Most of the Lux article is shade by association, while each episode of Wider Lens takes a serious and respectful look at a particular subset of this issue. With over 100 episodes available online, there are a wide variety to choose from, and I'd suggest choosing one that you feel particularly well-versed in (rather than passionate about). Judge their work on its substance, and feel free to report back with any perceived "danger," not mere difference of opinion.
The "difference of opinions" discussed in this piece is an active collaboration with people who support gay conversion therapy. I'm not sure how you can dismiss that as guilt by association--it isn't like they took a photo together one time, they're in working groups. People involved in running Genspect--people who have received grants--have received money from Alliance Defending Freedom, and Genspect is aware of the collaboration and does not condemn it. Whatever you think of trans healthcare for kids, these people are bad news
For anyone interested in the podcast I would recommend Episode 103: "Follow the gender-brick road: from bi to pan to trans," which explains why you should be worried if your child comes out as bisexual
Don't forget to check out Episode 114, which features Stephen Levine, a man who has testified on behalf of conservative behemoth Alliance Defending Freedom to pass legislation targeting trans people across the country
I will be writing a follow-up post to this one in a few days that goes deeply into the scientific underpinnings of the gender critical movement and explains why each and every one of the studies they rely on are shakey at best, unscientific at worst
You are very fond of guilt-by-association, but I'll address your opening rhetorical hijack for simplicity.
The phrase "conversion therapy" has a particular history which refers to (mostly physical aversion) therapies to "cure" homosexuality, as practiced in the 1970's and 1980's. These had been abandoned by almost all licensed and secular therapists by the 1990's and, if they exist at all, MAY be practiced among a few unlicensed or similarly fringe "Christians," at least in North America. No reputable western therapist practices this, and I have yet to hear of ANY licensed therapist who does so now in the United States or European Union. There are reports of its practice in India, and I assume it still takes place in various other places. Use of the phrase outside of that context (physical aversion such as electrical shock, with the intent of changing or extinguishing sexual orientation) is an appropriative hijack and clinically inaccurate.
Are you aware of anyone in North America or Europe who practices conversion therapy as it was defined in 1995 or earlier? In the absence of that I think it would be more honest to use a different phrase.
What you have done here is list a number of people who do not share your entire worldview, and that is tribalism, not discussion. What do you have other than ad hominem guilt by association?
What evidence is there that "gender affirmation" treatment has results which are better than either traditional "watchful waiting" or placebo? Is there any evidence that claims of suicidality are higher for trans-identified youth than other LGB or gender-nonconforming youth? With adjustment for co-morbidities? Without adjustment for comorbidity? Has there been any demonstrable drop in completed suicides among youth in either group since the expansion of uncritical "affirmation?" Convenience-sample customer reviews (or anecdotes about your friends) do not count as medical evidence.
To use the phrase "conversion therapy" for open-ended treatments which do not involve physically aversive elements is rhetoric, not discussion, and I know you can do better if you ever cared to.
1) "actively works with a group" is not guilt by association and it's incredibly dishonest to frame it that way
2) plenty of evidence exists to contradict every single unscientific point you have made and in a few days I will write a substack that explains the unbelievable amount of research I did to write the Lux article. I will dismantle ROGD, I will dismantle the small-sample studies from 15 years ago, I will dismantle the small-sample Swedish-language study on suicidality that has never been translated into English, and when I'm done I will solicit other academic papers in the comments and likely demolish those too
In fact: why not do it now. List the studies that support your position, in case you have any that I have not already read, and I'll look into them
Are you conceding that you've hijacked the phrase "conversion therapy" from its original, quite specific context? If so, thank you.
Again, for simplicity, let's stick with ROGD. Rather than ask you what your specific issues are with Littman 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0202330), let's begin with the idea of social contagion.
Would you agree that social contagion is a real phenomenon, and exists among adolescents of either sex?
What I said, specifically, is that exploratory therapy is identical to gay conversion therapy with the word "trans" subbed in for '"gay." This is objectively true. The theories on what made people gay and how to make them stop are identical to the exploratory therapy ideas on what make people trans and how to make them stop.
Littman's ROGD paper had to be republished with heavy modifications due to overly ambitious claims: it is a hypothesis that requires further experimentation to test. Where are the experiments? Wherefore the confirming studies? It's been 5 years
The rest will have to wait, I'm afraid. Let us continue this conversation after I present my evidence at length in the next substack
What do you think is necessary for a reestablishment of cultural trust in science administrations? Is it even possible or worthwhile?
