As Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I am nauseated that my own profession has seemingly lost every last vestige of intestinal fortitude, and the pantywaists who claim to be gatekeepers at important medical colleges and publishing houses cringe in fear of the Marxist "activists" whose ultimate purpose is to bring down Western civilization.
To my eye, the importance of this article on TheFP and the one it references cannot be overstated. This is PRECISELY why I subscribed to Common Sense and then TheFP. Well done, Ms. Weiss. Bloody well done.
For a year or so, in its messages supporting programs on PBS, Johnson & Johnson praised nurses, and told the story of how a nurse cured life-threatening jaundice in newborn infants by taking them outside into the sunshine. As the benefit was studied, the treatment was administered using a UV lamp that addressed bilirubin, called "Billy Lights". Sunlight is literally good for people. The Freedom of Information Act and various state Sunshine Acts require that government not make decisions in secret, but in the full light of day.
Sunlight is for humans too KD. My late mother always put us in the sun when we had a runny nose, it dried up after a few hours of sunlight no antibiotics were needed and we weren’t shlepp off for vaccinations either.
Me as well, Jim. It is nice to hear it from a doctor as I have lost faith in US medical institutions, just as I have with all of our other institutions.
But, this has happened before in an advanced society.
"Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care AUG 30, 2022"
"German doctors were not hacks. German medicine was not backwards. The contrary, it was the most advanced on Earth. Pre-WW2, German doctors won more Nobel Prizes in Medicine (9) than British (7), American (4), or any other nationality. Their medical journals and education were world-leading: in the early 20C, "Germany was well to the forefront in medical progress. The scientific approach to medicine had been developed there long before it spread to other countries, and postgraduates flocked to German medical schools from all over the world." The medical professionals who were about to go insane were the best and brightest anywhere.
German medicine led the world in ethics, too. Modern notions of informed consent regulations originated in late 19C Germany: “Explicit directives concerned with the welfare of people subjected to medical experimentation in Germany were in place long before the Nuremberg code was devised in 1947.”"
And,
"The medical profession has wrestled with the significance of the Doctors Trial. For instance, to observe its 50th anniversary, the British Medical Journal printed a special issue (free downloads here). The lead article “War crimes and medical science” warned that the Nazi problems were “not unique to one place or time, and could happen here” and the trial “left us with a legacy we still shrink from confronting.” It pointed to contemporary problems in American medicine and warned “there will always be imperatives that threaten the professional values we profess to hold so dear” and “the profession of medicine carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.”
And, it is just way too profitable:
"U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
I don't know how they can call it hormone replacement therapy (something no longer given to all menopausal women) when it is injecting people with a hormone their body is not meant to have and cannot handle without harm. But, then, this Gender Madness is called "Care".
"Gender-affirming care" is an ideologically loaded term, and a gaslighting misnomer of the first order. Let's speak truth: it's a euphemism for "sex-denying damage."
Loving Mother - All great points- thank you for bringing them up in detail.
I tried explaining like facts of history to my Summa Cum Laude daughter a couple of years ago. Explaining the utter madness committed under the guise of science and medicine. Mentioning to her that we are very close to the precipice of insanity that the National Socialist Parties Health Science Ministries atrocities too. I was given a MAGA/QAnon label by her, despite having a relative who lived through the rise and fall of the Third Reich and it's persecution of her and others. A relative who shared granular details of not only what happened but how the National Socialist Fascist's grip felt, sounded like, and the way it oozed across a complacent public. Our daughters largesse was horrifying at the time. It was as if she was re-enacting what my great aunt had told me about. However, I was wrong.
The great news is that today little Miss Summan Cum Laude actually listens because of articles like this. Also, because of the psychotic peer pressure to stifle free speech with 'fact checkers' and political movements. She too was shouted down as a racist. Some of her peer group has begun being scarred by these people unfortunately. Or should I say fortunately.
Each time people stifle these zealots the movement to crush them grows exponentially. Each time we speak about the absurdity and inherent evilness of their tactics their movement is defeated. They will wear this sin for a long time. We will be able to point to how each of us stood up for the better parts of being a human being.
I see it as a little bit of everything - profit seeking quacks, politics, cultural Maxists...
The Democrats, teachers unions (Randi Weingarten), the likes of Rick Levine (first female admiral) are pushing Gender Ideology and "transitioning" kids - and the old school Republicans don't fight it. It's kindof like how both of them wanted illegal immigration for different reasons (votes or cheap labor). Medicine has definitely been taken over by quacks and pharma is profiting big time. Pedro Gonzalez calls out all sides in The Transgender Leviathan:
And, there is this cultural trend where teens are somehow "adults" for the purposes of medicine and need to have "portals" directly to their pediatricians - where Gender Ideology is promoted just like in the schools.
So, yes it is way profitable and it is very handy for politicians on the left. No Democrats speak against it except for Tulsi Gabbard who became an Independent. The doctors were also out ahead of the politicians in 1930s Germany: https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
"Seven years on, 4thWaveNow founder Denise (also known as Marie) made her first public appearance in a conversation with YouTuber/podcaster Benjamin Boyce on April 9, 2022. The lively interview is available on YouTube (full video) as well as Spotify.
The central theme of the “calmversation” was the US federal government’s embrace of “affirmative” care for gender dysphoric minors–whether their parents are onboard or not.
Denise and Benjamin also talked at length about the organizations currently engaged in promoting gender-identity instruction in US schools, a practice that has been in place for many years. In addition, they touched on some rather controversial topics, including the choice of some “affirming” parents to purchase fake penises (“packers”) and tucking underwear for their small children.
The day after her chat with Boyce, Denise added some more detail and clarifications about the topics they discussed. You can find them in this Twitter thread, also compiled here."
Medical castration has been used as a PUNISHMENT of sex offenders, the infliction of suffering justified by the suffering they imposed on innocent victims. I suggest that adults who abuse children in this way be sentenced to medical castration and all its consequences.
That sounds great to me! There is a long list of doctors...starting with "Marci" Bowers. He identifies as a woman but I dunno if he's been chopped down below. Those with autogynophelia (who say they are lesbians) tend not to do that. I believe he is the one who chopped Jaron Bloshinsky among others as a child and he signed the letter demanding that this J. Michael Baily, Suzanna Diaz article be retracted. The signatories on the Open Letter, https://asbopenletter.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email, might be a good place to start looking. Another, the "Yeet the Teet" surgeon, Gallagher, is infamous.https://thepostmillennial.com/yeet-the-teet-doctor-poses-with-teen-patient-after-double-mastectomies If you ever read some of these surgeons talking about what they do - you have to wonder whether they are getting off on it sexually as well as making bank.
Interesting perspective, I hadn't really thought of the issue of German medicine like that. It seems true to me that any profession is subject to that type of slide into malignancy, when people stop, or are not allowed, to question assumptions and prevailing wisdom. With the type of information control and cancelling we see in this article and others situations in recent years, the real damage to health and well-being can be tremendous when that profession is medicine or other sciences or is used to develop regulations, "emergency" or otherwise.
Unfortunately, too many progressives will dismiss any analogy that criticizes their pov when Nazis are invoked, as much as they bandy it about when demonizing their opponents. "We care for (some) people, so we can't take that criticism seriously", even if the analogy is apt.
I hear you. In my experience, there is nothing that changes the progressive point of view other than personally being harmed by progressive actions. So, avoiding pointing out the parallel to the 1930s German Medical and political situation/playing Mitt Romney - won't win anything. WWII was not won by convincing the Nazis. We are not going to convince anyone indoctrinated with Kool-aid with anything.
We do need to hold doctors accountable with lawsuits. And, we need those who are not exactly progressive to wake up and see this problem. Their kids and grandkids are not immune from contagion/indoctrination. Most average people think this stuff is fringe but it is promoted from on high. The Biden WH has doubled down.
For starters, children, teens, and young people cannot "consent" to any any of this. A case of someone harmed by Gender "Affirmation" when under age 18 (and there are so many now) needs to go to the Supreme Court, IMO. I think we will need something like the Nuremberg doctors trails before this is over. Of course, the news likely won't report any of it. The closing of the Tavistock in the UK was not really reported in the US.
And then, more and more progressives are getting hit by the GI bus personally:
Thank you for the links to "I've Got the Blues." Maybe the loss of their children will wake up a sizable number of so-called progressives and help to bring us back to a place of sanity.
You are very welcome, Jane. I think we have to first wake up your average person who isn't even progressive. Most people seem to think there is this very rare person, the "trans person" and do not see the widespread problem. So, they look the other way. The media sure doesn't help.
Whoever can be awakened first will help. My opinion of the average person's intelligence and grasp of reality is quite low. I think they might begin to wake up if many PITTs would speak out publicly (and if that subject made an appearance on the MSM, a big "if"). I have one child, 46, happily married to a person of the opposite sex and happily childless, so you won't be seeing much of me on your posts or on PITT. (My daughter, a bright woman but not an independent thinker, is one of the average people who rely on the MSM, but who really doesn't want to think about all this. My husband and I don't understand how this happened.) I have a serious case of Weltschmerz and am trying to keep up on a number of fronts without depleting all of my energy. But I admire you for focusing yours, and I wish you success and peace. Really. :-)
I'm almost relentless in attacking Weiss's liberalism on here, but it's not from lack of admiration for her ability. It's only because she's dead wrong!
I truly don't understand why gatekeepers pay any attention to trans activists. Since transgenders are such a small part of the nation's population--0.5 percent the last I read--why do these activists have so much power to frighten, let alone censor, seasoned pros?
I believe it is for the same reason the Nazis - who comprised only a few percent of Germans - were able to take over the entire government and ultimately cause the deaths of 55 million people. Most people in peacetime are quiet, polite, and easily intimidated by loud, angry, screaming "activists" who get in their faces, block traffic, threaten them with ball bats and frozen water bottles, and spray them with Mace. Add to that law enforcement that is itself afraid to keep the peace lest THEY be arrested and their lives ruined, a weaponized federal police force, and there you have it. Mob rule - all at the service of the Democrat Party.
That is an apt parallel, Jim. Euphemistically titled "affirmative care" has certainly taken over at the federal level, even though most people would likely not be on board if you explained it to them. And, Trans Activists/SPLC/ACLU go after any dissent. Just look at Moms for Liberty. On Feds:
"Federal government embraces affirmative care: 4thWaveNow founder discusses in first public appearance FEATUREDPosted on April 15, 2022"
"Seven years on, 4thWaveNow founder Denise (also known as Marie) made her first public appearance in a conversation with YouTuber/podcaster Benjamin Boyce on April 9, 2022. The lively interview is available on YouTube (full video) as well as Spotify.
The central theme of the “calmversation” was the US federal government’s embrace of “affirmative” care for gender dysphoric minors–whether their parents are onboard or not.
Denise and Benjamin also talked at length about the organizations currently engaged in promoting gender-identity instruction in US schools, a practice that has been in place for many years. In addition, they touched on some rather controversial topics, including the choice of some “affirming” parents to purchase fake penises (“packers”) and tucking underwear for their small children.
The day after her chat with Boyce, Denise added some more detail and clarifications about the topics they discussed. You can find them in this Twitter thread, also compiled here."
You have to absolutely not give an inch to these people. Not ONE INCH. It is not "gender-affirming care;" never let them get away with calling it that. It is genital mutilation, no different from forced clitoridectomies performed on little muslim girls, except it's done under anesthesia. Speaking of which, this lunacy brings out MY Inner Muslim; I am constantly fantasizing about amputating the surgeons' hands with an axe.
There are crossroads in history, almost never recognized except in retrospect, when intervention by Normal People would have made all the difference; Hitler, of course, probably the best example. If ever in your life you intend to be involved in politics, in my opinion this is that time. Burn out the wires to your representatives with phone calls, and in your mind decide exactly whom you want in office the next go-round. It probably shouldn't be very many of them who are in there now.
> the Marxist "activists" whose ultimate purpose is to bring down Western civilization.
I must disagree with this characterization. It's an way way to dehumanize them, but it completely mischaracterizes their motivations. Their *goal* is not to destroy civilization, it's the *result*. They ARE bringing down civilization (and not just Western civilization, if the last 5 years in Japan is any indicator). But it's not what they're trying to do.
Activists - all kinds of activists, but especially within this space - are doing what THEY believe is right. Just as a counselor at a Christian "pray away the gay" camp believes they are saving a person's soul by telling them not to be gay, so is a school councilor who would take a girl away from her parents to receive medical procedures. That school councilor likely believes in their heart they saving the life and soul of a troubled "boy-in-a-girl's-body" with ROGD. So are the lawmakers in California, Minnesota and Maine who pushed through legislation allowing that. It's sickening, and sad, and it's evil by nature -- but it's not deliberately evil.
If we are to fight our enemy, we must come to know that enemy. Karl Marx's economic theories from 130 years ago are tangentially related to the actual manifestation of horror that's come to be in the last 5-10 years.
tl;dr: don't call them Marxists; call them groomers.
Perhaps I wasn't clear: they intend to replace Western civilization with their concept of a Marxist utopia; whether all of them KNOW it by that name or not, that is still the goal. Certainly their puppet-masters, who are well-schooled in Marxist/socialist/communist/critical theory know precisely what it is, and while THEIR ultimate goal is world rule, their methods are straight out of Marx and Engels. And of course to bring about their imaginary Intellectuals' Utopia , they must first bring down the existing Western civilization, and believe me - that is their intent.
As for dehumanizing them, that is exactly what I intend to do. To successfully thwart an enemy who plans to destroy my world and that of everyone I love who comes after me, I need to first see them as not-human; as objects, and when it comes to blows - which I believe unfortunately it will - be mentally prepared for that fight.
So whether they believe in what they do, believe they are righteous, believe God is on their side does to me not matter. Whether they are "good people" who are simply misguided does not matter. They are fanatics; whatever is in their hearts is immaterial because the effect of their evil is the same, and they must be met with whatever it takes.
You're absolutely correct. I can't dispute or disagree with any of your points here, other than to say it is important to know your enemy to fight your enemy.
Also, while it might be a good thing for the world for it to "come to blows," let's face it, it just won't happen. If it's not happening in places like Venezuela, it CERTAINLY won't happen in US/Canada/Europe. Mankind is dying with a whimper not a bang. Sometimes when I go for a walk, I like to imagine a small country of separatists, even just some large patch of land, where a few good people could band together, hit a social reset switch, set up homesteads, pull the plug on the internet, get rid of processed sugars, ban experimental medical procedures, raise families, build their own schools. Of course, if people did try that, it would be infiltrated by feds faster than you can say "glow". But that's the only path forward I can imagine for a positive future civilization to emerge. We can't save the one we have - not by voting, and certainly not by violence - it's too rotten, and too many people are complicit in spreading that rot. Technology has taken us to our greatest triumphs, and is driving us to our greatest downfalls.
Not deliberately evil… I used to agree, but every day, there’s less and less evidence of that. These people know that what they are doing is grotesque; they know they are destroying lives. Which is why they tolerate ZERO questioning or dissent.
If they truly held the value of helping people above all others, they would at least listen to other views, to ensure that nothing potentially helpful for their patients would slip past.
Sorry; what I meant wasn't that they're not evil -- they *are*. Simply that they rationalize that evil to themselves.
People in general are good at rationalizing their actions. They do harm, but think of themselves as doing good. See also: terrorism -- terrorists often come out with a manifesto of some sort. Some of them are crazy, others were lead down their paths via extreme interpretations of religious texts (and a textbook about gender-affirmative care or critical race theory can absolutely serve as a religious text; can fill that "God hole"; that desire for a higher calling and purpose in life that we all feel). Even a pedophile is going to find a way to justify their behavior to themselves and others (they'd say something like, "kids can consent too")
So, I disagree with the statement, "These people know that what they are doing is grotesque; they know they are destroying lives". They DON'T think it's grotesque. A few might see it as Utilitarianism ("greatest good for the greatest number"). Eg, they know some subset of kids of they force into transition will later detransition or commit suicide. But they think the number to whom that would happen is smaller than the number of actual trans kids who need their help, and they're willing to make some sacrifices. Others simply see it as their moral duty or moral imperative to transition kids ("trans rights are human rights"); consequences be damned.
This is because you are not fighting back using their rules. Academics defend themselves but don’t sue and offend. Until they play the “game” of putting the activists on the defensive so their motives are uncovered they will continue to be oppressed and their work burned.
Academics defend their work, which their attackers know is pristine and legit. The Jornalists are playing a totally different game with non-ethical rules to attack work they know is impeccable.
It reminds me of the girls who made the accusations in the Salem witch trials. Girls have a tendency to want to join in with other girls, particularly if the behavior gains attention.
As soon as the governor of Massachusetts decreed that spectral evidence (the supposed visions) was not admissible in court, the girls stopped having them. One of the girls apologized publicly many years later, seeming almost baffled that she was caught up in something so very wrong.
The Salem witch trials of the 17th century, the nervous disorders of the 18th century, the neurasthenia epidemic of the 19th century, and anorexia nervosa, repressed memory, bulimia, and the cutting contagion of the 20th century all share the same protagonist, magnifying and spreading her own pain: the adolescent girl.
Puberty is a rough time. And modern life seems to have pushed puberty to a younger and younger age (some theorize this started with the widespread adoption of electric lighting). As a result, kids have fewer years of life experience before puberty scrambles their brains and bodies.
But it is sadly true that the adolescent female seems to be most susceptible to social contagion. Perhaps this is an unfortunate side effect of females having evolved to be instinctively skilled at forming social networks.
It likely doesn't help that we often infantilize our children for far longer. The experience many have before puberty is basically just playtime with some school breaking it up. Through most of history, and still in many parts of the world, children begin doing various forms or work as soon as they are able. Thus helping give them purpose and experience about what life will be like.
Childhood, as the modern world has conceived of it, is a fairly new invention, historically speaking. And devoting a tremendous amount of investment, as a society, toward entertaining children is even newer. The Greatest Generation fell prey easily to the impulse of giving their children the pleasant childhood that, thanks to the Depression, they themselves did not have.
Now we idolize childhood. We have attempted to extend it as long as possible by giving adolescents privileges that used to have to be earned, while permitting them to continue to revel in the lack of responsibility that comes with modern childhood.
Yes. For most of history we understood that life is hard. Bad things can and will happen. Cultures are full of myths, fairy tales, traditions, etc to teach these lessons. But now we are trying to prevent ANY difficulty in our lives and moreso the lives of our children, without realizing we are only making them even more susceptible to bad things because these children are not gaining the defenses to deal with them.
What is really sad is that doing a difficulty thing well or overcoming adversity is likely one of the most rewarding things humans do. When stripped of it we become weak and whiney (I am including myself in there).
Idolize is almost too soft a word it’s deified. Youth is beauty. Beauty is youth. Anthropologist David Lancy refers to it as the newly minted “neontocracy” where now children are now the most celebrated people in society. This is problematic for many reasons. The irrationality intrinsic to childhood is a major one.
"some theorize this started with the widespread adoption of electric lighting)"
Hmmmm. I certainly do not know for sure, but I have assumed it has something to do with large-scale changes in diet to processed foods with high sugar content, coupled with way more sedentary lifestyles (sitting in front of TV or computer or phone screen).
Bovine growth hormones in hamburger have been implicated in rising numbers of children with "precocious puberty" (literally starting to get periods, for example, at age 6 or 7).
Remember the daycare scandals of the ‘80s - the satanic and ritual abuse of children in daycares across North America. People were actually arrested and imprisoned. Scary stuff.
Yup, it is very much like that but where teachers and administrators at school will go along with the idea that your girl is a witch and get her a broom - keeping the magic secret from parents. Total gaslighting and creating psych damage via triangulation with parents. The girls go little step by step down a garden path to a bad place. At first they might think they are just being sweet "allies" to the Gay-Straight Alliance Rainbow club. Then, they try out a trendy name or pronoun or style.... just keep them away from the doctors and therapists and hormone pushers at Planned Parenthood!
Mostly due to how women evolved. Children are more likely to survive if they have a father who is a good provider and defender. Also more likely to survive if they have a mother/grandmother/aunt who is able to hold the family peacefully together and negotiate beneficial connections with other families without the need for bloodshed. Women are social because it benefits children for women to form social networks.
But just as men's innate impulses have a dark side, so do women's. Social cooperation can manifest as a willingness to go along with anything, just to remain part of the in-group. Indeed, a lot of bad things that feminists attribute to "the Patriarchy" are actually a result of women policing other women's behavior. Feminism itself seems to have no qualms about policing women's behavior.
So it is hard-wired in girls to want to cooperate socially. Not all of us conform with that wiring, but on the whole, women want to be approved of by other women. And that makes girls more vulnerable to being caught up in social contagions.
This reminds me of something that happened to me in a feminism course when I was studying for a masters in social work about 30 years ago. We had to write a paper on an example of how women are abused. I wanted to write a paper about the abusive nature of the large increase in Cesarean section rates. The professor told me that it would be an automatic F if I wrote this paper. When I asked her why, she said because we have already won this war- women are getting into medical school and there are many more female Ob Gyns. I said but women are still being harmed by unnecessary C-sections. She repeated, you will get an F if you write this paper.
They say that in Nazi Germany the doctors were the most easily convinced and adamant adherents to the Cause. I can think of several reasons that's true. I hate to say that my experience with my colleagues is that if one pisses on a fire hydrant, they all piss on the fire hydrant - and thy will be the first to go after you if you don't. One doesn't get through medical school without being able to at least fake being a follower. There are some true leaders, yes, but they're rare, rare, rare.
There was a time when your average person held "Experts" in high regard, or at least defered to them. Today, Not So Much. (For Me) It started with Michael Crichton's State Of Fear, and the reaction to it. IF "They" (the Experts) are feeding me a line of Bull on The Climate, what else are they feeding me a line of Bull on? Sad to say as time has gone on, it appears, A Lot. When someone like Alex Jones is seen as just as credible as the CDC...Houston We Have A Problem.
Question: Is there a major national institution, that when they say This or That is True, your knee jerk reaction is to believe them? Because I'm having trouble coming up with one. We are seeing The Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome being played out in Real Time/Life.
"State of Fear" was great, especially if you dig into the footnotes to see how well Crichton documented all the statements about climate in the book. The propaganda techniques used on global warming worked so well the Left has adapted them to everything now. Climate scientists have been getting cancelled for telling the truth for decades.
Something I hear the other day. Our prehistoric ancestors needed to know 2 things. 1. Where The Lions are, 2 where the bushes with the good berry's are. If you don't know whee the bushes with the Good Berry's are, you don't eat today, But you might eat tomorrow. If you don't know where The Lions are, You Die. We're had wired to look for and expect the worst.
IMO the politicization of science started with climate change. It was born in ‘89 with James Hanson and has been a relentless wrecking ball ever since. Like most politicized science, there was a grain of truth in Hanson’s initial warning, but it has been warped and disfigured beyond recognition. Climate change alarmism should serve as a warning. After 35 years of failed prediction after failed prediction, the political movement is seemingly as strong as ever. No mountain of counter factual data discourages the enlightened class.
Well, the climate is changing and the Earth is getting warmer. There's no getting around that fact. The question is whether the pollution we create is responsible for that warming, or if Nature is doing it all on her own.
Me, I think Nature is doing what Nature has done for a billion years: Hot then Cold then Hot then Colt then Hot. Currently we're in a hot stage. Eventually we'll switch to cool, and then the next Ice Age. I don't see how the pollution we generate affects that very much,.
