I would bet a whole night at the bar that this language is derived from a repository operated by the Trans Journalist Association and/or its sister organization Open News, and that every reporter you cited (or his or her editor) is a member of one or both of those organization, OR that a later work plagiarized an earlier example.
Or begs the use of a chrome filter which, If detecting the term "sex assigned at birth" to negate all phrases, and substitute the word "sex" for gender. It's amazing how literally Bizarro World these statements are in the style guide.
As, Aaron H. writes below "Sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed.". That is correct. However, in rare cases, observation yields the wrong answer. For example, Caster Semenya was observed to be female at birth. However, he is actually an XY male with a DSD. He has Testis, not Ovaries. Of course, he has no Fallopian tubes or Uterus. These facts are well-known. It is also true, that the BBC, NPR, the New York Time, AP, and Reuters didn't report them.
That statement is about 99.9+% true. A few exceptions exist.
1. Consider CAIS persons. An ultrasound would conclude that the fetus was female. However, genetic testing would yield the reverse result. Which is correct? In my opinion, neither. In my opinion, CAIS persons are neither male or female.
2. Consider Caster Semenya. An ultrasound would conclude that the fetus was female. However, genetic testing would yield the reverse result. Which is correct? In my opinion, Caster was and is male. A male with a DSD. 5-ARD to be precise.
3. It is unlikely that a human chimera would be detected before birth. Are human chimeras male or female? They are very rare, but real.
4. In some (very rare) cases, the SRY gene is trans-located onto an X chromosome. An ultrasound would conclude that the fetus was male. However, genetic testing would yield the reverse result. Which is correct? In my opinion, male is the better answer.
5. Some very rare folks have both male and female external genitalia. An ultrasound would not reach much of a conclusion. However, genetic testing would yield the correct result.
6. Some very rare folks have ambiguous external genitalia. An ultrasound would not reach much of a conclusion. However, genetic testing would yield the correct result.
I'm still struggling to understand why so many people in so many places in the US have bought into this "gender ideology." I've seen some discussion about its *source* in "follow the money" type articles (and the birth of gender studies disciplines), but it's one thing to sell the ideology and another thing to buy it and a whole other thing to defend it emotionally and to demand it be followed.
It's so illogical, so un-obvious--and yet it seems so many are buying it hook, line and sinker. How did that happen?
Progressives want to be good and inclusive people, they’ve been told by the activists that they trust that this is the way to do it. It really is as simple as that.
I am reluctant to extend this courtesy to full-time DEI consultant sorts of people, but I think the random office drone who dropped a "he/him/his" in his email signature is just trying to be nice and is not giving this a whole ton of thought or assigning much importance to it.
(n.b., am an office drone, I mean that as light jeering rather than truly perjorative)
I think, to, that in the U.S., the issue is polarized in a way that it isn't in Europe, with right-wingers being especially against it. Since a lot of left-leaning people see right-wingers as, well, kind of 🦇💩, they figure that the right wing is just against it for bigoted reactionary reasons (which isn't entirely wrong) and that therefore they should be for it.
I tend to go by a combination of Hanlon's Razor and assuming that people are trying to act in good faith most of the time. Given that, I think it's unlikely that money is a primary motivation for that complex of beliefs often described as "gender ideology." Obviously, specialists in gender-affirmation surgeries have a pecuniary interest, but if it were just up to them, I doubt we'd have the mess that we have.
Money does play a role in medicine. However, I would not overstate the point. Ideology and medical facts play are more important. Consider, some history here. At one time, bone marrow transplants and whole body radiation were consider ‘treatments’ for cancer. A California insurance company refused to pay for these treatments on the ground that they were ‘experimental’. This was the basis for the Nelene Fox case. The insurance company was right. The ‘treatments’ didn’t work (for Nelene Fox and many other) and were subsequently abandoned.
The ‘treatments’ were very expensive and profoundly lucrative for the medical establishment. When it was shown that they didn’t work, they were abandoned. Trans surgery and hormones may be very lucrative for the medical establishment (they are). However, the real driver is ideology, not money. Trans ideology holds that people have a ‘right’ to trans medical treatment. The fact that these ‘treatments’ cost lots of money is irrelevant (to them). They don’t get the money anyway. They do provide the ideological justification.
So far, TRAs (Trans Rights Activists) have dominated the APA (American Psychological Association), The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other groups. The bottom line is that Chase Strangio has far more power than the opponents of trans ‘medicine’. In Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, etc.), they have been far less successful. In the UK, the national government and political parties have turned against them. However, the situation in Scotland is more complex. Famously, JKR is a big critic. However, the SNP has promoted trans ideology without hesitation. Notoriously, Nicola Sturgeon was force to resign because she wanted to send a male prisoner to a women’s prison. The SNP has embraced ‘gender self-id’ allegedly, because the Greens insist one it.
This fits the global (including American) pattern. Trans ideology is very much an elite idea. In the US, Harvard supports it. Ordinary Americans don’t. To paraphrase Lenin, “trans ideology is highest stage of identity politics”.
Money does play a role in medicine. However, I would not overstate the point. Ideology and medical facts play are more important. Consider, some history here. At one time, bone marrow transplants and whole body radiation were consider ‘treatments’ for cancer. A California insurance company refused to pay for these treatments on the ground that they were ‘experimental’. This was the basis for the Nelene Fox case. The insurance company was right. The ‘treatments’ didn’t work (for Nelene Fox and many other) and were subsequently abandoned.
The ‘treatments’ were very expensive and profoundly lucrative for the medical establishment. When it was shown that they didn’t work, they were abandoned. Trans surgery and hormones may be very lucrative for the medical establishment (they are). However, the real driver is ideology, not money. Trans ideology holds that people have a ‘right’ to trans medical treatment. The fact that these ‘treatments’ cost lots of money is irrelevant (to them). They don’t get the money anyway. They do provide the ideological justification.
So far, TRAs (Trans Rights Activists) have dominated the APA (American Psychological Association), The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other groups. The bottom line is that Chase Strangio has far more power than the opponents of trans ‘medicine’. In Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, etc.), they have been far less successful. In the UK, the national government and political parties have turned against them. However, the situation in Scotland is more complex. Famously, JKR is a big critic. However, the SNP has promoted trans ideology without hesitation. Notoriously, Nicola Sturgeon was force to resign because she wanted to send a male prisoner to a women’s prison. The SNP has embraced ‘gender self-id’ allegedly, because the Greens insist one it.
This fits the global (including American) pattern. Trans ideology is very much an elite idea. In the US, Harvard supports it. Ordinary Americans don’t. To paraphrase Lenin, “trans ideology is highest stage of identity politics”.
In Time to Think, about the Tavistock center in England, the author returned to the fact (like three times) that the treatments were among the largest if not the largest revenue generators for the center. The reporter also talks about what it would mean for all the patients in the pipeline if Tavistock were to even just pump the brakes on treatment. The writer of the book and her sources would have preferred a pause and review.
Here's some data on procedures in minors (which are, of course, far more concerning than in adults):
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis [of US insurance claims].
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.
You can’t over-emphasize how tribal this is. It really is about a divided population where two halves scorn and dismiss each other, with little or no consideration for any objective facts, logic, or even consistency. We see the same thing with many, many issues in the U.S., not just transactivism.
Money means the incentives are pointed the wrong way in the US, but that’s only part of the story I think.
