“ I was raised to believe in the core principles of the Democratic Party, which includes the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society.l
I wish I could be relaxed. I wish I could just be cool. But this is so obviously not true it’s hard to allow myself past this sentence. I choose to force myself to learn something from this and so I choose to ponder the idea that this sentence is in fact how Democrats view themselves. Perhaps she believes it is true.
Curious. The defining characteristic of the Democrat party, and the reason I left it as a gay man, is because of their heinous distrust of individuality and the need to control others in the false name of the “greater good.” From an almost guttural level I reject any claims of the “greater good” as I know what that really means. It means their greater good at your greater expense.
"The left I know believes that science is real. We accept scientific evidence even if it contradicts our political talking points."
Weird! The Left that I know deliberately ignores scientific evidence to maximize profits for Big Pharma, then attacks any scientist or media outlet contradicting them in any way - and then follow up by trying to pass new censorship laws to prevent doctors from whistleblowing or contradicting government policies.
The Left I know viciously attacks anybody who strays from The Narrative even slightly, labeling lifelong allies as instant enemies for the crime of questioning dogma.
If Jamie Reed's impression of "The Left" were even remotely true, her article wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.
That was my reaction as well. I've been watching the Left reject any science that does not conform to their ideology for the past 20 years.
I get the impression that Reed's perception of "The Left" has always been "people like me." Behavior by Leftists that she doesn't agree with has been perceived as merely an anomaly, not examples of who Leftists really are.
You missed the point. I will debate them but I never can because they do not debate. They insult. If you refute a leftist, the first thing out of their mouths is "You are a Racist.". I have yet to have one civil debate with a leftist.
Besides I was buttressing Celia's comment not debating a leftist. If I were debating a leftist, then your comment would be true.
I'm swarthy. I'm Hispanic. I'm Sephardic. I've been accused of being a white supremist and an antisemite. I believe even twice in this fora. There is no chance of reasoning with most leftists. They simply do not abide dissenting opinion. They are the bane of the Republic.
Yes, there's definitely a difference between leftists and liberals. I think the distinction is unclear to many on the right, but it's crystal clear to the principal behind the progressive OpEd News, who describes himself as a lefty and was very offended when someone called him a liberal.
The left I knew when I was young was much different from the left I see today. But the left has always wanted more control by central government and less individual liberty. That kind of defines the left.
No, lots of leftists from my youth are conservatives today ... and they haven't changed their views at all. But when the left gets what they want, they keep moving the goalposts farther and farther left.
She freely acknowledges she is in a left bubble. Then lauds herself for admitting error on one issue. But only when the error was staring her in the face and was no longer deniable. Most will never be in her position so if that is what it takes to acknowledge error we are screwed.
Edited to correct the auto-correct. If this is what I am to expect from AI, thanks but no thanks.
And they ("progressives") put stupid signs out in front of their houses designed to condescend to everyone who passes by, their snickering hidden behind surgical masks.
I’m not sure of what Jamie meant by the Left she knows, but I took it to mean the original (OG) leftists, the classic liberals. Not the illiberal Left that we have come to know today.
The left believes that only power is real. If the prestige of "science" can be enlisted in support of their totalitarian project, they will not hesitate to use it. If actual science conflicts with it, they will falsify, ignore, twist, intimidate, or cancel it. The classic case was T.D. Lysenko. When the new science of genetics conflicted with the Soviet project to create a "New Man" via the elimination of capitalism, "Scientific Socialism" (as Marxism was called back then) invented Lysenkoism, i.e., the heritability of environmental adaptations and sent geneticists to the Gulags.
This whole basic idea: my party is above contempt, the other beneath contempt is the first problem.
There are fine people on both sides. Each side has a slightly different idea on the proper role of government. As Bari stated in her opinion piece on Honestly, somewhere between 10 and 15% of the people think abortion should be allowed up to a year post-partum [that was sarcasm]. Between 10 and 15% believe no abortion should be allowed ever. And the other 70-ish percent believe abortion should be banned sometime near the end of the first trimester. The idea that the country is divided on abortion is misinformation that is constantly hammered into our heads by the people who make bank off most people thinking we're fiercely divided on the question of abortion ... following the money, congress-critters never waste the opportunity to shake the donation tray at their constituency ... likewise, the people who spill ink for a living have strong financial incentive to keep the imaginary division going.
The people are held hostage to the story makers and the story writers.
The media feeds into this too. States that are 52% R and 48% D get painted as "red states" while those that are 52% D and 48% R are called "blue states."
Those proportions are the same here in canada, a strong majority including me believes abortion should be legal and available but be cut off at a reasonable point.
But here the radicals also control the debate.
I wish the new conservative leader would step up and openly tackle it, he’d win in a landslide.
Indeed. We, in fact, have two fascist parties in this country. The only difference between them is that one has a noisy, influential socialist wing, and the other has a small classical liberal (as in free markets, free speech, freedom of religion) wing. I'm sticking with the one with the small classical liberal wing, despite Trump (whom I will not vote for even if my party nominates him).
That the vast majority take your attitude only encourages the wannabe Caesars. It would be a stinging rebuke to the two parties if even 20% of the electorate voted third party. What this country needs is a proper multi-party democracy like most of Europe has, and so long as everyone takes your attitude we'll never have one. My vote might not count in the electoral outcome, but mine and every other third party vote counts as a matter of moral standing: I and everyone else who votes third party refuse to give our assent to the wannabe Caesars, and we will make known our refusal by not be confused with the apathetic non-voter, since we vote.
I was surprised and disappointed that in the 2016 election, despite all those who claimed they couldn't stand either Clinton or Trump, less than 6% voted third party. I fear the same thing will happen this year. Those who truly are concerned about "losing our democracy" shouldn't vote for either Biden or Trump, both of whom have proven that they are willing to be lawless.
The problem is that elections with more than 2 people are mathematically broken - the correct winner is not guaranteed to win (by "correct winner" I mean the single candidate the beats all others in 1-1 contests). This is because the candidates with more similar views will steal votes from each other.
We can fix this with ranked-choice or runoffs. But until we do fix it, elections with more than 2 people are worthless.
Don't be fooled. Ranked choice voting is too easy to game. Example: Alaska in 2020 was a red state, 40%R, 30%D, 30%I. After the primary, there were 2 Rs and 2 Ds on the final ballot. One D dropped out (reason unknown), the Rs split the vote (31% to 29%) and the D won with 40% of the vote (not close to a majority). The Presidential race was 43%R and 43%D.
I held my nose and voted Trump. Henceforth I will no longer exercise my suffrage. It's a farce and the entire system needs to crash even if it kills myself and everyone I love.
No wars. A peace in the Middle East foreign policy that was working. Isolate Iran and other bad actors, radical Palestinians, by getting peace agreements starting with the more moderate Arab countries. The ability to make the bullies of the world believe he would do as promised which kept them corralled. Telling the Taliban leader we knew where his family lived and his family would be the first wiped out if he didn't follow their agreement. I begin to wonder why anyone would believe in the Dems misinformation when his record far surpass' the Dems in most areas. Xi is now saying Taiwan will be back with Beijing before the end of the year. And you want who in charge to manage that situation. All this moral clap trap is what is destroying the world these days. While the bad guys are breaking into your house, you don't want a band of hippies with peace beads protecting you. All your morals will do you and your family no good when the terrorists start attacking inside or country again and you'[rem 6' under. Providing they can find any of your parts to bury. Oh and Catholics and concerned parents are not the ones the FBI and school boards need to be concerned about. To paraphrase and update Carville, it's the Constitutional and lawful systems stupid. And ours are crumbling. Rapidly! And I don't mean the SCOTUS. If schumer and biden don't like them, I LOVE THEM.
Mr. Brandt I liked President Trump's policy. I understand the application of pliers and hammers to persuade thuggish individuals to becoming rapidly reasonable and seeing things our way. I'm sometimes ok with no water nor baby in the bath tin. President Trump is all about himself. If that benefits you he doesn't mind if you get splashed as both make their way out of the window. I'm trying to catch the baby this time.
That was a tough sentence to get around. It is more aligned with old school communism than the classic Democratic Party which certainly was focused on individual freedoms at one point in time ("Hell no, I won't go." and "I can use any bathroom, not just the one labeled "Colored."). Maybe not any more?
But once past that disturbing line, you gotta admit she has courage and did good.
As far as politics, when we focus more on the American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and serving one another in real life (not trying to echo our opinions into far off communities) OUR world becomes a better place. And that's what Jamie did: changed HER world. Then a free press (another American ideal) amplified her story and its truths and gave it legs.
I do think that it is of vital importance that we stand for truth on an individual level these days. Too many doctors and medical personnel—most in fact—took a cowardly, compliant path during Covid as they watched more courageous colleagues vilified and fired. No one wants to recognize the obvious: This has cost many lives. People like John Oliver and Steve Colbert also have responsibility for their ridiculing of questioning the corporate narrative on vaccines. Can you even imagine George Carlin or Richard Pryor taking a similar position and shilling for a Pharma agenda? So much for current “liberals”.
It’s a delusion. They believe they mean well. They believe they are the smart people and know what is best for everyone else--the collective. Of course, they exempt themselves from these requirements.
contempt. They are hive people, Lockstepping lemmings. They demand a one size fits all approach and are the very model of intolerance. I feel bad because engaged individually leftists appear to be generally kind. That changes pretty much when you question the latest whim they're forcing on the entirety of the west.
I'm afraid I missed that. No matter I think I would prefer to see the lemmings scurry back to yonder wood and happily munch on bark and nuts. I greatly appreciate them doing what they please and I not interfere. Sadly they can't seem to extend the same courtesy.
That line struck me, as well I find it chilling. The essence of Chinese Communist authoritarianism and leftism through the ages. The supremacy of the state. And its "Dear Leader." The United States of America is based on the rights of the individual. That is our core. It is what has made and kept us free and prosperous. Never forget that.
What that sentence of hers describes is communism. It’s the collective of mindless sheep and drones. It’s their way, their thinking or its banishment to the outer reaches of hell and ridicule.
I think you have hit on the genuine cause of the national division. It is not Republican versus Democrat. Those are just labels. Rather it is the individual mindset versus the collective (for the greater good) mindset. I think there are some things where laws to ensure an agreed upon greater good are justified - air travel, border control, military defense, etc.. But I also think the problem with the greater good belief is that the next logical step is belief that government can or will fix what ails us. It neither can nor should. To engage in such is the equivalent of a dog chasing it's tail.
The first time I went to New York City, I was profoundly struck by the absolute reliance on government and infrastructure. On the streets and in the subways, police and transit employees are vital to the functioning of the city. It must be easy to think government control is required for everything to work well.
Growing up in Tennessee and now living in Florida, I felt that the government functions best when minimally intrusive. It’s easy to think that you barely need government at all.
In either case, the individual versus collective mindset might just be the product of self interest. My problem is with the people who either want the government to do everything so they don’t have to and those who want the government to leave them alone so they can lie, cheat, and steal.
Also, I’m fairly certain that “the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society” isn’t to far off from Jefferson’s "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots“ but maybe the difference is in whether the sacrifice is a limited, individual decision or the lifelong demand of the state.
Starting with your last point re individualism and Jefferson, I think individuals need to band together for common purpose. But that is THEIR decision, not the government's. Big, big difference. I do not deny the need for government. I am not an anarchist. And I won't use the phrase "I believe in limited government" because that had been co-opted. I believe in practical government. Effected by the enactment of a law to address a particular issue administered in such a way to achieve the goal and subject to judicial review to assure lawful enactment and enforcement. That is good governance. That is not what we have now. Not really on any level - federal, state or local - but particularly at the federal level we have a Congress that is AWOL on every significant issue except spending that results in a massively bloated executive branch bureaucracy that is too unwieldy to manage. It has created the scenario where we are now ruled - ruled not governed - by career bureaucrats in the alphabet executive branch agencies who are accountable to no one. If you have doubt, consider the efforts made to torpedo the former president and select - select, not elect - the present one.
The difference is in the individual decision vs the coerced action. Even if the result is the same, the coercion is unforgivable and never worth the ends it seeks.
I believe progress is an emergent property of liberty. I do not believe progress can be engineered or coerced, it must erupt spontaneously from the hearts and minds of a free people.
“[N]ormal” democrats" are simply those who refuse to face and accept that the core tenets of their party are now based on principles and ideas that would have been considered insane just a decade ago.
Why does the “greater good” always require the “sacrifice of the individual”? It is the justification for delegating the determination of the greater good to a few. Perhaps the greater good is best determined by the independent actions of thousands and millions of individuals making independent decisions about what is in their best interests. That is the beauty of a “market” that is free.
Because ultimately liberals believe in 2 things: 1. They are eternally guilty for any advantage they have over others, and 2. Therefore no one can be trusted to do anything right, so all power must reside in the government.
Yes. This. Thank you. I’m reading Thomas Sowell’s new book Social Justice Fallacies and this is exactly his point. They are supplanting the will of the individual with the will of a surrogate decision maker and it never turns out well for the individual.
I think you are painting liberals with a broad brush. Classical liberals believe in science, we believe in debate, we believe in being challenged and having to prove our beliefs. The far Left has taken over a lot of space in the Democratic party but there are still many of us classical liberals left (think RFK Jr) and we feel politically homeless.
