It’s been really dispiriting to see the responses to Reed’s accusations. It really does seem to boil down to, “This is so insane that only a rube or a bigot could believe it really happened.” Just zero curiosity, full confidence that it’s not just untrue but a wildly fallacious smear campaign. Makes you wonder how they’ll respond to whatever the AG’s investigation uncovers.
The silver lining is only a handful of small publications are doing this damage control spin. I don't know how many people read the Missouri Independent and/or St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
I think the larger woke-leaning outlets are just trying their best to avoid bringing up the Washington University Transgender Center at all costs.
I recall seeing very few MSM headlines one way or the other. There were some that mentioned the ensuing investigations, but they tended to gloss over why and how those investigations got started. Rather than doing a deep dive into attempting to debunk Reed's affidavit, MSM journos seemed to try to just avoid mentioning it altogether.
I'd bet anything that Reed spoke to you because she trusts that you wouldn't twist her words out of context. There's no way she should give the time of day to any other random reporter. Trusting a reporter nowadays is almost as dumb as trusting a cop. Keep your mouth shut and an attorney present.
This further shows how much guts Reed has. She knew the shit storm that was gonna happen. She spent a long time preparing, being observant, and most importantly, collecting those precious receipts.
Apart from anything about the merits of the accounts or the issues, this piece highlights how the combination of the eternal game of telephone (here, what was reported as “deliberate misgendering”) and of routine interpersonal/workplace BS being expressed in the language of civil rights is making the discourse so poisonous.
Great work as usual. I hope the lack of response from the Post-Dispatch doesn't indicate an attitude of "Who cares? It's only Substack. No one reads that (well, no one who matters...)."
So far I've read only the excerpts, not the whole "debunking" articles, but this Hutton quote jumped right out at me: "The idea that nobody got information, that everybody was pushed toward treatment, is just not true." Of course it isn't true, and that's not what Reed was claiming. I'm guessing that the reporter did not push back against or clarify this misrepresentation.
Was hoping you would chime in on Freddie Deboer's piece yesterday.
He seems to have vastly underplayed the medical scandal aspect while at the same time time excusing himself for misleading his readers because he's not an expert.
FdB will not engage on this. All the razor sharp criticism he wields against other progressive issues and people, he refuses to do for this topic, and then claims to be mystified that people notice and wonder why.
In many cases, I think in FdB’s too, the presence of a trans friend or family member effectively shuts down any possibility of them engaging critically with the subject.
It is pretty wild watching him check his brain at the door though.
"Nobody is trying to deny or erase the distinction between trans women and cis women, but also TWAW so obvs they belong in female sports/prisons/rape shelters and any&all single-sex spaces are deplorably bigoted"
"Incentive structures are skewed towards encouraging Rachel Dolezals, but no way would male prisoners have perverse incentives to switch up their pronouns to score transfers to women's prisons"
Exactly. I was really disappointed by his post yesterday. It’s amazing he can’t hear himself.
But more than that, I’m frustrated that he keeps saying he’s been so clear about what’s out of bounds, except I’ve never seen him moderate comments around this nor give a clear example of what’s out of bounds. In practice it comes off as “anything critical of a trans-adjacent issue is off limits.” But that’s not what he says he’s asking for.
It's sort of like when public schoolboards solicit feedback - you're allowed to praise them as much as you want, but if you criticize them in any way they'll say you're violating "decorum" rules and cut off your mic.
It makes me question everything about his intellect. There is just this gaping hole where his curiosity and skepticism should be. When we are talking about children and young people being harmed, how can anybody just be uninterested in that?
Not only does FdB criticize the excesses of the progressive left, as a marxist he is fundamentally opposed to capitalism and often criticizes its outcomes.
And yet, he states that all the for-profit child gender clinics are just fine! They are surely doing the right thing always! No one should pay any attention!
Well, he doesn’t say that. He says he’s not an expert and that this issue lies outside his field of interesting opinions. But even that is disingenuous. One of the articles that received massive amounts of trans comments was the DID mental illness one. This issue clearly does intersect with one of his core topics--mental health and social media.
Freddie writes "I don’t understand why this element of medical science has become everyone’s business", which goes further than saying that the issue merely lies outside his range of expertise. I read that as saying that not only does he not have an opinion, you and I should also not have opinions. It should all be left up to "the doctors".
Just read Freddie’s article and it’s very frustrating. If he’s going to make a statement that progressive people should be trans-affirming, he needs to show the same intellectually curiosity with this issue as with similar issues. Instead he’s retreating to “I’m not an expert” and “some people are really transphobic”. There are good reasons people are obsessed with this topic - it’s a huge cultural shift taking place. And if he wants to know why people don’t trust the medical establishment in this matter, there’s no lack of evidence, including jesse’s reporting and developments in the UK. It’s not like liberal institutional capture is outside his area of interest.
Yes, agreed. And I think FdB makes the same mistake as a lot of others: he conflates values and attitudes about alphabet people with issues about children. For instance, I believe any consenting adult should be able to be whoever they want and love whoever they wish, provided they do no harm. But children, not so much. Children are not capable of making such life altering decisions such as medical and/or surgical interventions that can’t be undone.
If you’re of a certain age, it’s impossible to not be aware of how much of the trans debates echos previous arguments against gay rights. And any “Well, those weren’t valid arguments for that then, but they are for this now” thoughts you may entertain are going to strike you as dubious.
What’s more, though you would never say it, you sense there is a simple revulsion to trans women out there that is almost identical to how people (including leftists) commonly felt about gay men (and in many conservative and minority communities still do.)
This may make lefty Gen-X and hetero boomer men reluctant to wade in.
That and they’ve also been told all their lives by feminists (male and female) that as men they are simply to defer to liberal women on certain issues related to gender, women’s bodies, terminology, etc. They’re thus used to sitting certain arguments out.
EDIT: I initially failed to make clear I was talking about heterosexual liberal men
They are superficially similar, but the actual issues at hand are nowhere close to the same.
As a truly obvious example that will shut down this argument completely, being gay doesn't require a lifetime of medical treatments starting from childhood.
Still, common arguments like “It’s a mental illness and shouldn’t be treated as normal” or “They try to covert vulnerable kids and must be stopped” are the same.
Didn’t “homosexuality” journey over the decades through various editions of the DMV from mental illness to a sort of limbo (patients’ mental problem was their unease with their homosexuality—or something like) to finally being taken out completely?
The following are both ugly arguments that were made by bigots against gay rights back in the day and which are now being made about trans people:
1) “They’re sick — or if you want to put it nicer, they’re mentally ill and we shouldn’t be indulging their pathology by pretending it’s natural or alright.”
2) “They’re trying to indoctrinate teens into their lifestyle. We have to save the kids from their twisted propaganda.”
If you are a left of center, progressive heterosexual man (committed to gay rights) and you hear people saying those things (in some form) about trans people your instinctual reaction is assume they’re bigots and tell them to fuck off.
So when people like Katie Herzog argue “all these fourteen-year-old girls are just being convinced they’re trans” or “we need to protect kids from the doctors and teachers who are trying to support them in their professed sexual identity” it‘s a hard sell.
EDIT: I should have made clear in the initial comment you responded to that I was talking about well intentioned male liberals who were heterosexual like Freddie DB.