If you look at it like abortion: in the U.K. we’ve had legalised abortion for 50 odd years, and it is not a political issue. Or if it is it’s so fringe it doesn’t register as an issue in any way. This means we have fairly sensible, middle of the road policies concerning up to what point in gestation an abortion may be performed, and under what circumstances.
In the US precisely because it’s a hot issue every time a “prolifer” tries to restrict abortion in any way, eg by permitting abortions only up to 12 weeks or something, the other side runs the other way onto extremely shaky moral ground and starts saying abortions are fine up to birth. They go so crazy you worry they’ll start saying abortions are fine before the kid’s 2nd birthday. This pendulum of madness exists in the US on polarised issues. It’s as though the point isn’t the patients or the people, the point is to hurt the other “team”. Calling each other groomers, racists, transphobes, Nazis… it’s a sickness in civil discourse.
Sickness is pretty accurate. I’m not quite sure what continues to fuel it. My own point of view growing up among evangelical conservatives is that it’s largely fueled by them, and only secondarily by reactionaries on the left. The persecution complex of evangelical Christians is a big part of it. And I’m often afraid their religion has also left them vulnerable to craving authoritarian rule. Working against that is extremely frustrating and is what I think has unhinged a lot of well-meaning folks on the left. I think the left has its own fanatics and always has, like environmentalists who would ok with the eradication of the human “pestilence” on earth. But they have always been fringe and even if they can be a danger, not many folks buy what they’re selling. Evangelicals, however, are all about the sell, and they’re quite good at it. Lots of folks have bought into their rhetoric over the decades. It’s any easy group to mobilize. And I’m afraid the reaction to that is for the left to become just as group-thinky with its own purity tests and such. That’s what it looks like where I stand.
For gays and lesbians, there is a ton of pressure to buy into gender ideology because, hey, weren't we until recently as oppressed? In some sense, that is true; much of what is said about trans people today was said about gays and lesbians forty years ago. (Yes, I am old enough to remember that.) In another sense, however, it's a terrible comparison. The gay rights movement was insisting not upon medicalization, but that our minds and bodies were fine just as they were.
As frustrated as I can get with folks who go along with the gender jihad, I can also understand them to an extent. There was a time when I told myself I had to accept or else I was a bad person and also a traitor to my sub-culture. I don't think either now, but for a long time I did.
Money does play a role in medicine. However, I would not overstate the point. Ideology and medical facts play are more important. Consider, some history here. At one time, bone marrow transplants and whole body radiation were consider ‘treatments’ for cancer. A California insurance company refused to pay for these treatments on the ground that they were ‘experimental’. This was the basis for the Nelene Fox case. The insurance company was right. The ‘treatments’ didn’t work (for Nelene Fox and many other) and were subsequently abandoned.
The ‘treatments’ were very expensive and profoundly lucrative for the medical establishment. When it was shown that they didn’t work, they were abandoned. Trans surgery and hormones may be very lucrative for the medical establishment (they are). However, the real driver is ideology, not money. Trans ideology holds that people have a ‘right’ to trans medical treatment. The fact that these ‘treatments’ cost lots of money is irrelevant (to them). They don’t get the money anyway. They do provide the ideological justification.
So far, TRAs (Trans Rights Activists) have dominated the APA (American Psychological Association), The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other groups. The bottom line is that Chase Strangio has far more power than the opponents of trans ‘medicine’. In Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, etc.), they have been far less successful. In the UK, the national government and political parties have turned against them. However, the situation in Scotland is more complex. Famously, JKR is a big critic. However, the SNP has promoted trans ideology without hesitation. Notoriously, Nicola Sturgeon was forced to resign because she wanted to send a male prisoner (convicted of rape) to a women’s prison. The SNP has embraced ‘gender self-id’ allegedly, because the Greens insisted one it.
This fits the global (including American) pattern. Trans ideology is very much an elite idea. In the US, Harvard supports it. Ordinary Americans don’t. To paraphrase Lenin, “trans ideology is highest stage of identity politics”.
I believe there's merit to the idea that many liberals view trans as the new gay.
Being generally aware of the discrimination and prejudice that gay people faced from time immemorial until the sea change in public attitudes in during the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decades of this century, liberals want to show that they, at least, have learned from the mistakes of the past. Hence they go out of their way to be as responsive to the talking points of trans rights advocates and their allies as possible. Why shouldn't they? They're unlikely to hear gender critical views being expressed by like-minded friends and acquaintances.
This is exactly the kind of using your obsessive and pedantic focus to reveal weird journalism failures stuff I subscribe for. Great find and great summary!
The phrase "sex assigned at birth" is misleading too since no one assigns one's sex at birth anymore than one assign's a person's hair color or height. These traits are what they are.
Yeah, I take issue with Jesse's position that the stylistic mandate regarding "undocumented immigrants" and "sex assigned at birth" are both different in degree *and* in kind from the above.
It's only a difference in degree for those two phrases. Because they both have underlying assumptions and political stances baked in. A stylistic choice would be "we are going to move to using Ms. to refer to women, rather than using Miss and Mrs.".
In contrast "sex assigned at birth" has an underlying political bent and framing to it. It's the "actually the failure was with the doctor for assuming and assigning". It deflects and changes the entire meaning away from what "biological sex" means.
The same goes for the move from "illegal immigrants" to "undocumented immigrants". When you shift the focus to documenting/having documents you completely miss the whole point about the illegal border crossing. Plus "undocumented immigrants" often times *have* documents! It doesn't even make any sense! Unless you're trying to change the solution to "all we have to do is give them documents" just like "all we have to do is stop assuming and assigning genders based on genitalia".
So these specific stylistic choices are very similar to the gender affirming language Jesse discusses above. They are phrases that force the author to state something that they don't necessarily agree with, and confuse the issues by implanting a certain political assumption. If you open a scientific piece discussing the production of gametes, and are forced to shoehorn in "assigned at birth" language it confuses the issues just as a piece discussing the NHS stopping puberty blockers due to a lack of evidence gets confused by stating gender affirming care is "evidence based". So I posit Jesse is wrong, the difference is only in degree, not in kind. And because there is no difference in kind, I take issue with institutions mandating the usage of these phrases as well.
As, Aaron H. writes below "Sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed.". That is correct. However, in rare cases, observation yields the wrong answer. For example, Caster Semenya was observed to be female at birth. However, he is actually an XY male with a DSD. He has Testis, not Ovaries. Of course, he has no Fallopian tubes or Uterus. These facts are well-known. It is also true, that the BBC, NPR, the New York Time, AP, and Reuters didn't report them.
You point out another gobsmacking silliness in this whole ideology: If There Are Any Exceptions, Discard The Rule. But even in this example of Simenya, it's apples and oranges.
The arguments about how to handle DSDs (Intersex) is distinct from any conversation about "gender" (not biological sex, mind you--"gender"). Even trans people acknowledge the existence and binary nature of biological sex--it's their curse because of their "gender."
Gender (femininity, masculinity, and the inevitable blend) is highly individualized, infected by social expectations, with some basis (for most) in biology--but we can concede that it's *quite independent* of biological markers. (Discuss!)
Doctors can observe--with grand certitude--the sex of a baby. They can never guess about the degree of masculinity or femininity that baby will adopt ("gender")--but that doesn't negate the value of observing and naming sex in a baby. Upon further observation, it may become known that the baby has some biological difference that makes them Intersex--but again, that's distinctive from the "gender" of masculinity and femininity (or whatever gender words you want to use).
