Since there are no gender neutral nouns or pronouns in Spanish, how are we going to handle that? I guess Spanish is a bigotophobic language and should be eliminated, in all fairness of course to the .006% of gender neutral citizens.
Spanish has a binary grammar gender system, differentiating masculine and feminine. The gender of nouns agrees with determinants and adjectives, so gender is a very pervasive feature. Nouns are always assigned a gender; from a grammatical point of view, there are no gender-neutral nouns.
It is also important that you know that officially, there is no gender-neutral language in Portuguese.
In French, there is no neutral grammatical gender — all nouns must be coded as masculine or feminine. Forcing an ungendered word into the vocabulary messes up the remaining context of any speech.
In Russian, every word, with the possible exception of adverbs, has a grammatical gender. “It cannot be removed or neutralized,” without destroying the remaining context.
Currently in Chinese written pronouns are divided between the masculine human 他 (he, him), feminine human 她 (she, her), and non-human 它 (it), and similarly in the plural.
But wait, there’s more! Gender fad is reshaping language debate around the world. Evidence that sex and gender actually are what they’ve always seemed to be.
TheCommonAtheist 
To quote Danny Glover:
“I’m too old for this shit!”
LikeLiked by 3 people
We’re the same age. I know what you mean
LikeLiked by 1 person
Warning, reading this may be dangerous to my mrntal health:
Then make way for the young, Jim. Get out of their way and stop bitching about things that are obviously beyond your ability to comprehend!
Really, seriously, Jim. What is it about this subject that bothers you so much? I am way older than you, and I have no problem with this topic of conversation. A person is not just a body, or we would all be the same persons. A person is what resides inside the body, and some people just don’t fit in their bodies.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Everyone fits in their body just fine. Do you not think everyone on earth makes concessions and has struggles? That is ridiculous. I bear my crosses and it’s no different in any way from theirs.
LikeLike
We all bear our crosses, if you want to make a religioys analogy out of this. All the more reason to be accepting of othet’s crosses. That’s all I’m saying. Live and let live.
LikeLike
Same age?
Wow…you don’t look 102.
You must have an awesome skincare regime.
😎
LikeLike
Hahaha. I like this picture. I was living off grid a few weeks wearing my elk skins and came across a wildlife photographer. When I returned to civilization this was in my inbox.
No, I’m only 100 but look 60.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am currently in Spain. I spoke to a language teacher on Saturday night about this and he said that it is currently in review, how Spanish will handle gender fluidity going forward and that schools are currently experimenting with different solutions. I think it should be up to each language and its speakers to come up with a solution and that what works for one, will not necessarily work for the other. But, I am not too old for this shit.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hah. Maybe the ones that should adapt are the few that it effects?
LikeLike
Whenever I think of LGBTQIA+ rights, I draw a racial parallel and that keeps me in line.
For eg. “I don’t mind gay people but….” and “I don’t mind Black people but….”
“I think gay people should have rights but…” and “I think Black people should have rights but….”
Same with “Maybe the ones who should adjust to inclusive gender terms are the LGBTQ” and “Maybe the ones who should resolve their issues with the N word are Black people, not anyone else.”
In my mind, if it sounds racist, then the LGBTQIA+ equivalent is also homophobic/transphobic. I give the consideration I hope to receive, but I understand that as you are not a minority or any other protected class (I am assuming), it is not something you have ever had to consider.
And that’s ok. But maybe age is not the problem?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hardly anyone that disagrees is phobic, bigoted, or racist. Some words should not be used for sure, but compelling speech has a fundamental flaw in human rights.
LikeLike
If White people got to choose what racism looked like, it would never exist. Nothing would be racist.
Similarly, if straight people got to choose what homophobia and transphobia looked like, that might not exist either.
Because who wants to be called either of those? So I’ll leave that opinion up to the person’s affected. As a fellow minority, I draw my parallels for my own personal evaluation. Whether a non-minority agrees or disagrees is irrelevant.
LikeLiked by 3 people
What if you didn’t like being black, or felt like you should’ve been born white? Should we change our worldwide language to accommodate a tiny minority because of their feelings?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you think that people become gay because they don’t like being straight?? This is a very strange analogy…..
From a change perspective, race is a far more complex topic because it is easier to change one’s gender than to change one’s race. And whereas sex or gender is purely individual, a person’s parentage and family history immediately gives their race away. But when it comes to the struggle for rights, in my opinion, that’s where the similarities arise.
As far as language, race does not determine conjugations or anything of the sort in language. And if a person decides they don’t want to be referred to by a specific racial or ethnic term (like the N word for Black people or Oriental for Asians), then that’s their choice. America, in fact, is the only modern country obsessed with race and racial terms like this. When I go to Mexico, for instance, no one refers to me by my race. They refer to me by my nationality.
Again, a very strange way to draw a parallel between sexuality and race, but ok.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I ask because I’m curious. I don’t have all the answers. I certainly don’t expect the world to bend over my own dislikes. There is no way to please everybody these days.
LikeLike
No one is asking you to please everyone. Minorities are asking for more inclusive language and you have written a blog post to say it is an inconvenient request while quite hilariously using a mostly gender-neutral language, i.e. English.
If you think inclusive language is such a bother, then focus on English and let other languages tackle their own problems without English interference.
LikeLike
The difficulty is virtually no languages possess the structure to accommodate. You can’t just change the pronoun without changing the entire structure of every other word in the context of conversation. It doesn’t work. It will take some sort of creative genius to figure out how to make masculine and feminine neutral in themselves.
You yourself brought race into the issue and equate everything based on your own paradigm. Now you criticized me for extrapolating on your analogy which does not fit. See that?
LikeLiked by 1 person
See what?? Does your brain only process one component at a time? 😂 I didn’t say race was a bad parallel. I said your CHOICE OF CHANGE analogy was strange. Race was not the only element in your analogy. It had other components, no?
A Swedish guy was at the table during this conversation about inclusive language and he disagrees with you. He said his language has a gender neutral word for almost everything now because of how the language naturally evolved. It wasn’t even about the LGBTQIA+ movement, though that may certainly help polish things up.
Like I said, focus on English and let other people mind their own business in peace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My brain processes many parallels. That is where the idea of language and wokism intertwined. But of course I’m not a savant of any kind.
“ Whenever I think of LGBTQIA+ rights, I draw a racial parallel and that keeps me in line” This is your lens according to you.
The funny thing about todays contradictions, diversity and equality are opposing forces.
If everyone was treated the same that would be insensitive.
LikeLike
You are missing the point entirely. I specifically said why I found your parallel strange in the initial comment when I asked if you think that people just wake up and CHOOSE to be gay. The keyword is CHOOSE, but you are stuck on race.
Also, how does “inclusiveness” = being treated like everyone else??
I don’t think you know enough about diversity issues to be TELLING instead of ASKING and the more you TELL instead of ASK, is the more you rob yourself of the opportunity to learn. Other people are in the comments trying to educate you, but you are 100% sure you are correct.
And that’s ok, but this is where I clock out to go spend my time on more productive conversations. All the best to you and your language preservation efforts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You certainly are willing to risk offending me and that is the nature of discussion and inquiry. I learn something from everyone so thank you. You should dig at me a little and that is now forbidden from the main walks of life. Everyone is easily offended so no real discourse is possible.
LikeLike
I like this!
LikeLiked by 2 people
The only language I know of that can accommodate this is English. No wonder we seem to have the biggest problem with it
LikeLiked by 1 person
If only we had stuck with Old English. With the advent of Middle English (circa 1060), we lost our gendered nouns – alas we seem to want to come full circle.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think as much as people think and want to affect change, this is the natural course of things whether we like it or not. I would suspect in any crowded ecosystem that gender swings would be normal based on available space.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“we seem to have the biggest problem with it”
Who is we, heterosexual man? I am heterosexual, and I have no problem with it. I can use e, eir, em or whatever as easily as I can use he, her, or them. Right now I am not in a situation where the new pronouns are needed, but that makes no difference. Not that I ever used it, but I have no problem not using the N word, for example. I don’t use the F or H words for non-heterosexuals either. Those are just commo courtesy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
English speakers. Our language structures dictate the core ways in which we think.
“ I can use e, eir, em. That isn’t any verbiage I was aware of.
Not using offensive and formally derogatory language is different than being compelled to say certain words.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Who is compe.ling you to say anything? I am not looking for a fight here, Jim. If anything I am looking for a way to peace. Pick your battles by your important they are in “your” life. If you tell me this affects the way you live, I will shut up.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Admittedly there isn’t much I can do. Isn’t living in reality worthy enough on its own merit? Sticking to the post topic, why do you suppose every language evolved naturally the way that it did? Is it because that mirrors reality in nature, or is it just some willy nilly fluke all language is binary based on observable, natural reality?
This affects me personally because of the insistence from a few loud narcissistic people that think they are doing good but ably causing further demise and division.
At this point I believe our course is set. Look up the “Universe 25” project and look at the parallel to today. High populations, plenty of resources and food, easy life, men and boys who are no longer masculine and spend their days idle, grooming themselves, women who refuse to have offspring, violent, manipulative alphas, and other parallels to mouse populations in a luxurious but closed environment.
In the end all the mice die in every case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
LikeLike
Too much here to debate in one sitting, and my memory (lack of it) will probably not remind me to come back here, so I will try to keep this general.
Language developed in binary because in the days language was developing it was doing so based on small groups of people. And people in those days did not have the luxury to explore their feelings. Survival was the main task of life. If anyone of the time was not binary, they probably did not survive. So looking strictly at language does not paint a full picture. Non-binary people, if they grew up, were pretty much not part of the society they lived in. But yet, according to the oldest surviving book in history, non-binary people were acknowledged to exist. But they were not accepted then, and they are barely being accepted now by large cnunks of society. But we are learning to accept. We need to keep on learning to accept.
After 73 years of living on this planet, I have not reproduced. This was not by intent, it was purely by accident. Shit happens.
There are a lot of women out there who are unable to have children. I know, I was attracted to a number of them. At one point in my life this troubled me, but not anymore. Babies are fodder for the war machines, slaves for the wealthy. The earth is so overpopulated with humans we are driving other species into smaller and smaller habitats. Why should we survive and not them? They are natural parts of the ecosystem. We need them.
Mice in a closed environment can only tell us about mice in a closed environment. Scientists who try to predict human futures will not do so by watching mice. They are fools! Humans are not mice!
I would thank you for the links, Jim, but I am not interested. I’m too old to waste my time reading about things that are meaningless to me. I live my life based on myself, my experience, and my understanding of those experiences. Those are my realities. Yes, science has helped make it easier to survive in this world, but it has also created a world where we do not know how long we can survive. Our societies are so far behind our technological progress that we are using things today that will be found to be detrimenral in the future. Bees are one of the biggest necessities to our food production, but we are killing them off in numbers so large they may soon be extinct. Bees are more importanf than labratory mice!
And now I am exhausted. We shall meet again, sir.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are conflating gender with sex. Biological sex comes in two categories: male and female. Yes, you mix these up but there are in reality only two sexes. To prove the point, come up with some other sex category than male/female and the intersex between these two. Today in human biology there are only these two sexes. There is no third sex. Period. End of story. Fact.
Everything you talk about past this fact is ‘gender’ which is a cultural construct about masculine (a construct) and feminine (a construct) expressed in a particular culture. What’s feminine in this language might be masculine in that language. Behavior/fashion/mannerisms and so on deemed masculine in this culture might be considered feminine in that culture. That’s BELIEVING that gender is an equivalent ‘thing’ to sex in biological reality is absolutely wrong. Every single cell in your body is either male or female. No amount of believing otherwise will change this reality. No amount of changing from sex to gender in law will make those cells in your body magically become female. No amount of hormones, no amount of surgery, no amount of altering the language, will accomplish this magical feat. That’s gender ideology is equivalent to just another faith-based reality denying religion.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is this serious or sarcasm?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh it’s completely serious. Really aside from English it fits nowhere.
Even India has to create an entirely new set of conjugation to accommodate the language for nonbinary people.
LikeLike
During the gay marriage debate in Spain I actually went into the archives of one of Spain’s most important newspapers, El Pais. To add some insight to the argument that the word marriage couldn’t be used for gay unions, I found a fabulous article arguing that in Spanish Juez (Judge) only existed in the masculine; therefor, women should be barred from becoming judges! Are you confident your mathematical argument as it pertains to Aristotelian logic is sound?
LikeLiked by 2 people
No I’m not certain I even have an argument. It is however, telling that in every culture language development is two gendered. That is of course, the old way now I suppose.
LikeLike
So that’s it? Binary definitions eliminate any further nuance? White free man versus slave?
LikeLiked by 1 person
You think you’re free?
LikeLike
Is the implication that I’m white?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The implication is that I’m white and people somehow think that makes me free, or freer. I’m pidginholed into a role as much as anyone else.
LikeLike
Are you denying being white gets you more privileges than being non-white in American society? You may be a good person who does not take advantage of your skin colour, but we who are not white do not have that advantage.
I am not saying every white person is racist, but every white person is privileged, whether they know it or not — whether they take advantage of it or not.
If you are pigeonholed, your pigeonhole is much bigger than mine. That is a fact in Canada, not just in the USA. I have seen it all my life. Where was my scholarship for always being in the top two or three students in every grade and every school I ever attended? Why was I always passed over?
I’ll stop here. I am getting off topic!
LikeLiked by 1 person
So you are white. My privilege is an inheritable trait from my father. He was a worker bee and so am I. If hard work is privilege then I have it.
See the problem is privilege and freedom is not the white mans to give. No one in America is held back by their race or color.
Now that being white is so offensive to the woke culture are you going to start defending that as well?
LikeLike
I have nothing against white people, I am half white myself. Yet people around me “in real life” do not see it that way. It was much worse as a child, my skin was much darker then. It has lightened as I aged, but the only place I ever felt totally safe as a person of colour was in the hippie movement. Almost no one there looked at skin colour, and if they did they were objected to right away. Skin is just something to hold our insides from falling away from our skeletons. Inside we are all just the same.
But when is the ladt time you saw a white person being pulled over for a trafgic stop by a cop with his gun out? That is privilege. The white person is trusted, persons of colour are not!
LikeLike
Twice as many whites are killed by police each year in the US. That never gets reported because it doesn’t fuel any race agenda. Last month 5 black police officers killed a black man. The legacy media also said that was white privilege. Idiots.
I have been bullied by white police officers myself. My whole family was. I think it’s inherent to personality types that seeks to be a cop. There’s quite a few bad apples that have egos going out of control during any incident. They beat that man to death and not one of them stopped to question that maybe they are going too far.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mob mind! Or should I say mob insanity. It will probably be discoveredl, though not necessarily released to the public, the Blackcops/Black man incident was premeditated murder disguised as a traffic stop gone bad. TYRE NICHOLS’ beating was not a random event, I can guarantee that. Maybe murder was not the intent, but it was the result. Someone had a beef with Nichols and got their cop buddies to help.
I am sorry to hear about your family being bullied, but your family is not pure white, is it? Again, I am not trying to cause a fight, I am just looking at the facts. You dared to not keep your blood pure white. That becomes a target for racists. It SHOULD NOT HAPPEN! But we all know it does.
LikeLike
“when is the last time you saw a white person being pulled over for a trafgic stop by a cop with his gun out” ~rawgod
The lmost recent incident was on March 1. 2023
https://meaww.com/chase-allan-heres-why-farmington-cops-were-told-to-kill-the-bodycams-when-25-year-old-was-shot
As Jim noted, it’s a frequent occurence, but seldom gets national media attention ccause it runs counter to their racial profiling narrative.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And you say this as a Korean adoptee?
LikeLike
No, I say it as a matter of fact. The empirical data simply does not support the legacy media’s race-baiting narrative.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Interesting. Could you explain the whole Korean adoptee perspective and how that might affect your opinion?