How old do you think that people generally have to be to make informed medical decisions about themselves, and would you generally support laws which attempt to lower the age at which kids require consent from their parents to obtain medical treatment (say, in Oregon, where the current age for puberty blockers w/o parental consent is 14 and there is a bill which proposes to lower the age of required parental consent)?
That's such a good question--I think it's going to take a long time, I'm talking decades, though I hope I'm wrong. Admitting COVID missteps is risky, but a risk I think would be worth it because admitting mistakes means you aren't just some dogmatic partisan. Also, if we could stop dumbing down science in ways meant to reassure the public that would be great. "We know there are no side effects to the vaccine" is a patently ridiculous statement that any thinking person can see through. "There are no long-term studies, but we have reason to believe there aren't side effects and the benefits vastly outweigh the risks" is more correct. We should do that more, I think (and for the record I am double vaxxed and boosted)
Re: informed medical decisions, that's tough. I think the age goes up the more irreversible the change. Puberty blockers are a reversible change--you stop taking them and the puberty stops being blocked. Hormones are much less reversible. 14 seems too old for an age limit to me, since most kids will be in the middle of puberty by that point. Hormone age should be older than puberty blocker age (in my opinion)
There’s always been a pendulum swing between the embraces of “enlightenment” science and romanticisim throughout history in popular culture. Look at the spiritualists and mesmers and other hucksters back in the 19th century, only to give way to post WW2 embrace of science and rationality. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is an entire book, written in the 90s, about the oncoming rush of romanticism/pseudoscience. A lot of the traditional cultural fulcrums and shifts are identified and discussed in that book. It’s one of my favorite pieces of Sagan writing.
What he didn’t anticipate was the technocratic neoliberal “silicon valley” culture of bloviating promises of world-altering developments matched with huckster money fleecing. For literally 20+ years now we’ve had billionaire shitweasels tell us how their subscription based repackaging of existing goods and services was going to completely and fundamentally revolutionize the world through the bleeding edge, and sometimes beyond the bleeding edge, of science.
It’s all garbage though, hype built upon some pop psychology in order to hit unicorn status and cash out on an IPO. That left the impression in the public of science as basically little more than culture and hype, and left us ripe for exploitation in a more political sphere.
There’s a lot of other elements combining together too. You could probably easily write a book or at least a series of essays on it all.
As for when? Yeah. It’ll take decades. Science needs some new breakthroughs to create new, unexplored fields of science, where new developments and new benefits to our lives are happening frequently. It’s hard to be blase about science when it’s doing shit like eradicating smallpox or landing on the moon or creating computers that went from taking up entire rooms to fitting on a desk to fitting in your pocket in one lifetime.
But that fast advancement of a number of different fields happened decades ago. The low lying fruit has been claimed. What’s left in those fields is hard to reach, requiring huge teams, large budgets, and slow, persistent research. And that’s not sexy and is full of failures.
All organizations need to address issues of "institutional capture" by motivated subgroups, particularly of trade groups, "professional organizations" and educational institutions. WPATH unilaterally declared itself the authority in this area, and "chain of trust" convenience led to abdication by others.
Adults need to assert adult authority and daylight how easily a relatively small cadre of motivated actors can hijack entire institutions. This happened with regulatory agencies many years ago at the federal level, and has been leveraged across many other institutions, with "gender affirmation" being just one example.
Weirdly, I had the exact reaction to the email subject that you didn’t expect. It went something like “Science????”
If I had noticed the “(Political)” I would probably not have had quite that initial response. In any event, this post was your usual high quality (thank you) and I have the article proper queued up.
Genuine and heartfelt congratulations on being saner than 99.9% of the population, including me (it didn't occur to me how weird the whole situation was until after Moore said what she did about the debate)
Your sources seem the bog-standard, industrial US ones, but you might want to look east to the European Union and United Kingdom, where less profit-driven providers are reviewing the evidence with medical standards and less "gender essence" ideology.
See also Hannah Barnes' recent book Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children.
Pediatric "gender affirmation" is the greatest US medical debacle since the lobotomy fad, which was (like eugenics) strongly supported by key medical lobbies.