But crucially, it’s almost impossible to pretend your sexuality is something it isn’t. You cannot force a gay person to be attracted to the opposite sex, any more than you can expect straight people to enjoy having sex with someone of the same sex.
The disgust that you mentioned previously is not always sinister--it can feel literally repulsive for some straight people to imagine having gay sex. That’s not bigotry--it’s sexuality.
Yes, it’s your sexuality. But hetero or boomer Gen-X male sexuality often means finding the idea of gay sex icky, no longer being at all attracted to your wife and thinking all these younger women you see are incredibly attractive. Just mind bogglingly so.
Guess what? Society doesn’t want to hear it. Literally no one does. They don’t care that it’s your sexuality. No one on earth wants to hear it.
So you just shut up, hope you won’t be asked to contemplate anything icky and try to be a good person or ally or whatever.
A contrast: the medicalization of children that is coyly rolled into euphemisms like "gender affirming care", "top surgery", and "bottom surgery" is what riles so many people.
Trans fights for medicalization. Gay rights was about fighting OFF medicalization.
Excellent point. But, of course, that’s not how it’s framed.
The pivotal gay rights battle was for marriage rights. The fighting cry of trans rights is “Trans women are women.” The rote response of leftwing heterosexual men to both is “Um, okay. Sure.”
You’re dead-on about “gender-affirming care” but many liberal hetero men just dismiss it as an icky thing they don’t want to think about. They don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss.
In my anecdotal conversations with liberal men, I’ve actually seen a lot of curiosity rather than revulsion. I almost feel like many of them don’t care one way or the other because honestly they’d be interested in at least seeing what it’s like to sleep with a trans woman.
Which feels like yet another way males’ sexuality overrides the boundaries of women.
I personally doubt those liberal men actually want to try sleeping with a trans woman. They might say that to virtue signal, but when the rubber hits the road....I don't think that's really on their bucket list.
I didn’t mean to imply all, or even a majority. I’ve just spoken with many who express that to me, and they’re not virtue signaling. It’s a sexual curiosity.
The vast majority of heterosexual men have, at best, an “uncanny valley” reaction to trans women. Many (perhaps most) are, frankly, repulsed at the thought of having sex with them.
Heterosexual men get to have sex with an infinitesimal fraction of the biological women they’d like to and that provides more than a lifetime’s worth of “curiosity.”
Different strokes I guess - pretty much every guy I know wants to experience sex with a trans woman about as much as they want to experience getting jumped in a prison shower.
As a ... something ... bi/heteroflexible/what have you early Gen Xer, I am completely repelled by the idea of having sex with a trans person, but not by male-male sexual contact. Honestly, I don't understand the fascination with MtF by "straight" men, but to each his own.
Heterosexual, liberal -- no, make that civil libertarian -- boomer here.
I won't dispute your assessment of similarities; though in my opinion it overstates the case, given that parallels can be found among a great many issues. Today pro-lifers often find similarities between pro-choice and pro-slavery arguments.
And I've gone off track, much like the rest of the discussion here.
Jesse's post concerns a specific claim about a specific institution, and its aftermath in the press. It's more about the press than about trans issues. He alerts us to the "bifurcated" responses to all the allegations. That's what we have here. We're all taking sides. Not much of any of this is about Wash U or the press or Bari Weiss.
I imagine I'm kind of dumping on you. I apologize for that, but I was attracted to this particular point and felt I should defend my demographic membership. My general observation is aimed at, oh, almost everyone. Not Jesse, who is properly hedging and -- as far as I can tell -- looking for evidence on each side. I hope he is able to flesh out his information.
FdB didn't engage with a single reason his readers are so rabid about policy and culture relating to trans identity. It was so annoying, like why even post it? Yeah, some people disagree with the basic facts he stated, but I don't think that's really his audience's tendency. Like he said cis women are safe in public spaces with trans women but somehow sidestepped the definition of 'public.' Prisons aren't public. Locker rooms, changing areas, etc might be a different story. He really could've kept that.
And he did the thing that almost everyone does when they talk about this topic. Y'all- I'm getting exhausted!
They scoff at the idea that trans women are all predators, completely and probably willfully missing the point.
Allowing female identified men into women's sex segregated spaces opens the door to every creepy man in the world. If you cannot challenge or protest the right of man to be in a restroom or changing room or locker room, then you have now given an all access pass to every skeevy perv. They can waltz right in to any space where women are in a state of undress. And that is exactly what has happened. It was so predictable!
And yet the feelings of transwomen were given preference over the actual physical safety of women. And we were all called ( and are still being called) transphobic for saying that that men would do exactly what they went and did.
Back when I was a liberal feminist (I'm a rad fem but not a literal terf by any means) my rebuttal was 'straight men have been more likely to abuse us so we should worry about them.' and I think most ppl are still at this brain dead level tbh.
Right, I'm agreeing! The gap is the idea that they wouldn't use self-ID to do that, so we should direct our attention away from that. Liberal feminism is brain worms.
Sorry! My brain has been fried by being around five year olds all day! I am very ready for my work day to end.
I'm also just so sick of this issue. I don't understand why this medical scandal hasn't fully blown open yet. I am beginning to worry that this is "Wait for Mueller!" all over again.
Exactly! It's not trans women per se, it's that the changing societal norms and structures makes it hard to guard against or say no to intrusive men using the permissiveness of the new self ID norm. Why is it so hard to admit that skeevy men who get off on intruding into women's spaces or flashing women will happily do this? Some even have already!
I have a friend, highly intelligent, irreverent, verbally jousty, with a trans sister. He’s my boyfriend’s best friend, and when I was first getting to know him, I made the mistake of asking him to chime in on the “gender identity madness” only for him to respond “Well my sister is trans.”
We got into a few really loud arguments before one night listening to each other, and what I heard is that he’s between a rock and a hard place. His sister is and always has been a volatile and difficult person. She decided to start transitioning a few years ago, and he’s tried to be there financially, physically, and emotionally the whole way. But some little thing always happens--he’ll slip up and say, “bro”, and she’ll freak out and kick him out of the house.
So there’s an emotional coercion at play. It’s not that my friend doesn’t have real questions, but he doesn’t feel like he can possibly go there because he loves his sibling and doesn’t want things to deteriorate any further, or for her to become unhinged.
He's alluded to having someone trans in his close circle; not sure if it's a relative or a friend but yes he views the issue through the prism of a personal relationship, which I agree is largely what motivates him to keep his head buried so firmly in the sand.
I live in STL and am watching this closely. My kids were patients at Wash U child psychiatry for years.
The defense of the center in local communities has been swift and amounts to:
1. You can’t trust anyone who associates with a right-wing transphobe like the Republican AG
2. She’s just a receptionist, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about
3. Reed is just a transphobe and it doesn’t matter than she’s married to a trans man, that’s just a reboot of “I can’t be racist, I have a black friend!”
