I absolutely admire Jesse for not having gone 'Jimmy Concepts' by now.
The shit he gets in a single day by the likes of Hobbes would be enough to make most people lose their mind (and principles).
I'm really curious how long it will take the Hobbeses of this world to go from "No one would be irresponsible enough to give a deeply troubled kid like this hormones/blockers" to "Repeat after me: Human. Helicopters. Are. Helicopters."
Jesse, please! Absolutely NO ONE is attempting to "ban youth gender medicine", as you falsely claim here.
What many, including me, are trying to ban is unsupported-by-evidence harmful measures that should be banned just like all sorts of other proposed drugs and treatments that have not been proven to be both safe and effective.
Safe and effective psychological and psychiatric treatment for gender dysphoria is fully supported by all.
I don’t understand what the hedging is supposed to accomplish. He has to make sure everyone knows he’s not a conservative when everyone who is reading this and giving him a fair shake *knows* this. I’m personally pro-banning any and all unnecessary medicalization of children, but Jesse constantly implies that makes me on the same team as Sean Hannity. It’s distracting and upsetting. Surely he understands the feeling of being associated with people you have nothing in common with?
I think Jesse’s views have been fairly well articulated through his writing.
He doesn’t think it’s a good idea for the state to interfere with what should be a purely medical decision and I suspect he would be especially concerned about it being done in an area with so much room for ideological confounders.
What he wants is for the medical establishment themselves to be carefully examining the evidence for treatments and ensuring that those affected are being carefully assessed in a way that mitigates risks of undue harm.
He’s also been pretty clear that he leans towards the views of many of even the more conservative clinicians he’s interviewed in that he thinks that in certain, well assessed cases, youth transition may be the right treatment, so state bans are obviously not something he’s going to be on board with.
That said, I don’t think he would claim everyone who is in favour of restrictions is in the same camp as Hannity, or at least I’ve never seen him write anything to that effect.
I *know* what he believes and I don’t understand why you feel the need to explain this to me. I read everything he writes. That is not what I was talking about. I’m talking about the constant snide phrasing of “Republican bans on youth gender medicine” as if placing “Republican” at the beginning of something is supposed to speak for itself and work as an obvious modifier for “bad.” Parents who “help” their children transition? He means parents who teach their children they can change sex and bring their children into clinics and sign off on experimental drugs, double mastectomies, and cross-sex hormones. But because he used “Republicans” earlier in the paragraph, it’s supposed to be a given that it’s a bad thing to be parent-critical. Because Republican. Tell me I’m a conservative long enough and maybe I’ll start believing it.
What I’m saying is that describing things as “Republican” does most, if not all, of the heavy lifting in “arguing” that total bans on fucking with children’s bodies and holding parents accountable is bad.
Also, and I’m sorry to keep replying as I don’t see an edit button on the app - per Kara Dansky, a good number of these bills have actually been written by her organization of left-wing radical feminists. It does not seem journalistically ethical to never mention this.
Language matters. If "youth gender medicine" means blockers hormones & surgery, that is completely unsupported by available evidence and does immense harm. Calling it "medicine" is highly misleading.
I agree. Ideally these bans would be unnecessary because doctors and medical associations realize that they've been swept away by their own altruistic feelings (or that they've been unduly influenced by activist groups) and step on the brake. This has been done in several countries now - Finland, Sweden, etc. But in the US (and Canada) medical organizations are willfully ignoring mounting evidence of harms perpetrated, and keep repeating that puberty blockers and hormones are "life saving treatment". I can see how blanket bans may be the only option.
Yes, I completely agree. Just this week, a medical commission in Norway recommended halting blockers hormones & surgery in youth, joining Finland, Sweden, and the UK. These are countries where medicine is what it should be: evidence based. Sadly not yet in the US.
I never would have guessed that the helicopter line would have come from a letter of referral. That's easily verifiable. I assumed it was going to dissolve into he-said-she-said.
If I were the suspicious type, I would wonder whether all those letters and other corroborating items will be quietly scrubbed from patients' online charts before they can be subpoenaed.
good thing she has names. but yes, what I have seen some medical professionals doing to protect....I'm not sure what, their lies maybe (?), it's certainly not these kids...is beyond belief.
I could see that; spoliation is a very real thing. In this case, it might turn out to be an illegal thing, so anyone scrubbing charts had better have themselves a *really* good attorney.
My immediate reaction to the young person including "attack helicopter" as part of their identity is whether they were trying to be snarkily funny instead of serious. Did nobody at the clinic stop to wonder if the patient might have been joking? I'm reminded of an incident from my daughter's high school years, when she was late to school and entered "Abducted by aliens" into the tardy and absence log.
I was called in for a meeting with the principal, who took it very seriously and was concerned, while my daughter and I tried very hard not to look at each other so we wouldn't start laughing hysterically (meanwhile, I felt like Bad Parent). My daughter was just expressing her offbeat, Aubrey Plaza-ish sense of humor. She didn't truly believe she had been abducted by aliens. We still laugh about it to this day. It has become a classic family story.
In 1938 the high school newspaper interviewed my mom because she'd won some tennis competition. The student reporter asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said, "A gangster's secretary." She was kidding. Teenagers have been smartasses since, well, at least 1938. (She actually went on to Stanford and became an English teacher.)
Hard not to be discouraged watching the Twitter wars Jesse is fighting over this piece. I know it's par for the course--most of the attacks are in bad faith. But still. The dogmatic insistence that the whistleblower must be lying is so bizarre because these same people yelled "believe women!" in the Harvey Weinstein case in the face of Weinstein insisting his victims are lying.
I also keep thinking about the Catholic child abuse cases--it wasn't just the church that tried to deny the abuse, it was also families, congregations, communities who denied it and vilified the victims. Why is obvious--they saw it as an attack on their church not as a question about harms. So here we are--the "progressives" are viciously attacking someone trying to report abuse--they also don't care to look into the harms because that might undermine something they believe in.
