Not to gild the lily here, but to piggyback as your unofficial (unwanted?!) correspondent from the Blue Bubble, there are two opposing primary values here that can never be squared, the first value being Truth (w in this case a healthy dash of Do No Harm) and the second being Compassion.
Whenever I raise this issue with anyone I know I'm met with a Great Wall of Compassion, with arguments like this, sometimes singular, sometimes combined:
If it makes one sad suicidal child feel better, it's worth it; so what if I have to use a new pronoun or pretend that dude w stubble and linebacker shoulders is a girl (or let them in my bathroom)? it's fine if it makes them feel better; it doesn't harm anyone's child to learn about Gender Theory in grade school, it's "inclusive" and "tolerant"; why do you care!!?; why do you care if some kid takes puberty blockers, they're reversible and it's not your business; there's always been gay or Trans kids, they're just expressing themselves now in ways that make you feel threatened; then of course the cherry on top: when did you become a Trump-loving Fox News-watching Republican?
Abandon all hope ye who enter! Conspicuous compassion is simply the must-have item of our time, the ultimate bauble to express your inherent superiority, and whatever kids or adults are harmed here will just have to be sacrificed on the altar—Compassion demands it!
Of all the insanity we have witnessed from the progressive left, this is the most disturbing.
It’s crystal clear that progressives have a strong aversion to children. They had no second thoughts at all about how they treated children during COVID. Here in Illinois, children 2 and over were forced to wear masks all day, every day for 2 years. Oh, it’s no big deal; kids are resilient.
They have treated abortion as a sacrament for years, and make it the central focus of their agenda.
The trans hysteria is the modern-day version of alchemy- we can turn boys into girls and vice-versa. At least medieval alchemists only experimented on metals, not on young children. It seems the ultimate goal is to force people to deny reality, in favor of progressive pronouncements. Boys can so be girls, and 2+2 really does equal 5!
But why do they consistently choose children as the focus of their attacks on civilization? What kind of monstrous evil does that?
Its becoming apparent that there is a strong aversion to reproductive sex and a determination, which has been going on for some time, to separate sex from the biological imperative.
about 6 months ago I started following the PITT Substack (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans). it’s mostly testimonials from parents (mothers) who are experiencing one of their children in varying states of transition or estranged from the ones who did. they are all pretty heartbreaking as you can imagine. the most interesting aspect is that 9 out of 10 testimonials all start the same: very liberal households with yard signs, Obama pins, Pride flags and uber Democrat. they support and say all the progressive shibboleths until the Trans comes home. then they start tapping the brakes.
it’s all fun and right side of history until your beautiful, feminine 15 year old daughter decides she wants surgery and hormones. then your whole world explodes.
the moral of the story? it’s one thing to support the progressive narrative until it effects your family directly. and yes, like vaccine mandates, it will be hard to find anyone who will admit to greenlighting PBs and surgery for kids in 4-5 years...
Liberals are the same when it comes to crime. White liberals pushed to "defund the police" along with professional black activists. I think it was a poll by Pew of black Americans that said 70%+ wanted the same level of police or more. But no, your white saviors believe otherwise and will make it so.
The scariest people are those who think they are doing the right thing but in reality are destroying the world.
While I lived in California I came across an interesting statistic. That there are more armed private security than there are police. Defunding the police just means potentially fewer taxes. It does not mean less protection for the wealthy. I once chanced walking through a wealthier neighborhood near the coast while walking my dog. I can vouch for the fact of their being many private patrols of every street in those neighborhoods continually. Cross the demarcation street between well off & wealthy & they no longer patrol.
Sounds like closeted conservatives to me, they proclaim to be liberal yet live their own lives by conservative values. 2 parent heterosexual family in the suburbs, education is important and so on. And when it starts hitting them instead of poor working class people they're surprised that the luxury beliefs can backfire.
"And even when this deranged ideology finally collapses in on itself like a dying star, and gender dysphoria is finally seen as a psychopathology that should be treated rather than an identity to be celebrated, those who supported the medicalization of children will remain wrapped in the mantle of moral absolutism. They will not apologize. Their alibi will be that Good People™ couldn’t help but be swept away by this multi-year ideological intoxication."