But reducing that pollution is a good idea even if doesn't touch the "warming" problem. Clear air and water is better for us than dirty, so why not reduce pollution on health grounds alone? Sure, if reducing pollution helps stem the heating, that's a bonus. But it's not necessary; getting rid of acid rain, forever chemicals, smog, and Cancer Alleys are worth it by itself.
Note that I said reduce, not eliminate. We can't eliminate pollution, not in the advanced society people want. But we can reduce pollution considerably, and should do as much as we can of that without melting down our economies.
Going whole-hog with modern nuclear will rid of us much fossil-fuel pollution. Rebuilding the national power grid will allow electric appliances and tools to replace many (though not all) gas-powered ones, cleaning the air even more. Capturing the methane generating by thousands of landfills and piping it into boilers can generate power locally. Planting billions of trees around the planet will clean the air, cool the land, and trap carbon, as well as provide homes for animals. Etc.
None of that hurts the economy, only enhances it; takes millions of tons of pollution out of land, sea, and skies; and may even slow the heating of the planet.
Carbon dioxide is not a "pollutant" in any normal sense. We humans generate a lot of CO2 with every breath. That CO2 is the most essential chemical for life on earth, after H2O. Every carbon atom in a corn plant or a Redwood Tree comes from the CO2 in the air. Co2 is not biologically harmful at 420 parts per million in the air. Increased CO2 has made the earth GREENER by an area the size of the 48 states. It is GOOD for plants, and ultimately good for all animal life, which depend on plants. There is a simple, straightforward way to address global warming if it ever actually becomes excessive. Solar Radiation Mitigation (SRM) is what happens naturally when a major volcano erupts and puts sulfate particles into the stratosphere. After Mount Pinatubo erupted in the 1990s, the earth's temperature dropped a full degree for a year. Humanity can cause that same effect intentionally by spraying sulfur oxides from the many commercial planes that fly across the northern hemisphere every day. Scientists have worked out that it is so cheap that any medium size nation could END GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE ENTIRE EARTH. Global warming alarmists are panicking because China might just do that, and take away their excuse for controlling our use of energy.
What is the "failure"? The earth is observably getting warmer. It's unrealistic to think that you can have 8 billion people, at least half of whom are burning coal, driving cars, etc. and have no effect at all on the atmosphere. We never had wildfire smoke days when I was growing up, rarely read about people dying of heatstroke, etc. Is some of it alarmist, sure, but even insurance companies and the military are factoring climate change into their decisions. They wouldn't be doing that if it was false.
And poverty has declined by 90% in the last one hundred years. The scares of the 70s never happened. I read the books and was alarmed but huh, NONE of them actually materialized. Regarding insurance companies and the military, you can't be serious. You have noticed that the military has been lying the US into wars for a VERY, VERY long time and their observations about climate are not be trusted or believed. Insurance companies have no special knowledge beyond mortality and risk tables that price the insurance you buy. They do not know if climate will change in either direction as it has numerous times in history. The 70s and 80s were full of alarmism about global cooling and by the way, cold temps kill many more than hot temps and that is observable based on actual facts, not projections by Al Gore, one of the great hucksters of the last 40 yrs and those like him. These people make Fauci look positively honest and well intended, when we know in fact he was and is not.
If you want to take an objective look at climate change, the first thing that strikes you is that for at least two decades this has been turned into a purely religious issue, with excommunication of heretics (“deniers”) and immense pressure on climate scientists to provide only “correct” answers in their study. As this immense pressure is brought on the scientific community and the public at large, all the legacy media would never say a word on the cultist aspect of the phenomenon. A dead giveaway is that the whole thing is sold strictly as a bundle: man-made climate change, “attribution science” (all negative weather events are due to climate change), what the priorities should be (prioritize disease elimination which can save millions of lives at relatively little expense or spend many trillions on forward models). Now if you’re just questioning the forced transition to EVs (which is clearly shown to have minimum results) you are a “denier”, just as much as if you would say there’s no man-made climate change. You have to be completely brainwashed not to notice these clear signs of a major con job.
History has shown "experts" to be spectacularly wrong time after time, particularly when they all benefit from having the same government-approved and funded point of view. No, show me the numbers. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
CO2 represents four parts in ten-thousand of the atmosphere, equivalent to the first four seconds of a 2-1/2 hour walk, to put it in perspective. And it's not even the most common after nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor. It is 1/30th as common as argon (0.93%). So why don't the global warming people target argon? Because it's not man-made and can't be used as a cudgel to further their Marxist world-government agenda.
So a trace gas, constantly being removed from the atmosphere and used by plants to make the oxygen that keeps all animals alive, including humans, in an atmosphere that is a mere sliver compared to the size of the planet, is swamping the effects of radionuclide decay in the earth and radiant energy from a nearby star?
As this author is maintaining......it's about the cancellation of the discussion as much as the results of a certain kind -- not getting published. They limit the discussion to their view only. Dangerous.
For you to say Climate Change is real....because the military and Insurance companies say so!! My God......let's never stop hearing alternative viewpoints.
The actual number of people dying from heat has been dropping drastically throughout the 20th Century since the invention of air conditioning. As for smoke, I am 73 and there was a lot of wildfire smoke over the years. The number of actual forest fire acres has dropped over the past century as we have gotten smarter. As Smoky Bear says, 90% of wildfires are caused by careless humans. Brush and trees do not spontaneously combust at 120 degrees. They need a careless cigarette or an unextinguished campfire to get going.
Exactly. Abigail Shrier called out the over reliance on "experts" in her book "Irreversible Damage". I was already jaded about government, banking/economists, media... Gender Ideology and the complicity of medicine, pharma , and the Education Complex added a few more to the list. We are in the lobotomy era only much worse.
Here is The Problem. Sometime They (The Experts) Are Going To Be Right. And no one will believe them. What if the CDC issues a warning about a new pandemic, and its a Black Death level pandemic and (say) 40% of the population doesn't believe them? By playing politics with Covid they have destroyed their credibility. I wish I had an answer.
When the next Black Death level pandemic hits, people will notice that 30-60% of the people they know are dying - they won't need experts to tell them to be careful.
Yes, I agree. They played politics with Covid and our children... maybe it was useful to have a "Civil Rights Movement of Our Time" as Biden said when he celebrated the "transition" of 8 year old girls on his campaign trail?
I liked this comment on a recent PITT substack article so much I want to reprint it here:
""Mama Ain't Playin'
Jul 7
See Bob Ostertag's book, Sex Science Self. Artificial hormones have always been a solution in search of a problem. They've been used to try to turn gay men straight; they've been used to chemically castrate sex offenders; and now they're being used to turn our daughters into cosmetic simulacrums of tiny men, and to turn our sons into false women.
I wouldn't trust an endocrinologist at this point any farther than I could spit a rat. (Dr. Will Malone of Idaho is the lone exception. He's been pursuing a quixotic challenge against his professional organization because of their creepy experimentation on kids.)"
The AMA lost its bearings years ago when it decided to become trendy. The AAPS--American Assoc of Physicians and Surgeons is pretty diametrically opposite to AMA: logic, not dogma. Reason, not populism. I tend to buy what they’re selling--subject to verification, of course. Ronnie was right.
American Assoc of Physicians and Surgeons. Never heard of them. Thanks, learn something new every day.
Wikipedia explains it ALL
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association that promotes conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, such as HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, and vaccine and autism connections. The association was founded in 1943 to oppose a government attempt to nationalize health care. The group has included notable members, including American Republican politicians Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Tom Price.
AT A revent meeting of the Death Club, one of our members said that he loved the group because there were no "experts". just a bunch of us talking about what the heck happens to us when we take our last breath.
As a 75 yea old Christian I am REALLY LOOKING FORWARD to it. I get to go Home. The Bible doesn't really say much about it, except its Really Cool. I fully expect my mind to be Blown, and to say things like Of Course! Why Didn't See This Before, Its All So Plain Now.
I still own the homeplace where my cousin-the-widower doctor grew up, and several years ago I brought him from his nursing home to stay in the Old Place for a night. He was in his early nineties and suffered horribly from joint pain but was SO glad to re-live older and better times.
He'd lost his wife about twenty years before. We were having a nice discussion about her over breakfast and he told me, "I'm looking forward to dying soon. I miss my wife so very much and I am looking forward to the day I can see her again." I hope he got his wish.
Thank you, thank you. I have been participating on this BBS for over a year. I consider myself to be a moderate conservative. I know to many moderate is a dirty word. I try to keep an open mind. On some things I am hard core conservative on others, not so much.
The point of this preamble is, I hope, to prove I am not some sort of right wing fanatic who sees a communist behind every bush. With trepidation I have been saying the Democrats are now socialists and some hard core communists. There is very little difference between a socialist and a communist if any difference at all.
In the past anyone who said that called anyone or an organization a communist was lumped in with Joe McCarthy as a glassy eyed nut case. You calling out the Marxists gives me some validation that I am not a glassy eyed right wing fanatic. I am not a fanatic. I am a realist.
I think the difference between socialists and communists is that socialists win elections and communists have revolutions to gain power. Once in power, there isn't much difference. Whether the riots of 2020 were the beginning of the American communist revolution remains to be seen.
I don't believe there are capitalist's and communist's anymore. For instance, both Hitler and Mao were ultimately monster's capable of rationalizing any human atrocity for the sake of power and control. No ideology describe's the horror they represented. Even if captured no human punishment would have atoned for the human damage they inflicted. Label's like socialist/communist or capitalist, even corporate fascism serve as smokescreen's. None of those word's appear in our Constitution and we accept defeat when we allow what are actually avaricious thug's to control the American national dialogue by forcing the conversation into those term's. The brave judge in Louisiana that called out the D.C. surveillance state and placed an injunction against their collusion with tech billionaires to subvert American free elections and speech wasn't fighting an ideology, he is in combat with the DNC/EU/CCP/Davos perp's hoping to turn the world into an open air prison. (Subscription journalism helped make the ruling possible.) The perp's believe in power, throw away labor and the exploitation of resources without consequence. That's it. The Constitution is in their way.
The economic capture and compromise of elected political system's throughout Western "democracy" by billionaire financier's is allowing their obvious attempt's to re-engineer the political/social/financial narrative across the world and implement CCP style (15 minute cities/travel by permit/citizen mass surveillance, etc.) repression of individual freedoms like speech and movement. European's are fighting back. The so called "globalist" DNC/Davos crowd has wrecked every life and society it touched. The French riot's, the Dutch farmers, the collapsed economy in Sri Lanka, the hidden citizen rendition prison's in China (where they make their money), the American 2008 crash, arrest's for thought crimes in Great Britain, all.
Who, in the name of Bud Light, is funding and organizing the opposition to free speech and idea's in America? The tactic is certainly recognizable. False moral indignation, the mob pile-on, cancellation, career and character criminalization/assassination, the poseur expert and the corporate/federal grant given to well paid class war elitist grifter's who have no actual moral argument but somehow find support from MSM/surveillance state operatives. Who does chaos serve? Could it be the international looter's who gutted American industry and walked away with pension funds, homes and savings in 2008?
America is living inside a manufactured lie. Throw the rascals out (and prosecute).
I think of "socialist" sort of like I think of "agnostic," who's really an atheist without the strength of conviction. Maybe "commie-light" would be a better term, but no matter; in the end the effect is the same.
I want to start an anonymous site called “how I became MAGA” and share stories from moderate conservatives and liberals on how the came to notice and disassociate from the extremes on their side and when and how they were labeled MAGA for breaking from the “woke” narrative!
"There is very little difference between a socialist and a communist if any difference at all."
I dunno, one can hold that the government should be run for the benefit of ordinary people, not the globalist plutocracy. I don't think that quite equates to Stalinism. Denmark seems like a nice place.
The U.S. taxes the living daylights out of me already so what's the difference. Everyone acts like Federal Income Tax is the only tax, and it's low compared to other countries, but add in 15% FICA tax and the 28% suddenly becomes 43%. Then state and local taxes and you're well past the 50% range. Then add health care costs on top of that which you wouldn't pay in most other countries and Denmark doesn't look so bad.
... which makes them 'socialist' as most people use the term. One can define socialist and equivalent to communist but that's not what most people do, they define socialism as a more humane mixed economy. I know no self described socialist who advocates the downfall of capitalism, they rather want to tame it and redirect some of the benefits to working people.
The Scandinavian countries are different in that their socialism grew much more organically. They have long been societies focused on charitable giving (partly, I suspect, due to Lutheranism) and ensuring the common good (a necessity in their harsh climate). The idea of turning those efforts over to the government to administer more centrally (and theoretically, more effectively)--while appalling to us Americans--seemed perfectly logical to them.
But their Leftists have largely taken over, importing thousands of "refugees" who will not assimilate, and who are wreaking havoc on their societies.
Denmark seems to be the only one of those nations that has attempted to fight back. But with the collapse of the anti-immigration government, I have my doubts as to whether they will be able to hold the line.
It goestoshowya how nearly useless terms like 'Leftist' have become. By *definition* socialists are leftists, no? Yet, as you allude, the 'left' is now equated with the progressives. But IMHO that's a hostile takeover and as a paleo-socialist I can assure one and all that I loathe woke Progressivism as much as any Rightie. Meanwhile the Progressives, tho considering themselves lefties, have been seduced by the globalist plutocrats (are they lefties or righties? ) to do the work of dividing and weakening the working class. Good work comrades!
I didn't think that anything was scarier than "equity" based science; I was wrong. Simply reinforces my bias against any doctor much younger than I am.
I’ve already decided to never go to a doctor who graduated from med school after 2020 (might also be my cutoff for finishing their internship and residency, we’ll see). The absolute nonsense they’re being force fed these days is appalling. Wait until people start dying from the future malpractice. One can only hope that the majority of the victims are those that DEI medicine was supposed to protect. Poetic Justice.
"Physicians were one of the strongest demographics behind the Nazi vote. Lawyers were generally favorable to Nazi policies as well. Intellectuals are not a single group, but the ones with an economic interest in politics often favored National Socialism.
Doctors were interested in eugenics ideology, at the time a key Progressive platform. Lawyers saw growth in various racial law areas and expanding scope of criminal activity as new areas for work. Their economic interests were more or less aligned with Fascism.
Other intellectuals, such as Marxists were opressed, but it was very common for KPD members to join the Nazis and there was no particular problem with them doing so. Only active Communists were prosecuted.
In conclusion it depends on the type of intellectuals, but the white collar professions were generally Fascist. If you were to express it as a percentage it would be high among professional degrees. Finding unveristy data would be harder because there was no centralized state University system at the time.
Also, if it helps, Technical University Munchen was a major Fascist organizing ground."
Abortion and Eugenics in Nazi Germany Henry P. David, Jochen Fleischhacker and Charlotte Hohn Population and Development Review Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 81-112
German Lawyers and the State in the Weimar Republic Kenneth F. Ledford Law and History Review Vol. 13, No. 2 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 317-349
Thank you. Great and very pertinent information. Hitler may not have been particularly well educated, but the Nazi hierarchy was chock full of people with doctorates.
Fifty years ago I was listening to a CBS radio commentator say 90% of all SS officers had their PHD. If true, it proves you don't have to be a semiliterate red neck to be a violent fanatic.
Bari, thank you for another article showing the politicization of almost everything, medicine, law, biology, high school debate, et al. When science is beyond debate, it's propaganda. By the way, historically, there were far more transgender males than females, and their gender dysphoria began around age two. Now we have many more transgender girls who began feeling like boys in their teenage years with no such antecedent feelings. This is strong evidence that ROGD should be studied as a possible social contagion.
The recent COVID situation is a testament - when doctors en masses turned away from therapeutic means to help sick and instead followed the treatment formula the party required.
I truly believe that bias is a certainty when the money comes from a politicized and corrupt source. The NIH frequently wants “popular” and/or “sexy” results.
When the war in Ukraine started, our Mexican gardener said: “yeah, sure, go ahead, load them with weapons, that area will be in fire for a decade now…”
It will. It will be nothing short of Afganistán.
While our Silicon Valley highly educated elite is cheering.
Uh, huh. In 1930s Germany the doctors were actually out ahead of the politicians. So, it was mostly the other way around with the medical community convincing the politicians who found it useful. Sound familiar?
"Still, doctors embraced eugenics with shocking enthusiasm and radicalism. They didn’t simply “go along” with Hitler, they were already so steeped in this quasi-scientific ideology that they were out ahead of Nazi politicians. “The German medical community set its own course in 1933. In some respects this course even outpaced the new [Nazi] government, which had to rein in the profession's eager pursuit of enforced eugenic sterilisations.”
"Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care AUG 30, 2022"
Brandon went to town halls during his campaign and celebrated the "transition" of 8 year old girls, talking about "The Civil Rights Movement of our Time". In the same way, the politicians in Germany found the Ideology coming out of medicine very useful in the 1930s. Medicine was out in front of politics then as now.
BTW, Rick Levine really needs to be removed from his position as first female admiral health secretary - where he promotes harm to children and calls it "care".
Me too, middle school teacher. And they switch “genders” as often as peer groups. If only we felt bold enough to express and discover our masculinity, femininity without making chemical/surgical alterations. Without labels. Just be a good person. Spend some time thinking about something other than yourself.
From my friends with kids in middle school....it is now considered cool to question your gender. What an easy way for a lonely kid to gain acceptance. So very sad that the institutions of education are supporting this very harmful nonsense.
Of course social contagion is the source of this "epidemic" of young people suddenly developing severe gender dysphoria. It is blindingly obvious to anyone not invested in the trans activist ideology, and I'd say it probably is to them as well and that they have to perform some mental gymnastics to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.
I took my 1 year old son to Boston Children's Hospital's ("BCH") Weymouth location on June 29th for some bloodwork. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the waiting room was BEDECKED with the Pride flag. There were at least 9 flags draped on every conceivable surface of the not-too-large waiting room/reception area, one of which was probably at least 3 x 5 feet.
For additional context, the BCH Weymouth location is co-located with a Brigham & Women's ("BWH") satellite location. I mistakenly took my son to the BWH phlebotomy lab at first, not realizing that there was an entirely separate space for BCH. There was not a Pride flag to be seen anywhere. Neither was there anything in the main entryway of the hospitals' shared space. ONLY the waiting room of one of the preeminent CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS in the COUNTRY was festooned with the flag. It was absolutely ridiculous, deeply offensive, and a WT ACTUAL F moment for me.
To heighten the surrealism of my BCH Weymouth experience, I had a hair appointment at my salon in the South End of Boston (Boston's gay neighborhood) later the same day. The salon is owned by a gay man, and many of the employees are gay. I counted one [very reasonably sized] Pride flag on the salon's front window. Frankly, I wouldn't have cared if my salon had 100 flags; it would have been appropriate if the salon's owner had made that choice. Not so much for a BCH waiting room.
I am working on a complaint to BCH that won't see the light of day, but I sure as hell hope that The FP et al. bring pressure to bear on these institutions, because they've completely lost the plot.
Agreed. I almost hate to use the term but its definitely a social contagion fueled by peer pressure and put into hyperdrive via social media. Parents who go all in and let their kids do the drugs/surgeries also need to have their heads examined.
I'm surprised more Parents aren't opting for homeschooling due to this bizarre phenomenon.
My wife taught high school math for years at a public school in our community. She saw the same thing. What 9th grade girl who isn't "popular" wouldn't love to be celebrated for "coming out" as L or T or Q? Hard to believe this isn't obvious to anyone with an open mind.
I think this situation is largely due to the huge push to get women into medicine and STEM. Women, even the sciency ones, in general are far more controlled by desire to conform, to force others to conform, and to reach consensus - even when the consensus is dead wrong - than men are. Simple as that. Women are far more susceptible to fads and crazes.
(Disclaimer: plenty of fine freethinking women etc but I’m talking the middle of the bell curve and generalities.)
Where we go from here: I don’t know. I guess we watch as science drives off a cliff. Wheee!!!!
First of all, this should be called ‘conversion therapy’ not ‘gender affirming care’.
But aside from that, one thing I haven’t heard mentioned is how the Democrats doing this to children are actually *worse* than child molesters. Someone who is sexually molested as a child at least has a chance to reverse the impacts of that trauma with psychotherapy.
Finally, I would like to see an article that outlines how the specific type of psychological and emotional manipulation represented by the whole
“You can have a dead child or a trans child.”
ploy, is a tactic used almost exclusively by literal psychopaths, and almost all Democrats are willing to engage in this……….
The manipulative hysterics involved in convincing parents that their children’s lives are on the line if they don’t sign on to all of this are deeply disturbing.
It’s coercion, plain and simple. This is not allowed in the practice of medicine (respect for autonomy) or in scientific discovery (informed consent). Ironically, it is the gender practitioners who have coerced and provided care without scientific evidence and therefore, without informed consent. Thank you to these brave researchers! Our children and patients are worth it!
I doubt there are many. Suicide and becoming "trans" are two extreme escape routes for kids who feel awkward and uncomfortable in their own skin, but you are still alive if you "transition." It seems more likely that suicidal kids become "trans" than the other way around.
I suspect that the results will be so confounded by co-morbidities (autism, depression, et al) that it will be impossible to show a link between lack of "gender affirming care" (Dear Lord I so hate this term!) and self-harm.
That would probably be true, that a causation link is difficult to establish. That is always true with respect to mental health conditions. But, we can turn that argument around. It is the responsibility of the medical team to develop a body of evidence that the adolescents' distress has been caused by gender dysphoria of a persistent type BEFORE using invasive medical strategies developed for treating gender dysphoria. In fact, there is poor or nonexistent evidence that medically transitioning adults is a necessary, safe, or effective treatment for any case of gender dysphoria.
The use and abuse of children as ideological tools by adults has become more widespread and disturbing in recent years. My neighbour was thrilled when she could give her five year old the Covid vaccine - a healthy girl who was never, ever at risk from the disease. We have an entire generation of children and young adults who think they are doomed because of climate change. And now we have a new generation of young girls getting irreversible medical interventions for the cause.
It is "conversion therapy" in its original sense as well. Many of the young people being subjected to it are actually homosexual; their attraction to the same sex is being used as "proof" that they are the "wrong" gender. And this exactly how Iran "treats" homosexuals--a homosexual person can either transition or be executed.
The emphasis is no longer about making sure gay kids know they’re no less a boy or girl for being attracted to the same sex and supporting them in their current bodies, allowing them to fully experience puberty and grow up gay.
The Left is teaching young people that the rejection of traditional notions of feminity and masculinity is a medical condition (gender dysphoria) that requires treatment in the form of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
As a girl who grew up in a time when the stereotypes of "feminine" and "masculine" were being actively crushed, I am deeply disturbed to see those old stereotypes being trotted out again as a means of convincing children that they should be eager to be mutilated.
This is particularly scary for me because I was a tomboy. If I had been subjected to this rhetoric in my early youth....
That has been one of my major "WTF" issues with all of this. I have a niece that transitioned far enough to be on testosterone for a time (early 20's). She is back to being a woman now. But she now says that some of the prime motivations were that she wasn't very girly, so she felt that maybe she wasn't a girl. Yet when growing up in the 80's I thought we were constantly working to teach people that gender roles were not static. That you could be a girl who likes sports or short hair or whatever way you define not being girly.