I hear you. Definitely feeling politically homeless on the left these days. I’m sure there are many more of us out there but they’re too scared to speak up. And I don’t think it’s just the far left anymore. Progressives are also dwelling in siloed, myopic thinking. It’s almost impossible to have a respectable debate about any issue without a “morally superior” view point that serves only to shame and shut down fair discourse. What has the left become?
No matter what the Democratic Party has become in recent years, or even over the last 40 years, I too believe these same core principles - I grew up believing in the same Democratic principles. The DP didn't necessarily adhere to these principles all the time, just as the Republicans have periodically gone astray too. But these are the ideals I ... We ... were taught to strive for : " the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society". Add to that: equality across the board, individual right, the free expression of ideas, the pursuit of happiness. No party adheres to principles 100%. Despite this fact, they are still will grounded ideals. I would also add that these principles generally sound like the more rational Republican and Libertarian ideals too. In fact, they sound very American.
"I was raised to believe in the core principles of the Democratic Party, which includes the willingness to sacrifice one's individual needs for the good of the collective society."
I was raised in a Democratic family, with Republican grandparents (WWII generation). The principles that I learned were to work hard on any task, and push to enhance future generations. My parents sacrificed for me (and my uncles & aunts for the cousins) as I have done for my children. But it doesn't have to be a dog eat dog world with the more you win the others lose. That together we can all push the ball forward by helping others along the way. And YES, take pride and enjoy personal achievements. Making money its a sign of unfair privilege its a good thing.
As a career surgeon, especially, the Hippocratic Oath returns to haunt those who forget it. Always. And it is a shame that medical schools now do not require even reading it, let alone a pledge to follow it.
There is no question in my mind that the surgical manipulation of normally functioning tissue and organs to crate an illusion of something else is fraught. To an extent that also includes purely cosmetic surgery. Just watch a few episodes of “Botched.”
Gender transitioning medication and surgery is a serious matter and one-way street with no good return path.
Minors cannot drink or vote, and cannot sign a surgical consent form for anything else but this.
Pure insanity driven by a political fringe. This will go down in the flames of medical misadventure like no other procedure before or after.
Just try asking a surgeon for a vasectomy, or a gynaecologist for a tubal ligation, if you have no children. If you are not declined you will have to spend a long time convincing them you really know your own mind. The risk of regret is high and no one wants to be in the position of having an unhappy patient come back with a lawyer saying "You should have stopped me."
But if you're a minor with unexplored issues (never mind formally diagnosed ones: that's "conversion therapy" these days) you can arrange to become sterilised and incapable of having sex or orgasms, no questions asked. Why on earth, on this one issue, do we presume minors who have no real understanding of how they will change in the future, magically know their own minds perfectly? We won't let them get a tattoo, or a piercing, but chemical and surgical castration - right on!
Correct. And a surgeon who is compelled to perform an amputation needs a second opinion on the chart prior to proceeding; and in many cases if elective needs a psychiatric consult beforehand as well.
While difficult vasectomies and tubals can be reversed and do not maim or cause any serious complications either.
"This will go down in the flames of medical misadventure like no other procedure before or after."
Ah, my friend, if only it were so extraordinary. From lobotomies to total knee meniscectomies to thalidomide babies to the live cell vaccine for pertussis, the history of
medicine is replete with tales of institutional dysfunction and stupidity resulting in large scale
harm. It's just that our collective dependency makes us need to forget. Like children who need to forget each incident of parental failure or cruelty, we are shocked anew each time it happens. (I'm not saying I see a solution, I'm just trying to explain the cycle of shock, mistrust, and renewed naivete).
You provide some notable examples. In each case that you mention however there was at least some level of pathology being treated; and, the science at the time not sufficiently developed to anticipate the adverse effects. Gender affirming treatment is no such treatment. Gender is a psychological state of mind, a perception, unlinked to physiological function. The treatment is purely artificial and knowingly dangerous.
Thalidomide babies are exactly what my daughter and her friends need to see--oh and especially the parents of friends of hers who have put their kids on puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones. Every time someone says," trust the science," or, "doctors know what they're doing," I want to hold up a giant poster of a thalidomide baby.
The reason there are no thalidomide babies in the US is because the FDA did not approve that drug. The giant poster needs to be of an FDA employee,Frances Oldham Kelsey, who demanded better data and research. Light candles next to her portrait to mourn the loss of scientific courage, a belief of serving people not politics or corporations, & an era when scientists demanded sound research and data. Political comment &. decorating advice 🤭!
I believe your statement, "there are no thalidomide babies in the US," is wrong. I'm 67 and the "thalidomide generation" was several years younger than me. There was a young woman in my college dorm with a misshapen arm who was a freshman when I was a senior: perhaps I am wrong to assume she was a "thalidomide baby" but her arm bore the classic imprint of the drug. And more recently, during the 90s my exwife had a coworker with a similar condition who knew she was, indeed, a thalidomide baby.
There are a very small number of grown woman and men that that are thalidomide "babies" in the US, but chances are their pregnant mothers were treated by doctors in Europe and Canada where thalidomide was approved. The "thalidomide babies" in the US may be naturalized citizens or born in the US but their pregnant mothers received thalidomide while being treated by a doctor outside of the US. These babies, a very small number, would be an exception and not the rule.
The courage of the FDA to demand better testing for approval of thalidomide still remains one of its best moments. Sparing almost all babies born in the US at that time the effects of thalidomide.
Have you read "Ending Medical Reversal" by VK Vasad? Astonishingly, he describes research that found 40% of medical practice as ineffective or harmful to patients.
Could the author be Vinay Prasad (rather than Vasad). Dr. Prasad has written many pieces about flawed research and the subject of medical reversals. He is a sharp critic of the current CDC and its COVID response as well. His Substack and YouTube channel are well worth look.
As an Emerita Professor of Public Health, I've served for years on FDA and NIH panels on "contested technologies" and researched the history of many drugs, devices, surgical procedures that were harmful and eventually overturned. I believe this book published by Johns Hopkins Press, authored by Vinayak K. Prasad, MD, MPH, and Adam S. Cifu, MD addresses these issues well. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11308/ending-medical-reversal
I experienced an atypical adverse reaction to prescription statins: lightheadness and double vision. When I tried a more "natural" solution, Red Yeast Rice, I had a milder but similar reaction. My doctor said, "Of course you did. It's the same chemicals, just stronger in the prescription form."
Recently a different doctor suggested a different prescription treatment, based on highly concentrated fish oil, that required taking multiple large softgels per day. I realized that it was just the prescription form of the high-concentration krill oil I'd already tried...without my cholesterol numbers moving down in the slightest.
Mine was severe muscle cramping. These drugs almost all have vicious side effects and the "benefits" are coming under increasing fire. Cardiologist recently suggested Repatha the injectable. Those side effects look absolutely frightening. I was able to reduce cholesterol by diet and supplements alone to the 160 range. Supplements are citrus bergamot, mg and vit d and k2. I exercise significantly as well. Not sure the medical profession isn't so in thrall to big pharma that they've lost all vestiges of common sense.
Btw - there is a weird virus going around that mimics stroke symptoms. Went to ER and they found no heart malfunction. Was relieved when a few friends came down with same symptoms. Sucked for them but made me feel better.
My eye doctor is my real guardian. Due to my type 1 diabetes, I get a scan of my retina every year, to check for vascular damage in my retinal veins.
According to him (and he may be wrong, but I hope not!), any problems with my veins will show up first in my retina. As long as my eyes remain healthy, chances are that other veins are in good shape as well. *crosses fingers*
I suspect that it may be a DNA issue, considering that my cholesterol has been high all my adult life. They just didn't want to treat it when I was in my childbearing years. And then the meds didn't play nice, which frustrates my doctors immensely, but they don't have anything feasible to offer.
My cholesterol recently went up, which alarmed me. But then I realized that, due to my work location the previous year, I was stopping at Taco Bell almost every work day. I guess persistent bad diet does have an effect!
Add to your list, the ongoing and expanding use of ECT ( electroconvulsive “therapy” )when there is no decent science to justify its use. In fact the ECT machines never went through FDA approval but were grandfathered in many decades ago. There are no decent RCTs to demonstrate efficacy and safety( it is neither) . It is the Wild West of psychiatry, with no data collection, no regulation and expanding its use to younger and younger children for a growing number of DSM “ labels”. Yet another money making SCAM foisted on the vulnerable.
I know this is anecdotal, but back in my early 20s, I accidentally gave myself "insulin shock therapy" (lowering blood sugar to the point that a seizure occurs), which preceded ECT (and was abandoned as more dangerous than ECT).
I experienced a significant improvement in my depression. It did not resolve completely, but it became more manageable and less crushing for a number of years afterward.
Medicine is far from a hard science, however well designed randomized controlled trials have been and should still be the cornerstone of any intervention. Psychiatry is the least scientific field( no lab tests, no imaging studies, no biopsies) to substantiate a diagnosis. Psych patients are the perfect target for dangerous untested interventions because they have zero credibility. Lawyers don’t take their cases( unless a young person has a successful suicide, and the family wants to sue) so patients damaged by their money grubbing arrogance have no recourse.We hear about the “ mental health crisis” in the country especially amongst the youth. This is fertile hunting grounds for the psych community.They have no accountability and no one really cares in the halls of governmental power. It’s a real and growing problem .
"Psych patients are the perfect target for dangerous untested interventions because they have zero credibility."
This is SO true. Once a person has been dumped into the "mentally ill" category, no one takes them seriously.
I spent a couple of weeks in a private mental hospital after a totally ineffective suicide attempt at age 21. Bafflingly, no one ever asked *why* I had made that attempt. The doctor in charge of the place insisted that I had subjective symptoms (symptoms only *I* would know if I had) that I did not, and medicated me accordingly (it took about two years for my brain to recover).
But one of the things I noticed keenly as I interacted with other patients and participated in group therapy was that the primary thing all of us seemed to be suffering from was a lack of anyone actually *caring*. Most of us had people who claimed to care...but what they *really* cared about was that we returned to behaving the "normal" way they expected us to behave.
It's not surprising that when even our family and friends are more interested in regaining "normal" than in anything else, mental health practitioners would be most interested in forcing the semblance of "normal" on the mentally ill, whatever the damage done in the effort.
Not to take anything away from a person receiving inadequate mental health care, the families receive instructions from the same providers. It breaks my heart to think that the words and actions we were given to support the healing did not build a bond with our loved one but a rod to poke them.
That is psychiatry for you. The thing is ALL the therapies and drugs, if done properly, work for some significant portion of the relevant population, say 5-10%, AND can have damaging effects when poorly administered. I don't know of a drug therapy that doesn't take 10-20 years off life expectancy for instance. Add to that the high rate of misdiagnosis and ignoring of co-morbidities and you've a shit show at the best of times. Then there is the attaction of the authoritarian personality to the "discipline; the proportion of nutters in the "discipline" (I had one Consultant who diagnosed themselves as having a heart attack in the Alps and STILL climbed a mountain!); etc. I know of one good one: they got out and went into General Practice.
The problem, dear Doctor, is that your profession, as has mine, been captured by the Left. These people are lunatics who have degraded your calling to the point that medical dogma is now mocked. The antics of the medical profession during Covid were deplorable. But the entire "gender transformation scam" is more redolent of Drs. Mengele and Frankenstein than of any real physician. So more than past time to heal thyselves.......
One truism about medicine is that bad results don’t hide forever. Trust me this whole gender medicine detour will implode but unfortunately way too late for a lot of mistreated people. Which is why many state legislatures are at least extending the statutes of limitations for malpractice in gender medicine and surgery indefinitely.
Because the American Left has become totally politically obsessed and convinced itself that the messenger is more important than the message. If someone who seems conservative is making a statement (like "gender dysphoria often reflects a separate psychological issue" or "children aren't ready to make decisions to destroy their fertility"), it can be ignored simply because of who the messenger is. Europe seemingly hasn't made this issue as politicized.
Problem is the many fine docs and careers ruined by the Covid madness and and lies pushed by the medical profession and the Faustian bargain they've struck with Big Pharma. The ghouls at Purdue Pharma are not a "one off." Sad that people with years of training can be bought off by junk food banquets.
The number of gender clinics in this country went from one to more than one hundred in a very short period of time. Multiple “ fellowship” programs have exploded( pediatric gynecology, pediatric urology, endocrine gender specialists etc. ) These programs must generate numbers to exist and justify their existence.They have pumped out many of these surgeons and medical practitioners who now are committed to this travesty in order to earn their living( add to that the numbers of nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who are also financially and ideologically bound to this insanity) .They are woke ideologues who stand to lose everything if this trans ideology is destroyed. It is going to be a a real fight to turn this around. I urge people to follow Leon Sapir , now at the Manhattan Institute, who is at the forefront of the legal and political challenges that are happening in the USA and around the world.
The biggest offender in this travesty of medicine is the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose board wholeheartedly endorses "affirming care." They are supposed to protect children's health. I am not sure what they gain by taking a stance that is obviously not supported by the evidence in Europe. They are busy doing fake studies that support their position, but they cannot expect the public to let them get away with this forever. They are criminals, and I hope there will be consequences for their advocacy of malpractice by pediatricians across this country. Those who have been harmed will have to rise up make it happen.
I like everything you’ve said so far - but I think your “truism” misses the point. Bad results in the pharmaceutical industry commonly hide for 20 - 30 years. The medical industry, including much of the “science” in medical journals, is deeply compromised and corrupt, and has been rotting from the inside for decades. The medical and public health response to COVID just revealed that decay for all who are willing to see.