Beginning with the idea of “First, do no harm,” I can see the case for delaying irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments as long as practical. The actual timing is best left to the child and their supporters who love them, which hopefully includes their parents. But since I want to build a society that supports delaying irreversible decisions, I think the way to do that is to be fully accepting of gender queer and gender non-conforming people. Allow everyone to dress and present themselves as they want. If every 5th grader can where jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt on Monday and a blouse and skirt on Tuesday, without bullying or pearl clutching, it will be a lot easier for each of those kids to search for who they are and love the person they find.
From there, the some kids will follow their inner self to hormones and surgeries with no regrets. But importantly, others will decide that the gender fluid space is where they belong, and not feel pressured to jump one way or another. To be clear, I do not want to make medical decisions for others, and I don’t want state governments to do it either. But I do want to live in a society that minimizes the need for anyone to make medical decisions just to live and be accepted as the person they are.
Sadly, current political fights are geared to preventing this kind of gender acceptance. Maybe in another generation we reduce the fixation on binary gender.
You might want to look into second-wave feminist projects such as Marlo Thomas' Free To Be You and Me. Gender nonconformity and the destruction of sexist (gender) stereotypes was central. If you have a chance to see the 1974 television special of that name, I highly recommend it. Major parts of it are available on YouTube, with the album also digitized and still available for play or purchase.
2nd wave feminism did a lot of good, but was peripheral to trans and non-binary gender issues. “Free to Be You and Me” came out only 5 years after Stonewall. Most of the LGBTQ+ community was still deeply hidden from public life. My thought is that if you are really concerned about children receiving irreversible, gender-affirming care too early, we in the wider society should maximize non-medical, gender affirming care and acceptance, not ban it like so many states are doing.
To stay with a musical analogy, this is not Marlo Thomas singing “Free to Be You and Me,” this is The Kinks singing “Lola.”
Best pediatric past practice for decades has been support of the individual (not sexist "gender") through puberty, with "watchful waiting" and attention to all other possible co-morbidities, which shows that the vast majority of gender-anxious youth resolve as LGB with normal puberty. This is the "treatment" which was standard from the 1970's forward, and helped lead to the destigmatization of homosexuality, normalization of marriage equality and similar WITHOUT stigmatization or lifelong iatrogenic dependency.
We do well to support the individual, NOT the "gender" stereotype, and consider what makes for any evidence-based treatment. Supportive "watchful waiting" has a proven track record with no harmful side effects, and remains the gold standard by all normal, objective measures.
Do you have a list of criteria that would convince you that any treatment is legitimate? What are its elements? How might that be actively applied to all current cases? Retroactively used to examine past cases? To track the success of current treatments over the next 5-10 years?
Various claims are made by "gender" clinicians, but without robust evidence, and certainly nothing approaching the past success of "watchful waiting." Such is the consensus emerging out of Sweden and Finland and other nations who examine the issue with a more objective, medical lens and standards.
Thanks for this post and I'll read your article. As a long transitioned trans man, or "man of transsexual history" -- as I prefer -- this topic has been extraordinarily disturbing. It took me a bit to see past Genspect's psuedo-scientific bloviating to their very real biases. We all have bias, but in their case, there was a snake in the grass pretending to be otherwise. I had many tweets back and forth with "gender critical" folks to establish that most of them are not speaking in good faith. They would deny to my "face" on Twitter, what I told them about the state of my own health, claiming against my protests that I must be in bad health -- despite all evidence to the contrary. They would say I would "regret" transition soon enough, but then, I told them it's been 34 years -- I don't think so. At any rate, your comments about this org and the general mistrust of science now, following Covid are apt. Hopefully, good sense and real "evidence-based care" will prevail.
I’ve been a subscriber for years and have always enjoyed your take on the conservative milieu. You’re at your journalistic best when rubbing elbows with drunk republicans in hotel bars.
When it comes to gender ideology though I feel your coverage is dishonest. You paint your opponents as cultural conservatives, without ever acknowledging that the TERF leadership is largely radical feminists. For every Matt Walsh there are a dozen Kara Danskys and Megan Murphys: for every Ben Shapiro there are a hundred Julie Bindels and Kathleen Stocks.
Does gender ideology pose a threat to women? Absolutely! But you never acknowledge that male predators are being housed in Women’s prisons, or that male cheats have destroyed women’s sports. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns. There’s a dark side you work hard to keep in the dark.
I will continue to read your work because I like having my beliefs challenged. Thank you for that. But you’ve got a long way to go to persuade me that humans can change sex.
