August 14, 2024 - 1:00pm
The war on the Cass Review marches on. In her latest column, Lydia Polgreen inadvertently illuminates the predicament US progressives face as evidence undermining one of their pet causes mounts.
The Cass Review, an evidence-led report chaired by respected British paediatrician Hillary Cass, has raised serious concerns about the lack of evidence for the benefits of youth gender transitioning. For US progressives, though, the content and timing of these revelations present serious political problems. Paediatric gender transition is at the centre of a partisan tug of war, with red states restricting hormonal and surgical interventions for young patients, blue states designating themselves as “sanctuary states” for underage gender refugees, and a Supreme Court case looming. Polgreen sets out to defuse the threat — not by refuting it, but by dismissing it.
The author sneers at those who think they “see a scandal” unfolding, “albeit one with largely theoretical victims.” (In fact, Polgreen met with not-at-all theoretical victims on a recent reporting assignment. She just prefers not to think too hard about the implications of their experiences.) She studiously avoids handling any uncomfortable realities, like what the medical “autonomy” she advocates actually entails or what patients are being asked to consent to: sterility, the loss of sexual pleasure, and life as a guinea pig in an unregulated medical experiment. She attempts to relocate the debate from the realm of scientific investigation to a political battlefield, denouncing a “war on trans kids” that requires readers to pick a side.
Faced with evidence that patients continue to struggle with psychiatric problems, forming relationships, and holding down employment after transition, Polgreen deconstructs whatever she can: “There is, contrary to Aristotle, no universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes a good life.” What’s a good life, anyway? Who are we to judge? This is the same kind of open-minded relativism that would rather let drug addicts slowly decompose on city street corners than imagine what helping them might look like.
She goes on to note that, “[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible.” Ignore, for a moment, the pseudoscientific language — sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact — and focus on what is being criticised here: the desire for children to avoid unnecessary hormones and surgeries and strife through self-acceptance.
Yes, in fact, accepting your one and only body — rather than waging an unending war on your flesh and the world’s perceptions — is the best possible outcome for every patient who turns up at a gender clinic. It is truly remarkable that saying so has become fraught at all.
When confronted with disconfirming evidence, a believer has two options: walk away or double down. In his studies of disconfirmation and cognitive dissonance, sociologist Leon Festinger described the strategies believers employ to avoid painful reckonings, including the “avoidance of dissonance by misperception” and the push to demonstrate ever more enthusiastic, active, and total buy-in when one’s core beliefs are challenged. The greater the dissonance, the greater the pressure believers are under to reduce that dissonance by any means necessary.
It’s hard to imagine a much greater source of dissonance than the possibility that many US progressives have thrown their support behind a medical scandal targeting vulnerable children and young people who have been swept up in a dangerous delusion. If it were true that doctors were sterilising gender-confused patients incapable of providing informed consent, that would not only be a very bad thing in itself: it would make supporters feel like very bad people! Therefore, the claim cannot be true and only a very bad — or, in Polgreen’s words, a very “transphobic” — person would ever suggest it were. A good progressive does not entertain the ravings of transphobes.
But there are other approaches to resolving cognitive dissonance. Public opinion is shifting — and not just in the United Kingdom and Europe, where multiple health authorities have reviewed the evidence for paediatric gender transition and changed course. In the US, too, the bigger picture is starting to come into view. The comment section of Polgreen’s article teems with stories of progressives who tout their liberal credentials — and politely but firmly dissent on the issue of paediatric gender transition. They talk about the need to protect young people from the consequences of decisions they are not yet ready to make, for example.
Evidently, rather than doubling down, many progressives are starting to change their minds.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIt used to be said that the Right looks for converts, while the Left looks for traitors. On these issues conservatives need to focus on the needs and distress of the young and confused people involved, to calmly but strongly push back on the ideology which is damaging these young people, and to welcome any converts to the cause, even if we disagree with them on other issues. This is about saving people, not scoring political points. But if people are saved, the political outlook is validated.