Like the grain-heavy diet that was promoted from the 70s onward. Evidently it was based on one small study and was basically junk science, but it was politically convenient for the lobbyists.
Or promoting margarine over butter for decades. Even now that they've admitted that hydrogenated fat is horrible for you, the media has focused on the evils of fried fast food, but carefully avoided making the connection that margarine is a hydrogenated fat.
Fellow surgeon; there is NO surgical treatment for mental illness. I am embarrassed that many of these doctors are Board Certified and Fellows of the ACS. What has happened to medical ethics, to rational thinking. None of these surgeons would offer amputation to a patient with alien limb syndrome. The issue of surgical cure for gender dysphoria is identical.
Essentially, the “gender affirmation” industry has taken children that likely have discomfort regarding sexuality, and promised treatment with drugs and surgery. Unbelievable!
Good post, Robird. There is no surgical treatment for mental illness, social discomfort, adolescence, etc.
I think "having gender dysphoria" is mostly nonsense. It is a relatively recent term. Some men had parafilias which they want normalized (who cares what they do but they are not women)...
Gender can also be a high school cult. For girls it can be less about sexuality sometimes and more about being part of a thing/group. It damages families (Nonbelivers are outsiders unlike believers at school).
Abigail Shrier is right that we need to get "Social Emotional Learning" or SEL out of the schools. Why do they feel they must talk to other people's kids about feelings, etc.?
I despise "gender affirmation" in all forms. Rafferty pushed this at the AAP and having child mutilation enthusiast Admiral Levine as Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary is a real problem.
You do know they've declassified gender dysphoria and any thoughts of born in the wrong body as mental illness, right? Thinking one is the opposite sex is now apparently normal and not a mental illness according to the health and medical authorities.
Which begs the question why gender related surgeries are covered by medical insurance. So medical treatment is not for any illness mental or otherwise, but to align one's body with some feeling that's always inside you?
Unfortunately, the business of medicine replaced the Hippocratic Oath for many. My friend who was an Ob/Gyn was very upset with colleagues who only knew how to make money in their profession rather than learn how to invest.
Well said. I did not realize that the Hippocratic oath had been abandoned. That explains a lot. The medical profession has forgotten where it came from. In my mind there is no greater sin.
Also, the “long game” of how the human body reacts to radical hormonal changes. It’s cancer. Why is the medical community not discussing the “what’s next” aspect of this treatment?
Doctors performed lobotomies and electroshock therapy in the 50s and 60s, in a misguided attempt to make people normal. We now look at these practices as abhorrent, in 20 years we will look at gender treatment in the same manner
I am a retired pediatric pulmonologist. Thus, I have no overlap with gender affirming care although personal relationships with pediatric endocrinologists at my former Department. I agree with JBT that one day, this whole area of gender-affirming care will be seen as the greatest medical and surgical malfeasance of our time. The story first told by Jamie Reed and others needs deep study by objective individuals. It is another story of the tyranny of self-identified experts. Endocrinologists know a great deal about hormones but not so much about adolescent psychology and even less about basic medical ethics.
This seems contradictory to me: "For as long as I can remember, I believed in and fought for transgender rights. My peers and I rebelled against the idea of strict gender roles and gender conformity. The old ideas of what a man and woman had to be were outdated and repressive. But we attacked these problems by trying to change the culture, not by irrevocably changing our bodies." If you rebel against strict gender roles, shouldn't you realize that you can retain your biological gender even if you don't fit those gender roles? Isn't it being more true to yourself to be the kind of man or woman you are, rather than try to change your gender?
Good point! Why would you need surgery and hormones to break the binary? Just be an expansive you and the definition of what a girl or boy can expand with you. Becoming the opposite sex via medicalization only shrinks the spectrum and reinforces the binary. The contradictions fall over themselves. Which is why anyone still caught up in this bullshit just shouts, transphobe! Bigot! TERF! So stupid it makes my head spin.
The ones who "come out as nonbinary" are funny. The only way to be "nonbinary" is as a public performance. Otherwise, you're just a boy or girl, man or woman, with the clothes and hairstyle and activities you prefer. I suppose that's too not-special ...
When a student in middle school states that they are nonbinary, it seems like this is a serious problem with our society. With the push for sexualization via social media at an age when they are not emotionally ready for it; the awkwardness of their body changing at a rate that is different than their friends and peers; and the gender stereotypes that are given to young people makes "nonbinary" a socially acceptable equivalent of "time out". Nonbinary as an acceptable shelter for children seems rather tragic since they are questioning themselves rather than the false expectations set too often by social media.
When adults are asking for pronouns, re-defining gender, labeling children as cis/trans, etc., it is one heck of an overture, fanfare, and cuing the lights for the start of a show. Performing on this stage may be absolutely irrestistible and highly seductive for some preteens and teens.
What is happening is comparable to the Pleasure Island scene from the movie Pinocchio. Coachmen lured and transported young boys to a place where there is nothing but fun, but the fun things result in boys becoming donkeys. Did these bratty and wilful boys truly deserve to be made into donkeys and cruelly used by the coachmen? Do teenagers and preteens truly deserve to be transformed into an asinine version of sexuality by society?
Douglas Murray says there's no difference between saying "I'm non-binary" and saying "Look at me." He seems right to me. If not, I'd like to know the distinction.
I have met a lot of gay people, and a much smaller number of people for whom "queer" was oddly more fitting. Some were flamboyantly performative, while most were closely guarded (and very polite) wallflowers whose inherent differentness was nonetheless impossible not to notice. Hard to describe but not a vacuous label. But then everything becomes cheapened by the Instant Media circus, so who knows what you may have encountered there.
Agree for adults and perhaps he was referencing adults making the non-binary statement. When it comes to 12 year olds stating "I'm non-binary", my thoughts are who fed you this line?!
Recently, a whole new definition of gender roles that resemble cartoonish sterotypes has been used to define male and female. In a children's book about being transgender published in 2021, the dad who likes to cook is described as having a shadow that is not always blue. When did the basic survival skill of cooking become feminine? In another children's book, the character knows that they are really a girl because they cry when Charlotte the spider dies in Charlotte's Web, love pink, and hate sports. Think of Dylan Mulvaney assuming a female role that describes themselves as a bimbo or a girl when they are well into their 30's or 40's. When did growing up and being smart become a masculine trait?
Why should a young guy question their masculinity if they could make a great omlet but struggle with slope formula? Why should a gal who loves soccer and made a joke about Charlotte's death instead of breaking into tears question whether they are a girl? What desperately needs to be altered are not bodies of young people, but the gender stereotypes that are now being taught.
"But when we started to wise up, it didn’t mean my entire liberal worldview evaporated. If anything, it just reinforced my views."
I had the opposite experience. I started to wise up when my historically happy and non-dysphoric daughter changed her name and pronouns behind my back, aided and abetted by our local Marxist Indoctrination Factory, aka her high school. That started a cascade of "evaporation." My entire leftist worldview was annihilated. From covid to climate change, immigration to abortion, systemic racism to Republicans being branded as mouth-breathing bigots, I woke the fuck up and will never vote democrat again.
That said, I am still tremendously thankful for her blowing the whistle.
You are so on point. Minors can’t get tattoos, buy OTC cold medication, drive before 16 or join the military. There is a minimum age for marriage. But taking powerful hormones to block a natural phase in mammal development because you “think” you’re something other than how you were born well that’s totally diff.
Not to mention that the criminal justice system deals with minors differently because their brains are not fully mature. If they can't conform their behavior to the law, why would we think they have the intelligence and sense to determine to take puberty blockers or surgically alter their bodies to sort of mimic the opposite sex.
It is to be hoped that the trickle of self-realization that your represent will become a great river; a tsunami that sweeps away all the lies. The present day Democrat dogma is patent lunacy. Thanks for having the courage to shout that out.
Mrs. M, I am happy to have you on this side but I want you here because you embrace conservatism, not because you are pi$$ed about your daughter. I have a daughter so I absolutely understand, support, and empathize about her negative influences.
Conservatism has its own irrational excesses. If you need everyone on your team, how are you any better than the other team that demands total loyalty to their causes? Mrs Miller is welcome here, as far as I’m concerned.
Yes conservatism does have its nutjobs. And I said I was happy to have her on the conservative side. But if it is because she is angry about what she perceives the other side did to her daughter she may well be rebounding. That is not embracing conservatism, that is disavowing (some aspects) of liberalism. Which IMO creates problems for conservatism. As in how many of the nut jobs are just rebounding liberals? That is a rhetorical question.
Her background, worldview and way of life are the exact opposite of mine. It must have taken agonizing self-reflection to undertake the whistleblowing. It makes me think that the conditions and activities at that clinic were even worse than we can imagine, diabolical. Despite her misguided beliefs, I am almost awestruck by her courage - a heroine who was prepared to face the dreadful wrath of her family, friends, peers, the left-wing and in fact half the country.
She really sounds like someone who had been brainwashed into joining a cult and needed "deprogramming" to escape its clutches. Fortunately she was strong enough to deprogram herself. Many people can't deal with the cognitive dissonance that goes with such experiences.
She is not deprogrammed. She just admitted she was wrong about this one aspect. And then only after observing the problems for years. I too am glad she came to that realization bur she is hardly deprogrammed. And her continued public pursuit of notoriety is a little concerning. Book deal coming? Candidate for office?
Yeah, maybe she's just partially deprogrammed. Might need a visit to Room 101 of The Ministry of Love in George Orwell's novel "1984" to complete the process :).
The political left in which I spent most of my life has a hard, mean edge these days. I will not soon forget the really outrageous calls for unvaccinated people to be rounded up and exiled from society or banned from hospitals. Noam Chomsky was one of these voices. Never was it deemed pertinent to mention that Pfizer, a company that has previously paid a record-breaking 2.3 billion dollar fine for healthcare marketing fraud, had no liability for its product which also did not prevent transmission. The left’s position was rigid, sanctimonious and frankly stupid. I’ll do my own thinking, thanks! I notice now supposedly progressive journalists fail to examine the subsequent numbers of excess deaths and disability which are appalling and seem to correlate with the vaccine rollout. Intellectually very dishonest.
Our nations behavior during the pandemic was appalling. It was a politicized nightmare. The virus WAS a serious health threat but because of petty political partisanship its toll was much higher than needed. We couldn’t overcome our blind dedication to demonizing anyone who didn’t think as we did. Masks became face diapers. People who wore them were sheeple. Left and right should be ashamed.
It is interesting that when Elon Musk recently opened the Twitter Files to journalists (including of course Bari Weiss), the files revealed a massive censorship operation during the pandemic with, I recall, something like 80 full-time FBI agents arm-twisting tech companies to censor, deplatform, or shadow ban voices—many of prominent doctors and scientists—disagreeing with the fused government/corporate narrative on Covid. The majority of the censored opinions were deemed to come from the right. Obviously a very troubling way for a government constant billing itself as preserving democracy to act. In my opinion, the Twitter Files incident has been vastly underreported. To have the government silencing thousands of citizens is a bigger story than Watergate. So now Biden has publicly called for Musk to be investigated. I do not concur that calling a mask “a face diaper,” while denigrating, is equivalent to censoring and firing thousands of citizens.
You are my kind of left leaning person. I feel hope when I read your comment. I neither want nor need to persuade you to convert to conservatism. I just need to know that there are people like you on the left.
They forced shots on children they knew didn't need them, and took our tax money to pay for the shots and give record profits to the Big Pharma companies they told us they opposed.
I consider it an atrocity and a human rights abuse.
A well-stated story. I agree with Ms. Reed in her concern for surgery and other medical procedures on minors, and am grateful for her courage in facing the zealots who advocate for those procedures, as well as those calmer people who simply disagree with her (and me).
"The left I know believes that science is real. We accept scientific evidence even if it contradicts our political talking points."
I don't agree with her characterization of the political left, in fact it is the opposite of my own observations, but if the only other choice is the Republican party...well, I'm hoping and praying for better from both in 2024, against all experience and odds. You never know.
If I were to choose sexual preferences for a mother of five, I'm pretty sure "queer woman married to a transman" wouldn't make the top ten because I don't understand it at all. But I would choose "courageous, intelligent, and concerned" as desirable qualities in any parent or citizen, and Ms. Reed seems to have those qualities. I wish her and her family well.
It wasn’t too long ago when religious conservatives were saying that the Earth was 6,000 years old because that’s what the Bible says, and that fossils were put there by God to test our faith, and has their own word salad of “creation science” and “irreducible complexity” to try to couch their unscientific beliefs in the language of science, and in the midst of this nonsense, it was liberals who pushed back and would point to the scientific method and evidence to argue against it. It’s a relatively recent development that the left is pushing anti-scientific nonsense.
The problem of how to treat gender dysphoria is a medical and psychological problem. The fact that this has been entangled in politics is more evidence that progressive thinking is fundamentally flawed.
Until recently gender dysphoria was relatively rare and mainly very young boys ( toddlers) who were otherwise well as far as psych could tell. It was handled with the parents , pediatrician, and psych, with dignity and privacy and not surgically.( until the kid reached 18. ). This explosion in young teens( more girls than boys) who never before exhibited gender dysphoria, is something else entirely. Obama snuck trans care into the ACA bill which made it political. At the same time the psych works deleted the word “ disorder” from the label. Now there is endless money in the industry for treating something that is now not even a disorder , with public dollars. Social media is the vector for the contagion. A perfect storm for this disaster at the expense of the kids and society as a whole.