Indeed, they will claim that they were NEVER for this OBVIOUSLY terrible thing. And the ones who haven't sterilized their children might even believe it one day.
I think the reaction will be the typical narcissist reaction: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Narcissism is a common trait with these virtue-signaling activists who seem to constantly feel the urge to signal to the world that they're good people even though they're behaving terribly. They have replaced personality with identity and hope that their loud words replace any sort of virtuous action and they think that activism is a substitute for doing something of value. Ironically, activism is one of the most passive things one can do.
Thank you for this Brad. I appreciate the hard work that goes into it.
I live in a liberal college town that is ground zero for this toxic gender ideology pushed through the K-12 public school system. The number of mostly young pre-teen and teen females claiming gender disphoria or trans identity is significantly over the national average. Not ironically so is the incidence of diagnosed depression and other mental health problems in the local K-12 student population.
We know the science is fake by our common sense and observation. These kids hit puberty and get awkward and hormonal. Many are a confused mess of emotional reactions they don't yet have the developed frontal lobe to process. The are on Instagram seeing the pretty and popular people, and lacking coping skills and understanding that they will grow and change over the next several years to become more comfortable in their skin, they do what young people do and over-react that they are different and don't fit in.
But instead of adults in the education system mentoring them to a calm place, the radicals in control exploit those strong childish emotions to push the kids into a toxic gender ideology that backs a political agenda. These radicals are evil.
The frustrating part is the lack of science speaking out against this. With this post I am a bit more hopeful that the tide is turning.
Physicians are separated into three types: clinicians, researchers, and bureaucrats. I trust the first two types, I do not trust bureaucrats, because they are no different from any other bureaucrats worldwide.
My compassion is for those who have been misled and often mutilated in the name of caring and who either choose to ignore or disbelieve science in favor of their misguided and evil gender ideology.
When the gender dysphoria death star implodes, as it must, there will be no consequences for the insane zealots who constructed it, no repercussions, and certainly no apologies, just as with the Russian collusion hoax, the Covid insanity etc etc......
My BIL is a good point. He fought it until he caved. (There are mitigating circumstance in his case especially as his child went through this long before the contagion erupted.) However, once he caved he went all in with the ideology. He's a pretty typical prog so once he got his talking points it was off to the races. But dont you dare remind him of the things he said before he caved.
It's good to know it wasn't because of social pressure. I would imagine you have to lie to yourself to look in the mirror daily. What a horrible way to live.
yeah this was a unique case. Adopted orphan with serious identity issues early on, among other problems. Professional intervention early, especially this was a the time were that might have helped, but frankly I am not sure of that. But this case to me is the exception to the rule.
I will say that his child was the first case the local HS saw and it was a dream come true. They were ready. I see a lot of wish fulfillment going on with the educational and medical community. They willed this contagion into being. Truly evil people
Ugh, yeah I can imagine them being happy that they finally get to show how good they are by pushing a kid along into transition. It also seems that teachers, administrators and school "counselors" often meddle in the mental health of kids, pushing them into therapy and pharmaceuticals.
I agree with you there. I think they want more and more money and more and more "different" people in the world to make them all feel better about themselves. It's gross.
oh yeah that is a factor I cannot miss when i see the teachers and administrators pushing this. Without exception, every one is fat and/or ugly. Sounds mean I know and it is sad, but it does not mean Im wrong.
I suspect that’s exactly how many of them live each day. They know what leftists are doing is wrong. But they are too afraid of what leftists will do to them if they step out of line. They say they fear Trump and his supporters. What really terrifies them is each other.
Transgenderism is real but exceedingly rare - less than one-quarter the number of flat-earthers globally. There is no known medical, including environmental, source or cause for clusters, leaving social contagion the most likely source. Ethical psychiatrists don't medicalize the condition in children or teen-agers. The brain is still developing until the age 24-26, most of those treated with talk therapy and, where needed, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications "grow out of" self-reported transgenderism. Many turn out to br gay.
