Personally, I find it suspicious Jesse would take the time to write about this when the much more pressing issue of subscribing to Blocked and Reported on Substack goes unvoiced
Thank you for what you are choosing to write about, and for researching it so well!
I am getting sick of people who point out excesses on the left being told that the right is worse--and then trying to shut the whole conversation down. There are really bad excesses on both sides. Really.
I'm on the left. I'm seeing a lot of knee jerk "well, those on the right are bad, so we can't talk about anything else" and getting tired of it. For parents whose kids have medicalized due to gender dysphoria, with many on the (our) left squelching accurate information about the condition and treatment.... well, these kids are being poisoned and lied to...by the left...and the left has to step up and stop it.
It's like your kid saying that it's ok that they did something bad in school because someone else in school did something worse. Almost every parent has heard that!
The left is the only hope for untangling bad policy and medicine when it comes to trans-identified young people. At the moment, polarization is only intensifying. The losers will be our rising generation.
If the Dems keep doubling down, the GOP will exploit this to sweep the 2024 elections and institute permanent minority rule with the support of MAGA elections officials in the states and MAGA judges, including SCOTUS.
If the Dems can strike a reasonable position - e.g., youth transition is not banned but continues under research protocols that provide for open-ended exploratory psychotherapy with clear, pre-registered variables and significant oversight by neutral bodies (oof, that last point is asking a lot!!) - then the GOP isn’t guaranteed to win.
To be clear, my position doesn’t sell out anyone. What benefits the left/Dems also does right by distressed young people. I have multiple stakes in this debate, with the well-being of a beloved family member, many of my students, my professional and personal reputation, and democracy itself riding on the outcome.
But nothing can improve as long as the transition-or-suicide narrative prevails, and people like Jesse are impugned as cold-blooded killers for demanding evidence that youth gender medicine isn’t harming legions of kids.
"But nothing can improve as long as the transition-or-suicide narrative prevails"
This is SO easily deconstructed, since "gender affirmation" began less than a generation ago, history should have heaps of teen suicides going up to the sky,
Instead, the real suicide surge is 7-10 years after the transition, with a mutilated body and worsening health from the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
I'd bet that a lot of decidedly non-Republican parents plan to vote Republican to protect their kids from the surgeons. God help us.
Leor Sapir recently had a carefully argued Twitter thread on the historical (lack of) evidence for an epidemic of suicide among trans-identified youth. It's worth a read.https://twitter.com/LeorSapir/status/1631030576198086659
That's good but most readers will stop reading at the firast numerical statistic and all but a few will do no more than count decimal places.
The transition-or-suicide extortion is the most powerful argument of the "trans" activists as well as the greatest weakness of the transition-promoting crowd since it's so easily debunked. But it needs to be debunked with simplicity and visceral effectiveness. Very few people can read at the level of scientific journals.
The simple version of Leor's argument is: suicide rates should have been much higher in the past if indeed 40% of trans youth are at risk of killing themselves. There's a "missing epidemic." I'm sure you're right that most readers glaze over upon beholding a statistic - ugh!
"""Instead, the real suicide surge is 7-10 years after the transition"""
Got a source for that one?
"""worsening health from the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones."""
This makes no sense.
For one thing, puberty blockers are discontinued when starting cross-sex hormones.
As the name implies, cross-sex hormones are simply the hormones that the body naturally produces in the opposite sex. In fact, since testosterone and estrogen are produced in both sexes, cross-sex hormones are ultimately just a change in levels.
They don't cause "worsening health". What they do cause is a shift from one sex's risk profile to the other's: taking estrogen leads to a higher risk of breast cancer but a lower risk of prostate cancer or hair loss, and so on. And again, those are a natural consequence of those hormone levels: they're the same health concerns that members of the opposite sex already have even without transitioning.
As a science writer, Jesse could do a lot to help his readers be more informed about these basic scientific aspects of the issue like "what are cross-sex hormones" and "where do puberty blockers fit in".
I think the source for the suicide rate rising ~10 years later is the big Swedish study by Dhejne et al. Don't have the link handy - if you can't find it via Google, let me know.
Jesse noted, rightly, that mental health improved in trans masculine youth, only, and in quite limited ways. Testosterone is widely recognized as having at least mild anti-depressive effects; it definitely boosts energy by nearly all accounts.
Jesse's oeuvre is no longer at the 101 level; his 2018 Atlantic article explained what CSH and PBs are.
From the many hours I've spent perusing the literature (not as an MD but as a PhD with relevant skills), I agree that the risks you outline are pretty much tit-for-tat regarding CSH. We could drill down on whether a breast cancer diagnosis is likely to be more lethal than prostate cancer (yes, at least in non-trans-medicalized people). But overall, generally, one risk is traded for another.
However, there are other risks. Genital atrophy is a biggie, for both sexes. This can result in pain, additional surgeries (even if unwanted), chronic urinary issues, and more. As a postmenopausal woman, I'm grateful AF for the estradiol patch. But for young people, what does it mean to be on cross-sex hormones for one's entire adulthood? I know a young trans masculine person who acquired joint pain that normally only strikes females in their 50s. They have symptoms that accord with fibromyalgia. I know all of these symptoms too well, but at least I'd live a good chunk of my adult life before they struck. I would not wish my health struggles on anyone, and yet this young person whom I dearly love is already facing similar issues.
This stuff is complicated. If I didn't know and love young trans-identified people, I wouldn't care nearly as much. Because I'm invested in their welfare, I want their medical and psychological care to be excellent. That's not where we are today.
"""Jesse noted, rightly, that mental health improved in trans masculine youth, only, and in quite limited ways."""
Indeed. And yet, if you talk to trans people who are taking hormones -- including trans women taking estrogen -- what you'll hear from the vast majority of them is very different from what those studies suggest!
They'll tell you hormones made them feel better and run down a list of ways. They'll tell you they don't regret starting HRT and they don't want to stop.
So, here's where someone like Jesse could really add to the conversation: talk to people who say they're getting benefits from it, quantify what those purported benefits are, and figure out why they don't show up in the data. Perhaps those people are mistaken or misreporting their own experiences. Perhaps they're wrongly attributing improvements to HRT when they were actually caused by something else. Or perhaps the studies that produce that data are failing to measure something important.
Personally, having both heard those stories and witnessed some colossal data-driven product failures in the corporate world -- caused by people dismissing reports of customer sentiment as "just anecdotes" because they were contradicted by the data, until they had a problem on their hands and realized they hadn't collected all the data they needed -- I suspect it's the latter. But someone like Jesse would be in a good position to investigate and report on that.
"""Jesse's oeuvre is no longer at the 101 level; his 2018 Atlantic article explained what CSH and PBs are."""
And yet many of his readers are still operating on false beliefs about what they are and how they're used. Maybe they haven't read the 2018 article, who knows. But it seems like it might be time for a refresher, and as someone who's writing posts for subscribers on a schedule, surely he has a backlog of ideas for posts to fill that schedule. Maybe this should be one of them.
"""But for young people, what does it mean to be on cross-sex hormones for one's entire adulthood?"""
The same thing it means for cis people of the opposite sex to be on those same hormones for their entire adulthoods.