4. This has been thoroughly “debunked” by these 2 stories
5. She’s giving cover for the genocide of trans kids
6. The patient who was hemorrhaging from a ruptured vagina (thinned by testosterone ) “probably just had extra vigorous sex”
7. Reed is lying, she even repeated a right wing meme about being an attack helicopter
8. She’s just mad about being fired [she wasn’t fired]
9. This is revenge for a bad review she got for being abusive and misgendering kids on purpose to give them a thick skin
10. She’s clearly being coached by right wing transphobes because she repeats the inflammatory description of a blocker as a “cancer drug.” Lol, like how people call Ivermectin a “horse dewormer” even though it’s used worldwide as one treatment option against malaria and other tropical infections?
Reed could be a big fat liar. The world is full of them. But the records should tell all. Why be hasty? If these people firmly believe or disbelieve her, some of them are going to look pretty dumb. Certainty at this stage one way or the other simply signals one’s own bias.
Patience is hard, especially for Gen Z loudmouths on Twitter.
Also, thank you Jessie. As a subscriber to your own substack and to BARpod, I hoped you’d give this case the careful investigation it deserves. This is s great start. Please continue to be the pervert for nuance you are. Know that this hits close to home for own of your devoted listeners. My kids have autism and their neurodivergent peers are sure jumping all in with boutique genders and name changes and I suspect they could be patients at this clinic. My own kids have been in rooms without me talking to some of the doctors who refer here and it’s a scary thought. Looking for new care now. It’s so scary, Wash U and St. Louis Childrens hospital has always been the gold standard, like no need to even vet a specialist if they work there, everyone just trusts them implicitly. That’s changing, at least for me.
This whole business with TransParent is very ironic given the amount of ink spilled against the NYT for not fully disclosing one of the people they talked to was part of a gender-critical group. What the paper here did is much worse, considering this person was their main source, and the person in the NYT article got like a single-sentence quote.
Wonderfully done here, Jesse. I also wonder how hard the reports on those other pieces actually looked for patients with negative outcomes or who might have felt rushed (even if the ensuing outcome wasn't necessarily negative).
As with all things in the news, the shoddy reporting by the two Missouri papers will go around the world and be held as definitive proof while reporting like this will barely be seen.
Kind of a metacomment, but: yesterday I listened to an interview with Todd Rose on his recent book "Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions". Maybe I'm alone in never having heard of him before, but I thought it was one of the most interesting podcasts I've ever heard. It explained A LOT about why almost no one is ever going to change their mind about these issues irrespective of the evidence. I can't recommend this too highly: https://thehub.ca/2023-03-02/seeing-through-our-collective-illusions-todd-rose-on-the-science-of-why-we-make-bad-decisions/
a broken clock is correct twice a day. claims that some kids do OK on the "care" doesnt disprove the well documented proof that most dont. no kid can consent to this "care" becuase they cant imagine how they will feel when theyre 25 YO and are permanently harmed by this "care".
jamie reed's account matches the accounts of 1000's of others.
parents who advocate for this "care" have a huge financial intrest to do so. gender affirming "care" requires the option to receive astronomically expensive plastic surgery. who is going to pay for this optional vanity "care"? per these homophobic parents the tax payer must shell out. this is what all their politicking and statements are about . just another group at the tit of the gov
Precisely. I mean, it would be like Rose Kennedy’s parents acknowledging they consented to destroying their daughter’s brain. What a thing to grapple with, which is why denial is so attractive.
We all know it to be true, but I doubt her parents ever acknowledged their mistake, at least not publicly.
It's one thing for people to smear other people on social media (only to be expected perhaps given the disinhibiting effects of hiding behind the screen). But to see mainstream journalists--over and over!--just jumping to be first to smear a whistleblower because the information doesn't fit their tribal allegiance! Well, it's depressing (even though I know journalism has rarely reached the ideal of objectivity) that this is the kind of fight Jesse has to fight every day.
Jesse, I think you're doing heroic work on standing up for accurate reporting and valid science on transgender issues, and you've paid the price by facing the activists' firehose of vitriol. I'm glad you're fighting against the tendency of these folks to combine shrillness, puritanism, and mob behavior in one depressing package.
And yet . . .
I have no right to declare myself your assignment editor, but sometimes I fear your constant focus on exposing the terrible shortfalls on the side of the activists and their supporters while (as far as I can tell) being fairly silent on the barrage of horrific anti-transgender bills put forth by red states is doing a disservice to the cause of tolerance and dignity for transgender of all ages that all of us here agree with.
You're hardly in the camp of the red state bigots but aiming your (totally justified!) fire at the one side may wind up giving the other side support they obviously do not deserve.
So keep up the good work you're doing, but if you'll be open to suggestion, every now and then help your readers and the public to understand more thoroughly what these politicians are doing.
Isn’t there an inherent tension in what you’re suggesting? If the clinics, broadly speaking, are operating in a shoddy way, and if the science, generally speaking, is poor to very poor, then isn’t any effort to shut the clinics down kind of...okay?
Jesse has constantly and full throatedly said he disagrees with legislative efforts to shut down access to care. What else is there to say on that front?
The flip side is that because the American medical world refuses to acknowledge the ongoing questions around this field of care, and because the American media have been largely reluctant to cover this controversy, who else has the authority to at least put the breaks on this stuff?
Again, it's very important work. But it's not the only work. At risk again of being the lazy person telling Jesse what to write about, I'd love to read a compendium of all the odious laws being passed by these legislatures. Full throatedly saying you're against them is great but not very informative. I'd love to be informed.
There are, truly, dozens of activist orgs and Twitter accounts providing such a compendium. You might not get an accurate look at what’s being banned or outlawed, though.
Right, even this "Tennessee bans drag!" stuff is, afaict, completely wrong. It's just a messaging bill that really just emphasizes stuff that was already illegal, like sexual performances in front of a child. I saw a really viral tweet that claimed it banned the movie "Tootsie", which was just completely made up.
billionaire activists spent decades spreading disinfo about mythical "trans" kids and gender ideology via a well financed campaign that was based on 1000's of lies. they were so successful because they understood the need to keep these issues away from the public and keep awareness of the harmful polcies they enacted as low a possible. the entire gender ideology effort depends on people not haveing any of the facts about this fraud. but that could only last so long. now people are becomming aware that every gender biz stat and claim is a lie. and these lies harm dysphoric kids and adults the most by preventing them from getting evidenced based care and instead pushes them into ideology care that does more harm than good.
FYI, I’m listening to Ezra Klein’s most recent podcast, and it’s an interview with someone about the republican bills. It’s a frustrating listen, given how the interviewee avoids any of the good faith questions or concerns that anybody has, but it’s definitely a long conversation about what the bills are about and what the “goal” is among Republican lawmakers.
Thank you for your post; lots of people have written great answers.
The only thing I want to say is that the truth is the truth. You cannot refrain from telling the truth because you are afraid of how opponents will twist it.
I don't know what is "horrific" about the bills; we just get what one side says is in the bills.
It’s frustrating because literally all of these laws were spawned by the steadfast refusal of activists to engage with good faith questions and concerns around trans related issues: trans girls and women in sports; the quality of research underpinning GAC; what amount of instruction on gender identity and sexuality is appropriate at what ages; social contagion, etc.
If activists, and center media, had been willing to engage, none of these laws would have any teeth.
The activists have goals ("trans women are women") that others do not share, and on which the activists are not going to back down. It is a clash of values, of visions for society. It is entirely appropriate that these clashses be settled by democratically electred reprensentatives.