LikeLike
Could you explain why you think one’s ethnicity matters in looking at hard data and rates?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Because background and experience informs everything. Your perspective is created based on your experience. Isn’t that obvious?
LikeLike
Really?! Then what’s the point of education if, as you claim as if true, “background and experience informs everything. Your perspective is created based on your experience.”
I think these can have an affect… IF you allow them – and only them – to direct your thinking. The whole REASON for an education is learning HOW to think differently than these brute, dull, and emotive inheritances.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Are you implying the two are completely separate? As if biases don’t exist? 🙂
LikeLike
Are you sticking with education is useless?
LikeLike
I’m glad you’ve calmed down. The rant seemed a bit snow-flakey 🙂
LikeLike
Which ‘rant’ is that?
LikeLike
The it’s either black or white rant. I believe in nuance.
LikeLike
I still don’t know to which ‘rant’ you’re referring. Reparations?
LikeLike
I’m not sure what perception has to do with a number of white people killed versus Black people killed? That’s pretty raw data
LikeLike
It has to do with framing. That number is only significant if whittled down to represent the percentage of population within each community. Otherwise that would be misleading, wouldn’t it? 🙂 Statistics have to be presented with guidelines.
LikeLike
How would my opinion on someone elses’s perspective alter the the fact that cops routinely shoot people from all walks of life?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m still wondering why you felt the need to delete the posts about your adoption and trip to Korea the last time I asked about it? It seems like an extreme reaction.
LikeLike
I think you have ne confused with someone else. I”ve never been to Korea. Nor am I adopted.
LikeLike
I haven’t at all. I’ve got photographic memory. So I wish you good luck processing all of that.
LikeLike
Your memory is faulty, so there is ‘s nothing for me to process.
LikeLike
Not surprising. But I doubt such instances happen as frequently to whites as people of colour. Whites certainly do not expect to have anything happen to them when pulled over people of colour live in fear of it.
LikeLike
They live in fear of it because the news has a divisive agenda and pushes that fear. It isn’t based on reality
LikeLike
As opposed to the transgender panic? 😀
LikeLike
Yes. It’s all about fairness to me, to women. Now men pretending to be women are winning their medals and dictating womens rights. Shameful anyone is allowing that but that is how far academia has fallen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
12 cases maketh not a pandemic. I’ll be happy to acknowledge your point if you can demonstrate with evidence a substantive pattern. Just anecdotal evidence is not enough.
LikeLike
Again, this is standard boilerplate apologetics. It’s ALL anecdotal (yeah, 12, sure). Who care s that when studies are submitted for research, when committees are suggested, when ANYONE dares to question the orthodoxy of transactivists determined to allow their brethren to dominate whatever women’s sports they care to choose, these are usually shut down by invertebrate administrators? You, Pink, are dismissing out of hand big name world famous women athletes who, in no uncertain terms, insist that this ‘inclusion’ harms women, and here are another hundred examples? This is what people like tennis superstar Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams are telling us, people like Olympian rower Dr Mary O’Connor, women AT EVERY LEVEL of athletics is trying to say, trying to let everyone know that this ‘inclusion’ is not only biologically unfair but undermining women’s athletics (often putting women competing with such men at much higher risk for injury) everywhere (not that the True Believers care whatsoever about biological women).
Who cares there is robust scientific evidence for the significant puberty related male advantage in most sports forms that last (so far) over 14 years with reduced testosterone? Well, have you heard about the three surveys done with female Olympians published in 2022? Yeah, didn’t think so. Nobody carried it. Nobody published it in legacy media. Nobody wanted to TOUCH it, I guess. The unanimous condemnation by each survey was enough to relegate it to the dustbin. Not only that, but who actually cares that dozens of the most elite female athletes across every Olympic sport agreed that speaking out was an invitation for tremendous social media vitriol, usually followed by degrees of professional sanction, and vicious and threatening personalized attacks against them, their families, coaches, and teammates? Golly, I wonder why more women are stepping up to the microphone and complaining about this? But, sure, let’s go with pretending there are only 12 people against this ‘inclusion’ to suggest, without any truthful merit whatsoever, that those complaining about unfairness amount to some tiny biased and disgruntled minority rather than the general consensus by women at every level of every women’s sport and women at the very top of these sports?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Maybe you should be asking the 45,000 on the reddit detransition forums.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL. Ah, yes, the highly scientific statistical method of the Reddit forums. Is your implication that there are 45 thousand de-transitioners? Out of how many transgender people? Out of what total population?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Internet trends are a culturally very useful data.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As evidence of being an internet trend, nothing else. There’s also an internet trend for Pokemon — that doesn’t determine their value.
LikeLike
Shaping our thoughts by the ones actually involved in the trend is better than guessing based on our own biases.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Go read them for yourself, Pink. It seems almost no one in legacy media bothers to listen to those who started down this path and then changed their minds… and all the various reasons they did so. To then to reference anyone who has left this medicalization of youth in the name of ‘gender identity’ casts one as a ‘transphobe’ and some kind of Terrible Person worthy of dismissal… be that dismissed opinion, position, or job and adds the bonus of casting suspicion on friends, colleagues, and family members. But it does demonstrate that portraying those who do not go along with this life long detrimental medicalization of under age youth is not simply a ‘fringe’ element, nor are the numbers as a percentage of the population who has started the process and then left it somewhere in the low single digits. Au contraire. It seems to be higher than 30% since 2015, which is when the craze really began. (You mean it’s not biological but psychological and sociological? Whodathunk… except anyone with two neurons to rub together).
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m asking for real evidence. Not forums. Can you point to any actual study or verifiable numbers of some sort? I think it’s fairly absurd to imply there’s some sort of worldwide conspiracy designed to hide data. Especially when countries like Iran, Russia or China would happily attempt to compile evidence that in any way proved the “dangerousness” of any member of the LGBT+ community.
LikeLike
Funny you mention this. The actual study that started this a few posts ago was from Iran. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4301205/
LikeLike
I love the “patients requesting sex reassignment surgery” part. Perhaps they forgot to add the alternative – death. Because that is the real world choice gays and lesbians face in Iran (among other Muslim states): surgical reassignment to the ‘correct’ sex. But here in the West, we don’t call this anti-same sex attraction ‘religious totalitarianism’! No, no, no… we call this ‘aligning one’s gender with the body’! It’s SO much more enlightened!
LikeLike
The contradiction is what bothers me. They say sex and gender are different things, so why change sexes to become a different gender?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, Jim… now there’s a rabbit hole of crazy just waiting for you to try to figure out. If you do, please remember that it is incoherent because it relies on changing the meaning of words to its opposite meaning here but not there and then there but not here. It’s a self contained bubble world of incoherence that relies on presuming the conclusion, believing that one can be born in the ‘wrong’ body, that each us really, really, really do contain a special something called ‘gender’ (think of ‘soul’) and that it’s not only reasonable but unquestionable that an untold number of children suffering from all kinds of psychiatric and psychological angst are perfectly capable of diagnosing and then organizing their own medical treatment IN THIS ONE CASE.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s true and country specific. Iran has been criticised for that for years. Especially after a documentary came out around 15 years ago.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a fascinating study even in regard to the question itself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would think it’s expected, knowing that in Iran any same sex attraction is by definition considered a psychiatric pathology.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, that’s precisely what I meant. Countries like Iran, Russia and China would happily taint science with their religiopolitical ideologies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Isn’t is psychiatric in nature? Seems like I’m this case Iran is being consistent with any other mind malady
LikeLike
When it comes to same sex attraction, the whole reason why it’s now widely accepted throughout the west is BECAUSE it’s biological! Gender, in stark contrast, is like a religious belief: it requires nothing from reality to define it other than comparative FEELINGS against culturally constructed sex-based stereotypes of masculine and feminine! In Iran, it’s the biology being denied (by imposed religious ideology) that labels this ‘condition’ psychiatric and then eligible on this basis to be surgically ‘corrected’. In the West, it’s gender feelings being denied (by imposed religious-adjacent ideology) that labels this as intolerance and on this basis to be surgically ‘corrected’!
Both ideologies deny reality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
P.S. this is the documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Like_Others
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rest easy, Pink. The lawsuits will bring it all out into the open soon enough. Prepare now to pretend to be surprised at the scope of the deceit from captured institutions, the acceptance of high level risk towards promoting the grand experiment almost all chemical and surgical interventions of minors actually is, how little oversight and lack of professional care has been implemented, and of course how much money has been made by those implementing this tragic charade (starting with Abbvie as the drug dealer of choice).
LikeLiked by 1 person
You do understand any medical care given to minors is at the request, supervision and with the consent of parents, right? I find it fascinating that the whole detransition question seems to be a uniquely American phenomena. And that much of the media behind it is linked to the Heritage Foundation.
LikeLike
“You do understand any medical care given to minors is at the request, supervision and with the consent of parents, right?”
You’re joking, right? Either that, or you are absolutely illiterate on the subject because there are thousands upon thousands of cases where not only is this claim simply not true but there are hundreds of known cases where any parental reluctance is proof of ‘conversion therapy’ that then leads to the child being removed from the home, made wards of the state, and then ’emancipated’ from these parental ‘transphobes’. I read of new cases every day, often brought about by self-assigned teacher-champions and ‘counsellors’ busy, busy, busy helping transactivists lead children to their ‘best’ lives with only life long medicalization, significant health reductions, and massively increased risks as a sleight cost… in the name of ‘correcting’ and child’s gender ‘identity’ with their physical body. I use the term ‘child’ because this is EXACTLY what’s going on in reality… remember, for any CHILD that reaches Tanner Stage Two to start the transitioning process. Yeah, I know. This is insane but it really IS WPATH’s recommendation for ‘timely’ intervention. This is what the US Endocrine Society follows and this is what the American Academy of Pediatrics follows.
So you tell me, Pink: do you think a child at Tanner Stage Two is competent to make an INFORMED consent? This is matter of consent is what shut Tavistock’s doors and it’s only a question of time through lawsuits (and maybe courageous whistle blowers) the same will happen in the US and Canada and Australia and New Zealand. This is going to blow up and badly damage every medical profession and supposed professional that went along with this travesty. But what should be damaged most is the lack of fortitude legacy media played in this, and absolute corrupt willingness of non critical people to go along with it to avoid being called Bad Names.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Is Washington teachers are REQUIRED to hide such gender swaps from the parents and are not allowed to use the pronouns they have chosen, in front of the parents.
LikeLike
It is almost ubiquitous, Jim, other than States (and perhaps someday Provinces in Canada) that have passed legislation specifically outlawing this.
I know that in rare cased transitioning is exactly the RIGHT medical treatment so I do not agree with outlawing legislation. But, I can certainly understand the deep frustration and legitimate fear parents have for the health and welfare of their children taught this ideology in schools and feeling levels of powerlessness to protect their kids from this social onslaught.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would tentatively agree with you, tildeb, that transitioning is exactly the RIGHT medical treatment … -IF- it’s done when the individual has passed puberty and is aware of the permanent changes that will be taking place in his/her body.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Honestly Nan, I’ve come across two cases – both intersexed kids – where treatment prior to puberty was both obvious and almost irrelevant for the kids to maintain the least disruption to their lives – not just physically but socially. So, like you, I would be loathe to interfere prior to puberty, but I think in some exceptional cases this is exactly the right treatment. Brute laws might serve the majority of kids and have political advantages for voting parents but I still think a medical condition should be treated as a medical condition without political/ideological/religious interference. I think today’s gender ideology really has captured medical institutions (as well as many civil rights organizations and governmental oversight bodies/legislation including gender in place of sex) and we’re seeing the harmful results play out over time in every social area this influence touches.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s a pretty good story too that touches on some indicative problems https://nypost.com/2022/07/11/trans-woman-returns-to-life-as-man-and-hits-out-at-the-activist-doctor-who-turned-his-life-upside-down/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can you point to a case where parental consent was not necessary or was not given and treatment went on anyway?
LikeLike
Every case is anecdotal, Pink. Under this umbrella, you will be able to reject every one of them. But some of the more egregious cases that have been included in various law suits and are available to you if you want to look for them, especially one (I’m pretty sure BC) where the family judge was the affirming parent of a transitioned child and ruled consistently that parents had to go along with their child’s decision to transition or the child would become a ward of the state. She was still on the bench last time I checked but I can’t recall her name offhand.
LikeLike
Chloe Cole. Turns out her AND her parents actually took the advice of the doctors which turned out to be bad information, which is main stream medical advice. She did hormone therapy and had her breasts removed only to wake up that it was just a phase of puberty.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No. You’re implying medical gender-transitioning is being done to/by children without parental consent, which I too would agree is completely unethical. So I’m asking you to point to cases that prove this is indeed happening. Any single case would be bad and should be questioned.
LikeLike
Is mal-informed consent, consent?
Chloe’s parents were told if she didn’t have the surgery she would commit suicide. “Do you want a transgender child or a dead child?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s not “mal-informed” consent. I’ve read a lot about that particular case and it’s fascinating. The name in the lawsuit is Chloe Brockman (in case you want to search for details). She identified as trans at age 9 and insisted on being called Ky. Her mother is a nurse and her father an IT specialist. The first doctors they consulted told repeatedly told them she was too young for medical treatment until she turned 13, at which point they put her on puberty blockers. After an incident at school where a boy touched her breasts she became fixated on having a mastectomy and was given one a year and a half later. Her parents not only consented, they went doctor shopping when they didn’t get the answer they wanted. Do I think 15 is too early for surgery? Yes. But I also think that ultimately treatments have to be an agreement between parents, doctors and the teenager in the case of people around that age.
LikeLiked by 1 person
they went doctor shopping when they didn’t get the answer they wanted
IMO, this speaks volumes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whenever I read these stories I’m reminded of being a teenager who wanted contact lenses — and my mother would say, “half the time you forget your racket on tennis days and your boots on riding day, you’re not responsible enough for contacts.”
So I find it quite mystifying that parents feel serious medical procedures are appropriate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
All the more reason to restrict such activities til they are adults.
LikeLike
Possibly, but the law works by allowing parents to decide on access to all legal medical procedures. Even moreso in cases regarding standardised treatment. Brockman’s story is sad but it’s one that originates entirely with her own actions and her family’s desires.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is a great example of the ineptness of academia and the medical establishment thinking this is remotely necessary to correct a mental state with surgery. But what the hell, women have been doing this for years.
LikeLike
No, Pink. In Canada, it’s the law! Here:
“In circumstances where parents are not acting in the best interests of their child, that parental liberty interest may be infringed where it is necessary for the state to intervene to protect a child whose life and security are in jeopardy.”
What does that mean, best interests? It means… wait for it… TRANSITIONING!! Why? Because the language was changed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms from making SEX a prohibited category for discrimination to GENDER and Gender Identity!
So, the identity of minors is protected. You won’t read their names in the press. But you will encounter law after law after law that protects schools and teachers from revealing ‘gender’ information and ‘social transitioning’ about students from parents. Parents, you see, are not to be trusted. There are laws that allow states to provide ‘sanctuary’ to kids seeking transitioning. No parents are necessary. There are laws to force parental medical coverage be applied to kids for transitioning without parental consent. And so on. Where two parents disagree about transitioning, only the ‘affirming’ parent maintains rights. And so on. The system is geared to provide children a path to transitioning whether the parents agree or not.
So you can pretend that without a long list of named transitioners who did not have parental consent there is only smoke and no fire. But the truth is that CHILDREN are deciding to transition and that their consent alone is sufficient. But at least we agree that this practice is completely unethical.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In Washington it’s under the guise that children can receive behavioral health care without consent, specifically drafted because of gender dysphoria yet ambiguous enough to not raise any alarms.
LikeLike
Which should mean that you can point to at least one case in Canada where that happened, right?
LikeLike
Not easily because, as I explained, information about minors – especially ‘health’ information like transitioning either with or without parental consent – is under a publication ban because they are minors! So even the adults’ names are banned because it could lead to a privacy breach of the minor!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would presume that any parent who felt wronged by the system would be free to go to the media to tell their story. And as in France or the UK have their identities protected. Do you have any cases where identities are protected and these sorts of stories are occurring?