“This is about saving people” <– No, the Social Conservative cause is not that at all — it is punishing, condemning, and mutilating those you feel are fit for only that.
https://taliaperkinssspace.quora.com/People-are-born-transgender-they-are-not-mentally-ill-it-is-no-paraphilia-it-is-a-physical-birth-defect-no-more-a-men
You find and cite no facts to the contrary of those linked to there, neither did Cass — she ignored what did not suit her purposes.
Only 1 in 150 people at most will say they are transgender who generally meet the requirements for medical transition being recommended — of those, only 1 in 3 will meet the requirement for medical transition being recommended. At most we are discussing the medical care for the problem of only 1 in 450 people.
Of those who decide to undertake medical transition of apparent sex and gender, less than 1% will regret that decision as having been a mistake altogether. That statistic includes those who begin transition as youth and conclude it after their 18th birthday and those who conclude it before that.
That means that for every 1 person that “gender critical” social conservatives propose to save from being respectively boys with breasts and periods and girls with beards and deep voices — you will be inflicting with your laws and policies exactly that on 99 other at least.
Those barratrists claiming their lawsuit will have over 1000 people as plaintiffs against a supposedly improvidently recommended medical transition? They will need about 1500 just for to meet the 1% mark of those who transition in the UK alone. What do they now have, fewer than 15?
And you have no possible factual excuse for claiming otherwise. If you do, why have you been hiding it for decades?
You are monstrous child abusers, every one of you.
Very convincing satire, nailed it. Love the way you captured the projection at the end.
Not satire, but thank you for admitting you have nothing substantive in reply.
Your sort never does.
You are a sad one, Talia. Yikes.
I’m not the child abuser here. Those of you like you here who cluelessly and factlessly want that to be done are the sad ones.
Nobody bothers to provide facts etc because it would be pointless. You are blind to reality and logic.
“You are blind to reality and logic.” <– That is yo “gender critical” sorts, who believe at least one of these impossibilities:
That gender does not physcially exist, or, is magically always the same as the sex of a person.
🙂
Keep sticking your fingers in your ear, while the narrative crumbles all around you. Afterall, that’s what all caring, inclusive ideologues do – stare logic and fact in the face and deny its existence. More than 6,000 children across the U.S. have undergone surgical procedures since 2017. More than 300 children were under the age of 12. Think about that. These 12 year olds are getting surgery before puberty.
It is only your narrative crumbling, none in your cult can cite facts actually in support of what you say. Neither can or have you, yet.
“These 12 year olds are getting surgery before puberty.” <– Prove it.
“More than 6,000 children across the U.S. have undergone surgical procedures since 2017. More than 300 children were under the age of 12” <– Okay, now prove there is a regret rate above 1%, or 5%, or 10%.
Whatever number you pull out of your nethers (and only that 1% or less will be supported by research) you then have to prove that is a justification for forcing the other 99% to be boys growing up with breasts.
You are the monster here.
Normality is not a cult.
Neither is simply not being physically typical.
‘You are monstrous child abusers, every one of you.’
Talking to yourself again.
I am not, I am describing the gender critical accurately.
The dissonance is strong in this one! It’s amazing how you can turn everything around and effectively swear black is white – expert gaslighter. You remind me of my ex-husband he had narcissistic personality disorder as well.
“The dissonance is strong in this one!” <– Then point it out, quote it. Restate it.
I have no “narcissistic personality disorder” — the reason I can prove you wrong so easily is you believe self-contradictory nonsense.
I do enjoy your input: single-issue focused and uniformly and monolithically argumentative. So much so that I suspect you are just an AI algorithm. How ironic that, in order to be able to post, I have to check mark that I am not a robot!