Agreed. But the activists throttled the debate for so long, and contorted the data and the reality for so long, that they created a culture war that will absolutely have blowback for democrats and liberals more generally, let alone gays, lesbians, and trans people. Its despotic overreach that got us here, and ultimately they’ll be responsible for the terrible laws.
Yes, I am part of the blowback. I am a 67 year old lifelong Democrat and left political activist who is now voting straight Republican and who will be lending my modest political talents as a volunteer for Republican candidates in 2024, entirely because of the crime against humanity of child mutilation and sterilization that is fully supported by every Democrat currently in office. I want every last one of them voted out. If a sane Democrat appears (less likely than a unicorn, IMO), I will support that Democrat. I have a litmus-test list of bills, starting with opposition to the Equality Act.
I am torn here. The threat to democracy on the right scares the hell out of me, so I could only support a Republican who clearly stands up for voting rights and fair elections. In particular, I think it is important to make sure that Republicans who are in the "election was stolen" camp be opposed, particularly, the Secretary of State or Attorney General office. But, I get what you are saying and why.
I don’t begrudge you your feelings on this, nor can I criticize your political decisions. I feel very torn myself--even more than just the kids, but because of the legal and social implications of gender identity on our society.
what youre calling anti trans bills are really bills that protect the most vulranable kids from the fraud of gender ideology. the only way that someone can think these bills harm anyone is if one dosent understand the facts of the issue
- most kids grow out of gender dysphoria and ID as their birth gender unless given gender meds
- even if they dont, theres no evidence gender meds help - they do more harm than good
- pediatric gender dysphoria doesnt lead to more suicides than does pediatric bi polar, each not that great
- suicides go up after starting this "care" becuase real issue for distress are ignored.
- kids have a human right to experience puberty without being tricked into life long loss of sexual function by quacks selling a fraud.
these bills increase diversity and inclusion of gay and gnc people by allowing them the freedom to be who they are and not forcing them to carve their body up or sacrifice their future happiness to please activists who want them to conform to stereotypes
Why would a gender nonconforming woman post a risk to women in the bathroom? And again, if a gender nonconforming woman faces violence in the bathroom for being a gender nonconforming woman, how does that make her safe?
biological men are a threat to women. they murder them, assault them, rape them. it makes no difference if the man is wearing a dress or slacks. the stats dont lie. many stats show the men in dresses are more of a risk than other men. but theres no stats that show they are less. all biological men are safer in the mens room. the stats dont lie. thats where they are safe. some women like ms davis are just too nice to say no to people who rob the rights and thereby harm women. i dont have that problem
I'm not talking about men. I'm talking about gender nonconforming women. I have said that repeatedly. What about gender non conforming women? Women who are masculine presenting (or "butch.") Why should they face violence in restrooms?
> "It is true that many patients came in anxious and depressed, whether that was a diagnosis or just symptoms, but from my experience, that was alleviated with the start of gender affirming hormones,” Jones said.
Any journalist who covered this controversy, or any medical topic for that matter, *even a little* would want to know how Jones would know something like this. Based on Jesse's reporting, the really obvious answer is that Jones wouldn't, but the journalist here just prints it without a second thought. We're not even given the slightest hint the Jones works in a traveling education role, and would never have seen patients in the clinic, and indeed, rarely even *went* to the clinic.
I don't *want* Jamie Reed's allegations to be true. These kids sound miserable, and giving them what amounts to a fake diagnosis just to get them on drugs is horrible. But if the best evidence *so far* that Reed is wrong is a person who even admits they have a bias against Reed, and has no special knowledge of what happens in the clinic, it convinces me even more that Reed is telling the truth.
I'm struggling to follow the number of sentences using the pronoun 'they'.
"They said to them that they and them were out of their depth, which was a shock to them because they had never had their views challenged by them in this way"...
I mean, why couldn't non-binary people have chosen literally any other set of pronouns to describe themselves? What happened to Zim/Zer? Maybe it sounded ridiculous but at least I could work out who was being referred to in a damned sentence!
I’m interested in understanding the “helicopter” thing, because I feel like it probably needs an exhausting amount of context to fully understand. Like, I’m online enough to know that “I identify as an attack helicopter” was a meme to make fun of trans people all the way back on 4chan and antifeminist Youtube, and that the phrase has gone through cycles of reclamation ever since, from trans Youtubers turning it into a joke to Isabel Fall’s controversial short story.
But I am not online enough to understand what would motivate a kid to bring that to a clinic where they presumably are hoping to receive serious medical intervention. I know teenagers are notorious mischievous responders, but there’s responding to an anonymous survey with a troll meme, and there’s taking it all the way to the gender clinic. Identifying as random inanimate objects was a thing people did with varying levels of seriousness on Tumblr in the early 2010s; is the kid one of those? Were they sufficiently mentally ill and Internet-poisoned that neither they nor their caretakers could really understand the extent to which they were trolling?
It’s not that I necessarily disbelieve it, but it feels like such an obvious troll, I’m trying to figure out the circumstances under which it happened.
“Attack Helicopter” comes from a dustup over a science fiction story published in Clarkesworld back in the teens. Given the rest of the teen’s reported list of possibilities I immediately heard it as a frustrated “I don’t *know* what the *fuck* I identify as, I’m just unHappy”.
No, it’s older than that. The short story’s title is a reference to the older meme. That’s why it was such a dustup - people saw the title and assumed the story was transphobic because the meme was.
Ah, did not know the original. I think it’s the case regardless that it was the kid making a *reference* rather than an actual assertion -- and that maybe Reed and def the normies saying “thats so nuts Reed’s obviously fabulating” don’t recognize it as such.
It’s been really dispiriting to see the responses to Reed’s accusations. It really does seem to boil down to, “This is so insane that only a rube or a bigot could believe it really happened.” Just zero curiosity, full confidence that it’s not just untrue but a wildly fallacious smear campaign. Makes you wonder how they’ll respond to whatever the AG’s investigation uncovers.
I don't need to wonder. "Missouri is a red state, ergo whatever findings are made by the AG are presumptively false"
And round and round we go.
The silver lining is only a handful of small publications are doing this damage control spin. I don't know how many people read the Missouri Independent and/or St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
I think the larger woke-leaning outlets are just trying their best to avoid bringing up the Washington University Transgender Center at all costs.
I recall seeing very few MSM headlines one way or the other. There were some that mentioned the ensuing investigations, but they tended to gloss over why and how those investigations got started. Rather than doing a deep dive into attempting to debunk Reed's affidavit, MSM journos seemed to try to just avoid mentioning it altogether.
Receipts FTW!
I'd bet anything that Reed spoke to you because she trusts that you wouldn't twist her words out of context. There's no way she should give the time of day to any other random reporter. Trusting a reporter nowadays is almost as dumb as trusting a cop. Keep your mouth shut and an attorney present.
This further shows how much guts Reed has. She knew the shit storm that was gonna happen. She spent a long time preparing, being observant, and most importantly, collecting those precious receipts.
Apart from anything about the merits of the accounts or the issues, this piece highlights how the combination of the eternal game of telephone (here, what was reported as “deliberate misgendering”) and of routine interpersonal/workplace BS being expressed in the language of civil rights is making the discourse so poisonous.