The latest talking points seem to be that (1) she was merely a receptionist at the gender clinic (clearly not true), so she violated HIPAA by just looking at patient information, and (2) she and Jesse both violated HIPAA by publishing anything about patients, no matter how well their personally identifiable information is concealed. So they've gone from "she's lying" to "she's an anti-trans receptionist who had no business even looking at patient records." They are just looking for any reason to discredit her, with no regard for the way these children were treated.
And they don’t seem to realize the contradiction they make when they shift from “she’s lying, didn’t happen” to “she released true information illegally.” I am unfollowing all sorts of journalists, academics, and *lawyers* over this nonsense.
Oh on Twitter someone helpfully explained that one could break the law by releasing HIPAA protected information (eg, someone went to a clinic) and also lie about it by claiming something happened there that didn't. Hmmmm, lots of knotty twists and turns here...
Fantastic analogy. Gender identity theory really is a religion, so it's no surprise that its adherents respond to criticism by closing ranks. I know it's been helpful for me to think of it as a religion, so I can accept that there is a belief that human beings have a male or female "essence" without giving that belief the slightest credence.
It blows me away that people are continuing to deny that disturbed kids online are adopting ever more bizarre “genders” based off of inanimate objects/animals/aesthetics. This stuff was part of the truscum/tucute wars on tumblr like a decade ago with people identifying as nonsense such as “autismgender” and “stargender” at least that far back. Now, it takes no effort at all to find the TikToks & such where this stuff continues. People talk about their absurd ideas about gender and share invented pride flags (I miss when pride flags didn’t exist to split hairs between people with identities of one) and they convince their peers to adopt similar ideas about themselves, while claiming it to be valid because “neurodivergent people have different ideas about gender”/“neurodivergent people don’t really understand gender”/“autistic people are naturally ‘gender creative’ because they don’t understand gender like non-autistic people” et cetera.
When I read the bit about Attack Helicopter Kid in Reed’s piece, I immediately thought “yeah it makes sense that these kids aren’t maintaining the weird ‘identities’ as a purely online LARP and they’re going to start bringing them to actual gender clinics. I wish they had actually gotten this kid help, because they need it.” The response to this stuff from our supposed betters continues to blackpill me on this entire issue. It seems like the only positions that are being permitted in this culture war are the right-wing one which feels a lot like a rearguard action over gay marriage, and the radically “affirmative” model in which you deny that kids are identifying as trees and rabbits except when you say that it’s a good thing and tree/treer/treeself should be allowed to do what tree/treer/treeself wants, since tree/treer/treeself isn’t harming anyone.
Thanks, this is really informative. I'm wondering whether the nurse named will also make what she knows public, considering that Reed named her. Will there be a new info drop in the next few days?
Not surprised Amanda Marcotte was tweeting what she did at Jonathan Chait and Jesse. I lost respect for her a long time ago, back when she was blogging at Pandagon.
I read about the news from Norway earlier today. I am wondering how many more shoes will drop about youth gender medicine.
She still works there so she's not in a position to say anything unless she decides to also seek whistleblower protections. I have no idea how that works.
I'm glad you are covering these stories Jesse, but it is outrageous that you and others refer to Erica Anderson as "she" and otherwise prop up the utter madness of Gender Identity Ideology. Anderson refers to raccoon gender identity as "wacky", as if a child identifying as a sex they're not, is NOT wacky. (And as if Anderson's insistence that he's a woman isn't ridiculous, appropriative, and offensive.)
You and others play along with the "true trans" versus "not true trans" insanity: the former are apparently truly born in the wrong body, while the latter are not. Stop! Born-in-the-wrong-body is anti-science mysticism which leads to unspeakable harm to children's bodies and psyches. It also leads to all sorts of other harms such as the destruction of women's sex-based rights. Please stop kowtowing to the tenets of Gender Identity Ideology. And please stop lying about the sex of people you report on, such as Erica Anderson.
The answer to TRA-extremism isn't anti-trans extremism.
Persistent, extreme forms of gender dysphoria are real, though quite rare - and I don't see how it takes away from my sex-based rights as a woman to address people like Erica Anderson, Blaire White or Buck Angel in a way that alleviates their dysphoria.
Insisting on calling Erica Anderson a "he" is just as stupid and misguided as insisting on calling serial rapist "Isla Bryson" a "she" or as giving puberty blockers to tomboyish girls or feminine boys.
perhaps calling a he a she doesnt take away your sex based rights by itself. but its part of a larger system that does take away your sex based rights, erase the rights of a half a doz groups and harm kids and dysphoric ppl. its also a mater of free speech whether or not sum1 chooses to participate in sum1 elses fantasy.
We don't need to believe in the "born in the wrong body" silliness to refer to trans identifying individuals by the pronouns of their choice. Yes, Dr Anderson is male. She is a trans woman. I don't think she disputes her maleness. Saying "she" doesn't negate her sex, it just expresses the fact that we, as a society, treat this person as a woman *in certain respects*.
Imagine a world where a very small number of adults who want to present as the opposite sex go through extensive evaluations and counseling, and some of them end up transitioning slowly, carefully, and with the understanding that this is done to alleviate suffering and that their perception of their gender must not take precedence over biological women's rights to safety. Once these people transition, we, as a society, agree to refer to them as the sex with which they identify. Personally, I'd be ok with a world like that.
Even if your suggested vision of a small number of people referred to by wrong sex hormones were appropriate, the reality of our world is far from what you describe. The number of kids identifying as a different sex (or no sex, both sexes, etc.) is skyrocketing, as is harm to their bodies and psyches. In CA alone, hundreds of men are seeking to be placed in women's prisons; and that's happening in other states, too. Men are taking women's trophies, political positions, awards, and more.
Very wealthy oligarchs have bankrolled systemic take-over of key organizations and adoption of harmful laws and school curricula everywhere. There is no going back.
And once you declare that certain select individuals get to claim to be the other sex, you cannot shut the door to others. That's not how it works. If one person gets to use a gutted meaning of the word "woman", countless more will argue that they are just as entitled. The world you'd be ok with is not a possibility, not now, not in light of the realities all around us, and Big Pharma rowing the boat.