LikeLike
Here’s the reddit thread. Go to town.
LikeLike
I didn’t ask for internet rumours. I asked for a single case. Just one. One case where an underaged person began medical treatment without parental consent.
LikeLike
Think, Pink: how would we find that out? That’s why I say YOU do the research if you must have that one example. I have only encountered aliases. So, hey, good luck to you.
What we DO know is that the entire medical and legal and educational and government infrastructure is obligated to facilitate exactly this under age access without needing parental consent. Spcifically relegating parental consent to be moot. Don’t you find this… strange… when every meta review on gender transitioning either reveals the experimental aspect is very high risk and evidence for its efficacy very poor or when such reviews are submitted and granted public exposure, all of a sudden the policies change overnight?
Do we know parents are told to either consent or they will be blamed for pushing their child into suicide? Yes. All the time. This is actually standard procedure in many clinics if th4e whistleblowers are to be believed. Are we told how many parents disagree about affirming? Yes. All the time. And do we know what the standard response to this refusal is? Yes. That the state WILL take the child away. It’s right there in the state and provincial laws! Are we made aware of legal bias awarding custody to the parent who affirms? Yes. All the time. Can we find out how laws all over the place in the US and Canada have been changed to allow this to happen? Yes. I’ve already given you the BC link I mentioned earlier. Do we know how what’s ‘best’ for the child has been redefined to allow this to happen, that affirmation only is now the ONLY therapy covering EVERY MEDICAL PRACTITIONER involved with any child that raises gender as an issue, that parents are no longer protected under law to be held responsible for a child if it involves gender? Yes, yes, and yes.
So why pretend there is some lingering question about the role of parental consent in all of this when such consent has clearly been cut off from mattering in every area of concern?
LikeLike
Fascinating. So is the implication that this is only happening in Canada where these obscure privacy laws are in play? Not in the US, not in the UK, not in France, Spain or Germany?
LikeLike
What? No. My bias is about Canada. But it’s definitely common. (Check out the daily stories from PITT or Broadview or Genspect.)
Or have you forgotten what brought down Tavistock? Lawsuits. Specifically, lawsuits that forced exposure to what’s really going on in gender clinics when parental consent is institutionally relegated to being meaningless. (Those lawsuits are just starting up in the US.) When parental consent has been castrated (spade?), Pink, you cannot have ‘informed consent’ from a minor. That’s what Bell’s lawsuit against Tavistock set as precedence.
The substantiated honest medical reviews of all data following such lawsuits then puts the nail in the gender coffin because what IS going on is a unfolding tragedy involving not just children who do not have legal consent but those who tend to be the most vulnerable of children including and not least of which are budding gays and lesbians (let’s not even go into the very high rate of diagnosed autism and other psychiatric conditions). Just this one aspect – same sex attraction – should anger you to your core. (See LGB Alliance position statement <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/43079/html/here.) But also consider the number of children claiming trans identity when attracted to the same sex. (But also note the attack against biological same-sex attraction by children claiming ‘gay’ status if mtf or ‘lesbian’ if ftm! (The greater the victim identities claimed, the greater the social standing!) That should tweak the old discrimination antenna because neither trans gay or trans lesbian is in fact same-sex attraction!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m still waiting for any single example of a case where a child received medical treatment without parental consent. The LGB Alliance is a group that supports gay conversion therapy, so think twice before promoting their nonsense.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Riiight…
LikeLike
Why do you suppose there needs to be a law to allow children genital realignment if there are no children seeking it without parental consent? Like you said, it allows the government to placehold the parent ant decide if you are making the right choices.
LikeLike
And it’s not just one law but a series of policy directives, as well as going back and changing legislation to make ‘gender’ a protected identity… whatever the hell that might mean (like making a ‘soul’ a protected identity). Pink has made no effort whatsoever to address why these changes have been made but, instead, implies with his question for details that are unavailable (for very good reasons) that without specific cases he can parse, all of these are superfluous nothing-to-see-here changes that amount to no effect in the real world. But he knows better… he just wants to appear to ‘win’ the exchange if I don’t provide him with these details. But note, this is exactly how deniers constantly pretend to refute reality by asking a never-ending stream of ‘questions’ they make no attempt to answer on their own. This is boilerplate apologetics once again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A little bit of intellectual honesty on your part wouldn’t go amiss. I’m asking you to name a single case where there hasn’t been parental consent. No one here has been able to do that. The only case mentioned was of disputed consent regarding a teen and the court sided with one parent who then gave consent.
LikeLike
These cases are not referring to actual physical gender change w/o parental consent, but it would seem things are leading in that direction.
https://www.newsweek.com/kids-young-four-can-now-change-gender-scotland-schools-without-parental-consent-1618942
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/briannaheldt/2018/09/27/new-california-law-allows-children-to-get-transgender-treatments-without-parental-consent-n2522928
https://mynorthwest.com/3296653/rantz-washington-laws-permit-teen-gender-reassignment-surgery-parental-consent/
https://thebridgehead.ca/2020/12/15/states-working-to-help-children-gender-transition-without-parents-knowledge-and-other-stories/
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are literally hundreds of such accounts of CHILDREN determining to transition and starting hormone therapy without the parents knowing. There are hundreds of accounts of CHILDREN binding without the parent’s consent. There are hundreds of examples of CHILDREN being aided and abetted by teachers and councillors without the parents’ consent. In fact, it is POLICY for teachers NOT to inform the parents when transitioning – or desire to transition – arises.
It’s COMPLETELY fucked up. And in many places it is the LAW.
As for surgeries without parental consent, we simply don’t know. Why on earth would anyone involved go public with such an account OTHER than disgruntled detransitioners that YOU know and I know you would dismiss out of hand.
So I don’t know why – when the law, the schools, and every medical practitioner’s ‘ethical’ standard of practice is stacked against any parent who does not wish their child to transition – you pretend all of this is above board and beyond questioning.
Look, if you don’t see the one-sided organizing of the gender deck by government, education, and the medical professions in the US and Canada, don’t see how and why this puts gay and lesbian young people particularly at risk for conversion, don’t see how significant chemicals that thwart healthy development in children by children are a problem, don’t see why children deciding to go this route is backwards from every other chilkd-0related issue, don’t grasp how informed consent plays zero role in any of this by anyone involved, then obviously there is absolutely nothing any where at anytime by anybody that will. You have your position and it appears to be closed to what should be reasonable concern by any reasonable person. That, my friend, is no different than any run of the mill religious fundamentalist believing what they do because it seems obvious to me through how many comments you’ve made that your beliefs about this are already calcified into certainty. Your comments as far as I can tell carry no questioning of this ideology in practice nor recognize any of the harm already accrued by tens of thousands of children. Not even a raised eyebrow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lawrence Krause calls it “Reason Responsiveness”. In spite of massive evidence one still believes what they want. And that “Reason Responsiveness needs to be a pre-requisite for participation in free speech”
“Truth is valuable. Any belief about the world will either be true, false, or partially true. There is no a priori way of knowing which is which. To determine the truth of a belief we must be free to evaluate it through evidence, reason, and discussion, and be at liberty to challenge and contradict it with differing beliefs in the marketplace of ideas, and be open to revision as necessary.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes I get that. There is a whole lots more to the policy than “gender” identity. It is an assault on free speech itself. If they can get you to comply with this it is a slippery slope to wider than normal scale fascism. The truth is, meaningful topics will offend someone, somewhere, and if you’re not allowed to offend anyone at all, we are doomed.
The fake outrage folks certainly don’t mind being offensive, but it’s a one way street, as you know.
LikeLike
It’s all part of critical social justice, which is a group based victim/victimizer ideology that opposes liberal democracy – and the rights and freedoms for individuals that we assume a a birthright – in all its core values.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They’ve done a pretty good job at shaming and shutting up the opposition. The new virtue is fake outrage and being deeply offended. Most people just keep there head down.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That was after he outcry. Your lack of serious knowledge on this is troubling. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdp9z/lgb-alliance-trans-conversion-therapy
LikeLike
Of course everyone has it all wrong. Maybe good therapy would include accepting who you are and why you’re different. Nobody was born with the wrong genitals. Nature makes no mistakes and we should expect more and more anomalies as populations surge and decline. Everything is as it should be. Fighting for special recognition is also as natural as ignoring it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s an absolutely nonsensical thing to say. People spend their entire lives changing things about themselves. We change our skin colour in the sun, we change our hair colour with products, we change the amount of knowledge we have constantly. Some people change more by using braces, high heeled shoes, tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery. Life is this process and every human being is free to embark on their own journey and pursue what’s important to them without other people interfering.
LikeLike
This is a stretch from what you say to the genital mutilation of children.
More than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone ritual female genital mutilation (FGM) in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is practiced. FGM is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15. FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.
It’s just a cultural norm. Do you have issue with that?
The common belief is that it is forced on women by men. In fact, elderly women often do the most to perpetuate the custom. I thought African girls were held down and butchered against their will, but some of them voluntarily and joyfully partake in the ritual.
LikeLike
Fgm has nothing to do with this issue. Gender transitions are a slow process done under close medical supervision at the request of the patient.
LikeLike
We know that. That’s what makes this worse. Every child that changes pronouns before and during puberty flip flops around and often change their mind day to day. That’s exactly why it is in their best long term interest to wait til that settles in.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As the court of appeals ruled in England when they overturned the Tavistock case: the best interest of the individual is a decision for them, their doctors and their parents/guardians — no one else. Another person’s sexuality and gender are none of your business, Jim.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If I may … You’re correct. It isn’t Jim’s (or anyone else’s) business. So why is the topic being rammed down the throats of the general populace? Children and/or adults who have other psychological/mental problems are not put on display and reported in every news media outlet.
Oh! I know! “Sex sells.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
For the same reason Anita Bryant created her Let’s Save the Children from the Homosexuals campaign. No one is “ramming” anything. People have more options now and they’re not hiding. In the world I grew up coming out as gay was impossible. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for trans people. As for pronouns, I had teachers tell us to call them Ms. others Mrs. and some were even Mz. Some remained Ms. after getting married. Others were older and preferred Mrs. without being married — none of that really matters. It’s common courtesy to refer to people by the way they present themselves. I don’t know if your name is Nan, but if you tell me that’s what you want to be called, that’s what I’ll do. I won’t open your purse to check your id and then yell at you for having dared shorten Fernanda to Nan — to conceal your real identity as Fernanda 🙂
LikeLike
I appreciate what gay folks went through. But using force and intimidation to change a person’s viewpoint rarely accomplishes its purpose. Yes, gay folks are now at least granted privileges common to “straights,” but has the discrimination ever ended? IOW, does the constant battering of a philosophy actually change those who have closed minds?
Unfortunately, so long as the religious population exists, there will always be issues related to the sexual aspects of humans.
LikeLike
One of the differences – and it’s major – is that equality rights for gays and lesbians cost no one else’s anything. No one getting married has to step aside for a gay couple to web. But that’s not true with gender ideology that demonstrably displaces women from women only spaces. It’s this displacement that transactivists call ‘trans rights’ that is causing the growing backlash by real feminists.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is a huge cash cow too. State insurance here is not allowed to deny $100s of thousands of dollar treatments to “maybe” help someone feel coddled.
LikeLike
For me(and I’m glad you are sharing additional insight) it actually is my business as the post title says, this is pioneering our culture in many ways. It has to be my business lest I offend someone. How else do I keep up with the acronyms, pronouns, and dog whistles?
LikeLiked by 2 people
You don’t have to, Jim. How many transgender people do you run into each day? In the event you do meet one, when they introduce themselves they’ll say their name, then you can call them by that. The last time I saw someone who I thought might be trans was three years ago. It was a cashier. Pronouns were never necessary. If it was someone in my circle of friends or a client, and their gender identity wasn’t obvious I might ask. And if you get it wrong you can do what people have done forever which is to say, oops, not my intention to offend.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“No one is “ramming” anything.”
An absolutely false statement. It’s in the fucking curriculum starting in kindergarten.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And rammed down the throats of children in their formative years through education in the US and Canada.
LikeLiked by 2 people
They don’t find it on their own, that’s for sure. It’s the latest fad!
LikeLike
We are in agreement then… with one caveat: informed consent. That, too, was in the Cass review conclusion (which is why the clinic was shut down) and that is EXACTLY what is not happening outside of those countries that have reviewed and pulled back the Affirmation Only approach currently imposed on US and Canadian medical communities.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pink, today a kid can go into a Planned Parenthood clinic and come out with T or E. Any kid can get it online. You are seriously deluded if you think all if not most transitioning is a slow, carefully planned out therapy guided by informed medical practitioners with the child’s long term health and welfare front and center. In that world, the sky is not blue. In some cases, sure, this is the process especially outside of the US and Canada. But in many cases, no. That’s a problem that cannot be addressed effectively when people simply assume what you are assuming. The fact of the matter is what’s true in reality and in reality there are NO guardrails in either law or policy of many institutions to protect children from diagnosing themselves and beginning the transition process. Denying there is a problem here is denying reality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When this ‘journey’ is facilitated by law and professions to allow uninformed minors to gain full access to life-altering therapies based on their feelings of discomfort, surely there comes a point when the brakes should be applied and we use evidence to inform best practices rather than this toxic ideology indoctrinated into children.
LikeLike
No Pink; this reveals the scope of your own indoctrination. The ‘conversion therapy’ issue is the prominent transactivist attack against ANY medical therapy that is not Affirmation Only. (In Canada, parliament voted unanimously to outlaw all ‘conversion therapy’, which is what any therapy that doesn’t support affirmation only is). It’s a word game.
Gays and lesbians who think trans are their allies are deluded; I don’t think there is a more vulnerable group to this rancid ideology than kids who feel same sex attraction and are uncomfortable about it. That’s why at Tavistock the running ‘joke’ was that their job seemed to be transing the gay away. But, as always, don’t take my word for it. Read Hannah Barnes’ new book Time to Think (I heard an interview last week that talked about exactly this impact Tavistock was having on young gay and lesbian children, the concern raised by clinicians and hoiw these were either ignored or suppressed, and how this issue comported with some reddit threads of detransititioners who didn’t understand as children what their same sex attraction really was, nor the discomfort this was causing them that led directly to undergoing transition as if a ‘solution’. Talk about conversion therapy….!)
LikeLike
As someone who experienced conversion therapy as a 10 year old and who has been fighting for gay rights on the front line for 25 years, I don’t think you’re in a position to explain to me how any of that works. The Lgb Alliance isn’t pro gay, it’s anti trans. Which is why I and others are pushing to have their charity status revoked. They haven’t promoted a single pro gay effort since their inception.
LikeLike
Here too. SB 5904 makes it a psychological diagnosis and can be performed without parental consent.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Is that Washington State?
LikeLike
Yes
LikeLike
Oh, and let’s not be concerned with the reasons for Sage’s Law. That little horror story of institutional abuse intentionally relegating the adoptive parents as meaningless by sticking with the gender narrative and forcing the child into harm’s way in the name of ideology shouldn’t bother anyone at all. Sacrifices must be made to achieve what’s ‘best’ for the child, donchaknow, even if it kills them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-dad-jailed-6-months-after-repeatedly-exposing-transgender-son-s-identity-despite-publication-ban-1.5390847
LikeLiked by 1 person
The child had parental consent of the mother and the doctors agreed. Did you read that whole article? The father’s behaviour seems quite outrageous.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes I read it. The father didn’t grant consent and was prohibited from airing his grievances in public.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Parental consent means of the legal guardian. The courts heard the case and made a determination. It would be the same if one parent was a Jehovah’s Witness or Christian Scientist. Or do you propose an exception if the matter is to do with gender? That parents don’t have to abide by court decisions if the issue is gender?