It is like we have jumped back 50 years with all of this. Now more than any time in my life we are putting these walls around various labels and saying "If you don't fit into these walls, then you must be something else".
yup...once enough people became Gay or Lesbian, it was not longer something that made you interesting or unique (thus got you no attention on social media) so we keep adding more. More ways to label just so someone can get validation for doing nothing. Eventually they will get to the same place many of us already are...they are individuals. Their label will just be their name.
Agreed, Celia. How many little girls growing up in the 1970s who loved Legos and Tinkertoys would have been manipulated into a regimen of puberty blockers if they were born a half century later?
Is this a new form of eugenics? Once surgeries are performed on either sex the ability to have children is basically lost. Except, we see pregnant “men” on the cover of Vanity Fair. I am glad that this is finally going to be fully researched. Families suffering need answers and the correct treatment.
Yes, and if you are uncomfortable in any way as a girl at puberty, socially or physically, but you like boys - no problem - you are a gay boy in a girl body!
I agree with most everything you so clearly stated. Do you believe that it's only "Democrats doing this to children"? That seems like an emotional reaction. Have a lovely day.
It is overwhelmingly Democrat. If you are a Democrat and oppose this evil, thank you. It’s clear to this Independent that this and wokism drec is pushed by Democrats because they use divisiveness to get votes.
Thank you for your polite reply. It's always better to respectfully speak to people. I don't really want to go there - i.e., about Democrats using divisiveness to get votes, because that will just open up a rabbit hole about all the damage that the Republicans have done. It won't end well. Please enjoy your day. It looks like a good one from where I'm sitting.
The Security State has been, ironically, hijacked by left-wing extremists and it is being used to target domestic political opposition. But the only reason they are doing that is because $6 trillion is at stake annually and they need to silence and destroy their opposition so they can make it $8 trillion.
I also believe is free debate, but understand her comment. She was just asking for clarification and didn’t want to go down a path that would lead everyone too far from the main topic.
Disagree. So what if Republicans also try and demonize their opponents? They do. That's politics. Happens every day 24/7 on both sides of the aisle. The difference is when you do so at the expense of defenseless children. That shit crosses all lines. It is sinister. Yet the Democrats actually support mutilating children so they can call their opponents transphobes. They think it is a winning political strategy that will garner votes.
And the author of the comment is saying because the other guy does bad things we somehow can't discuss the bad things we do. Can't get much more juvenile and lazy than that. It is a transparent 4th grade playground "whataboutism" debate tactic.
Thank you for your very excellent reply. I will absolutely take everything you said into consideration. However, I don't need to like egocentrics and showboating. That said, "this is the comment section of The Free Press" (thanks for the reminder, for some reason I thought, just for a minute or two, that I was responding to my local Patch group, where people routinely behave poorly). As such, my comments are just as worthy as are those of, say, rude people with big egos.
Then, Biden ran with it - celebrating the "transition" of 8 year old girls at town halls during his campaign. No one paid much attention. Then, he went and appointed Rick/Rachael Levine as Assistant Health Secretary. The dude goes to places like Duke University to be part of symposiums promoting Gender Ideology and youth "transition".
No Democrat politicians disagree with it except for Tulsi Gabbard who became an Independent. Plenty of old school Republicans go along with it and veto legislation that would protect children because GI is very profitable.
Well, in the US it absolutely is only Democrats, yes. Internationally there are different parties, obviously, but I just call all left-wing extremists ‘Democrats’ for simplicity.
Calling it “emotional” on my part to correctly label the party affiliation of the people who are doing this is a deceptive linguistic ploy.
You might call it ‘partisan’ because I could forego making note of who they vote for. But calling it “emotional” is an attempt by you to subtly paint me as an irrational actor incapable of reasoned analysis. Nice try!!
Kevin, I don't appreciate your sarcasm. You seem to have a need to be "right". Isn't it always better when people try to understand one another without ego getting in the way? Nice try!!
An interesting thread about sarcasm that reminds me of something I've always practiced.
I tried to never use sarcasm when raising my young children, believing that children didn't really appreciate or understand it. I also don't tease dogs because it clearly messes with the bonds established through trust. And my wife really doesn't do well with sarcasm as much as she enjoys the fact that my high school and college friends still routinely and casually use sarcasm while interacting with each other.
I on the other hand used sarcasm (and its second cousin, irony) often with my son as he grew up - only in commenting on issues other than himself. Never directed at him.
Women are wired by evolution, because of their size disadvantage, to use emotional manipulation.
Using sarcasm indicates you are not taking things too seriously and also that you have some insight into things happening below the surface. As such you are not a good target for emotional manipulation. This can be annoying to women, especially when it disrupts their agenda. But obviously it depends on the woman and there are varying degrees etc etc etc.
I am a big fan of sarcasm. But grew up as a tomboy, and I am still into building things with tools (whether that be a sewing machine or a hammer), so clearly I am not a REAL woman.
“Uninformed” is a nonsensical pejorative in this context. “Unproductive” would fit better with the rest of your claim.
Sarcasm often arrives as a disgust reaction when someone realizes they aren’t actually having a conversation but are instead participating in someone else’s bad faith narcissistic narrative push.
There’s a lot of sarcasm online from people who don’t feel like telling the person they are talking to
“Oh you’re a dishonest scumbag and there’s no point in talking to you.”
I'm reading this reply, Kevin - and I can't help but think that by using words like 'deceptive linguistic ploy', 'subtly paint me', 'Nice try' - you are in fact faintly praising Theresa as a worthy opponent. She just doesn't realize it. Maybe she's new here.
You're getting softer week after week, I've noticed..
If you think there is bipartisan support for "gender affirming care" then you live under a rock. Name one State where this barbaric mutilation of childen has been outlawed by Democratic lawmakers. Democrats support this insanity because they have made a political calculation this will get them votes by painting their opponents as bigots and transphobes. They don't give a flying fuck about what happens five years later when a girl wants her breasts back or wants to have children and can't. But thanks for wishing me a lovely day.
You raise a good question. It seems to me it's only Democrats, liberals, and those on the far left, but I doubt there's any scientific evidence supporting this.
Do you know of any conservatives who support hormone blocking, child mutilation, etc.?
Is this practice promoted in private or charter schools for instance?
I'm aware of one Republican legislator (who has a trans grandchild and has been subverted by the ideology) who has voted with the Democrats to not prevent clinics from transing kids. He's in Tennessee.
I have said this before. Allowing a child to make the radical and dangerous decision to change their sex is wrong. Teenagers are not know for making good decisions.
If a kid wants a sex change, let them do it when they are adults and on their own dime.
It's absolute madness that we won't let a 17-year-old get a tattoo or have a beer, but we'll let a 13-year-old commit to a lifetime of sterility and unnecessary medical intervention.
In the People's Republic of Massachusetts, a child of 12 or older must have parental consent for medical treatment - except where sex or drugs are concerned, in which case the child must give consent for the provider to share info with the parents.
Lonesome, once again I quote Bill Maher (a lifelong Democrat & now a voice AGAINST the WOKE Left), “I wanted to be a Pirate when I was a kid. I’m glad my parents didn’t take me to a Dr. and have my eye removed & leg cut off, just so I could wear a patch & peg-leg”
I completely agree - accept for the fact that it is impossible for anyone to ever change his/her sex. This is all damaging the body for cosmetic changes.
And, children cannot possibly make these decisions. I think the Gender pushers will be in trouble on the consent issue...
I know one. She is direct with her daughter in both her love and her disagreement with what her daughter believes. They are walking through it and we will see where it ends.
And the social contagion describes perfectly what the daughter experienced at her public school! Her and a large number of young women suddenly deciding they are not female any more.
I know just one. Her daughter (now "son") has BPD (diagnosed) and has exhibited traits of it and/or high-functioning autism since childhood. I observed this personally, since the girl is my daughter's best friend. She spent several years living as an informal foster child in our home, due to the emotional havoc she was wreaking on her family and her father was wreaking on her.
This is absolutely a case of social contagion. If she had not been introduced to this idea on the internet, it would never have occurred to her. And her BPD makes her highly susceptible to "trying on" a different personality. (It's worth noting that another girl with BPD among my children's friends went through a period of a couple of years declaring herself to be trans.)
My friend--the conservative mom--has gone along with the charade because she loves her (adult) child and wants to maintain a relationship with her. But there is no "Transhausen by Proxy" as we see so often among Leftist moms who are eager for living proof of their Woke "virtue."
Many girls on the autism spectrum are not fitting into the tough social circles of middle school girls. An inability to "read" the complicated social interactions like understanding sarcasm can isolate the girl from other girls. Being isolated from girls, but able to maintain some friendship with boys, leaves her vulnerable to the suggestion that she is a boy. The ground is fertile and the internet has the trans seed.
I have heard, but do not have the stats, that it is largely in the urban centers where girls are requesting to transition. If this is true, then it is a fashion, like the tattoo, for example, albeit a more radical one.
I suspect that, since the internet is driving a lot of this, concentration in urban centers would be largely a matter of population density. Also large urban centers have "clinics" to promote and facilitate transition.
"Here it is in a graph: Red Wyoming had only 0.56% trans-ID youth while Blue New York state was over five times higher at 3.00%. "
I don't see it simply going out of fashion when it is so profitable:
"U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
I know no one, that I know of, with gender dysphoria. But I know and am related to my share of gays and lesbians, who are on both sides of the political divide....it's both wrong and unfair to label someone politically based on their sexual orientation.
That said, at the crux of this issue is age. If a child presumably suffers from gender dysphoria, our country, already in a wash of laws, ought to add another: No permanent medical interference (therapy ok) of any kind until age 21. That ends the discussion of child mutilation and doing reversible harm to underage children.
You answered my question with a question, but maybe you don't have an answer. That's ok.
But I like having a dispassionate discussion with someone presumably on the left.
What is Theresa's Substack? Do you write a column on Substack?
States that have legislated that very thing are being sued and moronic judges are enjoining them. One of the biggest purveyors if these lawsuits is the ACLU which apparently have now forsworn America and liberty. And those judges are using the very same flawed entities such as this Singer group to prove grooming children and rendering them infertile is the right thing to do.
The relevance is...? Dunno how it is with you; in most places,people set their chidren's course as well as they are able. Some time in their children's teens (with luck, could be sooner) peer pressures kick in, at which time parents' preferences get kicked to the curb.
Not sure of the relevance at this point, but someone just reminded me that "this is the comment section of The Free Press"; I assume that means it's okay to comment as one sees fit. Agreed that all good parents do the best they can for their children. However, all children do not have good parents. Many are in homes with parents or guardians who would kick them to the curb if they expressed gender dysphoria. What of those children? Where will they seek guidance? Are they relegated to "Gender Affirming" counsellors?
Kick them to the curb? Really? Don't conflate telling your kid "No" or giving them tough love (i.e. responsible parenting) with such an odious metaphor.
Maybe not a child exactly - but there are tons of teens who claim to have "dysphoria" and they are minors, too - with underdeveloped prefrontal lobes - or lack of life experience - or bad influences - or something. Those moms tend to post anonymously. They feel ashamed and they also take Abigail Shrier's advice about maintaining a little family privacy. Then, when the girl comes out of it - hopefully unharmed by "allies" who work against the family including Planned Parenthood - it is easier for her to move on. Like, maybe not everyone will have noticed and if you've always used her real name at home there is no struggle"going back" to something. Just lose the bad friends (including adults you once thought had you back) and move on.
Oh, there was that Fox News program that glorified a little girl "transitioning to a boy" in a "conservative family".
"Fox News Promotes Family Who Transitioned 5-Year-Old Child"
"Over the past few years since my teen son adopted a trans identity, I’ve adopted a new identity of my own. I now identify as a “politically homeless former life-long Democrat.” (Still need to work out those pronouns.) At the risk of sounding as if I’m highlighting a political divide in what should first and foremost be a non-ideologic issue of medical wrongs, I think it’s important to acknowledge a stark difference between those of us with kids caught in the gender web who tilt Left and those who tilt Right.
To a greater degree, liberals not only grieve for our children, living with the non-stop trauma of watching them shuffle or careen along a path that we know will cause them emotional and physical harm, we grieve for the loss of a reality in which we found safety and solace, and through which we found purpose and community — a world we thought we understood. A world we thought we could trust.
Not only has trans ideology delivered liberal parents the crushing blow of watching our children self-destruct, we also have to face that it is our people — wider liberal society — who took a U-turn on the road to sanity, and are aiding and abetting this nightmare. Our icons who are selling and supporting this garbage. We have the distinct displeasure of having to focus our rage at our own."
etc. This mom writes well. I recommend the whole thing - which is not that long.
The adolescents who are pushing for "gender affirmative care" are currently mostly girls from "liberal" affluent families. The same is true for adolescents who are reporting record levels of anxiety, depression and self-harm. I haven't seen data yet on the overlap between these two groups, but I would predict that the girls wanting to transition are a subset of the group with general distress. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues have found a strong connection between the number of hours girls spend on social media per day and the number of mental disorder diagnoses they accumulate. Haidt reported that self-identified liberal girls spend more time than other girls on social media, so their political ideology may not be the direct cause of their mental health issues.
I haven't seen any studies on the political preferences of the medical personnel in the gender clinics.
States controlled by woke Democrats, including New York, California and Oregon, among others, are leading the charge to establish gender transition clinics and to pass laws that lower or abolish age of consent by patients to medical transitions, and abolish parents' rights to override children's demands for these procedures. Bills have been re-introduced at the federal Congressional level by Democratic members to achieve the same goals.
There is no question or doubt that it is Democrats who are pushing medical transitioning of children upon demand by the children. The same Democratic states that are pushing this agenda have passed laws that mandate gender indoctrination in K-12 public schools.
All of this information is publicly available now, and the Democrats are very open that this is their agenda.
With all due respect, this is part of the Democratic Party platform. It is shouted from the White House rooftops. So, yes, it is Democrats and the so-called "Social Democrats" who are behind this. That is not to say that ALL Democrats support this madness, but all who do support it are either Democrats or left of Democrat.
Fear is the best whip. It whips us into panic or guilt or both. Remember: you will be killing your grandparents if you don’t vaccinate, wear mask, stay at home, etc. The opposite happened because many grandparents died without care and human contact with loved ones when they needed it most.
I also noticed how conversion therapy is wrong, but pushing a young girl with possible mental health problems to change her sex is OK. The entire push with the dead child or trans child is also complete bull crap. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm sure I've read that the mental health of a majority of people who transition actually gets worse and suicide rates go up. So it should be "You can have a dead child who transitioned."
'..is a tactic used almost exclusively by literal psychopaths, and almost all Democrats are willing to engage in this..'
Except of course the parents in the study mentioned in the essay, who the author states were mostly progressive. I guess even some evil Dems don't want to see their kids mutilated..
I wish I could remember where I read it, but the average life span after surgical transition is about 10 years. That sounds about right to me as my brother in law lived 11 years after his. He died from a treatable disease he chose not to treat, so a slow motion suicide that doesn't get recorded as a suicide.
He was a grown ass, well educated adult. I've wondered if for children the average life span is any better. I tend to doubt it. I also tend to doubt that parents are told: "a dead child, or a trans child...that will be dead in ten years."
Anyone who lives in a progressive community can attest to this. I talk openly with my own kids about it and encourage them to observe the patterns around them, which are very clear. This is a trend. A trend that is going to leave huge swaths of people infertile, mutilated, and deeply depressed. I’ll never understand how it’s legal for doctors and parents to intervene and redirect the natural development of a child, not for any medical reason, but because of a trendy feeling.
Can't explain the surgeons, but there is a long history of psychiatrist and psychologists with radical treatments. Post WW2 ubiquitous frontal lobotomies for the mentally ill, primitive electro-shock treatment, and later repressed memory syndrome with affirmed parental sexual assault, satanic rituals including murder and cannibalization, child care centers sexual assault of groups of young children (which sent people to prison on fantastic testimony from 3-6 year olds), etc. This is just the newest malevolent treatment brought to us by them.
I was a target during the 80's repressed memory syndrome in very young children. I ran a children's church program for years, but when parents began scrutinizing me personally, I gave up and quit. The grief was not worth the effort.
I love children and prior to the repressed memory witch hunts would have gladly volunteered to help with childcare in various settings, but after that, I completely avoided any situation where I might be alone with a child who was not my own.
I remember well the horrific injustice done by the FBI to the owners of the Fells Acres Day School near Boston back in the 80's. Last year, the Mass. governor even suggested pardoning them after 40 years of wearing a scarlet letter but the angry mob prevailed.
Which lends a whole new meaning to "Mass" Formation Psychosis, I suppose.
Yes, I think so, too. Many people do. And yet - there she is in her prestigious position - and attending conferences spreading the harmful non-science.
Check out:
"TMI: Genderqueer 11-year-olds can’t handle too much info about sterilizing treatments–but do get on with those treatments
"On April 7, 2021, the UC San Francisco Child and Adolescent Gender Center offered a Zoom “training” entitled “Fertility Issues for Transgender and Nonbinary Youth.” Advertised widely on Facebook, the session was led by well-known gender therapist Diane Ehrensaft and a colleague, and was attended by over 100 people via Zoom. A recording of the session was provided to 4thWaveNow by an attendee. This article will draw on a few excerpts from the session, available for viewing here and here."
Something I have been saying is, IF I were a Law Student or just starting out, I would be spending A Lot of time studying Malpractice Law. Because in the near future you will not be able to swing a dead cat Without hitting a Law Suit on this. Hospitals, Advocacy Groups, Doctors, Parents,, Legislatures All going to be spending A Lot of time (and money) in court rooms. (If you are one of these, better Lawyer Up NOW)
Yes, and a lot of truly anguished, outraged plaintiffs demanding to know HOW they could have been manipulated by the entire medical industry—to say nothing of the role of academia, publishers, etc. The same plaintiffs are going to pretend that they weren't themselves actively censoring and punishing critics or even questioners of gender ideology.
It reminds me of 20 years ago, when the US invaded Iraq on completely false pretexts. Years later, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize "shock & awe" would claim that they were misled by the administration and intelligence—conveniently forgetting that literally MILLIONS of people worldwide were publicly protesting the imminent invasion for weeks on end, citing a lack of evidence and legal standing.
Sure. Do you have some Niger yellowcake or blurry surveillance photos for sale? It's not that Saddam wasn't playing games with inspectors; it's that Iraq played no role in 9/11, and there was no imminent threat of attack from them, even if you believed them to be developing a WMD program.
If you believe in preemptive war, that's your prerogative, but I would claim that's an un-American position to take. If, on the other hand, you think simply taking out dictators should be the purview of the US military, then I'd be interested to hear assessment of how Libya turned out for everyone, and I'd also want to know why we never took out Suharto, Pinochet, or the countless other authoritarian dictators we've supported over the years.
This! It was the Iraq War that made me realize that I am simply not a Republican.
To be fair, even Saddam thought he had WMDs. His scientists were too terrified of the punishment for failure, so they lied to him about their successes.
So many of us are politically homeless now. Can't stand the R's and D's in equal measure. Both are deeply corrupt, but each one has its own special flavorful mix of hypocrisy and duplicitousness.
1. Saddam bought a nuclear reactor from France in the 1980's. It wasn't to provide clean cheap energy to the Iraqi's. It was to get a Bomb. Thanks to the Israelis it didn't happen. 2. Too many people only think Nukes when they think WMD. Saddam had and Used against The Iranians and the Kurds. EVERYBODY(from Andorra to Zimbabwe) including his inner circle Knew he had Bio/Chem weapons. Everyone was wrong.
"I'd also want to know why we never took out Suharto, Pinochet, or the countless other authoritarian dictators we've supported over the years."
The answer to that is fairly simple. They didn't start wars with their neighbors. Start wars with neighbors, interrupt trade...then We have a problem with that. The Rules a simple. Don't start (unprovoked) was with your neighbors, Don't use WMD, Don't interrupt international trade. Putin has done 2 of the 3, which is why we're sending weapons & money to Ukraine. (as an aside I do not support that.. that war is more like The Castellammarese War. The question is which one is Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, and which one is Salvatore Maranzano?)
And yes we have treaty's/relations with some Very Bad People. Welcome To The Real World.
There is a lawsuit in California (I believe) that is the first action of this type in this country. Depending on how that goes, it could open the floodgates. Doctors are protected by the AMA and APA and AAP which has made this the treatment of choice, but if it ever gets to a jury, then watch out.
In terms of psychology, remember recovered memories from the 90s? Also keep in mind the pathologizing discourse against gays by psychology....I read so much of it because it fascinated me and as I read it I came to realize that much of it was on effeminacy, and ultimately a veiled discourse based on the suspicion that theology/philosophy/religion have had for women.
Is the issue at the end that psychology is in no small way a discipline with a messed up epistemology?
In the upcoming long-term survey of adolescent gender dysphoria, I hope you'll also collect data on what psychotropic medications these kids may be on before their ROGD started.
That popped into my mind as well, but I'm not sure what type info to collect. I think by trying to start branching into parent data, and definitely teacher data, you may wind up going down a rabbit hold that ends up looking like an attempt to identify political ideologies. Just my 2 cents......
You could be right. From my minimal observations, i’ve seen parents (mothers) trying to live their dreams through their children. Maybe the study can call it broadly “religious” ideologies to head off the political identity ;)
i'd like to add that mother's have been trying to live their dreams through their children through eons. take a look at many mother's who either try or succeed in hijacking their daughter's wedding plans...i've always said, that if the mother had her "dream" wedding, she's more willing to let her daughter have hers.
Indeed. The single most important person in any wedding is the mother of the bride. Full stop. Any seasoned wedding planner, caterer, florist, baker, photographer, etc. know this all too well.
Barry, do you mean the new fashion on the Left to withhold making “gender” determinations with newborns? A colleague talked about his neighbor’s kid, threatening suicide, was transitioned and gave me the silent treatment when I asked if that was the right approach.
Watch Hollywood. It was a featured part of Tom Hanks’ recent move “Otto”. Writing vanishingly rare works circumstances into movies is the equivalent of putting multi-racial couples in advertisements (for which I have no truck, but it is “chosen” by 15% of people...not exactly targeting the larger market segment when selling toothpaste).
I refused to watch that "version" of Ove. I read and LOVED the book and refused to let an American version take it to such a looney place. So, I watched the Swedish version and read the subtitles.
If this is a social contagion then it'd also be great if someone was able to collect a Facebook network graph of the spread of ROGD. Basically a cholera map of gender dysphoria.
Gosh, yes. But, I don't know how you would collect all the location information. Like, moms are not going to fill out a government health form so that the authorities can come to your house and say "You are abusing your teen by using that "deadname" you gave your daughter when she was born!" The closest thing I have come across is a graph on here: https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-is-this-happening-and-who-can
People can see with their own eyes how deranged it is that so many kids identify as trans yet they all pretend it’s because the kids are finally free to be themselves. All those closeted suicidal trans kids before 2015--where are the bodies? Now it’s the straight kids in the closet because ewww heteronormativity.
The unconditional acceptance and celebration of this movement that makes money by grinding up kids and their families is pushing many people away from the left.
ExACTly what I was thinking before I opened then read your reply.
I'm not glad I never had children, my own upbringing was painful enough. Yet I'm astounded that things have gone as far as they have towards destroying whatever chances children born in the last two or three decades have of growing up free of emotional traumas imposed by 'social' media generally and our current 'medical/political establishment' more specifically.