Great work as usual. I hope the lack of response from the Post-Dispatch doesn't indicate an attitude of "Who cares? It's only Substack. No one reads that (well, no one who matters...)."
So far I've read only the excerpts, not the whole "debunking" articles, but this Hutton quote jumped right out at me: "The idea that nobody got information, that everybody was pushed toward treatment, is just not true." Of course it isn't true, and that's not what Reed was claiming. I'm guessing that the reporter did not push back against or clarify this misrepresentation.
Was hoping you would chime in on Freddie Deboer's piece yesterday.
He seems to have vastly underplayed the medical scandal aspect while at the same time time excusing himself for misleading his readers because he's not an expert.
FdB will not engage on this. All the razor sharp criticism he wields against other progressive issues and people, he refuses to do for this topic, and then claims to be mystified that people notice and wonder why.
A lot of liberal men truly have a blind spot here.
In many cases, I think in FdB’s too, the presence of a trans friend or family member effectively shuts down any possibility of them engaging critically with the subject.
It is pretty wild watching him check his brain at the door though.
"Nobody is trying to deny or erase the distinction between trans women and cis women, but also TWAW so obvs they belong in female sports/prisons/rape shelters and any&all single-sex spaces are deplorably bigoted"
"Incentive structures are skewed towards encouraging Rachel Dolezals, but no way would male prisoners have perverse incentives to switch up their pronouns to score transfers to women's prisons"
Exactly. I was really disappointed by his post yesterday. It’s amazing he can’t hear himself.
But more than that, I’m frustrated that he keeps saying he’s been so clear about what’s out of bounds, except I’ve never seen him moderate comments around this nor give a clear example of what’s out of bounds. In practice it comes off as “anything critical of a trans-adjacent issue is off limits.” But that’s not what he says he’s asking for.
It's sort of like when public schoolboards solicit feedback - you're allowed to praise them as much as you want, but if you criticize them in any way they'll say you're violating "decorum" rules and cut off your mic.
Checking his brain at the door- exactly!
It makes me question everything about his intellect. There is just this gaping hole where his curiosity and skepticism should be. When we are talking about children and young people being harmed, how can anybody just be uninterested in that?
This liberal man most decidedly does not have a blind spot.
Not only does FdB criticize the excesses of the progressive left, as a marxist he is fundamentally opposed to capitalism and often criticizes its outcomes.
And yet, he states that all the for-profit child gender clinics are just fine! They are surely doing the right thing always! No one should pay any attention!
Well, he doesn’t say that. He says he’s not an expert and that this issue lies outside his field of interesting opinions. But even that is disingenuous. One of the articles that received massive amounts of trans comments was the DID mental illness one. This issue clearly does intersect with one of his core topics--mental health and social media.
Freddie writes "I don’t understand why this element of medical science has become everyone’s business", which goes further than saying that the issue merely lies outside his range of expertise. I read that as saying that not only does he not have an opinion, you and I should also not have opinions. It should all be left up to "the doctors".
Just read Freddie’s article and it’s very frustrating. If he’s going to make a statement that progressive people should be trans-affirming, he needs to show the same intellectually curiosity with this issue as with similar issues. Instead he’s retreating to “I’m not an expert” and “some people are really transphobic”. There are good reasons people are obsessed with this topic - it’s a huge cultural shift taking place. And if he wants to know why people don’t trust the medical establishment in this matter, there’s no lack of evidence, including jesse’s reporting and developments in the UK. It’s not like liberal institutional capture is outside his area of interest.
"It’s not like liberal institutional capture is outside his area of interest."
LOL! Absolutely right. On this and only this issue, Freddie turns off all his usually sharp critical faculties.
Sad.
Agreed.
Yes, agreed. And I think FdB makes the same mistake as a lot of others: he conflates values and attitudes about alphabet people with issues about children. For instance, I believe any consenting adult should be able to be whoever they want and love whoever they wish, provided they do no harm. But children, not so much. Children are not capable of making such life altering decisions such as medical and/or surgical interventions that can’t be undone.
If you’re of a certain age, it’s impossible to not be aware of how much of the trans debates echos previous arguments against gay rights. And any “Well, those weren’t valid arguments for that then, but they are for this now” thoughts you may entertain are going to strike you as dubious.
What’s more, though you would never say it, you sense there is a simple revulsion to trans women out there that is almost identical to how people (including leftists) commonly felt about gay men (and in many conservative and minority communities still do.)
This may make lefty Gen-X and hetero boomer men reluctant to wade in.
That and they’ve also been told all their lives by feminists (male and female) that as men they are simply to defer to liberal women on certain issues related to gender, women’s bodies, terminology, etc. They’re thus used to sitting certain arguments out.
EDIT: I initially failed to make clear I was talking about heterosexual liberal men
They are superficially similar, but the actual issues at hand are nowhere close to the same.
As a truly obvious example that will shut down this argument completely, being gay doesn't require a lifetime of medical treatments starting from childhood.
Still, common arguments like “It’s a mental illness and shouldn’t be treated as normal” or “They try to covert vulnerable kids and must be stopped” are the same.
Again, superficially similar, but since gender dysphoria *is* a mental illness, this analogy doesn't really work.
Didn’t “homosexuality” journey over the decades through various editions of the DMV from mental illness to a sort of limbo (patients’ mental problem was their unease with their homosexuality—or something like) to finally being taken out completely?
This Onion clip certainly hits different now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhKa-NVWEg8&ab_channel=TheOnion
I am of a certain age.....67....and gay. Trans debates don't so much echo those of gay rights as co-opt them.
To your mind, Which argument of the trans debate echo those of the gay rights debate? One or two examples would be nice. Thank you.
The following are both ugly arguments that were made by bigots against gay rights back in the day and which are now being made about trans people:
1) “They’re sick — or if you want to put it nicer, they’re mentally ill and we shouldn’t be indulging their pathology by pretending it’s natural or alright.”
2) “They’re trying to indoctrinate teens into their lifestyle. We have to save the kids from their twisted propaganda.”
If you are a left of center, progressive heterosexual man (committed to gay rights) and you hear people saying those things (in some form) about trans people your instinctual reaction is assume they’re bigots and tell them to fuck off.
So when people like Katie Herzog argue “all these fourteen-year-old girls are just being convinced they’re trans” or “we need to protect kids from the doctors and teachers who are trying to support them in their professed sexual identity” it‘s a hard sell.
EDIT: I should have made clear in the initial comment you responded to that I was talking about well intentioned male liberals who were heterosexual like Freddie DB.
But crucially, it’s almost impossible to pretend your sexuality is something it isn’t. You cannot force a gay person to be attracted to the opposite sex, any more than you can expect straight people to enjoy having sex with someone of the same sex.
The disgust that you mentioned previously is not always sinister--it can feel literally repulsive for some straight people to imagine having gay sex. That’s not bigotry--it’s sexuality.
Yes, it’s your sexuality. But hetero or boomer Gen-X male sexuality often means finding the idea of gay sex icky, no longer being at all attracted to your wife and thinking all these younger women you see are incredibly attractive. Just mind bogglingly so.