LikeLike
The link serves to confirm Tildeb’s comment that publication bans revevent arents who feel wronged by the system from telling their sside of the story to the media — which constitutes a a blatant violation of their Fundamental Freedoms, namely:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-rights-protected/guide-canadian-charter-rights-freedoms.html#a2b
And ccording to the father, both parents had legal guardianship over their daughter. So why should the views of one parent prevail over the views of the other?
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL! That’s not an argument about gender, it’s an argument of parental rights. And you’re welcomed to tackle that in the courts and through public opinion.
LikeLike
I’ll take that as atacit concession to Tildeb’s comment that legal constraints prevent many parents from bringing this issue into the public spotlight.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If we’re straightforward isn’t it the case that a dissenting parent could dissent and simply exclude the family name?
LikeLike
How does one go public if you can’t reveal your identity?
Plus, it strikes me as highly incongruent for the courts to command the father refer to his biological daughter by her chosen male name — in public, as well as in private — while simultaneoucommanding him torfrain from pefering to himself by his own chosen proper name in public.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Canada is pretty fucked up right now and We are racing to catch up.
LikeLike
This intentional systemic victimization of parents against their children transitioning is the very motivation of Billboard Chris.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just wonder if this euphoria was such a natural phenomenon, why would it need to be taught and why would it have to be protected by law as an inalienable right? Oh, it’s a religion.
LikeLike
No it isn’t. It’s a specific case in one country where one person gravely abused his position. He could have told his story through a lawyer to the media without publishing photos and the name of his child and trying to profit off of the case.
LikeLike
No. Not really. The lawyers and academics are government sanctioned entities that would also be out of compliance.
Every lawyer in Canada is required by law to be a member of a law society and to be governed by its rules.
LikeLike
The order is one of privacy to not reveal a name. Are you implying you’ve read a newspaper article where the identity of the source was protected?
LikeLike
It is the law here. Case in point is also personal My wife as a government employee is mandated to keep pronouns secret from the parents. During school conferences with parents she will incur disciplinary procedures if she uses the child’s preferred pronouns in front of a parent who doesn’t know. She must wink and play along.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And what difference does that make? Is the implication that teens should be outed? Just trans or the gay ones too? Should teachers tell religious parents so they can then enjoy watching their students become homeless when they’re kicked out?
LikeLike
That’s a bit extreme for me. It makes a difference in overall happiness. Children are very impressionable and I can’t think of any official or teacher I could trust to take the reigns from me.
Another example, kids are prone to pop culture and fads. This has become popularized and now reinforced by meddlers. The idea that kindergartners now ponder their gender identity is just plain stupid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think that’s mostly untrue. Gender dysphoria is extremely rare. There’s no epidemic. Allowing children to do their thing and discover who they are without pressure is undeniably the healthiest path. As a gay person I can tell you I never for a second questioned my gender, so this idea that people get “confused” is nonsense. No one decides to endure ridicule and medical treatment unless there’s something very intense inside of them pushing them to do it.
LikeLike
It is extremely rare in actuality, so why are they dedicating so much time to this? Why are they teaching it in schools? Why are so many kids participating in pronoun nonsense? I personally know several, yet it’s .006% of the population that has it? That’s our education system for you. If it is so rare, it should be filed in the APA for the experts only. Not for 1st graders, presented in a way to make them think it might be them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This paranoia is all right wing/Fox news nonsense. Exactly like the Don’t Say Gay bills. Teaching that there’s variety and that it’s okay to be different is something society should have embraced long ago. Yes, I would have loved to grow up knowing there was nothing wrong or less than in being LGBT, and yes I would have liked to know it early.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There may be an excess on the right wing, but to grow up knowing you’re ok is a bit different than letting children decide their entire future with unproven medicines and surgery at age 12 or 13.
One problem is the other comorbid factors that are married to the gender dysphoric, primarily narcissism. You can’t reasonably even object to their arguments or be a phobic bigot which is simply not true.
There is also the rights tendency to desire a level of purity and childhood beauty and innocence, at least for a time let kids be kids. In this I mostly agree. The problem is they reject anything sex ed, yet fail to teach their own kids anything about it at all except shame.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, the old motte and bailey tactic: because gender dysphoria is so rare, there cannot be an epidemic. Case closed. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Is it rare? Why, yes! According to out of date research, we can comfortably say that far less than 1% of people meet this criteria! See how rare this is? So any concern now, today, must obviously be hysterical, you see. That’s what ‘the science’ shows! And don’t I feel justified relying on ‘the science’ because it allows me to paint any critic as NOT following the science, as being hysterical, which I can then suggest must be biased or perhaps bigoted or, even worse, a TRANSPHOBE motivated by hate to try to bring about genocide! Why can’t we all just be kind?
There’s the motte.
Now, because gender dysphoria sweeps through some ELEMENTARY schools – where first the kids are primed to see the world of gender as a rainbow spectrum and then indoctrinated with activist demonstrations of their understanding about gender identity and how to respect it – and we have well documented cases where literary 20-40% of students SUDDENLY develop this ‘extremely rare’ condition and identify as ‘living in the wrong body’, this reality by the trans ‘ally’ can step forward and claim this must not be true. Show me a case. Well, that’s not REAL gender dysphoria, you see, so show me another. Same. And another. Same. And another. Same. You see? All of these cases aren’t ‘real’ gender dysphoria. Now here’s a case that is. Blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, back in reality, we have some percentage of these self identified gender dysphoric CHILDREN going on puberty blockers, going on testosterone, binding, beginning the process of transitioning without their parents knowing anything about this… because it’s organized by law, by school board policy, by Planned Parenthood, by gender clinics associated with local hospitals, school administrators and teachers and councillors and doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists who MUST use the Affirmation Only approach (or lose their professional credentials) to follow the child’s decision whether or not to inform the parents about ANY of this.
There’s the bailey.
CHILDREN are leading their own medical diagnosis and all the adults except many parents are lining up to help facilitate this… or suffer the consequences for questioning any of it. Because, after all, we’re only talking about an extremely rare condition, donchaknow, and who wants to be an active hater of some vulnerable and victimized minority?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jesus Christ – more of the same nonsense. The reason there is no epidemic, is the numbers don’t back up there being an epidemic. In total numbers of people who present as possibly having gender dysphoria the number is well within World Health Organisation estimates. The fact there’s a rise is the same reason there’s a rise in people admitting they’re gay, because it’s less dangerous now.
Please stop playing games. If you have numbers, studies and so forth, do present them. If it’s reddit and a blog somewhere or misrepresentations of quashed lawsuits then you will not convince me or any other educated person.
LikeLike
More motte and bailey, Pink. Way to double down!
Yup, tens if not hundreds of thousands of children’s lives being medicalized with irrefutable and life long health risks the CHILD deems acceptable and you call criticism of this this ‘playing games.’ Families being torn apart and you call this ‘playing games.’ People going public with their parental and professional experiences at home, in gender clinics, hospitals, counselling rooms, classrooms and courtrooms, nothing but ‘playing games’ apparently. Sages’ Law came about because of critics ‘playing games’. Detransitioners by the thousands telling us about all of this and, POOF!, all of it is ‘playing games.’
Yup, you know better because you don’t have the ‘right’ numbers offered to you on what you deem to be an admissible silver platter and, because of EVERYONE ELSE’S failings and imaginings you feel you’re not playing a game to claim there’s nothing to see here, nothing to be concerned about, nothing to criticize, because the numbers you do accept fall within WHO guidelines. All is well, you have decided. Well, aren’t you special.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sure. Hundreds of thousands of lives are being destroyed and not a single respectable media outlet worldwide has picked up the story. It’s just the brilliant people of an unverified Reddit forum who are “in the know”. All the evidence is being hidden by a mysterious lobby which makes fortunes on forcing children to become trans. Do you not see the ridiculousness of what you’re proposing? Doctors from across the world are colluding to hide numbers?
What you’re talking about is Q-Anon for anti-LGBT people.
LikeLike
Five words: Jamie Reed, Boston Children’s Hospital. You may now resume your denialism.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The problem is the gender experts claim to have sufficient data and that part is a lie. The phenomenon is so new there isn’t any except forums where people speak out.
LikeLike
That’s why I gave the summary link: poor to very poor data ‘supporting’ the whole transition process.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The DSM-5 estimates that about 0.005% to 0.014% of people assigned male at birth (that is, roughly one in 10,000) and 0.002% to 0.003% of people assigned female at birth (that is, two or three in every 100,000) are diagnosable with gender dysphoria.
If this is the case, why so much of this is going on in schools? Why are so many kids claiming it? Pschosymatic me too attention getting nonsense that forces us to play along by law.
LikeLike
Excellent, Jim! Now do the calculation. How many people with gender dysphoria are estimated in your state? In America? Then show me any evidence whatsoever that the figures are higher than that estimate.
LikeLike
The figures aren’t higher than the estimate. That is why teaching it in schools is bad when about 5% of kids now are claiming it.
LikeLike
Your number is false. There are not 5% of kids claiming it. Real numbers are this: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
LikeLike
I wasn’t talking about children seeking gender care, but about the epidemic use of pronouns
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pull yourself together, Jim. I promise a pronoun isn’t going to sneak up behind you and try to stab you.
LikeLike
But the administration at my school will.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Compelled speech is antithetical to free speech, which is why it’s actually illegal where one has such rights. But then, this explains why transactivists and their allies are fine with denying free speech to those who criticize their core gender beliefs. Gender ideology – like any other totalitarian beliefs – is antithetical to liberal democracy. That’s why it’s toxic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is compelled speech like having to say I’m gay instead of calling me a fag? Or saying black instead of the N word? How dare they compel speech!
LikeLike
If these were forced by law and/or binding policy, then yes. But they’re not and you that.
LikeLike
Actually they are in most of the developed world where both racism and homophobia are crimes.
LikeLike
Yes, this is the very criticism of hate speech laws, that these invert the illegality of compelled speech to describe what one CANNOT say. Welcome to the wonderful world of disingenuous word games used to erode free speech. Notice the correlation between the rise of post modernism and erosion of individual rights. This is not an accident. Critical Social Justice in all its Marxist forms is a never-ending revolution that does nothing but tear down and destroy in the name of being virtuous. And it all starts with language.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Umm… did you not notice any of the trend lines, Pink? They are all going… up. Huh. I wonder what that means? Or do you presume they suddenly level off? These numbers are deduced from medical diagnosis (children often start transitioning without any medical advice) and insurance coverage for surgeries. Funny how that trend is rising, too… and starting for children at the ripe old age of 13! Never too young, I guess. But hey, not a concern when one starts with a couple of faith-based beliefs like 1) gender is real and can be surgically altered, and 2) children really, really, really are born in the wrong body. Once you accept those two beliefs, the rest is pretty easy!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Previous estimates from 2020 compared to 2022 now doubled, 1 in 5 between 13 and 17, number of adults remains steady. What does this tell us? That it is an ever-growing cohort of CHILDREN (currently about 10% in blue states versus .5% in red states), not that this seems to matter to anyone except parents. And they are all bad if they don’t consent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t get the link to the data, as I said, I’m happy to go through it.
LikeLike
“Amelia, who now identifies as nonbinary, isn’t the only young person changing pronouns these days; across the country tweens and teens are embracing nongendered iterations of these familiar words”.
She said she doesn’t feel like a boy, and doesn’t feel Ike a girl. How on earth would anyone know what it feels like to be something?
Here’s the article. More and more are claiming this and it isn’t right that everyone should be forced to keep up with their fluidity. https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-parents-wellness/index.html
LikeLike
I think non-binary is fantastic. It’s people who reject the traditional stereotypes of being male or female. How in the world is that a problem?
LikeLike
It a problem when the state mandates what speech you MUST use. You must play along. For the first time in common law history. There are things you can’t say which is barely tolerable, now there are things you must say or suffer sensitivity training lest anyone be offended. If nobody can be offended, nothing will ever be solved. You certainly don’t mind risking offending me, and that’s good. It should be deep and thought provoking and we progress. Now the law states you must and quite frankly the best ideas are automatically out of the conversation because of “feelings”.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m for offending everyone. From dwarfs to lesbians to transgender people. As long as it’s done with style and respecting people’s identities. If you think a doctor is a cretin, call him Dr. Cretin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
With racism at least you can hate an entire group of people simply based —on the way they behave.
LikeLike
Because it’s not true in reality. One is either male or female. There is no third sex, Pink.
LikeLike
In regards to genitalia, yes but not as we see gender. Some people feel no connection to the set of exclusive characteristics societies have labelled male or female.
LikeLike
“Society” has labeled? It seems to me it’s nature that labels via the sex organs attached to the individual. The rest is head-stuff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sex is reproductive organs. Gender is what we traditionally connected to those roles.
LikeLike
No, not in regards to genitalia: in regard to every cell in every person’s body. You know… real.
The gender feelings bs is related to cultural expressions of MASCULINE and FEMININE. You know… stereotypes. Conflating the two has led to the current shit show of magical thinking that one can ‘identify’ out of reality. Oh, and some powerful chemicals and surgery to make these feelings of discomfort labeled ‘gender dysphoria’ seem ‘real’. Look at the scars!
LikeLiked by 1 person
What I’ve always told religious people is, if you’re not LGBT, great. Do your own thing and stop trying to interfere with people who are. Mind your own business. Respect the right of individuals and their parents. Live your own life. We don’t need your help.
LikeLike
Right. Again, we’re in agreement. If you’re an adult and want to do whatever to your body, fine. I have zero problem with any of that. As I said, that kind of stuff is a medical issue between patient and doctor.
What I DO have an issue with is the indoctrination of kids with this acidic ideology about gender, the incredible zeal at which transitioning of children has become SOP at the legal, institutional, AND professional level. I have an issue with how critics of children diagnosing themselves using gender identity as a guide and gaining nothing but affirmation when expressed, as well as ease of obtaining very serious pharmaceuticals with significant health risks, are held to be bigots – like parents who dare not believe causing lifelong medicalization of their CHILDREN should be the first recourse for what is usually accompanied by a veritable smorgasbord of other psychological conditions. I have an issue with anything that opens such a seductive door to vulnerable children seeking relief from bodily discomfort and then empowers them to direct their own ‘care’ without any possibility of doing so with reasonable informed consent.
This aspect of consent from children at Tanner Stage Two is a complete and utter shit show of experimental, trauma-inducing, harmful ideology run amok… while concerned people are stripped of any meaningful way of countering it other than with ‘anecdotal’ reporting and political pushback using the issue as a springboard to power.
I also have an issue with the extent and scope of staggering laziness of those who think this is a good idea. It’s a terrible idea. I am amazed at the those who know a little and then deep dive into gullibility and moral cowardice if not ethical cravenness defending what in any other venue would be an atrocity now being carried out against children. (Imagine schools and medical professions all going along with ‘affirming’, say, an anorexia patient and having the law support this when a parent says, “Now just hold on a goddamned second here,” and being vilified as a Terrible Person for stepping up and challenging what is OBVIOSLY harmful to the child.)
I think this period will come back to be a stellar example of just how stupid and foolish and destructive so many well meaning people can be when duped by the same kind of virtuous belief like any other religious belief that accepts reality-denying claims. I think people SHOULD be embarrassed they could go along to get along and allow so many thousands of children to pay that price. I think it’s obvious just how screwed up people have to be to go along with the blatant lie that transwomen are women when this is biologically counterfactual. I think belief in gender identity – like belief in a person’s soul – is a handy fiction for ideologues, that only in the most extraordinary and rare case can one go along with the absurd fiction of being born in the wrong body… not because it’s true but because it is so strongly lived that disruption of the fiction might cause even greater harm. I think addressing this fiction as if true with affirmation and easily accessible medicalization and surgeries is equivalent to a crime but because it is often carried out on children by children I think it is obvious that simply cannot know enough about their own potential development a priori to hold informed consent. I think this ideology is a house of cards that will cause much more harm before it all comes crashing back to facing reality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I believe every individual has the right to autonomy. Physical, sexual, mental, medical and so forth. And people are free to apply their beliefs to their own lives and bodies. Before they reach adulthood the law stipulates these decisions are made with parents and doctors. I have full trust in that system. The case of trans people is complex and it’s a process of discovery and understanding. One which is for them to experience without third parties creating any sort of hostile environment. If you’re interested in verifiable sources, the Investigative branch of Reuters has published quite a bit of thoughtful insights on the issue: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Canadians are kinda screwed because discrimination is legal in Canada. At least in the US they pretend.
https://lawrencekrauss.substack.com/p/guest-post-a-commentary-on-equal
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think that doesn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things. It certainly doesn’t mean Canada is ruined or society is broken because there are some pro-active programs helping disadvantaged classes of people.