The Right tries to win the argument, the Left just wants total control of the discourse – feel free to discuss whether some woke idea is good, very good or great, but criticise it in any way and there will be some specific -ist -phobe term they apply, followed by the usual Nazi, fascist, bigot with some over exaggerated description (genocide etc) of the harm you are doing just be wanting to have any other discussion. Just look at what happens when sensible people try to say we need a conversation to understand the underlying causes of the recent riots.
There is no evidence undermining what you call “progressives” pet project. Since you are a Social Conservatives in your attitudes, you Mondegreen are as progressive as anyone involved — that is what trying to mandate your plan which you think is better for other people’s lives is, progressivism.
That is why you can cite no evidence which is “mounting” — the same as is the Cass Report, all you can cite is fraud, lies, deceitful propaganda, and “science” unable to pass peer review.
The Cass Report is not evidence led, it is evidence rejecting.
There is no delusion involved in people being transgender except for yours — you dislike reality and so reject it.
The gender ideology involved is the “gender critical” one, which is yours Mondegreen, You pretend the gender of a person either does not exist at all, or, is always identical to the sex of a person. Every trace of physical evidence in existence measured is to the contrary.
Yet you persist.
Q.E.D., you are delusional.
A perfect example of the “doubling down” that Mondegreen cites. You might’ve written that whilst staring at yourself in the mirror.
Except doubling is what should be done, to oppose you malicious child abusers. It is what should be expected, it is not evidence Mondegreen is correct.
What Mondegreen is doing is called steelmanning her argument — it is a logical fallacy which you are falling for.
I wonder what kind of physical abuse you must’ve encountered to keep you in this dire state. It’s clear that your psychological state is only going to lead one way – to a severe mental collapse; it’s just a question of when.
I’d like to think you could avail yourself of psychological support before it’s too late, but doubt you have the wherewithal to face up to whatever demons haunt you.
I wonder why you try to make it about me personally instead of about the facts which prove I am correct which you cannot counter with any facts of your own which support your claimed opinions.
More to the point, I wonder how many you think trying to make it about me and not about the facts will fool?
When you can’t write clearly, you aren’t thinking clearly.
When you have a substantive reply, then you’ll have one. You don’t.
Since 2017 6000 girls in the USA – some as young as 11 – have had their breasts removed because of a social media fad. That is a crime against humanity. Both the parents and the doctors responsible should be jailed for life. What you do as an adult is up to you.
No child abuser, it is not a crime against humanity. You desire to commit a crime against their humanity — you want to pretend that the sex and gender of a person is always the same, or, that gender does not even really exist but is a product of upbringing as if it were training.
You have no factual excuse for what you claim and imply.
Of those 6000 people, at most about 60 will regret it. The Trolley Care problem you are flunking remains largely the same even if it were 300 not 60. You propose to force with the policies you prefer and advocate for here, that 5940 are boys forced by you personally and with your endorsement, to have breasts and periods. It is not particularly better if it were 5700, or 5000 instead, which it is not.
You have no excuse to pretend any of those surgeries in any high proportion were done improvidently — while a handful certainly were, so what? That is far better proportion than has most medical care. You cannot enact a blanket ban on gender affirming care for youth without so mutilating and abusing those many, many thousands compared to “saving” from the same only a few tens of people.
And you have no factual excuse you can name — and your ilk never have yet done it — as any basis on which to claim otherwise.
You mention the Trolly Car problem, yet your comment has nothing to do with it. And since when do boys have periods?
The trolley car problem has everything to do with it. Failing to treat being transgender as the physical, anatomical variance it is and prohibiting gender affirming medical care to transgender youth as you desire to do is the same thing as forcing 99 boys and girls to respectively grow up with breasts and periods, and, beards and deep voices — for the sake of saving at most 1 from the same. You are saying, proudly, that you will hurt those 99 in just exactly that way, for the sake of 1.
When they are transgender — about which ignorance, thank you for confirming yet again, the “gender critical” cult has as its chief creed that transgender people do not really exist, but are mentally ill cisgender people. You are delusional.
“while a handful certainly were, so what?”