The reality of our world is absolutely far from what I'd like. I know this, I've been following this for some years now, and I have skin in the game - I am a woman and I have a trans-identifying daughter. This is not an intellectual exercise for me by any means.
As you said, though - there is no going back. We can't insist that all trans women (or transwomen, I honestly don't care) use masculine pronouns and use the men's bathrooms and changing rooms. I also would not want to have a trans man using the women's bathrooms and changing rooms! We have to live in the reality that has developed in which people can get surgically modified to resemble the opposite sex. Now, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to insist that people who look like women, who have (artificial) breasts and (artificial) vaginas, declare their maleness? What if you can't tell? If you met Jazz Jennings on the street and you didn't know that this was a trans person, I would bet you would say "she". So what do we do, realistically speaking?
In my opinion, we fight for what really matters - proper psychological care and no medicalization for young people, laws upholding women's rights to single-sex shelters, prisons, and changing rooms/bathrooms (some are easier to achieve than others, and again - there are cases where we won't be able to tell, but at least the laws should be clear), clear restrictions on who gets to compete in women's sports, no changing of birth certificates to pretend that the male child was in fact born female or vice versa, and clear statistics that distinguish between the sexes.
We may not be able to achieve all these protections and goals right away, or ever. But I think these matter a lot more than pronouns. And I don't think the word "woman" is gutted if we keep using it in all proper contexts (and not "cervix-haver" or "menstruator") and maintain a clear distinction between those who are women and those who are transwomen.
Hi MOGDD, I have skin in the game too. I think your strategy is self-defeating, but we just disagree. It's great to be able to discuss though. Thanks, and good night.
One of the bizarre little twists one hears in these discussion is that somehow "male" and "female" are in one box, and "man" and "woman" are in another. They're not. Men are adult human males; women adult human females. (Pronouns indicate which one you're talking about, so if you say "she", you are indicating that you agree a man is an adult human female, when he isn't.) Not only does it not make sense to pretend that male/female and man/woman are separate, but also gender identitarians constantly use male/female and man/woman any which way they want; they do not observe this supposed division. See the section on that topic entitled "The Gender is Not Sex Smokescreen) in The Anti-Science Nonsense of Gender Ideology in Schools at https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender
Gender Ideology replaces objective consistent definitions of vital words with circular subjective ones that render those words meaningless. Then it insists that everyone has to agree to that definitional coup. And to the forfeiture of sex-based rights, sex-based sexuality (e.g. homosexuality is same SEX attraction), etc. I can wish Dr. Anderson well without participating in (and thereby promoting) Gender Identity Ideology and its absurd definitions of vital words. Insisting that people need to go along with gutting our vital words---that's what is disrespectful.
I absolutely agree with you that words matter. I also agree that a woman is an adult human female. A transwoman, on the other hand, is an adult human male who has had a sex change (I am reluctant to apply the term "trans woman" to a "socially transitioned" man). Kathleen Stock's wonderful book "Material girls" speaks at length about this, and I think she does a good job clarifying the word salad that modern society made.
We can say "she is a transwoman" and be clear on what we're saying. That way we're not muddling the language, we're not rendering statistics meaningless, and we're still able to keep women's sex-based rights.
"She is a TW" muddles the language; even without insisting as most gender identitarians do that it's "trans woman" not "transwoman." It muddles it because "she" is used for females. As for how we'll magically not have stats rendered meaningless, and women won't forfeit sex-based rights, if we personally insist that only men who've had genital surgery get to use "she", and we hope that everyone else will do the same....well that's simply naive. Its another version of hoping that we can embrace an irrational concept (men can think their way into being women) and yet somehow limit the impacts to just "a few" or just "true trans", etc.
Other people have explored the mean-spirited nature of this comment, but I have a question for you. What pronouns would you use for a person with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome?
Why do you declare it to be "othering" to say I will not adopt a circular meaning for vital words, a meaning that has been used to do grave harm to children and civil rights? The light gets in when we talk kindly to each other, as I do with all. And as I embrace all, I do not forfeit my integrity and honesty in the process, nor do I cast aside my commitment to defending children and civil rights. Those who require me to bow my head and utter the words of their faith, as if it's good to ask me to do so, are keeping the light out.
I’m sure it would feel better coming from someone who isn’t a little nuts, but these people are pieces of shit and you should feel good about yourself that they dislike you.
I think most pediatricians are confused and scared. I'm lucky in that I don't work for a large corporation, but a small independently owned pediatric practice.
Thanks for writing this. My initial thoughts when I read Reed's story were (1) that--assuming the account was accurate at all--the child was probably a right wing troll and (2) that it did defy credulity that they would have placed a right-wing troll on hormones.
It seems clear from this post, though, that the child was probably joking about that part. Is that how you read the situation? If I remember correctly, your first response was that it is not unusual for kids to pick up weird stuff from the Internet. That response was not very satisfying to me given that "I identify as an attack helicopter" is a well-known *right-wing* meme.
Assuming the kid was obviously joking, though, can you say a little bit why that is necessarily a red flag?
For the kid in question, beyond helicopter, wouldn’t “female...maybe non binary” also raise flags? I thought the broader point is that the kid in question obviously has an unsettled sense of self, and therefor def shouldn’t be put on blockers or hormones...
There was also communist and human, which may have also been jokes. If a kid feels the need to be this flippant about his gender identity, maybe he isn't ready to decide on one.
The point is that he is deeply disturbed and in no way ready to make a lifelong decision like changing sex. Rather, being mutilated into a caricature of the other sex.
The whole transition industry seems monstrously irresponsible.
My first thought was a kid on the autism spectrum or with that kind of cognitive rigidity and difficulty distinguishing truth from lies, saw the meme and took it seriously, not at all as a joke.