LikeLike
All you wanted was one case on the other topic and that would’ve made a difference? Here I present 1 case and you downplay it as insignificant.
Maybe it would matter when it’s 2, or 3? The problem is reversing it when a precedence is set. This is Jim Crow and “white people can’t be discriminated against, unless they are gay, of course.
LikeLike
LOL 🙂 Are you serious? One case proves something exists, which in the case of a crime for example, is unacceptable, so one case is enough to condemn it. In the case of something of less gravity, then we look for a pattern to decide if it’s substantive (toxins in food, dangerous side effects) or infrequent enough that it’s unimportant.
In the case you linked to, Jim Crow would be if he was barred from all similar courses. If it’s just one that focuses on minorities and he can access others without the same conditions then his chances aren’t really hurt.
LikeLike
Just wanted to mention the detransition rate – often portrayed as miniscule -seems to be somewhere between 10-30%. (Source) This rate of detransitioning makes no sense if gender dysphoria were indeed a biological condition. If GD were actually a psychological condition related to normal development (which has better evidence from reality to support it considering about 3 out of every 4 youths questioning their ‘gender identity’ find gender-body congruence without any medicalization following the teenage years), then medicalizing the ‘treatment’ to address body-gender incongruity through blockers, hormones, and surgeries is, at the very least, medically preemptive if not ethically suspect.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A 70% success rate for a treatment is higher than, for example, the success rate of anti-depressants (60%). So that number doesn’t determine what you’re implying it determines. And again, this is a matter for doctors and their patients.
LikeLike
What you call a ‘success rate’ with all the medicalized interventions that have well established permanent health risks is actually LOWER than doing nothing! That’s a very strange way of justifying a ‘success rate’!
LikeLiked by 1 person
What does it take for you to understand that an individual is free to choose whatever medical procedures they want? There are risks to most treatments. HRT for menopausal women increases cancer risk. Breast augmentations have all sorts of risks but remain one of the most popular plastic surgeries. Hair loss medication can cause impotence. If detransitioning only occurs in 10 to 30% of patients, that means successful outcomes in 70 to 90%. Other people’s medical risks are 100% not your concern.
LikeLiked by 1 person
To be clear, when you say, “other people,” I am referring specifically to CHILDREN.
This matters very much.
When you talk about this as a “medical issue between doctor and patient”, I am referring to when this issue is about CHILDREN who do NOT have informed consent or necessary understanding of life long risks and disfigurement and sterility but who are able to demand and receive a single medicalized treatment program from a veritable host of social institutions and professions who MUST comply by law and policies.
This matters very much.
You insist I misunderstand that, “an individual is free to choose,” by utterly ignoring the fact we’re talking about CHILDREN who, in every other area of life are NOT free to choose BECAUSE they have yet to be franchised adults and so they do not – except in this single case – possess informed consent.
By all means, and as I’ve said repeatedly, adults can do whatever they like in this matter. I don’t care because I DO understand that in a liberal democracy ADULTS are individuals free to choose such stuff. But not CHILDREN.
And I also understand you are determined to ignore reason itself (‘success rate’ for aligning gender with biology is greater if nothing is done) if it digresses from maintaining your faith-based belief that anyone – including children – should undergo life long medicalization with known and vastly higher rates of risk in a bunch of categories including suicide if they so choose AS CHILDREN rather than be children who simply live through the discomfort (it used to be much easier and more supportive when talk therapy and ‘watchful waiting’ was the medical standard treatment) and reach adulthood before making any such drastic and irrevocable decisions for which they can be responsible.
You ignore what’s true in favour of believing what you want to be true. That’s a huge red flag you are waving away.
Back in the day, you’d see this in a religious person quite easily but now seem truly oblivious to your own proclivity to do exactly the same if it supports your gender identity beliefs. That’s another huge red flag. That’s why I keep calling every critical theory version – in this case gender ideology – ‘religious’. You not only exhibit the same kind of allegiance to the ideology as any faithful believer does with religious allegiance but you also use the same apologetic reality tactics to serve your beliefs rather than what’s true! That’s yet a third red flag. Someday I hope you’ll see all this and wonder what could have gone so badly wrong in your thinking to get to this place.
LikeLike
Who are you trying to fool? You’re not talking about children at all. You talk of “gender ideology” as applied to adults. You say medical advice should be disregarded for adults. “Children” are your cover story, the same way they were for the Christian right anti-gay campaigns.
LikeLike
They teach in in grade school Pink
LikeLike
They teach variety in grade school? Kinsey? That we’re not all CIS gendered anglo saxon protestants?
LikeLike
Every major paper has articles on it pink. You can downplay it all you want, but it’s not the public schools to confuse children with graduate level theory.
LikeLike
So major papers are being taught in grade school? Which ones?
LikeLike
La times new york times New York post Seattle times…, even the LA unified school district and Seattle school district have their own publications outlying the curriculum grade 4 and 5. This isn’t secret. You have the internet if France, or should I mail you hard copies?
LikeLike
There’s the language game being played, as if there really is a group called ‘cis’. It always starts with obfuscating the language and then inverting the meaning. Pink seems content to indoctrinate children with lies, as if that’s a good thing. Given enough words, he’ll pretend this is reasonable, rational, moral, and kind.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not the one playing word games and obfuscating, you are with your bait and switch. Using children in exactly the same way Anita Bryant did to fear monger against gay people. Children are the responsibility of their parents and they together with doctors are the only ones who can and should decide on appropriate medical treatments. Evidently you feel you should be able to dictate far and wide how people should lead their lives, but I can assure you that your ideology is factually incorrect. No one needs your permission or approval.
LikeLike
Two things:
First, you keep on stating as if true that, “Children are the responsibility of their parents and they together with doctors are the only ones who can and should decide on appropriate medical treatments.”
You are wrong. Factually wrong. Many children can and do start sex-change therapies without ANY parental involvement or knowledge. This is aided and abetted by schools, counsellors, Planned Parenthood, online sales, and in many places not only professional policy for medical practitioners but by legislation. This issue has been raised here repeatedly and you can verify this yourself if you so choose.
Secondly, you are trying to make this very concerning issue of medicalizing CHILDREN for life without reasonable guardrails at every step as some kind of covert bigotry or hatred. You are wrong. Factually wrong. I have zero bigotry for any individual who decides a sex change is right for him or her. But I do have an issue with ANYONE who thinks allowing children to decide this kind of never-ending treatment and disfigurement and sterility is a net good or is morally right or ethically proper is wrong in both principle and practice in every conceivable way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So what prompted me to write this post; my best friends son is in the process of transitioning. Two years ago he privately went to see a counselor specializing in this field. All the time thinking he was going to a regular therapist, while keeping his feelings secret from family. Of course the counselor who specializes in this field affirmed his feelings and never explored other options of self acceptance, time, age (she’s 21) or any alternate outlooks. She now has made it public to friends and family. My heart goes out to her and I hope this brings her peace of mind, but it will be an entirely different set of ongoing medication and medical problems. Wishing there was a more amicable outcome but now the course is set. S/he is staying with her girlfriend of 3-4 years and they are a tight couple for now. He is basically a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, but she says no, not a lesbian, but I can’t recall the term.
I am hopeful for her and time will tell if this is actually a solution for the problem. Changing physically what is perceived a mental situation seems at least should be addressed in a variety of ways but it is not. There are no experts in this field, only facilitators.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ps. This seems to be the only field of psychology where the patient gets to diagnose the illness and arrange his own treatment.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There were experts in sexual dysphoria but they have long since been dismissed, their research boxed up, and their status as bigots cemented. As an assigned member of a Board appointed facilitator team, I was in communication with Dr Ken Zucker – now ‘cancelled’, his research ignored, his clinic defunded, and his team disbanded for other professions entirely – in preparation for my school receiving a transition child back in late 90s. This guidance was invaluable.Prior to this student’s enrollment, there were heightened concerns especially inside and outside the classroom and school considering the rural and deeply conservative nature of the wider community. As I’ve said elsewhere, everything went so well that no one cared about the transitioned status of this additional student who went on to graduate with everyone else. Now with transactivists leading the charge, it’s all ideological and partisan and, to be blunt, fascist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely, it’s an international conspiracy in which doctors worldwide are colluding to suppress evidence. Perhaps when Trump is reinstated with JFK Jr. as his VP, then they’ll release the records.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think their is such a rush to please everyone and fix everything they don’t really consider the collateral damage. Sometimes things are just shitty for people. We should treat them kindly and with respect, but not everything is fixable, simply to solve a mental anguish that quite frankly, lacks sufficient data and lacks a net gain in risk reward. There is a lot of money to be made and as you know, that drives a lot of foreplay into action without thinking critically. Just because you care doesn’t mean you should do something about it.
LikeLike
There is a lot of money to be made — The mantra of the greedy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are no experts in this field, only facilitators. IMO, can’t be said often enough.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a lie, pure and simple. You’ve been ranting about gender ideology, pronoun use and even trying to control the use of the word cis. The Reuters investigation shows exceedingly small numbers of medical transitioning of teens. That’s the end of the story until you have more than Reddit and a blog to offer up as evidence.
LikeLike
Reuters is using insurance claims for both surgeries and covered hormone therapies to drive its numbers. All of these are steeply increasing, in fact doubling, over less than a two year spread. You seem oblivious to these trends. I’m not. These numbers fail to capture the vast difference between both urban and rural differences of GEOGRAPHY (just like religious belief is more relevant to geography than the reality of its claims… funny that) as well as the hotspots of exploding numbers in some locales. In addition, these numbers do not capture the extent of blockers or hormones or binding if not approved by insurance. With over a third of all American’s uninsured, surely you realize these numbers are very much on the conservative side.
But even in this case, the current rate is about 1000 times greater than the stable rate that sought medical intervention prior to the 2000s. (1 per hundred thousand for natal females, about 3 per hundred thousand for natal males) Prior to the 90s and for half a century, almost all those seeking sex change interventions were males. And prior to today’s rush to transition, nearly all cases exhibited significant evidence prior to age 7. None of this is still the case. This massive expansion of a ‘medical condition’ is an entirely new phenomena in human history. To facilitate this ‘revolution’ of children entering puberty before ‘realizing’ they have been ‘assigned’ the wrong gender from being born ‘in the wrong body’, western countries have been falling all over ourselves to facilitate sex change therapies. To aid in this rush, activists trained in critical theory have attacked our language to try to dissolve boundaries and are now attempting reasonable people to go along with all of this idiocy by using words to deny reality. I won’t play along with all of these lies. I will stick with the common language. You can talk gibberish all you want using the recommended gender terminology that you believe makes things real (like insisting we really do have a’soul’ and that it really is the conduit between the body and a divine element) but it’s all being part of the drugged crowd gazing upon the magnificence of the Emperor’s new cloths. No thanks. Reality is enough for me. And in reality many children are being harmed by participating in gender ideology believing it to be true when, in fact, all of the core tenets are false.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Are you being intentionally obtuse? Even if the Reuters numbers are doubled they’re within reasonable estimates of % of the population with GD. And again your comment goes on to attack the very decision to take this route of treatment, which I repeat, is not your concern. Mind your own business.
LikeLike
Reasonable estimates based on what?
All the trend lines are steeply inclined, Pink.
As I pointed out, the estimates prior to the 2000s were thrown out and now completely disregarded. Why 5% in, say, Portland and.5% in, say, Oklahoma? Sure, that will come in as averaged 2.5% (assuming proportionate numbers of claims) when in fact there’s a high likelihood that the numbers from Oklahoma might be way too low in reality. And this likelihood is made clear when a quarter of a elementary grade girls when introduced to the first transgendered child suddenly become transgendered, too… in a matter of weeks. Mention Rapid Onset as a social contagion and watch the claims of bigotry fly! Quick: choose a cool male name and get those blockers today. Don’t forget to visit the counsellor’s office and get help to pre-order your T now! No one at school will mention ANYTHING to your parents because when it comes to sex change medicalization (gender affirming care, my ass), the child is in charge.
What percentage of children, I wonder, undergoing sex change medicalization will make your brow furrow ever so slightly that maybe something is amiss here: 5%? 10%? 50% You tell me what the ‘reasonable’ percentage is, Pink. I’m curious if you have a number in mind.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tildeb may be a little hard headed while you are too trusting and maybe reading in a little too much hope from a personal perspective. Not everything can be fixed. If you had a son or daughter I think you’d be more cautious under any circumstance.
I know how difficult this is. His mother bawled like a baby knowing what was about to happen. My buddy has been very supportive but privately thinks there has to be a better solution. I agree.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not optimistic, I’m a pragmatist. The world is highly imperfect. The mind is highly complex. Trans people have an incredibly difficult existence, so anything that can be done to ease that under medical supervision can be a good thing. I do trust doctors as I’m from a family of doctors. All dedicated people who spend their lives studying to achieve positive outcomes. Not for the money. What most doctors endure is extreme so I don’t believe for a second they’re out there causing harm without any sense of ethics.
LikeLike
Minding my own business versus a state sanctioned indoctrination program when it comes to the health and welfare of children sent to me to be ‘educated’? My dear chap, that is EXACTLY my business. So no. Sorry. I won’t shut up. And every supporter of any critical theory version like gender ideology is interfering with that education and on purpose and to effect.
Why does it matter more of us stand up for what’s true and insist we have the right to do so? Gee, I don’t know… maybe it’s because we’re having this ideology forced down our collective throats by the very worst elements of our political ‘allies’ but told to ‘be kind’ and let these poor downtrodden victims just go about THEIR business… which is… well, Andrew Doyle says it far better than I here.
LikeLike
Dr Erica Anderson – hardly a transphobe being transitioned, a clinic psychologist, and someone who has treated hundreds of patients and past president of USPATH and former board member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) – seems to be a ‘conspiracy’ believer like I am when it comes to criticizing today’s going-along-to-get-along unrestrained medicalizing practices on children remind us that:
“A full systematic review by the Swedish health authority, for example, concluded that the evidence for medicines like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for youth is currently weak, and that the risks currently outweigh the benefits. Sweden’s health authority has updated their recommendations to severely curtail the use of puberty blockers for those under 18, pending further systematic study. They did not do this because they are transphobic: they did it because they are responsible.”
What a liar, eh?
LikeLike
That’s fantastic! A medical association making medical decisions based on their interpretation of the best available evidence. Evidence which changes over time as different treatments are researched and assessed. Your arguments are flimsy, at best. Swedish regulations are very similar to those in the rest of Europe -which in and of itself disproves the idea of some sort on conspiracy to force children into being transgender. You’re not even thinking clearly as you write because you seem so emotionally involved. Your theory the Reuters number are off because many in the US don’t have insurance is laughable. You mean these people who can’t even afford basic insurance are, in droves, getting easily accessible unregulated medical treatments for free? Free surgeries too? All with no parental supervision? And this is happening in America and no one approached the Murdoch media? Laughable.
LikeLike
“A medical association making medical decisions based on their interpretation of the best available evidence.”