"incessant focus on the self to the detriment of producing anything else of value"
This sentence stood out on your long list of negative consequences of gender transition. I think incessant focus on the self is the problem social media culture has led many people into and is a cause as well as an effect of the many mental problems youth have today.
> All those closeted suicidal trans kids before 2015--where are the bodies?
I heard a trans activists say that 40% of trans people commit suicide if they don’t transition. And also that 10% of people are trans. It can be one or the other, but it’s statistically impossible for both of those things to be true unless 12 million Americans committed suicide last year.
The really messed up part is how there is a growing problem with suicide, but the demographic most affected by this is middle-aged men. That's the demographic that most strongly supports the Republicans, so Democrats completely ignore the epidemic of suicides there while declaring from Congress that trans suicides are a major national issue and it's all the fault of those evil transphobes.
Not only do they use suicide as a manipulative bully tactic, they do so while ignoring the people who are actually affected by suicide.
Among teenagers, boys are 4x more likely to commit suicide than any other group. No one in the mainstream is going to bring that up though. And if they do, it'll be to victim blame those kids.
Suicide is an issue close to my heart. I volunteer with a crisis center and definitely see lots of teens come through. What scares me is that so many now threaten suicide over what was once just considered a normal part of growing up--"I'm going to kill myself because my girlfriend broke up with me" kind of stuff.
I still *DO* see lots of gay kids who think about suicide, (especially boys) who are bullied at school. It's not like being gay is accepted everywhere.
The common thread with suicidal adults is usually some sort of financial problem and/or drinking/drug problem. With kids (gay or not), the common thread is that most of them are afraid to talk to their parents about ANYTHING. So many parents SAY "you can talk to me about anything" but then don't follow through.
Is it surprising that boys are committing suicide? Their society is teaching them that they are evil simply because they are male. That their interests and impulses are inherently "toxic." That they are criminals--specifically rapists--from birth.
In many cases, they have never been given real work to do. College is not welcoming to them (indeed, school is where they have been indoctrinated with the idea that they are useless pimples on the butt of society). Having lived much of their lives in the comfortable world of video games, jobs are "too hard"; not surprising, when they are also depressed.
Isn't it true that more women than men attempt suicide? Men are more successful at it, though. Is it because men are less likely to seek therapy? Is it because they have more access to guns?
Based on my own observations and (yes, sadly) experience, women make a lot of suicide attempts that are *intentionally* (subconsciously or not) not effective enough to kill them. For women, a suicide attempt is the ultimate way of sending the message that she finds the situation she is in unbearable, and will somebody please, please, PLEASE fix it. It is a desperate form of communication.
From what I've gathered about men who commit suicide, they are not trying to communicate anything. They are just DONE with whatever is making them miserable enough that they want to die.
While men may be more likely to own firearms, which simplify being successful at suicide, they also engage in other effective methods that require some physical strength and/or mechanical know-how to accomplish: climbing over guardrails to throw themselves off bridges, fitting up a car to guarantee that the carbon monoxide will kill you, hanging themselves. Also, guns are heavier than most people think if they've never handled them.
Autistic youth and those with mental health issues have high level of suicides. Boys are more successful than girls as is typical in suicide. So, I wouldn't say that they aren't affected by suicide. Just like I wouldn't say older females aren't either. They just succeed less often. Also, last time I looked 40% of women between the ages of 18-65 are on or have used psychotropic medications for depression. We have been burying the problems of mental health under a mountain of quasi-effective medication for years.
The 40% statistic is not substantiated. Also, from an evolutionary standpoint, if 10% of adolescents had always been disengaged from heterosexuality and reproduction, wouldn't we expect to see a progressive decline in births over centuries?
“We” see it because many of us are curious enough to open our eyes and ears. In the huge echo chamber run by MSM / “elites”, the people who just stick to their approved information sources have little idea of this information.
That’s why trying to getting the word out is so critical. And it has to be SO relentlessly done especially at the front lines where I feel we find ourselves - because the perpetrators of this are geared for battle to put down / silence / etc any of us “heretics” to keep their followers in the dark.
Listen to Megyn Kelly, Miriam Grossman (and read her book “Lost in Trans Nation”) and try as you might to help those you can discuss logically and empathetically and both try to re-activate their common sense and spread the word.
I try to stay focused on THIS when this comes up. - Yeah I have a LOT of other issues that I am passionate about but if I mix them all in, I advance none of them. I care way too much about my beautiful granddaughter.
BTW, keep in mind that back 1949/50, the Kinsey report said that around 4% of adult males were homosexuals. I read a few months ago, in the Economist, I think, that the estimates are still 4% of adults homosexual.
Forget about the new "queer" stuff.....it's largely pose and a label to tart oneself up.
20 some years ago, when my kids were in high school, the local magnet high school (academics and performing arts) had a “thing” going where all the girls were lesbians (whether they actually were or not). Parents told me that while these girls were waiting in the carpool line (not everyone rode the bus), the girls would divide up into couples and make out (lots of tongue) primarily to shock the parents. At least half of these lesbian couples broke up in college and discovered they were actually straight or bisexual and had boyfriends. In their 20’s a lot of them married men. Take those statistics and ask the question, “what if these same girls thought they were trans in high school and had puberty blockers, top surgery and testosterone treatments?” In what universe would subjecting teenagers to mutilating body treatments be deemed okay when it precludes their natural sexual progression to being straight, gay or bisexual…not trans? In other words, the teenagers never change their biological sex but grow into whatever sexuality they were programmed for originally. Am I making sense? With teen girls, a high school fad is often just a high school fad. That it shocks and scares their parents (especially their mothers) is part of it’s purpose. As a final point, in most states it’s illegal to get a tattoo under age 18, but it’s okay to have top surgery? Really?
The newest thing is the girls in my niece's high school are all "pansexual" though most of them date boys while a couple are with girls. The boys just kind of go along with it with a shrug.
Man, I am so glad I was a new kid, really shy and not part of any clique my last two years in public high school. Yes it was lonely and awful and I hated every minute of it, but whew. Of course back then there wasn’t all this madness.
Aaaand...this is why my wife and I aren't sending our daughters to our local magnet "school of the arts" - epicenter of this social contagion in our area.
It should be obvious at this point that there is a sinister political agenda and that the Democrats are behind it. What else would explain Biden slurring about "gender affirming care" as a government issue? It's one thing if the private sector wants to cut off its body parts, but when a political party promotes and celebrates it -- someone is gaining financially. I suspect that Obama gained financially. This "celebration" started near the end of his presidency. Suddenly we had "gender neutral" bathrooms at the university where I teach. They were handing out pronoun swag and at one workshop, glassy-eyed zealots promoted asking students what gender they are today.
I smelled a rat right away, and have been watching this with my jaw hanging for years now. It's one thing for activists to silence information that they believe is for the common good -- let's say anything to do with climate change. But to silence information that counters the narrative that so many people could have been born in the wrong body? Laws on the table that award custody to the gender-affirming parent? Denying as a "right wing talking point" (the stupidest "argument" out there) that these cross-sex hormones damage the body, that there is no good reason to remove healthy breasts from a teenage girl? That puberty blockers stunt a person's growth?
There could only be one reason why the truth is being silenced: THIS IS CORRUPTION WRIT LARGE. The research that someone needs to do is to find out: WHO's GETTING PAID to PROMOTE THIS. WHO is PAYING to spread this mind virus. WHY did medical principles go out the window on this? Some serious investigative journalism needs to NAIL THESE EVIL PEOPLE TO TO THE WALL.
And don't get me started on the weak-livered parents who actually take their teen to the "gender therapist" -- that's like taking a kid who's done heroin to a drug dealer for more -- Parents who actually go along with this because they are "afraid." MOST PEOPLE KNOW THIS IS BULLSHIT. SO SPEAK UP.
I'm not one to buy into the nebulous "Globalist" theory, but there are in fact a few of the wealthiest of the wealthy who are so rich that they believe they can do anything---anything including transhumanism (transgender being a subcat of that belief). These people donated a million here to Planned Parenthood, a million to ACLU, another million or so to some Ivy League medical schools, etc., kingmade a US president (Obama, the first to codify "we just want to pee") or two (Biden), or oh hell, just put his own brother in the IL governor's mansion. That's how their $$$$ makes the world go around.
I honestly now have resorted to just wishing more billionaires would be like Bezo who's interest is mainly to play with his expensive toys. Or they should all just get into cage fight with each other. Stop these crazies who are out to remake the world according to their sci-fi dystopian nightmare and leave the rest of us alone.
This is an important report if you haven't seen it:
"U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
Indeed that analogy wasn’t clear. I don’t support suppressing any information, but it’s more understandable to censor information against clean energy than to censor evidence that cutting off healthy body parts doesn’t prevent the unprovable manipulation tactic: would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?
Interesting perspective. However, do you think you are qualified to criticize parents who "take their teen to the gender therapist"? If you've not been in their shoes, I'm afraid you're speaking out of turn.
Parents abuse their own children all the time and it is absolutely appropriate to call out the abusers that are mutilating their own kids under the direction of a quack.
As a mother who's "been in their shoes" (ie. speaking from experience), I 100% agree with Dog L. With VERY RARE exceptions, today's therapists (not just gender ones) are REQUIRED to take their patients down the 'affirmative care' path, lest they risk losing their license. And both 'APA' associations support and encourage this. It all SCREAMS corruption.
Regrettably, I must agree with you. It seems the zeitgeist is with those who support "gender affirming" care. It's wrong, but how did we get here? The answer can't be simple; it's got to be multifaceted with many deserving some blame. It's a major CF.
You've got no argument from me. I don't believe that what's happening is right and I never did. However, what is concerning are those that refuse to "hear" what a child is saying. Transgenderism does exist, but it's very rare. No child should be allowed to mutilate one's body. I'd extend the term "child" to refer to young adults as well. Reaching the age of legal majority does not make one an adult.
I think so many people inherently know that these girls are struggling emotionally and less invasive methods should be a first step before the irreversible damage. I’ve followed Abigail Shrier and Lisa Littman, their research and the hate they’ve received for trying to expose the truth. It’s good to know there are more researchers out there doing incredible and important research but horrific that this is being censored. What I don’t understand is shouldn’t these trans activists want to act and advocate in the best interest of these girls rather than destroy lives if they realize it was the wrong intervention?
I’ve read that the first generation of transition patients are very concerned about the current trend of immediate hormones and surgery. In the past, before the gender clinics went mad, people had to undergo rigorous psychotherapy and live as their preferred gender for years. Data from those who did not meet criteria for surgery and went to underground clinics for reassignment surgery shows the tragic outcomes of failing to pursue treatment thoughtfully and patiently.
Thank you, Dr. Bailey. As a public health professional and parent of an ROGD kid, the frustration of having to remain silent is unbearable. We desperately need this research. The indoctrination of our children and subsequent push toward irreversible, unnecessary, dangerous, and evidence-free “gender affirmative care” is surely the most heinous public health scandal of our time. The medical community must be held accountable. This will only happen when the wider world understands the tremendous damage clinicians have willfully caused to young people, employing emotional manipulation and disinformation to coerce parents into consenting to the medical harm of their children, and the families they have destroyed by pitting vulnerable children against those parents who have pushed back against their pressure campaign to medically transition every child who succumbs to this social contagion.
Thank you for sharing. This forced retraction demonstrates a fear of asking questions about a subject that has presented rapidly and treating it with only minimally studied treatments.
Add to that my opinion that what we are seeing is not a manifestation of a single transsexual diagnosis (if we use a medical descriptor) but a variety of diagnostic categories that are being thrown into a “diagnostic garbage can” and being discussed as one subject. So the importance of studying and further understanding trans and more importantly what is effective treatment with the best risk to benefit ratio is extremely important.
Ahh the Bailey paper. I know about this. TFP I've had my frustrations with you for sure but I'm glad you got the scoop to publish this. When this mania/madness/panic is all said and done, the truth will out and it will not be what the establishment media had emphasized and pushed.
Changing gender and gender identification/dysphoria is an issue that requires honesty, compassion, and clear thinking. And that is NOT what we are getting. Instead we get emotional blackmail and manipulation.
May God bless everyone who tries to act with integrity these days. To everyone else, well you know what you can do.
“On May 5, a group of 100 academic activists and gender clinicians published an online Open Letter expressing “ethical” and “editorial concerns” about the journal and “serious concerns over research ethics and intellectual integrity” of our article”
———————————————————
Are you sure it wasn’t 51 former intelligence officials?
I love “concerns over ethics” from the child penis chopping lobby.
Brave and important work. Of course, the madness only stops when the lawsuits start. If highly accomplished medical professionals (like your anonymous coauthor) find the social pressure of yielding to this almost unbearable, what chance do teenage girls have?
Thanks for writing this article, and your commitment to the truth. Is it the times, or have I been asleep for the past several years, but there’s a trail of censorship and canceling accelerating across several disciplines and political agendas that have me worried? Is there any evidence of government involvement in the retraction of your paper, or is it mainly institutional?
I suggest that a look at Lambda Legal Defense Fund should be undertaken by a brave and ethical investigative journalist. https://lambdalegal.org/ is the NGO that has co-opted large legal firms all across the nation (these firms also get their tax write-offs) to push Gender Affirming Care policies into medical organizations like AMA, AAP, ACP, APA, etc. as well Amicus Briefs and legal support for legislation protecting and promoting GAC for minors. This is a perverse and deviant use of legal clout. Physicians and psychologists who have spoken out have been intimidated and silenced. I would bet they are involved in this (AND Littman as well).
Excellent. Social contagion is real. In addition to parents, perhaps teachers would also be willing to participate in your future studies. Those who are still capable of independent thought see first hand the kids with social and emotional problems spontaneously decide they were “born in the wrong body”.
One of the more frightening facts in your article suggests the largest predictor of medicalization is a visit to a gender therapist. It appears the medical institutions and States with laws that require immediate affirmation are the real groomers.
Including the teachers in the study would be interesting indeed, as many have jumped on this bandwagon, while those opposed have been intimidated or threatened into silence.
Celebrities! Cher, Magic Johnson, Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, etc ...and there are lots of Democrat and liberal parents with gay children as well. What are the odds that so many celebrities have trans kids or even gay kids? Chicken or the egg?
That may or may not be true. Although Shiloh was back to being a feminine looking girl a year or two ago, photos taken in 2023 show her sporting a "buzz cut" and somewhat mannish clothes.
"Oh, you have a gay white son? How nice. I have a queer daughter who's dating an undocumented migrant and my 40 year old trans son and his non-binary Black spouse just welcomed their multi-racial pansexual daughter via Somali surrogate." CHECKMATE
"Not to mention the parents who have a statistically impossible number of transvestite and pansexual kids." -- And/or those who simply feel the need to virtue signal in order to fit in. I know a family in which the mom is super woke (and an uber TRA), and her social media feeds are FULL of pro-trans posts. Unsurprisingly, her two young boys have severe anxiety issues, and one thinks he's trans. Because of course. The effect she's having on their mental health breaks my heart.
As Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I am nauseated that my own profession has seemingly lost every last vestige of intestinal fortitude, and the pantywaists who claim to be gatekeepers at important medical colleges and publishing houses cringe in fear of the Marxist "activists" whose ultimate purpose is to bring down Western civilization.
To my eye, the importance of this article on TheFP and the one it references cannot be overstated. This is PRECISELY why I subscribed to Common Sense and then TheFP. Well done, Ms. Weiss. Bloody well done.
“As Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant”
————————————————-
Wrong! The best disinfectant is the mRNA COVID vaccine. Sunlight is for horses.
For a year or so, in its messages supporting programs on PBS, Johnson & Johnson praised nurses, and told the story of how a nurse cured life-threatening jaundice in newborn infants by taking them outside into the sunshine. As the benefit was studied, the treatment was administered using a UV lamp that addressed bilirubin, called "Billy Lights". Sunlight is literally good for people. The Freedom of Information Act and various state Sunshine Acts require that government not make decisions in secret, but in the full light of day.
So well said. The imagery is superb.
As usual, KD?, spot on!
Sunlight is for humans too KD. My late mother always put us in the sun when we had a runny nose, it dried up after a few hours of sunlight no antibiotics were needed and we weren’t shlepp off for vaccinations either.
Vitamin D Is a QAnon UltraMAGA conspiracy theory, sir.
So is human trafficking according to Fact Checkers United
FACT CHUCKERS ?who they be ?
Can I assume that you are one of the vaccinated that did not have any harmful side effects to the vaccine?
You can assume wicked sarcasm.
Answer the questions, Kevin Durant.
Me as well, Jim. It is nice to hear it from a doctor as I have lost faith in US medical institutions, just as I have with all of our other institutions.
But, this has happened before in an advanced society.
"Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care AUG 30, 2022"
https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
"German doctors were not hacks. German medicine was not backwards. The contrary, it was the most advanced on Earth. Pre-WW2, German doctors won more Nobel Prizes in Medicine (9) than British (7), American (4), or any other nationality. Their medical journals and education were world-leading: in the early 20C, "Germany was well to the forefront in medical progress. The scientific approach to medicine had been developed there long before it spread to other countries, and postgraduates flocked to German medical schools from all over the world." The medical professionals who were about to go insane were the best and brightest anywhere.
German medicine led the world in ethics, too. Modern notions of informed consent regulations originated in late 19C Germany: “Explicit directives concerned with the welfare of people subjected to medical experimentation in Germany were in place long before the Nuremberg code was devised in 1947.”"
And,
"The medical profession has wrestled with the significance of the Doctors Trial. For instance, to observe its 50th anniversary, the British Medical Journal printed a special issue (free downloads here). The lead article “War crimes and medical science” warned that the Nazi problems were “not unique to one place or time, and could happen here” and the trial “left us with a legacy we still shrink from confronting.” It pointed to contemporary problems in American medicine and warned “there will always be imperatives that threaten the professional values we profess to hold so dear” and “the profession of medicine carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.”
And, it is just way too profitable:
"U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-sex-reassignment-surgery-market
Creating patients for life:
https://corinnacohn.substack.com/p/the-medical-leash-of-hormone-replacement
I don't know how they can call it hormone replacement therapy (something no longer given to all menopausal women) when it is injecting people with a hormone their body is not meant to have and cannot handle without harm. But, then, this Gender Madness is called "Care".
"Gender-affirming care" is an ideologically loaded term, and a gaslighting misnomer of the first order. Let's speak truth: it's a euphemism for "sex-denying damage."
Yes. Thank you, grateful1.
Loving Mother - All great points- thank you for bringing them up in detail.
I tried explaining like facts of history to my Summa Cum Laude daughter a couple of years ago. Explaining the utter madness committed under the guise of science and medicine. Mentioning to her that we are very close to the precipice of insanity that the National Socialist Parties Health Science Ministries atrocities too. I was given a MAGA/QAnon label by her, despite having a relative who lived through the rise and fall of the Third Reich and it's persecution of her and others. A relative who shared granular details of not only what happened but how the National Socialist Fascist's grip felt, sounded like, and the way it oozed across a complacent public. Our daughters largesse was horrifying at the time. It was as if she was re-enacting what my great aunt had told me about. However, I was wrong.
The great news is that today little Miss Summan Cum Laude actually listens because of articles like this. Also, because of the psychotic peer pressure to stifle free speech with 'fact checkers' and political movements. She too was shouted down as a racist. Some of her peer group has begun being scarred by these people unfortunately. Or should I say fortunately.
Each time people stifle these zealots the movement to crush them grows exponentially. Each time we speak about the absurdity and inherent evilness of their tactics their movement is defeated. They will wear this sin for a long time. We will be able to point to how each of us stood up for the better parts of being a human being.
Kudos to you for not giving up.
very simple stuff... stand up to bullies and good things happen.
I'm not sure it's Marxists pushing this. I think it's profit seeking quacks who are in charge.
I see it as a little bit of everything - profit seeking quacks, politics, cultural Maxists...
The Democrats, teachers unions (Randi Weingarten), the likes of Rick Levine (first female admiral) are pushing Gender Ideology and "transitioning" kids - and the old school Republicans don't fight it. It's kindof like how both of them wanted illegal immigration for different reasons (votes or cheap labor). Medicine has definitely been taken over by quacks and pharma is profiting big time. Pedro Gonzalez calls out all sides in The Transgender Leviathan:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/lets-read-the-transgender-leviathan
Rafferty is the quack in charge of the American Academy of Pediatrics
"The American Academy of Pediatrics sidelines formal proposal to revise Pediatric Medical Transition policy for the 4th consecutive year
Unfortunately, it seems that U.S. medical organizations have allowed politics to overshadow their commitment to evidence-based medicine.
CHRISTINA BUTTONS JUL 9, 2023"
https://www.buttonslives.news/p/the-american-academy-of-pediatrics
And, there is this cultural trend where teens are somehow "adults" for the purposes of medicine and need to have "portals" directly to their pediatricians - where Gender Ideology is promoted just like in the schools.
So, yes it is way profitable and it is very handy for politicians on the left. No Democrats speak against it except for Tulsi Gabbard who became an Independent. The doctors were also out ahead of the politicians in 1930s Germany: https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
And a very sick administration!
You said it, Skinny:
"Federal government embraces affirmative care: 4thWaveNow founder discusses in first public appearance FEATUREDPosted on April 15, 2022"
https://4thwavenow.com/
"Seven years on, 4thWaveNow founder Denise (also known as Marie) made her first public appearance in a conversation with YouTuber/podcaster Benjamin Boyce on April 9, 2022. The lively interview is available on YouTube (full video) as well as Spotify.
The central theme of the “calmversation” was the US federal government’s embrace of “affirmative” care for gender dysphoric minors–whether their parents are onboard or not.
Denise and Benjamin also talked at length about the organizations currently engaged in promoting gender-identity instruction in US schools, a practice that has been in place for many years. In addition, they touched on some rather controversial topics, including the choice of some “affirming” parents to purchase fake penises (“packers”) and tucking underwear for their small children.
The day after her chat with Boyce, Denise added some more detail and clarifications about the topics they discussed. You can find them in this Twitter thread, also compiled here."
Thank you for info and links.
Medical castration has been used as a PUNISHMENT of sex offenders, the infliction of suffering justified by the suffering they imposed on innocent victims. I suggest that adults who abuse children in this way be sentenced to medical castration and all its consequences.
That sounds great to me! There is a long list of doctors...starting with "Marci" Bowers. He identifies as a woman but I dunno if he's been chopped down below. Those with autogynophelia (who say they are lesbians) tend not to do that. I believe he is the one who chopped Jaron Bloshinsky among others as a child and he signed the letter demanding that this J. Michael Baily, Suzanna Diaz article be retracted. The signatories on the Open Letter, https://asbopenletter.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email, might be a good place to start looking. Another, the "Yeet the Teet" surgeon, Gallagher, is infamous.https://thepostmillennial.com/yeet-the-teet-doctor-poses-with-teen-patient-after-double-mastectomies If you ever read some of these surgeons talking about what they do - you have to wonder whether they are getting off on it sexually as well as making bank.
Of course, there are many child gender clinics in the US and Planned Parenthood gives out synthetic hormones - https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-is-this-happening-and-who-can
There should be a trial of course, perhaps of the Nuremberg variety as these young people cannot possibly give proper "consent".