Guess what? Society doesn’t want to hear it. Literally no one does. They don’t care that it’s your sexuality. No one on earth wants to hear it.
So you just shut up, hope you won’t be asked to contemplate anything icky and try to be a good person or ally or whatever.
A contrast: the medicalization of children that is coyly rolled into euphemisms like "gender affirming care", "top surgery", and "bottom surgery" is what riles so many people.
Trans fights for medicalization. Gay rights was about fighting OFF medicalization.
Excellent point. But, of course, that’s not how it’s framed.
The pivotal gay rights battle was for marriage rights. The fighting cry of trans rights is “Trans women are women.” The rote response of leftwing heterosexual men to both is “Um, okay. Sure.”
You’re dead-on about “gender-affirming care” but many liberal hetero men just dismiss it as an icky thing they don’t want to think about. They don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss.
I am not defending or excusing them, mind you.
In my anecdotal conversations with liberal men, I’ve actually seen a lot of curiosity rather than revulsion. I almost feel like many of them don’t care one way or the other because honestly they’d be interested in at least seeing what it’s like to sleep with a trans woman.
Which feels like yet another way males’ sexuality overrides the boundaries of women.
I personally doubt those liberal men actually want to try sleeping with a trans woman. They might say that to virtue signal, but when the rubber hits the road....I don't think that's really on their bucket list.
Hahaha! Yeah, I agree.
I once asked my now husband what was a "deal breaker" for him in terms of dating a woman. He said "a penis".
Yes, but that was just “dating.” I’m sure his standards for marrying were a million times higher!
I didn’t mean to imply all, or even a majority. I’ve just spoken with many who express that to me, and they’re not virtue signaling. It’s a sexual curiosity.
It‘s the circles you travel in. That’s fine.
The vast majority of heterosexual men have, at best, an “uncanny valley” reaction to trans women. Many (perhaps most) are, frankly, repulsed at the thought of having sex with them.
Heterosexual men get to have sex with an infinitesimal fraction of the biological women they’d like to and that provides more than a lifetime’s worth of “curiosity.”
Different strokes I guess - pretty much every guy I know wants to experience sex with a trans woman about as much as they want to experience getting jumped in a prison shower.
As a ... something ... bi/heteroflexible/what have you early Gen Xer, I am completely repelled by the idea of having sex with a trans person, but not by male-male sexual contact. Honestly, I don't understand the fascination with MtF by "straight" men, but to each his own.
Heterosexual, liberal -- no, make that civil libertarian -- boomer here.
I won't dispute your assessment of similarities; though in my opinion it overstates the case, given that parallels can be found among a great many issues. Today pro-lifers often find similarities between pro-choice and pro-slavery arguments.
And I've gone off track, much like the rest of the discussion here.
Jesse's post concerns a specific claim about a specific institution, and its aftermath in the press. It's more about the press than about trans issues. He alerts us to the "bifurcated" responses to all the allegations. That's what we have here. We're all taking sides. Not much of any of this is about Wash U or the press or Bari Weiss.
I imagine I'm kind of dumping on you. I apologize for that, but I was attracted to this particular point and felt I should defend my demographic membership. My general observation is aimed at, oh, almost everyone. Not Jesse, who is properly hedging and -- as far as I can tell -- looking for evidence on each side. I hope he is able to flesh out his information.
FdB didn't engage with a single reason his readers are so rabid about policy and culture relating to trans identity. It was so annoying, like why even post it? Yeah, some people disagree with the basic facts he stated, but I don't think that's really his audience's tendency. Like he said cis women are safe in public spaces with trans women but somehow sidestepped the definition of 'public.' Prisons aren't public. Locker rooms, changing areas, etc might be a different story. He really could've kept that.
And he did the thing that almost everyone does when they talk about this topic. Y'all- I'm getting exhausted!
They scoff at the idea that trans women are all predators, completely and probably willfully missing the point.
Allowing female identified men into women's sex segregated spaces opens the door to every creepy man in the world. If you cannot challenge or protest the right of man to be in a restroom or changing room or locker room, then you have now given an all access pass to every skeevy perv. They can waltz right in to any space where women are in a state of undress. And that is exactly what has happened. It was so predictable!
And yet the feelings of transwomen were given preference over the actual physical safety of women. And we were all called ( and are still being called) transphobic for saying that that men would do exactly what they went and did.
Back when I was a liberal feminist (I'm a rad fem but not a literal terf by any means) my rebuttal was 'straight men have been more likely to abuse us so we should worry about them.' and I think most ppl are still at this brain dead level tbh.
But that's exactly it! Straight men are more likely to abuse us, and now they have carte blanche to come into any sex segregated space.
Right, I'm agreeing! The gap is the idea that they wouldn't use self-ID to do that, so we should direct our attention away from that. Liberal feminism is brain worms.
Sorry! My brain has been fried by being around five year olds all day! I am very ready for my work day to end.
I'm also just so sick of this issue. I don't understand why this medical scandal hasn't fully blown open yet. I am beginning to worry that this is "Wait for Mueller!" all over again.
Exactly! It's not trans women per se, it's that the changing societal norms and structures makes it hard to guard against or say no to intrusive men using the permissiveness of the new self ID norm. Why is it so hard to admit that skeevy men who get off on intruding into women's spaces or flashing women will happily do this? Some even have already!
I subscribe to Deboer's substack as it is very good.
It's clear that there are 2 topics he is reticent to discuss fully: socialism/communism and transgender issues.
Even with communism, he'll engage with at least some rebuttals of his positions, vs. trans issues are just a 3rd rail.
I subscribe because 1 sacred cow topic isn't a dealbreaker, but man you could hide a small continent in that blind spot of his.
I have a friend, highly intelligent, irreverent, verbally jousty, with a trans sister. He’s my boyfriend’s best friend, and when I was first getting to know him, I made the mistake of asking him to chime in on the “gender identity madness” only for him to respond “Well my sister is trans.”
We got into a few really loud arguments before one night listening to each other, and what I heard is that he’s between a rock and a hard place. His sister is and always has been a volatile and difficult person. She decided to start transitioning a few years ago, and he’s tried to be there financially, physically, and emotionally the whole way. But some little thing always happens--he’ll slip up and say, “bro”, and she’ll freak out and kick him out of the house.
So there’s an emotional coercion at play. It’s not that my friend doesn’t have real questions, but he doesn’t feel like he can possibly go there because he loves his sibling and doesn’t want things to deteriorate any further, or for her to become unhinged.
So I wonder whether FdB has anyone even remotely like that in his life. Because that makes it so hard to even have questions.
He's alluded to having someone trans in his close circle; not sure if it's a relative or a friend but yes he views the issue through the prism of a personal relationship, which I agree is largely what motivates him to keep his head buried so firmly in the sand.
I live in STL and am watching this closely. My kids were patients at Wash U child psychiatry for years.
The defense of the center in local communities has been swift and amounts to:
1. You can’t trust anyone who associates with a right-wing transphobe like the Republican AG
2. She’s just a receptionist, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about
3. Reed is just a transphobe and it doesn’t matter than she’s married to a trans man, that’s just a reboot of “I can’t be racist, I have a black friend!”
