९ डिसेंबर, २०२१

"Why wouldn’t I prostrate myself before the petulant mobs who insist that my standard journalistic investigation into a medical mystery..."

"... specifically, why so many teen girls were suddenly identifying as transgender and clamoring to alter their bodies—makes me a hater?... As an undergraduate studying philosophy, I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering whether my will was free.... Today, before any of us decides what it is we want, we open our phones and participate in our own manipulation at the hands of those who actively want us to think, and see, and vote differently than our own wills would have us do. If we were not entirely free before, in other words—we are far less so now..... When polled, nearly two out of three Americans (62%) say they are afraid to express an unpopular opinion. That doesn’t sound like a free people in a free country. We are, each day, force-fed falsehoods we are all expected to take seriously, on pain of forfeiting esteem and professional opportunity: 'Some men have periods and get pregnant.' 'Hard work and objectivity are hallmarks of whiteness.' 'Only a child knows her own true gender.' 'Transwomen don’t have an unfair advantage when playing girls’ sports.'... I didn’t write Irreversible Damage to be provocative. In a freer world, nothing in my book would have created controversy. I wrote the book because I knew it was truthful and I believed recording what I found—that there was a social contagion leading many teenage girls to irreversible damage—was the right thing to do...."

३१ टिप्पण्या:

Dave Begley म्हणाले...

I read this essay earlier today.

I was impressed with her entire essay and, in particular, her discussion about free will.

Since my youngest daughter was a high school swimmer, I especially appreciated her comments about men competing against women in sports.

It really is astounding how the liberal establishment has tried to censor and destroy this woman. The Left just wants obedience. No dissent or critical thinking is allowed.

Shrier has uncovered a major public health problem. Where do these young girls go to get their sexual identity back? What if a minor makes a mistake about this? No so easy to reverse.

On Twitter (before I was kicked off it this week), I asked several NE state senators to introduce legislation to protect minors. No surgery and no drugs or hormone suppressing drugs until they reach the age of 21. A person can't buy beer legally until age 21 but they can under go sex change surgery? That's totally and completely wrong.

But Dems don't want to protect children.

wendybar म्हणाले...

All the child has to do is look in his or her pants. DNA doesn't lie. Only SCIENCE DENIERS claime there are more than 2 genders. If they got dug up in 150 years, the scientists would go with their DNA not with what they WISH they were instead.

Howard म्हणाले...

She's getting a prostrate exam whether she wants one or not. Then she will have solidarity with the "community."

I'm Not Sure म्हणाले...

"We are, each day, force-fed falsehoods we are all expected to take seriously, on pain of forfeiting esteem and professional opportunity: 'Some men have periods and get pregnant.' 'Hard work and objectivity are hallmarks of whiteness.' 'Only a child knows her own true gender.' 'Transwomen don’t have an unfair advantage when playing girls’ sports.'"

I can agree with concern about the lies up until the last one- think I'll be sitting that one out. I've been hearing that "a woman can do anything a man can do" for quite some time now. If that's the rule they insist on, let them play by it.

Gabriel म्हणाले...

The choices you have ay any moment are at least in part constrained by all the choices you have made up until that moment.

It is very easy to make free, stupid choices that foreseeably result in having no choices left. And at that point say "But I had no choice".

farmgirl म्हणाले...

Amen.

Her interview w/Jordan Peterson is amazing.
I will never, ever understand the backward, upside-down, illogical thinking of a progressive. I will stay on my little dirt road that floods in rainy seasons and eat dust forever. Happily. Unfortunately, the progressives are creeping in- what’s the word for taking over and pricing out locals? Gentrification?
Yeah- that.

Welcome 2VT

PS it wasn’t so bad when they just owned 2nd homes- now, they’re permanent features. Sigh.

MikeD म्हणाले...

I'm not sure: FYI a transwoman is a male pretending he's a female, thus the sports analogy.

gilbar म्हणाले...

have any(all?) of you read irreversible damage???
If you haven't, you should; not just because it will depress you...
But because it will dismay you (especially when you find out that it is an illegal book)

if i had a young daughter i wouldn't just be depressed and dismayed.. i'd be terrified

Michael K म्हणाले...

