September 23, 2022

"The equating of sex nonconformity with transgenderism arose incrementally, through a complicated regulatory process involving court decisions and bureaucratic guidelines..."

"... that were presided over by transgender interest groups. Borrowed from the women’s legal movement, the nonconformity framing was designed in the early 2000s and solidified during the Obama era to empower judges and bureaucrats at the federal Office for Civil Rights to bypass rulemaking procedures and force schools, on penalty of violating Title IX, to defer to their students’ gender self-identification. We should treat children who are different with compassion and acceptance. Transgender ideology does the opposite. When children say they’re transgender, that frequently prompts a visit to a gender clinic where a 'gender-affirming' therapist may prescribe puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and even surgery to 'fix' this perceived misalignment between 'gender identity' (i.e., social roles and stereotypes) and the child’s biological sex. As an ideological matter alone, this is regressive in the extreme. It repudiates decades of work by women’s-rights activists who rightfully gauged such notions as sexist and oppressive and fought to free nonconformists from social stigma. Subjecting children to body-altering surgery and drugs is a medical scandal of horrifying proportions."

Wright makes the treatments offered to transgenders seem analogous to conversion therapy offered to gay people. He uses the phrase "perceived misalignment," implying that the condition of feeling feminine while having a male body or masculine while having a female body is another manifestation of human diversity that ought to be celebrated and not regarded as a problem to be solved. 

47 comments:

Howard said...

But ADHD drugging our alpha male children is a okay.

Saint Croix said...

Control freaks abound on the left.

The people who stab little babies in the middle of the birth canal

and the people who castrate little boys

and the people who are talking about blotting out the sun

are all the same people.

You control freaks need to relax and stop with the ugly and vicious attacks.

And you need to quit censoring your critics to hide your fuck ups.

Gabriel said...

No man has any idea what "being a woman" feels like. It is impossible that any man can say "I feel I am really a woman" and be truthful because they have no way to know what that experience is like any more than they could know what being dead is like, or being an owl is like. (They may be sincere, of course, but they cannot be truthful.)

And the same for women vs men obviously. Transgenders can know the experience of playing the role of the other sex, at best. They may think the surgeries will help them play the role better, and many of them go on to find out they've got the worst of both worlds--having given up irreversibly what they had, and still not having what they think they want.

traditionalguy said...

Lab rats are treated better than the poor children being made into sterilized monsters in the name making them feel socially acceptable. Defending these Josef Mengele medical experimentation as care giving is an institutional crime wave hiding behind Faked science.

Joe Smith said...

What doctors are doing to minor kids is horrific and criminal.

They are children whose brains are not fully developed and who are besieged by peer pressure, along with indoctrination by adults who are supposed to be looking out for them.

Some states need to start prosecuting schools, teachers, doctors, hospitals, etc. for malpractice and dereliction of duty.

This is barbarism. If you don't believe me, go on Twitter or search for the photos and stories of kids (yes kids) who realized too late that they made a huge mistake.

Their lives will never be the same.

Drago said...

Howard: "But ADHD drugging our alpha male children is a okay."

Howard pretends to oppose what his lefty pals are doing to perfectly normal boys who have lots of energy.

Nice try Howard.

Joe Smith said...

Also...at least on the male side, these kids are most likely just gay.

What do liberals have against gay kids?

Let them live their lives with the 'parts' that God intended them to have.

The hubris of trans-activists (and it is activism) is astounding...

Wa St Blogger said...

In the old days, conformity was having to play to rigid binary gender roles, forcing people into closets. Then the closets emptied, but then conformity came back by forming people into another mold. Used to be fine that a girl liked boy things and didn't mean she was lesbian. (no so much for boys.) Now, if your are cis, you are not right. and if you are not binary conforming, you must be one of the 57 spices in the Heinz bottle. Rigid conformity in non-conformity clothing. I think it's good that we allow "spectrums" along the gender continuum, so let's stop trying to make everyone trans.

Sebastian said...

"presided over by transgender interest groups"

They provided the muscle, sure, but it was progs in power who "presided," opening another front in the culture war, the better to devastate the culture, undermine bourgeois morality, and screw the deplorables.

"Subjecting children to body-altering surgery and drugs is a medical scandal of horrifying proportions."

Very nice to say, but until the lawsuits start bankrupting "providers" and prosecutors start jailing the abusers, nothing will change.

"the condition of feeling feminine while having a male body or masculine while having a female body is another manifestation of human diversity that ought to be celebrated and not regarded as a problem to be solved"

Small problem here: progs don't actually believe in diverse diversity. They believe in their own power and the right it entails to subject everyone to it, down to the cutting off of young breasts and penises.