I'm a little bit surprirsed by this comment, since I think the article I wrote for Lux did a pretty good job of explaining the connection between this specific group and conservative actors. You're correct that I don't talk about women's prisons or women's sports: I also don't talk about the military-industrial complex or the flooding in Vermont
Whatever else my coverage may be, I think "dishonest" is strong. Regardless, glad you're reading and I'll be doing a follow-up post about why I think gender-affirming care is the right way to go in a few days
People are losing their jobs and being thrown out of organizations for asserting that biological sex is a reality which has informed the creation of single-sex spaces, which serve legitimate needs within public policy.
Stories and articles on "gender identity" as a scientific or public policy matter have been commissioned, and then killed. Freelancers with strong records across multiple marquee publications have been unable to interest editors in these topics, or been iced out completely for suggesting it. People with legitimate and substantive angles are actively denied the opportunity to publish, had their online accounts terminated because of complaint, and ONLY able to find voice or get published by marginal (sometimes "right wing") publications.
To accuse those independent actors of "working with" or "cozying up" to the only outlets which will rent them a room, employ them or publish their material is dishonest.
"Dishonest" is a mild and moderate word here.
When a person cannot meet basic needs because they are harassed and exiled, they may be forced to second or third or fourth-choice possibilities.
Are you familiar with the recent movie Affirmation Generation, which featured many of the voices you vilify? It was made with private money, then posted for free on Vimeo for a short time, before complaints of "transphobia" got it taken down. It was then briefly hosted as a "pay-per-view" feature and doing moderately well, before a distributor picked it up. That distributor then rented AMC theaters for theatrical showings nationwide, but AMC was harassed until all of those showings were canceled, city by city.
What alternatives are there to rationally speak moderate but heterodox views when "activists" (freneticists really, de-facto religious zealots) make harassment of reasonable women their main goal?
Compare and contrast this with the way that some would deny other groups economic and educational opportunity, then rail on about what marginal jobs they hold or how prone they are to degeneracy and criminal activity. The left ostracizes and evicts moderate and mature voices, then blames them for being homeless or finding shelter where they can.
The authoritarian left is deeply puritan and getting off on sadism against moderate and good-faith actors, mostly women.
As someone who was a radical feminist in the seventies, before I transitioned to male in the late eighties -- I can tell you that the basis of second wave radical feminist anti-trans ideology is misandry. They blamed transsexuality on patriarchy and capitalism. It began with a book published in 1979, _The Transgender Empire_ by Janice Raymond. The title of which has now been hijacked by Chris Rufo in a recent newsletter going on against transsexual care generally. At any rate, you are right that the crazies on the rad feminist left are responsible ultimately for a lot of the anti-trans ideology we see sweeping the socially conservative right. Strange bedfellows! At any rate, the whole "men in women's spaces" is driven as much by misandry and hysteria as it is by fact. I can tell you that trans women have been going into women's bathrooms and lockerrooms for years now, decades -- and no one seemed to notice till relatively recently.
Of course, the sports issue and others are best handled by the NCAA, Olympic committee and others -- and NOT GOP lead invitatives to deny trans women entry to sports. The culture wars are not the place to ajudicate these important issues.
The TERF style feminists of the seventies lost the battle here in the US to third and fourth generation feminists at least thirty years ago. Though some persisted. There are younger recruits. The Meghan Murphys of the world are old style in comparison to third and fourth wavers now -- but they are around. Notably, often outside the USA. At any rate, Murphy and others of that ilk are now bitterly complaining that Matt Walsh et al are stealing their ideas. Well, I suppose they are. Walsh and Knowles are anything but feminist and I think it's just desserts that Murphy and Bindal would have their anti-trans agenda seized by what amount to right wing reactionaries.
For the record, I don't support censorship or non-platforming generally or - hate speech laws. The non-platforming and cancellation of people like Murphy on campus or at libraries have only led to their being platformed by larger outlets like Tucker Carlson. Giving these folks victim status has not made their message any more rational but it has given them grievance megaphones.
I am happy to see Laura taking on this subject and will be interested in what else she has to say.
Hadn’t heard of Genspect before this article but wow. This is a dangerous group that needs to be pushed back against.
I would suggest listening to the podcast Gender, A Wider Lens, at https://gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm with an open mind.
Most of the Lux article is shade by association, while each episode of Wider Lens takes a serious and respectful look at a particular subset of this issue. With over 100 episodes available online, there are a wide variety to choose from, and I'd suggest choosing one that you feel particularly well-versed in (rather than passionate about). Judge their work on its substance, and feel free to report back with any perceived "danger," not mere difference of opinion.
