A surreal parable about appeals to authority, overconfident dilettantes, and what happens when social media turns important controversies into team sports
I just want people to know that I, not Jesse, wrote this entire post.
OK, well, I didn't exactly *write it* write it, but I outlined its structure and main points, and let Jesse fill in the details.
Or, to be a little more precise, I didn't actually have any contact with Jesse, who doesn't know that I exist. But I did follow the Twitter battle as it was playing out, and thought of some snappy retorts that I thought Jesse could use. I telepathically conveyed these to him. So BASICALLY I'm the author of the long post that resulted.
Jesse's utter lack of journalistic integrity is shown by the fact that he did not cite or credit me in any manner whatsoever for my vital contributions. Harumph.
I was on the zoom call discussing this post (although you've probably forgotten since I didn't have my camera on). I can't believe you didn't call me before posting this Robert.
I know we all live and die by “lived experience” now, but doesn’t there seem to be just a little bit of a conflict of interest when trans people are all over the major studies and standards regarding transgender care?
Potentially, but I'm not really surprised that a lot of trans people are involved. People specialize like this because the topics are extremely interesting to them, and I can only imaging that personal experience is a great driver of interest. It's the same reason the academic foreign policy space has a lot of immigrants, lots of family lawyers have been through difficult and complex family law situations themselves, and most veterinarians enjoy being around animals. Interests at the level needed for advanced degrees don't arise from nothing
As a complete outsider to the world of professional journalism, all the drama of the last few weeks seems incredibly odd and neurotic. When the NYT published the "schools hiding social transition from parents" article a few weeks ago, you could tell that a certain sort of NYC lefty millennial journalist--lots of denizens of the Gawker diaspora and extended universe, although not just them--decided enough was enough, and it was time for them to put their foot down. So first there was the Scocca article excoriating the NYT's recent coverage, then the GLAAD and NYT letters. And then the outrage--the outrage!--that the NYT told them to pound sand.
I don't know, there are times that all of this seems to be less about the substance of the debate on youth gender care, and much more about who's calling the shots around here ("here" being elite center-left NYC journalism and opinion). Youth gender care is simply the arm-wrestling match that they're determined to win, for winning's sake. I cannot, for the life of me, think of another reason why presumably intelligent people would consider it beyond the pale to say something as simple and common-sensical as "kids with GD and comorbidities maybe shouldn't always be treated the same as kids with GD only."
If GD is worth questioning. If it is real, is a lifetime tether to the medical industry really the best answer. As a former liberal who is now far right without moving an inch, I ask why can’t kids become genuinely nonbinary? The whole trans push ironically enforces the divide. Why does one side have to go over to the other side if there is a genuine option just to be yourself? Why not let boys wear dresses and play with makeup without cutting their dicks off? Why not let girls act like boys without pretending this makes them actually a boy, and by the way, we can cut your breasts off for you? The sickest part of this whole thing is the enforcers who insist the binary must be underlined using medical intervention.
Completely agree. I still have yet to understand why hardcore medical intervention with really serious side effects to try to get to a rough approximation of the opposite gender is a better solution than therapy geared towards acceptance of one’s body. I mean, even after transitioning, most people can still tell someone’s original gender.
You may call yourself far right, but you are in complete agreement with the feminists of the 1970s (AKA “Second Wave Feminists” AKA “True Feminists”) on this matter—Leftists all. They fought against this gender binary bullshit then, and those who have their heads screwed on straight fight it now. The so-called “non-binary” ones are actually just normal—provided they don’t think they are sexually non-binary and need to cut bits off just to prove it.
The puzzling part is where a lot of the NB youth I have come into acquaintance with all seemed to progress to taking HRT and getting double mastectomies. What happened to the beautiful mysterious androgyny of the David Bowie and Grace Jones era?
Imagine, for just a moment, that people in your profession are publicly posting that you are a hateful person who has absolutely and repeatedly made bigoted remarks and stated that you want people to suffer and die. If you think Jesse is even a scintilla out of line here you are really lacking empathy. Imagine how much time and energy it takes to demonstrate the stupidity of these claims. These so-called professionals are vicious ghouls. What is remarkable is the lack of blow-back for their wildly offensive behavior. I'm grateful that people like Jesse are willing to put themselves through this to protect all kids; gay, trans, and otherwise; from the serious harm that can come from treatments promoted by irrational zealots.