"Indeed. And yet, if you talk to trans people who are taking hormones -- including trans women taking estrogen -- what you'll hear from the vast majority of them is very different from what those studies suggest!"
Yes and we should always treat anecdotes and the self-reports of people who have quite likely made impulsive and grave mistakes with their health as more credible than peer-reviewed studies!!!
I agree that first-person and phenomenological accounts of trans experiences are important. I'd love to see more academic work that does this - and in a way that doesn't just fall back on "minority stress is responsible for all suboptimal mental health." Whether Jesse feels that this sort of reporting is in his wheelhouse is up to him. My sense is that he feels urgency over the shambolic state of youth gender medicine, which I share.
I know and love lots of trans people, and I've seen a wide range of short-term outcomes regarding their mental health. None of them would endorse feeling regrets; yet two of the young trans women I know saw their well-being tank this past fall, and at least one was hospitalized as a result. Again, I'm not willing to chalk this up solely to minority stress. One of them, who lived as a gay man until about 6 months ago, bemoaned negativity in the trans community, as opposed to a spirit of optimism and sense of fun among gay men. N = 1, to be sure. But I've witnessed this as a front-row onlooker, and I don't think it's an isolated experience.
As for cross-sex hormones: medically and biologically, the effects are different than for endogenous hormones. This is most apparent when it comes to urogenital atrophy. But there are lots of scientific studies that suggest elevated all-cause mortality, and it's not all attributable to poor mental health/suicide. I'm thinking of Dhejne's big study based on the Swedish national registry, as well as a study based on Kaiser Permanente's patient records that came out around 2018 or '19. I would *like* there to be no long-term health concerns, because I know so many people who've medicalized! But my reading of the evidence is that there are tradeoffs here. For trans people who are durably happy with their transition, those tradeoffs may well be worthwhile. Still, good data is important so that people can make truly informed decisions.
Get back to me when... The right boasts about mutilating children or when the right comes up with nifty slogans like 'yeet the teet'. I will wait. I will be very patience.
How about that time they took over a chunk of a major city and nobody did anything about it until they murdered some black teens? We can play this game forever if you like.
I lived in Seattle in 2020, I saw it with my own eyes. Are you informed about anything you talk about? It's hard to imagine being so completely wrong about so many things by sheer coincidence.
I was living in Seattle and working downtown in 2020 too. I saw it all. Mostly peaceful protests my ass... while many on the progressive left sat back and cheered it all on, as if it was some sort of racial justice, even though most of the worst violence was perpetrated by black-clad white anarchists and other hangers-on.
I lived in the Seattle area from 1975 to 2010 and talk to friends there every week. I never heard anything about this takeover. What the hell are you talking bout?
The right isn’t a monolith. Unless you want every conservative to write off all liberals as being Antifa, you should know there are bad actors in both parties, that don’t actually represent the majority opinion.
If Satan himself is the GOP nominee, everyone on the right will vote for him. Even for Trump. How many have decided to bail out because of the extremists? Not too damned many.
...I don’t think you understand how alarmed people are by the behavior of the current administration. Biden called half the country fascists. His DOJ frequently targets conservatives while ignoring actual threats. The democrats are targeting free speech and using the full power of the federal government to silence political opponents. Trump *isn’t* great, but many people believe that it’s a matter of keeping their civil liberties.
I'd like to see a chromosome count of these "people" you're talking about.
"The Democrats are targeting free speech." What a steaming pile of horseshit that is. Is it a Democrat taking books off library shelves and demanding prior censorship of references to him in blogs?
No, the hindered "free speech" you've got your undies in a bundle over is the exposure of lies, and the censorship you're talking about is fact-checking.
All Democrats need to do is air conservatives' own words, unedited, unembellished, and verbatim.
The actual threats are your people, the guys with the beards and the guns, and if they had been napalmed on 1/6 I would have stood up and cheered.
You think Trump believes in civil liberties? How many has he unsuccessfully sued for hurting his feelings?
Also, not to get too technical, but banning books from libraries isn’t a violation of the first amendment. If you go into your local library, you will notice something important, not every book that has ever been written is available. You see, librarians make value judgements every day. There is a world of difference between banning a book and refusing to buy it with public funds.
Who decides what is misinformation? Do you think it should be the government? Do you think raw power should dictate what is true? Democrats are currently defending censorship like they are always going to be the ones in power. If you hate Trump and think he is dangerous, you should also hate the entire censorship apparatus that has been set up under the current administration.
In the middle of a respectful debate, you called me stupid, and demented. You stated confidently that you would’ve loved to see people slaughtered. Tell me, do you think your can insult people out of their political philosophies?
"But there are a lot of people whose lives are dedicated to (say) reviewing video games who hyperventilate online about how fascism is at our doorstep. If they really thought that.....they’d quit tomorrow to fight the fascists."
This is why it was hilarious when these people were like "You can draw a straight line from Gamergate to Trump!" They think their little online obsession explains everything about the world.
It’s fundamentally disingenuous argument but fits in perfectly with the current liberal obsession with censorship.
The flip side is another attempt at censorship along the lines of “person X isn’t an expert in Y and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to write about it!”
People write about what they care about. And readers respond to passionate writing.
As someone who grew up in the late 90s and early 00s, I still can't get over the complete partisan reversal on censorship and civil liberties generally, it's just bizarre to live through.
Back in ye olden times of peak New Atheism, I think I remember Richard Dawkins calling the "expertise" claim the "Courtier's reply".
Basically, anyone who doesn't have a Masters Degree in haute couture shouldn't be opining on whether or not the emperor is naked.
“most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc.”
It's actually quite clear if you use the term "assault *rifle*", which is a select fire rifle chambered in an intermediate caliber feeding from a detachable magazine, it's "assault *weapon*" that is completely subjective and political.
Only if you use the features based "assault *weapon* formulation, as an "assault *rifle*" is select fire (i.e. it can fire in both semi and full automatic modes), which is not something that is generally available on the civilian market absent some serious federal licensing. The blurring is deliberate, it was part of a strategy concocted in the 80s by gun control groups to drive support for bans by confusing people as to whether modern styled rifles were semi or fully auto, there are smoking gun memos on it out there.
Why don't you do the minimal amount of research necessary to make that distinction clear? Not knowing feels like a choice when you also attach a strong opinion to the subject.
I know about the statistics for firearm homicide. I know that in America it’s the highest on the planet, more than twice that of Yemen, which is in a civil war. I know that guns are the leading cause of death for children.
Why should I give shit one over varieties of guns?
I don’t want a chartered right to firearms at all. Handguns, rifles, thirty-round magazines. Anything that fires repeatedly is intended for massacre. Variations on that massacre potential don’t mean a thing to me.
What I've seen is that the best way to counter the excesses of the right is to play back their own words, unedited and verbatim. The Lincoln Project does exactly that and it works. The reason it works is that the rhetoric of the right is so repellent and sick that censorship of it would be counterproductive.
When the face of MAGA is some goon with a flag-painted face, plastic horns and a raccoon hat doing a wolf howl, why should we censor?
Put Greene and Boebert above the fold, Best way to damage the right.