Yes but, and I say this as a pretty devout conservative, the messaging in opposition is pretty flawed too. As it is regarding abortion. Conservatives are just playing the you-can-pass-a-law-and-fix-it game and that is egregious in my opinion. Let's be honest and say these things (gender transition for minors and abortion, particularly repeat abortions) can be abused. We don't know what the answer, there may not be an answer that fits every incident. But either on demand without scrutiny and limits is wrong.
There are no physical "fixes" for psychological problems that aren't poor to very poor. Full Stop! On top of that, as I have said before but not so crudely, whichever ever way you cut a tranny up or whichever hormone/drug cocktail you shoot them up with, they haven't been socialised for that sex. Good luck not coming out even more damaged and screamingly crazy than going in. It isn't a matter of "can be abused"; it is a matter of cannot BUT be abused. The idea is completely fucked up in the FIRST place.
Very good point about physical fixes for psychological problems. When it comes to trans I had a client that was the most successful trans person I have known. She was treated as a girl from the time she was a child and she was in her 50s when I met her. Everybody just accepted she was different and accepted her as she was. This was in a very traditional.Hispanic community. She was completely at ease with herself. And put me at ease because I had to discuss it with her. If I met her on the street I would not have known she was not female.
Hi Lynne, When it comes to "trans" these days nearly everyone can point to someone they have met and maybe they like that person... Sure! Good. But, "accepted her as she was" - humm.... I suspect that once some folks have gone very far down a path there is nothing much else for it but to go with it - make the best of it. In the old days "passing" as that guy does was the goal. It sure didn't work out for that flight attendant, Scott.
Anyhow, if interested, Helen Joyce has written a book that might help you understand your client, "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" Best wishes to the client.
I think there are and always have been people who are somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum. Even people with male and female parts and the idea of chromosomes was unknown. I think it was very rare. Surgical intervention other than castration did not exist. So I think people used to be willing to accept it. I think that is what happened with my client. Well at least if she was truthful with me. I was using her condition as a form.of mitigation and she did not want to be singled out in that manner. To look at her she looked like a matronly woman.in her 50s.
The problem I have with how we treat it now is 1) it is trendy in some circles and I believe there is social contagion so it is no longer rare; 2) the experimentation, both surgical and pharmaceutical horrific; 3) the assault on the role of parents is egregious; and 4) acceptance is demanded and it is very much in your face. I do not do well with demands.
As a retired educator, I have seen in the past three years about two dozen students, all who were designated “special ed” In elementary school changer genders. I live in the town I taught in. One high school. That so many young people suddenly changed gender - a few in 6 and 7 th grade, more by 8th grade and the majority by 9th is shocking. The young people I know all came from one elementary school. There are two more in town, so I don’t know about those students. What I can say is the majority of those transitioned students, about 80% came from chaotic homes, with poor life choices constantly on display by their custodial parent or parents. Most of these students were emotionally immature, unable to negotiate even the least bit of frustration, unable to accept basic class rules - when you finish three problems, then you can take a break, and challenging every class expectation with the “but what if...?” Rejoinder. None of these students were designated, on the spectrum of autism. Are they doing better now that they are trans men and women teens? Are they more emotionally mature that they are taking powerful hormones? From what I’ve heard the answer is no. The scattered, disruptive and destructive behaviors have only grown with there troubled humans. Throwing hormone blockers has changed nothing. But it was easier for the parents to say, “see my behavior had nothing to do with my child’s problems. They were born in the wrong body.”
I always find it funny that so many people who sneer at religion, or at the very idea of a God, blithely toss around the phrase “born in the wrong body,” unable to parse that they’re implying the pre-existence of an immortal Self, aka a soul.
I never got transgender as a concept, but what really clarified it for me was when Jordan Peterson said, “What is it EXACTLY that is in the wrong body,” and realized that he was talking about a soul, and that transgender is therefore a religion, not science. Now, I’m pretty sure I understand transgender completely, and it’s a religion that I don’t happen to believe in.
Thanks for the first hand observation. But to be fair parents in this generation have been schooled that the village raises the child. Many educators have taken that to heart and see themselves as the village gatekeeper (this comes I think of decades now of educators as mandatory reporters). And reportedly parents are told that the choice is transition or suicide. Some states even view non-supportive of transition children as child abusers. IMO we have created a sordid web based on unsupported science.
Free Press- once again, thank you for publishing this type of writing- it is so important. I teach family law at DePaul Law School. After Gavin Newsom vetoed a state bill that would have denied parents who opposed gender affirming care a preference for custody in a divorce case, I devoted about a half hour of class to discussing Jamie Reed's initial piece (and the quiet of the media in response until the NYT's piece). Not surprisingly, most students thought parents who deny kids this care are simply bad parents. I make a point to get my students to see both sides although I'm still not sure how many were ultimately convinced. But I will say this--her language about the comparative merit of the Democratic Party is not helpful overall from a societal standpoint- I would gently suggest that Jamie (whom I do admire) read Jonthan Haidt's wonderful book The Righteous MInd so she can understand that good people are on both political sides. And today's problems are largely driven by society's failure to accept this truth.
Thank goodness you teach. During Covid I saw a collapse in young (baby) lawyers of the idea that lawyers need to understand there are two sides (at least) of every issue. An unintended consequence of that is it makes for a pretty well-grounded person.
Not just young lawyers. I was one of four lawyers at a small firm and was shocked when they were completely unable to engage in a discussion about mandates. They dissolved the firm to force me out - we had a very good and supportive professional and personal relationship prior to the C-19 shot rollout. Very few voices for freedom/autonomy in the legal world in Canada.
I learned this long ago in law school when one of my professors (who was Jewish) gave a lecture about how he supported the Nazis marching in Skokie.....
Yes, the inability to see things from multiple perspectives is a real problem across the board. I'm sorry you had that experience--I hope you landed in a better place....
The best smackdown for this phenomenon I ever saw was the brilliant response to a young woman now embarrassed that she had sleeved out her entire arm with Harry Potter tattoos (because of JKR being a “TERF”):
“It’s almost like making irreversible alterations to your body at a young age is a really bad idea.”
Hello from the other side of the galaxy 👋 where we never gave up our beliefs and right to stand up for at least *some* traditional values, and not go along with illiberal group think that maligns people’s character who don’t agree. I appreciate what she’s doing, and the courage it takes to go against the groupthink around transgenderism.. but, let’s also be honest. When parents who don’t want this stuff normalized, are called “extremists”, and those who don’t go along with every pronoun from here to Timbuktu are called “fascists” and “bigots”, there’s a whole lot more to back up from that just the most extreme parking lot. Kids don’t need this ideology, and that includes a lot more than just the normalization of gender "affirming" surgeries and puberty blockers. With schools already strapped for funding, good teachers, and meaningful academics, this stuff (transgenderism, over-sexualization , decolonization, etc) are what activist teachers are fighting for? Really?! Am I wrong here? Or does anyone else also feel this way?
I am glad she finally blew the whistle. But Ms Reed is the poster child for the anarchy activist. Radical thinking, change for its own sake, violent actions, incomplete rationale. Her good intentions made no sense to start with. Kudos for coming clean, but really, how do you get into such a nonsensical position in the first place?
The Long March Through the Institutions, starting with the radicals in the universities in the 60's. It's infested everything from high school debates to Ivy League deans, as we recently found out. Even math apparently has something to-do with "White Supremacy" - no joke. Just look up Tema Okun. It's all bundled together under some form of anti-everything western Judeo/Christian culture.
It's not that big of a mystery. It's the sincere belief that the world is unjust and changes are needed to help those less fortunate. Where it all goes wrong is the misguided belief that the best way to effect the desired changes is through laws and public programs, instituted and enforced by the government.
The Left couches every issue like this. Masks, vaccine mandates, abortion, trans, anti-capitalism, climate change, BLM, Hamas, etc. It's all wild-eyed "sky is falling" brinkmanship.
Politics may have replaced religion for them, but they are no less zealous or factually baseless.
The extreme right gives as good as it gets on that score. These days they, too, treat every election cycle as “our last chance to save America!” If Trump doesn’t win, the gulags will be filled with Republicans by the end of the year! Social media rewards hysterics of all persuasions.
I agree with you. I hated the right in the 80s and 90s, because I was on the receiving end of the moral majority and satanic panic nonsense. But all of that social influence seems like a distant memory; the far right doesn't feel like a threat to me anymore, either. The Left? Different story. They've ideologically captured nearly all of our institutions. This article is an example. It's totally out of control and it's scary.
I think she and her wife (I refuse to participate in denying biological reality anymore, Jamie and her partner are females, lesbians not "queer") probably fostered and adopted. (This is not uncommon for lesbian couples and actually a good thing given how many kids need homes.)
If we are to judge people, one key metric would be the extent to which their actions and advocacy have improved the lives of their fellow human beings.
On that metric, Jamie Reed would clearly rate top marks.
“ I was raised to believe in the core principles of the Democratic Party, which includes the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society.l
I wish I could be relaxed. I wish I could just be cool. But this is so obviously not true it’s hard to allow myself past this sentence. I choose to force myself to learn something from this and so I choose to ponder the idea that this sentence is in fact how Democrats view themselves. Perhaps she believes it is true.
Curious. The defining characteristic of the Democrat party, and the reason I left it as a gay man, is because of their heinous distrust of individuality and the need to control others in the false name of the “greater good.” From an almost guttural level I reject any claims of the “greater good” as I know what that really means. It means their greater good at your greater expense.
For me it was this one:
"The left I know believes that science is real. We accept scientific evidence even if it contradicts our political talking points."
Weird! The Left that I know deliberately ignores scientific evidence to maximize profits for Big Pharma, then attacks any scientist or media outlet contradicting them in any way - and then follow up by trying to pass new censorship laws to prevent doctors from whistleblowing or contradicting government policies.
The Left I know viciously attacks anybody who strays from The Narrative even slightly, labeling lifelong allies as instant enemies for the crime of questioning dogma.
If Jamie Reed's impression of "The Left" were even remotely true, her article wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.
That was my reaction as well. I've been watching the Left reject any science that does not conform to their ideology for the past 20 years.
I get the impression that Reed's perception of "The Left" has always been "people like me." Behavior by Leftists that she doesn't agree with has been perceived as merely an anomaly, not examples of who Leftists really are.
Disagree with the left and they will not debate you. They will call you names and pillory you.
The left is not liberal. They are fascists, Nazis.
You literally followed up your accusation by doing the exact thing you claim they do.
You missed the point. I will debate them but I never can because they do not debate. They insult. If you refute a leftist, the first thing out of their mouths is "You are a Racist.". I have yet to have one civil debate with a leftist.
Besides I was buttressing Celia's comment not debating a leftist. If I were debating a leftist, then your comment would be true.
I'm swarthy. I'm Hispanic. I'm Sephardic. I've been accused of being a white supremist and an antisemite. I believe even twice in this fora. There is no chance of reasoning with most leftists. They simply do not abide dissenting opinion. They are the bane of the Republic.
So you’re preemptively calling them fascists because that’s what they’ve done to you?
Rise above it.
Yes, there's definitely a difference between leftists and liberals. I think the distinction is unclear to many on the right, but it's crystal clear to the principal behind the progressive OpEd News, who describes himself as a lefty and was very offended when someone called him a liberal.
The left I knew when I was young was much different from the left I see today. But the left has always wanted more control by central government and less individual liberty. That kind of defines the left.
The left you knew when you were young was exactly the same as today. The young are more vulnerable to bullshit is all.
No, lots of leftists from my youth are conservatives today ... and they haven't changed their views at all. But when the left gets what they want, they keep moving the goalposts farther and farther left.
Science means what we say it means.
Truth means what we say it means.
Democracy means what we say it means.
Justice means what we say it means.
Less we than the media, pundits and politicians. Definitely an uncontrolled minority.
She freely acknowledges she is in a left bubble. Then lauds herself for admitting error on one issue. But only when the error was staring her in the face and was no longer deniable. Most will never be in her position so if that is what it takes to acknowledge error we are screwed.
Edited to correct the auto-correct. If this is what I am to expect from AI, thanks but no thanks.
You are spot on.
Eta, we are screwed!
And they ("progressives") put stupid signs out in front of their houses designed to condescend to everyone who passes by, their snickering hidden behind surgical masks.
I’m not sure of what Jamie meant by the Left she knows, but I took it to mean the original (OG) leftists, the classic liberals. Not the illiberal Left that we have come to know today.
Yes, i think the point was that she doesn't recognize the new left. The left she "knows" is a memory.
That left died at the turn of the century - the 19th/20th century.
That left died at the turn of the century - the 19th/20th century.
the left I know says i killed Grandma. and ordered about a billions dollars worth of masks for the populace ( not for themselves) from CHINA
And then dumped a small mountain of useless disposable masks into the ocean
But god forbid you or I use a plastic straw!
The left believes that only power is real. If the prestige of "science" can be enlisted in support of their totalitarian project, they will not hesitate to use it. If actual science conflicts with it, they will falsify, ignore, twist, intimidate, or cancel it. The classic case was T.D. Lysenko. When the new science of genetics conflicted with the Soviet project to create a "New Man" via the elimination of capitalism, "Scientific Socialism" (as Marxism was called back then) invented Lysenkoism, i.e., the heritability of environmental adaptations and sent geneticists to the Gulags.