Yes, honestly, I've been wondering why MSNBC and New York Magazine don't seem to care that their "journalists" are attacking their own colleagues and others falsely. Do they have to delete the tweets? Do they have to apologize? I can't believe I would keep my job if I publicly attacked colleagues or made false accusations like those two women from NY Mag and the MSNBC person.
Right? What makes it more mind-boggling is how nit-picky some of the flame-throwing complaints really are. IIRC, the supposedly unforgivable mistake that Bazelon made was to use the term "Patient Zero" to refer to the first Dutch patient to get gender-affirming treatment. I get the usual connotation that term has, but as she explained, she used it because the Dutch doctors and the patient themself used it. So there wasn't even the question of her implicit bias showing through, or whatever. That would warrant, AT MOST, a quiet comment to the editor about future articles, I think, not the very public freakout that happened.
To use your example, it would be like Spielberg seeing Avatar 2 and then tweeting: "James Cameron will be remembered for one thing, and ONE THING only: the shame of using Papyrus as the font for subtitling the space-whale dialog." It's nuts!
They were upset with Bazelon for writing something other than the activist line, and the Patient Zero bit was all they could find to hang their hat on. The use of “Patient Zero” wasn’t what they were actually pissed off about.
I think the last tweet from Edmiston reveals a very subtle but important fact in these Twitter battles. It’s a sentence that reveals their mindset. They are not looking for the truth, they are not studying something. In their minds, they’re in the ideological thunderdome. Academics and journalist fight for the crowd. They’re here to convince the average Joe to follow their ideology, and in this battle, anything goes.
It’s not that they lied, or that they’re doing bad science. That’s not how they think. For them science is not a tool to learn about the world. It’s a tool to convince people that their ideology is correct. Once you see it you can’t unsee. There are so many who use their vast knowledge of statistics to construct models that show what they want. Or great writers who use their mastery of written English to sneakily go back and forth from vague language to specific. It’s not about the truth. Many of them would probably tell you there is no truth.
Good on you Jesse. You’re a truth finder. Best part about being one is that reality will always back you. People might be able to twist words and statistics, but nobody can twist reality
I'm gonna be that guy and put forward a bad faith take:
I'm probably conspiracy theorizing here, but the thing that stood out about Dr. Edmiston's _very_last_ tweet (in this post) was that he made a point to clarify that _he_ was the trans person in question.
Obviously you have to make it clear that you, _AS_A_TRANS_THINKER_, are the person who has been wronged, lest you be deprived of that juicy pitty succor.
True dat ... seriously I like the word you used, reality, better than truth, which, as you have pointed out, has lost its meaning for some folks. Or could you call it denial? In any case reality is what remains when ideology fails. As it must, because ideology is the application of religious faith to a problem. The problem for us truth lovers is that reality can take time to assert itself. It can be effectively ignored for a time, or you can try to off load its consequences to someone else.
Edmiston is a liar who very publicly tried to destroy Jesse's reputation and career. Why on earth should Jesse be sanguine about this?? He shouldn't feel bad for a second for not "taking the high road", whatever that means in this scenario. There is no high road to take.
Edmiston sought out Jesse, and picked the arena were the fight would take place. Then lost.
What else has Edmiston lied about in their career?
I think the way the NYMag fact-checker just dragged Chait (suggesting he's some incompetent who doesn't let her proof read his homework before turning it in) is possibly the most shocking thing in this sequence. If management at the magazine are ok with it, this shit will really never end.
And Jesse: you deserved to do a touchdown dance on this one.
Was thinking the same. I hope Chait has the nerve to demand that they have a conversation with this person. Certainly makes me trust the “fact-checking” at NY Mag a lot less.
Journalists have just annihilated themselves over the course of the last decade.
An entertaining yarn, and good job fighting back. But this does only further my belief that everyone of conscience needs to be off of that stupid blue bird website now, if not sooner. As Jesse points out in this article, even when he was in the right, he was still contributing to the toxic team sports nature of the "dialogue" there and dunking on his enemies. In other words, there are no winners in a blue bird website fight. No matter how right you are, everyone still loses. The only sane, rational choice is not to play at all.