“Doctors can observe--with grand certitude--the sex of a baby.” I would guess that doctors are about 99.9% right. Whether that constitutes “grand certitude” would depend on your mileage. In a few very rare cases, babies are born with ambiguous external genitalia (perhaps 0.018% of the time). In these cases, doctors obviously can not use external genitalia to determine sex. They can use genetic testing and ultrasounds. In some very rare cases, persons are born with unambiguous external female anatomy. However, they are not female. The have no Ovaries, Fallopian tubes, or Uterus. They are XY males with a defection SRY gene. This (quite rare) condition is known as CAIS. Caster Semenya was born with unambiguous external female anatomy. He is not CAIS. He is a male with a DSD (5-ARD).
All they have to do is add "supporters contend" or "supporters argue", at the beginning of the sentence and it would be fine. I mean, the reporters aren't scientists. I feel like that sort of attribution is almost always used when reporting on a disputed thing?
It has been years since I have paid any attention to the Crank News Network. This cut-and-paste stuff is really appalling. Journalism has been shredded in this country. It lies on the cutting room floor. It has been ripped up by ideologues, by the desire of journos to play on Team Blue, certainly by social media, by elevating pc narratives over facts.
I want my country back, I want my journalism back. I want elite illiberals who are falsely referred to as liberals to keep their authoritarian mitts off our institutions. I want the demented wokeness that is tearing apart activist groups and philanthropies and media outlets to go away.
Regarding the crazy gender ideology afoot, almost no one adhered to Andrea Long Chu-type nonsense until like fifteen minutes ago. Just say no people, say no to all the nonsense, the power-grubbing. the performative social media activity. Join me and just say no.
For me, it started maybe in 2015 with bathroom bills that I understood would help keep people from harassing people clearly trying to pass as women and minding their business. I could understand they would be afraid of assault in the men’s bathroom. And the counter argument of “those pedos might rape girls or women!” seemed weird since it seemed far more likely that a man might assault little boys in the men’s room. So what, we need 4 bathroom? One each for adults and one each for children?
Anyway. Then it was a matter of figuring out insurance for people needing sex change operations. I felt sympathy for this but figured the doctors would help sort it out. I believed we were basically a rational people in the end, no matter the culture war vultures on either side.
Next thing I know it’s a raging storm and I’ve been trying to sort fact from fiction ever since. I want to support people who need it, but it’s a damn mess.
Take it a step further; don't tale them seriously on *any* remotely political issue, as they're clearly untrustworthy.
On a semi related note, I have a long running pet theory that noticing this type of thing and then being gas-lit about it is part of what makes the US right wing so susceptible to conspiracy theories, they seem much more plausible when you have so many blatant examples of the media lying to you (and all your normie friends trying to cover for them).
"Many outlets dug themselves into a deep hole on this issue by simply acting as stenographers and megaphones for activist groups rather than doing their jobs." Such a statement would apply to a lot of issues of which trans medicine is only one.
Google doesn't show any prior instances of the phrases "medically necessary, evidence-based care," "multidisciplinary approach," and "assigned gender" in the same sentence, but there are more than 2,000 since then that copy this wording. So it looks like CNN's Jen Christensen, a longtime member of the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, is patient zero.
The American Medical Association (AMA) put out a press release in June 2021 with similar wording. "Gender-affirming care is medically-necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people."
When I wrote to Tawna Sachez, my representative in the Oregon House of Representatives, last June to protest proposed legislation that protected gender-affirming care for minors, I found clear signs that trans activists had already coached her office on how to respond to what they likely view as "anti trans" correspondence.
The staffer responded in part:
"Thank you also for taking the time to detail to your opposition to the portion of HB 2002 that protects gender-affirming care for minors, and for sharing these resources. HB 2002 only expands gender-affirming care without parental consent to youth over the age of 15, and does so to protect youth whose parents may not support their decision to seek such care. While I hear your concerns regarding puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, I think it is worth noting that every leading medical association in the United States supports such care, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatry Association, and the Endocrine Society. This study from the Journal of Adolescent health, along with several other studies, supports a relationship between access to gender-affirming care and lower rates of depression and suicidality among transgender and nonbinary youth."
I'm one of many centrist Democrats in Oregon who despairs of ever breaking progressives' stranglehold on the legislature.
Still, I couldn't let those canned trans talking points go unanswered. I responded as follows:
Thank you for replying to my note. In your reply, you said: "While I hear your concerns regarding puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, I think it is worth noting that every leading medical association in the United States supports such care . . ." To counter that, I would like to offer facts about the very different status of gender medicine in Europe:
A Teen Gender-Care Debate Is Spreading Across Europe
Doubts have now come to the Netherlands, where the most-contested interventions for children and adolescents were developed.
Europe, where governments and medical authorities in at least fivencountries that once led the way on gender-affirming treatments for childrennand adolescents are now reversing course, arguing that the science undergirding these treatments is unproven, and their benefits unclear.
The about-face by these countries concerns the so-called Dutch protocol, which has for at least a decade been viewed by many clinicians as the gold standardmapproach to care for children and teenagers with gender dysphoria.
Kids on the protocol are given medical and mental-health assessments; somemgo on to take medicines that block their natural puberty and, when they’re older, receive cross-sex hormones and eventually surgery. But in Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, and the U.K., scientists and public-health officials are warning that, for some young people, these interventions may do more harm than good.
European health authorities are not reversing themselves on broader issues of trans rights, particularly for adults. But this turn against the Dutch protocol has inflamed activists and politicians in the United States. Republicans who have worked to ban its recommended treatments claim that the shifts in Europe prove they’re right. Their opponents argue that any doubts at all about the protocol, raised in any country whatsoever, are simply out of step with settled science: They point to broad endorsements by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among other groups; and they assert that when it comes to the lifesaving nature of gender-affirming care, “doctors agree.”
But doctors do not agree, particularly in Europe, where no treatments have been banned but a genuine debate is unfurling in this field. In Finland, for example, new treatment guidelines put out in 2020 advised against the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other medical interventions as a first line of care for teens with adolescent-onset dysphoria. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare followed suit in 2022, announcing that such treatments should be given only under exceptional circumstances or in a research context.
Shortly after that, the National Academy of Medicine in France recommended "la plus grande réserve" in the use of puberty blockers. Just last month, a national investigatory board in Norway expressed concerns about the treatment. And the U.K.’s only national gender clinic for children, the Tavistock, has been ordered to close its doors after a government-commissioned report found, among other problems, that its Dutch-protocol-based approach to treatment lacked sufficient evidence.
There has been at least one noteworthy development since the Atlantic piece was published:
England Limits Use of Puberty-Blocking Drugs to Research Only
The National Health Service of England announced on Friday that it would limit the use of puberty-suppressing drugs to children enrolled in clinical trials. The change comes as the agency’s pediatric gender services have struggled to keep up with soaring demand.
A document explaining the agency’s reasoning stated that “there is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment.”
Needless to say, I received no reply to this information from the staffer or his boss. There's no daylight between trans rights activists and the progressives in the Oregon legislature.
I developed a few years back what I call a nuclear option, similar to the disaster created for Santorum by Dan Savage, for such people.
I had 65,000 hardcore porn novels generated with artificial pen-name authors such as “Mitch McConnell” and “Newt Gingrich”, which were completely typeset and print-ready, and worked flawlessly via Amazon print-on-demand.