WHOA! Excuse me? This ‘handful’ of children are innocent human beings! Yet you dismiss them out of hand for having trusted a medical system that betrayed them for procedures that are non reversible and commit them to a lifetime of suffering. ‘so what?’ SO WRONG!
Talia, you have become representative of everything that is tragic and insane about trans ideology. You don’t care about the few, which is a much larger percentage than we know, whose lives were ruined. You only care about your ideology. You envision yourself as a martyr for the ’cause’ but what cause is justified when children’s lives are at stake? They have perfectly healthy bodies that are transformed into hideous facsimiles of male and female and will never be the opposite sex. This is how monstrous this ideology is. And you’re caught up in it and refuse to see the facts.
The reality is, the entire trans movement is a social engineering project paid for by perverted, predator trans billionaires (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement) who seek to destroy women’s rights, destabilize society by destroying families and communities and make billions in profit from the medicalization of children. I know you won’t watch this, but for the other commenters, this provides the ammunition to shut trans ideology down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNq7dYOdQyQ
We will look back on these times and feel disgust for how easily we believed the lie and fell for the propaganda. Trans ideology is simply the pathway to transhumanism, the merging of biology and machine, where women will be discarded as mothers and used only for sex slaves, if at all, and totalitarian surveillance and control will ensure that nobody has an original thought.
Talia, I feel only compassion for those who’ve fallen for the trans propaganda. You will wake up one day, hopefully soon, and realize the horror of your betrayal of both women and children. Because that’s what you’re doing. Feminism was supposed to take us to a better place – one that is FREE of gender constraints. Instead, it’s been hijacked to support a deeply misogynist ideology.
Thank you.
“This ‘handful’ of children are innocent human beings!” <– And you want to abuse them. That is what your gender critical ideology is about — that is what you are in favor of. You want for them the lifetime of suffering! That is what forcing boys to have breasts and periods and forcing girls to have beards and deep voices is, and that is what withholding gender affirming care does.
You are complaining that a lifetime of suffering has been avoided by them, to the tune of more than 99 out of 100.
There is no trans ideology, only your gender critical ideology about transgender people, and how they must be abused for the sake of your feelings, and that is what withholding gender affirming care is. Abusing us.
“The reality is, the entire trans movement is a social engineering project paid for by perverted, predator trans billionaires” <– No idiot, transgender people have existed throughout all of human history, in every human culture.
“They have perfectly healthy bodies that are transformed into hideous facsimiles of male and female and will never be the opposite sex.” <– I understand you do not believe transgender people really exist — and that proves by itself you are a fanatic imbecile.
“Trans ideology is simply the pathway to transhumanism, the merging of biology and machine, where women will be discarded as mothers and used only for sex slaves,” <– You need to be clinically evaluated. Really.
“one that is FREE of gender constraints” <– Says the person who wants people to be forced into exhibiting a gender they do not have.
Mutilation is a crime.
But you are hallucinating it in the first place.
The people in favor of sterilizing children see themselves as the good guys. That’s a mental illness that is hard to combat. Predictably, our resident Mengele is in full frothing mode.
Yup! Fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch.
You think it is children at random? That is what you imply.
You are of course lying or delusional, because only 1 in 150 will ever in any way state they are transgender, and only 1 in 3 ( that’s at most 1 in 450 overall) will undertake medical transition of apparent sex and gender. In the US at least, a good 93% at minimum are undertaking surgical sterilization only when adult — the only procedure which actually is sterilization. It is a fact that by policy future fertility and difficulties with it are discussed before such are undertaken, including gamete banking and deferring genital reconstruction altogether.
Regret at such surgery for all reasons combined affects at most 1 in 45,000 people. Regret at doing so in any way a minor affects less than a handful worldwide per year, because so few qualify for any sterilizing procedures when 17 years old — literally at most a few hundred per year worldwide.