But what do you do if you are being defamed by a liar so publicly? Do you think Jesse should have ignored it? If he had, we wouldn't know what a liar Edmiston is.
If people would actually decouple from the bird website it wouldn't matter what the few remaining crazies shout onto the void on there. No one would hear it and no one would care. This is my point. Twitter is beyond fixable. Even with the truth on your side you don't really win. The only way forward is for people to actually stop engaging with it.
In a vacuum, I agree, but a lot of people rely on Twitter to drive their own audience - how many people became subscribers to this newsletter directly or indirectly because of Twitter? I imagine it's a significant chunk, if not the majority. If giving up Twitter meant losing half your paycheck, would it be worth it?
Plenty of other people, to be sure, don't need it, including Edmiston (presumably). But saying don't go to Twitter because it's a shitshow is like saying don't live in NYC because it's expensive. Some people don't really have a choice for one or another reason.
I get what you are saying but that sort of mindset guarantees that we will have this dumpster fire forever. The only currency the blue bird website understands is clicks and engagement. The only way anythings changes on there is to deprive them of those clicks and engagement. I understand for some people that might feel impossible, but that's the addiction talking.
This is what people tell themselves (I have to be on Twitter to drive people to my website!) but it honestly feels like cope.
You can post links to your work on Twitter all day, or find interesting people to network with via DM, without ever engaging in “public Twitter beef”. But Twitter beefing is a finely tuned Skinner box aimed at the social dominance module of our monkey brains.
Let me offer a related comments. There is no such thing as AFAB and AMAB.
Newborn babies are not assigned male or female. That is just PC nonsense. The reality of male or female birth is observed and reported. It is perfectly accurate? Of course not. A very (very) small number of babies are born with ambiguous genitalia and cannot be immediately recognized as male or female. The estimate prevalence of intersex conditions (DSDs - Disorders of Sex Development) is in the range of 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000.
CAIS is even more profound, but even more rare (1 in 7,000 to 1 in 10,000). CAIS individuals are born looking completely female. However they are not female. They are actually genetic men with complete insensitivity to certain hormones. Typically, they are raised as girls and think of themselves as women. But they have no uteruses and can never have children.
Most (almost all) live their lives as women (with no children of course). With modern technology this condition can be detected, but not corrected (what would that even mean?)
AMAB and AFAB are just PC BS. The reality of biological sex hasn’t changed since in billions of years and never will. What has changed is that we are now afflicted with a powerful Trans lobby that doesn’t like reality. Sadly, this too has precedent. Quotes from Camille Paglia.
She says that androgyny becomes prevalent “as a civilization is starting to unravel. You find it again and again and again in history.”
“People who live in such times feel that they’re very sophisticated, they’re very cosmopolitan,” she says. But in truth, they are evidence of a civilization that no longer believes in itself. On the edges of that civilization are “people who still believe in heroic masculinity” — the barbarians. Paglia says that this is happening right now, and that there’s this tremendous “disconnect” between a culture that’s infatuated with transgenderism, and “what’s going on ‘out there’.” She sees it as “ominous.” And she’s right to. This insanity cannot last. Again and again I say unto you: if you don’t like the Religious Right, wait till you get the Post-Religious Right. The post-Christian people who are coming don’t give a damn about your feelings.
I would say, that sex is determined at conception, not assigned in 99.99% of cases. CAIS is a quite rare exception. CAIS persons have XY chromosomes and male androgen patterns. However, in appearance they are quite female (very female). An ultrasound would (does) reveal that no uterus is present and CAIS persons can't have kids.
One question I have over the recent kerfuffle re: trans youth medicine: proponents of the most extreme version of youth gender affirming care seem allergic to evidence that shows that careful assessment is not being followed, or at a minimum, can’t show that careful assessment as a normal human being would understand it (eg, more than 2 hours with a specialist before being prescribed blockers) is routine in this area.
I’m curious why this is such a deeply held belief that’s immune to evidence? Why do journalists, that appear to have nothing to lose in this matter, have such strong opinions on it?