Interesting perspective, I hadn't really thought of the issue of German medicine like that. It seems true to me that any profession is subject to that type of slide into malignancy, when people stop, or are not allowed, to question assumptions and prevailing wisdom. With the type of information control and cancelling we see in this article and others situations in recent years, the real damage to health and well-being can be tremendous when that profession is medicine or other sciences or is used to develop regulations, "emergency" or otherwise.
Unfortunately, too many progressives will dismiss any analogy that criticizes their pov when Nazis are invoked, as much as they bandy it about when demonizing their opponents. "We care for (some) people, so we can't take that criticism seriously", even if the analogy is apt.
I hear you. In my experience, there is nothing that changes the progressive point of view other than personally being harmed by progressive actions. So, avoiding pointing out the parallel to the 1930s German Medical and political situation/playing Mitt Romney - won't win anything. WWII was not won by convincing the Nazis. We are not going to convince anyone indoctrinated with Kool-aid with anything.
We do need to hold doctors accountable with lawsuits. And, we need those who are not exactly progressive to wake up and see this problem. Their kids and grandkids are not immune from contagion/indoctrination. Most average people think this stuff is fringe but it is promoted from on high. The Biden WH has doubled down.
For starters, children, teens, and young people cannot "consent" to any any of this. A case of someone harmed by Gender "Affirmation" when under age 18 (and there are so many now) needs to go to the Supreme Court, IMO. I think we will need something like the Nuremberg doctors trails before this is over. Of course, the news likely won't report any of it. The closing of the Tavistock in the UK was not really reported in the US.
And then, more and more progressives are getting hit by the GI bus personally:
"I’ve Got the Blues — Part 1 JUL 10, 2023"
https://pitt.substack.com/p/ive-got-the-blues-part-1
and
"I’ve Got the Blues — Part 2 JUL 11, 2023"
https://pitt.substack.com/p/ive-got-the-blues-part-2
Thank you for the links to "I've Got the Blues." Maybe the loss of their children will wake up a sizable number of so-called progressives and help to bring us back to a place of sanity.
You are very welcome, Jane. I think we have to first wake up your average person who isn't even progressive. Most people seem to think there is this very rare person, the "trans person" and do not see the widespread problem. So, they look the other way. The media sure doesn't help.
Whoever can be awakened first will help. My opinion of the average person's intelligence and grasp of reality is quite low. I think they might begin to wake up if many PITTs would speak out publicly (and if that subject made an appearance on the MSM, a big "if"). I have one child, 46, happily married to a person of the opposite sex and happily childless, so you won't be seeing much of me on your posts or on PITT. (My daughter, a bright woman but not an independent thinker, is one of the average people who rely on the MSM, but who really doesn't want to think about all this. My husband and I don't understand how this happened.) I have a serious case of Weltschmerz and am trying to keep up on a number of fronts without depleting all of my energy. But I admire you for focusing yours, and I wish you success and peace. Really. :-)
Well said. Do not disregard modern medical happenings in China and Russia either. China has produced a human chimera that survived 9 days.
Indeed.
I'm almost relentless in attacking Weiss's liberalism on here, but it's not from lack of admiration for her ability. It's only because she's dead wrong!
Still respecting someone you wholly disagree with -- yet another lost art in our rapidly declining society.
Lol. Weiss is far from a liberal. The only thing keeping her from being on Fox, Newsmax, etc.is her sexual orientation.
I truly don't understand why gatekeepers pay any attention to trans activists. Since transgenders are such a small part of the nation's population--0.5 percent the last I read--why do these activists have so much power to frighten, let alone censor, seasoned pros?
I believe it is for the same reason the Nazis - who comprised only a few percent of Germans - were able to take over the entire government and ultimately cause the deaths of 55 million people. Most people in peacetime are quiet, polite, and easily intimidated by loud, angry, screaming "activists" who get in their faces, block traffic, threaten them with ball bats and frozen water bottles, and spray them with Mace. Add to that law enforcement that is itself afraid to keep the peace lest THEY be arrested and their lives ruined, a weaponized federal police force, and there you have it. Mob rule - all at the service of the Democrat Party.
A good point, Jim. I take crap from no one, and many of the correspondents in this comment section take none either. We surely are a minority.
This is a tough crowd - and a damn fine one.
You've read this one, right? https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors It parallels 1930s Germany pretty well. The doctors and ideologues had something and it turned out to be useful for the politicians.
That is an apt parallel, Jim. Euphemistically titled "affirmative care" has certainly taken over at the federal level, even though most people would likely not be on board if you explained it to them. And, Trans Activists/SPLC/ACLU go after any dissent. Just look at Moms for Liberty. On Feds:
"Federal government embraces affirmative care: 4thWaveNow founder discusses in first public appearance FEATUREDPosted on April 15, 2022"
https://4thwavenow.com/
"Seven years on, 4thWaveNow founder Denise (also known as Marie) made her first public appearance in a conversation with YouTuber/podcaster Benjamin Boyce on April 9, 2022. The lively interview is available on YouTube (full video) as well as Spotify.
The central theme of the “calmversation” was the US federal government’s embrace of “affirmative” care for gender dysphoric minors–whether their parents are onboard or not.
Denise and Benjamin also talked at length about the organizations currently engaged in promoting gender-identity instruction in US schools, a practice that has been in place for many years. In addition, they touched on some rather controversial topics, including the choice of some “affirming” parents to purchase fake penises (“packers”) and tucking underwear for their small children.
The day after her chat with Boyce, Denise added some more detail and clarifications about the topics they discussed. You can find them in this Twitter thread, also compiled here."
You have to absolutely not give an inch to these people. Not ONE INCH. It is not "gender-affirming care;" never let them get away with calling it that. It is genital mutilation, no different from forced clitoridectomies performed on little muslim girls, except it's done under anesthesia. Speaking of which, this lunacy brings out MY Inner Muslim; I am constantly fantasizing about amputating the surgeons' hands with an axe.
There are crossroads in history, almost never recognized except in retrospect, when intervention by Normal People would have made all the difference; Hitler, of course, probably the best example. If ever in your life you intend to be involved in politics, in my opinion this is that time. Burn out the wires to your representatives with phone calls, and in your mind decide exactly whom you want in office the next go-round. It probably shouldn't be very many of them who are in there now.
I appreciate your words, Jim. I hope to vote for DeSantis at the national level.
The greatest power the media has is to make us believe that a small minority of people is actually a great majority of people.
The progressive left—is a sector, Pew tells us, that is overwhelmingly white, privileged and accounts for just 6% of the U.S. population.
The $$$ to be made by those who advertise with the gatekeepers.
Totally agree, Jim! My sentiments exactly!
> the Marxist "activists" whose ultimate purpose is to bring down Western civilization.
I must disagree with this characterization. It's an way way to dehumanize them, but it completely mischaracterizes their motivations. Their *goal* is not to destroy civilization, it's the *result*. They ARE bringing down civilization (and not just Western civilization, if the last 5 years in Japan is any indicator). But it's not what they're trying to do.
Activists - all kinds of activists, but especially within this space - are doing what THEY believe is right. Just as a counselor at a Christian "pray away the gay" camp believes they are saving a person's soul by telling them not to be gay, so is a school councilor who would take a girl away from her parents to receive medical procedures. That school councilor likely believes in their heart they saving the life and soul of a troubled "boy-in-a-girl's-body" with ROGD. So are the lawmakers in California, Minnesota and Maine who pushed through legislation allowing that. It's sickening, and sad, and it's evil by nature -- but it's not deliberately evil.
If we are to fight our enemy, we must come to know that enemy. Karl Marx's economic theories from 130 years ago are tangentially related to the actual manifestation of horror that's come to be in the last 5-10 years.
tl;dr: don't call them Marxists; call them groomers.
Perhaps I wasn't clear: they intend to replace Western civilization with their concept of a Marxist utopia; whether all of them KNOW it by that name or not, that is still the goal. Certainly their puppet-masters, who are well-schooled in Marxist/socialist/communist/critical theory know precisely what it is, and while THEIR ultimate goal is world rule, their methods are straight out of Marx and Engels. And of course to bring about their imaginary Intellectuals' Utopia , they must first bring down the existing Western civilization, and believe me - that is their intent.
As for dehumanizing them, that is exactly what I intend to do. To successfully thwart an enemy who plans to destroy my world and that of everyone I love who comes after me, I need to first see them as not-human; as objects, and when it comes to blows - which I believe unfortunately it will - be mentally prepared for that fight.
So whether they believe in what they do, believe they are righteous, believe God is on their side does to me not matter. Whether they are "good people" who are simply misguided does not matter. They are fanatics; whatever is in their hearts is immaterial because the effect of their evil is the same, and they must be met with whatever it takes.
You're absolutely correct. I can't dispute or disagree with any of your points here, other than to say it is important to know your enemy to fight your enemy.
Also, while it might be a good thing for the world for it to "come to blows," let's face it, it just won't happen. If it's not happening in places like Venezuela, it CERTAINLY won't happen in US/Canada/Europe. Mankind is dying with a whimper not a bang. Sometimes when I go for a walk, I like to imagine a small country of separatists, even just some large patch of land, where a few good people could band together, hit a social reset switch, set up homesteads, pull the plug on the internet, get rid of processed sugars, ban experimental medical procedures, raise families, build their own schools. Of course, if people did try that, it would be infiltrated by feds faster than you can say "glow". But that's the only path forward I can imagine for a positive future civilization to emerge. We can't save the one we have - not by voting, and certainly not by violence - it's too rotten, and too many people are complicit in spreading that rot. Technology has taken us to our greatest triumphs, and is driving us to our greatest downfalls.
Not deliberately evil… I used to agree, but every day, there’s less and less evidence of that. These people know that what they are doing is grotesque; they know they are destroying lives. Which is why they tolerate ZERO questioning or dissent.
If they truly held the value of helping people above all others, they would at least listen to other views, to ensure that nothing potentially helpful for their patients would slip past.
Sorry; what I meant wasn't that they're not evil -- they *are*. Simply that they rationalize that evil to themselves.
People in general are good at rationalizing their actions. They do harm, but think of themselves as doing good. See also: terrorism -- terrorists often come out with a manifesto of some sort. Some of them are crazy, others were lead down their paths via extreme interpretations of religious texts (and a textbook about gender-affirmative care or critical race theory can absolutely serve as a religious text; can fill that "God hole"; that desire for a higher calling and purpose in life that we all feel). Even a pedophile is going to find a way to justify their behavior to themselves and others (they'd say something like, "kids can consent too")
So, I disagree with the statement, "These people know that what they are doing is grotesque; they know they are destroying lives". They DON'T think it's grotesque. A few might see it as Utilitarianism ("greatest good for the greatest number"). Eg, they know some subset of kids of they force into transition will later detransition or commit suicide. But they think the number to whom that would happen is smaller than the number of actual trans kids who need their help, and they're willing to make some sacrifices. Others simply see it as their moral duty or moral imperative to transition kids ("trans rights are human rights"); consequences be damned.
This is because you are not fighting back using their rules. Academics defend themselves but don’t sue and offend. Until they play the “game” of putting the activists on the defensive so their motives are uncovered they will continue to be oppressed and their work burned.
Academics defend their work, which their attackers know is pristine and legit. The Jornalists are playing a totally different game with non-ethical rules to attack work they know is impeccable.
Oh, God....hope you didn't have any direct contact/interactions with patients.
My wife, who is a pediatric nurse, has been saying this for years...because she is witness to it. It is more social pressure than physiology.
It reminds me of the girls who made the accusations in the Salem witch trials. Girls have a tendency to want to join in with other girls, particularly if the behavior gains attention.
As soon as the governor of Massachusetts decreed that spectral evidence (the supposed visions) was not admissible in court, the girls stopped having them. One of the girls apologized publicly many years later, seeming almost baffled that she was caught up in something so very wrong.
The Salem witch trials of the 17th century, the nervous disorders of the 18th century, the neurasthenia epidemic of the 19th century, and anorexia nervosa, repressed memory, bulimia, and the cutting contagion of the 20th century all share the same protagonist, magnifying and spreading her own pain: the adolescent girl.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/gender-ideology-is-toxic-nonsense
Puberty is a rough time. And modern life seems to have pushed puberty to a younger and younger age (some theorize this started with the widespread adoption of electric lighting). As a result, kids have fewer years of life experience before puberty scrambles their brains and bodies.
But it is sadly true that the adolescent female seems to be most susceptible to social contagion. Perhaps this is an unfortunate side effect of females having evolved to be instinctively skilled at forming social networks.
It likely doesn't help that we often infantilize our children for far longer. The experience many have before puberty is basically just playtime with some school breaking it up. Through most of history, and still in many parts of the world, children begin doing various forms or work as soon as they are able. Thus helping give them purpose and experience about what life will be like.
Childhood, as the modern world has conceived of it, is a fairly new invention, historically speaking. And devoting a tremendous amount of investment, as a society, toward entertaining children is even newer. The Greatest Generation fell prey easily to the impulse of giving their children the pleasant childhood that, thanks to the Depression, they themselves did not have.
Now we idolize childhood. We have attempted to extend it as long as possible by giving adolescents privileges that used to have to be earned, while permitting them to continue to revel in the lack of responsibility that comes with modern childhood.
Yes. For most of history we understood that life is hard. Bad things can and will happen. Cultures are full of myths, fairy tales, traditions, etc to teach these lessons. But now we are trying to prevent ANY difficulty in our lives and moreso the lives of our children, without realizing we are only making them even more susceptible to bad things because these children are not gaining the defenses to deal with them.
What is really sad is that doing a difficulty thing well or overcoming adversity is likely one of the most rewarding things humans do. When stripped of it we become weak and whiney (I am including myself in there).
Idolize is almost too soft a word it’s deified. Youth is beauty. Beauty is youth. Anthropologist David Lancy refers to it as the newly minted “neontocracy” where now children are now the most celebrated people in society. This is problematic for many reasons. The irrationality intrinsic to childhood is a major one.
Very well said Celia! How do we reverse this?
And social media makes it so much worse.
You might be explaining Beatlemania as well.
LOL! Oh, the innocence of it!
"some theorize this started with the widespread adoption of electric lighting)"
Hmmmm. I certainly do not know for sure, but I have assumed it has something to do with large-scale changes in diet to processed foods with high sugar content, coupled with way more sedentary lifestyles (sitting in front of TV or computer or phone screen).
Bovine growth hormones in hamburger have been implicated in rising numbers of children with "precocious puberty" (literally starting to get periods, for example, at age 6 or 7).
very plausible, considering bovine growth hormones have also been implicated in increasing the risk of premenopausal breast cancer
Hmmmmm. Maybe?
Remember the daycare scandals of the ‘80s - the satanic and ritual abuse of children in daycares across North America. People were actually arrested and imprisoned. Scary stuff.
Arrested, imprisoned, and harassed falsely as well
It was a blatant lie
Pretty sure that was entirely bullshit. Like repressed memories of dad the molester
Whatever happened to poltergeists? You don't hear about them any more.
Yup, it is very much like that but where teachers and administrators at school will go along with the idea that your girl is a witch and get her a broom - keeping the magic secret from parents. Total gaslighting and creating psych damage via triangulation with parents. The girls go little step by step down a garden path to a bad place. At first they might think they are just being sweet "allies" to the Gay-Straight Alliance Rainbow club. Then, they try out a trendy name or pronoun or style.... just keep them away from the doctors and therapists and hormone pushers at Planned Parenthood!
A perfect analogy.
Exactly. Social contagion.
It’s true wonder why young girls are so vulnerable.
Mostly due to how women evolved. Children are more likely to survive if they have a father who is a good provider and defender. Also more likely to survive if they have a mother/grandmother/aunt who is able to hold the family peacefully together and negotiate beneficial connections with other families without the need for bloodshed. Women are social because it benefits children for women to form social networks.
But just as men's innate impulses have a dark side, so do women's. Social cooperation can manifest as a willingness to go along with anything, just to remain part of the in-group. Indeed, a lot of bad things that feminists attribute to "the Patriarchy" are actually a result of women policing other women's behavior. Feminism itself seems to have no qualms about policing women's behavior.
So it is hard-wired in girls to want to cooperate socially. Not all of us conform with that wiring, but on the whole, women want to be approved of by other women. And that makes girls more vulnerable to being caught up in social contagions.
This reminds me of something that happened to me in a feminism course when I was studying for a masters in social work about 30 years ago. We had to write a paper on an example of how women are abused. I wanted to write a paper about the abusive nature of the large increase in Cesarean section rates. The professor told me that it would be an automatic F if I wrote this paper. When I asked her why, she said because we have already won this war- women are getting into medical school and there are many more female Ob Gyns. I said but women are still being harmed by unnecessary C-sections. She repeated, you will get an F if you write this paper.
I'm not at all surprised at your experience. If you resist the official narrative, you will be punished for it in whatever way they can punish you.
Excellent reply Celia thank you.
When we eliminate all of the various academies and associations and organizations that went along with this people will say
“But we need medical professionals and institutions we can’t just expel all of these people from the practice of science and medicine.”
Yeah well Germany still needed aviation experts after WWII but that doesn’t mean you keep the Luftwaffe.
Starting from scratch will be a dramatic improvement over whatever this is.
They say that in Nazi Germany the doctors were the most easily convinced and adamant adherents to the Cause. I can think of several reasons that's true. I hate to say that my experience with my colleagues is that if one pisses on a fire hydrant, they all piss on the fire hydrant - and thy will be the first to go after you if you don't. One doesn't get through medical school without being able to at least fake being a follower. There are some true leaders, yes, but they're rare, rare, rare.
There was a time when your average person held "Experts" in high regard, or at least defered to them. Today, Not So Much. (For Me) It started with Michael Crichton's State Of Fear, and the reaction to it. IF "They" (the Experts) are feeding me a line of Bull on The Climate, what else are they feeding me a line of Bull on? Sad to say as time has gone on, it appears, A Lot. When someone like Alex Jones is seen as just as credible as the CDC...Houston We Have A Problem.
Question: Is there a major national institution, that when they say This or That is True, your knee jerk reaction is to believe them? Because I'm having trouble coming up with one. We are seeing The Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome being played out in Real Time/Life.
"State of Fear" was great, especially if you dig into the footnotes to see how well Crichton documented all the statements about climate in the book. The propaganda techniques used on global warming worked so well the Left has adapted them to everything now. Climate scientists have been getting cancelled for telling the truth for decades.
Youtube
Michael Crichton | States of Fear: Science or Politics?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCCvOv3qZY&t=545s
Also
"Global Warming" Michael Crichton on Charlie Rose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4dIkEyfd0
9:30 mark
Something I hear the other day. Our prehistoric ancestors needed to know 2 things. 1. Where The Lions are, 2 where the bushes with the good berry's are. If you don't know whee the bushes with the Good Berry's are, you don't eat today, But you might eat tomorrow. If you don't know where The Lions are, You Die. We're had wired to look for and expect the worst.
State of Fear was one of his better novels.
IMO the politicization of science started with climate change. It was born in ‘89 with James Hanson and has been a relentless wrecking ball ever since. Like most politicized science, there was a grain of truth in Hanson’s initial warning, but it has been warped and disfigured beyond recognition. Climate change alarmism should serve as a warning. After 35 years of failed prediction after failed prediction, the political movement is seemingly as strong as ever. No mountain of counter factual data discourages the enlightened class.
It Is Frustrating. I just call it The Narrative.
Show me the $$$$, I will show you the bullshit, it’s as simple as that!
As my wife used to say about life in Big Corporate, "The answer to every question is 'money.' "
Well, the climate is changing and the Earth is getting warmer. There's no getting around that fact. The question is whether the pollution we create is responsible for that warming, or if Nature is doing it all on her own.
Me, I think Nature is doing what Nature has done for a billion years: Hot then Cold then Hot then Colt then Hot. Currently we're in a hot stage. Eventually we'll switch to cool, and then the next Ice Age. I don't see how the pollution we generate affects that very much,.
But reducing that pollution is a good idea even if doesn't touch the "warming" problem. Clear air and water is better for us than dirty, so why not reduce pollution on health grounds alone? Sure, if reducing pollution helps stem the heating, that's a bonus. But it's not necessary; getting rid of acid rain, forever chemicals, smog, and Cancer Alleys are worth it by itself.
Note that I said reduce, not eliminate. We can't eliminate pollution, not in the advanced society people want. But we can reduce pollution considerably, and should do as much as we can of that without melting down our economies.
Going whole-hog with modern nuclear will rid of us much fossil-fuel pollution. Rebuilding the national power grid will allow electric appliances and tools to replace many (though not all) gas-powered ones, cleaning the air even more. Capturing the methane generating by thousands of landfills and piping it into boilers can generate power locally. Planting billions of trees around the planet will clean the air, cool the land, and trap carbon, as well as provide homes for animals. Etc.
None of that hurts the economy, only enhances it; takes millions of tons of pollution out of land, sea, and skies; and may even slow the heating of the planet.
Carbon dioxide is not a "pollutant" in any normal sense. We humans generate a lot of CO2 with every breath. That CO2 is the most essential chemical for life on earth, after H2O. Every carbon atom in a corn plant or a Redwood Tree comes from the CO2 in the air. Co2 is not biologically harmful at 420 parts per million in the air. Increased CO2 has made the earth GREENER by an area the size of the 48 states. It is GOOD for plants, and ultimately good for all animal life, which depend on plants. There is a simple, straightforward way to address global warming if it ever actually becomes excessive. Solar Radiation Mitigation (SRM) is what happens naturally when a major volcano erupts and puts sulfate particles into the stratosphere. After Mount Pinatubo erupted in the 1990s, the earth's temperature dropped a full degree for a year. Humanity can cause that same effect intentionally by spraying sulfur oxides from the many commercial planes that fly across the northern hemisphere every day. Scientists have worked out that it is so cheap that any medium size nation could END GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE ENTIRE EARTH. Global warming alarmists are panicking because China might just do that, and take away their excuse for controlling our use of energy.
What is the "failure"? The earth is observably getting warmer. It's unrealistic to think that you can have 8 billion people, at least half of whom are burning coal, driving cars, etc. and have no effect at all on the atmosphere. We never had wildfire smoke days when I was growing up, rarely read about people dying of heatstroke, etc. Is some of it alarmist, sure, but even insurance companies and the military are factoring climate change into their decisions. They wouldn't be doing that if it was false.
And poverty has declined by 90% in the last one hundred years. The scares of the 70s never happened. I read the books and was alarmed but huh, NONE of them actually materialized. Regarding insurance companies and the military, you can't be serious. You have noticed that the military has been lying the US into wars for a VERY, VERY long time and their observations about climate are not be trusted or believed. Insurance companies have no special knowledge beyond mortality and risk tables that price the insurance you buy. They do not know if climate will change in either direction as it has numerous times in history. The 70s and 80s were full of alarmism about global cooling and by the way, cold temps kill many more than hot temps and that is observable based on actual facts, not projections by Al Gore, one of the great hucksters of the last 40 yrs and those like him. These people make Fauci look positively honest and well intended, when we know in fact he was and is not.