The quote about the helicopter came from a “Letter of Support” written by a therapist who interviewed the child. Why would they have included this information if it was a joke? Either the LoS writer was insufficiently curious, or it wasn’t a joke, but either one should be a red flag.
the kid wasnt joking. anderson wants to believe they were joking because anderson needs kids to have mental acuity, emotional knowledge and maturity enough to allow adults to become millionaires providing pediatric gender care, as anderson has done. but of course kids are none of these things. kids are stupid. and easy to trick. some often lie. not on purpose. they are confused about what adults want from them. kids in distress dont joke as much, thats something adults do. also they dont joke at the doctor or something like that. kids with psych issues need psych care that has evidence of improving outcomes. theres no evidence gender "care" helps these kids. most grow out of dysphoria without meds. once they grow out of their dysphoria and other issues they get better. but once theyve taken gender meds their problems compound and they get worse.
not sure where you are getting this info. there are 11 studys with participants who had gender dysphoria as kids studys followed them from age 7 to 20. these participants met the clinical definition of gender dysphoria at the time which was termed DSM4. this definition equates to todays' DSM5. studys found kids grew out of gender dysphoria 65-95% of the time, without meds and without social transition. every study ever done shows this same result. no studys show anything different. since gender dysphoria is a syntpom of psych issues, why wouldnt they get better or grow out of it? most of the time ppl wirh psych issues do get better over time.
youre orrect that some kids and adults ID as another gender without any dysphoria at all. this is a choice some ppl make and since its a choice is more like a hobby such as sports and fishing. gender ID with adults often is just part of a sex addiction, but really there are 1000s of reasons ppl opt for this. thats not gender dysphoria. thats a hobby
"To date, there have been at least 10 follow-up studies of children whose behavior was consistent with the DSM diagnosis of GID (or GD per DSM-5) (44–53). Across these studies, the year at the time of first evaluation in childhood ranged from 1952 (49) to 2008 (51). For the 9 studies that included boys, the sample sizes (excluding those lost to follow-up) ranged from 6 to 79 (Mean age, 26 years). Most of these studies also provided the age at the time of first evaluation in childhood, which ranged from a mean of 7 years (47) to a mean of 9 years (48), with an age range from 4 to 12 years.
At the time of follow-up, using different metrics (e.g., clinical interview, maternal report, dimensional measurement of gender dysphoria, a DSM diagnosis of GID, etc.), these studies provided information on the percentage of boys who continued to have gender dysphoria (herein termed “persisters”) and the percentage of boys who did not (herein termed “desisters”).2 Of the 53 boys culled from the relatively small sample size studies (Bakwin, Davenport, Kosky, Lebovitz, Money and Russo, Zuger), the percentage classified as persisters was 9.4% (age range at follow-up, 13–30 years). In Green (47), the percentage of persisters was 2% (total n = 44; Mean age at follow-up, 19 years; range, 14–24); in Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis (52), the percentage of persisters was 20.3% (total n = 59; Mean age at follow-up, 19.4 years; range, 16–28); and in Steensma et al. (51), the percentage of persisters was 29.1% (total n = 79; Mean age at follow-up, 16.1 years; range, 15–19). Across all studies, the percentage of persisters was 17.4% (total N = 235), with a range from 0 to 29.1%.3
These studies also provided information on the sexual orientation of the boys at the time of follow-up. '
It's mostly about how solidly you feel hanging your hat on a gender that's separate from your sex. When it's an identity mishmash there's a lot more therapy that should occur before medicalization.
If you're about to start a medical procedure this serious and life-changing and your response when asked why you want to do this is to spout some funny memes, at the very least, an adult should have sat you down and had a heart-to-heart about why this is not the time for joking around. According to Reed, no such filtering mechanism existed, and kids were allowed to say whatever the hell they wanted. That's the problem. Whether or not the kid was joking is not remotely the point.
A few years ago the filmmakers Miranda July and Mike Mills told the New Yorker they were raising their child without gender--no pronouns, no gendered toys or clothing etc. The child, they explained, would reveal his or her gender in due time. Meanwhile, as good parents, they would not dictate that gender. I’ve often wondered what’s happening with children like this. The above tweet is about a boy and his sister who are furious about being raised that way (the therapist is horrified they are going full term). Here may be a case of the children seeing that the emperor has no clothes.
Following a long with this drama on twitter and I have to wonder how many people longing for Jesse to go to jail are also pro-“abolish prisons”. I’m not sure if Reed is being honest or not but I hope as long as she’s been found to be operating in good faith that she gets some leeway on the way she tracked data
I have to say, I was also nervous when Jesse doubled down on defending her after the whole attack helicopter thing since that’s the sort of thing I’d expect a slightly out-of-touch political agent to throw in to tie a political message to some previous stories, but I think Jesse been pretty good about leaving things as ‘possible’ rather than ‘probable’
I absolutely admire Jesse for not having gone 'Jimmy Concepts' by now.
The shit he gets in a single day by the likes of Hobbes would be enough to make most people lose their mind (and principles).
I'm really curious how long it will take the Hobbeses of this world to go from "No one would be irresponsible enough to give a deeply troubled kid like this hormones/blockers" to "Repeat after me: Human. Helicopters. Are. Helicopters."
“Trans helicopters are helicopters.”
Excellent coverage, as usual. I’m still blown away by her affidavit too. It’s one thing to speak up. It’s another to do it in a signed and sworn affidavit that could lead to various legal consequences for getting things wrong. https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/2-07-2023-reed-affidavit---signed.pdf
To my knowledge, AGs are not obligated to bring any charges.
Jesse, please! Absolutely NO ONE is attempting to "ban youth gender medicine", as you falsely claim here.
What many, including me, are trying to ban is unsupported-by-evidence harmful measures that should be banned just like all sorts of other proposed drugs and treatments that have not been proven to be both safe and effective.
Safe and effective psychological and psychiatric treatment for gender dysphoria is fully supported by all.