100%. I had someone tell me recently that you're either a trans ally or transphobic. There is no trans neutral. So do we just sit back and wait for the lawsuits to come from the generation of kids who were affirmed into irrevocable bodily changes?
This and other topics are immune to evidence, and even more so immune to criticism and discussion because a loud minority will smack you in the face with a "soft cudgel", as mentioned by Tim Urban below, to keep you in line if you dare to even suggest the possibility of critical discussion.
This most recent episode of The Lex Friedman podcast with Tim Urban is worth listening to the whole of, but the "cudgel" metaphors are discussed here:
"Edmiston also expressed frustration at my alleged transphobia and the fact that I didn’t reach out to him before quoting from the SoC: “It is so telling that these anti-trans journalists would quote my work, misrepresent it, but never actually reach out to me to ask me anything.”"
Am I the only one to think this is a bizarre criticism? If one looks up the authors of the SoC, there's a list of dozens. Why would anyone think to reach out to *this guy* to clear a quote? Did he know if Jesse reached out to any of the other authors? Did he think there was some magical way for Jesse to know he was the author of those specific words? Am I missing something?
I thought this was a bizarre criticism too. Not only are there dozens of contributors, but this is a medical document, a guide for clinicians. Why should anyone think a literal guide for healthcare professionals who maybe aren’t experts in the subject area would be written so opaquely that anyone should need to contact the authors for clarity on what seems to be a pretty obvious sentence? I would think the whole point of a document like this is to use clear, plain language so as not to confuse clinicians. The suggestion that no one should try to interpret it without the explicit guidance of the authors about what they *really meant to say* seems really ridiculous to me.
I don’t know how you can stand it. You’re a stronger person than I am, that’s for sure. I wish every single journalist who vilified you would retract their statements and issue an apology, and I hope you get the ultimate vindication one day.
One of the worst things about today is that everything in the world is expected to move at the speed of Twitter. It is not unreasonable for someone to take nine hours or even--gasp!--a day to respond to a bunch of people hysterically subtweeting about the outrage du jour.
I swear the world would be better off if we shut down the Internet for three hours every day, so people could catch their breath and come to their senses.
This is so true and painfully obvious to everyone except them. Even moderate trans people are genuinely worried about the blowback this kind of behavior causes and will continue to cause.
I have some experience with TRAs (Trans-Rights Activists). A more dishonest group can not be found. They have repeatedly claimed that J.K. Rowling wants to ‘exterminate’ them. This is well after JKR wrote “I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people” (https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/). They make up all sorts of stuff and get away with it, because trans is PC and PC rules the media. The statement (from the AP) that “a person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate” is literally true, but perhaps not in the way they meant. A certain proportion (roughly 1 in 1000) of babies are born with a DSD (Disorders in Sexual Development) which make them appear to be male/female, even though they are not. For example, Caster Semenya was thought to be female at birth. He is actually an XY male with a DSD.
The phrase ‘assigned at birth’ is quite dishonest (but of course, very PC). Sex is ‘observed at birth’ and is around 99.9% accurate (see above for an exception). The fact that AFAB and AMAB are widely used shows you that power of the TRAs.
I just want people to know that I, not Jesse, wrote this entire post.
OK, well, I didn't exactly *write it* write it, but I outlined its structure and main points, and let Jesse fill in the details.
Or, to be a little more precise, I didn't actually have any contact with Jesse, who doesn't know that I exist. But I did follow the Twitter battle as it was playing out, and thought of some snappy retorts that I thought Jesse could use. I telepathically conveyed these to him. So BASICALLY I'm the author of the long post that resulted.
Jesse's utter lack of journalistic integrity is shown by the fact that he did not cite or credit me in any manner whatsoever for my vital contributions. Harumph.
I am Robert Woolley and the above comment was not authored by me.
Identity theft is not a joke, Jesse! Millions of families suffer every year!
I was on the zoom call discussing this post (although you've probably forgotten since I didn't have my camera on). I can't believe you didn't call me before posting this Robert.
^^^ I have never heard of that person in my life.
I wrote all of these comments. You're welcome.