You could perhaps a dozen an hour and distribute them freely via certain websites which would duly index the content and start flowing into Google.
My feeling basically is that when you get a robotic reply, that deserves a robotic response consisting of an interesting robotic novel in the name of the person and a link to where you can buy it, and search for in Book Reviews. Google is very effective at diffusing such stuff.
It is, as they say, a free country and you can’t block political expression.
Here’s a contemporary non-explicit example I generated yesterday, a refutation of Judith Butler’s recent “Gender” book, written by pseudo-Judith Butler, a companion edition by Butler x Nancy Drew for tweets, and a humor edition by Michel Foucault written in zany Pepe le Pew French/English for postmodernists. “A Malignancy of Gender”
These were from a group of 17 books in 9 languages refuting Gender, all focused on Butler.
It’s getting so tiresome to see such a struggle over basic science and medicine, and snatching away hard-won postions women have achieved, and rank falsehoods, it seems ripe to go to plan B, leveraging free speech as this trans phenomenon has leveraged “LGBT”
ps: So far I'm finding "The Malignance of Gender" surprisingly readable. Could it be there are too few examples of profoundly obscurantist texts in existence to properly train the pseudo Judith Butler robots?
This sounds awful but I never read more than a paragraph or two because I know most of the books I generate are quite, well, on the spot.
I usually observe a few paragraphs being dynamically generated and if is not crazyland let it proceed invisibly to completion. I felt it didn’t full Butler crazy factor.
Nancy Drew is tad too complex for her demographic, but I didn’t want it condescending.
What I saw of Foucault is incredibly annoying.
I have Dawkins, Gawande, Edward Gorey, Plato, Achebe, Allende, Ghibran, Xun, Hesse, Mishima, Solzhenitsyn, Sontag, Assis, Agnon, Premchand and Sapphire.
The Hebrew and Arabic right-to-left typesetting the AI could not figure out for indesign, and for Chinese and Japanese the top-bottom, right-to-left back-to-front settings were also too mysterious.
But the Chilean Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi and Russian versions look flawless. I am only fluent in French and Dutch, though I can read German, wow they may be off.
I'm proficient in Spanish having learned it along with English while growing up in a South American capital in the 50s and early 60s, studied it at the high school and college level and spoken it recently during repeated trips to Peru. I'd be happy to take a quick look at the Chilean text to see whether it is passable. I also have two happy years of college Brazilian Portuguese under my belt, so I could scan the text and do the same.
I read a few paragraphs of the introduction and a few paragraphs of the first chapter of both texts.
Except for a spelling error at the end of the second to last complete line on page 24 ("distinca" should be "distinta") of Butler x Allende, I detected no errors. A highly educated and erudite Chilean or Brazlian might advocate for more elegant or idiomatic ways of expressing certain ideas, but that would apply to the translation of almost any work written by a human.
AI is going to turn foreign-language instruction on its head if it hasn't already. It will take great discipline for a student to compose sentences and paragraphs, to say nothing of essays or term papers, unaided. That discipline will pay off, because their original work will be less polished than that of their classmates who cheated and so will be above suspicion of plagiarism.
Oh, you wicked, wicked person, you! Think about where the royalties would do the most damage to gender ideology, should there ever be any, and send them to those lucky recipients.
I had explained to friends that major publications had been largely court stenographers for trans/gender activist. And so have the most prestigious universities, government, NGOs, glitterati, and so on.
So, how do you save face and climb off the sycophancy choo-choo? I don't see how and they will get deeper and deeper into the hole.
The situation parallels the Catholic Church's hierarchy vis a vis child abuse. Not so much the abuse itself, but the endless cover-up and lying.
The only party of the article that felt (adorably) naive was when Jesse said it would be awkward for news outlets to climb out of this hole they've dug when the culture comes back to its senses about trans issues. We've how they (and other public figures) handle the shifting political attitudes when their views become untrendy: just pretend you never said that.
And if you get an email from Jesse saying, "but didn't you say that last year?" you just ignore the email.
Politicians have done this as long as I can remember, and editorial boards are these days political organizations.
I think the phrase should be "news spam". These unending boilerplates are a reason why AI's - trained with news sources - tend to statistically overstate these phrases, poisoned. It is news spam.
While CNN has not really been researching and conveying news for years inside the US, versus CNN international, all "web based" news reporting is an echo system for any statement which is fed into it - "X Bombs Hospital killing thousands" suddenly is news of the hour when it's a hoax, and erupts on hundreds of sites with tiny variations.
If on websites you could use an ad blocker to (a) block articles with false statements and.notify the source of "spam" the circulation would become bad enough news sources would start to alter stock phrases. Or (b) rewrite false statements before displaying, hilighting or listing false statements and transmitting "spam" notifications.
Take "Illegal Alien", "Undocumented" and other terms as a good example. A non-citizen without an unexpired visa is the core concept, whether visitor, residence, or work visa. Not illegal, not "Undocumented". Millions of people enter the US without "documents" under "visa waiver". The terminology should be cleaned up and made accurate. Non-residents overstaying visits.
Another is LGBTQ+ - I am gay, not LGBTQ+ and statements made about gay men and, for instance "conversion theapy" apply primarily to gays, a much lesser degree lesbians, and that's it. "Anti-LGBTQ+" legiation has nothing to do with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and statements are factually incorrect.
Virtually all statements relative to trans are false or prevaricating - "affirmation" is "experimental treatment." "Alleviate" distress is "provoke" distress, "trans"children is "gay or lesbian" children. "Assigned" at birth is "identified", and "spectrum" is "binary".
I'm convinced the only strategy to fight such mechanically reproduced nonsense is armies of AI bots publishing at such a volume that it statistically overwhelms filtering systems.
This is why I don't trust media -- either side, left or right. The desire to be on the "right side of history" and pursue an activist agenda has turned journalists into stenographers who regurgitate whatever bias they prefer. Trying to find to the "truth" or showing curiosity are just so boring.
I would bet a whole night at the bar that this language is derived from a repository operated by the Trans Journalist Association and/or its sister organization Open News, and that every reporter you cited (or his or her editor) is a member of one or both of those organization, OR that a later work plagiarized an earlier example.
Wow, I thought I was pretty knowledgeable on this topic, but I had never heard of the TRA:
https://www.transjournalists.org
Or of Open News, which seems like a broader DEI effort:
https://opennews.org
Here’s their “style guide”:
https://styleguide.transjournalists.org/
"When a friend, family member, public figure, document, or public record misgenders or deadnames a trans person, do not publish the quote verbatim."
Of course the truth cannot be told.
"You can't say Ell** Page!!"
Or begs the use of a chrome filter which, If detecting the term "sex assigned at birth" to negate all phrases, and substitute the word "sex" for gender. It's amazing how literally Bizarro World these statements are in the style guide.
As, Aaron H. writes below "Sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed.". That is correct. However, in rare cases, observation yields the wrong answer. For example, Caster Semenya was observed to be female at birth. However, he is actually an XY male with a DSD. He has Testis, not Ovaries. Of course, he has no Fallopian tubes or Uterus. These facts are well-known. It is also true, that the BBC, NPR, the New York Time, AP, and Reuters didn't report them.
And, of course sex can be observed before birth. It can also be discovered through various tests on the fetus. We are male or female from conception.
That statement is about 99.9+% true. A few exceptions exist.