Her piece was well done.

Wa St Blogger म्हणाले...

if i had a young daughter i wouldn't just be depressed and dismayed.. i'd be terrified

I have 3 in the range of 13-22. I was careful not to let crazy people have unsupervised access to them. They are all quite sane and unconfused. I volunteer with youth in my local community. I am shocked at how many of the girls are not she/her. We have done them all a disservice, and it is not enough to say "well, I didn't try and convince them." If you did not speak out against this madness you are complicit. The signs were clear decades ago. Voting for these idiots to be in charge is on you.

As for Shrier, she may be this century's Joan of Arc - Asked to recant her heresies or be burned at the stake. There is nothing new under the sun. Allow institutions unchecked power, and they will abuse it, all in the name of righteousness.

Mikey NTH म्हणाले...

I'm so old I remember when schools were cautioning teens against giving in to "peer pressure" and going along with the crowd because it was popular. Teenagers are remarkably conformist and prone to blindly following what's popular.

Dave Begley म्हणाले...

I'm good friends with a young female lawyer in our building. She has a daughter in grade school. She tells me that all sorts of girls - in Omaha! - are talking about gender fluidity and transitioning. I was totally astounded. Omaha!

n.n म्हणाले...

Gender is physical and mental sex-correlated attributes. Trans (a state or process of divergence) in body and/or mind. Transgender spectrum conversion therapy. A progressive confusion normalized with good intentions. Throw another baby on the barbie, it's over, right?

Tomcc म्हणाले...

Prof. Althouse, the paragraph you posted is one of the most cogent summaries of our dysfunctional society that I've seen. Thanks for that! And good for her for standing up for freedom of thought.

madAsHell म्हणाले...

It's why they removed the pregnant girls from the high school.

Pregnant girls get lots of attention. Therefore, I need to get pregnant.

PM म्हणाले...

Q: Why do so many teen girls suddenly identify as transgender?
A: I think one reason is Acceptance. Suddenly you have cred and status in something new and cool. Same reason you once grew your hair long or smoked dope or got tatted or hot-wired a car. Because you're a teenager - maybe you're fat or have zits or are short or have a big nose or stutter or are clumsy or a thousand other reasons - and you don't want to be looked at side-eyed, you want in. The surgery, tho, the finality of it, brutal.

Krumhorn म्हणाले...

A University of Pennsylvania trannie on the girls swim team has been breaking records right and left including two new records where he finished 38 seconds ahead of the second place swimmer...in a sport where times are measured in the hundredths of a second. Of course, he swam for 3 years on the UPenn men's team before putting on his skirt.

How is it that the women's movement and all of the pussy-hatters not out filling the DC mall in eye-bulging protest of a chick with a dick beating the crap out of menstruaters in swimming competitions??

It's clear that feminism has nothing at all to do with women's rights. It's about political power for the fat ugly ones.

- Krumhorn

Sprezzatura म्हणाले...

So, the idea is that we absolutely don’t want to have a system that, at its core, accepts that a man can be on the rag.

But, holy F we better not think about a system that doesn’t, at its core, fuss about expressing devotion to and following the big guy that made the world in seven days and doesn’t like eating clams.


Got it.

gilbar म्हणाले...

to be clear; i'm super glad she wrote Irreversible Damage, and i'm glad i read it
it just made me sad to think about making all these girls sterile
(if you give a 10 year "puberty blockers" (chemical castration), and the hormones
They'll Never be able to have kids (no matter WHAT they decide later)

This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll.... This Is Genocide

I'm Not Sure म्हणाले...

Mike D: "FYI a transwoman is a male pretending he's a female"

Yes, I understand but this is the world that progressives have created. I think it's somewhat inconsistent to be all "I am woman, hear me roar" and then complain about unfairness when a bigger lion eats your lunch.

hawkeyedjb म्हणाले...

The other day, I was reading something on the blog known as Medium. I made the pedestrian (and factual) comment that transwomen are men pretending to be women. For this I am permanently banned from Medium, for inciting hate. Not that I give a shit about never visiting Medium again, I'm just astonished that delusion and fantasy have taken over so much of our society. The make-believe world is one of depravity and willful ignorance, and must be protected from any intrusion of reality. It's sick.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Excellent essay! She made me think of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People”: ”You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands the most alone.”