4. This has been thoroughly “debunked” by these 2 stories
5. She’s giving cover for the genocide of trans kids
6. The patient who was hemorrhaging from a ruptured vagina (thinned by testosterone ) “probably just had extra vigorous sex”
7. Reed is lying, she even repeated a right wing meme about being an attack helicopter
8. She’s just mad about being fired [she wasn’t fired]
9. This is revenge for a bad review she got for being abusive and misgendering kids on purpose to give them a thick skin
10. She’s clearly being coached by right wing transphobes because she repeats the inflammatory description of a blocker as a “cancer drug.” Lol, like how people call Ivermectin a “horse dewormer” even though it’s used worldwide as one treatment option against malaria and other tropical infections?
Reed could be a big fat liar. The world is full of them. But the records should tell all. Why be hasty? If these people firmly believe or disbelieve her, some of them are going to look pretty dumb. Certainty at this stage one way or the other simply signals one’s own bias.
Patience is hard, especially for Gen Z loudmouths on Twitter.
Also, thank you Jessie. As a subscriber to your own substack and to BARpod, I hoped you’d give this case the careful investigation it deserves. This is s great start. Please continue to be the pervert for nuance you are. Know that this hits close to home for own of your devoted listeners. My kids have autism and their neurodivergent peers are sure jumping all in with boutique genders and name changes and I suspect they could be patients at this clinic. My own kids have been in rooms without me talking to some of the doctors who refer here and it’s a scary thought. Looking for new care now. It’s so scary, Wash U and St. Louis Childrens hospital has always been the gold standard, like no need to even vet a specialist if they work there, everyone just trusts them implicitly. That’s changing, at least for me.
This whole business with TransParent is very ironic given the amount of ink spilled against the NYT for not fully disclosing one of the people they talked to was part of a gender-critical group. What the paper here did is much worse, considering this person was their main source, and the person in the NYT article got like a single-sentence quote.
Wonderfully done here, Jesse. I also wonder how hard the reports on those other pieces actually looked for patients with negative outcomes or who might have felt rushed (even if the ensuing outcome wasn't necessarily negative).
As with all things in the news, the shoddy reporting by the two Missouri papers will go around the world and be held as definitive proof while reporting like this will barely be seen.
Kind of a metacomment, but: yesterday I listened to an interview with Todd Rose on his recent book "Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions". Maybe I'm alone in never having heard of him before, but I thought it was one of the most interesting podcasts I've ever heard. It explained A LOT about why almost no one is ever going to change their mind about these issues irrespective of the evidence. I can't recommend this too highly: https://thehub.ca/2023-03-02/seeing-through-our-collective-illusions-todd-rose-on-the-science-of-why-we-make-bad-decisions/
a broken clock is correct twice a day. claims that some kids do OK on the "care" doesnt disprove the well documented proof that most dont. no kid can consent to this "care" becuase they cant imagine how they will feel when theyre 25 YO and are permanently harmed by this "care".
jamie reed's account matches the accounts of 1000's of others.
parents who advocate for this "care" have a huge financial intrest to do so. gender affirming "care" requires the option to receive astronomically expensive plastic surgery. who is going to pay for this optional vanity "care"? per these homophobic parents the tax payer must shell out. this is what all their politicking and statements are about . just another group at the tit of the gov
What's the saying? It's much easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled?
Precisely. I mean, it would be like Rose Kennedy’s parents acknowledging they consented to destroying their daughter’s brain. What a thing to grapple with, which is why denial is so attractive.
We all know it to be true, but I doubt her parents ever acknowledged their mistake, at least not publicly.
It's one thing for people to smear other people on social media (only to be expected perhaps given the disinhibiting effects of hiding behind the screen). But to see mainstream journalists--over and over!--just jumping to be first to smear a whistleblower because the information doesn't fit their tribal allegiance! Well, it's depressing (even though I know journalism has rarely reached the ideal of objectivity) that this is the kind of fight Jesse has to fight every day.
Jesse, I think you're doing heroic work on standing up for accurate reporting and valid science on transgender issues, and you've paid the price by facing the activists' firehose of vitriol. I'm glad you're fighting against the tendency of these folks to combine shrillness, puritanism, and mob behavior in one depressing package.
And yet . . .
I have no right to declare myself your assignment editor, but sometimes I fear your constant focus on exposing the terrible shortfalls on the side of the activists and their supporters while (as far as I can tell) being fairly silent on the barrage of horrific anti-transgender bills put forth by red states is doing a disservice to the cause of tolerance and dignity for transgender of all ages that all of us here agree with.
You're hardly in the camp of the red state bigots but aiming your (totally justified!) fire at the one side may wind up giving the other side support they obviously do not deserve.
So keep up the good work you're doing, but if you'll be open to suggestion, every now and then help your readers and the public to understand more thoroughly what these politicians are doing.
Isn’t there an inherent tension in what you’re suggesting? If the clinics, broadly speaking, are operating in a shoddy way, and if the science, generally speaking, is poor to very poor, then isn’t any effort to shut the clinics down kind of...okay?
Jesse has constantly and full throatedly said he disagrees with legislative efforts to shut down access to care. What else is there to say on that front?
The flip side is that because the American medical world refuses to acknowledge the ongoing questions around this field of care, and because the American media have been largely reluctant to cover this controversy, who else has the authority to at least put the breaks on this stuff?
Again, it's very important work. But it's not the only work. At risk again of being the lazy person telling Jesse what to write about, I'd love to read a compendium of all the odious laws being passed by these legislatures. Full throatedly saying you're against them is great but not very informative. I'd love to be informed.
There are, truly, dozens of activist orgs and Twitter accounts providing such a compendium. You might not get an accurate look at what’s being banned or outlawed, though.
Right, even this "Tennessee bans drag!" stuff is, afaict, completely wrong. It's just a messaging bill that really just emphasizes stuff that was already illegal, like sexual performances in front of a child. I saw a really viral tweet that claimed it banned the movie "Tootsie", which was just completely made up.
Yeah I personally would love it if Jesse reported on the right-wing bills more because he is the most thorough journalist on this subject
Curious what you’d like to know more about, with Jesse’s skill set. A thorough explanation of what the proposed laws do and don’t do?
billionaire activists spent decades spreading disinfo about mythical "trans" kids and gender ideology via a well financed campaign that was based on 1000's of lies. they were so successful because they understood the need to keep these issues away from the public and keep awareness of the harmful polcies they enacted as low a possible. the entire gender ideology effort depends on people not haveing any of the facts about this fraud. but that could only last so long. now people are becomming aware that every gender biz stat and claim is a lie. and these lies harm dysphoric kids and adults the most by preventing them from getting evidenced based care and instead pushes them into ideology care that does more harm than good.
FYI, I’m listening to Ezra Klein’s most recent podcast, and it’s an interview with someone about the republican bills. It’s a frustrating listen, given how the interviewee avoids any of the good faith questions or concerns that anybody has, but it’s definitely a long conversation about what the bills are about and what the “goal” is among Republican lawmakers.
Thank you for your post; lots of people have written great answers.
The only thing I want to say is that the truth is the truth. You cannot refrain from telling the truth because you are afraid of how opponents will twist it.
I don't know what is "horrific" about the bills; we just get what one side says is in the bills.