1. Consider CAIS persons. An ultrasound would conclude that the fetus was female. However, genetic testing would yield the reverse result. Which is correct? In my opinion, neither. In my opinion, CAIS persons are neither male or female.
2. Consider Caster Semenya. An ultrasound would conclude that the fetus was female. However, genetic testing would yield the reverse result. Which is correct? In my opinion, Caster was and is male. A male with a DSD. 5-ARD to be precise.
3. It is unlikely that a human chimera would be detected before birth. Are human chimeras male or female? They are very rare, but real.
4. In some (very rare) cases, the SRY gene is trans-located onto an X chromosome. An ultrasound would conclude that the fetus was male. However, genetic testing would yield the reverse result. Which is correct? In my opinion, male is the better answer.
5. Some very rare folks have both male and female external genitalia. An ultrasound would not reach much of a conclusion. However, genetic testing would yield the correct result.
6. Some very rare folks have ambiguous external genitalia. An ultrasound would not reach much of a conclusion. However, genetic testing would yield the correct result.
I'm still struggling to understand why so many people in so many places in the US have bought into this "gender ideology." I've seen some discussion about its *source* in "follow the money" type articles (and the birth of gender studies disciplines), but it's one thing to sell the ideology and another thing to buy it and a whole other thing to defend it emotionally and to demand it be followed.
It's so illogical, so un-obvious--and yet it seems so many are buying it hook, line and sinker. How did that happen?
Progressives want to be good and inclusive people, they’ve been told by the activists that they trust that this is the way to do it. It really is as simple as that.
I am reluctant to extend this courtesy to full-time DEI consultant sorts of people, but I think the random office drone who dropped a "he/him/his" in his email signature is just trying to be nice and is not giving this a whole ton of thought or assigning much importance to it.
(n.b., am an office drone, I mean that as light jeering rather than truly perjorative)
The full-time DEI consultants are indeed, among the activists I was referring to
I think, to, that in the U.S., the issue is polarized in a way that it isn't in Europe, with right-wingers being especially against it. Since a lot of left-leaning people see right-wingers as, well, kind of 🦇💩, they figure that the right wing is just against it for bigoted reactionary reasons (which isn't entirely wrong) and that therefore they should be for it.
It's also important that Europe has not-for-profit health-care systems. Sex-trait modification surgeries are big money-makers here in the US.
I tend to go by a combination of Hanlon's Razor and assuming that people are trying to act in good faith most of the time. Given that, I think it's unlikely that money is a primary motivation for that complex of beliefs often described as "gender ideology." Obviously, specialists in gender-affirmation surgeries have a pecuniary interest, but if it were just up to them, I doubt we'd have the mess that we have.
Money does play a role in medicine. However, I would not overstate the point. Ideology and medical facts play are more important. Consider, some history here. At one time, bone marrow transplants and whole body radiation were consider ‘treatments’ for cancer. A California insurance company refused to pay for these treatments on the ground that they were ‘experimental’. This was the basis for the Nelene Fox case. The insurance company was right. The ‘treatments’ didn’t work (for Nelene Fox and many other) and were subsequently abandoned.
The ‘treatments’ were very expensive and profoundly lucrative for the medical establishment. When it was shown that they didn’t work, they were abandoned. Trans surgery and hormones may be very lucrative for the medical establishment (they are). However, the real driver is ideology, not money. Trans ideology holds that people have a ‘right’ to trans medical treatment. The fact that these ‘treatments’ cost lots of money is irrelevant (to them). They don’t get the money anyway. They do provide the ideological justification.
So far, TRAs (Trans Rights Activists) have dominated the APA (American Psychological Association), The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other groups. The bottom line is that Chase Strangio has far more power than the opponents of trans ‘medicine’. In Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, etc.), they have been far less successful. In the UK, the national government and political parties have turned against them. However, the situation in Scotland is more complex. Famously, JKR is a big critic. However, the SNP has promoted trans ideology without hesitation. Notoriously, Nicola Sturgeon was force to resign because she wanted to send a male prisoner to a women’s prison. The SNP has embraced ‘gender self-id’ allegedly, because the Greens insist one it.
This fits the global (including American) pattern. Trans ideology is very much an elite idea. In the US, Harvard supports it. Ordinary Americans don’t. To paraphrase Lenin, “trans ideology is highest stage of identity politics”.
Money does play a role in medicine. However, I would not overstate the point. Ideology and medical facts play are more important. Consider, some history here. At one time, bone marrow transplants and whole body radiation were consider ‘treatments’ for cancer. A California insurance company refused to pay for these treatments on the ground that they were ‘experimental’. This was the basis for the Nelene Fox case. The insurance company was right. The ‘treatments’ didn’t work (for Nelene Fox and many other) and were subsequently abandoned.
The ‘treatments’ were very expensive and profoundly lucrative for the medical establishment. When it was shown that they didn’t work, they were abandoned. Trans surgery and hormones may be very lucrative for the medical establishment (they are). However, the real driver is ideology, not money. Trans ideology holds that people have a ‘right’ to trans medical treatment. The fact that these ‘treatments’ cost lots of money is irrelevant (to them). They don’t get the money anyway. They do provide the ideological justification.
So far, TRAs (Trans Rights Activists) have dominated the APA (American Psychological Association), The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other groups. The bottom line is that Chase Strangio has far more power than the opponents of trans ‘medicine’. In Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, etc.), they have been far less successful. In the UK, the national government and political parties have turned against them. However, the situation in Scotland is more complex. Famously, JKR is a big critic. However, the SNP has promoted trans ideology without hesitation. Notoriously, Nicola Sturgeon was force to resign because she wanted to send a male prisoner to a women’s prison. The SNP has embraced ‘gender self-id’ allegedly, because the Greens insist one it.
This fits the global (including American) pattern. Trans ideology is very much an elite idea. In the US, Harvard supports it. Ordinary Americans don’t. To paraphrase Lenin, “trans ideology is highest stage of identity politics”.
Do we have that many of those surgeries in the US, where it is basically a money grab by doctor's?
In Time to Think, about the Tavistock center in England, the author returned to the fact (like three times) that the treatments were among the largest if not the largest revenue generators for the center. The reporter also talks about what it would mean for all the patients in the pipeline if Tavistock were to even just pump the brakes on treatment. The writer of the book and her sources would have preferred a pause and review.
13,000 in 2019, 12,800 in 2020 (pandemic began March 2020). I can't find more recent numbers. This includes both "top" and "bottom" surgeries.
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-surgery-gender-affirming-care-minors-eea6964112e528e8509cf4ba00f3fa52
Here's some data on procedures in minors (which are, of course, far more concerning than in adults):
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis [of US insurance claims].
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
You can’t over-emphasize how tribal this is. It really is about a divided population where two halves scorn and dismiss each other, with little or no consideration for any objective facts, logic, or even consistency. We see the same thing with many, many issues in the U.S., not just transactivism.
Btw, getting an email headlined “Expectant Asshole Liked Your Comment” feels pretty special. Thanks, E.A.!
Money means the incentives are pointed the wrong way in the US, but that’s only part of the story I think.
If you look at it like abortion: in the U.K. we’ve had legalised abortion for 50 odd years, and it is not a political issue. Or if it is it’s so fringe it doesn’t register as an issue in any way. This means we have fairly sensible, middle of the road policies concerning up to what point in gestation an abortion may be performed, and under what circumstances.