I don’t understand what the hedging is supposed to accomplish. He has to make sure everyone knows he’s not a conservative when everyone who is reading this and giving him a fair shake *knows* this. I’m personally pro-banning any and all unnecessary medicalization of children, but Jesse constantly implies that makes me on the same team as Sean Hannity. It’s distracting and upsetting. Surely he understands the feeling of being associated with people you have nothing in common with?
I think Jesse’s views have been fairly well articulated through his writing.
He doesn’t think it’s a good idea for the state to interfere with what should be a purely medical decision and I suspect he would be especially concerned about it being done in an area with so much room for ideological confounders.
What he wants is for the medical establishment themselves to be carefully examining the evidence for treatments and ensuring that those affected are being carefully assessed in a way that mitigates risks of undue harm.
He’s also been pretty clear that he leans towards the views of many of even the more conservative clinicians he’s interviewed in that he thinks that in certain, well assessed cases, youth transition may be the right treatment, so state bans are obviously not something he’s going to be on board with.
That said, I don’t think he would claim everyone who is in favour of restrictions is in the same camp as Hannity, or at least I’ve never seen him write anything to that effect.
I *know* what he believes and I don’t understand why you feel the need to explain this to me. I read everything he writes. That is not what I was talking about. I’m talking about the constant snide phrasing of “Republican bans on youth gender medicine” as if placing “Republican” at the beginning of something is supposed to speak for itself and work as an obvious modifier for “bad.” Parents who “help” their children transition? He means parents who teach their children they can change sex and bring their children into clinics and sign off on experimental drugs, double mastectomies, and cross-sex hormones. But because he used “Republicans” earlier in the paragraph, it’s supposed to be a given that it’s a bad thing to be parent-critical. Because Republican. Tell me I’m a conservative long enough and maybe I’ll start believing it.
What I’m saying is that describing things as “Republican” does most, if not all, of the heavy lifting in “arguing” that total bans on fucking with children’s bodies and holding parents accountable is bad.
Also, and I’m sorry to keep replying as I don’t see an edit button on the app - per Kara Dansky, a good number of these bills have actually been written by her organization of left-wing radical feminists. It does not seem journalistically ethical to never mention this.
No one thinks the phrase “ban youth gender medicine” means “prevent kids with dysphoria from talking to a therapist”
Language matters. If "youth gender medicine" means blockers hormones & surgery, that is completely unsupported by available evidence and does immense harm. Calling it "medicine" is highly misleading.
I agree. Ideally these bans would be unnecessary because doctors and medical associations realize that they've been swept away by their own altruistic feelings (or that they've been unduly influenced by activist groups) and step on the brake. This has been done in several countries now - Finland, Sweden, etc. But in the US (and Canada) medical organizations are willfully ignoring mounting evidence of harms perpetrated, and keep repeating that puberty blockers and hormones are "life saving treatment". I can see how blanket bans may be the only option.
Yes, I completely agree. Just this week, a medical commission in Norway recommended halting blockers hormones & surgery in youth, joining Finland, Sweden, and the UK. These are countries where medicine is what it should be: evidence based. Sadly not yet in the US.
I never would have guessed that the helicopter line would have come from a letter of referral. That's easily verifiable. I assumed it was going to dissolve into he-said-she-said.
This investigation is going to be interesting.
If I were the suspicious type, I would wonder whether all those letters and other corroborating items will be quietly scrubbed from patients' online charts before they can be subpoenaed.
good thing she has names. but yes, what I have seen some medical professionals doing to protect....I'm not sure what, their lies maybe (?), it's certainly not these kids...is beyond belief.
I could see that; spoliation is a very real thing. In this case, it might turn out to be an illegal thing, so anyone scrubbing charts had better have themselves a *really* good attorney.
The subpoenas are going to be interesting!
My immediate reaction to the young person including "attack helicopter" as part of their identity is whether they were trying to be snarkily funny instead of serious. Did nobody at the clinic stop to wonder if the patient might have been joking? I'm reminded of an incident from my daughter's high school years, when she was late to school and entered "Abducted by aliens" into the tardy and absence log.
I was called in for a meeting with the principal, who took it very seriously and was concerned, while my daughter and I tried very hard not to look at each other so we wouldn't start laughing hysterically (meanwhile, I felt like Bad Parent). My daughter was just expressing her offbeat, Aubrey Plaza-ish sense of humor. She didn't truly believe she had been abducted by aliens. We still laugh about it to this day. It has become a classic family story.
That said, I believe Reed is onto something.
In 1938 the high school newspaper interviewed my mom because she'd won some tennis competition. The student reporter asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said, "A gangster's secretary." She was kidding. Teenagers have been smartasses since, well, at least 1938. (She actually went on to Stanford and became an English teacher.)
Hard not to be discouraged watching the Twitter wars Jesse is fighting over this piece. I know it's par for the course--most of the attacks are in bad faith. But still. The dogmatic insistence that the whistleblower must be lying is so bizarre because these same people yelled "believe women!" in the Harvey Weinstein case in the face of Weinstein insisting his victims are lying.
I also keep thinking about the Catholic child abuse cases--it wasn't just the church that tried to deny the abuse, it was also families, congregations, communities who denied it and vilified the victims. Why is obvious--they saw it as an attack on their church not as a question about harms. So here we are--the "progressives" are viciously attacking someone trying to report abuse--they also don't care to look into the harms because that might undermine something they believe in.
The latest talking points seem to be that (1) she was merely a receptionist at the gender clinic (clearly not true), so she violated HIPAA by just looking at patient information, and (2) she and Jesse both violated HIPAA by publishing anything about patients, no matter how well their personally identifiable information is concealed. So they've gone from "she's lying" to "she's an anti-trans receptionist who had no business even looking at patient records." They are just looking for any reason to discredit her, with no regard for the way these children were treated.
And they don’t seem to realize the contradiction they make when they shift from “she’s lying, didn’t happen” to “she released true information illegally.” I am unfollowing all sorts of journalists, academics, and *lawyers* over this nonsense.