You seek to prevent that 1 example of regret (at that, at most 1 in 45,000), at the cost of forbidding the 99 in 45,00 from medical transition, including those who qualify for it as youth.
You have no facts whatsoever you can, will, or have mentioned to the contrary.
That shows you are the Mengele here, you want to force 99 boys and girls to respectively grow up with breasts and periods, and, beards and deep voices.
Right on cue. Hint: boys DO grow beards and have deep voices, and girls DO grow breasts and have periods. Naturally. No force is necessary. These are facts and they are only new to the wilfully obtuse.
No, not always. Claiming either that gender does not exist but as training, or, that is it always the same as the sex of a person is obtuse.
Continuing to hold views as you do despite known facts is obtuse, and in this case is you personally wanting to see to it that 99 children are mutilated and abused for the sake of saving at most 1 from the same.
Yes, always. To say anything else is dumb and sick.
Why yes, you think physical reality is dumb and sick. Only what is usual is real, what is unusual is fake — that is your belief, you are an imbecile.
Judging from the comments Times readers took a side and it wasn’t Ms. Polgreen’s. I have rarely seen the comments on a column in the Times display so much pushback. It seems that when you threaten children’s health people get mad.
And yet the gender critical are the only ones threatening any children’s health for the purpose of doing so, and the NYT has had an editorial slant against transgender people for decades.
“gender critical”//hey-thats a powerful argument you got there!
One small complaint – public opinion is not shifting. 80% of the population has always been uncomfortable with the medicalization of children. It’s the credentialed class that is slowly shifting its opinion. There is an important distinction here.
A citation you have not made, and, no doubt if made its duplicity will be easily divined.
There have been multiple polls in multiple countries that show about 80% of people oppose schools withholding information from parents about gender transitions of children. It’s hard to believe these same people support the medicalization of children.
The credentialed classes don’t change their whims slowly. They do it lightning fast, and without a shred of shame.
Within a few years, open advocates of
gender affirmation therapythe poisoning and mutilation of healthy, normal, functioning bodies, as a ‘medical’ treatment of those who are transiently unhappy with theirs, will be harder to find than Nazis in 1946.It’s over. All that’s left is mopping up the disintegrating GAT dictatorship, trying the worst of its criminals, ensuring that the complicit collaborators are metaphorically force-marched through the mutilation factories…and doing our best to compassionately manage the casualties. In some cases, for life.
Lets hope its over-I do think the real tipping point to kill this lunancy ston ecold dead for ever will be some form of class action by unhappy “transitioners” and once the multi billion $ damages are awarded watcht those “principles “change
While this incredible tragedy is still playing out, both of you gentlemen are dreaming if you believe anyone will ever be held accountable for these crimes against children. And, while I do not doubt these same victims will seek redress in the form of damages, the only people who will pay the bill for those inadequate damages will be the American taxpayer.
By now everyone should understand that the social experiments conducted by the elite class in America are funded by the general population who neither sought their wicked programs, nor agreed with the premises upon which those abominations were based.
I read Polgreen’s piece yesterday. She has written several pro-trans pieces in the Times, so I wasn’t surprised to read her hit job of the Cass Report. I wrote a comment in response, and it was printed. I read a lot of the comments and about 95 percent of them were against transitioning children. In fact, the four articles written about trans children (they were neutral about the topic) also were about 95 percent were against transitioning children. I think Lydia is panicking.
This is what is giving me hope that this nonsense is starting to show cracks even among liberal people (I’m considerably left of liberal myself). I have been following the NYT comments section every time a trans sceptic article has been published. It used to be that the comments would be mixed. But for this current piece, if you sort by “Readers Picks” you have to go down lots of pages before you encounter a comment that is even vaguely in the trans camp. (Of course I push the like the button on all the stuff I agree with, i.e., leave the kids alone).
People are getting braver. I’m seeing some articles written by trans sceptics that aren’t automatically brigaded as they were two or three years. Even my public library now has a few books from gender critical authors.