In the US precisely because it’s a hot issue every time a “prolifer” tries to restrict abortion in any way, eg by permitting abortions only up to 12 weeks or something, the other side runs the other way onto extremely shaky moral ground and starts saying abortions are fine up to birth. They go so crazy you worry they’ll start saying abortions are fine before the kid’s 2nd birthday. This pendulum of madness exists in the US on polarised issues. It’s as though the point isn’t the patients or the people, the point is to hurt the other “team”. Calling each other groomers, racists, transphobes, Nazis… it’s a sickness in civil discourse.
Sickness is pretty accurate. I’m not quite sure what continues to fuel it. My own point of view growing up among evangelical conservatives is that it’s largely fueled by them, and only secondarily by reactionaries on the left. The persecution complex of evangelical Christians is a big part of it. And I’m often afraid their religion has also left them vulnerable to craving authoritarian rule. Working against that is extremely frustrating and is what I think has unhinged a lot of well-meaning folks on the left. I think the left has its own fanatics and always has, like environmentalists who would ok with the eradication of the human “pestilence” on earth. But they have always been fringe and even if they can be a danger, not many folks buy what they’re selling. Evangelicals, however, are all about the sell, and they’re quite good at it. Lots of folks have bought into their rhetoric over the decades. It’s any easy group to mobilize. And I’m afraid the reaction to that is for the left to become just as group-thinky with its own purity tests and such. That’s what it looks like where I stand.
For gays and lesbians, there is a ton of pressure to buy into gender ideology because, hey, weren't we until recently as oppressed? In some sense, that is true; much of what is said about trans people today was said about gays and lesbians forty years ago. (Yes, I am old enough to remember that.) In another sense, however, it's a terrible comparison. The gay rights movement was insisting not upon medicalization, but that our minds and bodies were fine just as they were.
As frustrated as I can get with folks who go along with the gender jihad, I can also understand them to an extent. There was a time when I told myself I had to accept or else I was a bad person and also a traitor to my sub-culture. I don't think either now, but for a long time I did.
For some, it has become a sect of Social Justice. I think it is operating as a quasi religion at this point with a thin candy coating of ‘science’
Money does play a role in medicine. However, I would not overstate the point. Ideology and medical facts play are more important. Consider, some history here. At one time, bone marrow transplants and whole body radiation were consider ‘treatments’ for cancer. A California insurance company refused to pay for these treatments on the ground that they were ‘experimental’. This was the basis for the Nelene Fox case. The insurance company was right. The ‘treatments’ didn’t work (for Nelene Fox and many other) and were subsequently abandoned.
The ‘treatments’ were very expensive and profoundly lucrative for the medical establishment. When it was shown that they didn’t work, they were abandoned. Trans surgery and hormones may be very lucrative for the medical establishment (they are). However, the real driver is ideology, not money. Trans ideology holds that people have a ‘right’ to trans medical treatment. The fact that these ‘treatments’ cost lots of money is irrelevant (to them). They don’t get the money anyway. They do provide the ideological justification.
So far, TRAs (Trans Rights Activists) have dominated the APA (American Psychological Association), The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other groups. The bottom line is that Chase Strangio has far more power than the opponents of trans ‘medicine’. In Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, etc.), they have been far less successful. In the UK, the national government and political parties have turned against them. However, the situation in Scotland is more complex. Famously, JKR is a big critic. However, the SNP has promoted trans ideology without hesitation. Notoriously, Nicola Sturgeon was forced to resign because she wanted to send a male prisoner (convicted of rape) to a women’s prison. The SNP has embraced ‘gender self-id’ allegedly, because the Greens insisted one it.
This fits the global (including American) pattern. Trans ideology is very much an elite idea. In the US, Harvard supports it. Ordinary Americans don’t. To paraphrase Lenin, “trans ideology is highest stage of identity politics”.
I believe there's merit to the idea that many liberals view trans as the new gay.
Being generally aware of the discrimination and prejudice that gay people faced from time immemorial until the sea change in public attitudes in during the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decades of this century, liberals want to show that they, at least, have learned from the mistakes of the past. Hence they go out of their way to be as responsive to the talking points of trans rights advocates and their allies as possible. Why shouldn't they? They're unlikely to hear gender critical views being expressed by like-minded friends and acquaintances.
The phrases "medically necessary" and "evidence-based" are key for ensuring insurance coverage of a treatment.
Exactly. I have told people this......
Ah.
This is exactly the kind of using your obsessive and pedantic focus to reveal weird journalism failures stuff I subscribe for. Great find and great summary!
Hell yes.
The phrase "sex assigned at birth" is misleading too since no one assigns one's sex at birth anymore than one assign's a person's hair color or height. These traits are what they are.
Sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed.
I always imagine the midwife or doctor there with a coin with pink on one side and and blue on the other. It could go either way...
Yeah, I take issue with Jesse's position that the stylistic mandate regarding "undocumented immigrants" and "sex assigned at birth" are both different in degree *and* in kind from the above.
It's only a difference in degree for those two phrases. Because they both have underlying assumptions and political stances baked in. A stylistic choice would be "we are going to move to using Ms. to refer to women, rather than using Miss and Mrs.".
In contrast "sex assigned at birth" has an underlying political bent and framing to it. It's the "actually the failure was with the doctor for assuming and assigning". It deflects and changes the entire meaning away from what "biological sex" means.
The same goes for the move from "illegal immigrants" to "undocumented immigrants". When you shift the focus to documenting/having documents you completely miss the whole point about the illegal border crossing. Plus "undocumented immigrants" often times *have* documents! It doesn't even make any sense! Unless you're trying to change the solution to "all we have to do is give them documents" just like "all we have to do is stop assuming and assigning genders based on genitalia".
So these specific stylistic choices are very similar to the gender affirming language Jesse discusses above. They are phrases that force the author to state something that they don't necessarily agree with, and confuse the issues by implanting a certain political assumption. If you open a scientific piece discussing the production of gametes, and are forced to shoehorn in "assigned at birth" language it confuses the issues just as a piece discussing the NHS stopping puberty blockers due to a lack of evidence gets confused by stating gender affirming care is "evidence based". So I posit Jesse is wrong, the difference is only in degree, not in kind. And because there is no difference in kind, I take issue with institutions mandating the usage of these phrases as well.
As, Aaron H. writes below "Sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed.". That is correct. However, in rare cases, observation yields the wrong answer. For example, Caster Semenya was observed to be female at birth. However, he is actually an XY male with a DSD. He has Testis, not Ovaries. Of course, he has no Fallopian tubes or Uterus. These facts are well-known. It is also true, that the BBC, NPR, the New York Time, AP, and Reuters didn't report them.
You point out another gobsmacking silliness in this whole ideology: If There Are Any Exceptions, Discard The Rule. But even in this example of Simenya, it's apples and oranges.
The arguments about how to handle DSDs (Intersex) is distinct from any conversation about "gender" (not biological sex, mind you--"gender"). Even trans people acknowledge the existence and binary nature of biological sex--it's their curse because of their "gender."
Gender (femininity, masculinity, and the inevitable blend) is highly individualized, infected by social expectations, with some basis (for most) in biology--but we can concede that it's *quite independent* of biological markers. (Discuss!)
Doctors can observe--with grand certitude--the sex of a baby. They can never guess about the degree of masculinity or femininity that baby will adopt ("gender")--but that doesn't negate the value of observing and naming sex in a baby. Upon further observation, it may become known that the baby has some biological difference that makes them Intersex--but again, that's distinctive from the "gender" of masculinity and femininity (or whatever gender words you want to use).