That’s what is NOT happening in the US or Canada or Australia or New Zealand. Each country – advised by their national health organizations – refuse to do what Sweden, Denmark, and England did: a comprehensive review of the evidence. This comprehensive review is what Anderson is trying to get so that sex change by adults can return to being strictly between doctors and their patients who have informed consent. So transphobic, I know. By refusing to a systemic review, all of these countries are assuming that affirmation only is ethical. It’s not… especially when it is allowed to permit children to diagnose themselves and all the adults have to go along or face various punishments. I know you seem good with this model because you play the motte and bailey game by addressing this issue with countries that have already done systemic reviews, found the evidence of ‘success’ you like to pretend exists very poor or contraindicated FOR CHILDREN, and suggest the two are equivalent when they so obviously are not. And yes, even Anderson points this out as a problem:
“As recently as two years ago, many journalists admitted to me that they were afraid to cover transgender healthcare at all, let alone weigh in on the substance and particulars of the issues. In America it would seem that one is cast as either pro-trans or transphobic.”
Sound familiar, Pink?
“…a minority of overzealous practitioners in the United States have blurred activism with responsible professional conduct. Youth presenting at gender clinics represent a heterogeneous population of young people, but many parents have told me directly about their experience of providers who eschew the standard of practice requiring an individualized comprehensive biopsychosocial evaluation prior to initiating the deployment of medicines with minors. Such an evaluation, as described by the WPATH Standards of Care, entails multiple interviews over time assembling a clinical picture of the child’s development, family dynamics, history of psychiatric issues, autism spectrum disorder, and trauma. I’ve called such abdication “sloppy,” and for this I have been criticized. But the fact remains some medical providers have launched into a discussion with minors about puberty blockers or hormones from the very first interaction, obliterating any distinction between gender questioning/incongruent and gender dysphoric youth.”
Ya think? How do we know?
“Many school districts have instructed staff to hide the social transition from parents if the child requests it. This is another example of activism which may have started out with good intentions, namely creating safe places for kids, but which has gone too far. By condoning deception as a tactic, some districts operate as though teachers, not parents, are responsible for the upbringing of children. Changing names and pronouns at school is a simple step, but the gender journeys of many of today’s youth are highly complex, and parents need to be involved. Unless there is evidence of abuse at home, teachers should not engage in deception.
And so, surprise, surprise, not offering affirmation only is changed by activists to mean ‘abuse’. No, of course, it’s a coincidence all the language used in legislation and school policy seems to be close to identical in this. Amazing, really.
LikeLike
Until this moment, Tildeb, “I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness.” These young people who go to these clinics trying to improve their lives are doing the best they can with what medicine can offer at the moment. It is not your place to make judgements for them, or their parents, or their doctors. It is not for you to decide their ideology, nor in religion nor in anything else. It takes a profound sense of supremacy to believe other people should replace their own judgement for your own and that is something you are guilty of time and again. Now to a point that is becoming disturbing. The journeys people go on are their own. They need not your assistance, nor your permission, nor your acceptance. What you should accept is your place in the world is not one which is allowed to determine other people’s actions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pink, I think you have a point … but tildeb is a crusader, which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for him to just throw up his hands and walk away.
LikeLike
Crusading which tramples on other people is never a good idea. I think we should all presume that our fellow man (and woman) are doing our best. Kids, teens, doctors, activists, most of us. I always begin with that premise.
LikeLike
In the same way I am a ‘crusader’ against privileging religion in the public domain, so too am I a ‘crusader’ against all critical theory privileged in the public domain. In the same way I’m critical of the harm caused by believing in religious fictions and acting on these, so too am I critical of the harm caused by believing in gender fictions and acting on these. The same is true for the fiction of anti-racism and queer theory. All of these post modern fictions attack what’s true first by manipulating emotional language – to condemn its critics not with facts but with appeals to emotion as you’ve demonstrated here – and then either ignoring or rejecting any evidence that is contrary to the belief. You still haven’t told us, for example, what percentage of children being medicalized for life in the name of aligning gender with body goes beyond your notion of what is an ‘acceptable’ rate. But because gender is a fiction, I suspect that any rate is fine. I think this is grossly irresponsible.
Sure, believers honestly think it’s cruel and reckless to criticize them for supporting fictions in spite of known harm because it disturbs the comfort of believers who facilitate ongoing harm in the name of nice words they attach to their beliefs. You’re not doing anything that any other fervent religious believer hasn’t done before you. You aren’t using any new apologetic tactics and your personal attacks against the moral character of critics such as I am – cruel and reckless when they refer to contrary facts and compelling evidence from reality – is absolutely boilerplate typical. It does disappoint me that you have fallen into this warm and fuzzy trap and don’t recognize that how you are thinking about this issue leads you to aid and abet the believers and the fiction they are selling.
I remain dedicated to the principle of respecting what’s true in reality as arbitrated by reality. Gender ideology is incoherent and highly destructive. You think this criticism is a vice, a moral failing, an ethical capitulation… when it comes to ‘respecting’ YOUR fiction about gender affirming care, otherwise known as sex change therapies. Well, too bad, Pink. You are badly in error here. As long as this indoctrination of children and public privilege of implementing this ideology in action continues, I will continue to criticize and point out the lies and deceits and harm caused. If that makes me a ‘crusader, then so be it. I don’t care. Children, I think, deserve protection by responsible adults from irresponsible reality-denying believers of all faiths even when it’s privileged by public policy… regardless of how nice the new language might seem to those who do not understand the level of malignancy and harm behind it.
LikeLike
You can lie to yourself as much as you like. What’s clear is you want bans and prohibitions. That is the language of authoritarianism. Teaching more, questioning more, exploring more perspectives has made the world a better place. There are absolutely brilliant aspects of Queer theory, CRT and new perspectives on gender. Much of it entirely verifiable. Unquestionably verifiable. So you can put away your bait and switch saying it’s about protecting children but then attacking things that regard adults as well. Talk about using emotional language? Nothing like the defenders of the children from the Jews, the Gays and now the Trans.
LikeLike
Amen.
You forgot to add that”Amen.” All fixed now.
LikeLike
Anyone who thinks there’s something religious about Queer Theory or CRT has never opened a proper book on either of those topics. You should read Toni Morrison or Angela Davis. They could teach you a thing or two about bias.
LikeLike
To return the favour, may I suggest you read John McWhorter’s Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America.
You keep believing your belief is true, that all of this about gender ideology is somehow a bias of mine, that I am the problem, that my character is lacking, that I don’t understand, that I am cruel, that I am the crusader, yada, yada, yada. No, Pink: I simply demand that my beliefs about reality should be informed by compelling evidence from reality. When it comes to gender ideology and how it is being indoctrinated into children, how so many people then believe it as if true, and those in position of care and authority who then act on it as if true, and those who insist it should be imposed on others as if true, I find it’s not true. It’s a belief that is not supported by compelling evidence from reality.
Compounding this are a couple of factors: there’s a growing body of evidence – scant as it is because of legitimate fear and vilification for daring to question the orthodoxy by potential researchers – that a majority of detransitioners willing to speak – and pointing out their fear and vilification from previous ‘allies’ – indicate their discomfort during puberty wasn’t around gender whatsoever; it was around their discomfort at having same sex attraction… not that you as as gay man might be in the least concerned with this revelation because it interferes with your belief that I am somehow motivated to hate on homosexuality by using children. This disconnect from what I think is legitimate concern and your beliefs about it is all about me is so bizarre that it defies reason.
I have spoken about trans ideology imposed on others is a different problem than simply adults choosing to undergo whatever medicalized procedures they want. An ideology that displaces real people from earning a place with someone who merely feels they should have that place by fiat and calling this a ‘right’ (be it a rape center, a prison, sex-based sport, change room, whatever) is not benevolent. Pushing back is not ‘cruel’; it is necessary to address such bullying and fascist tactics as is more and more commonly used by transactivists and their dimwitted supporters (perhaps you have failed to be exposed to Revenge Day for the trans ‘community’ coming up). So yeah, there is a concern in reality about how ideologues who support the imposition and privileging of transgendered ideologues willing to met out violence and intimidation to support it. That you don;t share that concern is hardly surprising when you refuse to admit there is any problem at all except for the bias and bigotry of those who dare to push back even in words. You’ve misplaced reality in your haste to condemn critics.
LikeLike
“It is not for you to decide their ideology, nor in religion nor in anything else.”
Then why do you support their activism teaching young children against so many parents will?
LikeLike
Because teaching diversity is good. Indoctrination is when people are not free to access more than one point of view, like when books are banned. A school teaching about the history of slavery, the abuses of native peoples by colonists or the complexity of gender — isn’t indoctrination, it’s education. Students are free to discuss, to argue, to go home and research and so forth.
LikeLike
You’re inconsistent. I thought you were for parental rights? And btw, anyone who insists what they have to teach and demand the platform which I have seen here multiple times, is an activist, not an educator. Sorry your off on this one. You’re not in favor of variety because you are demonstrating that here in your disagreement with Tildeb. You should just be happy he’s provided addition “education “.
LikeLike
Parental rights in preventing education? No, in no instance. I’m for parental rights for informed medical decisions.
LikeLike
Parental rights in deciding what their childrens education is. Math, reading, language arts? Remember, those old fashioned things? It interesting you have agendist in your moniker—assuring parental rights are secondary to the importance of your own beliefs?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think education, like the legal system, needs to be independent and robust. First and foremost should be the ability to think critically. As we know from the Monkey Trials ideologues are the ones who want less and not more education.
And yes, agendist is intentionally sarcastic because there was never a gay lobby out to convert children.
LikeLike
If only that were true regarding gender ideology you point wouldn’t be a non sequitur.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think you don’t understand what a non-sequitur is. And seriously, you should read books about things rather than making up your mind based on other people’s “reviews”. Read Foucault, read Judith Butler, read Gloria Steinem, of course Simone de Beauvoir — all people who write beautifully about gender, sexuality and its role in society. While your opinions aren’t based on first hand analysis, you really are not in a position to make a judgement at all.
LikeLike
There you go believing in your beliefs again rather than checking in with reality. I’m worried about you, Pink.
LikeLike
At least wait until I use Reddit and third party sources as my references before you worry. Until then I remain someone with a doctorate, with a +20 year reputation of authenticating art and an unblemished record. Not someone who gets confused interpreting statistics.
LikeLike
Because you didn’t even notice why the Reuter’s site was using those very numbers to justify the expression of legitimate ‘alarm’ at the trend lines yet used the site as if to support that the number of kids was somehow ‘acceptable’ and not worth the so called hysteria erupting around this medicalization of so many thousands of children, perhaps you can apply your considerable academic mind to answering my repeated request to tell us what rate of children transitioning YOU deem worthy of concern actually is. I suspect you have no rate in mind but merely wish to support everything about gender ideology in particular and critical theory generally.
I haven’t encountered any statistical constraints from you yet… you know, as someone who can understand statistics so well. Doubling the rate in the past two years causes YOU no worry, obviously, and neither does the complete reversal of historical rates tweak your concern. The significant percentage of detransitioning doesn’t bother YOU nor does the rate of young gays and lesbians who attempted transition as children to account for their discomfort but came to the realization that they were same sex attracted when they became adults. Because absolutely nothing about any rate or practice or law or policy or indoctrination or legislation from any of this seems to concern you whatsoever – except criticizing anyone who questions the medicalizing for life of children because they decide significant health risks and guaranteed sterility is the way to go (regardless of what any family member or parent might raise about these risks and disfigurement and harm accrued), I just think it would be ever so enlightening if you could help us know what rates – if any – would concern you… just so we know where you and your considerably educated mind are coming from.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re free to make a fool of yourself in public, yet again. The Reuters numbers are considered the best available evidence by educated people because we can presume that uninsured treatment is dramatically less than insured treatment — as that is the case for everything across the board. But do carry on with your QAnon.
LikeLike
Good evidence is scant but yes, the Reuters numbers are as good as we get right now BECAUSE there is yet to be any comprehensive review like done in England, Sweden and Norway. That being said, the Reuters study was done to find out if alarm was warranted. The trend line these numbers point to IS the alarm you are ignoring. Completely ignoring.
So sure, double down on calling me whatever names tickles your fancy, Pink, and pretend I’m stupid. Fine. But at least read for comprehension if that isn’t too much trouble even if the reasons outlined – be it the Reuters numbers of my comments pointing out evidence from reality – disturb your a priori faith-based gender beliefs.
LikeLike
Furthermore, I wouldn’t attempt to set limits on how much birth control women should use, or on a number of abortions. Medical care is an issue between patients and doctors. Not for political point scoring. It shoul0be held to ransom by third parties who don’t experience and live with those decisions. Your behaviour throughout this debate is nothing less than a despicable trampling on the rights of others.
LikeLike
Yes yes yes, Pink, I get it. You think I’m a despicable human being for criticizing one of your cherished beliefs. But surely there must come a point when the medicalization of children based on their feelings of bodily discomfort needs to be of concern. Why won’t you tell us what this rate might be in your mind? Surely you can summon that much courage to be honest.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes they do, Jim… and that’s called indoctrination. Just like religious folk who don’t mind if their batshit crazy religion is taught in schools to vulnerable kids as if reasonable and rational and moral and kind, so do gender ideologues not mind if their batshit ideology is taught in schools to vulnerable kids as if reasonable and rational and moral and kind. But both are longitudinal attempts to indoctrinate our youth and calling it ‘good’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think the ideology is batshit crazy because 1) it’s incoherent, 2) it core tenets rely on faith, and 3) it denies reality. So yeah, I have problem basing policies and laws that displace rational people on this muddled idiocy. However…
I think adults can do what they like to their own bodies. Not children aided and abetted by ideologues. Adults. Not my thing but hey…
I will always draw a line when the swinging fist of someone believing in gender identity connects with the nose of someone not suffering from this delusion but is then forced to endure its inevitable negative consequences. That’s just wrong. No rational person should think gender ideology, based on a belief that people can be ‘born in the wrong body’ and corrected either by uttering magic words of identity or by medical means to present as people miraculously becoming a sex in reality other than what resides in every cell in their body, is a net good. I think that belief – like the belief at the center of critical theory in all its forms – is a lie. And I do not think any lasting good comes from believing in a lie but needs to be exposed for the lie it is.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And of course combinations between these two binary categories. But that’s intersexed and not a third sex. Pretending there is a third sex is just magical thinking.
LikeLike
IMO, the susceptibility of children is on full display with this issue.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This points out why demanding case information by you is very difficult… as I already pointed out but ignored by you.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Agreed
LikeLike
And you’d be right if Canada were the only country in the world. But if this is happening everywhere and often, wouldn’t Fox news be starting every program with it?
LikeLike
Goodnight, Jim.
LikeLike
I know in Toronto the police are held to this racist framing, as if one must shoot the correct number of people according to race or be considered racist. (How did that work out for the police in Rotherham?) What’s not expressed is the number of shootings based on police interactions and kinds of calls. I wonder why? The ‘black’ population, although relatively small in Toronto, is very active in both high rates of domestic violence and the highest rates of both gang and gun violence… exactly the kind of calls police receive far in excess per population than whites. But you never hear about this vast difference when the numbers are the other way around and certain ‘racial profiles’ or ethnicities are over-represented in violent criminal activity. Because there are few equivalent ‘white’ street gangs, these raw numbers get skewed to assign ‘race’ other than white when it comes to enforcement as if the cause and not the high rates caused buy members of this community. Then the disparity is revealed as if this ‘proves’ racism. It’s a mug’s game. And people are so uncritical that they don’t realize how they are being played by one-sided racists while legacy media usually plays right along with the charade because it fits a narrative of ‘systemic racism’. That is… until one goes into communities of high violence and begins to appreciate just how vital police are to the safety of the very community they are being damned for enforcing the law.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t think anyone feels comfortable during a traffic stop. If non-whites live in fear, then it’s because they’ve been mislead into thinking every police encounter ia racially motivated.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not quite. You, me, all of us — are part of categories. Some related to education, income, life span and yes, race. That last one playing a major role in the others. Your worker bee ancestors got to keep and invest their earnings; Black families didn’t have that choice.