I know we all live and die by “lived experience” now, but doesn’t there seem to be just a little bit of a conflict of interest when trans people are all over the major studies and standards regarding transgender care?
Potentially, but I'm not really surprised that a lot of trans people are involved. People specialize like this because the topics are extremely interesting to them, and I can only imaging that personal experience is a great driver of interest. It's the same reason the academic foreign policy space has a lot of immigrants, lots of family lawyers have been through difficult and complex family law situations themselves, and most veterinarians enjoy being around animals. Interests at the level needed for advanced degrees don't arise from nothing
You aren't allowed to notice things like that.
How about noticing subjective nonsense.
As a complete outsider to the world of professional journalism, all the drama of the last few weeks seems incredibly odd and neurotic. When the NYT published the "schools hiding social transition from parents" article a few weeks ago, you could tell that a certain sort of NYC lefty millennial journalist--lots of denizens of the Gawker diaspora and extended universe, although not just them--decided enough was enough, and it was time for them to put their foot down. So first there was the Scocca article excoriating the NYT's recent coverage, then the GLAAD and NYT letters. And then the outrage--the outrage!--that the NYT told them to pound sand.
I don't know, there are times that all of this seems to be less about the substance of the debate on youth gender care, and much more about who's calling the shots around here ("here" being elite center-left NYC journalism and opinion). Youth gender care is simply the arm-wrestling match that they're determined to win, for winning's sake. I cannot, for the life of me, think of another reason why presumably intelligent people would consider it beyond the pale to say something as simple and common-sensical as "kids with GD and comorbidities maybe shouldn't always be treated the same as kids with GD only."
If GD is worth questioning. If it is real, is a lifetime tether to the medical industry really the best answer. As a former liberal who is now far right without moving an inch, I ask why can’t kids become genuinely nonbinary? The whole trans push ironically enforces the divide. Why does one side have to go over to the other side if there is a genuine option just to be yourself? Why not let boys wear dresses and play with makeup without cutting their dicks off? Why not let girls act like boys without pretending this makes them actually a boy, and by the way, we can cut your breasts off for you? The sickest part of this whole thing is the enforcers who insist the binary must be underlined using medical intervention.
Completely agree. I still have yet to understand why hardcore medical intervention with really serious side effects to try to get to a rough approximation of the opposite gender is a better solution than therapy geared towards acceptance of one’s body. I mean, even after transitioning, most people can still tell someone’s original gender.
You may call yourself far right, but you are in complete agreement with the feminists of the 1970s (AKA “Second Wave Feminists” AKA “True Feminists”) on this matter—Leftists all. They fought against this gender binary bullshit then, and those who have their heads screwed on straight fight it now. The so-called “non-binary” ones are actually just normal—provided they don’t think they are sexually non-binary and need to cut bits off just to prove it.
The puzzling part is where a lot of the NB youth I have come into acquaintance with all seemed to progress to taking HRT and getting double mastectomies. What happened to the beautiful mysterious androgyny of the David Bowie and Grace Jones era?
"sorry Jesse gotta include you here"
Imagine, for just a moment, that people in your profession are publicly posting that you are a hateful person who has absolutely and repeatedly made bigoted remarks and stated that you want people to suffer and die. If you think Jesse is even a scintilla out of line here you are really lacking empathy. Imagine how much time and energy it takes to demonstrate the stupidity of these claims. These so-called professionals are vicious ghouls. What is remarkable is the lack of blow-back for their wildly offensive behavior. I'm grateful that people like Jesse are willing to put themselves through this to protect all kids; gay, trans, and otherwise; from the serious harm that can come from treatments promoted by irrational zealots.
Yes, honestly, I've been wondering why MSNBC and New York Magazine don't seem to care that their "journalists" are attacking their own colleagues and others falsely. Do they have to delete the tweets? Do they have to apologize? I can't believe I would keep my job if I publicly attacked colleagues or made false accusations like those two women from NY Mag and the MSNBC person.
Right? What makes it more mind-boggling is how nit-picky some of the flame-throwing complaints really are. IIRC, the supposedly unforgivable mistake that Bazelon made was to use the term "Patient Zero" to refer to the first Dutch patient to get gender-affirming treatment. I get the usual connotation that term has, but as she explained, she used it because the Dutch doctors and the patient themself used it. So there wasn't even the question of her implicit bias showing through, or whatever. That would warrant, AT MOST, a quiet comment to the editor about future articles, I think, not the very public freakout that happened.