Well said.
This whole basic idea: my party is above contempt, the other beneath contempt is the first problem.
There are fine people on both sides. Each side has a slightly different idea on the proper role of government. As Bari stated in her opinion piece on Honestly, somewhere between 10 and 15% of the people think abortion should be allowed up to a year post-partum [that was sarcasm]. Between 10 and 15% believe no abortion should be allowed ever. And the other 70-ish percent believe abortion should be banned sometime near the end of the first trimester. The idea that the country is divided on abortion is misinformation that is constantly hammered into our heads by the people who make bank off most people thinking we're fiercely divided on the question of abortion ... following the money, congress-critters never waste the opportunity to shake the donation tray at their constituency ... likewise, the people who spill ink for a living have strong financial incentive to keep the imaginary division going.
The people are held hostage to the story makers and the story writers.
The media feeds into this too. States that are 52% R and 48% D get painted as "red states" while those that are 52% D and 48% R are called "blue states."
Those proportions are the same here in canada, a strong majority including me believes abortion should be legal and available but be cut off at a reasonable point.
But here the radicals also control the debate.
I wish the new conservative leader would step up and openly tackle it, he’d win in a landslide.
He'll win in a landslide regardless. Pandering to jihadists isn't doing Junior any favours.
That would be Nikki haley
Not in Canada. That would be Pierre Marcel Poilievre.
Dear Mr. Kelly, Both are contemptible. They're two sides of the same coin.
Indeed. We, in fact, have two fascist parties in this country. The only difference between them is that one has a noisy, influential socialist wing, and the other has a small classical liberal (as in free markets, free speech, freedom of religion) wing. I'm sticking with the one with the small classical liberal wing, despite Trump (whom I will not vote for even if my party nominates him).
then your vote wont count unless you vote for Biden
That the vast majority take your attitude only encourages the wannabe Caesars. It would be a stinging rebuke to the two parties if even 20% of the electorate voted third party. What this country needs is a proper multi-party democracy like most of Europe has, and so long as everyone takes your attitude we'll never have one. My vote might not count in the electoral outcome, but mine and every other third party vote counts as a matter of moral standing: I and everyone else who votes third party refuse to give our assent to the wannabe Caesars, and we will make known our refusal by not be confused with the apathetic non-voter, since we vote.
I was surprised and disappointed that in the 2016 election, despite all those who claimed they couldn't stand either Clinton or Trump, less than 6% voted third party. I fear the same thing will happen this year. Those who truly are concerned about "losing our democracy" shouldn't vote for either Biden or Trump, both of whom have proven that they are willing to be lawless.
It wasn't a stinging rebuke when Perot got about that amount, nothing changed, those who voted Perot, got Clinton.
I voted for Gary Johnson and still think he was the best choice in 2016.
The problem is that elections with more than 2 people are mathematically broken - the correct winner is not guaranteed to win (by "correct winner" I mean the single candidate the beats all others in 1-1 contests). This is because the candidates with more similar views will steal votes from each other.
We can fix this with ranked-choice or runoffs. But until we do fix it, elections with more than 2 people are worthless.
Don't be fooled. Ranked choice voting is too easy to game. Example: Alaska in 2020 was a red state, 40%R, 30%D, 30%I. After the primary, there were 2 Rs and 2 Ds on the final ballot. One D dropped out (reason unknown), the Rs split the vote (31% to 29%) and the D won with 40% of the vote (not close to a majority). The Presidential race was 43%R and 43%D.
I held my nose and voted Trump. Henceforth I will no longer exercise my suffrage. It's a farce and the entire system needs to crash even if it kills myself and everyone I love.
No wars. A peace in the Middle East foreign policy that was working. Isolate Iran and other bad actors, radical Palestinians, by getting peace agreements starting with the more moderate Arab countries. The ability to make the bullies of the world believe he would do as promised which kept them corralled. Telling the Taliban leader we knew where his family lived and his family would be the first wiped out if he didn't follow their agreement. I begin to wonder why anyone would believe in the Dems misinformation when his record far surpass' the Dems in most areas. Xi is now saying Taiwan will be back with Beijing before the end of the year. And you want who in charge to manage that situation. All this moral clap trap is what is destroying the world these days. While the bad guys are breaking into your house, you don't want a band of hippies with peace beads protecting you. All your morals will do you and your family no good when the terrorists start attacking inside or country again and you'[rem 6' under. Providing they can find any of your parts to bury. Oh and Catholics and concerned parents are not the ones the FBI and school boards need to be concerned about. To paraphrase and update Carville, it's the Constitutional and lawful systems stupid. And ours are crumbling. Rapidly! And I don't mean the SCOTUS. If schumer and biden don't like them, I LOVE THEM.
Mr. Brandt I liked President Trump's policy. I understand the application of pliers and hammers to persuade thuggish individuals to becoming rapidly reasonable and seeing things our way. I'm sometimes ok with no water nor baby in the bath tin. President Trump is all about himself. If that benefits you he doesn't mind if you get splashed as both make their way out of the window. I'm trying to catch the baby this time.
Jack, not voting for Trump is a vote for Democrats. Overcome your loathing for Trump and consider whether you would rather Biden wins the election.
Yikes! I'm sure glad you don't love me! :-)
Happy New Year Jacek..
Thank you Mr. Phil.
; ]
That was a tough sentence to get around. It is more aligned with old school communism than the classic Democratic Party which certainly was focused on individual freedoms at one point in time ("Hell no, I won't go." and "I can use any bathroom, not just the one labeled "Colored."). Maybe not any more?
But once past that disturbing line, you gotta admit she has courage and did good.
As far as politics, when we focus more on the American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and serving one another in real life (not trying to echo our opinions into far off communities) OUR world becomes a better place. And that's what Jamie did: changed HER world. Then a free press (another American ideal) amplified her story and its truths and gave it legs.
I do think that it is of vital importance that we stand for truth on an individual level these days. Too many doctors and medical personnel—most in fact—took a cowardly, compliant path during Covid as they watched more courageous colleagues vilified and fired. No one wants to recognize the obvious: This has cost many lives. People like John Oliver and Steve Colbert also have responsibility for their ridiculing of questioning the corporate narrative on vaccines. Can you even imagine George Carlin or Richard Pryor taking a similar position and shilling for a Pharma agenda? So much for current “liberals”.
There is a reason for all those pharmaceutical ads beyond simple advertising.
It’s a delusion. They believe they mean well. They believe they are the smart people and know what is best for everyone else--the collective. Of course, they exempt themselves from these requirements.
Leftist. I hold the left in absolute
contempt. They are hive people, Lockstepping lemmings. They demand a one size fits all approach and are the very model of intolerance. I feel bad because engaged individually leftists appear to be generally kind. That changes pretty much when you question the latest whim they're forcing on the entirety of the west.
Did you see that cartoon the other day? "Too many Lemmings, not enough cliffs."
I'm afraid I missed that. No matter I think I would prefer to see the lemmings scurry back to yonder wood and happily munch on bark and nuts. I greatly appreciate them doing what they please and I not interfere. Sadly they can't seem to extend the same courtesy.
It was in TGIF. Honestly the only Mamek cartoon I found witty.
Dear, Mrs. Lynne thank you for the bearings. I'll go back and look. I sort of blow through whatever Mrs Bowles puts out.
Understandably. She is not for everyone.
That line struck me, as well I find it chilling. The essence of Chinese Communist authoritarianism and leftism through the ages. The supremacy of the state. And its "Dear Leader." The United States of America is based on the rights of the individual. That is our core. It is what has made and kept us free and prosperous. Never forget that.
What that sentence of hers describes is communism. It’s the collective of mindless sheep and drones. It’s their way, their thinking or its banishment to the outer reaches of hell and ridicule.
It’s quite shocking yet instructive
I think you have hit on the genuine cause of the national division. It is not Republican versus Democrat. Those are just labels. Rather it is the individual mindset versus the collective (for the greater good) mindset. I think there are some things where laws to ensure an agreed upon greater good are justified - air travel, border control, military defense, etc.. But I also think the problem with the greater good belief is that the next logical step is belief that government can or will fix what ails us. It neither can nor should. To engage in such is the equivalent of a dog chasing it's tail.
The first time I went to New York City, I was profoundly struck by the absolute reliance on government and infrastructure. On the streets and in the subways, police and transit employees are vital to the functioning of the city. It must be easy to think government control is required for everything to work well.
Growing up in Tennessee and now living in Florida, I felt that the government functions best when minimally intrusive. It’s easy to think that you barely need government at all.
In either case, the individual versus collective mindset might just be the product of self interest. My problem is with the people who either want the government to do everything so they don’t have to and those who want the government to leave them alone so they can lie, cheat, and steal.
Also, I’m fairly certain that “the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society” isn’t to far off from Jefferson’s "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots“ but maybe the difference is in whether the sacrifice is a limited, individual decision or the lifelong demand of the state.
Starting with your last point re individualism and Jefferson, I think individuals need to band together for common purpose. But that is THEIR decision, not the government's. Big, big difference. I do not deny the need for government. I am not an anarchist. And I won't use the phrase "I believe in limited government" because that had been co-opted. I believe in practical government. Effected by the enactment of a law to address a particular issue administered in such a way to achieve the goal and subject to judicial review to assure lawful enactment and enforcement. That is good governance. That is not what we have now. Not really on any level - federal, state or local - but particularly at the federal level we have a Congress that is AWOL on every significant issue except spending that results in a massively bloated executive branch bureaucracy that is too unwieldy to manage. It has created the scenario where we are now ruled - ruled not governed - by career bureaucrats in the alphabet executive branch agencies who are accountable to no one. If you have doubt, consider the efforts made to torpedo the former president and select - select, not elect - the present one.
Absolutely correct. Unelected bureaucracy are the entrenched ruling elite. They are overwhelmingly leftists.
The difference is in the individual decision vs the coerced action. Even if the result is the same, the coercion is unforgivable and never worth the ends it seeks.
I believe progress is an emergent property of liberty. I do not believe progress can be engineered or coerced, it must erupt spontaneously from the hearts and minds of a free people.
I mean in my view she is a pretty extreme liberal. Most “normal” democrats are not advocating for communism, and against capitalism imo.
“[N]ormal” democrats" are simply those who refuse to face and accept that the core tenets of their party are now based on principles and ideas that would have been considered insane just a decade ago.
Unlike those pesky RINO’s and establishment Republicans!
Tell ‘em, Bruce!
Why does the “greater good” always require the “sacrifice of the individual”? It is the justification for delegating the determination of the greater good to a few. Perhaps the greater good is best determined by the independent actions of thousands and millions of individuals making independent decisions about what is in their best interests. That is the beauty of a “market” that is free.
Because ultimately liberals believe in 2 things: 1. They are eternally guilty for any advantage they have over others, and 2. Therefore no one can be trusted to do anything right, so all power must reside in the government.
Yes. This. Thank you. I’m reading Thomas Sowell’s new book Social Justice Fallacies and this is exactly his point. They are supplanting the will of the individual with the will of a surrogate decision maker and it never turns out well for the individual.
A book unavailable, apparently, in most public school libraries :/
I think you are painting liberals with a broad brush. Classical liberals believe in science, we believe in debate, we believe in being challenged and having to prove our beliefs. The far Left has taken over a lot of space in the Democratic party but there are still many of us classical liberals left (think RFK Jr) and we feel politically homeless.
I hear you. Definitely feeling politically homeless on the left these days. I’m sure there are many more of us out there but they’re too scared to speak up. And I don’t think it’s just the far left anymore. Progressives are also dwelling in siloed, myopic thinking. It’s almost impossible to have a respectable debate about any issue without a “morally superior” view point that serves only to shame and shut down fair discourse. What has the left become?
Illiberal. The left has become illiberal. No other viewpoints allowed.
I am an American and feel pretty political homeless.
No matter what the Democratic Party has become in recent years, or even over the last 40 years, I too believe these same core principles - I grew up believing in the same Democratic principles. The DP didn't necessarily adhere to these principles all the time, just as the Republicans have periodically gone astray too. But these are the ideals I ... We ... were taught to strive for : " the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society". Add to that: equality across the board, individual right, the free expression of ideas, the pursuit of happiness. No party adheres to principles 100%. Despite this fact, they are still will grounded ideals. I would also add that these principles generally sound like the more rational Republican and Libertarian ideals too. In fact, they sound very American.
"I was raised to believe in the core principles of the Democratic Party, which includes the willingness to sacrifice one's individual needs for the good of the collective society."
I was raised in a Democratic family, with Republican grandparents (WWII generation). The principles that I learned were to work hard on any task, and push to enhance future generations. My parents sacrificed for me (and my uncles & aunts for the cousins) as I have done for my children. But it doesn't have to be a dog eat dog world with the more you win the others lose. That together we can all push the ball forward by helping others along the way. And YES, take pride and enjoy personal achievements. Making money its a sign of unfair privilege its a good thing.
As the saying goes "the poor cant help ya"
Bravo, Mr. Geller, well said.
I think what she meant to reference were the core principles of the Hunger Games
As a career surgeon, especially, the Hippocratic Oath returns to haunt those who forget it. Always. And it is a shame that medical schools now do not require even reading it, let alone a pledge to follow it.