I learned a new word for this concept today: kettle logic!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic
Oh on Twitter someone helpfully explained that one could break the law by releasing HIPAA protected information (eg, someone went to a clinic) and also lie about it by claiming something happened there that didn't. Hmmmm, lots of knotty twists and turns here...
Fantastic analogy. Gender identity theory really is a religion, so it's no surprise that its adherents respond to criticism by closing ranks. I know it's been helpful for me to think of it as a religion, so I can accept that there is a belief that human beings have a male or female "essence" without giving that belief the slightest credence.
It blows me away that people are continuing to deny that disturbed kids online are adopting ever more bizarre “genders” based off of inanimate objects/animals/aesthetics. This stuff was part of the truscum/tucute wars on tumblr like a decade ago with people identifying as nonsense such as “autismgender” and “stargender” at least that far back. Now, it takes no effort at all to find the TikToks & such where this stuff continues. People talk about their absurd ideas about gender and share invented pride flags (I miss when pride flags didn’t exist to split hairs between people with identities of one) and they convince their peers to adopt similar ideas about themselves, while claiming it to be valid because “neurodivergent people have different ideas about gender”/“neurodivergent people don’t really understand gender”/“autistic people are naturally ‘gender creative’ because they don’t understand gender like non-autistic people” et cetera.
When I read the bit about Attack Helicopter Kid in Reed’s piece, I immediately thought “yeah it makes sense that these kids aren’t maintaining the weird ‘identities’ as a purely online LARP and they’re going to start bringing them to actual gender clinics. I wish they had actually gotten this kid help, because they need it.” The response to this stuff from our supposed betters continues to blackpill me on this entire issue. It seems like the only positions that are being permitted in this culture war are the right-wing one which feels a lot like a rearguard action over gay marriage, and the radically “affirmative” model in which you deny that kids are identifying as trees and rabbits except when you say that it’s a good thing and tree/treer/treeself should be allowed to do what tree/treer/treeself wants, since tree/treer/treeself isn’t harming anyone.
Thanks, this is really informative. I'm wondering whether the nurse named will also make what she knows public, considering that Reed named her. Will there be a new info drop in the next few days?
Not surprised Amanda Marcotte was tweeting what she did at Jonathan Chait and Jesse. I lost respect for her a long time ago, back when she was blogging at Pandagon.
I read about the news from Norway earlier today. I am wondering how many more shoes will drop about youth gender medicine.
She still works there so she's not in a position to say anything unless she decides to also seek whistleblower protections. I have no idea how that works.
No, nothing else in the next few days. I'm tired!
Oh, you're tired too? I'm a teacher and so ready for spring break, which happens to start today. :D
Thanks so much for the work you are doing.
I'm glad you are covering these stories Jesse, but it is outrageous that you and others refer to Erica Anderson as "she" and otherwise prop up the utter madness of Gender Identity Ideology. Anderson refers to raccoon gender identity as "wacky", as if a child identifying as a sex they're not, is NOT wacky. (And as if Anderson's insistence that he's a woman isn't ridiculous, appropriative, and offensive.)
You and others play along with the "true trans" versus "not true trans" insanity: the former are apparently truly born in the wrong body, while the latter are not. Stop! Born-in-the-wrong-body is anti-science mysticism which leads to unspeakable harm to children's bodies and psyches. It also leads to all sorts of other harms such as the destruction of women's sex-based rights. Please stop kowtowing to the tenets of Gender Identity Ideology. And please stop lying about the sex of people you report on, such as Erica Anderson.
The answer to TRA-extremism isn't anti-trans extremism.
Persistent, extreme forms of gender dysphoria are real, though quite rare - and I don't see how it takes away from my sex-based rights as a woman to address people like Erica Anderson, Blaire White or Buck Angel in a way that alleviates their dysphoria.
Insisting on calling Erica Anderson a "he" is just as stupid and misguided as insisting on calling serial rapist "Isla Bryson" a "she" or as giving puberty blockers to tomboyish girls or feminine boys.
perhaps calling a he a she doesnt take away your sex based rights by itself. but its part of a larger system that does take away your sex based rights, erase the rights of a half a doz groups and harm kids and dysphoric ppl. its also a mater of free speech whether or not sum1 chooses to participate in sum1 elses fantasy.
We don't need to believe in the "born in the wrong body" silliness to refer to trans identifying individuals by the pronouns of their choice. Yes, Dr Anderson is male. She is a trans woman. I don't think she disputes her maleness. Saying "she" doesn't negate her sex, it just expresses the fact that we, as a society, treat this person as a woman *in certain respects*.
Imagine a world where a very small number of adults who want to present as the opposite sex go through extensive evaluations and counseling, and some of them end up transitioning slowly, carefully, and with the understanding that this is done to alleviate suffering and that their perception of their gender must not take precedence over biological women's rights to safety. Once these people transition, we, as a society, agree to refer to them as the sex with which they identify. Personally, I'd be ok with a world like that.
Edit: "counseling", not "covering"
Even if your suggested vision of a small number of people referred to by wrong sex hormones were appropriate, the reality of our world is far from what you describe. The number of kids identifying as a different sex (or no sex, both sexes, etc.) is skyrocketing, as is harm to their bodies and psyches. In CA alone, hundreds of men are seeking to be placed in women's prisons; and that's happening in other states, too. Men are taking women's trophies, political positions, awards, and more.
Very wealthy oligarchs have bankrolled systemic take-over of key organizations and adoption of harmful laws and school curricula everywhere. There is no going back.
And once you declare that certain select individuals get to claim to be the other sex, you cannot shut the door to others. That's not how it works. If one person gets to use a gutted meaning of the word "woman", countless more will argue that they are just as entitled. The world you'd be ok with is not a possibility, not now, not in light of the realities all around us, and Big Pharma rowing the boat.
The reality of our world is absolutely far from what I'd like. I know this, I've been following this for some years now, and I have skin in the game - I am a woman and I have a trans-identifying daughter. This is not an intellectual exercise for me by any means.