To use your example, it would be like Spielberg seeing Avatar 2 and then tweeting: "James Cameron will be remembered for one thing, and ONE THING only: the shame of using Papyrus as the font for subtitling the space-whale dialog." It's nuts!
They were upset with Bazelon for writing something other than the activist line, and the Patient Zero bit was all they could find to hang their hat on. The use of “Patient Zero” wasn’t what they were actually pissed off about.
Hoping the Cameron comment is at least partly inspired by Juilo Torres/Ryan Gosling's brilliant Papyrus short on SNL.
I think the last tweet from Edmiston reveals a very subtle but important fact in these Twitter battles. It’s a sentence that reveals their mindset. They are not looking for the truth, they are not studying something. In their minds, they’re in the ideological thunderdome. Academics and journalist fight for the crowd. They’re here to convince the average Joe to follow their ideology, and in this battle, anything goes.
It’s not that they lied, or that they’re doing bad science. That’s not how they think. For them science is not a tool to learn about the world. It’s a tool to convince people that their ideology is correct. Once you see it you can’t unsee. There are so many who use their vast knowledge of statistics to construct models that show what they want. Or great writers who use their mastery of written English to sneakily go back and forth from vague language to specific. It’s not about the truth. Many of them would probably tell you there is no truth.
Good on you Jesse. You’re a truth finder. Best part about being one is that reality will always back you. People might be able to twist words and statistics, but nobody can twist reality
I'm gonna be that guy and put forward a bad faith take:
I'm probably conspiracy theorizing here, but the thing that stood out about Dr. Edmiston's _very_last_ tweet (in this post) was that he made a point to clarify that _he_ was the trans person in question.
Obviously you have to make it clear that you, _AS_A_TRANS_THINKER_, are the person who has been wronged, lest you be deprived of that juicy pitty succor.
The victim card. It’s getting old, or I am
Both of these things are happening, I’m sad to report.
Also I'm claiming Juicy Pitty Succor as a band name
That was already my band name, you knew that! And yet you appropriated it. WELL.
As YOU know, the People of Pie stole JPS from the Zeebs in the Merch Wars of 1984. How DARE You. I demand satisfaction!
cheesecake will be fine
It would be nice a t-shirt worn next to someone wearing a Pervert for Nuance t-shirt.
True dat ... seriously I like the word you used, reality, better than truth, which, as you have pointed out, has lost its meaning for some folks. Or could you call it denial? In any case reality is what remains when ideology fails. As it must, because ideology is the application of religious faith to a problem. The problem for us truth lovers is that reality can take time to assert itself. It can be effectively ignored for a time, or you can try to off load its consequences to someone else.
Edmiston is a liar who very publicly tried to destroy Jesse's reputation and career. Why on earth should Jesse be sanguine about this?? He shouldn't feel bad for a second for not "taking the high road", whatever that means in this scenario. There is no high road to take.
Edmiston sought out Jesse, and picked the arena were the fight would take place. Then lost.
What else has Edmiston lied about in their career?
I think the way the NYMag fact-checker just dragged Chait (suggesting he's some incompetent who doesn't let her proof read his homework before turning it in) is possibly the most shocking thing in this sequence. If management at the magazine are ok with it, this shit will really never end.
And Jesse: you deserved to do a touchdown dance on this one.
Same, Katrina! How is she allowed to do that and keep her job?
I have no idea.
Was thinking the same. I hope Chait has the nerve to demand that they have a conversation with this person. Certainly makes me trust the “fact-checking” at NY Mag a lot less.
Journalists have just annihilated themselves over the course of the last decade.
An entertaining yarn, and good job fighting back. But this does only further my belief that everyone of conscience needs to be off of that stupid blue bird website now, if not sooner. As Jesse points out in this article, even when he was in the right, he was still contributing to the toxic team sports nature of the "dialogue" there and dunking on his enemies. In other words, there are no winners in a blue bird website fight. No matter how right you are, everyone still loses. The only sane, rational choice is not to play at all.