When you hear "The science is settled," run, don't walk, away. Science is never settled. The speed of light is an upper limit, right? Maybe not. The speed of the effect of gravity has not been determined. There is anecdotal evidence that it is as much as 2.5c.
In 1985 I was offered a spot for an experiment on the International Space Station. I proposed an experiment to measure the effect of the speed of gravity, but did not have the time to develop and vet the protocols, despite access to the best scientists and engineers in the nation through the national labs. Without those the experiment would be useless. I withdrew it almost immediately.
Give it a rest Einstein, the science is settled... In most sciences it is bad form to not put some suggestions for where further research is needed into your papers, you gotta keep that grant money flowing.
I don't think there is a lot of actual science on this. You can't do any experiment since it would be unethical to experiment on children. There is no way any experiment would get past an ethics review board, yet somehow this made it into clinical practice. But heavens forfeit if you prescribe "horse dewormer".
My point is that it's stupid to say the science is settled and no self-respecting scientist (or one looking for further grant money) would use a phrase like that.
"[T]he trans agenda … is an effort to entrap children into a miserable life of despair to help normalize the mental illness of a very small number of adults."
My 3 brothers and I (four boys, I'm the oldest) were raised by a hard working (glorious) single mother. We went to 10-13 different schools growing up, with attendant struggles, most of them unique to our personalities. For the earlier grades I'd assess the environment and adopt personality quirks that would, in my young opinion, help me "fit in" to each new school, i.e. for my Greenwich Village 4th and 5th grade I'd raise my hand to answer the teacher's questions, for my majority black school I'd walk and talk "street", for my low-income majority white school in a former steel town, I stopped answering easy questions in class after a few fist fights with my (hulking) classmates accusing me of thinking I was "hot shit". Soon I discovered my best ways forward in new schools was to play dumb, act tough, and fight if necessary... eventually I learned my personal key to social acceptance and a sense of well being was to yell out jokes in class; one day in the 9th grade of a brutally bad school I was basking in the accolades of winning "Class Clown", and joyfully told my mother. She got mad, even though she knew the school sucked, and told me academics are important to escape poverty (the 5 of us lived in my grandmother's upstairs 1 bedroom area, our dining table a 6' piece of plywood over our bathtub), and I got furious at her. Years later I told her of course she was right. Any great loving wonderful glorious (liberal) supportive hard working great mother like mine who knew to mention a factoid about academics, would also know that I wouldn't be ready to shoot up chemicals and gulp meds and start slicing & dicing my body, and any parent who encourages this procedure on their under-18 year old children are mentally ill monsters, to a one. Most normal people know this whole thing involving kids is monstrous, and I'm betting it becomes the camel's nose in the tent of pendulum swings that need to happen, and quick.
This will go down as crime on par with the sterilization of the tribal people of Canada, the sterilization of the Sami in Sweden & other medical horrors that are recorded from this century & the previous centuries. Cries & accusations, horrors & finally apologizes but no real punishments nor restitutions. The p es truly responsible will avoid it all. Those who aided & abetted this will express remorse, possibly even select one of their less well favored to face a public persecution as a ritual sacrifice to exonerate the others.
One question of the demographics and the preponderance of girls. I bet if you get more granular regarding income groups and social glass the statistics become even more stark
And autistic people. My son (adult) goes through things like this and always has. Once, he walked around on his tiptoes with his "claws" out hissing at people for 6 months because he was a dinosaur. They like to mimic. And, the people who've done this to mentally challenged people should rot in jail.
Nailed it, as usual.
Not to gild the lily here, but to piggyback as your unofficial (unwanted?!) correspondent from the Blue Bubble, there are two opposing primary values here that can never be squared, the first value being Truth (w in this case a healthy dash of Do No Harm) and the second being Compassion.