Myocarditis, for one. Lab leak and natural immunity for a couple more. Hunter Biden's "10% to the big guy" laptop for another.
Basically anything that gets labeled "misinformation" for partisan reasons, which is becoming the Democrats go-to move to avoid criticism. If they're getting beat up over inflation, they'll just say inflation is transitory and anyone saying otherwise is peddling misinformation. If they're getting beat up over the southern border crisis or the crime wave, they'll just call it misinformation.
Social media cracking down on "misinformation" means, in practice, censoring away anything that's hurting the Democrats poll numbers.
Do you really think Hunter's laptop is worth a moment of anyone's time? Whatabout Jared biting MBS' pillow for two super-large?
Contrasting, how many years of Trump lying every time he spoke did it take before news media started calling it lying?
What crime wave? You mean the guns?
Edit: please don't portray me as a champion of the Democrats. They are way too far right for my tastes. But while they are inept and corrupt, the other side makes a virtue of cruelty.
And yet here you are parroting all of their favorite talking points. Also, can you see why your complaint about being lumped in with people is ironic, given your other comments here?
My first “peaking” experience was seeing lots of tweets trashing Jesse for being transphobic, I assumed they were true but decided to read his work and--wait, what?!
There is something about foaming-at-the-mouth anger that makes me skeptical. As if mean girls are trying to see if I'll meet their cruelty and therefore be worthy of their club. It's such an insulting way to make points, I don't understand how it doesn't make more people do some research before jumping in.
Because they've been primed to believe jumping in makes them a good ally and doing research from unapproved sources will make them a conspiracy theorist.
(*chuckle*) the what? "Indefinite?" No such thing. Though I'm sure you can find a "they/them" web page that says it's a real term.
"They" is the nominative third-person plural pronoun. It is abused by sloppy speakers as a gender-indeterminate third person singular, recently promoted by those "non-binary" twits. Since English grammar and spelling started to be formalized in the late 18th century, the singular "they" has been controversial.
But that isn't what you were doing there.
It wasn't the "they" that was wrong; that was perfectly fine, the earlier part of your sentence was also plural. "They've been primed to believe..."
Where you fucked up was then treating multiple people, they, as a singular conspiracy theorist, which is unambiguously wrong. Like when morons talk about "Many changed their life." Lives.
Just be a man and own up. I'm a grammar obsessive, have been since before I spoke my first words. And I make mistakes too, and painlessly admit them without dodging and weaving about "language evolves" or making up terms.
And to answer your question, yes English is my Müttersprache, one of four languages I speak fluently, seven I speak conversationally. perhaps fifteen I can read. I am a certified (TEFL) teacher of ESL and have eight years of experience teaching in Vietnam, up to C2 level.
I even speak Vietnamese, a tonal language that not one westerner in a thousand living here ever attempts.
Huh, I speak a little Vietnamese, the tones do make it difficult, much harder than something like Spanish.
I picked it up because I work in the firearms business building AR-15s, and a good chunk of our workforce is Vietnamese, mostly middle aged men. Definitely ironic given the history of that particular rifle, I definitely get a chuckle wondering where some of our guys learned how to work on them.
I see that you are planning to take a break from Twitter soon, Jesse. I support that. I agree that a lot of these criticisms are disingenuous bs, and I hate to see your valuable mental bandwidth get taken up by jerks jerkin’.
I feel for Jesse and Katie. They have made a big part of their niche consist of reporting on what is occurring on Twitter. Sort've like being the beat reporter for hell.
Getting off Twitter was great for the ol' blood pressure. It was bad before but Musk is destroying it. The technical glitches are starting now and it will likely soon go dark, and good riddance.
I was trying to explain why I found arguing with Johnathan Katz so frustrating and here is the answer. He kept complaining about how the NYT has an anti-trans agenda, accused Matthew Yglesias of being transphobic (which I found absurd), etc. I was baffled. Still am. Thanks for writing this
Easiest accusation in the world, "transphobic." Face it, these people don't want allies. They treat someone who's 99% supportive as no different from someone who wants them all executed.
The transition surgeons, the affirmation therapists who never give a thumb down, and the activists .. all belong in prison.
Actual comment: Whataboutism in the way it's proposed here is exactly that, a derailing tactic.
Sometimes however I think it gets lobbied against people looking for consistent principles in their interlocutor. If someone tells me it's a grave journalistic error to not contact the subject or a figure in a piece, but they frequently attack their enemies in articles without doing so themselves, it isn't whataboutism to zoom out and settle on terms like be "consistent in your application of principles" to ensure we can have a coherent conversation.
I like this post a lot, but I have some mixed feelings about it, because there are definitely some topics that seem to produce an outsized number of people with no discernible reason to care as much as they do. There is a nigh-limitless number of lefties, for instance, who are *constantly* talking about Palestine, who have no personal connection there, and who don't care a whit about any other geopolitical conflicts. The intensity of their involvement (and the frequency of this "type" of person) does make me think about *why* people focus on a given topic.
Fair point/question. It does seem distinct from whether reporting on/being an activist for something is a fundamentally worthwhile endeavor.
Obviously some people are drawn to certain issues because they have an ax to grind, or whatever. And others may be drawn due to personal relevance or how the issue intersects with some broader belief, right?
My therapist asks me all the time (because he’s an octogenarian) why this issue means so much to me.
That’s relatively easy for me to answer. Gender shit meddles in law, sociology, medicine, feminism, parenting, free speech/belief, and public education, no matter how many people insist it’s about a vanishing small number of vulnerable people just wanting to live their lives with dignity.
I've always been curious about that one myself, as I've never been satisfied with some of the lazier conservative arguments that it's all antisemitism, or that it's just a proxy conflict where they pattern match the Palestinians as the US civil rights movement and the Israelis as the Bull Connors in the conflict. It's definitely a thing though.
The outrage mobs have made numerous false allegations against J.K. Rowling. The fact that these allegations have no basis in fact and are trivially refuted has had no impact. Why? Because there is no downside for lying about anything as long as the lies are PC.
Just remember the people you need to convince are the onlookers. You’ll never persuade the people directly engaged but the poverty of their arguments is startling.
Illiberals on the left love to Mau-Mau lefty journalists who critique the left. Indeed, they say that more attention should be focused on right-wing illiberalism and fascism. As if mega attention is not given to this now.
Speaking of fascism, someone who actually knows something about it, the stellar historian, Richard J. Evans, wrote a superb article, Why Trump isn't a fascist, which the New Statesman carried on January 13, 2021.
Huge numbers of people on the left wouldn't know what fascism is if it bit them on the behind. I don't want to violate Godwin's law but if we're talking fascism, as Matt Taibbi has noted, it is the Democratic Party that supports the connivance of the state and of corporations to suppress opinions that this combine doesn't like and that is actual fascism.
Mau-Mauing lefty journos who critique the left, saying that these journos should write about other things is a power move to try to shut up people like Jesse and Glenn Greenwald and Fredrik deBoer and Aaron Maté, und so weiter.
The reasoning of these High Priests of Liberalism is so bad because it is reversed engineered. They want independent-minded lefties to shut up, so they work backward to try to find reasons to support their illiberal postures.