But what do you do if you are being defamed by a liar so publicly? Do you think Jesse should have ignored it? If he had, we wouldn't know what a liar Edmiston is.
If people would actually decouple from the bird website it wouldn't matter what the few remaining crazies shout onto the void on there. No one would hear it and no one would care. This is my point. Twitter is beyond fixable. Even with the truth on your side you don't really win. The only way forward is for people to actually stop engaging with it.
I don't have an account, and I'm never on it.
I feel sorry for people who feel they need to use it to promote their work.
In a vacuum, I agree, but a lot of people rely on Twitter to drive their own audience - how many people became subscribers to this newsletter directly or indirectly because of Twitter? I imagine it's a significant chunk, if not the majority. If giving up Twitter meant losing half your paycheck, would it be worth it?
Plenty of other people, to be sure, don't need it, including Edmiston (presumably). But saying don't go to Twitter because it's a shitshow is like saying don't live in NYC because it's expensive. Some people don't really have a choice for one or another reason.
Life is better without it. Stop. It is poison and destroying our society.
I get what you are saying but that sort of mindset guarantees that we will have this dumpster fire forever. The only currency the blue bird website understands is clicks and engagement. The only way anythings changes on there is to deprive them of those clicks and engagement. I understand for some people that might feel impossible, but that's the addiction talking.
Yes! Twitter is a distillation of everything that is wrong with social media. It is purpose-built for obfuscation and conflict.
This is what people tell themselves (I have to be on Twitter to drive people to my website!) but it honestly feels like cope.
You can post links to your work on Twitter all day, or find interesting people to network with via DM, without ever engaging in “public Twitter beef”. But Twitter beefing is a finely tuned Skinner box aimed at the social dominance module of our monkey brains.
Me: I'm just saying that maybe children can't reliably understand the ramifications of losing their future sexual and reproductive capacity...
Them: WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH CHILDREN'S GENITALS?
Let me offer a related comments. There is no such thing as AFAB and AMAB.
Newborn babies are not assigned male or female. That is just PC nonsense. The reality of male or female birth is observed and reported. It is perfectly accurate? Of course not. A very (very) small number of babies are born with ambiguous genitalia and cannot be immediately recognized as male or female. The estimate prevalence of intersex conditions (DSDs - Disorders of Sex Development) is in the range of 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000.
CAIS is even more profound, but even more rare (1 in 7,000 to 1 in 10,000). CAIS individuals are born looking completely female. However they are not female. They are actually genetic men with complete insensitivity to certain hormones. Typically, they are raised as girls and think of themselves as women. But they have no uteruses and can never have children.
Most (almost all) live their lives as women (with no children of course). With modern technology this condition can be detected, but not corrected (what would that even mean?)
AMAB and AFAB are just PC BS. The reality of biological sex hasn’t changed since in billions of years and never will. What has changed is that we are now afflicted with a powerful Trans lobby that doesn’t like reality. Sadly, this too has precedent. Quotes from Camille Paglia.
She says that androgyny becomes prevalent “as a civilization is starting to unravel. You find it again and again and again in history.”
“People who live in such times feel that they’re very sophisticated, they’re very cosmopolitan,” she says. But in truth, they are evidence of a civilization that no longer believes in itself. On the edges of that civilization are “people who still believe in heroic masculinity” — the barbarians. Paglia says that this is happening right now, and that there’s this tremendous “disconnect” between a culture that’s infatuated with transgenderism, and “what’s going on ‘out there’.” She sees it as “ominous.” And she’s right to. This insanity cannot last. Again and again I say unto you: if you don’t like the Religious Right, wait till you get the Post-Religious Right. The post-Christian people who are coming don’t give a damn about your feelings.
Completely agree. Sex is assigned at conception, not birth.
I would say, that sex is determined at conception, not assigned in 99.99% of cases. CAIS is a quite rare exception. CAIS persons have XY chromosomes and male androgen patterns. However, in appearance they are quite female (very female). An ultrasound would (does) reveal that no uterus is present and CAIS persons can't have kids.
Amen, Brother Schaeffer!