Topical playlists are also available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@widerlenspod/playlists.
The "difference of opinions" discussed in this piece is an active collaboration with people who support gay conversion therapy. I'm not sure how you can dismiss that as guilt by association--it isn't like they took a photo together one time, they're in working groups. People involved in running Genspect--people who have received grants--have received money from Alliance Defending Freedom, and Genspect is aware of the collaboration and does not condemn it. Whatever you think of trans healthcare for kids, these people are bad news
For anyone interested in the podcast I would recommend Episode 103: "Follow the gender-brick road: from bi to pan to trans," which explains why you should be worried if your child comes out as bisexual
Or, you can listen to Episode 116, which I confess I haven't listened to yet, but features Michael "Fucksaw" Bailey (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_830423) talking about the evils of identity politics
Don't forget to check out Episode 114, which features Stephen Levine, a man who has testified on behalf of conservative behemoth Alliance Defending Freedom to pass legislation targeting trans people across the country
I will be writing a follow-up post to this one in a few days that goes deeply into the scientific underpinnings of the gender critical movement and explains why each and every one of the studies they rely on are shakey at best, unscientific at worst
You are very fond of guilt-by-association, but I'll address your opening rhetorical hijack for simplicity.
The phrase "conversion therapy" has a particular history which refers to (mostly physical aversion) therapies to "cure" homosexuality, as practiced in the 1970's and 1980's. These had been abandoned by almost all licensed and secular therapists by the 1990's and, if they exist at all, MAY be practiced among a few unlicensed or similarly fringe "Christians," at least in North America. No reputable western therapist practices this, and I have yet to hear of ANY licensed therapist who does so now in the United States or European Union. There are reports of its practice in India, and I assume it still takes place in various other places. Use of the phrase outside of that context (physical aversion such as electrical shock, with the intent of changing or extinguishing sexual orientation) is an appropriative hijack and clinically inaccurate.
Are you aware of anyone in North America or Europe who practices conversion therapy as it was defined in 1995 or earlier? In the absence of that I think it would be more honest to use a different phrase.
What you have done here is list a number of people who do not share your entire worldview, and that is tribalism, not discussion. What do you have other than ad hominem guilt by association?
What evidence is there that "gender affirmation" treatment has results which are better than either traditional "watchful waiting" or placebo? Is there any evidence that claims of suicidality are higher for trans-identified youth than other LGB or gender-nonconforming youth? With adjustment for co-morbidities? Without adjustment for comorbidity? Has there been any demonstrable drop in completed suicides among youth in either group since the expansion of uncritical "affirmation?" Convenience-sample customer reviews (or anecdotes about your friends) do not count as medical evidence.
To use the phrase "conversion therapy" for open-ended treatments which do not involve physically aversive elements is rhetoric, not discussion, and I know you can do better if you ever cared to.
1) "actively works with a group" is not guilt by association and it's incredibly dishonest to frame it that way
2) plenty of evidence exists to contradict every single unscientific point you have made and in a few days I will write a substack that explains the unbelievable amount of research I did to write the Lux article. I will dismantle ROGD, I will dismantle the small-sample studies from 15 years ago, I will dismantle the small-sample Swedish-language study on suicidality that has never been translated into English, and when I'm done I will solicit other academic papers in the comments and likely demolish those too
In fact: why not do it now. List the studies that support your position, in case you have any that I have not already read, and I'll look into them
Are you conceding that you've hijacked the phrase "conversion therapy" from its original, quite specific context? If so, thank you.
Again, for simplicity, let's stick with ROGD. Rather than ask you what your specific issues are with Littman 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0202330), let's begin with the idea of social contagion.
Would you agree that social contagion is a real phenomenon, and exists among adolescents of either sex?
What I said, specifically, is that exploratory therapy is identical to gay conversion therapy with the word "trans" subbed in for '"gay." This is objectively true. The theories on what made people gay and how to make them stop are identical to the exploratory therapy ideas on what make people trans and how to make them stop.
Littman's ROGD paper had to be republished with heavy modifications due to overly ambitious claims: it is a hypothesis that requires further experimentation to test. Where are the experiments? Wherefore the confirming studies? It's been 5 years
The rest will have to wait, I'm afraid. Let us continue this conversation after I present my evidence at length in the next substack
What do you think is necessary for a reestablishment of cultural trust in science administrations? Is it even possible or worthwhile?