If you want to take an objective look at climate change, the first thing that strikes you is that for at least two decades this has been turned into a purely religious issue, with excommunication of heretics (“deniers”) and immense pressure on climate scientists to provide only “correct” answers in their study. As this immense pressure is brought on the scientific community and the public at large, all the legacy media would never say a word on the cultist aspect of the phenomenon. A dead giveaway is that the whole thing is sold strictly as a bundle: man-made climate change, “attribution science” (all negative weather events are due to climate change), what the priorities should be (prioritize disease elimination which can save millions of lives at relatively little expense or spend many trillions on forward models). Now if you’re just questioning the forced transition to EVs (which is clearly shown to have minimum results) you are a “denier”, just as much as if you would say there’s no man-made climate change. You have to be completely brainwashed not to notice these clear signs of a major con job.
History has shown "experts" to be spectacularly wrong time after time, particularly when they all benefit from having the same government-approved and funded point of view. No, show me the numbers. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
CO2 represents four parts in ten-thousand of the atmosphere, equivalent to the first four seconds of a 2-1/2 hour walk, to put it in perspective. And it's not even the most common after nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor. It is 1/30th as common as argon (0.93%). So why don't the global warming people target argon? Because it's not man-made and can't be used as a cudgel to further their Marxist world-government agenda.
So a trace gas, constantly being removed from the atmosphere and used by plants to make the oxygen that keeps all animals alive, including humans, in an atmosphere that is a mere sliver compared to the size of the planet, is swamping the effects of radionuclide decay in the earth and radiant energy from a nearby star?
I don't think so.
As this author is maintaining......it's about the cancellation of the discussion as much as the results of a certain kind -- not getting published. They limit the discussion to their view only. Dangerous.
For you to say Climate Change is real....because the military and Insurance companies say so!! My God......let's never stop hearing alternative viewpoints.
The actual number of people dying from heat has been dropping drastically throughout the 20th Century since the invention of air conditioning. As for smoke, I am 73 and there was a lot of wildfire smoke over the years. The number of actual forest fire acres has dropped over the past century as we have gotten smarter. As Smoky Bear says, 90% of wildfires are caused by careless humans. Brush and trees do not spontaneously combust at 120 degrees. They need a careless cigarette or an unextinguished campfire to get going.
Exactly. Abigail Shrier called out the over reliance on "experts" in her book "Irreversible Damage". I was already jaded about government, banking/economists, media... Gender Ideology and the complicity of medicine, pharma , and the Education Complex added a few more to the list. We are in the lobotomy era only much worse.
Here is The Problem. Sometime They (The Experts) Are Going To Be Right. And no one will believe them. What if the CDC issues a warning about a new pandemic, and its a Black Death level pandemic and (say) 40% of the population doesn't believe them? By playing politics with Covid they have destroyed their credibility. I wish I had an answer.
When the next Black Death level pandemic hits, people will notice that 30-60% of the people they know are dying - they won't need experts to tell them to be careful.
Yes, I agree. They played politics with Covid and our children... maybe it was useful to have a "Civil Rights Movement of Our Time" as Biden said when he celebrated the "transition" of 8 year old girls on his campaign trail?
I liked this comment on a recent PITT substack article so much I want to reprint it here:
""Mama Ain't Playin'
Jul 7
See Bob Ostertag's book, Sex Science Self. Artificial hormones have always been a solution in search of a problem. They've been used to try to turn gay men straight; they've been used to chemically castrate sex offenders; and now they're being used to turn our daughters into cosmetic simulacrums of tiny men, and to turn our sons into false women.
I wouldn't trust an endocrinologist at this point any farther than I could spit a rat. (Dr. Will Malone of Idaho is the lone exception. He's been pursuing a quixotic challenge against his professional organization because of their creepy experimentation on kids.)"
The AMA lost its bearings years ago when it decided to become trendy. The AAPS--American Assoc of Physicians and Surgeons is pretty diametrically opposite to AMA: logic, not dogma. Reason, not populism. I tend to buy what they’re selling--subject to verification, of course. Ronnie was right.
American Assoc of Physicians and Surgeons. Never heard of them. Thanks, learn something new every day.
Wikipedia explains it ALL
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association that promotes conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, such as HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, and vaccine and autism connections. The association was founded in 1943 to oppose a government attempt to nationalize health care. The group has included notable members, including American Republican politicians Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Tom Price.
____________________________________________________________________________
Sounds like they are not buying The Narrative. This is a + for me.
AAPS. They are Good Dudes.
I lasted in the AMA for six months of a 40-year career, 'cos I needed the health insurance. Nincompoops, counterfeits, and psychopaths in the main.
Except there is no connection between vaccines and autism. If they are promoting that nonsense, then count me out.
They’re pretty up front about opposing it. One recent article was entitled “Covid-19: a weapon to fundamentally transform America.”
Should give you an idea how the group swings.
I can't think of one either. The last 5-6 years erased the ones I trusted.
This may have been The Goal. How does a society function if Large parts of that society don't really trust its institutions?
I would say by looking at our society that it doesn't.
For me, the last one to fall was the FBI. I had full belief in the FBI until 2016.
AT A revent meeting of the Death Club, one of our members said that he loved the group because there were no "experts". just a bunch of us talking about what the heck happens to us when we take our last breath.
As a 75 yea old Christian I am REALLY LOOKING FORWARD to it. I get to go Home. The Bible doesn't really say much about it, except its Really Cool. I fully expect my mind to be Blown, and to say things like Of Course! Why Didn't See This Before, Its All So Plain Now.
I still own the homeplace where my cousin-the-widower doctor grew up, and several years ago I brought him from his nursing home to stay in the Old Place for a night. He was in his early nineties and suffered horribly from joint pain but was SO glad to re-live older and better times.
He'd lost his wife about twenty years before. We were having a nice discussion about her over breakfast and he told me, "I'm looking forward to dying soon. I miss my wife so very much and I am looking forward to the day I can see her again." I hope he got his wish.
If you have never read it before, check out Mitch Album's The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It is delightful.
Thank you, thank you. I have been participating on this BBS for over a year. I consider myself to be a moderate conservative. I know to many moderate is a dirty word. I try to keep an open mind. On some things I am hard core conservative on others, not so much.
The point of this preamble is, I hope, to prove I am not some sort of right wing fanatic who sees a communist behind every bush. With trepidation I have been saying the Democrats are now socialists and some hard core communists. There is very little difference between a socialist and a communist if any difference at all.
In the past anyone who said that called anyone or an organization a communist was lumped in with Joe McCarthy as a glassy eyed nut case. You calling out the Marxists gives me some validation that I am not a glassy eyed right wing fanatic. I am not a fanatic. I am a realist.
Thanks again.
Ah Ha! So in other words you are a Globalist, GOPe, RINO, Secret Socialist, who voted for Hillary Clinton. As we suspected All Along! :-)
"I need some new conspiracies, all the old one came true." Elon Musk
All of the above.
LOL!
I think the difference between socialists and communists is that socialists win elections and communists have revolutions to gain power. Once in power, there isn't much difference. Whether the riots of 2020 were the beginning of the American communist revolution remains to be seen.
JUST A THOUGHT TEX.
I don't believe there are capitalist's and communist's anymore. For instance, both Hitler and Mao were ultimately monster's capable of rationalizing any human atrocity for the sake of power and control. No ideology describe's the horror they represented. Even if captured no human punishment would have atoned for the human damage they inflicted. Label's like socialist/communist or capitalist, even corporate fascism serve as smokescreen's. None of those word's appear in our Constitution and we accept defeat when we allow what are actually avaricious thug's to control the American national dialogue by forcing the conversation into those term's. The brave judge in Louisiana that called out the D.C. surveillance state and placed an injunction against their collusion with tech billionaires to subvert American free elections and speech wasn't fighting an ideology, he is in combat with the DNC/EU/CCP/Davos perp's hoping to turn the world into an open air prison. (Subscription journalism helped make the ruling possible.) The perp's believe in power, throw away labor and the exploitation of resources without consequence. That's it. The Constitution is in their way.
The economic capture and compromise of elected political system's throughout Western "democracy" by billionaire financier's is allowing their obvious attempt's to re-engineer the political/social/financial narrative across the world and implement CCP style (15 minute cities/travel by permit/citizen mass surveillance, etc.) repression of individual freedoms like speech and movement. European's are fighting back. The so called "globalist" DNC/Davos crowd has wrecked every life and society it touched. The French riot's, the Dutch farmers, the collapsed economy in Sri Lanka, the hidden citizen rendition prison's in China (where they make their money), the American 2008 crash, arrest's for thought crimes in Great Britain, all.
Who, in the name of Bud Light, is funding and organizing the opposition to free speech and idea's in America? The tactic is certainly recognizable. False moral indignation, the mob pile-on, cancellation, career and character criminalization/assassination, the poseur expert and the corporate/federal grant given to well paid class war elitist grifter's who have no actual moral argument but somehow find support from MSM/surveillance state operatives. Who does chaos serve? Could it be the international looter's who gutted American industry and walked away with pension funds, homes and savings in 2008?
America is living inside a manufactured lie. Throw the rascals out (and prosecute).
I think of "socialist" sort of like I think of "agnostic," who's really an atheist without the strength of conviction. Maybe "commie-light" would be a better term, but no matter; in the end the effect is the same.
Well put.
Or, Lonesome, labeled a “MAGA, White Supremest, Racist, ... blah, blah, blah ... fill in the derogatory blank”
I totally agree (identify) with your statement!
I want to start an anonymous site called “how I became MAGA” and share stories from moderate conservatives and liberals on how the came to notice and disassociate from the extremes on their side and when and how they were labeled MAGA for breaking from the “woke” narrative!
"There is very little difference between a socialist and a communist if any difference at all."
I dunno, one can hold that the government should be run for the benefit of ordinary people, not the globalist plutocracy. I don't think that quite equates to Stalinism. Denmark seems like a nice place.
None of the Scandinavian countries are socialist countries. The left would like you to think they are but they are not.
They are capitalist countries with large social programs and they tax the living daylights out of their citizens to maintain these programs.
The U.S. taxes the living daylights out of me already so what's the difference. Everyone acts like Federal Income Tax is the only tax, and it's low compared to other countries, but add in 15% FICA tax and the 28% suddenly becomes 43%. Then state and local taxes and you're well past the 50% range. Then add health care costs on top of that which you wouldn't pay in most other countries and Denmark doesn't look so bad.
... which makes them 'socialist' as most people use the term. One can define socialist and equivalent to communist but that's not what most people do, they define socialism as a more humane mixed economy. I know no self described socialist who advocates the downfall of capitalism, they rather want to tame it and redirect some of the benefits to working people.
The Scandinavian countries are different in that their socialism grew much more organically. They have long been societies focused on charitable giving (partly, I suspect, due to Lutheranism) and ensuring the common good (a necessity in their harsh climate). The idea of turning those efforts over to the government to administer more centrally (and theoretically, more effectively)--while appalling to us Americans--seemed perfectly logical to them.
But their Leftists have largely taken over, importing thousands of "refugees" who will not assimilate, and who are wreaking havoc on their societies.
Denmark seems to be the only one of those nations that has attempted to fight back. But with the collapse of the anti-immigration government, I have my doubts as to whether they will be able to hold the line.
I don't know if the Danish Gov runs any businesses. They through taxes pay for everything.
"But their Leftists have largely taken over"
It goestoshowya how nearly useless terms like 'Leftist' have become. By *definition* socialists are leftists, no? Yet, as you allude, the 'left' is now equated with the progressives. But IMHO that's a hostile takeover and as a paleo-socialist I can assure one and all that I loathe woke Progressivism as much as any Rightie. Meanwhile the Progressives, tho considering themselves lefties, have been seduced by the globalist plutocrats (are they lefties or righties? ) to do the work of dividing and weakening the working class. Good work comrades!
I refer to myself as a truth seeker. Much in common with you.
I didn't think that anything was scarier than "equity" based science; I was wrong. Simply reinforces my bias against any doctor much younger than I am.
I’ve already decided to never go to a doctor who graduated from med school after 2020 (might also be my cutoff for finishing their internship and residency, we’ll see). The absolute nonsense they’re being force fed these days is appalling. Wait until people start dying from the future malpractice. One can only hope that the majority of the victims are those that DEI medicine was supposed to protect. Poetic Justice.
The more exclusive the institution, the more the people inside it will do anything they are told, in order to retain their position.
I think most of them don't realize their own behavior - it simply becomes the default to follow what the rest of the group does.
Lemmings.
"Physicians were one of the strongest demographics behind the Nazi vote. Lawyers were generally favorable to Nazi policies as well. Intellectuals are not a single group, but the ones with an economic interest in politics often favored National Socialism.
Doctors were interested in eugenics ideology, at the time a key Progressive platform. Lawyers saw growth in various racial law areas and expanding scope of criminal activity as new areas for work. Their economic interests were more or less aligned with Fascism.
Other intellectuals, such as Marxists were opressed, but it was very common for KPD members to join the Nazis and there was no particular problem with them doing so. Only active Communists were prosecuted.
In conclusion it depends on the type of intellectuals, but the white collar professions were generally Fascist. If you were to express it as a percentage it would be high among professional degrees. Finding unveristy data would be harder because there was no centralized state University system at the time.
Also, if it helps, Technical University Munchen was a major Fascist organizing ground."
Abortion and Eugenics in Nazi Germany Henry P. David, Jochen Fleischhacker and Charlotte Hohn Population and Development Review Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 81-112
German Lawyers and the State in the Weimar Republic Kenneth F. Ledford Law and History Review Vol. 13, No. 2 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 317-349
The Germans were inspired by the eugenics movement in America of the early 1900s. Woodrow Wilson was a fan.
The enlightened wonderful Swedes didn't stop eugenics until the 70s.
https://www.nature.com/articles/37848
European fascists were inspired by Woodrow Wilson. Another guy with a PhD.
Thank you. Great and very pertinent information. Hitler may not have been particularly well educated, but the Nazi hierarchy was chock full of people with doctorates.
Fifty years ago I was listening to a CBS radio commentator say 90% of all SS officers had their PHD. If true, it proves you don't have to be a semiliterate red neck to be a violent fanatic.
And the intellectual elites are quick to attack the intellectual capability/education of conservatives.
I've heard that too. They weren't just thugs, they were well-educated thugs.
Bari, thank you for another article showing the politicization of almost everything, medicine, law, biology, high school debate, et al. When science is beyond debate, it's propaganda. By the way, historically, there were far more transgender males than females, and their gender dysphoria began around age two. Now we have many more transgender girls who began feeling like boys in their teenage years with no such antecedent feelings. This is strong evidence that ROGD should be studied as a possible social contagion.
The recent COVID situation is a testament - when doctors en masses turned away from therapeutic means to help sick and instead followed the treatment formula the party required.
I truly believe that bias is a certainty when the money comes from a politicized and corrupt source. The NIH frequently wants “popular” and/or “sexy” results.
I appreciate this insight. I tend to think intelligent people think for themselves. I will adjust my thought on that.
When the war in Ukraine started, our Mexican gardener said: “yeah, sure, go ahead, load them with weapons, that area will be in fire for a decade now…”
It will. It will be nothing short of Afganistán.
While our Silicon Valley highly educated elite is cheering.
It is galling. Ang your fardener was spot on.
Uh, huh. In 1930s Germany the doctors were actually out ahead of the politicians. So, it was mostly the other way around with the medical community convincing the politicians who found it useful. Sound familiar?
"Still, doctors embraced eugenics with shocking enthusiasm and radicalism. They didn’t simply “go along” with Hitler, they were already so steeped in this quasi-scientific ideology that they were out ahead of Nazi politicians. “The German medical community set its own course in 1933. In some respects this course even outpaced the new [Nazi] government, which had to rein in the profession's eager pursuit of enforced eugenic sterilisations.”
"Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care AUG 30, 2022"
https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
I recommend reading the whole thing.
"Sound familiar?"
Brandon went to town halls during his campaign and celebrated the "transition" of 8 year old girls, talking about "The Civil Rights Movement of our Time". In the same way, the politicians in Germany found the Ideology coming out of medicine very useful in the 1930s. Medicine was out in front of politics then as now.
BTW, Rick Levine really needs to be removed from his position as first female admiral health secretary - where he promotes harm to children and calls it "care".
Rare indeed. And generally vilified. Especially if they have the temerity to be correct.
As you know.
Never held YOU back, by God.
Well, I do have kinda thick skin.
And that's why I call you Moshe.
Me too, middle school teacher. And they switch “genders” as often as peer groups. If only we felt bold enough to express and discover our masculinity, femininity without making chemical/surgical alterations. Without labels. Just be a good person. Spend some time thinking about something other than yourself.
From my friends with kids in middle school....it is now considered cool to question your gender. What an easy way for a lonely kid to gain acceptance. So very sad that the institutions of education are supporting this very harmful nonsense.
Of course social contagion is the source of this "epidemic" of young people suddenly developing severe gender dysphoria. It is blindingly obvious to anyone not invested in the trans activist ideology, and I'd say it probably is to them as well and that they have to perform some mental gymnastics to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.
I took my 1 year old son to Boston Children's Hospital's ("BCH") Weymouth location on June 29th for some bloodwork. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the waiting room was BEDECKED with the Pride flag. There were at least 9 flags draped on every conceivable surface of the not-too-large waiting room/reception area, one of which was probably at least 3 x 5 feet.
For additional context, the BCH Weymouth location is co-located with a Brigham & Women's ("BWH") satellite location. I mistakenly took my son to the BWH phlebotomy lab at first, not realizing that there was an entirely separate space for BCH. There was not a Pride flag to be seen anywhere. Neither was there anything in the main entryway of the hospitals' shared space. ONLY the waiting room of one of the preeminent CHILDREN'S HOSPITALS in the COUNTRY was festooned with the flag. It was absolutely ridiculous, deeply offensive, and a WT ACTUAL F moment for me.
To heighten the surrealism of my BCH Weymouth experience, I had a hair appointment at my salon in the South End of Boston (Boston's gay neighborhood) later the same day. The salon is owned by a gay man, and many of the employees are gay. I counted one [very reasonably sized] Pride flag on the salon's front window. Frankly, I wouldn't have cared if my salon had 100 flags; it would have been appropriate if the salon's owner had made that choice. Not so much for a BCH waiting room.
I am working on a complaint to BCH that won't see the light of day, but I sure as hell hope that The FP et al. bring pressure to bear on these institutions, because they've completely lost the plot.
Agreed. I almost hate to use the term but its definitely a social contagion fueled by peer pressure and put into hyperdrive via social media. Parents who go all in and let their kids do the drugs/surgeries also need to have their heads examined.
I'm surprised more Parents aren't opting for homeschooling due to this bizarre phenomenon.
I think they are the number of kids being home schooled is way up
My wife taught high school math for years at a public school in our community. She saw the same thing. What 9th grade girl who isn't "popular" wouldn't love to be celebrated for "coming out" as L or T or Q? Hard to believe this isn't obvious to anyone with an open mind.
Oh, wait, that's the problem.
That’s the shocking part about this whole story. If we want it to go away I suggest we stop the federal $$$$ it will disappear as if by magic.
I think this situation is largely due to the huge push to get women into medicine and STEM. Women, even the sciency ones, in general are far more controlled by desire to conform, to force others to conform, and to reach consensus - even when the consensus is dead wrong - than men are. Simple as that. Women are far more susceptible to fads and crazes.
(Disclaimer: plenty of fine freethinking women etc but I’m talking the middle of the bell curve and generalities.)
Where we go from here: I don’t know. I guess we watch as science drives off a cliff. Wheee!!!!
First of all, this should be called ‘conversion therapy’ not ‘gender affirming care’.
But aside from that, one thing I haven’t heard mentioned is how the Democrats doing this to children are actually *worse* than child molesters. Someone who is sexually molested as a child at least has a chance to reverse the impacts of that trauma with psychotherapy.
Finally, I would like to see an article that outlines how the specific type of psychological and emotional manipulation represented by the whole
“You can have a dead child or a trans child.”
ploy, is a tactic used almost exclusively by literal psychopaths, and almost all Democrats are willing to engage in this……….
The manipulative hysterics involved in convincing parents that their children’s lives are on the line if they don’t sign on to all of this are deeply disturbing.
It’s coercion, plain and simple. This is not allowed in the practice of medicine (respect for autonomy) or in scientific discovery (informed consent). Ironically, it is the gender practitioners who have coerced and provided care without scientific evidence and therefore, without informed consent. Thank you to these brave researchers! Our children and patients are worth it!
Children/teens/young people cannot "consent". They are too young to truly understand.
Yup.
I want to see the statistics on adolescents killing themselves because they were unable to transition.
I doubt there are many. Suicide and becoming "trans" are two extreme escape routes for kids who feel awkward and uncomfortable in their own skin, but you are still alive if you "transition." It seems more likely that suicidal kids become "trans" than the other way around.
I suspect that the results will be so confounded by co-morbidities (autism, depression, et al) that it will be impossible to show a link between lack of "gender affirming care" (Dear Lord I so hate this term!) and self-harm.
That would probably be true, that a causation link is difficult to establish. That is always true with respect to mental health conditions. But, we can turn that argument around. It is the responsibility of the medical team to develop a body of evidence that the adolescents' distress has been caused by gender dysphoria of a persistent type BEFORE using invasive medical strategies developed for treating gender dysphoria. In fact, there is poor or nonexistent evidence that medically transitioning adults is a necessary, safe, or effective treatment for any case of gender dysphoria.
Well stated. I concur wholeheartedly.
I’d like to end the career of everyone who forced anyone to ask for that evidence in the first place.
Because if they’re willing to lie to coerce someone they’ve got zero business being anywhere in healthcare. Ever.
Particularly when you consider the rare instance of teen female suicide relative to boys.
The use and abuse of children as ideological tools by adults has become more widespread and disturbing in recent years. My neighbour was thrilled when she could give her five year old the Covid vaccine - a healthy girl who was never, ever at risk from the disease. We have an entire generation of children and young adults who think they are doomed because of climate change. And now we have a new generation of young girls getting irreversible medical interventions for the cause.
God we are really sick in America, and what’s worse there is no cure.
It is called grooming.
Agreed. This was used, in the case of the Harvard Women’s Swimming coach, to hold tongues regarding Lia Thomas who swims in their conference.
There is also no data to support the truth of the statement used in the coercion.
It is "conversion therapy" in its original sense as well. Many of the young people being subjected to it are actually homosexual; their attraction to the same sex is being used as "proof" that they are the "wrong" gender. And this exactly how Iran "treats" homosexuals--a homosexual person can either transition or be executed.
The emphasis is no longer about making sure gay kids know they’re no less a boy or girl for being attracted to the same sex and supporting them in their current bodies, allowing them to fully experience puberty and grow up gay.
The Left is teaching young people that the rejection of traditional notions of feminity and masculinity is a medical condition (gender dysphoria) that requires treatment in the form of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
As a girl who grew up in a time when the stereotypes of "feminine" and "masculine" were being actively crushed, I am deeply disturbed to see those old stereotypes being trotted out again as a means of convincing children that they should be eager to be mutilated.
This is particularly scary for me because I was a tomboy. If I had been subjected to this rhetoric in my early youth....
That has been one of my major "WTF" issues with all of this. I have a niece that transitioned far enough to be on testosterone for a time (early 20's). She is back to being a woman now. But she now says that some of the prime motivations were that she wasn't very girly, so she felt that maybe she wasn't a girl. Yet when growing up in the 80's I thought we were constantly working to teach people that gender roles were not static. That you could be a girl who likes sports or short hair or whatever way you define not being girly.