LikeLike
I think you’ve misread my status. My family came from the Deep South and extreme poverty and corruption. Both my mothers fathers (real and step fathers) were murdered. My father and mother left me absolutely nothing but a high demand, guilt ridden religion and white skin.
LikeLike
And you believe race status in your country is based on a single case like yours or on established patterns that affect people more generally?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would more or less agree with Thomas Sowell on this point.
LikeLike
Seriously? I don’t see the world through what seems to me to be a manufactured lens of liberals vs. conservatives. That’s something designed to create and foment division which translates to clicks and ratings.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Because you don’t see the world that way doesn’t prohibit you from understanding it. It’s actually true, and putting emotions and feelings aside, black Americans today are near about celebrity status. The world is wide open to be whatever you want to be, yet certain segments cling to the welfare state and the reparations that have essentially crippled that segment of the population.
LikeLike
Btw, Thomas Sowell is black and green up in the ghetto. It was the catalyst for his research later in life where he discovered this correlation.
LikeLike
To be honest I’m incredibly surprised by this direction you’re exploring. It seems to me both profoundly unenlightened and ungenerous. To the point where logical, as in mathematical, errors are inevitable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are certainly free to disagree as I have not formed any rigid opinions, I learn from everybody. What troubles me are the contradictions. On one hand they want to say sex is not a gender while simultaneously wanting to change sex to become another gender. I think there is a better way to help people accept who and what they are without labels of any kind.
LikeLike
You mean you don’t label yourself? I self identify when I go into a bathroom. I self identify when I raise my eyebrow and don’t feel the need to open my shopping bag at the checkout presuming the cashier respects my assertion I do not steal. I self identify when I presume someone speaks my language, understands my signals, all of it.
LikeLike
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
LikeLike
It’s a reflection of a couple of things: how race is not an adequate causal factor or descriptor for inequity comparisons when evidence from reality shows this not to be the case, and how other closer-to-home factors – unpleasant as they may be to hear – might play a significantly greater role than the claim rammed down our collective throats about ‘systemic’ and ‘colonial’ inheritances.
Also, believing such claims that Sowell criticizes with compelling contrary evidence has the tendency of moving the locus of control beyond the individual able and capable of adjusting to forces that perpetuate the notion of unbreakable victimhood and casts the individual as helpless. Learned helplessness is not conducive to any positive outcomes or healthy development that I am aware of. Yet that is EXACTLY what is being taught under the guise of ‘anti-racism’: perpetual victimhood. Sowell is well worth reading.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I disagree with Sowell because what he describes isn’t in fact a race based American experience. It’s a universal experience based on hierarchy. In Spain we had barely any blacks at all and yet the entire black “experience” could be attributed to Gypsies. That points to systemic rather than genetic factors.
LikeLike
If the supposed oppression was based on the color of their skin, why are there white people living in the same circumstances, displaying the same culture, that are also in that same situation?
LikeLike
LOL! Is that like the anti-evolution people ask why are there still monkeys if there are humans?
LikeLike
So you tell me, why is there economic disparity?
LikeLike
For a multitude of reasons. Many of which are systemic. I was cared for by people who had parents and grandparents who were slaves. That probably contributed to their station in life.
LikeLike
I don’t believe the past powers the present and most people given the opportunity will stay right where they are when they see how much effort it takes to excel on any stage. The wake doesn’t power the ship. Neuroscience is pretty clear that most people can’t escape their neurology.
Here’s 5 minutes worth watching.
LikeLike
So if most can’t escape, where does that leave us?
LikeLike
Well first of all reparations (welfare) has to end, for it is the cause. Prior to this seemingly noble attempt to elevate communities further, there is a direct correlation to it being harmful. Black employment and two parent households was equal to whites prior to this act which pays women to have children, but only if there is no man in the home. 80% of all delinquency comes from single parent homes. Crime, suicide, murder, prison, all of it is children raised by a mother only. Clearly this is a starting point but black men need to be in the home with their children. Same goes for whites raised by a single mother.
LikeLike
Sideline comment … I watched about 3-1/2 min. of this video and by then, he’d already started repeating his points. And this is what tends to happen in nearly every video … apparently it’s a common assumption that the average person is unable to “get it” unless IT is repeated at least 1/2 dozen more times. **Sigh**
LikeLike
Oh he wraps it all up. The end is by far the best part. 90 more seconds Nan
LikeLike
OK … so I went back and watched to the end. He does add a bit … but quite frankly, I don’t agree with all that he said. I think some of it is spot-on, but not all of it. I think it would be interesting to discuss my thoughts with him face-to-face.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, you can disagree of course, Pink, but these ARE the very numbers used by US census for federal programs! Sowell is an economist, after all, as well as an accomplished author who has risen to the top of his field through merit. And so the cohort of Caribbean blacks are not only far better in every category than non Caribbean blacks but fairly better than whites. This is the fact. The stability of family and an overwhelming value for education seems to be much more of a deciding factor for these higher numbers than hewing to historical racial grievances. If hierarchy were indeed the deciding factor, then these numbers would and should be quite different. You wishing it were so because of your perspective does not address this reality. Do not presume, however, that this means there isn’t historical grievances; rather, I think the takeaway is that there are much more effective ways to address them than blaming everyone else for personal decisions made today that cause a belief in the unalterable continuation of victimhood. This simply isn’t true. It’s a faith-based belief that ignores compelling evidence from reality when it doesn’t fit the narrative.
The idea/belief that perpetual victimhood from historical hierarchy is causal and inevitable (that must therefore be addressed by systemic policy solutions) is a mug’s game that never ends. It’s a victimhood that becomes the identity. (In today’s world this pays with increased virtue!) So there’s no good reason for it to end because it requires a shift in the locus of control to somewhere out there. Woe is me. You must reduce yourself to me. That’s the equity game. And it only divides and separates and discriminates on the basis of race, yet goes under the misnomer ‘anti-racism’. I think that’s a really regressive notion.
The idea/belief that victimhood can be overcome by quality of character can be addressed by policies and laws of equality of opportunity. This is the liberal value that over the past half century has lifted millions out of systemic racism, systemic poverty, and systemic despair. It is a real solution/opportunity that policy can address, always trying for a more perfect union when and if inequalities in the system are revealed. It has a very successful track record. Not perfect. But heading in the right direction. Blacks as a cohort in the US for example, reside at the top of all blacks globally in almost every category. This is not a coincidence. And this is exactly what’s being undermined today with counter factual policies that increase the importance of historical grievances based on race and turns these into central portions of one’s personal identity.
Unless you actually believe merit is racist, the equity push increases racial disparity and becomes a fixture FOR systemic perpetual grievances! I want my surgeon and yours to be full to the brim of medical merit and as much as humanly possible to be empty of racial animus. This is not going to happen under equity policies. And we know this now. I think that’s a problem worth criticizing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting concept, except how about other excluded groups? Do you mean to say systematic exclusion has no consequences?
LikeLike
How about them? How about excluded serfs and peasants and the disenfranchised everywhere? Why select race and make that the root of this hierarchy when there are so many to choose from? You want to skip this necessary foundation to justify race as the basis and go straight to consequences prsuming the conclusion, that it’s all about race!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not “all” about race, but every factor should be measured and plays a roll. Race has been a major factor in social hierarchy for centuries. Italian to Albanian, Turkish to Armenian, North African to Sub-Saharan African, Russian to Ukrainian, Chinese to all its minorities, these are all power structures which affect long term outcomes.
LikeLike
And they’re cyclical. Every “race” (if there really was such a thing) seems to get a turn being the asshole. The timeline may or may not be in your favor and we’re too shortsighted to see it, but it is the way of human nature.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s more a case of elite versus non-elite, but this overlaps substantially with race. In northeastern Brazil black and poor are basically synonymous.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Speaking of outcomes, this is what Signature Bank’s leadership was focusing on… before the bank went bust: pronoun usage.
LikeLiked by 1 person
O.M.G. !!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I guess the words that should have concerned them the most? Was/were.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And then there’s this ‘reparation’ plan reported out of San Francisco:
A city-appointed reparations panel brought their proposal to the Board this week and was met with unanimous support. The reparations plan includes “$5 million to every eligible Black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years and homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family.” The reparations panel now continues its work and will return with a final proposal in June.
Understand that San Francisco never had slaves. So this race-based plan has people whose ancestors never had slaves paying people whose ancestors never were slaves.
What about the very real and much more recent maltreatment of Japanese Americans during the second world war? What about the maltreatment of Chinese railway workers? What do you think, $10 million each and free railway pass for 500 years?
Granted, this is the approved plan from the city supervisors, which only costs each home owner a pitiful $600,000 paying for this ‘reparation’ (nice word… I wonder how the definition fits BEYOND simply a race-based payout?). Council has yet to vote on it.
This is the kind of batshit crazy that emerges when people actually believe language defines reality and we can change reality by changing words. It’s insane.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And it’s actually reparations that caused most of this mess in the black communities. Welfare IS reparations. We have learned nothing. Prior to this act the black community was on equal footing in family and employment data.
LikeLike
The problem using selected framing like ‘race’ on actual health issues, actual policy directives, is we get things like this from official sources:
“Some groups have higher suicide rates than others. Suicide rates vary by race/ethnicity, age, and other factors, such as where someone lives. By race/ethnicity, the groups with the highest rates were non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native and non-Hispanic White populations. Other Americans with higher than average rates of suicide are veterans, people who live in rural areas, and workers in certain industries and occupations like mining and construction. Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual have higher rates of suicidal thoughts and behavior compared to their peers who identify as heterosexual.” This from the CDC.
The truth? Well, perhaps to some it might matter.
The greatest risk factor for suicide is being male. That’s the hard truth. And that rate is growing fastest for those between 18-24 but also increasing at nearly 6% in absolute numbers for males over the age of 46. In fact, in truth, the risk for suicide is four times greater for ALL males than any of these other ‘selected’ group identity labels that are ever so popular today and yet absolutely dwarfs in both numbers and rates this idiotic reference to LGBTQ2S+.
The risk with fucking with language and selecting certain categories of groups that are in current vogue to appear virtuous/caring to others has the real world effect of hiding what’s true. What are the chances real solutions to real problems can be created in policies when the problems are framed not to reveal what’s true in fact, in reality, but to fit with and then serve an ideological framing where reality is denied if it conflicts and what’s true simply doesn’t count if it doesn’t confirm the group-based assumptions?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not sure I understand your aim. Are you saying statistics shouldn’t be taken because they can be misinterpreted? Or that they need to be better explained/understood? Have you heard of the Winton Centre in Cambridge? They’re amazing at it. Here’s a very amusing example of him breaking down numbers in regards to certain processed foods: https://medium.com/wintoncentre/are-we-individuals-or-members-of-populations-the-deeper-issues-behind-the-sausage-wars-a067aebf2063
LikeLike
I’m pointing out that framing relative numbers between only selected groups that just so happen to fit a group-based narrative (ie. whether racial disparity can be found between this group and that group and thus presented as reflecting racial inequity between those two selected groups to create a hierarchy) is no way to present actual real world problems because it misleads one from understanding the original problem (ie. the disparity is actually from MANY factors and not caused by or an honest reflection of the selected racial framing). The framing not only skews the real world problem but then misguides the direction of any potential solutions. In other words, when organizations like CDC is responsible for guiding effective solutions for the problems that fall under their purview – like rates of suicide and advice on effective intervention – then framing this as a group problem involving the groups selected that fit nicely with the current narrative about discrimination caused by hierarchy revealed by disparity misleads the CDC to the extent they miss what’s true entirely: the greatest risk factor BY FAR is being male. So any advice now offered misses this major cause altogether. And so we have exactly zero official concern about this increasing rise and rate of male suicide by the very organization charged with revealing this data. Believing the narrative about group disparities based on social justice values alters finding out what’s true and replaces it with what fits the narrative. This is not any way to find real world solutions to real world problems.
LikeLike
I disagree entirely. I’ve always known male suicide was the highest single category. We’re not talking about random groups. And the fact that correlation is not causation is irrelevant when incidence in and of itself is an important factor. Monkeypox vaccines can and should be promoted in groups of gay men because that’s a high risk group. Healthy eating should be promoted in low income neighbourhoods where unhealthy eating is more common. And when the affected group happens to be of a particular racial group then that too needs to be the focus.
LikeLike
“when the affected group happens to be of a particular racial group”
You’ve got the order backwards; you are presuming the conclusion once again, presuming that by comparing racial groups and finding disparity MEANS race is causal (that racial group disparity supposedly identifies racial group discrimination, as Kendi asserts without evidence). Selecting race is the problem because it biases you from seeing reality as it is. The CDC quote shows the shocking extent to which such presumptions about race and gender misleads them from identifying the overwhelming group most vulnerable: men. And so THIS miss becomes a miss by policy, which leaves the problem completely unaddressed by those various agencies and institutions charged with addressing them. I’m not good with that. Remember, how you think determines what you think; how the CDC frames the data determines what policy response to recommend. And it misses the most vulnerable group by intentional omission.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Spot on td
LikeLike
Causality is irrelevant if what you’re treating is a high incidence. If poverty/low education/stds alcoholism/unwanted pregnancy or whatever occurs at higher rates within specific groups, it’s common sense to design policies which target those groups.
LikeLike
True, Pink. Which is why missing the LARGEST group to the extent of not even bothering to mention it reveals the scope of the problem. So busy are those who wish to reinforce their group-based disparity-equals-discrimination narrative (especially concerning ‘victimized’ groups) that the true group most at risk doesn’t even rank!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Precisely! So your campaign, my campaign, the Winton Centre’s campaign is to show people how to understand the numbers!!! Go through them, dissect the numbers and show what they really mean.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Took you quite a while to get here
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is it possible to be gender neutral?
I ask this because I assume gender is what society expects- that is why it is a social construct- and society doesn’t have that, not yet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Personally I don’t think so. If you look to Scandinavia who has a head start on these issues, the more egalitarian a society becomes, the more they go back to their traditional roles. Nobody expected this and why I think those roles are more than just social constructs.
LikeLike
The reason I ask this is two fold.
If gender is a social construct- then it is the publics that decide what they assign and one may not control this.
I will give an example, not related to gender but it would help with the clarification. Other people called my people Luos but for a long time, the Luos didn’t refer to themselves as Luos. In fact, even now, that’s not the first reference. They will say I am JaAsembo or something else and the other can infer that they are Luos.
In talking about gender, when it is said so and so behaved as a woman, it means that there are social expectations or behaviour that society has placed on women and these identify with certain set of rules. To then say I am gender neutral is in my view very difficult thing to be done. Society doesn’t have that space, at least not now.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Gender neutrality is the equivalent of agnosticism regarding religious belief. When gender and sex are conflated, the term becomes non binary. It’s pretending there is a middle ground where none in fact exists. In the real world, sex is binary; so there’s no such space as ‘non binary’ in the same way as in the world of determining religious belief, there’s no no such space as ‘agnostic’. But in the gender world based on cultural stereotyping of masculine and feminine, neutrality is an equivalent measure of both but assumed to be the absence of each.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is not possible that both can be absent. No such creature exists in the human species. To argue for such a being would be asking for too much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a perfectly fair description. So why not allow the agnostics to be in that space?
LikeLike
Because, like in religious belief, it’s a non sequitur. Belief in religion is either/or… not, “I don’t know.” Belief in gender when conflated with biological sex as if a physical attribute is either/or.. not, “Neither.” Only sex is real, measurable, observed. And binary. Gender is none of those.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I find that odd. I’m an art historian which I feel is real, although it’s also a construct. In fact sometimes we’re so far apart in theory it’s like we’re not in the same profession.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nice
LikeLike
For those women who remain confused about all of this, who have entirely forgotten why gender/sex conflation undermines women specifically, perhaps Germaine Greer can help you out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Totally agree with Ms. Greer!
LikeLike
“it means that there are social expectations or behaviour that society has placed on women. Is that true, or perhaps are the natural traits of the traditional women what conformed our perceptions of what a woman does?