How old do you think that people generally have to be to make informed medical decisions about themselves, and would you generally support laws which attempt to lower the age at which kids require consent from their parents to obtain medical treatment (say, in Oregon, where the current age for puberty blockers w/o parental consent is 14 and there is a bill which proposes to lower the age of required parental consent)?
That's such a good question--I think it's going to take a long time, I'm talking decades, though I hope I'm wrong. Admitting COVID missteps is risky, but a risk I think would be worth it because admitting mistakes means you aren't just some dogmatic partisan. Also, if we could stop dumbing down science in ways meant to reassure the public that would be great. "We know there are no side effects to the vaccine" is a patently ridiculous statement that any thinking person can see through. "There are no long-term studies, but we have reason to believe there aren't side effects and the benefits vastly outweigh the risks" is more correct. We should do that more, I think (and for the record I am double vaxxed and boosted)
Re: informed medical decisions, that's tough. I think the age goes up the more irreversible the change. Puberty blockers are a reversible change--you stop taking them and the puberty stops being blocked. Hormones are much less reversible. 14 seems too old for an age limit to me, since most kids will be in the middle of puberty by that point. Hormone age should be older than puberty blocker age (in my opinion)
There’s always been a pendulum swing between the embraces of “enlightenment” science and romanticisim throughout history in popular culture. Look at the spiritualists and mesmers and other hucksters back in the 19th century, only to give way to post WW2 embrace of science and rationality. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is an entire book, written in the 90s, about the oncoming rush of romanticism/pseudoscience. A lot of the traditional cultural fulcrums and shifts are identified and discussed in that book. It’s one of my favorite pieces of Sagan writing.
What he didn’t anticipate was the technocratic neoliberal “silicon valley” culture of bloviating promises of world-altering developments matched with huckster money fleecing. For literally 20+ years now we’ve had billionaire shitweasels tell us how their subscription based repackaging of existing goods and services was going to completely and fundamentally revolutionize the world through the bleeding edge, and sometimes beyond the bleeding edge, of science.
It’s all garbage though, hype built upon some pop psychology in order to hit unicorn status and cash out on an IPO. That left the impression in the public of science as basically little more than culture and hype, and left us ripe for exploitation in a more political sphere.
There’s a lot of other elements combining together too. You could probably easily write a book or at least a series of essays on it all.
As for when? Yeah. It’ll take decades. Science needs some new breakthroughs to create new, unexplored fields of science, where new developments and new benefits to our lives are happening frequently. It’s hard to be blase about science when it’s doing shit like eradicating smallpox or landing on the moon or creating computers that went from taking up entire rooms to fitting on a desk to fitting in your pocket in one lifetime.
But that fast advancement of a number of different fields happened decades ago. The low lying fruit has been claimed. What’s left in those fields is hard to reach, requiring huge teams, large budgets, and slow, persistent research. And that’s not sexy and is full of failures.
exactly this
All organizations need to address issues of "institutional capture" by motivated subgroups, particularly of trade groups, "professional organizations" and educational institutions. WPATH unilaterally declared itself the authority in this area, and "chain of trust" convenience led to abdication by others.
Adults need to assert adult authority and daylight how easily a relatively small cadre of motivated actors can hijack entire institutions. This happened with regulatory agencies many years ago at the federal level, and has been leveraged across many other institutions, with "gender affirmation" being just one example.
I actually cheered when I sat down at lunch and pulled up substack and saw a new article (*two* new articles in fact) to read.
Weirdly, I had the exact reaction to the email subject that you didn’t expect. It went something like “Science????”
If I had noticed the “(Political)” I would probably not have had quite that initial response. In any event, this post was your usual high quality (thank you) and I have the article proper queued up.
Genuine and heartfelt congratulations on being saner than 99.9% of the population, including me (it didn't occur to me how weird the whole situation was until after Moore said what she did about the debate)
Thank you for this work. You have a right to be proud of this piece.
Your sources seem the bog-standard, industrial US ones, but you might want to look east to the European Union and United Kingdom, where less profit-driven providers are reviewing the evidence with medical standards and less "gender essence" ideology.
• https://archive.ph/6iu5J
• https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-becomes-transgender-care-outlier-as-more-in-europe-urge-caution-6c70b5e0
• https://www.city-journal.org/article/yes-europe-is-restricting-gender-affirming-care
See also Hannah Barnes' recent book Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children.
Pediatric "gender affirmation" is the greatest US medical debacle since the lobotomy fad, which was (like eugenics) strongly supported by key medical lobbies.