Good for Abigail Shrier. The quote goes for her, too.

JeanE म्हणाले...

In the sixteenth century boys with good singing voices were castrated before puberty to prevent their voices from deepening. While boys from poor families might be pressed into music training and surgical castration in the hopes that success as a castrati would lift the family out of poverty, other boys chose castration to preserve their singing voice. If one is celebrated for singing, and the culture supports, and even encourages boys to undergo castration to avoid a voice change, it's understandable that children would choose the procedure. We look back in horror at the wealthy patrons and church musicians that promoted castration of thousands of boys, but how are sex change surgeries and puberty blockers different? We have better anesthesia protocols than they did in the 16th century, but why aren't we helping young people to be comfortable in their own skin, rather than telling them that happiness is only attainable through surgeries and lifelong medical treatment?

n.n म्हणाले...

When first you play to construct political congruences.

David Begley म्हणाले...

“We are, each day, force-fed falsehoods we are all expected to take seriously, on pain of forfeiting esteem and professional opportunity.”

Another liberal falsehood is that net carbon zero is easy to achieve. Omaha Public Power District has set a written goal of net carbon zero by 2050, but OPPD has no cost estimate. I figured it will cost $40 billion.

Jersey Fled म्हणाले...

Young people often make bad choices. Like doing drugs or getting pregnant out of wedlock or not doing their best in school or becoming a part of the juvenile offender community.

And liberals always seem to be right there enabling them. In the name of compassion.

Jamie म्हणाले...

JeanE, I can't believe I've never thought of the castrati in this context before! Thank you for that. The ones who made it in the musical world lived very high indeed. Their purposeful disfigurement ensured them a cushy berth on Society.

We know a teenager who, it is my opinion, was a willing victim of this perfidious contagion. She attended a very progressive public school in a very progressive area just outside a very progressive East Coast city. In her circle, at least three other kids that she hung out with "came out" as trans. Surprise, suddenly she did the same, at 14. Her parents, good and faithful progressives, were apparently shocked at first, but then determined that their proper course of action was to support their child fully. They may also, on some deep level, have been - is "happy" the right word? These are friends of mine, so I can't bring myself to consider that; maybe "justified," instead - that their child was now a member of a progressive cause celebre.

They stopped short of surgery during their child's teen years, but they did do the hormone thing, after "appropriate" (I don't know the therapist - was this one of those who will prescribe as soon as possible, or one who still holds to watchful waiting and was eventually beaten down by this quite intelligent, quite strong-willed teen's arguments?) therapy.

At least two years later, this kid was presenting as a young woman with a somewhat "butch" appearance - unisex and decidedly not femme clothes, a haircut that reminded me of Dorothy Hamill, and no facial hair. The kid chose a name that could readily apply to either sex. Mom said her child was much happier than before - but I did and continue to wonder, given the kid's apparent unwillingness to commit all the way to a masculine look (the one adult in-transition friend we had years ago wasted no time growing a mustache and beard, before he could afford top surgery), whether that happiness comes from social approbation rather than from feeling "true to oneself."

mikee म्हणाले...

It doesn't matter what the Party tells you, all that matters is that you follow what the Party tells you, and that you do as the Party wishes. When the Party's boot is on your face, expecting the Party, much less the boot, to behave rationally is foolish. The point of the boot on your face is that the boot is there. And whatever the Party says, the Party boot will remain there, making sure you follow and obey the Party.

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

JeanE said...
In the sixteenth century boys with good singing voices were castrated before puberty to prevent their voices from deepening.

Is that original to you? Good thought, I too had never made that connection before

Luke Lea म्हणाले...

Things are getting almost as crazy in America now as they did in China during its Cultural Revolution.

Narr म्हणाले...

Since China has been mentioned--who can forget foot-binding?

And castrati might be called a last . . . flowering? . . . of the ancient practice of making some boys into eunuchs for other purposes than singing (though that was a valuable skill too).

Mary Renault's "The Persian Boy" should be consulted.