Apples and Oranges: Sex and Gender
“Doctors can observe--with grand certitude--the sex of a baby.” I would guess that doctors are about 99.9% right. Whether that constitutes “grand certitude” would depend on your mileage. In a few very rare cases, babies are born with ambiguous external genitalia (perhaps 0.018% of the time). In these cases, doctors obviously can not use external genitalia to determine sex. They can use genetic testing and ultrasounds. In some very rare cases, persons are born with unambiguous external female anatomy. However, they are not female. The have no Ovaries, Fallopian tubes, or Uterus. They are XY males with a defection SRY gene. This (quite rare) condition is known as CAIS. Caster Semenya was born with unambiguous external female anatomy. He is not CAIS. He is a male with a DSD (5-ARD).
All they have to do is add "supporters contend" or "supporters argue", at the beginning of the sentence and it would be fine. I mean, the reporters aren't scientists. I feel like that sort of attribution is almost always used when reporting on a disputed thing?
It has been years since I have paid any attention to the Crank News Network. This cut-and-paste stuff is really appalling. Journalism has been shredded in this country. It lies on the cutting room floor. It has been ripped up by ideologues, by the desire of journos to play on Team Blue, certainly by social media, by elevating pc narratives over facts.
I want my country back, I want my journalism back. I want elite illiberals who are falsely referred to as liberals to keep their authoritarian mitts off our institutions. I want the demented wokeness that is tearing apart activist groups and philanthropies and media outlets to go away.
Regarding the crazy gender ideology afoot, almost no one adhered to Andrea Long Chu-type nonsense until like fifteen minutes ago. Just say no people, say no to all the nonsense, the power-grubbing. the performative social media activity. Join me and just say no.
For me, it started maybe in 2015 with bathroom bills that I understood would help keep people from harassing people clearly trying to pass as women and minding their business. I could understand they would be afraid of assault in the men’s bathroom. And the counter argument of “those pedos might rape girls or women!” seemed weird since it seemed far more likely that a man might assault little boys in the men’s room. So what, we need 4 bathroom? One each for adults and one each for children?
Anyway. Then it was a matter of figuring out insurance for people needing sex change operations. I felt sympathy for this but figured the doctors would help sort it out. I believed we were basically a rational people in the end, no matter the culture war vultures on either side.
Next thing I know it’s a raging storm and I’ve been trying to sort fact from fiction ever since. I want to support people who need it, but it’s a damn mess.
Take it a step further; don't tale them seriously on *any* remotely political issue, as they're clearly untrustworthy.
On a semi related note, I have a long running pet theory that noticing this type of thing and then being gas-lit about it is part of what makes the US right wing so susceptible to conspiracy theories, they seem much more plausible when you have so many blatant examples of the media lying to you (and all your normie friends trying to cover for them).
"Many outlets dug themselves into a deep hole on this issue by simply acting as stenographers and megaphones for activist groups rather than doing their jobs." Such a statement would apply to a lot of issues of which trans medicine is only one.
It looks like the first CNN article actually appeared in April 2022: https://web.archive.org/web/20220421123042/https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/21/health/gender-affirming-care/index.html
Google doesn't show any prior instances of the phrases "medically necessary, evidence-based care," "multidisciplinary approach," and "assigned gender" in the same sentence, but there are more than 2,000 since then that copy this wording. So it looks like CNN's Jen Christensen, a longtime member of the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, is patient zero.
The American Medical Association (AMA) put out a press release in June 2021 with similar wording. "Gender-affirming care is medically-necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people."
https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-reinforces-opposition-restrictions-transgender-medical-care
When I wrote to Tawna Sachez, my representative in the Oregon House of Representatives, last June to protest proposed legislation that protected gender-affirming care for minors, I found clear signs that trans activists had already coached her office on how to respond to what they likely view as "anti trans" correspondence.
The staffer responded in part:
"Thank you also for taking the time to detail to your opposition to the portion of HB 2002 that protects gender-affirming care for minors, and for sharing these resources. HB 2002 only expands gender-affirming care without parental consent to youth over the age of 15, and does so to protect youth whose parents may not support their decision to seek such care. While I hear your concerns regarding puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, I think it is worth noting that every leading medical association in the United States supports such care, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatry Association, and the Endocrine Society. This study from the Journal of Adolescent health, along with several other studies, supports a relationship between access to gender-affirming care and lower rates of depression and suicidality among transgender and nonbinary youth."
I'm one of many centrist Democrats in Oregon who despairs of ever breaking progressives' stranglehold on the legislature.
Still, I couldn't let those canned trans talking points go unanswered. I responded as follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for replying to my note. In your reply, you said: "While I hear your concerns regarding puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, I think it is worth noting that every leading medical association in the United States supports such care . . ." To counter that, I would like to offer facts about the very different status of gender medicine in Europe:
A Teen Gender-Care Debate Is Spreading Across Europe
Doubts have now come to the Netherlands, where the most-contested interventions for children and adolescents were developed.
Europe, where governments and medical authorities in at least fivencountries that once led the way on gender-affirming treatments for childrennand adolescents are now reversing course, arguing that the science undergirding these treatments is unproven, and their benefits unclear.
The about-face by these countries concerns the so-called Dutch protocol, which has for at least a decade been viewed by many clinicians as the gold standardmapproach to care for children and teenagers with gender dysphoria.
Kids on the protocol are given medical and mental-health assessments; somemgo on to take medicines that block their natural puberty and, when they’re older, receive cross-sex hormones and eventually surgery. But in Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, and the U.K., scientists and public-health officials are warning that, for some young people, these interventions may do more harm than good.
European health authorities are not reversing themselves on broader issues of trans rights, particularly for adults. But this turn against the Dutch protocol has inflamed activists and politicians in the United States. Republicans who have worked to ban its recommended treatments claim that the shifts in Europe prove they’re right. Their opponents argue that any doubts at all about the protocol, raised in any country whatsoever, are simply out of step with settled science: They point to broad endorsements by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among other groups; and they assert that when it comes to the lifesaving nature of gender-affirming care, “doctors agree.”
But doctors do not agree, particularly in Europe, where no treatments have been banned but a genuine debate is unfurling in this field. In Finland, for example, new treatment guidelines put out in 2020 advised against the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other medical interventions as a first line of care for teens with adolescent-onset dysphoria. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare followed suit in 2022, announcing that such treatments should be given only under exceptional circumstances or in a research context.
Shortly after that, the National Academy of Medicine in France recommended "la plus grande réserve" in the use of puberty blockers. Just last month, a national investigatory board in Norway expressed concerns about the treatment. And the U.K.’s only national gender clinic for children, the Tavistock, has been ordered to close its doors after a government-commissioned report found, among other problems, that its Dutch-protocol-based approach to treatment lacked sufficient evidence.
The rest of this April 28, 2023, article in The Atlantic magazine can be found here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/04/gender-affirming-care-debate-europe-dutch-protocol/673890/
There has been at least one noteworthy development since the Atlantic piece was published:
England Limits Use of Puberty-Blocking Drugs to Research Only
The National Health Service of England announced on Friday that it would limit the use of puberty-suppressing drugs to children enrolled in clinical trials. The change comes as the agency’s pediatric gender services have struggled to keep up with soaring demand.
A document explaining the agency’s reasoning stated that “there is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment.”