There is no question in my mind that the surgical manipulation of normally functioning tissue and organs to crate an illusion of something else is fraught. To an extent that also includes purely cosmetic surgery. Just watch a few episodes of “Botched.”
Gender transitioning medication and surgery is a serious matter and one-way street with no good return path.
Minors cannot drink or vote, and cannot sign a surgical consent form for anything else but this.
Pure insanity driven by a political fringe. This will go down in the flames of medical misadventure like no other procedure before or after.
Just try asking a surgeon for a vasectomy, or a gynaecologist for a tubal ligation, if you have no children. If you are not declined you will have to spend a long time convincing them you really know your own mind. The risk of regret is high and no one wants to be in the position of having an unhappy patient come back with a lawyer saying "You should have stopped me."
But if you're a minor with unexplored issues (never mind formally diagnosed ones: that's "conversion therapy" these days) you can arrange to become sterilised and incapable of having sex or orgasms, no questions asked. Why on earth, on this one issue, do we presume minors who have no real understanding of how they will change in the future, magically know their own minds perfectly? We won't let them get a tattoo, or a piercing, but chemical and surgical castration - right on!
Correct. And a surgeon who is compelled to perform an amputation needs a second opinion on the chart prior to proceeding; and in many cases if elective needs a psychiatric consult beforehand as well.
While difficult vasectomies and tubals can be reversed and do not maim or cause any serious complications either.
I think it is a grift.
I thought vasectomies were reversible?
Not reliably, and it is part of informed consent for both procedures to make sure you understand any attempt at reversal may be unsuccessful.
"This will go down in the flames of medical misadventure like no other procedure before or after."
Ah, my friend, if only it were so extraordinary. From lobotomies to total knee meniscectomies to thalidomide babies to the live cell vaccine for pertussis, the history of
medicine is replete with tales of institutional dysfunction and stupidity resulting in large scale
harm. It's just that our collective dependency makes us need to forget. Like children who need to forget each incident of parental failure or cruelty, we are shocked anew each time it happens. (I'm not saying I see a solution, I'm just trying to explain the cycle of shock, mistrust, and renewed naivete).
You provide some notable examples. In each case that you mention however there was at least some level of pathology being treated; and, the science at the time not sufficiently developed to anticipate the adverse effects. Gender affirming treatment is no such treatment. Gender is a psychological state of mind, a perception, unlinked to physiological function. The treatment is purely artificial and knowingly dangerous.
Thalidomide babies are exactly what my daughter and her friends need to see--oh and especially the parents of friends of hers who have put their kids on puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones. Every time someone says," trust the science," or, "doctors know what they're doing," I want to hold up a giant poster of a thalidomide baby.
The reason there are no thalidomide babies in the US is because the FDA did not approve that drug. The giant poster needs to be of an FDA employee,Frances Oldham Kelsey, who demanded better data and research. Light candles next to her portrait to mourn the loss of scientific courage, a belief of serving people not politics or corporations, & an era when scientists demanded sound research and data. Political comment &. decorating advice 🤭!
I believe your statement, "there are no thalidomide babies in the US," is wrong. I'm 67 and the "thalidomide generation" was several years younger than me. There was a young woman in my college dorm with a misshapen arm who was a freshman when I was a senior: perhaps I am wrong to assume she was a "thalidomide baby" but her arm bore the classic imprint of the drug. And more recently, during the 90s my exwife had a coworker with a similar condition who knew she was, indeed, a thalidomide baby.
There are a very small number of grown woman and men that that are thalidomide "babies" in the US, but chances are their pregnant mothers were treated by doctors in Europe and Canada where thalidomide was approved. The "thalidomide babies" in the US may be naturalized citizens or born in the US but their pregnant mothers received thalidomide while being treated by a doctor outside of the US. These babies, a very small number, would be an exception and not the rule.
The courage of the FDA to demand better testing for approval of thalidomide still remains one of its best moments. Sparing almost all babies born in the US at that time the effects of thalidomide.
The modern day equivalent of bleeding and dousing with mercury.......
More like alchemy. “We can change men into women!” At least alchemists only practiced their insanity on base metals, not on children.
Have you read "Ending Medical Reversal" by VK Vasad? Astonishingly, he describes research that found 40% of medical practice as ineffective or harmful to patients.
Could the author be Vinay Prasad (rather than Vasad). Dr. Prasad has written many pieces about flawed research and the subject of medical reversals. He is a sharp critic of the current CDC and its COVID response as well. His Substack and YouTube channel are well worth look.
OK, I see now I misspelled the last name...........
Yes - I believe this is the book being discussed, by Vinayak K. Prasad, MD, MPH, and Adam S. Cifu, MD published by Johns Hopkins Press.https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11308/ending-medical-reversal
Hey my husband listens to Dr. Prasad religiously on YouTube!
No........different person.
Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives (Johns Hopkins Press Health Books (Paperback)) https://a.co/d/2nnejGP
As an Emerita Professor of Public Health, I've served for years on FDA and NIH panels on "contested technologies" and researched the history of many drugs, devices, surgical procedures that were harmful and eventually overturned. I believe this book published by Johns Hopkins Press, authored by Vinayak K. Prasad, MD, MPH, and Adam S. Cifu, MD addresses these issues well. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11308/ending-medical-reversal
Yes, that is the one I mentioned...........read it years ago.
Statins?
I experienced an atypical adverse reaction to prescription statins: lightheadness and double vision. When I tried a more "natural" solution, Red Yeast Rice, I had a milder but similar reaction. My doctor said, "Of course you did. It's the same chemicals, just stronger in the prescription form."
Recently a different doctor suggested a different prescription treatment, based on highly concentrated fish oil, that required taking multiple large softgels per day. I realized that it was just the prescription form of the high-concentration krill oil I'd already tried...without my cholesterol numbers moving down in the slightest.
Mine was severe muscle cramping. These drugs almost all have vicious side effects and the "benefits" are coming under increasing fire. Cardiologist recently suggested Repatha the injectable. Those side effects look absolutely frightening. I was able to reduce cholesterol by diet and supplements alone to the 160 range. Supplements are citrus bergamot, mg and vit d and k2. I exercise significantly as well. Not sure the medical profession isn't so in thrall to big pharma that they've lost all vestiges of common sense.
Btw - there is a weird virus going around that mimics stroke symptoms. Went to ER and they found no heart malfunction. Was relieved when a few friends came down with same symptoms. Sucked for them but made me feel better.
I haven't tried bergamot yet.
My eye doctor is my real guardian. Due to my type 1 diabetes, I get a scan of my retina every year, to check for vascular damage in my retinal veins.
According to him (and he may be wrong, but I hope not!), any problems with my veins will show up first in my retina. As long as my eyes remain healthy, chances are that other veins are in good shape as well. *crosses fingers*
Unsurprising; stroke affects the brain, not the heart.
Your cholesterol "issues" might be coded in your DNA.
Statins kill me. I convinced my primary to allow me to reduce the dosage to 2.5mg daily of a rosuvastatin and fast walking five miles daily.
I suspect that it may be a DNA issue, considering that my cholesterol has been high all my adult life. They just didn't want to treat it when I was in my childbearing years. And then the meds didn't play nice, which frustrates my doctors immensely, but they don't have anything feasible to offer.
My cholesterol recently went up, which alarmed me. But then I realized that, due to my work location the previous year, I was stopping at Taco Bell almost every work day. I guess persistent bad diet does have an effect!
Add to your list, the ongoing and expanding use of ECT ( electroconvulsive “therapy” )when there is no decent science to justify its use. In fact the ECT machines never went through FDA approval but were grandfathered in many decades ago. There are no decent RCTs to demonstrate efficacy and safety( it is neither) . It is the Wild West of psychiatry, with no data collection, no regulation and expanding its use to younger and younger children for a growing number of DSM “ labels”. Yet another money making SCAM foisted on the vulnerable.
I know this is anecdotal, but back in my early 20s, I accidentally gave myself "insulin shock therapy" (lowering blood sugar to the point that a seizure occurs), which preceded ECT (and was abandoned as more dangerous than ECT).
I experienced a significant improvement in my depression. It did not resolve completely, but it became more manageable and less crushing for a number of years afterward.
Medicine is far from a hard science, however well designed randomized controlled trials have been and should still be the cornerstone of any intervention. Psychiatry is the least scientific field( no lab tests, no imaging studies, no biopsies) to substantiate a diagnosis. Psych patients are the perfect target for dangerous untested interventions because they have zero credibility. Lawyers don’t take their cases( unless a young person has a successful suicide, and the family wants to sue) so patients damaged by their money grubbing arrogance have no recourse.We hear about the “ mental health crisis” in the country especially amongst the youth. This is fertile hunting grounds for the psych community.They have no accountability and no one really cares in the halls of governmental power. It’s a real and growing problem .
"Psych patients are the perfect target for dangerous untested interventions because they have zero credibility."
This is SO true. Once a person has been dumped into the "mentally ill" category, no one takes them seriously.
I spent a couple of weeks in a private mental hospital after a totally ineffective suicide attempt at age 21. Bafflingly, no one ever asked *why* I had made that attempt. The doctor in charge of the place insisted that I had subjective symptoms (symptoms only *I* would know if I had) that I did not, and medicated me accordingly (it took about two years for my brain to recover).
But one of the things I noticed keenly as I interacted with other patients and participated in group therapy was that the primary thing all of us seemed to be suffering from was a lack of anyone actually *caring*. Most of us had people who claimed to care...but what they *really* cared about was that we returned to behaving the "normal" way they expected us to behave.
It's not surprising that when even our family and friends are more interested in regaining "normal" than in anything else, mental health practitioners would be most interested in forcing the semblance of "normal" on the mentally ill, whatever the damage done in the effort.
Not to take anything away from a person receiving inadequate mental health care, the families receive instructions from the same providers. It breaks my heart to think that the words and actions we were given to support the healing did not build a bond with our loved one but a rod to poke them.
That is psychiatry for you. The thing is ALL the therapies and drugs, if done properly, work for some significant portion of the relevant population, say 5-10%, AND can have damaging effects when poorly administered. I don't know of a drug therapy that doesn't take 10-20 years off life expectancy for instance. Add to that the high rate of misdiagnosis and ignoring of co-morbidities and you've a shit show at the best of times. Then there is the attaction of the authoritarian personality to the "discipline; the proportion of nutters in the "discipline" (I had one Consultant who diagnosed themselves as having a heart attack in the Alps and STILL climbed a mountain!); etc. I know of one good one: they got out and went into General Practice.
Half a solution: when we find this happening we hang draw and quarter the fckers on live tv.
You are not correct about ‘live cell’ pertussis. It was whole cell and it was not problematic.
The problem, dear Doctor, is that your profession, as has mine, been captured by the Left. These people are lunatics who have degraded your calling to the point that medical dogma is now mocked. The antics of the medical profession during Covid were deplorable. But the entire "gender transformation scam" is more redolent of Drs. Mengele and Frankenstein than of any real physician. So more than past time to heal thyselves.......
One truism about medicine is that bad results don’t hide forever. Trust me this whole gender medicine detour will implode but unfortunately way too late for a lot of mistreated people. Which is why many state legislatures are at least extending the statutes of limitations for malpractice in gender medicine and surgery indefinitely.
In Europe, they have already backtracked as the science shows that the results are not what they expected or hoped for.
But the American Left--which has historically put European practice on a pedestal--rejects the science that Europe is now following.
Because the American Left has become totally politically obsessed and convinced itself that the messenger is more important than the message. If someone who seems conservative is making a statement (like "gender dysphoria often reflects a separate psychological issue" or "children aren't ready to make decisions to destroy their fertility"), it can be ignored simply because of who the messenger is. Europe seemingly hasn't made this issue as politicized.
Follow the money-The Gender Affirming Industrial Comlex.
Problem is the many fine docs and careers ruined by the Covid madness and and lies pushed by the medical profession and the Faustian bargain they've struck with Big Pharma. The ghouls at Purdue Pharma are not a "one off." Sad that people with years of training can be bought off by junk food banquets.
Some of it is the greater good conviction though. It took Ms. Reed being face to face with the undeniable for years to acknowledge it.
The number of gender clinics in this country went from one to more than one hundred in a very short period of time. Multiple “ fellowship” programs have exploded( pediatric gynecology, pediatric urology, endocrine gender specialists etc. ) These programs must generate numbers to exist and justify their existence.They have pumped out many of these surgeons and medical practitioners who now are committed to this travesty in order to earn their living( add to that the numbers of nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who are also financially and ideologically bound to this insanity) .They are woke ideologues who stand to lose everything if this trans ideology is destroyed. It is going to be a a real fight to turn this around. I urge people to follow Leon Sapir , now at the Manhattan Institute, who is at the forefront of the legal and political challenges that are happening in the USA and around the world.
The biggest offender in this travesty of medicine is the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose board wholeheartedly endorses "affirming care." They are supposed to protect children's health. I am not sure what they gain by taking a stance that is obviously not supported by the evidence in Europe. They are busy doing fake studies that support their position, but they cannot expect the public to let them get away with this forever. They are criminals, and I hope there will be consequences for their advocacy of malpractice by pediatricians across this country. Those who have been harmed will have to rise up make it happen.
