151 Comments

Thanks for all this, Jesse. One thing you neglected to mention is that what they’re doing is they’re trying to turn me into the next version of you. In your conclusion paragraph, what you’re saying is that they want me to join you in the penalty box. We serve as useful foils for them because we fit neatly into their Manichean world view, and by vilifying us, they amplify their message. As for my reporting about pediatricians' care for kids who identify as transgender, I'm getting ready to pitch it elsewhere.

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Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023

These typical, sordid episodes of leftist activism are the reason I’m now politically homeless and don’t trust the mainstream narrative on a lot of issues.

What left wing academics and journalists fail to realize is that their utter derangement and refusal to engage with critics and facts lead to them being as untrustworthy and vile as those on the right.

In an election between a MAGA Republican and a Woke progressive, I will not vote. I despise both equally.

Signed— a former liberal Democrat

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I am kind of surprised you guys don't talk more about how this type of online behavior is in some essence extremely similar to what trolls and 4chan adolescent hatred courters do. But it is even more pernicious because the people practicing it get social credit instead of opprobrium.

But it is in large part the same kind of low effort hateful trolling that all sorts of communities have cultivated over the years. Just with the ability to claim you are "on the right side of history" as an added bonus, so you don't even need to feel bad about being a disgusting human being.

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It's really telling to see the depths these people will go to keep people quiet about this issue. If Ryan really was a bad journalist who was going to make easily refutable claims in his article, they wouldn't care. But, we all know that's not the case. Instead of presenting factual counter arguments supporting youth gender treatments, their only option is to smear and destroy anyone who dares to question it. The part that really baffles me is how people on the left see this nonsense and go along with it.

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And this is why I strongly support the total bans on transgender surgical and pharmaceutical care for minors. It's not that the activists are completely lacking in any capacity for reason and communication. It's that these activists continue to be protected by major institutions. Institutions which are supposed to oversee, and ultimately uphold, the highest standards of medical care. Simply put, US institutions CANNOT BE TRUSTED. They have been completely captured by gender ideology, and as these activists show on an hourly basis, expecting to reason our way past this is a fool's errand.

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These are dark days for journalism.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up against present day left-wing and right-wing mobs.

You and Benjamin are brave people. Blessings upon you both.

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Obviously Alejandra Carballo is a scientific thinker and stoic logician. Anyone can see this. His rationale for every opinion is flawless-not.

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Reading this, I was once again plummeted into fantasies about the “day they’ll all get theirs and rightfully take their places on the (official) wrong side of history”. When or if that time ever comes, I can’t thank you enough for what you do, Jesse. I take solace in knowing that at least there ARE still some sane people out there writing.

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Thank you, Jesse, for what you do! The thing is, activists like this Carballo can spew all the hate and vitriol that they like - the truth is that they are wrong and eventually that will be quite apparent.

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Can the outrage be “performative” but the underlying rage real?

This is Thrasher, the professor of journalism at Northwestern:

“It is always mediocre, know nothing white dudes (Singal, Chait, Ryan) who NY mag and the NYT are like ‘Yes, YES, that’s the person! That’s the voice we NEED! No MD? No MPH? No PhD? Hated by and not a part of the community he’s writing about? But he’s white? Commission HIM!!!’” -- Steve Thrasher

That doesn’t seem performative. That seems like real anger and racial animosity.

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‘Scientific American’ these days has a bad reputation. ‘Woke Anti-American’ would be more like it. Sciam actually published an embarrassing piece titled “Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum”. Arguably worse, Sciam has actually published articles opposing scientific research (if it is not sufficiently PC).

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I DON"T WANT TO TALK ABOUT COVID STUFF, but here's a comment about Covid stuff. (the pandemic is over, i don't give a shit, but i know people who give a shit so I get sucked back in some times)

A) I feel, deep down, that your coverage of youth gender medicine informs my feelings on trying to navigate both liberal mask-aficionado circles and anti-vaxx death cults during the pandemic. It feels like everyone is an idiot, listening to idiots, who are mud wrestling with idiots, while doxxing and destroying anyone who isn't an idiot who tries to lighten the mood or calm things down.