As you said, though - there is no going back. We can't insist that all trans women (or transwomen, I honestly don't care) use masculine pronouns and use the men's bathrooms and changing rooms. I also would not want to have a trans man using the women's bathrooms and changing rooms! We have to live in the reality that has developed in which people can get surgically modified to resemble the opposite sex. Now, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to insist that people who look like women, who have (artificial) breasts and (artificial) vaginas, declare their maleness? What if you can't tell? If you met Jazz Jennings on the street and you didn't know that this was a trans person, I would bet you would say "she". So what do we do, realistically speaking?
In my opinion, we fight for what really matters - proper psychological care and no medicalization for young people, laws upholding women's rights to single-sex shelters, prisons, and changing rooms/bathrooms (some are easier to achieve than others, and again - there are cases where we won't be able to tell, but at least the laws should be clear), clear restrictions on who gets to compete in women's sports, no changing of birth certificates to pretend that the male child was in fact born female or vice versa, and clear statistics that distinguish between the sexes.
We may not be able to achieve all these protections and goals right away, or ever. But I think these matter a lot more than pronouns. And I don't think the word "woman" is gutted if we keep using it in all proper contexts (and not "cervix-haver" or "menstruator") and maintain a clear distinction between those who are women and those who are transwomen.
Hi MOGDD, I have skin in the game too. I think your strategy is self-defeating, but we just disagree. It's great to be able to discuss though. Thanks, and good night.
One of the bizarre little twists one hears in these discussion is that somehow "male" and "female" are in one box, and "man" and "woman" are in another. They're not. Men are adult human males; women adult human females. (Pronouns indicate which one you're talking about, so if you say "she", you are indicating that you agree a man is an adult human female, when he isn't.) Not only does it not make sense to pretend that male/female and man/woman are separate, but also gender identitarians constantly use male/female and man/woman any which way they want; they do not observe this supposed division. See the section on that topic entitled "The Gender is Not Sex Smokescreen) in The Anti-Science Nonsense of Gender Ideology in Schools at https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender
Gender Ideology replaces objective consistent definitions of vital words with circular subjective ones that render those words meaningless. Then it insists that everyone has to agree to that definitional coup. And to the forfeiture of sex-based rights, sex-based sexuality (e.g. homosexuality is same SEX attraction), etc. I can wish Dr. Anderson well without participating in (and thereby promoting) Gender Identity Ideology and its absurd definitions of vital words. Insisting that people need to go along with gutting our vital words---that's what is disrespectful.
I absolutely agree with you that words matter. I also agree that a woman is an adult human female. A transwoman, on the other hand, is an adult human male who has had a sex change (I am reluctant to apply the term "trans woman" to a "socially transitioned" man). Kathleen Stock's wonderful book "Material girls" speaks at length about this, and I think she does a good job clarifying the word salad that modern society made.
We can say "she is a transwoman" and be clear on what we're saying. That way we're not muddling the language, we're not rendering statistics meaningless, and we're still able to keep women's sex-based rights.
"She is a TW" muddles the language; even without insisting as most gender identitarians do that it's "trans woman" not "transwoman." It muddles it because "she" is used for females. As for how we'll magically not have stats rendered meaningless, and women won't forfeit sex-based rights, if we personally insist that only men who've had genital surgery get to use "she", and we hope that everyone else will do the same....well that's simply naive. Its another version of hoping that we can embrace an irrational concept (men can think their way into being women) and yet somehow limit the impacts to just "a few" or just "true trans", etc.
Carol, when you accuse JS of "propping up madness", you sound an awful lot like Michael Hobbes. Don't sound like Michael Hobbes.
Other people have explored the mean-spirited nature of this comment, but I have a question for you. What pronouns would you use for a person with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome?
Why do you declare it to be "othering" to say I will not adopt a circular meaning for vital words, a meaning that has been used to do grave harm to children and civil rights? The light gets in when we talk kindly to each other, as I do with all. And as I embrace all, I do not forfeit my integrity and honesty in the process, nor do I cast aside my commitment to defending children and civil rights. Those who require me to bow my head and utter the words of their faith, as if it's good to ask me to do so, are keeping the light out.
Brava to Reed for speaking up and for the others, too, and thank you, Jesse, for looking into the claims and making sure light shines on it all.
Please keep telling us what is going on and I hope you are heard widely!
It would be really useful to hear what sorts of questions are asked when someone gets "gender affirmed" vs. when someone explores.
Various episodes of Gender: A Wider Lens deal with this contrast.
I’m sure it would feel better coming from someone who isn’t a little nuts, but these people are pieces of shit and you should feel good about yourself that they dislike you.
Yup, can confirm.
I think most pediatricians are confused and scared. I'm lucky in that I don't work for a large corporation, but a small independently owned pediatric practice.
Thanks for writing this. My initial thoughts when I read Reed's story were (1) that--assuming the account was accurate at all--the child was probably a right wing troll and (2) that it did defy credulity that they would have placed a right-wing troll on hormones.
It seems clear from this post, though, that the child was probably joking about that part. Is that how you read the situation? If I remember correctly, your first response was that it is not unusual for kids to pick up weird stuff from the Internet. That response was not very satisfying to me given that "I identify as an attack helicopter" is a well-known *right-wing* meme.
Assuming the kid was obviously joking, though, can you say a little bit why that is necessarily a red flag?
For the kid in question, beyond helicopter, wouldn’t “female...maybe non binary” also raise flags? I thought the broader point is that the kid in question obviously has an unsettled sense of self, and therefor def shouldn’t be put on blockers or hormones...
There was also communist and human, which may have also been jokes. If a kid feels the need to be this flippant about his gender identity, maybe he isn't ready to decide on one.
Or is so despondent and in pain, maybe. I remember the “flippancy” of being a teenager, and it was so often a deflection.
The point is that he is deeply disturbed and in no way ready to make a lifelong decision like changing sex. Rather, being mutilated into a caricature of the other sex.
The whole transition industry seems monstrously irresponsible.