Evans’ argument basically rested on the premise that as Trump eschews military adventurism, the expansion of empire and the prioritizing of military life as a template and ideal for all society he’s not a fascist. Trump’s just not into war and the military enough to meet the definition according to Evans.
Others then pointed out that the people Trump inspires certainly to seem to check off the boxes of a fascistic movement.
It’s worth noting, too, that Evans still viewed Trump as both anti-Democracy and a grave danger.
Don’t mistake 1) arguments among historians of Germany about who counts as a “fascist” for 2) arguments about whether Trump is an authoritarian who poses a mortal danger to our democracy. These are not contiguous debates. Answers depend almost entirely upon how one defines fascism. I know dozens of historians of Germany and not one would defend Trump in any way.
On my reading of your comment and the one from Gordon to which you responded, I thought it might not be clear that historians in this field work with fairly specific but sometimes-discordant definitions of "fascism."
I don't think either of your are wrong. I was providing a little additional context, but didn't frame it carefully enough. "Don't mistake" came across as scolding, I think - it wasn't meant that way, but I didn't take time enough to check how my tone would come across. Thanks for your patience and also for your commitment to fair discourse.
Trump meets several points of the definition. Foremost among them is the Führerprinzip, the cult of the leader. "Only I can fix it," this buffoon says.
He is also much more concerned with enemies within than without and places loyalty to his person over every other loyalty, just like Hitler did.
Where he fails to me the definition is, yes, in militarism, a failing easily attributable to his cowardice, and to his chumminess with authoritarians all over the world. He doesn't admore pluralists, he admires tyrants.
And he hs never established a national industrial policy either. But he is certainly no democrat, and certainly no socialist, and if he isn't a true Fascist it's only because he's a desperately stupid man.
And Mein Kampf is the only book he is known to have read,
The statement "left-of-center intellectual life" is a self-contradictory expression. There is no there there.
The ENTIRE "left-of-center intellectual life" involves what you skin color is and who you interact with in the bedroom. There is no intellectual life, because so many topics are off the table.
The only actual intellectuals actually posing important questions are conservative - Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, anyone opposing the insanity of trans delusion.
You emphasis “entire” for “left-of-center intellectual life” -- this in response to a piece by a left of center writer (Singal, Jesse) who’s addressing taboo questions, accusations & assumptions of the social justice movement with rigor in good faith.
You seem to be making some assumptions about the poster you're replying to, and throwing in a red herring derailing statement to boot. Why so defensive if the post is such trash?
There is a difference between conservatives and liberals. Most conservatives were once liberals, are familiar with liberal "reasoning", but are willing to consider the "arguments" of liberals. I was once a liberal and am familiar with the arguments. On the other hand, most liberals have never had any experience with thinking like a conservative, do not respect it, and consider them all fascists. Mr. Fox is a typical liberal - unable to think or meet an argument with a reasoned comment, he lashes out. He knows that I am making reasonable points, but is unable to articulate or understand what is wrong with them.
The thoughtful liberal is no more. Now it's all screaming and shouting and pointing. A reversion to the state of the baboon.
There are plenty of smart, thoughtful liberals out there. Unfortunately, the people who get the most traction on Twitter are not usually brilliant intellectuals. Social Media rewards people for acting insane.
Yeah I moved here in 2010. PTSD from Microsoft, Palin, many reasons.
I don't see a way to email in your profile, you can write me at one of my burner accounts, solonaquila431@gmail.com. If things stay civil I will give you the real one. Flame off, OK?
I don't see defensive. I don't see anything. So typical of "liberal intellectuals" - unable to actually make a coherent argument because some Woke loser may cancel you. Sad, really.
Do you actually think any real percentage of people who read Singal are Trump supporters? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just got confused about which substack you are reading.
I just got on here a few hours ago, still haven;t gotten the lay of the land. But there is definitely some Trump trash on here.
Anyway, even if they don't call themselves Trumpadors, people who remain in the Republican Party have decided that even Trump's vileness is not a deal-breaker. What, I should respect that? Sorry, no can do. Even that asshat George Will left.
Thank you for this timely essay. I read David Remnick’s interview with Masha Gessen this weekend and found it interesting and thought provoking but was left with a vague feeling of wanting to say, “Ya, but…” but I didn’t quite know why or “what about.” Hopefully, as they say at the end of the interview, the New Yorker will move forward from here with nuanced and careful coverage of the very complex issues of child gender medicine and transition as well as in the adult population and wider culture. Again, thanks for your work, Jesse.
Having spent over three decades joining new online forums I can definitely recommend not diving into insulting people before more than a few weeks have passed. WTTW.
But when people blast out the same syndrome of BS and lies, it's neither difficult nor unreasonable to presume their tribal affiliation, and this isn't my first rodeo.
Got a mirror? When I counted yesterday you were responsible for 15% of the posts on this thread, which is one definition of "blast"; and it's not difficult to figure out your tribal affiliation either. Maybe less coffee before you get back on the horse?
Personally, I find it suspicious Jesse would take the time to write about this when the much more pressing issue of subscribing to Blocked and Reported on Substack goes unvoiced
Thank you for what you are choosing to write about, and for researching it so well!
I am getting sick of people who point out excesses on the left being told that the right is worse--and then trying to shut the whole conversation down. There are really bad excesses on both sides. Really.
I'm on the left. I'm seeing a lot of knee jerk "well, those on the right are bad, so we can't talk about anything else" and getting tired of it. For parents whose kids have medicalized due to gender dysphoria, with many on the (our) left squelching accurate information about the condition and treatment.... well, these kids are being poisoned and lied to...by the left...and the left has to step up and stop it.
It's like your kid saying that it's ok that they did something bad in school because someone else in school did something worse. Almost every parent has heard that!
The left is the only hope for untangling bad policy and medicine when it comes to trans-identified young people. At the moment, polarization is only intensifying. The losers will be our rising generation.
If the Dems keep doubling down, the GOP will exploit this to sweep the 2024 elections and institute permanent minority rule with the support of MAGA elections officials in the states and MAGA judges, including SCOTUS.
If the Dems can strike a reasonable position - e.g., youth transition is not banned but continues under research protocols that provide for open-ended exploratory psychotherapy with clear, pre-registered variables and significant oversight by neutral bodies (oof, that last point is asking a lot!!) - then the GOP isn’t guaranteed to win.
To be clear, my position doesn’t sell out anyone. What benefits the left/Dems also does right by distressed young people. I have multiple stakes in this debate, with the well-being of a beloved family member, many of my students, my professional and personal reputation, and democracy itself riding on the outcome.
But nothing can improve as long as the transition-or-suicide narrative prevails, and people like Jesse are impugned as cold-blooded killers for demanding evidence that youth gender medicine isn’t harming legions of kids.
"But nothing can improve as long as the transition-or-suicide narrative prevails"
This is SO easily deconstructed, since "gender affirmation" began less than a generation ago, history should have heaps of teen suicides going up to the sky,
Instead, the real suicide surge is 7-10 years after the transition, with a mutilated body and worsening health from the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
I'd bet that a lot of decidedly non-Republican parents plan to vote Republican to protect their kids from the surgeons. God help us.