Michael K said...

The tranny movement is doing irreparable harm to a generation of children. Eventually, this will turn out like the "recovered memories" or the nursery school hysteria. The long term results will be worse.

RMc said...

a 'gender-affirming' therapist may prescribe puberty blockers

I don't understand how such things can even be legal.

Lurker21 said...

He's right. Society has embraced the sex stereotypes that the last generation wanted to get rid of. In men, it may have to do with the opening up of what were once masculine preserves to women, so men come to feel that they have to double down on what's left to them, so men have to be interested in sports, and not the arts, etc.

With women, it's more complicated. So many fields have opened up to women, so thinking about what's feminine ought to have broadened, but young tomboys still feel oppressed by old views of what is womanly, and the idea that not fitting in makes one masculine only reinforces the old distinctions. Perhaps the old stereotypes persist because of uncertainty about just what it means to be a woman in an age when girls are told they can do and be anything.

No man has any idea what "being a woman" feels like.

I suppose so, but men and women are less different than people and bats, and humans do have imaginative capacity. Some men know that they feel "different" and the closest way they find the express that difference is to identify as a woman. Whether expressing the difference requires changing one's sexual organs is another question, though.

Misinforminimalism said...

The progressive cause has willingly sacrificed millions of innocent children to create the illusion that it's 1965 and they're still standing tall on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. It's a power grab, yes, but moreso, it's grasping at progressives' own identities.

Their appetite for conflict cannot be sated. Preying on vulnerable, wounded children (many of whose wounds, it should be noted, are traceable directly to progressive policies that have decimated the American family) is despicable.

hawkeyedjb said...

If there's no problem, there's no graft to be gained. See Vanderbilt Medical for example.

PM said...

Once you let bullshit get a seat at the table you get this.

rhhardin said...

Childhood sex used to just be a search for pussy and not a column-inch word challenge.

Owen said...

Just because you can conceive of something and put some words around it, doesn't make it real. And even if it is somehow "real" to one person (a condition made easier when the something is a "feeling" and "inside you" without any independent observable features except those you yourself report or produce) doesn't mean that the rest of the world has any obligation (or right) to take it seriously unless, of course, you use this invention as an excuse to demand privileges or avoid liabilities otherwise incumbent on you as one more member of society.

The gay thing is one thing but how did it morph into the trans thing? The former has a long objective documented and pretty unambiguous presence in society. The latter is a sudden self-interested assertion of dubious and transient features. That's where the cultural Marxism gets you: "I identify as X! Obey!" Completely unworkable, never mind repellent and deeply damaging.

I'll stop now.

Christopher B said...

I don't see what's wrong with Wright's characterization. To use the vulgar, there have always been tomboy girls and sissy boys. It's only in the last few years that we've medicalized exhibiting non-conforming gender expression. Blend the claim that observed differences between the sexes are the result of social conditioning with the Blank Slate and Born This Way, and you get a toxic stew that leads directly to the idea of being born in the wrong kind of body.

It's "conversion therapy" quite literally on steroids.

Darcy said...

Obama didn't just abuse Title IX. He made sure insurance covered "transgender" health care. They all knew what they were doing. Follow the money stained with the blood of children.

Josephbleau said...

Today poor Ellie May Clampet would be swinging 10 inches and have a much reduced chest size. Probably with Orange hair. Wrasslin the girls instead of the boys.

gilbar said...

here's a serious question
are there ANY young people on the left (that is, with parents on the left), that are NOT being drugged?

Boys get adderall for "ADHD".
Girls get puberty blockers and HRT for 'Something'.
They ALL get selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, eating disorders, chronic pain, and, posttraumatic stress disorder,also depersonalization disorder, although with varying results.

Better Living Through Chemistry, is the slogan.. BUT; is the living Really "better" ??

Josephbleau said...

Unfortunately things really don't change. The woman MD or CFO won't have a man around unless he is a stud, or she is going to get another one who is. This is readily observed in corporate life. There are rare exceptions of course.

The greatest problem for educated women now is finding an equally educated mate with equal earnings. This makes it important for young women to go to elite Universities and dive in to the pool quickly. Elite schools still maintain close to 50-50 MF.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Gay rights including gay marriage was basically about nature. Much of the trans movement is about transcending nature, or proceeding as if it doesn't exist. Pure self-assertion.

n.n said...

Sex: male or female. Gender is sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation). The transgender spectrum represents a state or process of divergence from normal, whee some bands are more stable than others.

Tomboys are not transgender, but rather trans/social, at best. Social constructs define sex roles, dress, etc. are limited under the axiomatic principle of equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature with the intent to normalize a favorable juxtaposition (e.g. fitness) of the sexes.