Just ignore Talia Perkins, she’s on the wrong side of history and just engages in clickbait.
Definitely agree with you on the censorship. It should have no place here.
Down there in the bunker with the likes of Polgreen, Mermaids, the SNP and the ingrate cast of Harry Potter, listening to the enemies’ liberating armies approaching (hoping the democratic ones beat the tyrannical ones), waiting and hoping for Judith Butler to emerge from the MutterSchlafzimmer to give the last remaining cult fanatics one final rousing pep talk.
Click click click, Talia. Keep click-baiting, love. It’s the sound of the clock counting down the remaining lifespan of your destructive delusions. How awful it must be to be belatedly realising that your mutilating, chemicalising, medical experimenting lot were the bad guys, all along.
Like a wildfire that spews embers in every direction, the progressive conflagration that sparked the gender affirmation nonsense will only ignite more and more hectares of our culture with further insanities. Too many factors have combined for too long resulting in a mass of socially combustible humanity easily ignited by the least effort. Thoughtful people do their best to douse each blaze using buckets of reason and common sense but, like many out-of-control forrest fires, the firefighters are often struggling against something so relentless that it cannot be stopped until Nature herself intervenes.
The whole trans movement is but one element in the wider hyperliberal, cyborgian, transhumanence utopia these people dream of. The whole cannot be imagined without its parts. This is why trans ‘progressives’ so vehemently reject what they perceive as ‘transphobia’ – it undermines and potentially destroys their vision of a revolutionary overhaul of society. This revolution is not possible, in any sense, without the thorough-going normalisation of trans ideology as a new secular theocracy. In this sense, trans ideologues form the basis of a true cult.
Absolutely. Many people have yet to realize that we are being pushed into an alternate reality. We no longer live in a world dominated by Nature as the yardstick of truth. The new order values the unnatural or trans-natural above all else. Nature is repudiated as the basis for how we assess what policies should be promoted. The highest esteem is reserved for those who are most extreme in defying what Nature manifests.
What is this I AM NOT A ROBOT crap? Are you really that unserious at unherd? What were you thinking?
There is simply no arguing with these gender activists. They don’t just reject science and common sense, responsible treatment of vulnerable and confused kids, but the plain and simple evidence of their own eyes. And if they have to close them to do it, they do so with relish.
Polgreen is evidently typical of a certain kind of reactionary reality denier. Like climate change deniers, these unmoored, fascistic pseudo-progessives will say and do anything to maintain their fictional little world of false language and ideas – cis, trans, assigned at birth, born in the wrong body, etc – and brand anyone who disagrees a “phobe”. It all seems to have arisen from a corrupted version of individual identity, in which the phrase “true authentic self” becomes a secular version of the old immortal soul. It’s complete nonsense, of course. But what else does one expect from second-rate west coast academic “theorists” who are so dismissive of the sexed body evolved over millions of years that they have forgotten that their own lives utterly depend on such bodies? Such irrationality simply plays into the hands of Trumpian fantasy. News for Polgreen: there is no liberating paradigm shift, and there are no new types of human being. Gender dysphoria is and always has been a disorder. Get real.
War is peace. Plus I’m not a robot – honest.
Well that’s interesting – as of 15.15 BST 27 of the 45 posted comments here have disappeared.
Replying to a Talia Perkins comment that was visible an hour ago :
Talia has a point that deserves exploring.
The Cass Review is not without its own biases and agenda (“treat” young person’s mental health problems and in the process persuade them that their belief that they are existing in the wrong variety of body is just a teenage hormonal phase thing and that they will “get over it”) … I am being a bit facetious here.
For a forensic dissection of this review see Gideon Meyerowitz Katz’s Substack (unfortunately you have to subscribe).
As part of this report the Cass team commissioned a review of the management of trans kids in the UK. It looked at the clinical records of children who attended UK gender clinics from 2009-2021. They looked at the records of 3,306 children all together. The results of this commissioned study are buried in the Appendices of the main report.