Leor Sapir recently had a carefully argued Twitter thread on the historical (lack of) evidence for an epidemic of suicide among trans-identified youth. It's worth a read.https://twitter.com/LeorSapir/status/1631030576198086659
That's good but most readers will stop reading at the firast numerical statistic and all but a few will do no more than count decimal places.
The transition-or-suicide extortion is the most powerful argument of the "trans" activists as well as the greatest weakness of the transition-promoting crowd since it's so easily debunked. But it needs to be debunked with simplicity and visceral effectiveness. Very few people can read at the level of scientific journals.
The simple version of Leor's argument is: suicide rates should have been much higher in the past if indeed 40% of trans youth are at risk of killing themselves. There's a "missing epidemic." I'm sure you're right that most readers glaze over upon beholding a statistic - ugh!
"""Instead, the real suicide surge is 7-10 years after the transition"""
Got a source for that one?
"""worsening health from the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones."""
This makes no sense.
For one thing, puberty blockers are discontinued when starting cross-sex hormones.
As the name implies, cross-sex hormones are simply the hormones that the body naturally produces in the opposite sex. In fact, since testosterone and estrogen are produced in both sexes, cross-sex hormones are ultimately just a change in levels.
They don't cause "worsening health". What they do cause is a shift from one sex's risk profile to the other's: taking estrogen leads to a higher risk of breast cancer but a lower risk of prostate cancer or hair loss, and so on. And again, those are a natural consequence of those hormone levels: they're the same health concerns that members of the opposite sex already have even without transitioning.
As a science writer, Jesse could do a lot to help his readers be more informed about these basic scientific aspects of the issue like "what are cross-sex hormones" and "where do puberty blockers fit in".
I think the source for the suicide rate rising ~10 years later is the big Swedish study by Dhejne et al. Don't have the link handy - if you can't find it via Google, let me know.
The Chen et al. NEJM that Jesse reported on a few weeks ago can be found at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
Jesse noted, rightly, that mental health improved in trans masculine youth, only, and in quite limited ways. Testosterone is widely recognized as having at least mild anti-depressive effects; it definitely boosts energy by nearly all accounts.
Jesse's oeuvre is no longer at the 101 level; his 2018 Atlantic article explained what CSH and PBs are.
From the many hours I've spent perusing the literature (not as an MD but as a PhD with relevant skills), I agree that the risks you outline are pretty much tit-for-tat regarding CSH. We could drill down on whether a breast cancer diagnosis is likely to be more lethal than prostate cancer (yes, at least in non-trans-medicalized people). But overall, generally, one risk is traded for another.
However, there are other risks. Genital atrophy is a biggie, for both sexes. This can result in pain, additional surgeries (even if unwanted), chronic urinary issues, and more. As a postmenopausal woman, I'm grateful AF for the estradiol patch. But for young people, what does it mean to be on cross-sex hormones for one's entire adulthood? I know a young trans masculine person who acquired joint pain that normally only strikes females in their 50s. They have symptoms that accord with fibromyalgia. I know all of these symptoms too well, but at least I'd live a good chunk of my adult life before they struck. I would not wish my health struggles on anyone, and yet this young person whom I dearly love is already facing similar issues.
This stuff is complicated. If I didn't know and love young trans-identified people, I wouldn't care nearly as much. Because I'm invested in their welfare, I want their medical and psychological care to be excellent. That's not where we are today.
"""Jesse noted, rightly, that mental health improved in trans masculine youth, only, and in quite limited ways."""
Indeed. And yet, if you talk to trans people who are taking hormones -- including trans women taking estrogen -- what you'll hear from the vast majority of them is very different from what those studies suggest!
They'll tell you hormones made them feel better and run down a list of ways. They'll tell you they don't regret starting HRT and they don't want to stop.
So, here's where someone like Jesse could really add to the conversation: talk to people who say they're getting benefits from it, quantify what those purported benefits are, and figure out why they don't show up in the data. Perhaps those people are mistaken or misreporting their own experiences. Perhaps they're wrongly attributing improvements to HRT when they were actually caused by something else. Or perhaps the studies that produce that data are failing to measure something important.
Personally, having both heard those stories and witnessed some colossal data-driven product failures in the corporate world -- caused by people dismissing reports of customer sentiment as "just anecdotes" because they were contradicted by the data, until they had a problem on their hands and realized they hadn't collected all the data they needed -- I suspect it's the latter. But someone like Jesse would be in a good position to investigate and report on that.
"""Jesse's oeuvre is no longer at the 101 level; his 2018 Atlantic article explained what CSH and PBs are."""
And yet many of his readers are still operating on false beliefs about what they are and how they're used. Maybe they haven't read the 2018 article, who knows. But it seems like it might be time for a refresher, and as someone who's writing posts for subscribers on a schedule, surely he has a backlog of ideas for posts to fill that schedule. Maybe this should be one of them.
"""But for young people, what does it mean to be on cross-sex hormones for one's entire adulthood?"""
The same thing it means for cis people of the opposite sex to be on those same hormones for their entire adulthoods.
"Indeed. And yet, if you talk to trans people who are taking hormones -- including trans women taking estrogen -- what you'll hear from the vast majority of them is very different from what those studies suggest!"
Yes and we should always treat anecdotes and the self-reports of people who have quite likely made impulsive and grave mistakes with their health as more credible than peer-reviewed studies!!!
I agree that first-person and phenomenological accounts of trans experiences are important. I'd love to see more academic work that does this - and in a way that doesn't just fall back on "minority stress is responsible for all suboptimal mental health." Whether Jesse feels that this sort of reporting is in his wheelhouse is up to him. My sense is that he feels urgency over the shambolic state of youth gender medicine, which I share.
I know and love lots of trans people, and I've seen a wide range of short-term outcomes regarding their mental health. None of them would endorse feeling regrets; yet two of the young trans women I know saw their well-being tank this past fall, and at least one was hospitalized as a result. Again, I'm not willing to chalk this up solely to minority stress. One of them, who lived as a gay man until about 6 months ago, bemoaned negativity in the trans community, as opposed to a spirit of optimism and sense of fun among gay men. N = 1, to be sure. But I've witnessed this as a front-row onlooker, and I don't think it's an isolated experience.
As for cross-sex hormones: medically and biologically, the effects are different than for endogenous hormones. This is most apparent when it comes to urogenital atrophy. But there are lots of scientific studies that suggest elevated all-cause mortality, and it's not all attributable to poor mental health/suicide. I'm thinking of Dhejne's big study based on the Swedish national registry, as well as a study based on Kaiser Permanente's patient records that came out around 2018 or '19. I would *like* there to be no long-term health concerns, because I know so many people who've medicalized! But my reading of the evidence is that there are tradeoffs here. For trans people who are durably happy with their transition, those tradeoffs may well be worthwhile. Still, good data is important so that people can make truly informed decisions.
"There are really bad excesses on both sides. Really."
Get back to me when the "left" invades the Capitol and smears feces on the walls, with a gallows waiting outside.
Get back to me when... The right boasts about mutilating children or when the right comes up with nifty slogans like 'yeet the teet'. I will wait. I will be very patience.