There is a lawsuit against the AAP now:
The Complaint:
https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/10/Ayala-v-AAP-Complaint_stamped.pdf
Articles:
1. https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-american-academy-of-pediatrics-named-in-bombshell-detransitioner-lawsuit
2. https://nypost.com/2023/12/13/news/detransitioner-suing-american-academy-of-pediatrics/
I like everything you’ve said so far - but I think your “truism” misses the point. Bad results in the pharmaceutical industry commonly hide for 20 - 30 years. The medical industry, including much of the “science” in medical journals, is deeply compromised and corrupt, and has been rotting from the inside for decades. The medical and public health response to COVID just revealed that decay for all who are willing to see.
Like the grain-heavy diet that was promoted from the 70s onward. Evidently it was based on one small study and was basically junk science, but it was politically convenient for the lobbyists.
Or promoting margarine over butter for decades. Even now that they've admitted that hydrogenated fat is horrible for you, the media has focused on the evils of fried fast food, but carefully avoided making the connection that margarine is a hydrogenated fat.
True. But if the Town Crier refuses to spread the news it will matter naught.
Fellow surgeon; there is NO surgical treatment for mental illness. I am embarrassed that many of these doctors are Board Certified and Fellows of the ACS. What has happened to medical ethics, to rational thinking. None of these surgeons would offer amputation to a patient with alien limb syndrome. The issue of surgical cure for gender dysphoria is identical.
Essentially, the “gender affirmation” industry has taken children that likely have discomfort regarding sexuality, and promised treatment with drugs and surgery. Unbelievable!
Good post, Robird. There is no surgical treatment for mental illness, social discomfort, adolescence, etc.
I think "having gender dysphoria" is mostly nonsense. It is a relatively recent term. Some men had parafilias which they want normalized (who cares what they do but they are not women)...
Gender can also be a high school cult. For girls it can be less about sexuality sometimes and more about being part of a thing/group. It damages families (Nonbelivers are outsiders unlike believers at school).
Abigail Shrier is right that we need to get "Social Emotional Learning" or SEL out of the schools. Why do they feel they must talk to other people's kids about feelings, etc.?
I despise "gender affirmation" in all forms. Rafferty pushed this at the AAP and having child mutilation enthusiast Admiral Levine as Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary is a real problem.
You do know they've declassified gender dysphoria and any thoughts of born in the wrong body as mental illness, right? Thinking one is the opposite sex is now apparently normal and not a mental illness according to the health and medical authorities.
Which begs the question why gender related surgeries are covered by medical insurance. So medical treatment is not for any illness mental or otherwise, but to align one's body with some feeling that's always inside you?
Make this make sense!!!
Mental illness? On the contrary, TikTok and other social media channels actively encourage children to question their "gender identity".
Unfortunately, the business of medicine replaced the Hippocratic Oath for many. My friend who was an Ob/Gyn was very upset with colleagues who only knew how to make money in their profession rather than learn how to invest.
Or run a business- now most Drs. are hospital employees-they have ruined the profession for many!
Let's face it - they are insurance company employees once removed.
bingo
Good observation. I see now the “concierge” practices more often - trying to overcome the fees controlled ny insurance companies.
Makes lobotomies look tame.
They can’t even pierce their ears or get tattoos. But chopping of parts? what could go wrong?
Well said. I did not realize that the Hippocratic oath had been abandoned. That explains a lot. The medical profession has forgotten where it came from. In my mind there is no greater sin.
It has been replaced with oaths of fealty to DEI.
I'm not joking. This is how far gone we are already. Year 3 in the cultural revolution.
Also, the “long game” of how the human body reacts to radical hormonal changes. It’s cancer. Why is the medical community not discussing the “what’s next” aspect of this treatment?
Icepick lobotomies have gender transitioning beat for worst medical fad.
Other than that I agree
Thank you JBTMD. This RN appreciates your sanity.
Worse than not pledging to follow it, most write their OWN oaths, and damn the people who paid for most of their education.
Doctors performed lobotomies and electroshock therapy in the 50s and 60s, in a misguided attempt to make people normal. We now look at these practices as abhorrent, in 20 years we will look at gender treatment in the same manner
I am a retired pediatric pulmonologist. Thus, I have no overlap with gender affirming care although personal relationships with pediatric endocrinologists at my former Department. I agree with JBT that one day, this whole area of gender-affirming care will be seen as the greatest medical and surgical malfeasance of our time. The story first told by Jamie Reed and others needs deep study by objective individuals. It is another story of the tyranny of self-identified experts. Endocrinologists know a great deal about hormones but not so much about adolescent psychology and even less about basic medical ethics.
This seems contradictory to me: "For as long as I can remember, I believed in and fought for transgender rights. My peers and I rebelled against the idea of strict gender roles and gender conformity. The old ideas of what a man and woman had to be were outdated and repressive. But we attacked these problems by trying to change the culture, not by irrevocably changing our bodies." If you rebel against strict gender roles, shouldn't you realize that you can retain your biological gender even if you don't fit those gender roles? Isn't it being more true to yourself to be the kind of man or woman you are, rather than try to change your gender?
Good point! Why would you need surgery and hormones to break the binary? Just be an expansive you and the definition of what a girl or boy can expand with you. Becoming the opposite sex via medicalization only shrinks the spectrum and reinforces the binary. The contradictions fall over themselves. Which is why anyone still caught up in this bullshit just shouts, transphobe! Bigot! TERF! So stupid it makes my head spin.
The ones who "come out as nonbinary" are funny. The only way to be "nonbinary" is as a public performance. Otherwise, you're just a boy or girl, man or woman, with the clothes and hairstyle and activities you prefer. I suppose that's too not-special ...
When a student in middle school states that they are nonbinary, it seems like this is a serious problem with our society. With the push for sexualization via social media at an age when they are not emotionally ready for it; the awkwardness of their body changing at a rate that is different than their friends and peers; and the gender stereotypes that are given to young people makes "nonbinary" a socially acceptable equivalent of "time out". Nonbinary as an acceptable shelter for children seems rather tragic since they are questioning themselves rather than the false expectations set too often by social media.
I agree. The environment for children and adolescents is very destructive, perhaps worse than it has ever been.
I wouldn't send a child I hated to middle school, and I don't think I've ever met a child I hated.
I agree. And interestingly, nothing like puberty brings out the individuality of each human. And rather than embraced, it is universally feared.
It’s a way to get minority status if you are a nice suburban teenage girl. It’s a performance
When adults are asking for pronouns, re-defining gender, labeling children as cis/trans, etc., it is one heck of an overture, fanfare, and cuing the lights for the start of a show. Performing on this stage may be absolutely irrestistible and highly seductive for some preteens and teens.
What is happening is comparable to the Pleasure Island scene from the movie Pinocchio. Coachmen lured and transported young boys to a place where there is nothing but fun, but the fun things result in boys becoming donkeys. Did these bratty and wilful boys truly deserve to be made into donkeys and cruelly used by the coachmen? Do teenagers and preteens truly deserve to be transformed into an asinine version of sexuality by society?
I agree. You don't get any status points in that milieu for being a basically okay kid from a basically okay family.
Douglas Murray says there's no difference between saying "I'm non-binary" and saying "Look at me." He seems right to me. If not, I'd like to know the distinction.
I agree, and I think the same of "queer."
I have met a lot of gay people, and a much smaller number of people for whom "queer" was oddly more fitting. Some were flamboyantly performative, while most were closely guarded (and very polite) wallflowers whose inherent differentness was nonetheless impossible not to notice. Hard to describe but not a vacuous label. But then everything becomes cheapened by the Instant Media circus, so who knows what you may have encountered there.
Agree for adults and perhaps he was referencing adults making the non-binary statement. When it comes to 12 year olds stating "I'm non-binary", my thoughts are who fed you this line?!
Recently, a whole new definition of gender roles that resemble cartoonish sterotypes has been used to define male and female. In a children's book about being transgender published in 2021, the dad who likes to cook is described as having a shadow that is not always blue. When did the basic survival skill of cooking become feminine? In another children's book, the character knows that they are really a girl because they cry when Charlotte the spider dies in Charlotte's Web, love pink, and hate sports. Think of Dylan Mulvaney assuming a female role that describes themselves as a bimbo or a girl when they are well into their 30's or 40's. When did growing up and being smart become a masculine trait?
Why should a young guy question their masculinity if they could make a great omlet but struggle with slope formula? Why should a gal who loves soccer and made a joke about Charlotte's death instead of breaking into tears question whether they are a girl? What desperately needs to be altered are not bodies of young people, but the gender stereotypes that are now being taught.
"Isn't it being more true to yourself to be the kind of man or woman you are, rather than try to change your [sex]?"
Yes.
A person has to have some pretty serious issues to think about that kind of stuff
She had a CHILD, suddenly it wasn't theoretical anymore and Mum, the most dangerous form of man on the planet, took charge.
"But when we started to wise up, it didn’t mean my entire liberal worldview evaporated. If anything, it just reinforced my views."
I had the opposite experience. I started to wise up when my historically happy and non-dysphoric daughter changed her name and pronouns behind my back, aided and abetted by our local Marxist Indoctrination Factory, aka her high school. That started a cascade of "evaporation." My entire leftist worldview was annihilated. From covid to climate change, immigration to abortion, systemic racism to Republicans being branded as mouth-breathing bigots, I woke the fuck up and will never vote democrat again.
That said, I am still tremendously thankful for her blowing the whistle.
You are so on point. Minors can’t get tattoos, buy OTC cold medication, drive before 16 or join the military. There is a minimum age for marriage. But taking powerful hormones to block a natural phase in mammal development because you “think” you’re something other than how you were born well that’s totally diff.
Not to mention that the criminal justice system deals with minors differently because their brains are not fully mature. If they can't conform their behavior to the law, why would we think they have the intelligence and sense to determine to take puberty blockers or surgically alter their bodies to sort of mimic the opposite sex.
It is to be hoped that the trickle of self-realization that your represent will become a great river; a tsunami that sweeps away all the lies. The present day Democrat dogma is patent lunacy. Thanks for having the courage to shout that out.
Mrs. M, I am happy to have you on this side but I want you here because you embrace conservatism, not because you are pi$$ed about your daughter. I have a daughter so I absolutely understand, support, and empathize about her negative influences.
Conservatism has its own irrational excesses. If you need everyone on your team, how are you any better than the other team that demands total loyalty to their causes? Mrs Miller is welcome here, as far as I’m concerned.
Yes conservatism does have its nutjobs. And I said I was happy to have her on the conservative side. But if it is because she is angry about what she perceives the other side did to her daughter she may well be rebounding. That is not embracing conservatism, that is disavowing (some aspects) of liberalism. Which IMO creates problems for conservatism. As in how many of the nut jobs are just rebounding liberals? That is a rhetorical question.
If you note, Lynne, she mentioned about a half-dozen other things she realized the Leftist worldview about was bullshite. I think she's a convert.
What an insightful observation.
Her background, worldview and way of life are the exact opposite of mine. It must have taken agonizing self-reflection to undertake the whistleblowing. It makes me think that the conditions and activities at that clinic were even worse than we can imagine, diabolical. Despite her misguided beliefs, I am almost awestruck by her courage - a heroine who was prepared to face the dreadful wrath of her family, friends, peers, the left-wing and in fact half the country.
Yes! I’m sure IRL she and I would despise each other--but I’m in awe of her courage.
I am willing to sit down and enjoy a libation with just about anyone. Thus far I've never left such an encounter even slightly flustered.
You haven’t sat down with me yet. I don’t drink and can be impressively difficult.
Pfft we'll drink coffee and I'll set my mother on you. Have you ever had a tet a tet with a Sepahrdic woman? You watch your ass Mister.
She really sounds like someone who had been brainwashed into joining a cult and needed "deprogramming" to escape its clutches. Fortunately she was strong enough to deprogram herself. Many people can't deal with the cognitive dissonance that goes with such experiences.
I think she still has one foot in the cult!
She is not deprogrammed. She just admitted she was wrong about this one aspect. And then only after observing the problems for years. I too am glad she came to that realization bur she is hardly deprogrammed. And her continued public pursuit of notoriety is a little concerning. Book deal coming? Candidate for office?
Yeah, maybe she's just partially deprogrammed. Might need a visit to Room 101 of The Ministry of Love in George Orwell's novel "1984" to complete the process :).
She is categorically a leftist lunatic.
I wondered what her transman thought of the whole episode?
The political left in which I spent most of my life has a hard, mean edge these days. I will not soon forget the really outrageous calls for unvaccinated people to be rounded up and exiled from society or banned from hospitals. Noam Chomsky was one of these voices. Never was it deemed pertinent to mention that Pfizer, a company that has previously paid a record-breaking 2.3 billion dollar fine for healthcare marketing fraud, had no liability for its product which also did not prevent transmission. The left’s position was rigid, sanctimonious and frankly stupid. I’ll do my own thinking, thanks! I notice now supposedly progressive journalists fail to examine the subsequent numbers of excess deaths and disability which are appalling and seem to correlate with the vaccine rollout. Intellectually very dishonest.
Agree. The political Left has a mean edge, and the progressive Left is a hate group filled with angry misfits and outcasts.
absolutely correct.
Your comment is spot on and should be featured - regardless of "likes." Social media score keeping is idiocy writ large.
Our nations behavior during the pandemic was appalling. It was a politicized nightmare. The virus WAS a serious health threat but because of petty political partisanship its toll was much higher than needed. We couldn’t overcome our blind dedication to demonizing anyone who didn’t think as we did. Masks became face diapers. People who wore them were sheeple. Left and right should be ashamed.