Whenever I raise this issue with anyone I know I'm met with a Great Wall of Compassion, with arguments like this, sometimes singular, sometimes combined:
If it makes one sad suicidal child feel better, it's worth it; so what if I have to use a new pronoun or pretend that dude w stubble and linebacker shoulders is a girl (or let them in my bathroom)? it's fine if it makes them feel better; it doesn't harm anyone's child to learn about Gender Theory in grade school, it's "inclusive" and "tolerant"; why do you care!!?; why do you care if some kid takes puberty blockers, they're reversible and it's not your business; there's always been gay or Trans kids, they're just expressing themselves now in ways that make you feel threatened; then of course the cherry on top: when did you become a Trump-loving Fox News-watching Republican?
Abandon all hope ye who enter! Conspicuous compassion is simply the must-have item of our time, the ultimate bauble to express your inherent superiority, and whatever kids or adults are harmed here will just have to be sacrificed on the altar—Compassion demands it!
I guess there is a benefit to having enough tragedy on my CV that I can be extremely selective in how I deploy my compassion..
Of all the insanity we have witnessed from the progressive left, this is the most disturbing.
It’s crystal clear that progressives have a strong aversion to children. They had no second thoughts at all about how they treated children during COVID. Here in Illinois, children 2 and over were forced to wear masks all day, every day for 2 years. Oh, it’s no big deal; kids are resilient.
They have treated abortion as a sacrament for years, and make it the central focus of their agenda.
The trans hysteria is the modern-day version of alchemy- we can turn boys into girls and vice-versa. At least medieval alchemists only experimented on metals, not on young children. It seems the ultimate goal is to force people to deny reality, in favor of progressive pronouncements. Boys can so be girls, and 2+2 really does equal 5!
But why do they consistently choose children as the focus of their attacks on civilization? What kind of monstrous evil does that?
The ultimate goal is to eradicate the nuclear family. It's hard to do that if children are treated as children rather than an individual.
Its becoming apparent that there is a strong aversion to reproductive sex and a determination, which has been going on for some time, to separate sex from the biological imperative.
"It seems the ultimate goal is to force people to deny reality …"
That's it.
about 6 months ago I started following the PITT Substack (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans). it’s mostly testimonials from parents (mothers) who are experiencing one of their children in varying states of transition or estranged from the ones who did. they are all pretty heartbreaking as you can imagine. the most interesting aspect is that 9 out of 10 testimonials all start the same: very liberal households with yard signs, Obama pins, Pride flags and uber Democrat. they support and say all the progressive shibboleths until the Trans comes home. then they start tapping the brakes.
it’s all fun and right side of history until your beautiful, feminine 15 year old daughter decides she wants surgery and hormones. then your whole world explodes.
the moral of the story? it’s one thing to support the progressive narrative until it effects your family directly. and yes, like vaccine mandates, it will be hard to find anyone who will admit to greenlighting PBs and surgery for kids in 4-5 years...
Liberals are the same when it comes to crime. White liberals pushed to "defund the police" along with professional black activists. I think it was a poll by Pew of black Americans that said 70%+ wanted the same level of police or more. But no, your white saviors believe otherwise and will make it so.
The scariest people are those who think they are doing the right thing but in reality are destroying the world.
While I lived in California I came across an interesting statistic. That there are more armed private security than there are police. Defunding the police just means potentially fewer taxes. It does not mean less protection for the wealthy. I once chanced walking through a wealthier neighborhood near the coast while walking my dog. I can vouch for the fact of their being many private patrols of every street in those neighborhoods continually. Cross the demarcation street between well off & wealthy & they no longer patrol.
Makes sense. Those in their ivory towers won't experience the consequences of their enlightened viewpoints. They're too good for that.
yeah - funny how that happens. the flip side is they double down on that sh!t.
Sounds like closeted conservatives to me, they proclaim to be liberal yet live their own lives by conservative values. 2 parent heterosexual family in the suburbs, education is important and so on. And when it starts hitting them instead of poor working class people they're surprised that the luxury beliefs can backfire.
"And even when this deranged ideology finally collapses in on itself like a dying star, and gender dysphoria is finally seen as a psychopathology that should be treated rather than an identity to be celebrated, those who supported the medicalization of children will remain wrapped in the mantle of moral absolutism. They will not apologize. Their alibi will be that Good People™ couldn’t help but be swept away by this multi-year ideological intoxication."
