Wylie C Hembree et al., “Endocrine Treatment of Gender-Dysphoric/Gender-Incongruent Persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline,“ The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 102, Issue 11, 1 November 2017, Pages 3869–3903, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2017-01658. 20 Wylie C. Hembree, “Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline,” The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, September 1, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1210/ The WPATH Files “show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions.” jc.2009-0345. I have previously repeatedly addressed various concerns associated with PSTM, including "informed consent," "compromised assessments of the best interests of the child," and "ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care." I had not, until reading materials in relation to this thread, understood that PSTM is not only being allowed, but is being pressed onto minors: Quote Yet medical practitioners remain trigger-happy. At 18 gender clinics across the country, Reuters found that most do not have stringent protocols to determine whether a patient would be best served by undergoing the life-changing process of transitioning. Seven clinics said that, depending on the age of the child, they will begin prescribing puberty blockers based on the first visit if there are no “red flags.” But the red flags in the cases of detransitioners didn’t give anyone pause—in fact, their red flags seemed to rationalize the start of treatment. Adults have also reported being pressed to subject their children to transitioning. Reuters interviewed the parents of 39 minors who had sought “gender-affirming care.” Of that number, 28 said they felt “pressured or rushed to proceed with treatment” for their kids. Some said their children were recommended for puberty blockers after consultations lasting just 15 minutes. Despite so many serious concerns, prescriptions for blockers among minors doubled between 2017 and 2021, according to Komodo Health, a company specializing in products for analyzing medical data.24 Patrick Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told the Daily Mail that prescriptions for hormone therapy have risen at about the same rate. ... 24 Luke Andrews, “America’s child trans explosion in charts: Gender dysphoria rates and puberty blocker prescriptions among under-18s have DOUBLED since 2017,” Daily Mail, December 19, 2022, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ health/article-11533809/Puberty-blocker-prescriptions-trans-children-DOUBLED-2017-gender-dysphoria-rises.html. The piece goes on to detail the massive financial incentives involved in advancing PSTM. The members of the professional organizations endorsing PSTM are making huge amounts of money off PSTM: Quote Vanderbilt University Medical Center launched its Transgender Health Clinic in 2018. That was no easy feat in a Southern state dominated by Republican politics. But the skids got greased when Taylor told Nashville about the clinic’s profit potential. She said during a lecture the same year the facility opened its doors that “gender-affirming care” is “a big money maker.” After all, patients are repeat and often lifelong customers. Taylor explained: Quote These surgeries make a lot of money. So, female-to-male chest reconstruction could bring in $40,000. A patient just on routine hormone treatment, who we’re only seeing a few times a year, can bring in several thousand dollars because it requires lots of visits and labs that actually makes money for the hospital. Now, these I got from the internet, but it’s from the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery, which has—does a lot of surgery for patients. I just wanted to give you an idea of how much these bottom surgeries are making. And this is—I think this has to be an underestimate. This is for vaginoplasty, they’re saying, they’re quoting roughly around $20,000 for a vaginoplasty, but that doesn’t include your hospital stay, that doesn’t include your post-op visits, that doesn’t include your anesthesia, your OR. So I would think this has to be a gross underestimate. I think that’s just, like, the surgeon’s piece of it.51 It worked. The clinic didn’t just open. Taylor grew the number of patients from just 1 to over 2,000 in four years. Taylor’s reference to the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery is notable. In October 2023, the Pennsylvania Family Institute reported that over $20 million in state taxpayer dollars had been used to subsidize “gender-affirming care” for minors since 2015.52 The fact this information was obtained through a Right-To-Know Request with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services raises the question of whether it would have appeared in any of the aforementioned analyses. According to the institute, the Keystone State was spending almost $14,000 per day in 2022 on transgender services and surgeries. “From 2015 to 2022, Pennsylvania has had a more than 8,200 percent increase in taxpayer funding for these drugs, surgeries, and services through these state insurance programs for children,” the institute states. The spigot opened after Pennsylvania hospitals lobbied to expand state coverage of “gender-affirming care” in 2015. The following year, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services announced the state Medicaid program would cover all related services. And this is where we return to trying to understand what we can’t see.53 Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee launched an investigation into Vanderbilt’s transgender clinic in September 2022. There was confusion as to what exactly sparked the inquiry. According to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, it wasn’t the lecture in which Taylor discussed just how profitable transgenderism can be. Instead, Skrmetti told NewsChannel 5 that the impetus was Taylor’s comments in a separate video from 2019 about manipulating billing codes to get paid by insurance companies that won’t cover “gender-affirming care.”54 In that video, Taylor said: “So for the patient who gets a big bill because their insurance doesn’t cover any transgender-related codes I usually write ‘endocrine disorder not otherwise specified’ to allow me to order the labs that I want.” ... 51 Shayne Taylor, “Dr. Shayne Taylor on Gender Transition: ‘These Surgeries Make a Lot of Money,’” Grabien, September 21, 2022, https://news.grabien. com/story/dr-shayne-taylor-on-gender-transition-these-surgeries-make-alot-of-mo. 52 “Shocking new report reveals PA government spent more than $20 million on transgender surgeries and services for minors,” Pennsylvania Family Institute, October 23, 2023, https://pafamily.org/2023/10/23/shocking-newreport-reveals-pa-government-spent-more-than-20-million-on-transgendersurgeries-and-services-for-minors/. 53 “Pennsylvania Medicaid Removes Trans Health Exclusions!” National Center for Transgender Equality Image, July 20, 2016, https://transequality.org/ blog/pennsylvania-medicaid-removes-trans-health-exclusions. 54 Phil Williams, “REVEALED: Vanderbilt transgender clinic investigation sparked by doctor’s video, Tennessee AG says,” NewsChannel5, August 2, 2023, https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/ revealed-vanderbilt-transgender-clinic-investigation-sparked-by-doctors-video-tennessee-ag-says. Thanks, -Smac
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