Can you site a specific red state law (either enacted or proposed) that you oppose? Including a link to the text of that law, please.
Many such laws are based on model legislation written by Women's Declaration International USA, and I fully support all of those.
It’s frustrating because literally all of these laws were spawned by the steadfast refusal of activists to engage with good faith questions and concerns around trans related issues: trans girls and women in sports; the quality of research underpinning GAC; what amount of instruction on gender identity and sexuality is appropriate at what ages; social contagion, etc.
If activists, and center media, had been willing to engage, none of these laws would have any teeth.
The activists have goals ("trans women are women") that others do not share, and on which the activists are not going to back down. It is a clash of values, of visions for society. It is entirely appropriate that these clashses be settled by democratically electred reprensentatives.
Agreed. But the activists throttled the debate for so long, and contorted the data and the reality for so long, that they created a culture war that will absolutely have blowback for democrats and liberals more generally, let alone gays, lesbians, and trans people. Its despotic overreach that got us here, and ultimately they’ll be responsible for the terrible laws.
Yes, I am part of the blowback. I am a 67 year old lifelong Democrat and left political activist who is now voting straight Republican and who will be lending my modest political talents as a volunteer for Republican candidates in 2024, entirely because of the crime against humanity of child mutilation and sterilization that is fully supported by every Democrat currently in office. I want every last one of them voted out. If a sane Democrat appears (less likely than a unicorn, IMO), I will support that Democrat. I have a litmus-test list of bills, starting with opposition to the Equality Act.
I am torn here. The threat to democracy on the right scares the hell out of me, so I could only support a Republican who clearly stands up for voting rights and fair elections. In particular, I think it is important to make sure that Republicans who are in the "election was stolen" camp be opposed, particularly, the Secretary of State or Attorney General office. But, I get what you are saying and why.
I don’t begrudge you your feelings on this, nor can I criticize your political decisions. I feel very torn myself--even more than just the kids, but because of the legal and social implications of gender identity on our society.
what youre calling anti trans bills are really bills that protect the most vulranable kids from the fraud of gender ideology. the only way that someone can think these bills harm anyone is if one dosent understand the facts of the issue
- most kids grow out of gender dysphoria and ID as their birth gender unless given gender meds
- even if they dont, theres no evidence gender meds help - they do more harm than good
- pediatric gender dysphoria doesnt lead to more suicides than does pediatric bi polar, each not that great
- suicides go up after starting this "care" becuase real issue for distress are ignored.
- kids have a human right to experience puberty without being tricked into life long loss of sexual function by quacks selling a fraud.
these bills increase diversity and inclusion of gay and gnc people by allowing them the freedom to be who they are and not forcing them to carve their body up or sacrifice their future happiness to please activists who want them to conform to stereotypes
How is this Arkansas bathroom bill going to help gender nonconforming people who don't have surgery? https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2023-02-27/arkansas-bill-restricting-bathroom-access-in-presence-of-minors-advances
I'm aware per your postings elsewhere that you don't believe masculine cis women face violence ever but regrettably...
Why would a gender nonconforming woman post a risk to women in the bathroom? And again, if a gender nonconforming woman faces violence in the bathroom for being a gender nonconforming woman, how does that make her safe?
https://lisaselindavis.substack.com/p/what-does-making-room-for-gender
Again, I recall that you responded to this piece by saying that this just doesn't happen, but it does.
lets see the evidence.
biological men are a threat to women. they murder them, assault them, rape them. it makes no difference if the man is wearing a dress or slacks. the stats dont lie. many stats show the men in dresses are more of a risk than other men. but theres no stats that show they are less. all biological men are safer in the mens room. the stats dont lie. thats where they are safe. some women like ms davis are just too nice to say no to people who rob the rights and thereby harm women. i dont have that problem
I'm not talking about men. I'm talking about gender nonconforming women. I have said that repeatedly. What about gender non conforming women? Women who are masculine presenting (or "butch.") Why should they face violence in restrooms?
I keep coming back to this quote:
> "It is true that many patients came in anxious and depressed, whether that was a diagnosis or just symptoms, but from my experience, that was alleviated with the start of gender affirming hormones,” Jones said.
Any journalist who covered this controversy, or any medical topic for that matter, *even a little* would want to know how Jones would know something like this. Based on Jesse's reporting, the really obvious answer is that Jones wouldn't, but the journalist here just prints it without a second thought. We're not even given the slightest hint the Jones works in a traveling education role, and would never have seen patients in the clinic, and indeed, rarely even *went* to the clinic.
I don't *want* Jamie Reed's allegations to be true. These kids sound miserable, and giving them what amounts to a fake diagnosis just to get them on drugs is horrible. But if the best evidence *so far* that Reed is wrong is a person who even admits they have a bias against Reed, and has no special knowledge of what happens in the clinic, it convinces me even more that Reed is telling the truth.
I'm struggling to follow the number of sentences using the pronoun 'they'.
"They said to them that they and them were out of their depth, which was a shock to them because they had never had their views challenged by them in this way"...
I mean, why couldn't non-binary people have chosen literally any other set of pronouns to describe themselves? What happened to Zim/Zer? Maybe it sounded ridiculous but at least I could work out who was being referred to in a damned sentence!
I’m interested in understanding the “helicopter” thing, because I feel like it probably needs an exhausting amount of context to fully understand. Like, I’m online enough to know that “I identify as an attack helicopter” was a meme to make fun of trans people all the way back on 4chan and antifeminist Youtube, and that the phrase has gone through cycles of reclamation ever since, from trans Youtubers turning it into a joke to Isabel Fall’s controversial short story.
But I am not online enough to understand what would motivate a kid to bring that to a clinic where they presumably are hoping to receive serious medical intervention. I know teenagers are notorious mischievous responders, but there’s responding to an anonymous survey with a troll meme, and there’s taking it all the way to the gender clinic. Identifying as random inanimate objects was a thing people did with varying levels of seriousness on Tumblr in the early 2010s; is the kid one of those? Were they sufficiently mentally ill and Internet-poisoned that neither they nor their caretakers could really understand the extent to which they were trolling?
It’s not that I necessarily disbelieve it, but it feels like such an obvious troll, I’m trying to figure out the circumstances under which it happened.
“Attack Helicopter” comes from a dustup over a science fiction story published in Clarkesworld back in the teens. Given the rest of the teen’s reported list of possibilities I immediately heard it as a frustrated “I don’t *know* what the *fuck* I identify as, I’m just unHappy”.
No, it’s older than that. The short story’s title is a reference to the older meme. That’s why it was such a dustup - people saw the title and assumed the story was transphobic because the meme was.
Ah, did not know the original. I think it’s the case regardless that it was the kid making a *reference* rather than an actual assertion -- and that maybe Reed and def the normies saying “thats so nuts Reed’s obviously fabulating” don’t recognize it as such.
Yeah, I agree with that. I’m just curious to know what the kid thought they were doing, and what outcome they were, hoping for.
THAH (Trans Helicopters Are Helicopters)
Boom. Jesse earns my subscription dues again!
I suspected something was fishy when I read those articles debunking the “whistleblower”.
Top notch, Jesse! Keep fighting the good fight!