When removed from societal pressures, say, when shit hits the fan, gender roles immediately revert to their traditional roles.
Men hunt and provide protection and women manage and distribute. No?
LikeLike
Since most societies haven’t been alike, I don’t think it is a good argument to make about a traditional woman.
Two, in different societies women also gathered food. And in feudal societies, family labour was conducted equally by both parties. Unless I am mistaken
LikeLiked by 1 person
You may be right. Even the Iroquois, who had women governance for 1200 years, had what I described above as their roles. There’s always an anomaly but that shouldn’t sway us from the majority of datas.
LikeLike
Ethnographic data depends on who is collecting it. Their biases and the context under which the data is collected.
That said, different societies have allocated different responsibilities to different sexes. And gender roles are associated with those assignments
LikeLike
Hence, compelling evidence that gender is derived from culture and not genetically inherited. I’m not sure how hormones/surgeries ‘correct’ for a cultural stereotype.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That, I too, can’t wrap my head around.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Why would someone want to change sexes when they adamantly deny sex and gender are the same thing?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The why is difficult to answer. It is confounding however when one says they want to change sex while at the same time appearing to imply that that which they want to change to is not properly defined or something of that sort
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes. You want to change your sex to a gender you don’t believe actually exist. It is tragic when a woman has her breasts removed as a child only to realize later it was only a phase.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/02/11/transgender-debate-transitioning-sex-gender-column/1894076002/
LikeLike
From the article:
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are some truly devastating stories of teens being mutilated only to find out they were mostly led down this path by amateurs without good data and doctors in it for the money.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And what’s truly sad is there are those who are so wrapped up in defending this “movement,” they are blind to the damage it has done and is doing to the many young people who are simply caught up with the entire “gender” ideology.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Every adolescent goes through a phase of sexual inquiry and experimentation. Best to let it play out. Why does anyone feel the need to “identify” as anything? Certainly limits your options when you demand a label.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And blind to fueling the extreme pushback, which is to make all such treatments illegal when there really are a few people for whom this path is exactly the right one.
But it takes a long time to go through everything ethically necessary, all the alternatives and possibilities through less invasive therapies to finally reach this radical point that justifies transitioning with informed consent, including sterility, long term physiological costs, surgical alteration, and life long medicalization.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Jim, something occurred to me as I read the remark about the Iroquois and women governance. I wonder if these women felt they were “really” men since the male gender tends to be the governing force in many societies …
LikeLike
That’s a good question but is not how it was. Iroquois society was matrilineal, meaning descent was traced through the mother rather than through the father, as it was in Colonial society. While Iroquois sachems (chiefs-leaders) were men, women nominated them for their leadership positions and made sure they fulfilled their responsibilities. The woman had the final say—a bit like the influence QE had in Britain.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The solution is obvious, Jim: everyone must ask the objects in whatever language is used how they gender identify first and then respect their individual feelings and choices on this matter! Problem solved!
Oh, wait… these objects can’t speak? Reality is so intolerant.
Well then, there can only be one correct solution: we must yield to the new gender language police from the Elect-Who-Are-More-Virtuous-By-Self-Appointment-Than-Anyone-Else and warp the language to fit whatever reduces victimizing harm the most, according to these experts. We have a good start in the English world by switching nouns and adjectives – to avoid offending, of course, and keep vulnerable people/objects safe from all the white bigots – so that the noun must now come first so as to not be held hostage to the intolerant and victimizing adjectives that in-days-of-colonial-yore victimized so many. For example, a big brown cow must now be referred to as a cow of colour and size. Think of the feelings of all those other cows of various colourings and shading. They are cows first, damn it. People aren’t disabled, you silly person; they’re people experiencing disability. People aren’t mentally ill, you see; they’re people living with a mental health condition. People aren’t addicts; No, no, no. They are people with substance use disorders. Later the locus of control, so as to better teach the young how to avoid being respsonsible and promote feelings of hopelessness as asufferer of life. Yup, an obese person becomes a person of size, sort of an inherited trait, which magically erases the dangers of self imposed obesity, donchaknow. Poof!. Modifying a noun with preceding adjectives is the new hate crime these days.
Now I’m a person experiencing surprise that so many of us could be this dumb.
Rather than using cow-first language because it supposedly helps to not define cows by just one of their characteristics – umm, I mean people – it makes it far more difficult to engage with people as the individuals that they are, rather than as an aggregation of demographic markers. Secondly, it makes it more difficult to discuss things of actual substance so busy are we policing the language of others. This dumbs down the entire population… in the name of being demonstrably virtuous but that changes exactly nothing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t believe language naturally evolved to incorporate what we are now trying to shoehorn. Because… it is unnatural to cater to a host of mental quirks that do not benefit fitness.
LikeLike
There is a sustained attack against language to – as you say – shoehorn social justice politics into social consciousness and, by doing so, alter our description of reality to fit the ideology (because the ideology will not fit reality). For example, the noun ‘woman’ is a term applied to a biological reality: an adult human female. By changing the definition of ‘woman’ under the auspices of social justice identity politics, we can magically alter this reality by insisting the word is the thing that when changed – anyone identifying as a woman (now a woman means anyone who feels feminine) – means reality has changed. A woman – an adult human female – now becomes an identity group based on individual feelings unrelated to what constitutes a biological female. Presto! Reality has now comported to the ideology. It takes a certain kind of religious belief to go along with the lie that by altering words we can alter reality. That’s why the language is under attack so that liberal terms like tolerance and diversity and respect for the individual can be hijacked by the New Religion to mean exactly the opposite of what it once meant and try to force people into going along with the charade or face mob hostility and moral vilification for failing to do so. The counter argument to remaining true to the definition of, say, a woman isn’t rational; it’s emotional screeching about being a terrible person causing harm/genocide to the deluded.
All of this matters because, in effect, this alteration of language amounts to compelled speech and attacks and vilifies freedom of thought if it dares to venture outside of the narrow bounds of the Approved Ideology. What we are seeing today is the hostile takeover of our means to communicate honestly AND vilifies the use of reality and evidence from it to support any criticism.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The utter lunacy of conflating gender with biological sex is revealed when – as you quite right point out – exported to other languages. It doesn’t work. And yet here we are changing laws to conflate the two. This becomes egregious harm against real people in real life when, for example, Title IX is hijacked from establishing EQUALITY rights for women to promote EQUITY rights for men to force everyone to submit to their delusion that that really, really, really are women… if they so choose to identify as such. So women have to yield their protected spaces in sports or prisons or rape centers or work spaces to men whose anti-reality feelings of sex-confusion now trump women’s real world safety.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly my point in a previous post. Feminism in particular is supporting men becoming women and will live again under the tyranny of men who think they are women.
It turns out that gender dysphoria is also accompanied with several other comorbid psychological deficits, the primary being narcissism. We are certainly being gaslitten by this trait and the small number of those pressing are behaving like a textbook case.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So women have to yield their protected spaces — Just one more slam against those of us who were BORN women and still IDENITY as women.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s more than a slam: it’s more of an erasure. And it is reinforced with every anti-female chant and signature procured in support of anti-woman ‘trans’ rights. Women are going from being a very real sex category of very real people to an imaginary identity term anyone can use for whatever convenience they might gain. This is what we’re seeing happen.
How any female can support gender identity ideology is Forrest Gump level stupid (stupid is as stupid does) that reverses women’s equality rights in law. Maybe this is what happens when a population raised in the luxurious waters of legal liberalism and hard won equality civil rights and liberties for all forget that the real world is a very harsh place without them in law and practice, and we set them aside at our peril. Welcome back to the 1950s when gender stereotypes ruled culture. But let’s call it ‘progressive’ because the word defines reality!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a dream that transgendered men will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by by their choice of personal pronouns but by the color of their “Drag Queen Story Hour” ball gowns.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And by the size of their womens league trophies.
LikeLiked by 2 people
An excellent summary here of where we are in the science.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I said all of this alteration of reality starts with the hostile take-over of language. It is done for a reason, and we become complicit when we ‘go along to get along’. I have also said we can and should be able to recognize this tactic when we encounter it, when ‘up’ is redefined to mean another kind of ‘down’, ‘black’ is redefined to mean another kind of ‘white’. Post modern language not only does exactly this but is purposeful not as way to communicate clearly but used intentionally that, as Orwell pointed out, “falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.” The devil of a toxic ideology like post modernism in all its ‘critical’ forms (gender, anti-racism, queer) lives and breathes in the details. So the intention of taking over the language and redefining common words is to hide the harm, alter reality, justify the never-ending ‘social revolution’ through confusing language.
Andrew Sullivan (whose writings have been on a tear lately) has an article here that reveals the scope of what’s going on today throughout the West and just how intentional is the hostile takeover of our language in the service of tearing down our liberal democracy aided and abetted by those who think they are doing ‘social justice’.
Remember, the whole charade self destructs when enough people refuse to go along with the basic assumptions and redefinitions, keeping ‘up’ to mean the OPPOSITE of ‘down’ (not another kind, which is the lie), ‘white’ to mean the OPPOSITE of ‘black’ (and not another kind of black, which is the lie). In this case, keeping ‘gender’ to mean the social construct of cultural femininity and masculinity and NOT another kind of ‘sex’ of which there are exactly two – male and female plus some rare combinations of these. That’s the brute fact this gender-serving language tries to get around. No amount of hormone therapies and puberty blockers and sex change surgeries will affect changing a culture’s gender stereotypes one iota. But it will cause vast swaths of harm to those who believe they can alter the biological reality of their bodies by undergoing these treatments. Don’t go along with lies. And refuse to participate in the ‘new’ language ideologues are trying to force upon all of us. That’s how each of us can help put a stop to this anti-liberal and highly corrosive ideology. Stop believing it’s true when it’s not.
LikeLiked by 2 people
One such redefinition lately is masculinity, specifically toxic masculinity. But the two words don’t even go together. They are polar opposites. Masculinity is restraint, provision, compassion, expertise, and physical skill. Toxic masculinity is actually feminine men.
Now sharing that amass of knowledge is “mansplaining” and as a consequence the mast of skill, shared knowledge and capability, is learning to be quiet.
All these artificial proppings are contrary to nature and revert to their former nature immediately when there is a crisis—or if we just refuse collectively to allow them to walk on masculinity—which by nature is not toxic. They only get it if we grant it. If we grant it then we are weak and they don’t want us. It’s a game nobody can win.
If masculine principle is toxic, what does that make feminism? Good question.
LikeLike
Yes, I think the social construct of what it means to be masculine or feminine (post 60s) has been in flux ever since that social revolution. And I think that’s generally a very good thing in that individuals are no longer restrained by unspoken sex-based expectations, acceptable social roles, and appropriate behaviours. But many second and third generation feminists raised in the waters of post 60s feminism have moved away from equality of opportunity with men to equity from men. In other words, what I think is happening is that women are reversing the old field and seem unaware of the consequences, assuming sex-based expectations, acceptable social roles, and appropriate behaviour means being the same. When boys and girls develop through puberty and become significantly divergent in these, then I have encountered a kind of ‘feminism’ that presumes the disparity must be because someone somewhere isn’t doing a good enough job in getting boys and girls aligned properly first. And I have seen this assumption played out in education where males account for less than 10% of teachers in elementary and 35% in high school. This has been a watershed and significant change since the first generation of girls post 60s graduated into the profession of teaching (late 80s, early 90s). Remember these dates.
By saying ‘playing out’, what I mean is that if the expectations, social roles, and behaviour (assumed to be a virtue by so many females coming into the teaching profession and gaining authority in it) are not the same for all students regardless of their sex, then this lack of equity usually produces a ‘correcting’ response, whether it be in policy or practices or discipline. It’s important to remember that with so many females involved at the school level where children develop the most over time, the assumption is that the comparison between males and females tends to use and enforce female benchmarks of what constitutes ‘the same’ especially when it comes to overt behaviour.
Males are disciplined constantly for comparing poorly with their female counterparts. The female overt behaviour is considered the most conducive to learning and so this tends to be the benchmark so many boys fail to live up to. This ‘masculine’ issue of overt behaviour that falls short of the model girl overt behaviour sets is not equitable, and so this seems to be the problem in the eyes of the female dominated school staff and so schools end up focusing quite a bit of attention on trying to supress or channel or divert or even outlaw these disruptive-to-the-learning-environment behaviours exhibited by so many boys.
I believe this difference is what becomes known as ‘toxic’ masculinity because it presents as causing a chronically negative impact in the school environment. (Sports, where males excel at athletic competition, boosts the reputation of the school when successful, and so this aspect – which I think is a very important if not THE vital element in female social structures – tolerates and even celebrates this kind of masculinity… but only in the venues where the competition is played and certainly not back in the classroom or school hallways! Then the SAME male behaviour becomes ‘toxic’ behaviour, you see.)
Another MAJOR concern in schools is about inclusion and safety. Again, establishing a social hierarchy on physical dominance and associated risk taking behaviour by boys becomes a chronic source of ‘toxic’ masculinity when it interferes with or competes with creating an equity environment in schools. And so on.
All of this I think matters much more than perhaps many people realize.
Firstly, I suspect this constant demand on boys to align with female behaviour in schools and other social settings and the constant failing to live up to these expectations do so as demonstrated by authority figures becomes internalized by boys as a ‘something is wrong with me’ attitude and might be a leading cause of depression and suicide in boys (about 5 times the rate of girls).
Secondly, I think it’s easy to recognize the affect on kids coming out of this protected environment and we see this first generation of students entering post secondary with the same expectations for safety and inclusion. This has been used because it fits seamlessly with gender ideology and so we now enjoy a completely dysfunctional and explicitly illiberal post secondary campuses especially in classrooms but certainly beyond to the point of shutting down fraternities and student organizations that are not ‘safe’ because of their masculine ‘toxicity’. Once upon a time, such toxicity went under the term ‘fun’. And we can’t have that.
Thirdly, the explosion of administration numbers equal to and sometimes exceeding the number of students they purportedly support enrolled at these institutions are, again, heavily weighted with women. And the cycle continues to the point where those just going to post secondary education is predominantly female and this shows up in graduation numbers with women outweighing men. These women are now beginning to outweigh men in all kinds of professions except those typically dominated by men. It’s not an accident that DEI initiatives now target those obvious inequity in STEM subjects and have implemented what amounts to a nation wide DEI oath of allegiance to even be considered for a teaching/researching position. And we continue to circle the drain as a civilization of denying males AND females their biological differences that produce inequities and now are enjoying pathologizing these natural differences as a ‘right wing conspiracy’!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You will no doubt notice that no one anywhere seems to care when females dominate any profession. No one is demanding systemic reviews because females outnumber males in things like nursing. There is no organization lobbying to get more men into gynecology or early childhood education. Notice how many are pointing out the greatest risk for suicide is being male. Yeah. No one outside of the ever evil ‘right wing conspiracy’, that is. Funny that anything to do with men and men’s systemic inequities only finds a home somewhere on the right of the political spectrum but seems to be of zero concern to any one or institution anywhere on the left.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just have to say, the concerns I have raised here and the responses they have stimulated follow an almost identical path expressed by J.K. Rowling about how the arguments unfold, the kind of approaches many use, the typical fallacies in play, and why talking about this issue now in spite of condemnation doing so matters so much.
To hear it for yourself, here is the last episode of the The Witch Trials of JK Rowling (about 60 minutes) where Megan Phelps-Roper of Westboro Baptist fame has her final interview with Rowling. Note the many reasons Rowling offers about why it’s so important for her to speak up because her reasons mirror my own (that almost no one in the public domain ever articulates), namely, that the final and perhaps most dangerous affect of not disputing this toxic ideology in all its forms by staying quiet or going along to get along – even putting aside the contentious issue of the vast harm done in the name of believing in the righteousness of the ideology – serves the empowerment and recruitment of the far right.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you have a link?
LikeLike
Sorry about that. Yes, it’s here.
LikeLike