The New York Times. 9 June 2023, updated 12 June. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/health/puberty-blockers-transgender-children-britain-nhs.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Needless to say, I received no reply to this information from the staffer or his boss. There's no daylight between trans rights activists and the progressives in the Oregon legislature.
I developed a few years back what I call a nuclear option, similar to the disaster created for Santorum by Dan Savage, for such people.
I had 65,000 hardcore porn novels generated with artificial pen-name authors such as “Mitch McConnell” and “Newt Gingrich”, which were completely typeset and print-ready, and worked flawlessly via Amazon print-on-demand.
You could perhaps a dozen an hour and distribute them freely via certain websites which would duly index the content and start flowing into Google.
My feeling basically is that when you get a robotic reply, that deserves a robotic response consisting of an interesting robotic novel in the name of the person and a link to where you can buy it, and search for in Book Reviews. Google is very effective at diffusing such stuff.
It is, as they say, a free country and you can’t block political expression.
Here’s a contemporary non-explicit example I generated yesterday, a refutation of Judith Butler’s recent “Gender” book, written by pseudo-Judith Butler, a companion edition by Butler x Nancy Drew for tweets, and a humor edition by Michel Foucault written in zany Pepe le Pew French/English for postmodernists. “A Malignancy of Gender”
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5vwtrgnc06kipela6muug/Butler_112233full.pdf?rlkey=39zh8v4p2dsluni0xznlt1k8j&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l64vkkcs9q1z3hzt5tyi1/ButlerDrew_112233full.pdf?rlkey=d1k8968emvlmvkhw9i6s1hm61&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/11z67n1vrpj2rdb1adhj5/ButlerFoucault_112233full.pdf?rlkey=ehmkzggyowztnsazgwsw92qbp&dl=0
These were from a group of 17 books in 9 languages refuting Gender, all focused on Butler.
It’s getting so tiresome to see such a struggle over basic science and medicine, and snatching away hard-won postions women have achieved, and rank falsehoods, it seems ripe to go to plan B, leveraging free speech as this trans phenomenon has leveraged “LGBT”
ps: So far I'm finding "The Malignance of Gender" surprisingly readable. Could it be there are too few examples of profoundly obscurantist texts in existence to properly train the pseudo Judith Butler robots?
This sounds awful but I never read more than a paragraph or two because I know most of the books I generate are quite, well, on the spot.
I usually observe a few paragraphs being dynamically generated and if is not crazyland let it proceed invisibly to completion. I felt it didn’t full Butler crazy factor.
Nancy Drew is tad too complex for her demographic, but I didn’t want it condescending.
What I saw of Foucault is incredibly annoying.
I have Dawkins, Gawande, Edward Gorey, Plato, Achebe, Allende, Ghibran, Xun, Hesse, Mishima, Solzhenitsyn, Sontag, Assis, Agnon, Premchand and Sapphire.
The Hebrew and Arabic right-to-left typesetting the AI could not figure out for indesign, and for Chinese and Japanese the top-bottom, right-to-left back-to-front settings were also too mysterious.
But the Chilean Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi and Russian versions look flawless. I am only fluent in French and Dutch, though I can read German, wow they may be off.
I'm proficient in Spanish having learned it along with English while growing up in a South American capital in the 50s and early 60s, studied it at the high school and college level and spoken it recently during repeated trips to Peru. I'd be happy to take a quick look at the Chilean text to see whether it is passable. I also have two happy years of college Brazilian Portuguese under my belt, so I could scan the text and do the same.
Sure:
Isabel Allende
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1usbiqiltdgpg2etha17x/ButlerAllende_112233full.pdf?rlkey=yuv8pjacvsvx8fq7sejlq7qje&dl=0
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/a1w3f3lgnku1zlxowoiik/ButlerAssis_112233full.pdf?rlkey=lq6qoadvdgkixbshtlej5hqio&dl=0
I read a few paragraphs of the introduction and a few paragraphs of the first chapter of both texts.
Except for a spelling error at the end of the second to last complete line on page 24 ("distinca" should be "distinta") of Butler x Allende, I detected no errors. A highly educated and erudite Chilean or Brazlian might advocate for more elegant or idiomatic ways of expressing certain ideas, but that would apply to the translation of almost any work written by a human.
AI is going to turn foreign-language instruction on its head if it hasn't already. It will take great discipline for a student to compose sentences and paragraphs, to say nothing of essays or term papers, unaided. That discipline will pay off, because their original work will be less polished than that of their classmates who cheated and so will be above suspicion of plagiarism.
I noticed more format glitches in the Allende.
Oh, you wicked, wicked person, you! Think about where the royalties would do the most damage to gender ideology, should there ever be any, and send them to those lucky recipients.
I had explained to friends that major publications had been largely court stenographers for trans/gender activist. And so have the most prestigious universities, government, NGOs, glitterati, and so on.
So, how do you save face and climb off the sycophancy choo-choo? I don't see how and they will get deeper and deeper into the hole.
The situation parallels the Catholic Church's hierarchy vis a vis child abuse. Not so much the abuse itself, but the endless cover-up and lying.
The only party of the article that felt (adorably) naive was when Jesse said it would be awkward for news outlets to climb out of this hole they've dug when the culture comes back to its senses about trans issues. We've how they (and other public figures) handle the shifting political attitudes when their views become untrendy: just pretend you never said that.
And if you get an email from Jesse saying, "but didn't you say that last year?" you just ignore the email.
Politicians have done this as long as I can remember, and editorial boards are these days political organizations.
I think the phrase should be "news spam". These unending boilerplates are a reason why AI's - trained with news sources - tend to statistically overstate these phrases, poisoned. It is news spam.
While CNN has not really been researching and conveying news for years inside the US, versus CNN international, all "web based" news reporting is an echo system for any statement which is fed into it - "X Bombs Hospital killing thousands" suddenly is news of the hour when it's a hoax, and erupts on hundreds of sites with tiny variations.
If on websites you could use an ad blocker to (a) block articles with false statements and.notify the source of "spam" the circulation would become bad enough news sources would start to alter stock phrases. Or (b) rewrite false statements before displaying, hilighting or listing false statements and transmitting "spam" notifications.
Take "Illegal Alien", "Undocumented" and other terms as a good example. A non-citizen without an unexpired visa is the core concept, whether visitor, residence, or work visa. Not illegal, not "Undocumented". Millions of people enter the US without "documents" under "visa waiver". The terminology should be cleaned up and made accurate. Non-residents overstaying visits.
Another is LGBTQ+ - I am gay, not LGBTQ+ and statements made about gay men and, for instance "conversion theapy" apply primarily to gays, a much lesser degree lesbians, and that's it. "Anti-LGBTQ+" legiation has nothing to do with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and statements are factually incorrect.
Virtually all statements relative to trans are false or prevaricating - "affirmation" is "experimental treatment." "Alleviate" distress is "provoke" distress, "trans"children is "gay or lesbian" children. "Assigned" at birth is "identified", and "spectrum" is "binary".
I'm convinced the only strategy to fight such mechanically reproduced nonsense is armies of AI bots publishing at such a volume that it statistically overwhelms filtering systems.
This is why I don't trust media -- either side, left or right. The desire to be on the "right side of history" and pursue an activist agenda has turned journalists into stenographers who regurgitate whatever bias they prefer. Trying to find to the "truth" or showing curiosity are just so boring.
And people wonder why Americans hate the media...