My first thought was a kid on the autism spectrum or with that kind of cognitive rigidity and difficulty distinguishing truth from lies, saw the meme and took it seriously, not at all as a joke.
100 % what I thought. It’s totally something a kid with Autism would say.
The quote about the helicopter came from a “Letter of Support” written by a therapist who interviewed the child. Why would they have included this information if it was a joke? Either the LoS writer was insufficiently curious, or it wasn’t a joke, but either one should be a red flag.
the kid wasnt joking. anderson wants to believe they were joking because anderson needs kids to have mental acuity, emotional knowledge and maturity enough to allow adults to become millionaires providing pediatric gender care, as anderson has done. but of course kids are none of these things. kids are stupid. and easy to trick. some often lie. not on purpose. they are confused about what adults want from them. kids in distress dont joke as much, thats something adults do. also they dont joke at the doctor or something like that. kids with psych issues need psych care that has evidence of improving outcomes. theres no evidence gender "care" helps these kids. most grow out of dysphoria without meds. once they grow out of their dysphoria and other issues they get better. but once theyve taken gender meds their problems compound and they get worse.
If they grow out of it then they were never actually dysphoric.
Gender dysphoria is clearly characterized and is almost never appears for the first time in teens, much less adults.
not sure where you are getting this info. there are 11 studys with participants who had gender dysphoria as kids studys followed them from age 7 to 20. these participants met the clinical definition of gender dysphoria at the time which was termed DSM4. this definition equates to todays' DSM5. studys found kids grew out of gender dysphoria 65-95% of the time, without meds and without social transition. every study ever done shows this same result. no studys show anything different. since gender dysphoria is a syntpom of psych issues, why wouldnt they get better or grow out of it? most of the time ppl wirh psych issues do get better over time.
youre orrect that some kids and adults ID as another gender without any dysphoria at all. this is a choice some ppl make and since its a choice is more like a hobby such as sports and fishing. gender ID with adults often is just part of a sex addiction, but really there are 1000s of reasons ppl opt for this. thats not gender dysphoria. thats a hobby
http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html?m=1
from the intro section of this study -
"To date, there have been at least 10 follow-up studies of children whose behavior was consistent with the DSM diagnosis of GID (or GD per DSM-5) (44–53). Across these studies, the year at the time of first evaluation in childhood ranged from 1952 (49) to 2008 (51). For the 9 studies that included boys, the sample sizes (excluding those lost to follow-up) ranged from 6 to 79 (Mean age, 26 years). Most of these studies also provided the age at the time of first evaluation in childhood, which ranged from a mean of 7 years (47) to a mean of 9 years (48), with an age range from 4 to 12 years.
At the time of follow-up, using different metrics (e.g., clinical interview, maternal report, dimensional measurement of gender dysphoria, a DSM diagnosis of GID, etc.), these studies provided information on the percentage of boys who continued to have gender dysphoria (herein termed “persisters”) and the percentage of boys who did not (herein termed “desisters”).2 Of the 53 boys culled from the relatively small sample size studies (Bakwin, Davenport, Kosky, Lebovitz, Money and Russo, Zuger), the percentage classified as persisters was 9.4% (age range at follow-up, 13–30 years). In Green (47), the percentage of persisters was 2% (total n = 44; Mean age at follow-up, 19 years; range, 14–24); in Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis (52), the percentage of persisters was 20.3% (total n = 59; Mean age at follow-up, 19.4 years; range, 16–28); and in Steensma et al. (51), the percentage of persisters was 29.1% (total n = 79; Mean age at follow-up, 16.1 years; range, 15–19). Across all studies, the percentage of persisters was 17.4% (total N = 235), with a range from 0 to 29.1%.3
These studies also provided information on the sexual orientation of the boys at the time of follow-up. '
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784/full
https://www.city-journal.org/correcting-the-record-on-social-transition?wallit_nosession=1
It's mostly about how solidly you feel hanging your hat on a gender that's separate from your sex. When it's an identity mishmash there's a lot more therapy that should occur before medicalization.
If you're about to start a medical procedure this serious and life-changing and your response when asked why you want to do this is to spout some funny memes, at the very least, an adult should have sat you down and had a heart-to-heart about why this is not the time for joking around. According to Reed, no such filtering mechanism existed, and kids were allowed to say whatever the hell they wanted. That's the problem. Whether or not the kid was joking is not remotely the point.
So this tweet, https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1634670872739950595?s=61&t=0iPo3RzaZ1smvqDK4C8rpA
A few years ago the filmmakers Miranda July and Mike Mills told the New Yorker they were raising their child without gender--no pronouns, no gendered toys or clothing etc. The child, they explained, would reveal his or her gender in due time. Meanwhile, as good parents, they would not dictate that gender. I’ve often wondered what’s happening with children like this. The above tweet is about a boy and his sister who are furious about being raised that way (the therapist is horrified they are going full term). Here may be a case of the children seeing that the emperor has no clothes.
*full terf
Child Protective Services should have rehomed this child and arrested these parents.
Link to the Norway report: https://ukom.no/rapporter/pasientsikkerhet-for-barn-og-unge-med-kjonnsinkongruens/sammendrag
It's matter of fact and common sense.
Beware the notion of “common sense.” It’s a false concept except for the most basic considerations as “don’t hold your hand in a flame.”
There is ignorance and there is learning.
Following a long with this drama on twitter and I have to wonder how many people longing for Jesse to go to jail are also pro-“abolish prisons”. I’m not sure if Reed is being honest or not but I hope as long as she’s been found to be operating in good faith that she gets some leeway on the way she tracked data
I have to say, I was also nervous when Jesse doubled down on defending her after the whole attack helicopter thing since that’s the sort of thing I’d expect a slightly out-of-touch political agent to throw in to tie a political message to some previous stories, but I think Jesse been pretty good about leaving things as ‘possible’ rather than ‘probable’
I think those people are longing for Jesse to go stand in an empty field where a prison used to be. Without pizza. While being attacked by pigeons.
Look, I love Jesse’s work, but who wouldn’t pay to see that?