It is interesting that when Elon Musk recently opened the Twitter Files to journalists (including of course Bari Weiss), the files revealed a massive censorship operation during the pandemic with, I recall, something like 80 full-time FBI agents arm-twisting tech companies to censor, deplatform, or shadow ban voices—many of prominent doctors and scientists—disagreeing with the fused government/corporate narrative on Covid. The majority of the censored opinions were deemed to come from the right. Obviously a very troubling way for a government constant billing itself as preserving democracy to act. In my opinion, the Twitter Files incident has been vastly underreported. To have the government silencing thousands of citizens is a bigger story than Watergate. So now Biden has publicly called for Musk to be investigated. I do not concur that calling a mask “a face diaper,” while denigrating, is equivalent to censoring and firing thousands of citizens.
You are my kind of left leaning person. I feel hope when I read your comment. I neither want nor need to persuade you to convert to conservatism. I just need to know that there are people like you on the left.
They forced shots on children they knew didn't need them, and took our tax money to pay for the shots and give record profits to the Big Pharma companies they told us they opposed.
I consider it an atrocity and a human rights abuse.
A well-stated story. I agree with Ms. Reed in her concern for surgery and other medical procedures on minors, and am grateful for her courage in facing the zealots who advocate for those procedures, as well as those calmer people who simply disagree with her (and me).
"The left I know believes that science is real. We accept scientific evidence even if it contradicts our political talking points."
I don't agree with her characterization of the political left, in fact it is the opposite of my own observations, but if the only other choice is the Republican party...well, I'm hoping and praying for better from both in 2024, against all experience and odds. You never know.
If I were to choose sexual preferences for a mother of five, I'm pretty sure "queer woman married to a transman" wouldn't make the top ten because I don't understand it at all. But I would choose "courageous, intelligent, and concerned" as desirable qualities in any parent or citizen, and Ms. Reed seems to have those qualities. I wish her and her family well.
I puzzled over “queer woman married to a transman” too. I think she is describing a lesbian marriage, using Newspeak.
It wasn’t too long ago when religious conservatives were saying that the Earth was 6,000 years old because that’s what the Bible says, and that fossils were put there by God to test our faith, and has their own word salad of “creation science” and “irreducible complexity” to try to couch their unscientific beliefs in the language of science, and in the midst of this nonsense, it was liberals who pushed back and would point to the scientific method and evidence to argue against it. It’s a relatively recent development that the left is pushing anti-scientific nonsense.
The problem of how to treat gender dysphoria is a medical and psychological problem. The fact that this has been entangled in politics is more evidence that progressive thinking is fundamentally flawed.
Until recently gender dysphoria was relatively rare and mainly very young boys ( toddlers) who were otherwise well as far as psych could tell. It was handled with the parents , pediatrician, and psych, with dignity and privacy and not surgically.( until the kid reached 18. ). This explosion in young teens( more girls than boys) who never before exhibited gender dysphoria, is something else entirely. Obama snuck trans care into the ACA bill which made it political. At the same time the psych works deleted the word “ disorder” from the label. Now there is endless money in the industry for treating something that is now not even a disorder , with public dollars. Social media is the vector for the contagion. A perfect storm for this disaster at the expense of the kids and society as a whole.
Yes but, and I say this as a pretty devout conservative, the messaging in opposition is pretty flawed too. As it is regarding abortion. Conservatives are just playing the you-can-pass-a-law-and-fix-it game and that is egregious in my opinion. Let's be honest and say these things (gender transition for minors and abortion, particularly repeat abortions) can be abused. We don't know what the answer, there may not be an answer that fits every incident. But either on demand without scrutiny and limits is wrong.
There are no physical "fixes" for psychological problems that aren't poor to very poor. Full Stop! On top of that, as I have said before but not so crudely, whichever ever way you cut a tranny up or whichever hormone/drug cocktail you shoot them up with, they haven't been socialised for that sex. Good luck not coming out even more damaged and screamingly crazy than going in. It isn't a matter of "can be abused"; it is a matter of cannot BUT be abused. The idea is completely fucked up in the FIRST place.
Very good point about physical fixes for psychological problems. When it comes to trans I had a client that was the most successful trans person I have known. She was treated as a girl from the time she was a child and she was in her 50s when I met her. Everybody just accepted she was different and accepted her as she was. This was in a very traditional.Hispanic community. She was completely at ease with herself. And put me at ease because I had to discuss it with her. If I met her on the street I would not have known she was not female.
Hi Lynne, When it comes to "trans" these days nearly everyone can point to someone they have met and maybe they like that person... Sure! Good. But, "accepted her as she was" - humm.... I suspect that once some folks have gone very far down a path there is nothing much else for it but to go with it - make the best of it. In the old days "passing" as that guy does was the goal. It sure didn't work out for that flight attendant, Scott.
Anyhow, if interested, Helen Joyce has written a book that might help you understand your client, "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" Best wishes to the client.
I think there are and always have been people who are somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum. Even people with male and female parts and the idea of chromosomes was unknown. I think it was very rare. Surgical intervention other than castration did not exist. So I think people used to be willing to accept it. I think that is what happened with my client. Well at least if she was truthful with me. I was using her condition as a form.of mitigation and she did not want to be singled out in that manner. To look at her she looked like a matronly woman.in her 50s.
The problem I have with how we treat it now is 1) it is trendy in some circles and I believe there is social contagion so it is no longer rare; 2) the experimentation, both surgical and pharmaceutical horrific; 3) the assault on the role of parents is egregious; and 4) acceptance is demanded and it is very much in your face. I do not do well with demands.
I am 100% onboard with your second paragraph!
With the first one - I am just going to say that there is more to it and recommend the Helen Joyce book as it is too much to describe in a reply.
Inherently flawed.
As a retired educator, I have seen in the past three years about two dozen students, all who were designated “special ed” In elementary school changer genders. I live in the town I taught in. One high school. That so many young people suddenly changed gender - a few in 6 and 7 th grade, more by 8th grade and the majority by 9th is shocking. The young people I know all came from one elementary school. There are two more in town, so I don’t know about those students. What I can say is the majority of those transitioned students, about 80% came from chaotic homes, with poor life choices constantly on display by their custodial parent or parents. Most of these students were emotionally immature, unable to negotiate even the least bit of frustration, unable to accept basic class rules - when you finish three problems, then you can take a break, and challenging every class expectation with the “but what if...?” Rejoinder. None of these students were designated, on the spectrum of autism. Are they doing better now that they are trans men and women teens? Are they more emotionally mature that they are taking powerful hormones? From what I’ve heard the answer is no. The scattered, disruptive and destructive behaviors have only grown with there troubled humans. Throwing hormone blockers has changed nothing. But it was easier for the parents to say, “see my behavior had nothing to do with my child’s problems. They were born in the wrong body.”
I always find it funny that so many people who sneer at religion, or at the very idea of a God, blithely toss around the phrase “born in the wrong body,” unable to parse that they’re implying the pre-existence of an immortal Self, aka a soul.
I never got transgender as a concept, but what really clarified it for me was when Jordan Peterson said, “What is it EXACTLY that is in the wrong body,” and realized that he was talking about a soul, and that transgender is therefore a religion, not science. Now, I’m pretty sure I understand transgender completely, and it’s a religion that I don’t happen to believe in.
yup - and it is a religion supported by the state and spread at school.
spot on
Great observation.
** But it was easier for the parents to say, “see my behavior had nothing to do with my child’s problems. ..." **
Bingo!
YES.
Thanks for the first hand observation. But to be fair parents in this generation have been schooled that the village raises the child. Many educators have taken that to heart and see themselves as the village gatekeeper (this comes I think of decades now of educators as mandatory reporters). And reportedly parents are told that the choice is transition or suicide. Some states even view non-supportive of transition children as child abusers. IMO we have created a sordid web based on unsupported science.
That is definitely one cohort! Please have a scan at PITT.substack.com for some of the others.
Free Press- once again, thank you for publishing this type of writing- it is so important. I teach family law at DePaul Law School. After Gavin Newsom vetoed a state bill that would have denied parents who opposed gender affirming care a preference for custody in a divorce case, I devoted about a half hour of class to discussing Jamie Reed's initial piece (and the quiet of the media in response until the NYT's piece). Not surprisingly, most students thought parents who deny kids this care are simply bad parents. I make a point to get my students to see both sides although I'm still not sure how many were ultimately convinced. But I will say this--her language about the comparative merit of the Democratic Party is not helpful overall from a societal standpoint- I would gently suggest that Jamie (whom I do admire) read Jonthan Haidt's wonderful book The Righteous MInd so she can understand that good people are on both political sides. And today's problems are largely driven by society's failure to accept this truth.
Thank goodness you teach. During Covid I saw a collapse in young (baby) lawyers of the idea that lawyers need to understand there are two sides (at least) of every issue. An unintended consequence of that is it makes for a pretty well-grounded person.
Not just young lawyers. I was one of four lawyers at a small firm and was shocked when they were completely unable to engage in a discussion about mandates. They dissolved the firm to force me out - we had a very good and supportive professional and personal relationship prior to the C-19 shot rollout. Very few voices for freedom/autonomy in the legal world in Canada.
I am so sorry JP. It really chills me. As lawyers it is our duty to make unpopular arguments.
I learned this long ago in law school when one of my professors (who was Jewish) gave a lecture about how he supported the Nazis marching in Skokie.....
Yes, the inability to see things from multiple perspectives is a real problem across the board. I'm sorry you had that experience--I hope you landed in a better place....
"Not surprisingly, most students thought parents who deny kids this care are simply bad parents."
This is so messed up. How will this generation ever find their way back to sanity?
The best smackdown for this phenomenon I ever saw was the brilliant response to a young woman now embarrassed that she had sleeved out her entire arm with Harry Potter tattoos (because of JKR being a “TERF”):
“It’s almost like making irreversible alterations to your body at a young age is a really bad idea.”
She should wear that sleeve with pride that there are women like JKR who buck the sheep
Ironic, yes?
Hello from the other side of the galaxy 👋 where we never gave up our beliefs and right to stand up for at least *some* traditional values, and not go along with illiberal group think that maligns people’s character who don’t agree. I appreciate what she’s doing, and the courage it takes to go against the groupthink around transgenderism.. but, let’s also be honest. When parents who don’t want this stuff normalized, are called “extremists”, and those who don’t go along with every pronoun from here to Timbuktu are called “fascists” and “bigots”, there’s a whole lot more to back up from that just the most extreme parking lot. Kids don’t need this ideology, and that includes a lot more than just the normalization of gender "affirming" surgeries and puberty blockers. With schools already strapped for funding, good teachers, and meaningful academics, this stuff (transgenderism, over-sexualization , decolonization, etc) are what activist teachers are fighting for? Really?! Am I wrong here? Or does anyone else also feel this way?
I am glad she finally blew the whistle. But Ms Reed is the poster child for the anarchy activist. Radical thinking, change for its own sake, violent actions, incomplete rationale. Her good intentions made no sense to start with. Kudos for coming clean, but really, how do you get into such a nonsensical position in the first place?
The Long March Through the Institutions, starting with the radicals in the universities in the 60's. It's infested everything from high school debates to Ivy League deans, as we recently found out. Even math apparently has something to-do with "White Supremacy" - no joke. Just look up Tema Okun. It's all bundled together under some form of anti-everything western Judeo/Christian culture.
A combination of mental illness and desperate attention-seeking.
It's not that big of a mystery. It's the sincere belief that the world is unjust and changes are needed to help those less fortunate. Where it all goes wrong is the misguided belief that the best way to effect the desired changes is through laws and public programs, instituted and enforced by the government.
The fetching charm of leftist lunacy. Naturally.
"....a showdown between the right and left"
The Left couches every issue like this. Masks, vaccine mandates, abortion, trans, anti-capitalism, climate change, BLM, Hamas, etc. It's all wild-eyed "sky is falling" brinkmanship.
Politics may have replaced religion for them, but they are no less zealous or factually baseless.
The extreme right gives as good as it gets on that score. These days they, too, treat every election cycle as “our last chance to save America!” If Trump doesn’t win, the gulags will be filled with Republicans by the end of the year! Social media rewards hysterics of all persuasions.
I agree with you. I hated the right in the 80s and 90s, because I was on the receiving end of the moral majority and satanic panic nonsense. But all of that social influence seems like a distant memory; the far right doesn't feel like a threat to me anymore, either. The Left? Different story. They've ideologically captured nearly all of our institutions. This article is an example. It's totally out of control and it's scary.
I've heard "conservatives are overreacting" just slightly more than I've heard "how did it come to this?"
Conservatives weren't overreacting. We're in the third year of a socialist cultural revolution driven by the Democratic Party.
A long journey begns with one step. She has far to go.
Five kids, but she’s gender confused? How does a transman husband impregnate?
Basically they are lesbians so I assume sperm donors.
I think she and her wife (I refuse to participate in denying biological reality anymore, Jamie and her partner are females, lesbians not "queer") probably fostered and adopted. (This is not uncommon for lesbian couples and actually a good thing given how many kids need homes.)
If we are to judge people, one key metric would be the extent to which their actions and advocacy have improved the lives of their fellow human beings.
On that metric, Jamie Reed would clearly rate top marks.