Indeed, they will claim that they were NEVER for this OBVIOUSLY terrible thing. And the ones who haven't sterilized their children might even believe it one day.
I think the reaction will be the typical narcissist reaction: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Narcissism is a common trait with these virtue-signaling activists who seem to constantly feel the urge to signal to the world that they're good people even though they're behaving terribly. They have replaced personality with identity and hope that their loud words replace any sort of virtuous action and they think that activism is a substitute for doing something of value. Ironically, activism is one of the most passive things one can do.
Thank you for this Brad. I appreciate the hard work that goes into it.
I live in a liberal college town that is ground zero for this toxic gender ideology pushed through the K-12 public school system. The number of mostly young pre-teen and teen females claiming gender disphoria or trans identity is significantly over the national average. Not ironically so is the incidence of diagnosed depression and other mental health problems in the local K-12 student population.
We know the science is fake by our common sense and observation. These kids hit puberty and get awkward and hormonal. Many are a confused mess of emotional reactions they don't yet have the developed frontal lobe to process. The are on Instagram seeing the pretty and popular people, and lacking coping skills and understanding that they will grow and change over the next several years to become more comfortable in their skin, they do what young people do and over-react that they are different and don't fit in.
But instead of adults in the education system mentoring them to a calm place, the radicals in control exploit those strong childish emotions to push the kids into a toxic gender ideology that backs a political agenda. These radicals are evil.
The frustrating part is the lack of science speaking out against this. With this post I am a bit more hopeful that the tide is turning.
The abdication of most doctors and scientists is, in my opinion, criminal.
as Ive said before, they have become the moral descendants of Mengele.
When I read the story of David Reimer and the doctor who tortured him I immediately thought of Mengele.
Remember - Mengele believed h e was working in the service medicine and to advance mankind.
Agreed.
Physicians are separated into three types: clinicians, researchers, and bureaucrats. I trust the first two types, I do not trust bureaucrats, because they are no different from any other bureaucrats worldwide.
My compassion is for those who have been misled and often mutilated in the name of caring and who either choose to ignore or disbelieve science in favor of their misguided and evil gender ideology.
When the gender dysphoria death star implodes, as it must, there will be no consequences for the insane zealots who constructed it, no repercussions, and certainly no apologies, just as with the Russian collusion hoax, the Covid insanity etc etc......
Can you even imagine being the parents of these kids when they turn 21 or 25? I would never, ever, ever forgive my parents.
My BIL is a good point. He fought it until he caved. (There are mitigating circumstance in his case especially as his child went through this long before the contagion erupted.) However, once he caved he went all in with the ideology. He's a pretty typical prog so once he got his talking points it was off to the races. But dont you dare remind him of the things he said before he caved.
It's good to know it wasn't because of social pressure. I would imagine you have to lie to yourself to look in the mirror daily. What a horrible way to live.
yeah this was a unique case. Adopted orphan with serious identity issues early on, among other problems. Professional intervention early, especially this was a the time were that might have helped, but frankly I am not sure of that. But this case to me is the exception to the rule.
I will say that his child was the first case the local HS saw and it was a dream come true. They were ready. I see a lot of wish fulfillment going on with the educational and medical community. They willed this contagion into being. Truly evil people
Ugh, yeah I can imagine them being happy that they finally get to show how good they are by pushing a kid along into transition. It also seems that teachers, administrators and school "counselors" often meddle in the mental health of kids, pushing them into therapy and pharmaceuticals.
seems like a lot of payback for their unhappy chilhoods.
I agree with you there. I think they want more and more money and more and more "different" people in the world to make them all feel better about themselves. It's gross.
oh yeah that is a factor I cannot miss when i see the teachers and administrators pushing this. Without exception, every one is fat and/or ugly. Sounds mean I know and it is sad, but it does not mean Im wrong.
How many of them have children of their own?
No. You are not wrong. At all.
I suspect that’s exactly how many of them live each day. They know what leftists are doing is wrong. But they are too afraid of what leftists will do to them if they step out of line. They say they fear Trump and his supporters. What really terrifies them is each other.
100%.