Unless you have read absolutely nothing I've written you would know that I am 100% opposed to the "trans" movement. I think it's vile.
How about that time they took over a chunk of a major city and nobody did anything about it until they murdered some black teens? We can play this game forever if you like.
Never been interested in games and if I were I would choose more challenging opponents.
This takeover, did you hear about that from the bewildered guy with mumps?
I lived in Seattle in 2020, I saw it with my own eyes. Are you informed about anything you talk about? It's hard to imagine being so completely wrong about so many things by sheer coincidence.
I was living in Seattle and working downtown in 2020 too. I saw it all. Mostly peaceful protests my ass... while many on the progressive left sat back and cheered it all on, as if it was some sort of racial justice, even though most of the worst violence was perpetrated by black-clad white anarchists and other hangers-on.
I lived in the Seattle area from 1975 to 2010 and talk to friends there every week. I never heard anything about this takeover. What the hell are you talking bout?
That's an easy one. Look up CHAZ in Google.
The right isn’t a monolith. Unless you want every conservative to write off all liberals as being Antifa, you should know there are bad actors in both parties, that don’t actually represent the majority opinion.
Technically correct, functionally meaningless.
If Satan himself is the GOP nominee, everyone on the right will vote for him. Even for Trump. How many have decided to bail out because of the extremists? Not too damned many.
...I don’t think you understand how alarmed people are by the behavior of the current administration. Biden called half the country fascists. His DOJ frequently targets conservatives while ignoring actual threats. The democrats are targeting free speech and using the full power of the federal government to silence political opponents. Trump *isn’t* great, but many people believe that it’s a matter of keeping their civil liberties.
I'd like to see a chromosome count of these "people" you're talking about.
"The Democrats are targeting free speech." What a steaming pile of horseshit that is. Is it a Democrat taking books off library shelves and demanding prior censorship of references to him in blogs?
No, the hindered "free speech" you've got your undies in a bundle over is the exposure of lies, and the censorship you're talking about is fact-checking.
All Democrats need to do is air conservatives' own words, unedited, unembellished, and verbatim.
The actual threats are your people, the guys with the beards and the guns, and if they had been napalmed on 1/6 I would have stood up and cheered.
You think Trump believes in civil liberties? How many has he unsuccessfully sued for hurting his feelings?
You are demented.
Well, that fell apart quickly. Are you ok? You need to go outside, take a deep breath and enjoy the real world for a bit.
Here is an example of democrats banning books: https://abc7.com/to-kill-a-mockingbird-ban-book-bank-burbank-unified-school-district-books-on-race/7936504/
Also, not to get too technical, but banning books from libraries isn’t a violation of the first amendment. If you go into your local library, you will notice something important, not every book that has ever been written is available. You see, librarians make value judgements every day. There is a world of difference between banning a book and refusing to buy it with public funds.
Who decides what is misinformation? Do you think it should be the government? Do you think raw power should dictate what is true? Democrats are currently defending censorship like they are always going to be the ones in power. If you hate Trump and think he is dangerous, you should also hate the entire censorship apparatus that has been set up under the current administration.
In the middle of a respectful debate, you called me stupid, and demented. You stated confidently that you would’ve loved to see people slaughtered. Tell me, do you think your can insult people out of their political philosophies?
"But there are a lot of people whose lives are dedicated to (say) reviewing video games who hyperventilate online about how fascism is at our doorstep. If they really thought that.....they’d quit tomorrow to fight the fascists."
This is why it was hilarious when these people were like "You can draw a straight line from Gamergate to Trump!" They think their little online obsession explains everything about the world.
It’s fundamentally disingenuous argument but fits in perfectly with the current liberal obsession with censorship.
The flip side is another attempt at censorship along the lines of “person X isn’t an expert in Y and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to write about it!”
People write about what they care about. And readers respond to passionate writing.
As someone who grew up in the late 90s and early 00s, I still can't get over the complete partisan reversal on censorship and civil liberties generally, it's just bizarre to live through.
Back in ye olden times of peak New Atheism, I think I remember Richard Dawkins calling the "expertise" claim the "Courtier's reply".
Basically, anyone who doesn't have a Masters Degree in haute couture shouldn't be opining on whether or not the emperor is naked.
“most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc.”
I'm against the Second Amendment and I'm not really clear on the difference between automatic and semiautomatic.
I've heard the sequel to "What is a Woman?" is going to be called "What is an Assault Rifle?"
It's actually quite clear if you use the term "assault *rifle*", which is a select fire rifle chambered in an intermediate caliber feeding from a detachable magazine, it's "assault *weapon*" that is completely subjective and political.
Even then, there are some Rugers that blur the line between "hunting rifle" and "assault rifle", as the Liberal Party of Canada discovered recently. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-withdraws-proposed-measures-banning-certain-rifles-shotguns-2023-02-03/
Only if you use the features based "assault *weapon* formulation, as an "assault *rifle*" is select fire (i.e. it can fire in both semi and full automatic modes), which is not something that is generally available on the civilian market absent some serious federal licensing. The blurring is deliberate, it was part of a strategy concocted in the 80s by gun control groups to drive support for bans by confusing people as to whether modern styled rifles were semi or fully auto, there are smoking gun memos on it out there.
Why don't you do the minimal amount of research necessary to make that distinction clear? Not knowing feels like a choice when you also attach a strong opinion to the subject.
Because it doesn’t make any fucking difference to me.
I mean, how seriously would you take someone who won't learn about the subject they're opining about?
I know about the statistics for firearm homicide. I know that in America it’s the highest on the planet, more than twice that of Yemen, which is in a civil war. I know that guns are the leading cause of death for children.
Why should I give shit one over varieties of guns?
How can you know if it makes any difference to you if you don't even know what you're talking about?
This guy seems like a troll
I don’t want a chartered right to firearms at all. Handguns, rifles, thirty-round magazines. Anything that fires repeatedly is intended for massacre. Variations on that massacre potential don’t mean a thing to me.
I want the whole idiotic amendment gone
The gun fetish is sick.
Can you give some examples of this censorship?
What I've seen is that the best way to counter the excesses of the right is to play back their own words, unedited and verbatim. The Lincoln Project does exactly that and it works. The reason it works is that the rhetoric of the right is so repellent and sick that censorship of it would be counterproductive.
When the face of MAGA is some goon with a flag-painted face, plastic horns and a raccoon hat doing a wolf howl, why should we censor?
Put Greene and Boebert above the fold, Best way to damage the right.
Myocarditis, for one. Lab leak and natural immunity for a couple more. Hunter Biden's "10% to the big guy" laptop for another.
Basically anything that gets labeled "misinformation" for partisan reasons, which is becoming the Democrats go-to move to avoid criticism. If they're getting beat up over inflation, they'll just say inflation is transitory and anyone saying otherwise is peddling misinformation. If they're getting beat up over the southern border crisis or the crime wave, they'll just call it misinformation.
Social media cracking down on "misinformation" means, in practice, censoring away anything that's hurting the Democrats poll numbers.
re you saying that misinformation is not real?
Do you really think Hunter's laptop is worth a moment of anyone's time? Whatabout Jared biting MBS' pillow for two super-large?