Some data from this portion of the review :
A waiting time of 3 years before intial consultation was not unusual.
On average children had 6.7 appointments before being referred to an endocrinologist (another wait list).
Of the children who did not drop out of this process en route, 31% eventually got referred to an endocrinologist (so about 1,000) of which about 400 went on to receive puberty blockers and cross sex hormones after another series of assessment appointments.
Of this sample of 3,306 < 0.5% reported detransitioning (no details of age, years under treatment for this group or any other details for this < 10 individuals).
There is no information in this report regarding what psychological / psychiatric interventions were attempted for these 3,306 children and more importantly what the outcome of these interventions were (paras 11.29 – 11.43). My educated guess is that there is a post code lottery in the UK right now regarding ANY sort of mental health treatment for young persons.
Most worryingly, the only treatment the review recommends – a combination of psychotherapy and social interventions has only very poor / no evidence to support it – the York systematic review could find no studies robust enough to support this avenue of management.
So this “Evidence Based Review” recommends a management strategy that has no decent evidence to support it. Wet finger in the air / wishful thinking. Hooray
More research please.
In the meantime I would highly recommend Jan Morris’s autobiography “Conundrum” for a more nuanced insight into what it feels like to be born in the wrong variety of body and what it feels like to fully transition.
I don’t know about the UK, but in the US a girl can walk into Planned Parenthood on her 18th birthday and get a prescription for testosterone after a 20-minute consultation. No therapy required. If she’s away at college she can get it from the student health center. The next step is a double mastectomy which will be done via her parents insurance without their consent. These girls who have no life experience whatsoever are making permanent, life-altering decisions. And they don’t pass as men. They look like strange androgynous beings. How are they going to survive in the real world?
No one is a girl at 18. Not legally.
“So this ‘Evidence Based Review’ recommends a management strategy that has no decent evidence to support it.”
Perhaps. But there is no evidence to support medicalized treatment either. Given the lack of evidence for either treatment, which is more ethical to perform on children? The non-invasive or invasive treatment?
Treatment aside, all sides of the debate agree on one tbing, the only diagnostic tool we have for gender dysphoria or distress is the “deeply held belief” of the distressed individual. In otherwords, the patients “word”.
To my knowlege, distress caused by any deeply held belief lands squarely in the mental health arena because a belief, by definition, is medically undiagnosable. I would suggest that biological sex is irrelevant in a debate about personal belief and medical ethics.
The relevant question is…
Is it ethical for a medical doctor to diagnose a deeply held personal belief as a medical condition, and subsequently treat the disordered belief with invasive medical interventions?
If so, can you provide examples where you believe this logic ethically applies to other deeply held beliefs? Maybe race? Religion? Mental Illness?
Well, I’m glad to hear that the NYT is allowing comments critical of youth gender medicalization now. I quit the Times in 2021 when any such comments were being deleted.
By the way, a third biologically-female young girl with no breasts and bad skin (from testosterone ) just moved into my neighborhood in the Bay Area. It’s all the same cohort: upper-middle-class white girls in liberal areas. These girls were anorexic when I was a teenager in the 70’s. Another way of rejecting womanhood, albeit generally without permanent consequences. Thank goodness my daughter was friends with the studious Asian girls in high school. Their families do not entertain this ideology.
It’s not unlike the lockdown and ‘zero COVID’ advocates. Nowadays, if you can actually get anyone to admit to having supported what are widely regarded as an insane set of policies, the response if often along the lines of ‘well, people thought they were doing the right thing’, as though that makes it all fine.
The same will happen here.
Mary Harrington’s interesting link between feminism and transhumanism- from the pill to Roe vs Wade to their support for gender reassignment as young as possible (to prevent any return of biological essentialism challenging bourgeois women’s professional freedom, as the author puts it).
Funny, none of those have anything to do with trans-humanism. Of course, you make up whatever sounds good to you.