I pray sane and rational people heed this data as many of us have been saying from day 1. Europe seems to have awoken.
Transgenderism is real but exceedingly rare - less than one-quarter the number of flat-earthers globally. There is no known medical, including environmental, source or cause for clusters, leaving social contagion the most likely source. Ethical psychiatrists don't medicalize the condition in children or teen-agers. The brain is still developing until the age 24-26, most of those treated with talk therapy and, where needed, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications "grow out of" self-reported transgenderism. Many turn out to br gay.
When you hear "The science is settled," run, don't walk, away. Science is never settled. The speed of light is an upper limit, right? Maybe not. The speed of the effect of gravity has not been determined. There is anecdotal evidence that it is as much as 2.5c.
In 1985 I was offered a spot for an experiment on the International Space Station. I proposed an experiment to measure the effect of the speed of gravity, but did not have the time to develop and vet the protocols, despite access to the best scientists and engineers in the nation through the national labs. Without those the experiment would be useless. I withdrew it almost immediately.
Give it a rest Einstein, the science is settled... In most sciences it is bad form to not put some suggestions for where further research is needed into your papers, you gotta keep that grant money flowing.
Is your point that the peer-reviewed science supports gender-affirming care at any age?
I don't think there is a lot of actual science on this. You can't do any experiment since it would be unethical to experiment on children. There is no way any experiment would get past an ethics review board, yet somehow this made it into clinical practice. But heavens forfeit if you prescribe "horse dewormer".
My point is that it's stupid to say the science is settled and no self-respecting scientist (or one looking for further grant money) would use a phrase like that.
The ideology is settled.
"[T]he trans agenda … is an effort to entrap children into a miserable life of despair to help normalize the mental illness of a very small number of adults."
Exactly.
My 3 brothers and I (four boys, I'm the oldest) were raised by a hard working (glorious) single mother. We went to 10-13 different schools growing up, with attendant struggles, most of them unique to our personalities. For the earlier grades I'd assess the environment and adopt personality quirks that would, in my young opinion, help me "fit in" to each new school, i.e. for my Greenwich Village 4th and 5th grade I'd raise my hand to answer the teacher's questions, for my majority black school I'd walk and talk "street", for my low-income majority white school in a former steel town, I stopped answering easy questions in class after a few fist fights with my (hulking) classmates accusing me of thinking I was "hot shit". Soon I discovered my best ways forward in new schools was to play dumb, act tough, and fight if necessary... eventually I learned my personal key to social acceptance and a sense of well being was to yell out jokes in class; one day in the 9th grade of a brutally bad school I was basking in the accolades of winning "Class Clown", and joyfully told my mother. She got mad, even though she knew the school sucked, and told me academics are important to escape poverty (the 5 of us lived in my grandmother's upstairs 1 bedroom area, our dining table a 6' piece of plywood over our bathtub), and I got furious at her. Years later I told her of course she was right. Any great loving wonderful glorious (liberal) supportive hard working great mother like mine who knew to mention a factoid about academics, would also know that I wouldn't be ready to shoot up chemicals and gulp meds and start slicing & dicing my body, and any parent who encourages this procedure on their under-18 year old children are mentally ill monsters, to a one. Most normal people know this whole thing involving kids is monstrous, and I'm betting it becomes the camel's nose in the tent of pendulum swings that need to happen, and quick.
This will go down as crime on par with the sterilization of the tribal people of Canada, the sterilization of the Sami in Sweden & other medical horrors that are recorded from this century & the previous centuries. Cries & accusations, horrors & finally apologizes but no real punishments nor restitutions. The p es truly responsible will avoid it all. Those who aided & abetted this will express remorse, possibly even select one of their less well favored to face a public persecution as a ritual sacrifice to exonerate the others.
One question of the demographics and the preponderance of girls. I bet if you get more granular regarding income groups and social glass the statistics become even more stark
And autistic people. My son (adult) goes through things like this and always has. Once, he walked around on his tiptoes with his "claws" out hissing at people for 6 months because he was a dinosaur. They like to mimic. And, the people who've done this to mentally challenged people should rot in jail.
good point - and I agree