Contrasting, how many years of Trump lying every time he spoke did it take before news media started calling it lying?
What crime wave? You mean the guns?
Edit: please don't portray me as a champion of the Democrats. They are way too far right for my tastes. But while they are inept and corrupt, the other side makes a virtue of cruelty.
And yet you post like every generic bluanon resistance Democrat.
That it appears so to you speaks nothing about me and everything about you.
I agree with the Democrats about almost nothing.
And yet here you are parroting all of their favorite talking points. Also, can you see why your complaint about being lumped in with people is ironic, given your other comments here?
"current liberal obsession with censorship."
Whoa, we have a scholar here.
It's not censorship, it's self-respect. Not being immortal, we choose to not waste time on conservative fools.
I can't tell if this is meant ironically or not, given the topic and all.
Chris is a standard "liberal" which means that he must ask Liberalism Central if a particular topic is "on the approved list".
He substitutes ad hominism for intellectualism and thinks that they are equivalent because they both end in "ism".
Choose what you like but don’t choose for *me*. That’s the point.
My first “peaking” experience was seeing lots of tweets trashing Jesse for being transphobic, I assumed they were true but decided to read his work and--wait, what?!
There is something about foaming-at-the-mouth anger that makes me skeptical. As if mean girls are trying to see if I'll meet their cruelty and therefore be worthy of their club. It's such an insulting way to make points, I don't understand how it doesn't make more people do some research before jumping in.
Because they've been primed to believe jumping in makes them a good ally and doing research from unapproved sources will make them a conspiracy theorist.
"make them a conspiracy theorist."
Christ, man, get a refresher on singular and plural.
"make them conspiracy theorists."
Reaching for the ibuprofen
That's actually the indefinite they, not the plural they. English not your first language?
(*chuckle*) the what? "Indefinite?" No such thing. Though I'm sure you can find a "they/them" web page that says it's a real term.
"They" is the nominative third-person plural pronoun. It is abused by sloppy speakers as a gender-indeterminate third person singular, recently promoted by those "non-binary" twits. Since English grammar and spelling started to be formalized in the late 18th century, the singular "they" has been controversial.
But that isn't what you were doing there.
It wasn't the "they" that was wrong; that was perfectly fine, the earlier part of your sentence was also plural. "They've been primed to believe..."
Where you fucked up was then treating multiple people, they, as a singular conspiracy theorist, which is unambiguously wrong. Like when morons talk about "Many changed their life." Lives.
Just be a man and own up. I'm a grammar obsessive, have been since before I spoke my first words. And I make mistakes too, and painlessly admit them without dodging and weaving about "language evolves" or making up terms.
And to answer your question, yes English is my Müttersprache, one of four languages I speak fluently, seven I speak conversationally. perhaps fifteen I can read. I am a certified (TEFL) teacher of ESL and have eight years of experience teaching in Vietnam, up to C2 level.
I even speak Vietnamese, a tonal language that not one westerner in a thousand living here ever attempts.
Huh, I speak a little Vietnamese, the tones do make it difficult, much harder than something like Spanish.
I picked it up because I work in the firearms business building AR-15s, and a good chunk of our workforce is Vietnamese, mostly middle aged men. Definitely ironic given the history of that particular rifle, I definitely get a chuckle wondering where some of our guys learned how to work on them.
That's great, Chris.
I see that you are planning to take a break from Twitter soon, Jesse. I support that. I agree that a lot of these criticisms are disingenuous bs, and I hate to see your valuable mental bandwidth get taken up by jerks jerkin’.
I feel for Jesse and Katie. They have made a big part of their niche consist of reporting on what is occurring on Twitter. Sort've like being the beat reporter for hell.
I do appreciate hearing about online wackiness without having to wade into it myself...
Yep. “Scraping the bottom of the internet barrel so we don’t have to”. Thank you for your service.
Getting off Twitter was great for the ol' blood pressure. It was bad before but Musk is destroying it. The technical glitches are starting now and it will likely soon go dark, and good riddance.
I was trying to explain why I found arguing with Johnathan Katz so frustrating and here is the answer. He kept complaining about how the NYT has an anti-trans agenda, accused Matthew Yglesias of being transphobic (which I found absurd), etc. I was baffled. Still am. Thanks for writing this
Easiest accusation in the world, "transphobic." Face it, these people don't want allies. They treat someone who's 99% supportive as no different from someone who wants them all executed.
The transition surgeons, the affirmation therapists who never give a thumb down, and the activists .. all belong in prison.
Actual comment: Whataboutism in the way it's proposed here is exactly that, a derailing tactic.
Sometimes however I think it gets lobbied against people looking for consistent principles in their interlocutor. If someone tells me it's a grave journalistic error to not contact the subject or a figure in a piece, but they frequently attack their enemies in articles without doing so themselves, it isn't whataboutism to zoom out and settle on terms like be "consistent in your application of principles" to ensure we can have a coherent conversation.
I like this post a lot, but I have some mixed feelings about it, because there are definitely some topics that seem to produce an outsized number of people with no discernible reason to care as much as they do. There is a nigh-limitless number of lefties, for instance, who are *constantly* talking about Palestine, who have no personal connection there, and who don't care a whit about any other geopolitical conflicts. The intensity of their involvement (and the frequency of this "type" of person) does make me think about *why* people focus on a given topic.
Fair point/question. It does seem distinct from whether reporting on/being an activist for something is a fundamentally worthwhile endeavor.
Obviously some people are drawn to certain issues because they have an ax to grind, or whatever. And others may be drawn due to personal relevance or how the issue intersects with some broader belief, right?
My therapist asks me all the time (because he’s an octogenarian) why this issue means so much to me.
That’s relatively easy for me to answer. Gender shit meddles in law, sociology, medicine, feminism, parenting, free speech/belief, and public education, no matter how many people insist it’s about a vanishing small number of vulnerable people just wanting to live their lives with dignity.
I've always been curious about that one myself, as I've never been satisfied with some of the lazier conservative arguments that it's all antisemitism, or that it's just a proxy conflict where they pattern match the Palestinians as the US civil rights movement and the Israelis as the Bull Connors in the conflict. It's definitely a thing though.
The outrage mobs have made numerous false allegations against J.K. Rowling. The fact that these allegations have no basis in fact and are trivially refuted has had no impact. Why? Because there is no downside for lying about anything as long as the lies are PC.
The real issue is that the statement "She is a TERF" is a complete argument to the Woke wackadoodles. No additional evidence need be given.
Just remember the people you need to convince are the onlookers. You’ll never persuade the people directly engaged but the poverty of their arguments is startling.
You’re right . It’s a spectator sport. Twitter will miss you Jesse.
Illiberals on the left love to Mau-Mau lefty journalists who critique the left. Indeed, they say that more attention should be focused on right-wing illiberalism and fascism. As if mega attention is not given to this now.
Speaking of fascism, someone who actually knows something about it, the stellar historian, Richard J. Evans, wrote a superb article, Why Trump isn't a fascist, which the New Statesman carried on January 13, 2021.
Huge numbers of people on the left wouldn't know what fascism is if it bit them on the behind. I don't want to violate Godwin's law but if we're talking fascism, as Matt Taibbi has noted, it is the Democratic Party that supports the connivance of the state and of corporations to suppress opinions that this combine doesn't like and that is actual fascism.