It is like we have jumped back 50 years with all of this. Now more than any time in my life we are putting these walls around various labels and saying "If you don't fit into these walls, then you must be something else".
Boxes. The Tumblr generation delighted in finding new boxes to put themselves in. And those boxes have become cages.
yup...once enough people became Gay or Lesbian, it was not longer something that made you interesting or unique (thus got you no attention on social media) so we keep adding more. More ways to label just so someone can get validation for doing nothing. Eventually they will get to the same place many of us already are...they are individuals. Their label will just be their name.
"She is back to being a woman now." Of course, she's always been a woman/girl. It is sad how regressive this all is.
Agreed, Celia. How many little girls growing up in the 1970s who loved Legos and Tinkertoys would have been manipulated into a regimen of puberty blockers if they were born a half century later?
Is this a new form of eugenics? Once surgeries are performed on either sex the ability to have children is basically lost. Except, we see pregnant “men” on the cover of Vanity Fair. I am glad that this is finally going to be fully researched. Families suffering need answers and the correct treatment.
Pretty much, if you ask me.
Yes, and if you are uncomfortable in any way as a girl at puberty, socially or physically, but you like boys - no problem - you are a gay boy in a girl body!
Cultural Marxism means breaking down everything.
It is absolutely unreasonable! I cannot fathom the damage being done to a generation.
Not only the SOGD kids but everyone watching how they are embraced and celebrated.
I agree with most everything you so clearly stated. Do you believe that it's only "Democrats doing this to children"? That seems like an emotional reaction. Have a lovely day.
It is overwhelmingly Democrat. If you are a Democrat and oppose this evil, thank you. It’s clear to this Independent that this and wokism drec is pushed by Democrats because they use divisiveness to get votes.
Thank you for your polite reply. It's always better to respectfully speak to people. I don't really want to go there - i.e., about Democrats using divisiveness to get votes, because that will just open up a rabbit hole about all the damage that the Republicans have done. It won't end well. Please enjoy your day. It looks like a good one from where I'm sitting.
The primary damage done by Republicans is their total failure to stop Democrats from erecting a psychopathic totalitarian regime in Washington DC.
I'm afraid that more than one republican has participated in its erection, staring with the "Patriot" Act.
This is correct but it is a secondary problem.
The Security State has been, ironically, hijacked by left-wing extremists and it is being used to target domestic political opposition. But the only reason they are doing that is because $6 trillion is at stake annually and they need to silence and destroy their opposition so they can make it $8 trillion.
The problem is the spending.
Absolutely!
100% this
Hammer, hit, nail head.
👆🏻
I also believe is free debate, but understand her comment. She was just asking for clarification and didn’t want to go down a path that would lead everyone too far from the main topic.
Disagree. So what if Republicans also try and demonize their opponents? They do. That's politics. Happens every day 24/7 on both sides of the aisle. The difference is when you do so at the expense of defenseless children. That shit crosses all lines. It is sinister. Yet the Democrats actually support mutilating children so they can call their opponents transphobes. They think it is a winning political strategy that will garner votes.
And the author of the comment is saying because the other guy does bad things we somehow can't discuss the bad things we do. Can't get much more juvenile and lazy than that. It is a transparent 4th grade playground "whataboutism" debate tactic.
Agree, JB, thanks for stating the obvious!
Yes. This. More of this.
Thank you for your very excellent reply. I will absolutely take everything you said into consideration. However, I don't need to like egocentrics and showboating. That said, "this is the comment section of The Free Press" (thanks for the reminder, for some reason I thought, just for a minute or two, that I was responding to my local Patch group, where people routinely behave poorly). As such, my comments are just as worthy as are those of, say, rude people with big egos.
It started under Obama:
"Obama made transgenderism a pet issue of his administration,"
https://www.thestandardsc.org/jennifer-bilek/billionaires-funding-transgender-movement-for-profit/
Then, Biden ran with it - celebrating the "transition" of 8 year old girls at town halls during his campaign. No one paid much attention. Then, he went and appointed Rick/Rachael Levine as Assistant Health Secretary. The dude goes to places like Duke University to be part of symposiums promoting Gender Ideology and youth "transition".
No Democrat politicians disagree with it except for Tulsi Gabbard who became an Independent. Plenty of old school Republicans go along with it and veto legislation that would protect children because GI is very profitable.
Follow the money
Same goes for unnecessary surgeries
Well, in the US it absolutely is only Democrats, yes. Internationally there are different parties, obviously, but I just call all left-wing extremists ‘Democrats’ for simplicity.
Calling it “emotional” on my part to correctly label the party affiliation of the people who are doing this is a deceptive linguistic ploy.
You might call it ‘partisan’ because I could forego making note of who they vote for. But calling it “emotional” is an attempt by you to subtly paint me as an irrational actor incapable of reasoned analysis. Nice try!!
They are, in fact, all Democrats.
Kevin, I don't appreciate your sarcasm. You seem to have a need to be "right". Isn't it always better when people try to understand one another without ego getting in the way? Nice try!!
Oh,no! Someone doesn’t appreciate sarcasm! Whatever will we do?! Quick! Fetch the fainting couch! 🤣
Aaron, “clutch your pearls” !!!
May I suggest switching to decaf?
Incorrect. My primary need is for others to submit to the power of my rightness.
(somehow she did not recognize the sarcasm in this comment 😂😂)
Goodbye then.
Well, that's very open minded. How can you expand your horizons if you don't listen to the opposition?
You must be a Democrat. (sarcasm)
Is that your ego leaving or you?
"Kevin, I don't appreciate your sarcasm."
Now, THAT's funny.
Refusing to affirm my sarcasm could make me suicidal.
(this is a joke)
Carry out your statements so we could be rid of you.
Yep, there's no light at the end of that tunnel..
Unless it's an oncoming train......
He's a troll. Don't respond to him!
Sorry to disagree but "Kevin Durant" is both hilarious and insightful.
We'd be poorer without his dark commentary.
An interesting thread about sarcasm that reminds me of something I've always practiced.
I tried to never use sarcasm when raising my young children, believing that children didn't really appreciate or understand it. I also don't tease dogs because it clearly messes with the bonds established through trust. And my wife really doesn't do well with sarcasm as much as she enjoys the fact that my high school and college friends still routinely and casually use sarcasm while interacting with each other.
I on the other hand used sarcasm (and its second cousin, irony) often with my son as he grew up - only in commenting on issues other than himself. Never directed at him.
Women are wired by evolution, because of their size disadvantage, to use emotional manipulation.
Using sarcasm indicates you are not taking things too seriously and also that you have some insight into things happening below the surface. As such you are not a good target for emotional manipulation. This can be annoying to women, especially when it disrupts their agenda. But obviously it depends on the woman and there are varying degrees etc etc etc.
I am a big fan of sarcasm. But grew up as a tomboy, and I am still into building things with tools (whether that be a sewing machine or a hammer), so clearly I am not a REAL woman.
You’re not the norm, let’s say, but not that strange. It’s not like you have hooves like Hillary Clinton.
Sarcasm is an in-the-minute form of satire, and is very useful as such.
“Uninformed” is a nonsensical pejorative in this context. “Unproductive” would fit better with the rest of your claim.
Sarcasm often arrives as a disgust reaction when someone realizes they aren’t actually having a conversation but are instead participating in someone else’s bad faith narcissistic narrative push.
There’s a lot of sarcasm online from people who don’t feel like telling the person they are talking to
“Oh you’re a dishonest scumbag and there’s no point in talking to you.”
I'm reading this reply, Kevin - and I can't help but think that by using words like 'deceptive linguistic ploy', 'subtly paint me', 'Nice try' - you are in fact faintly praising Theresa as a worthy opponent. She just doesn't realize it. Maybe she's new here.
You're getting softer week after week, I've noticed..
Keep it up.
:)
If you think there is bipartisan support for "gender affirming care" then you live under a rock. Name one State where this barbaric mutilation of childen has been outlawed by Democratic lawmakers. Democrats support this insanity because they have made a political calculation this will get them votes by painting their opponents as bigots and transphobes. They don't give a flying fuck about what happens five years later when a girl wants her breasts back or wants to have children and can't. But thanks for wishing me a lovely day.
Beautiful reply no sarcasm here, just a direct punch to the gut.
You raise a good question. It seems to me it's only Democrats, liberals, and those on the far left, but I doubt there's any scientific evidence supporting this.
Do you know of any conservatives who support hormone blocking, child mutilation, etc.?
Is this practice promoted in private or charter schools for instance?
I'm aware of one Republican legislator (who has a trans grandchild and has been subverted by the ideology) who has voted with the Democrats to not prevent clinics from transing kids. He's in Tennessee.
Great question, 234!
Have you ever met a Conservative mother of a child with gender dysphoria?
I have said this before. Allowing a child to make the radical and dangerous decision to change their sex is wrong. Teenagers are not know for making good decisions.
If a kid wants a sex change, let them do it when they are adults and on their own dime.
It's absolute madness that we won't let a 17-year-old get a tattoo or have a beer, but we'll let a 13-year-old commit to a lifetime of sterility and unnecessary medical intervention.
In the People's Republic of Massachusetts, a child of 12 or older must have parental consent for medical treatment - except where sex or drugs are concerned, in which case the child must give consent for the provider to share info with the parents.
Really great policy [sarcasm]
Lonesome, once again I quote Bill Maher (a lifelong Democrat & now a voice AGAINST the WOKE Left), “I wanted to be a Pirate when I was a kid. I’m glad my parents didn’t take me to a Dr. and have my eye removed & leg cut off, just so I could wear a patch & peg-leg”
At least he didn't want to be a mermaid. His parents could have had both his legs amputated and surgically implanted a big fish tail.
I completely agree - accept for the fact that it is impossible for anyone to ever change his/her sex. This is all damaging the body for cosmetic changes.
And, children cannot possibly make these decisions. I think the Gender pushers will be in trouble on the consent issue...
Gender pushers are vile, pernicious, perverts.
I know one. She is direct with her daughter in both her love and her disagreement with what her daughter believes. They are walking through it and we will see where it ends.
And the social contagion describes perfectly what the daughter experienced at her public school! Her and a large number of young women suddenly deciding they are not female any more.
I know just one. Her daughter (now "son") has BPD (diagnosed) and has exhibited traits of it and/or high-functioning autism since childhood. I observed this personally, since the girl is my daughter's best friend. She spent several years living as an informal foster child in our home, due to the emotional havoc she was wreaking on her family and her father was wreaking on her.
This is absolutely a case of social contagion. If she had not been introduced to this idea on the internet, it would never have occurred to her. And her BPD makes her highly susceptible to "trying on" a different personality. (It's worth noting that another girl with BPD among my children's friends went through a period of a couple of years declaring herself to be trans.)
My friend--the conservative mom--has gone along with the charade because she loves her (adult) child and wants to maintain a relationship with her. But there is no "Transhausen by Proxy" as we see so often among Leftist moms who are eager for living proof of their Woke "virtue."
Many girls on the autism spectrum are not fitting into the tough social circles of middle school girls. An inability to "read" the complicated social interactions like understanding sarcasm can isolate the girl from other girls. Being isolated from girls, but able to maintain some friendship with boys, leaves her vulnerable to the suggestion that she is a boy. The ground is fertile and the internet has the trans seed.
I have heard, but do not have the stats, that it is largely in the urban centers where girls are requesting to transition. If this is true, then it is a fashion, like the tattoo, for example, albeit a more radical one.
I suspect that, since the internet is driving a lot of this, concentration in urban centers would be largely a matter of population density. Also large urban centers have "clinics" to promote and facilitate transition.
It's everywhere - but more in liberal areas - and spreading. Parents on the PITT substack are from all over. There is a useful chart here:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-is-this-happening-and-who-can
"Here it is in a graph: Red Wyoming had only 0.56% trans-ID youth while Blue New York state was over five times higher at 3.00%. "
I don't see it simply going out of fashion when it is so profitable:
"U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-sex-reassignment-surgery-market
Abigail Shrier has written elequently
"Little Miss Trouble
Why I’m Not Waiting for the Gender ‘Pendulum’ to Swing Back
ABIGAIL SHRIER JUN 2, 2023"
https://www.thetruthfairy.info/p/little-miss-trouble
I know no one, that I know of, with gender dysphoria. But I know and am related to my share of gays and lesbians, who are on both sides of the political divide....it's both wrong and unfair to label someone politically based on their sexual orientation.
That said, at the crux of this issue is age. If a child presumably suffers from gender dysphoria, our country, already in a wash of laws, ought to add another: No permanent medical interference (therapy ok) of any kind until age 21. That ends the discussion of child mutilation and doing reversible harm to underage children.
You answered my question with a question, but maybe you don't have an answer. That's ok.
But I like having a dispassionate discussion with someone presumably on the left.
What is Theresa's Substack? Do you write a column on Substack?
States that have legislated that very thing are being sued and moronic judges are enjoining them. One of the biggest purveyors if these lawsuits is the ACLU which apparently have now forsworn America and liberty. And those judges are using the very same flawed entities such as this Singer group to prove grooming children and rendering them infertile is the right thing to do.
The relevance is...? Dunno how it is with you; in most places,people set their chidren's course as well as they are able. Some time in their children's teens (with luck, could be sooner) peer pressures kick in, at which time parents' preferences get kicked to the curb.
Not sure of the relevance at this point, but someone just reminded me that "this is the comment section of The Free Press"; I assume that means it's okay to comment as one sees fit. Agreed that all good parents do the best they can for their children. However, all children do not have good parents. Many are in homes with parents or guardians who would kick them to the curb if they expressed gender dysphoria. What of those children? Where will they seek guidance? Are they relegated to "Gender Affirming" counsellors?
Kick them to the curb? Really? Don't conflate telling your kid "No" or giving them tough love (i.e. responsible parenting) with such an odious metaphor.
No one really answered my question. Not one person.
Maybe not a child exactly - but there are tons of teens who claim to have "dysphoria" and they are minors, too - with underdeveloped prefrontal lobes - or lack of life experience - or bad influences - or something. Those moms tend to post anonymously. They feel ashamed and they also take Abigail Shrier's advice about maintaining a little family privacy. Then, when the girl comes out of it - hopefully unharmed by "allies" who work against the family including Planned Parenthood - it is easier for her to move on. Like, maybe not everyone will have noticed and if you've always used her real name at home there is no struggle"going back" to something. Just lose the bad friends (including adults you once thought had you back) and move on.
Oh, there was that Fox News program that glorified a little girl "transitioning to a boy" in a "conservative family".
"Fox News Promotes Family Who Transitioned 5-Year-Old Child"
https://dailycaller.com/2022/06/10/fox-news-family-transgender-child/
Fox is no good.
Uh, yeah, it’s democrats. Come on.
Hi Theresa, I thought you might find today's PITT interesting:
"I’ve Got the Blues — Part 1"
https://pitt.substack.com/p/ive-got-the-blues-part-1
"Over the past few years since my teen son adopted a trans identity, I’ve adopted a new identity of my own. I now identify as a “politically homeless former life-long Democrat.” (Still need to work out those pronouns.) At the risk of sounding as if I’m highlighting a political divide in what should first and foremost be a non-ideologic issue of medical wrongs, I think it’s important to acknowledge a stark difference between those of us with kids caught in the gender web who tilt Left and those who tilt Right.
To a greater degree, liberals not only grieve for our children, living with the non-stop trauma of watching them shuffle or careen along a path that we know will cause them emotional and physical harm, we grieve for the loss of a reality in which we found safety and solace, and through which we found purpose and community — a world we thought we understood. A world we thought we could trust.
Not only has trans ideology delivered liberal parents the crushing blow of watching our children self-destruct, we also have to face that it is our people — wider liberal society — who took a U-turn on the road to sanity, and are aiding and abetting this nightmare. Our icons who are selling and supporting this garbage. We have the distinct displeasure of having to focus our rage at our own."
etc. This mom writes well. I recommend the whole thing - which is not that long.
The adolescents who are pushing for "gender affirmative care" are currently mostly girls from "liberal" affluent families. The same is true for adolescents who are reporting record levels of anxiety, depression and self-harm. I haven't seen data yet on the overlap between these two groups, but I would predict that the girls wanting to transition are a subset of the group with general distress. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues have found a strong connection between the number of hours girls spend on social media per day and the number of mental disorder diagnoses they accumulate. Haidt reported that self-identified liberal girls spend more time than other girls on social media, so their political ideology may not be the direct cause of their mental health issues.
I haven't seen any studies on the political preferences of the medical personnel in the gender clinics.
States controlled by woke Democrats, including New York, California and Oregon, among others, are leading the charge to establish gender transition clinics and to pass laws that lower or abolish age of consent by patients to medical transitions, and abolish parents' rights to override children's demands for these procedures. Bills have been re-introduced at the federal Congressional level by Democratic members to achieve the same goals.
There is no question or doubt that it is Democrats who are pushing medical transitioning of children upon demand by the children. The same Democratic states that are pushing this agenda have passed laws that mandate gender indoctrination in K-12 public schools.
All of this information is publicly available now, and the Democrats are very open that this is their agenda.
With all due respect, this is part of the Democratic Party platform. It is shouted from the White House rooftops. So, yes, it is Democrats and the so-called "Social Democrats" who are behind this. That is not to say that ALL Democrats support this madness, but all who do support it are either Democrats or left of Democrat.
Yip - did you not witness the shitshow on the WH lawns with the Trans taking off his/her top to fully expose his breasts during Pride Month.
Fear is the best whip. It whips us into panic or guilt or both. Remember: you will be killing your grandparents if you don’t vaccinate, wear mask, stay at home, etc. The opposite happened because many grandparents died without care and human contact with loved ones when they needed it most.
I also noticed how conversion therapy is wrong, but pushing a young girl with possible mental health problems to change her sex is OK. The entire push with the dead child or trans child is also complete bull crap. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm sure I've read that the mental health of a majority of people who transition actually gets worse and suicide rates go up. So it should be "You can have a dead child who transitioned."
'..is a tactic used almost exclusively by literal psychopaths, and almost all Democrats are willing to engage in this..'
Except of course the parents in the study mentioned in the essay, who the author states were mostly progressive. I guess even some evil Dems don't want to see their kids mutilated..
I wish I could remember where I read it, but the average life span after surgical transition is about 10 years. That sounds about right to me as my brother in law lived 11 years after his. He died from a treatable disease he chose not to treat, so a slow motion suicide that doesn't get recorded as a suicide.
He was a grown ass, well educated adult. I've wondered if for children the average life span is any better. I tend to doubt it. I also tend to doubt that parents are told: "a dead child, or a trans child...that will be dead in ten years."
Anyone who lives in a progressive community can attest to this. I talk openly with my own kids about it and encourage them to observe the patterns around them, which are very clear. This is a trend. A trend that is going to leave huge swaths of people infertile, mutilated, and deeply depressed. I’ll never understand how it’s legal for doctors and parents to intervene and redirect the natural development of a child, not for any medical reason, but because of a trendy feeling.
Can't explain the surgeons, but there is a long history of psychiatrist and psychologists with radical treatments. Post WW2 ubiquitous frontal lobotomies for the mentally ill, primitive electro-shock treatment, and later repressed memory syndrome with affirmed parental sexual assault, satanic rituals including murder and cannibalization, child care centers sexual assault of groups of young children (which sent people to prison on fantastic testimony from 3-6 year olds), etc. This is just the newest malevolent treatment brought to us by them.
"Can't explain the surgeons".
Answer --> $$$$$$$$$$
I was a target during the 80's repressed memory syndrome in very young children. I ran a children's church program for years, but when parents began scrutinizing me personally, I gave up and quit. The grief was not worth the effort.
I love children and prior to the repressed memory witch hunts would have gladly volunteered to help with childcare in various settings, but after that, I completely avoided any situation where I might be alone with a child who was not my own.
I remember well the horrific injustice done by the FBI to the owners of the Fells Acres Day School near Boston back in the 80's. Last year, the Mass. governor even suggested pardoning them after 40 years of wearing a scarlet letter but the angry mob prevailed.
Which lends a whole new meaning to "Mass" Formation Psychosis, I suppose.
Yes, there is even a major player from the Satanic Panic days who is a major player in the current craze - head of a department at UCSF!
"Diane Ehrensaft, 'Satanic Panic' Woo Peddler, Now Champions the 'Gender Angels' Among Us
The dangerously consequential career of a quack"
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/diane-ehrensaft-satanic-panic-woo
The surgeons make $$$. So do the endocrinologists.
From that article, Ehrensaft reads as a classic con-man, making her money by destroying other people’s lives.
Yes, I think so, too. Many people do. And yet - there she is in her prestigious position - and attending conferences spreading the harmful non-science.
Check out:
"TMI: Genderqueer 11-year-olds can’t handle too much info about sterilizing treatments–but do get on with those treatments
Posted on April 13, 2021"
https://4thwavenow.com/2021/04/13/tmi-genderqueer-11-year-olds-cant-handle-too-much-info-about-sterilizing-treatments-but-do-get-on-with-those-treatments/
"On April 7, 2021, the UC San Francisco Child and Adolescent Gender Center offered a Zoom “training” entitled “Fertility Issues for Transgender and Nonbinary Youth.” Advertised widely on Facebook, the session was led by well-known gender therapist Diane Ehrensaft and a colleague, and was attended by over 100 people via Zoom. A recording of the session was provided to 4thWaveNow by an attendee. This article will draw on a few excerpts from the session, available for viewing here and here."
Something I have been saying is, IF I were a Law Student or just starting out, I would be spending A Lot of time studying Malpractice Law. Because in the near future you will not be able to swing a dead cat Without hitting a Law Suit on this. Hospitals, Advocacy Groups, Doctors, Parents,, Legislatures All going to be spending A Lot of time (and money) in court rooms. (If you are one of these, better Lawyer Up NOW)
Yes, and a lot of truly anguished, outraged plaintiffs demanding to know HOW they could have been manipulated by the entire medical industry—to say nothing of the role of academia, publishers, etc. The same plaintiffs are going to pretend that they weren't themselves actively censoring and punishing critics or even questioners of gender ideology.
It reminds me of 20 years ago, when the US invaded Iraq on completely false pretexts. Years later, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize "shock & awe" would claim that they were misled by the administration and intelligence—conveniently forgetting that literally MILLIONS of people worldwide were publicly protesting the imminent invasion for weeks on end, citing a lack of evidence and legal standing.
"It reminds me of 20 years ago, when the US invaded Iraq on completely false pretexts."
False Pretexts? Are you Really sure you want to Go Down That Road?
To Quote Doc Holliday in Tombstone "I'm Your Huckleberry....That's Just My Game."
Sure. Do you have some Niger yellowcake or blurry surveillance photos for sale? It's not that Saddam wasn't playing games with inspectors; it's that Iraq played no role in 9/11, and there was no imminent threat of attack from them, even if you believed them to be developing a WMD program.
If you believe in preemptive war, that's your prerogative, but I would claim that's an un-American position to take. If, on the other hand, you think simply taking out dictators should be the purview of the US military, then I'd be interested to hear assessment of how Libya turned out for everyone, and I'd also want to know why we never took out Suharto, Pinochet, or the countless other authoritarian dictators we've supported over the years.
This! It was the Iraq War that made me realize that I am simply not a Republican.