What is “bog-standard”?
It is British slang for "basic" or unremarkable.
Beginning with the idea of “First, do no harm,” I can see the case for delaying irreversible hormonal and surgical treatments as long as practical. The actual timing is best left to the child and their supporters who love them, which hopefully includes their parents. But since I want to build a society that supports delaying irreversible decisions, I think the way to do that is to be fully accepting of gender queer and gender non-conforming people. Allow everyone to dress and present themselves as they want. If every 5th grader can where jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt on Monday and a blouse and skirt on Tuesday, without bullying or pearl clutching, it will be a lot easier for each of those kids to search for who they are and love the person they find.
From there, the some kids will follow their inner self to hormones and surgeries with no regrets. But importantly, others will decide that the gender fluid space is where they belong, and not feel pressured to jump one way or another. To be clear, I do not want to make medical decisions for others, and I don’t want state governments to do it either. But I do want to live in a society that minimizes the need for anyone to make medical decisions just to live and be accepted as the person they are.
Sadly, current political fights are geared to preventing this kind of gender acceptance. Maybe in another generation we reduce the fixation on binary gender.
You might want to look into second-wave feminist projects such as Marlo Thomas' Free To Be You and Me. Gender nonconformity and the destruction of sexist (gender) stereotypes was central. If you have a chance to see the 1974 television special of that name, I highly recommend it. Major parts of it are available on YouTube, with the album also digitized and still available for play or purchase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_Be..._You_and_Me
The second-wave feminists now derided as "TERFs" mostly solved this problem, but are now demonized.
2nd wave feminism did a lot of good, but was peripheral to trans and non-binary gender issues. “Free to Be You and Me” came out only 5 years after Stonewall. Most of the LGBTQ+ community was still deeply hidden from public life. My thought is that if you are really concerned about children receiving irreversible, gender-affirming care too early, we in the wider society should maximize non-medical, gender affirming care and acceptance, not ban it like so many states are doing.
To stay with a musical analogy, this is not Marlo Thomas singing “Free to Be You and Me,” this is The Kinks singing “Lola.”
Best pediatric past practice for decades has been support of the individual (not sexist "gender") through puberty, with "watchful waiting" and attention to all other possible co-morbidities, which shows that the vast majority of gender-anxious youth resolve as LGB with normal puberty. This is the "treatment" which was standard from the 1970's forward, and helped lead to the destigmatization of homosexuality, normalization of marriage equality and similar WITHOUT stigmatization or lifelong iatrogenic dependency.
We do well to support the individual, NOT the "gender" stereotype, and consider what makes for any evidence-based treatment. Supportive "watchful waiting" has a proven track record with no harmful side effects, and remains the gold standard by all normal, objective measures.
Do you have a list of criteria that would convince you that any treatment is legitimate? What are its elements? How might that be actively applied to all current cases? Retroactively used to examine past cases? To track the success of current treatments over the next 5-10 years?
Various claims are made by "gender" clinicians, but without robust evidence, and certainly nothing approaching the past success of "watchful waiting." Such is the consensus emerging out of Sweden and Finland and other nations who examine the issue with a more objective, medical lens and standards.
Thanks for this post and I'll read your article. As a long transitioned trans man, or "man of transsexual history" -- as I prefer -- this topic has been extraordinarily disturbing. It took me a bit to see past Genspect's psuedo-scientific bloviating to their very real biases. We all have bias, but in their case, there was a snake in the grass pretending to be otherwise. I had many tweets back and forth with "gender critical" folks to establish that most of them are not speaking in good faith. They would deny to my "face" on Twitter, what I told them about the state of my own health, claiming against my protests that I must be in bad health -- despite all evidence to the contrary. They would say I would "regret" transition soon enough, but then, I told them it's been 34 years -- I don't think so. At any rate, your comments about this org and the general mistrust of science now, following Covid are apt. Hopefully, good sense and real "evidence-based care" will prevail.
I’ve been a subscriber for years and have always enjoyed your take on the conservative milieu. You’re at your journalistic best when rubbing elbows with drunk republicans in hotel bars.
When it comes to gender ideology though I feel your coverage is dishonest. You paint your opponents as cultural conservatives, without ever acknowledging that the TERF leadership is largely radical feminists. For every Matt Walsh there are a dozen Kara Danskys and Megan Murphys: for every Ben Shapiro there are a hundred Julie Bindels and Kathleen Stocks.