Mau-Mauing lefty journos who critique the left, saying that these journos should write about other things is a power move to try to shut up people like Jesse and Glenn Greenwald and Fredrik deBoer and Aaron Maté, und so weiter.
The reasoning of these High Priests of Liberalism is so bad because it is reversed engineered. They want independent-minded lefties to shut up, so they work backward to try to find reasons to support their illiberal postures.
Evans’ argument basically rested on the premise that as Trump eschews military adventurism, the expansion of empire and the prioritizing of military life as a template and ideal for all society he’s not a fascist. Trump’s just not into war and the military enough to meet the definition according to Evans.
Others then pointed out that the people Trump inspires certainly to seem to check off the boxes of a fascistic movement.
It’s worth noting, too, that Evans still viewed Trump as both anti-Democracy and a grave danger.
Don’t mistake 1) arguments among historians of Germany about who counts as a “fascist” for 2) arguments about whether Trump is an authoritarian who poses a mortal danger to our democracy. These are not contiguous debates. Answers depend almost entirely upon how one defines fascism. I know dozens of historians of Germany and not one would defend Trump in any way.
What am I mistaking? I literally end with “It’s worth noting, too, that Evans still viewed Trump as both anti-Democracy and a grave danger.”
On my reading of your comment and the one from Gordon to which you responded, I thought it might not be clear that historians in this field work with fairly specific but sometimes-discordant definitions of "fascism."
I don't think either of your are wrong. I was providing a little additional context, but didn't frame it carefully enough. "Don't mistake" came across as scolding, I think - it wasn't meant that way, but I didn't take time enough to check how my tone would come across. Thanks for your patience and also for your commitment to fair discourse.
Trump meets several points of the definition. Foremost among them is the Führerprinzip, the cult of the leader. "Only I can fix it," this buffoon says.
He is also much more concerned with enemies within than without and places loyalty to his person over every other loyalty, just like Hitler did.
Where he fails to me the definition is, yes, in militarism, a failing easily attributable to his cowardice, and to his chumminess with authoritarians all over the world. He doesn't admore pluralists, he admires tyrants.
And he hs never established a national industrial policy either. But he is certainly no democrat, and certainly no socialist, and if he isn't a true Fascist it's only because he's a desperately stupid man.
And Mein Kampf is the only book he is known to have read,
Glenn Greenwald is a moron. He’s a free speech absolutist.
The statement "left-of-center intellectual life" is a self-contradictory expression. There is no there there.
The ENTIRE "left-of-center intellectual life" involves what you skin color is and who you interact with in the bedroom. There is no intellectual life, because so many topics are off the table.
The only actual intellectuals actually posing important questions are conservative - Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, anyone opposing the insanity of trans delusion.
This is very silly. Or if you prefer very SILLY.
You emphasis “entire” for “left-of-center intellectual life” -- this in response to a piece by a left of center writer (Singal, Jesse) who’s addressing taboo questions, accusations & assumptions of the social justice movement with rigor in good faith.
h/t for Don't Crush That Dwarf.
And while I agree on the trans fad, the rest of your post is garbage.
Funny thing about you guys ... you claim to revere individualism but you despise individuality and you are about as individual as ants.
Trump won, right?
You seem to be making some assumptions about the poster you're replying to, and throwing in a red herring derailing statement to boot. Why so defensive if the post is such trash?
I can take my lumps but where do you see "defensive?"
Uncalled for hostility and snark, like what was said hit a nerve. If it was obviously false, why react like that?
There is a difference between conservatives and liberals. Most conservatives were once liberals, are familiar with liberal "reasoning", but are willing to consider the "arguments" of liberals. I was once a liberal and am familiar with the arguments. On the other hand, most liberals have never had any experience with thinking like a conservative, do not respect it, and consider them all fascists. Mr. Fox is a typical liberal - unable to think or meet an argument with a reasoned comment, he lashes out. He knows that I am making reasonable points, but is unable to articulate or understand what is wrong with them.
The thoughtful liberal is no more. Now it's all screaming and shouting and pointing. A reversion to the state of the baboon.
There are plenty of smart, thoughtful liberals out there. Unfortunately, the people who get the most traction on Twitter are not usually brilliant intellectuals. Social Media rewards people for acting insane.
I see you live in Vietnam. I have a question that you might be able to help me with (serious inquiry). Can you email me?
Yeah I moved here in 2010. PTSD from Microsoft, Palin, many reasons.
I don't see a way to email in your profile, you can write me at one of my burner accounts, solonaquila431@gmail.com. If things stay civil I will give you the real one. Flame off, OK?
If you tried and it bounced, try again.
I don't see defensive. I don't see anything. So typical of "liberal intellectuals" - unable to actually make a coherent argument because some Woke loser may cancel you. Sad, really.
I guess “sad” is the new “amused.”
You’re in over your head.
Do you actually think any real percentage of people who read Singal are Trump supporters? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just got confused about which substack you are reading.
I just got on here a few hours ago, still haven;t gotten the lay of the land. But there is definitely some Trump trash on here.
Anyway, even if they don't call themselves Trumpadors, people who remain in the Republican Party have decided that even Trump's vileness is not a deal-breaker. What, I should respect that? Sorry, no can do. Even that asshat George Will left.
A person can be a conservative and not support Trump. There are, in fact, millions of such persons. No sentient person today does support him.
It's so typical of liberal "intellectualism" that stereotypes are the ONLY way that such persons can express ideas.
Tell me what percentage wouldn't vote for him should he be the nominee.
Yet you keep responding. I believe that's called a revealed preference.
I doubt that. You have to understand someone first.
Thank you for this timely essay. I read David Remnick’s interview with Masha Gessen this weekend and found it interesting and thought provoking but was left with a vague feeling of wanting to say, “Ya, but…” but I didn’t quite know why or “what about.” Hopefully, as they say at the end of the interview, the New Yorker will move forward from here with nuanced and careful coverage of the very complex issues of child gender medicine and transition as well as in the adult population and wider culture. Again, thanks for your work, Jesse.
Check out Lisa Selin Davis' comments on that Gessen interview here: https://twitter.com/LisaSelinDavis/status/1634722107287388161
Lisa’s doing such great work. I hope she sees a broader audience sooner rather than later.
Lisa’s smart, principled, and fair - so much so that I’m a paid subscriber even though I’m pretty skint.
Thank you!
I have only been on this substack a few hours, I have no feel for tone yet. Gimme time.
Having spent over three decades joining new online forums I can definitely recommend not diving into insulting people before more than a few weeks have passed. WTTW.
Point taken.
But when people blast out the same syndrome of BS and lies, it's neither difficult nor unreasonable to presume their tribal affiliation, and this isn't my first rodeo.
Got a mirror? When I counted yesterday you were responsible for 15% of the posts on this thread, which is one definition of "blast"; and it's not difficult to figure out your tribal affiliation either. Maybe less coffee before you get back on the horse?
This is appreciated! Welcome and you’ll get the vibe soon I’m sure
Leave twitter for a bit and come hang with us on Singal Minded!