To be fair, even Saddam thought he had WMDs. His scientists were too terrified of the punishment for failure, so they lied to him about their successes.
But there was no evidence linking Iraq to 9/11.
So many of us are politically homeless now. Can't stand the R's and D's in equal measure. Both are deeply corrupt, but each one has its own special flavorful mix of hypocrisy and duplicitousness.
1. Saddam bought a nuclear reactor from France in the 1980's. It wasn't to provide clean cheap energy to the Iraqi's. It was to get a Bomb. Thanks to the Israelis it didn't happen. 2. Too many people only think Nukes when they think WMD. Saddam had and Used against The Iranians and the Kurds. EVERYBODY(from Andorra to Zimbabwe) including his inner circle Knew he had Bio/Chem weapons. Everyone was wrong.
"I'd also want to know why we never took out Suharto, Pinochet, or the countless other authoritarian dictators we've supported over the years."
The answer to that is fairly simple. They didn't start wars with their neighbors. Start wars with neighbors, interrupt trade...then We have a problem with that. The Rules a simple. Don't start (unprovoked) was with your neighbors, Don't use WMD, Don't interrupt international trade. Putin has done 2 of the 3, which is why we're sending weapons & money to Ukraine. (as an aside I do not support that.. that war is more like The Castellammarese War. The question is which one is Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, and which one is Salvatore Maranzano?)
And yes we have treaty's/relations with some Very Bad People. Welcome To The Real World.
Regarding Ukraine... I am starting to wonder whether making Ukraine America's #1 concern could have something to do with blackmailing the Biden family? https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/07/14/new-emails-finally-reveal-what-hunter-biden-was-doing-for-burisma-founder-as-more-dots-start-to-connect-n776307
I dunno...
There is a lawsuit in California (I believe) that is the first action of this type in this country. Depending on how that goes, it could open the floodgates. Doctors are protected by the AMA and APA and AAP which has made this the treatment of choice, but if it ever gets to a jury, then watch out.
SCOTUS has cleared their desks. The next big case will be parents vs the The Trans. Everybody feels the same way “Don’t touch the children”
Even if its (god forbid) Not Law Suits are coming. That's one thing we are really good at Suing.
There was a Billy Wilder comedy called The Fortune Cookie (Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau)
There is a line "Don't Get Mad. Sue The Bastards!" Whiplash Willie Gingrich.
In terms of psychology, remember recovered memories from the 90s? Also keep in mind the pathologizing discourse against gays by psychology....I read so much of it because it fascinated me and as I read it I came to realize that much of it was on effeminacy, and ultimately a veiled discourse based on the suspicion that theology/philosophy/religion have had for women.
Is the issue at the end that psychology is in no small way a discipline with a messed up epistemology?
In the upcoming long-term survey of adolescent gender dysphoria, I hope you'll also collect data on what psychotropic medications these kids may be on before their ROGD started.
I would also add collecting data on parents and teachers that influenced the ROGD.
That popped into my mind as well, but I'm not sure what type info to collect. I think by trying to start branching into parent data, and definitely teacher data, you may wind up going down a rabbit hold that ends up looking like an attempt to identify political ideologies. Just my 2 cents......
You could be right. From my minimal observations, i’ve seen parents (mothers) trying to live their dreams through their children. Maybe the study can call it broadly “religious” ideologies to head off the political identity ;)
Munchausen by proxy.
The term "Transhausen by Proxy" has already been coined to describe these moms.
Very good. I hadn't thought of that. You may have just hit upon it.
i'd like to add that mother's have been trying to live their dreams through their children through eons. take a look at many mother's who either try or succeed in hijacking their daughter's wedding plans...i've always said, that if the mother had her "dream" wedding, she's more willing to let her daughter have hers.
Don't fathers often also try to live their dreams through their children?
Indeed. The single most important person in any wedding is the mother of the bride. Full stop. Any seasoned wedding planner, caterer, florist, baker, photographer, etc. know this all too well.
Yep. My sense is that any Venn diagram of trans adolescents categorizing homosexuality, autism and use of psychotropics would have massive overlap.
Ha! Uberculchie - we should get Kamala on it!
Let me clarify, Uberculchie, I was being sarcastic! You are correct. Was just the mention of Venn Diagrams that made we think of our “word salad VP”
She's also good at discovering the "root causes" of problems, /sarc
Barry, do you mean the new fashion on the Left to withhold making “gender” determinations with newborns? A colleague talked about his neighbor’s kid, threatening suicide, was transitioned and gave me the silent treatment when I asked if that was the right approach.
Watch Hollywood. It was a featured part of Tom Hanks’ recent move “Otto”. Writing vanishingly rare works circumstances into movies is the equivalent of putting multi-racial couples in advertisements (for which I have no truck, but it is “chosen” by 15% of people...not exactly targeting the larger market segment when selling toothpaste).
I refused to watch that "version" of Ove. I read and LOVED the book and refused to let an American version take it to such a looney place. So, I watched the Swedish version and read the subtitles.
If this is a social contagion then it'd also be great if someone was able to collect a Facebook network graph of the spread of ROGD. Basically a cholera map of gender dysphoria.
That would be fascinating.
Gosh, yes. But, I don't know how you would collect all the location information. Like, moms are not going to fill out a government health form so that the authorities can come to your house and say "You are abusing your teen by using that "deadname" you gave your daughter when she was born!" The closest thing I have come across is a graph on here: https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-is-this-happening-and-who-can
Yes
People can see with their own eyes how deranged it is that so many kids identify as trans yet they all pretend it’s because the kids are finally free to be themselves. All those closeted suicidal trans kids before 2015--where are the bodies? Now it’s the straight kids in the closet because ewww heteronormativity.
The unconditional acceptance and celebration of this movement that makes money by grinding up kids and their families is pushing many people away from the left.
We can only hope...
ExACTly what I was thinking before I opened then read your reply.
I'm not glad I never had children, my own upbringing was painful enough. Yet I'm astounded that things have gone as far as they have towards destroying whatever chances children born in the last two or three decades have of growing up free of emotional traumas imposed by 'social' media generally and our current 'medical/political establishment' more specifically.
I’m one of them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mrsmiller/p/from-the-archives-1c2?r=9q8wg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I really enjoyed your essay!
Thank you Holly!
So good! I'm not an ROGD mom, but know a few trans boys, 2 who had double mastectomies at age 16. This sent me down the exact same rabbit hole as you.
🩷🩷🩷
"incessant focus on the self to the detriment of producing anything else of value"
This sentence stood out on your long list of negative consequences of gender transition. I think incessant focus on the self is the problem social media culture has led many people into and is a cause as well as an effect of the many mental problems youth have today.
Thank you. Well said!
I read your Substack piece. Very powerful. Great writing. Fantastic research. Your pain moved me.
Thank you Jim 🙏🏼 really appreciate that!
Yes, Alison, 👆!
> All those closeted suicidal trans kids before 2015--where are the bodies?
I heard a trans activists say that 40% of trans people commit suicide if they don’t transition. And also that 10% of people are trans. It can be one or the other, but it’s statistically impossible for both of those things to be true unless 12 million Americans committed suicide last year.
The really messed up part is how there is a growing problem with suicide, but the demographic most affected by this is middle-aged men. That's the demographic that most strongly supports the Republicans, so Democrats completely ignore the epidemic of suicides there while declaring from Congress that trans suicides are a major national issue and it's all the fault of those evil transphobes.
Not only do they use suicide as a manipulative bully tactic, they do so while ignoring the people who are actually affected by suicide.
Among teenagers, boys are 4x more likely to commit suicide than any other group. No one in the mainstream is going to bring that up though. And if they do, it'll be to victim blame those kids.
Suicide is an issue close to my heart. I volunteer with a crisis center and definitely see lots of teens come through. What scares me is that so many now threaten suicide over what was once just considered a normal part of growing up--"I'm going to kill myself because my girlfriend broke up with me" kind of stuff.
I still *DO* see lots of gay kids who think about suicide, (especially boys) who are bullied at school. It's not like being gay is accepted everywhere.
The common thread with suicidal adults is usually some sort of financial problem and/or drinking/drug problem. With kids (gay or not), the common thread is that most of them are afraid to talk to their parents about ANYTHING. So many parents SAY "you can talk to me about anything" but then don't follow through.
Is it surprising that boys are committing suicide? Their society is teaching them that they are evil simply because they are male. That their interests and impulses are inherently "toxic." That they are criminals--specifically rapists--from birth.
In many cases, they have never been given real work to do. College is not welcoming to them (indeed, school is where they have been indoctrinated with the idea that they are useless pimples on the butt of society). Having lived much of their lives in the comfortable world of video games, jobs are "too hard"; not surprising, when they are also depressed.
Isn't it true that more women than men attempt suicide? Men are more successful at it, though. Is it because men are less likely to seek therapy? Is it because they have more access to guns?
Based on my own observations and (yes, sadly) experience, women make a lot of suicide attempts that are *intentionally* (subconsciously or not) not effective enough to kill them. For women, a suicide attempt is the ultimate way of sending the message that she finds the situation she is in unbearable, and will somebody please, please, PLEASE fix it. It is a desperate form of communication.
From what I've gathered about men who commit suicide, they are not trying to communicate anything. They are just DONE with whatever is making them miserable enough that they want to die.
While men may be more likely to own firearms, which simplify being successful at suicide, they also engage in other effective methods that require some physical strength and/or mechanical know-how to accomplish: climbing over guardrails to throw themselves off bridges, fitting up a car to guarantee that the carbon monoxide will kill you, hanging themselves. Also, guns are heavier than most people think if they've never handled them.
"The really messed up part is how there is a growing problem with suicide, but the demographic most affected by this is middle-aged men. "
White men are just a discard demographic to the woke creeps.
Autistic youth and those with mental health issues have high level of suicides. Boys are more successful than girls as is typical in suicide. So, I wouldn't say that they aren't affected by suicide. Just like I wouldn't say older females aren't either. They just succeed less often. Also, last time I looked 40% of women between the ages of 18-65 are on or have used psychotropic medications for depression. We have been burying the problems of mental health under a mountain of quasi-effective medication for years.
The 40% statistic is not substantiated. Also, from an evolutionary standpoint, if 10% of adolescents had always been disengaged from heterosexuality and reproduction, wouldn't we expect to see a progressive decline in births over centuries?
“We” see it because many of us are curious enough to open our eyes and ears. In the huge echo chamber run by MSM / “elites”, the people who just stick to their approved information sources have little idea of this information.
That’s why trying to getting the word out is so critical. And it has to be SO relentlessly done especially at the front lines where I feel we find ourselves - because the perpetrators of this are geared for battle to put down / silence / etc any of us “heretics” to keep their followers in the dark.
Listen to Megyn Kelly, Miriam Grossman (and read her book “Lost in Trans Nation”) and try as you might to help those you can discuss logically and empathetically and both try to re-activate their common sense and spread the word.
I try to stay focused on THIS when this comes up. - Yeah I have a LOT of other issues that I am passionate about but if I mix them all in, I advance none of them. I care way too much about my beautiful granddaughter.
God Bless you, Professor Bailey
Right there with you.
Miriam Grossman is a hero!
BTW, keep in mind that back 1949/50, the Kinsey report said that around 4% of adult males were homosexuals. I read a few months ago, in the Economist, I think, that the estimates are still 4% of adults homosexual.
Forget about the new "queer" stuff.....it's largely pose and a label to tart oneself up.
20 some years ago, when my kids were in high school, the local magnet high school (academics and performing arts) had a “thing” going where all the girls were lesbians (whether they actually were or not). Parents told me that while these girls were waiting in the carpool line (not everyone rode the bus), the girls would divide up into couples and make out (lots of tongue) primarily to shock the parents. At least half of these lesbian couples broke up in college and discovered they were actually straight or bisexual and had boyfriends. In their 20’s a lot of them married men. Take those statistics and ask the question, “what if these same girls thought they were trans in high school and had puberty blockers, top surgery and testosterone treatments?” In what universe would subjecting teenagers to mutilating body treatments be deemed okay when it precludes their natural sexual progression to being straight, gay or bisexual…not trans? In other words, the teenagers never change their biological sex but grow into whatever sexuality they were programmed for originally. Am I making sense? With teen girls, a high school fad is often just a high school fad. That it shocks and scares their parents (especially their mothers) is part of it’s purpose. As a final point, in most states it’s illegal to get a tattoo under age 18, but it’s okay to have top surgery? Really?
There’s never a shortage of ideas that hurt teenage girls, and ROGD is the latest.
The newest thing is the girls in my niece's high school are all "pansexual" though most of them date boys while a couple are with girls. The boys just kind of go along with it with a shrug.
Man, I am so glad I was a new kid, really shy and not part of any clique my last two years in public high school. Yes it was lonely and awful and I hated every minute of it, but whew. Of course back then there wasn’t all this madness.
LUG has always been a “thing” especially at women’s colleges.
Aaaand...this is why my wife and I aren't sending our daughters to our local magnet "school of the arts" - epicenter of this social contagion in our area.
It should be obvious at this point that there is a sinister political agenda and that the Democrats are behind it. What else would explain Biden slurring about "gender affirming care" as a government issue? It's one thing if the private sector wants to cut off its body parts, but when a political party promotes and celebrates it -- someone is gaining financially. I suspect that Obama gained financially. This "celebration" started near the end of his presidency. Suddenly we had "gender neutral" bathrooms at the university where I teach. They were handing out pronoun swag and at one workshop, glassy-eyed zealots promoted asking students what gender they are today.
I smelled a rat right away, and have been watching this with my jaw hanging for years now. It's one thing for activists to silence information that they believe is for the common good -- let's say anything to do with climate change. But to silence information that counters the narrative that so many people could have been born in the wrong body? Laws on the table that award custody to the gender-affirming parent? Denying as a "right wing talking point" (the stupidest "argument" out there) that these cross-sex hormones damage the body, that there is no good reason to remove healthy breasts from a teenage girl? That puberty blockers stunt a person's growth?
There could only be one reason why the truth is being silenced: THIS IS CORRUPTION WRIT LARGE. The research that someone needs to do is to find out: WHO's GETTING PAID to PROMOTE THIS. WHO is PAYING to spread this mind virus. WHY did medical principles go out the window on this? Some serious investigative journalism needs to NAIL THESE EVIL PEOPLE TO TO THE WALL.
And don't get me started on the weak-livered parents who actually take their teen to the "gender therapist" -- that's like taking a kid who's done heroin to a drug dealer for more -- Parents who actually go along with this because they are "afraid." MOST PEOPLE KNOW THIS IS BULLSHIT. SO SPEAK UP.
1940s Germany had lampshade-affirming care. My guess is that if someone published a paper against it, these activists would howl.
I recommend you look up Jennifer Bilek on YouTube and her own 11th Hour blog.
She has been investigating the trans lobby on a 'follow the money' basis.
To your question who is paying to promote this, and who are getting paid, here are a couple of good starts:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement
I'm not one to buy into the nebulous "Globalist" theory, but there are in fact a few of the wealthiest of the wealthy who are so rich that they believe they can do anything---anything including transhumanism (transgender being a subcat of that belief). These people donated a million here to Planned Parenthood, a million to ACLU, another million or so to some Ivy League medical schools, etc., kingmade a US president (Obama, the first to codify "we just want to pee") or two (Biden), or oh hell, just put his own brother in the IL governor's mansion. That's how their $$$$ makes the world go around.
I honestly now have resorted to just wishing more billionaires would be like Bezo who's interest is mainly to play with his expensive toys. Or they should all just get into cage fight with each other. Stop these crazies who are out to remake the world according to their sci-fi dystopian nightmare and leave the rest of us alone.
The Pritzker family is evil! Pure evil.
This is an important report if you haven't seen it:
"U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-sex-reassignment-surgery-market
There is sooooooo much money to be made off of Gender Ideology.
Actually, Bezos bought the Washington Post. And you know how woke that ragsheet is.
How is it in the common good to suppress the truth about the climate? Do you want lights to come on when you flip the switch?
Indeed that analogy wasn’t clear. I don’t support suppressing any information, but it’s more understandable to censor information against clean energy than to censor evidence that cutting off healthy body parts doesn’t prevent the unprovable manipulation tactic: would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?
Interesting perspective. However, do you think you are qualified to criticize parents who "take their teen to the gender therapist"? If you've not been in their shoes, I'm afraid you're speaking out of turn.
Parents abuse their own children all the time and it is absolutely appropriate to call out the abusers that are mutilating their own kids under the direction of a quack.
Only a foolish, uninformed, manipulated parent would go to a gender therapist!!
Yes, I am qualified, based on the evidence. Thanks for asking.
As a mother who's "been in their shoes" (ie. speaking from experience), I 100% agree with Dog L. With VERY RARE exceptions, today's therapists (not just gender ones) are REQUIRED to take their patients down the 'affirmative care' path, lest they risk losing their license. And both 'APA' associations support and encourage this. It all SCREAMS corruption.
Regrettably, I must agree with you. It seems the zeitgeist is with those who support "gender affirming" care. It's wrong, but how did we get here? The answer can't be simple; it's got to be multifaceted with many deserving some blame. It's a major CF.
You've got no argument from me. I don't believe that what's happening is right and I never did. However, what is concerning are those that refuse to "hear" what a child is saying. Transgenderism does exist, but it's very rare. No child should be allowed to mutilate one's body. I'd extend the term "child" to refer to young adults as well. Reaching the age of legal majority does not make one an adult.
Bingo! The answer can ALWAYS be found by following the money trail.
I think so many people inherently know that these girls are struggling emotionally and less invasive methods should be a first step before the irreversible damage. I’ve followed Abigail Shrier and Lisa Littman, their research and the hate they’ve received for trying to expose the truth. It’s good to know there are more researchers out there doing incredible and important research but horrific that this is being censored. What I don’t understand is shouldn’t these trans activists want to act and advocate in the best interest of these girls rather than destroy lives if they realize it was the wrong intervention?
Thank you for this incredible article.
I’ve read that the first generation of transition patients are very concerned about the current trend of immediate hormones and surgery. In the past, before the gender clinics went mad, people had to undergo rigorous psychotherapy and live as their preferred gender for years. Data from those who did not meet criteria for surgery and went to underground clinics for reassignment surgery shows the tragic outcomes of failing to pursue treatment thoughtfully and patiently.
Thank you, Dr. Bailey. As a public health professional and parent of an ROGD kid, the frustration of having to remain silent is unbearable. We desperately need this research. The indoctrination of our children and subsequent push toward irreversible, unnecessary, dangerous, and evidence-free “gender affirmative care” is surely the most heinous public health scandal of our time. The medical community must be held accountable. This will only happen when the wider world understands the tremendous damage clinicians have willfully caused to young people, employing emotional manipulation and disinformation to coerce parents into consenting to the medical harm of their children, and the families they have destroyed by pitting vulnerable children against those parents who have pushed back against their pressure campaign to medically transition every child who succumbs to this social contagion.
Thank you for sharing. This forced retraction demonstrates a fear of asking questions about a subject that has presented rapidly and treating it with only minimally studied treatments.
Add to that my opinion that what we are seeing is not a manifestation of a single transsexual diagnosis (if we use a medical descriptor) but a variety of diagnostic categories that are being thrown into a “diagnostic garbage can” and being discussed as one subject. So the importance of studying and further understanding trans and more importantly what is effective treatment with the best risk to benefit ratio is extremely important.
Excellently stated!
Ahh the Bailey paper. I know about this. TFP I've had my frustrations with you for sure but I'm glad you got the scoop to publish this. When this mania/madness/panic is all said and done, the truth will out and it will not be what the establishment media had emphasized and pushed.
Changing gender and gender identification/dysphoria is an issue that requires honesty, compassion, and clear thinking. And that is NOT what we are getting. Instead we get emotional blackmail and manipulation.
May God bless everyone who tries to act with integrity these days. To everyone else, well you know what you can do.
“On May 5, a group of 100 academic activists and gender clinicians published an online Open Letter expressing “ethical” and “editorial concerns” about the journal and “serious concerns over research ethics and intellectual integrity” of our article”
———————————————————
Are you sure it wasn’t 51 former intelligence officials?
I love “concerns over ethics” from the child penis chopping lobby.
Brave and important work. Of course, the madness only stops when the lawsuits start. If highly accomplished medical professionals (like your anonymous coauthor) find the social pressure of yielding to this almost unbearable, what chance do teenage girls have?
Jordan Peterson has a court filing against the College of Psychologists of Ontario.
Thanks for writing this article, and your commitment to the truth. Is it the times, or have I been asleep for the past several years, but there’s a trail of censorship and canceling accelerating across several disciplines and political agendas that have me worried? Is there any evidence of government involvement in the retraction of your paper, or is it mainly institutional?
I suggest that a look at Lambda Legal Defense Fund should be undertaken by a brave and ethical investigative journalist. https://lambdalegal.org/ is the NGO that has co-opted large legal firms all across the nation (these firms also get their tax write-offs) to push Gender Affirming Care policies into medical organizations like AMA, AAP, ACP, APA, etc. as well Amicus Briefs and legal support for legislation protecting and promoting GAC for minors. This is a perverse and deviant use of legal clout. Physicians and psychologists who have spoken out have been intimidated and silenced. I would bet they are involved in this (AND Littman as well).
Excellent. Social contagion is real. In addition to parents, perhaps teachers would also be willing to participate in your future studies. Those who are still capable of independent thought see first hand the kids with social and emotional problems spontaneously decide they were “born in the wrong body”.
One of the more frightening facts in your article suggests the largest predictor of medicalization is a visit to a gender therapist. It appears the medical institutions and States with laws that require immediate affirmation are the real groomers.
Including the teachers in the study would be interesting indeed, as many have jumped on this bandwagon, while those opposed have been intimidated or threatened into silence.
“There is ample evidence that in progressive communities, multiple girls from the same peer group are announcing they are trans almost simultaneously”
———————————————————
Not to mention the parents who have a statistically impossible number of transvestite and pansexual kids.
Those people need to be prosecuted with whatever the maximum child sexual abuse charges are.
Celebrities! Cher, Magic Johnson, Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, etc ...and there are lots of Democrat and liberal parents with gay children as well. What are the odds that so many celebrities have trans kids or even gay kids? Chicken or the egg?
I think Angelina’s kid grew out of it and is now back to being a girl.
That may or may not be true. Although Shiloh was back to being a feminine looking girl a year or two ago, photos taken in 2023 show her sporting a "buzz cut" and somewhat mannish clothes.
https://www.lifeandstylemag.com/posts/shiloh-jolie-pitt-now-143408/
"Oh, you have a gay white son? How nice. I have a queer daughter who's dating an undocumented migrant and my 40 year old trans son and his non-binary Black spouse just welcomed their multi-racial pansexual daughter via Somali surrogate." CHECKMATE
If it wasn’t owned by the neurotic, social ladder climbing lefties at NBC, this would be an SNL skit
Oh yeah well I’m a witch and I just pooped my pants. Ha!!
"Not to mention the parents who have a statistically impossible number of transvestite and pansexual kids." -- And/or those who simply feel the need to virtue signal in order to fit in. I know a family in which the mom is super woke (and an uber TRA), and her social media feeds are FULL of pro-trans posts. Unsurprisingly, her two young boys have severe anxiety issues, and one thinks he's trans. Because of course. The effect she's having on their mental health breaks my heart.