Does gender ideology pose a threat to women? Absolutely! But you never acknowledge that male predators are being housed in Women’s prisons, or that male cheats have destroyed women’s sports. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns. There’s a dark side you work hard to keep in the dark.
I will continue to read your work because I like having my beliefs challenged. Thank you for that. But you’ve got a long way to go to persuade me that humans can change sex.
I'm a little bit surprirsed by this comment, since I think the article I wrote for Lux did a pretty good job of explaining the connection between this specific group and conservative actors. You're correct that I don't talk about women's prisons or women's sports: I also don't talk about the military-industrial complex or the flooding in Vermont
Whatever else my coverage may be, I think "dishonest" is strong. Regardless, glad you're reading and I'll be doing a follow-up post about why I think gender-affirming care is the right way to go in a few days
People are losing their jobs and being thrown out of organizations for asserting that biological sex is a reality which has informed the creation of single-sex spaces, which serve legitimate needs within public policy.
Stories and articles on "gender identity" as a scientific or public policy matter have been commissioned, and then killed. Freelancers with strong records across multiple marquee publications have been unable to interest editors in these topics, or been iced out completely for suggesting it. People with legitimate and substantive angles are actively denied the opportunity to publish, had their online accounts terminated because of complaint, and ONLY able to find voice or get published by marginal (sometimes "right wing") publications.
To accuse those independent actors of "working with" or "cozying up" to the only outlets which will rent them a room, employ them or publish their material is dishonest.
"Dishonest" is a mild and moderate word here.
When a person cannot meet basic needs because they are harassed and exiled, they may be forced to second or third or fourth-choice possibilities.
Are you familiar with the recent movie Affirmation Generation, which featured many of the voices you vilify? It was made with private money, then posted for free on Vimeo for a short time, before complaints of "transphobia" got it taken down. It was then briefly hosted as a "pay-per-view" feature and doing moderately well, before a distributor picked it up. That distributor then rented AMC theaters for theatrical showings nationwide, but AMC was harassed until all of those showings were canceled, city by city.
What alternatives are there to rationally speak moderate but heterodox views when "activists" (freneticists really, de-facto religious zealots) make harassment of reasonable women their main goal?
Compare and contrast this with the way that some would deny other groups economic and educational opportunity, then rail on about what marginal jobs they hold or how prone they are to degeneracy and criminal activity. The left ostracizes and evicts moderate and mature voices, then blames them for being homeless or finding shelter where they can.
The authoritarian left is deeply puritan and getting off on sadism against moderate and good-faith actors, mostly women.
As someone who was a radical feminist in the seventies, before I transitioned to male in the late eighties -- I can tell you that the basis of second wave radical feminist anti-trans ideology is misandry. They blamed transsexuality on patriarchy and capitalism. It began with a book published in 1979, _The Transgender Empire_ by Janice Raymond. The title of which has now been hijacked by Chris Rufo in a recent newsletter going on against transsexual care generally. At any rate, you are right that the crazies on the rad feminist left are responsible ultimately for a lot of the anti-trans ideology we see sweeping the socially conservative right. Strange bedfellows! At any rate, the whole "men in women's spaces" is driven as much by misandry and hysteria as it is by fact. I can tell you that trans women have been going into women's bathrooms and lockerrooms for years now, decades -- and no one seemed to notice till relatively recently.
Of course, the sports issue and others are best handled by the NCAA, Olympic committee and others -- and NOT GOP lead invitatives to deny trans women entry to sports. The culture wars are not the place to ajudicate these important issues.
The TERF style feminists of the seventies lost the battle here in the US to third and fourth generation feminists at least thirty years ago. Though some persisted. There are younger recruits. The Meghan Murphys of the world are old style in comparison to third and fourth wavers now -- but they are around. Notably, often outside the USA. At any rate, Murphy and others of that ilk are now bitterly complaining that Matt Walsh et al are stealing their ideas. Well, I suppose they are. Walsh and Knowles are anything but feminist and I think it's just desserts that Murphy and Bindal would have their anti-trans agenda seized by what amount to right wing reactionaries.
For the record, I don't support censorship or non-platforming generally or - hate speech laws. The non-platforming and cancellation of people like Murphy on campus or at libraries have only led to their being platformed by larger outlets like Tucker Carlson. Giving these folks victim status has not made their message any more rational but it has given them grievance megaphones.
I am happy to see Laura taking on this subject and will be interested in what else she has to say.