B) I was talking about some stupid DeSantis/Florida/mRNA bullshit that came out this week and just wanted to say "yes, I see what you're talking about and I agree with you. Here's a treatise on what things the left lies about, in the same shape that you're currently pissed off about in this case. If your enemy is Making Shapes That Look Like Triangles, and your allies start waving their arms in a Triangular-y way, maybe you should question your allies"

C) We're just computation platforms for meme viruses propagated by Twitter. The only solution is to build a very strong bullshit immune system, question everyone, trust no one... before GPT5 gets plugged directly in to Twitter

D) Thanks for making this entertaining. The only possible human coping mechanism is derision or laughter. Maybe GPT5 will make us better people.

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Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023

"Thrasher is somewhat misrepresenting the “Emergency Rule” in question, which does impose onerous and unecessary restrictions on adult trans healthcare in Missouri but which doesn’t ban it."

That's a distinction without a difference here. In reality, the Emergency Rule *does* ban adult trans healthcare, because the restrictions it imposes are impossible to comply with.

It requires health care providers to prove the absence of something for which no standard of proof actually exists: "ensure (at least annually) that the patient is not experiencing social contagion with respect to the patient’s gender identity". Whatever you might think of the social contagion theory, the fact is that no one can tell you with any degree of accuracy whether or not an individual is "experiencing social contagion". The concept of social contagion isn't defined in such a way that makes it possible to determine on an individual level.

It's the same tactic conservative states used to implement de-facto bans on abortion, back when Roe v. Wade prevented them from banning it outright: imposing requirements on providers and clinics that no provider or clinic actually met or would be able to meet in the foreseeable future.

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"It is always mediocre, know nothing white dudes (Singal, Chait, Ryan)[.] [...] No MD? No MPH? No PhD? Hated by and not a part of the community he’s writing about? But he’s white?"

This is beyond bad faith. No one can tell me that Thrasher doesn't know Erica Anderson. Seriously, how fully gone do you have to be as a *professor* to write such nonsense - not even as some anonymous troll but under your own fucking name, as if it's something you're proud of (which he undoubtedly is)?

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The line from Thrasher that jumps out, for me:

'LISTEN. STUDY. And as you see patterns, let the story find you.'

He must be a shit journalist, if he thinks the surface of things, the 'patterns', the narrative *shaping* you are *meant* to see (rather than the truth behind the veneer) are all you're meant to report. He must be the kind of craven shit purveyor of rewritten PR puff releases who deserves contempt. (I'm saying this as a former reporter & investigative hack, with 'credentials' (yes, Thrasher apparently likes credentials).

He is the sort of writer who recycles what is popular instead of thinking at all.

Also, what an absolute car crash of a human being.

He deserves our contempt. Or a plane ticket to Europe, where he can grace the more enlightened medical profession with his opinions on how EVIL they are.

Send him over. I'll gladly show him around.

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Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023

I've never heard of "Alejandra" Caraballo before. But I went to the Harvard Law website and his photo appeared of him with a crazy half-shaved haircut, earlobe plugs, and not one, but two nose rings. Yuck!!

https://clinics.law.harvard.edu/blog/2021/08/meet-the-first-trans-women-of-color-to-teach-at-harvard-law/

Then I found another photo of him with the earlobe plugs and nose rings, a different though equally crazy half-shaved haircut, and, this is so bizarre, half of one eyebrow shaved off in little vertical pinstripes. What? No forked tongue.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.D63t3-M6DuCkOE4QPVqP6QHaE8%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=49b7eac4c0697cdfc20071d8f9fb456a92d592da7e954df5779951fcf7ed187f&ipo=images

Clearly it's not enough for this autogynephile law school professor to pretend to be the sex he is not with lipstick and breast implants . He is also compelled to present himself like an extra from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The inmates are running the insane asylum. And John (Veritas) Harvard rolls in his grave.

https://www.moviehousememories.com/the-rocky-horror-picture-show-1975-film-synopsis/

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