One question I have over the recent kerfuffle re: trans youth medicine: proponents of the most extreme version of youth gender affirming care seem allergic to evidence that shows that careful assessment is not being followed, or at a minimum, can’t show that careful assessment as a normal human being would understand it (eg, more than 2 hours with a specialist before being prescribed blockers) is routine in this area.
I’m curious why this is such a deeply held belief that’s immune to evidence? Why do journalists, that appear to have nothing to lose in this matter, have such strong opinions on it?
Because it’s a religion at this point. It’s a “you’re either with us or against us” test.
100%. I had someone tell me recently that you're either a trans ally or transphobic. There is no trans neutral. So do we just sit back and wait for the lawsuits to come from the generation of kids who were affirmed into irrevocable bodily changes?
It would be fantastic -- if the public schools weren't ever more /becoming/ the "woke" schools.
This and other topics are immune to evidence, and even more so immune to criticism and discussion because a loud minority will smack you in the face with a "soft cudgel", as mentioned by Tim Urban below, to keep you in line if you dare to even suggest the possibility of critical discussion.
This most recent episode of The Lex Friedman podcast with Tim Urban is worth listening to the whole of, but the "cudgel" metaphors are discussed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkZz2I6sK08&t=8761s
"Edmiston also expressed frustration at my alleged transphobia and the fact that I didn’t reach out to him before quoting from the SoC: “It is so telling that these anti-trans journalists would quote my work, misrepresent it, but never actually reach out to me to ask me anything.”"
Am I the only one to think this is a bizarre criticism? If one looks up the authors of the SoC, there's a list of dozens. Why would anyone think to reach out to *this guy* to clear a quote? Did he know if Jesse reached out to any of the other authors? Did he think there was some magical way for Jesse to know he was the author of those specific words? Am I missing something?
I thought this was a bizarre criticism too. Not only are there dozens of contributors, but this is a medical document, a guide for clinicians. Why should anyone think a literal guide for healthcare professionals who maybe aren’t experts in the subject area would be written so opaquely that anyone should need to contact the authors for clarity on what seems to be a pretty obvious sentence? I would think the whole point of a document like this is to use clear, plain language so as not to confuse clinicians. The suggestion that no one should try to interpret it without the explicit guidance of the authors about what they *really meant to say* seems really ridiculous to me.
I don’t know how you can stand it. You’re a stronger person than I am, that’s for sure. I wish every single journalist who vilified you would retract their statements and issue an apology, and I hope you get the ultimate vindication one day.
One of the worst things about today is that everything in the world is expected to move at the speed of Twitter. It is not unreasonable for someone to take nine hours or even--gasp!--a day to respond to a bunch of people hysterically subtweeting about the outrage du jour.
I swear the world would be better off if we shut down the Internet for three hours every day, so people could catch their breath and come to their senses.
How about 300 days a year?
What’s funny is that your last sentence is basically included in the resolution to Ready Player One.
The people radicalizing the population against trans people aren't the Jesse's of the the world, it is the actual trans activists and allies.
This is so true and painfully obvious to everyone except them. Even moderate trans people are genuinely worried about the blowback this kind of behavior causes and will continue to cause.
But you see, he identifies as the author of that sentence, who are you to question his lived experience?
I have some experience with TRAs (Trans-Rights Activists). A more dishonest group can not be found. They have repeatedly claimed that J.K. Rowling wants to ‘exterminate’ them. This is well after JKR wrote “I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people” (https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/). They make up all sorts of stuff and get away with it, because trans is PC and PC rules the media. The statement (from the AP) that “a person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate” is literally true, but perhaps not in the way they meant. A certain proportion (roughly 1 in 1000) of babies are born with a DSD (Disorders in Sexual Development) which make them appear to be male/female, even though they are not. For example, Caster Semenya was thought to be female at birth. He is actually an XY male with a DSD.
The phrase ‘assigned at birth’ is quite dishonest (but of course, very PC). Sex is ‘observed at birth’ and is around 99.9% accurate (see above for an exception). The fact that AFAB and AMAB are widely used shows you that power of the TRAs.
Note that gender ideologists are reduced to treating developmental defects as different genders.
They are so determined to believe their lies that they have no more shame.
"Trans women" are men impersonating women.