Transgender conversion therapy is prosecuted through surgical, medical, or psychiatric corruption of the individual and community.

n.n said...

Sex is innate. Gender (i.e. sex-correlated attributes) is innate, but can be simulated, perhaps stimulated. Normalize, tolerate, or reject?

hombre said...

Remember that time when we thought our society would draw the line at mutilating and/or molesting our children?

What do you suppose changed that?

Tina848 said...

I was that tomboy. Never really wore dresses, still not a dress person. I joined the physics club, I was self conscious, I had short hair (Pat Benetar style), I felt alone, I didn't fit in to my High School, I was miserable, had very few friends, hated going to school and hated myself.

College was different. I made friends, gained confidence, grew up. I became a leader, on student council, President of my Sorority. I have 2 BS degrees, and 2 Masters degrees. Those girls I met at college, changed my life. I learned to be me and to be happy. I learned not to be self-conscious.

I am happily married, have a daughter, love being a woman. Mentor younger women and volunteer.

I needed time to grow up. Give these kids time and space. We have all been there.

cubanbob said...

All this crazy needs to be kneecapped. First order of business should be the abolishment of title 9 and both the federal student loan program and the department of education. Title 9 has metastasized like an aggressive cancer to something far removed from simply requiring funding women's sports. The department of education has always been suspect and frankly it's main goal is ideology. Where is the evidence that since its inception education has improved. As for student loans, the loan supposedly benefits the borrower the most. Let the lenders, the schools, provide the loans. They need skin in the game, not the taxpayer. The root of all this rot is Marxist cultural contamination spread by the education complex.

Lurker21 said...

Transcending nature is what the 21st century is all about. Transsexuality as the gateway to transhumanism. The internet is buzzing about Biden's Executive Order on Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing opening the way to transhumanism. Of course, it's paranoid talk ... so that means it's probably true.

My phone tells me Hilary Mantel, the novelist, just died.

grimson said...

First we were supposed to be tolerant, then accepting. Now it's "another manifestation of human diversity that ought to be celebrated." Up next--revered.

Leland said...

When you look at this with a Malthusian mindset, it all makes sense. Puberty blockers and “gender affirming” treatments forever prevent these people from breeding. And they can do these heinous things while blaming conservatives.

Joe Smith said...

cubanbob @ 1:01pm

Please tell me you are eligible to run for president...

holdfast said...

This isn’t “analogous” to conversion therapy, this is exactly conversion therapy. Except where prior versions were merely psychological, this is grossly physical. And it is exactly what is practiced in the super enlightened Islamic Republic of Iran, which has no gay people.

This is a genocide against gays and lesbians.

Owen said...

Education today: borrow impossible sums and burn up 4 or more years of your young life learning how much of a fragile victim you really are, ideally with time off for a sex change operation or at least some amazing piercings and ink.

Totally sustainable.

Scott Patton said...

"ought to be celebrated and not regarded as a problem to be solved"
Not enough profit in that. There's phony baloney jobs to be done.

Amadeus 48 said...

"Wright makes the treatments offered to transgenders seem analogous to conversion therapy offered to gay people."

Yup. Call 'em as you see 'em.

This is a mental condition treated through surgery and physiology-altering drugs. It is quackery on steroids.

Would it all be different if the preferred surgical treatment were frontal lobotomies?

Two-eyed Jack said...

I remember listening to some parent being interviewed on NPR in 2017 and hearing her talk about her six-year-old son being transgendered ("really" a girl). I thought that this parent just didn't want to find that her son was gay: that would be abnormal. I had read statistics saying that of every 10 boys expressing the desire to be a girl at an early age, 1 would persist into adulthood, 1 would be identify as heterosexual as an adult, and 8 would be gay. I assumed that it was likely the NPR-interviewee's child would grow out of his confusion and the parent would likely adjust.

Now we have a whole infrastructure, walled off from parents in many cases, that want to get as many of those kids on puberty blockers and into surgery as possible. I believe this is a growing threat, not some question of what sort of diversity to celebrate.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Drago said... Truth. I have a couple friends I've known since high school who worked at huge prestigious hospitals who were shocked to learn their son was "diagnosed" at elementary school. Their son was recommended for "the drug". He was evaluated at the aforementioned hospital by professionals, and confirmed, "he's just busy". They had serious words for the school administration. He's now an engineer with a great family.
Close call.

Aggie said...

You know, I really don't understand the point of nihilism, no sarcasm intended. But any fool can look at the birth rate and understand immediately that it's less than replacement, at the present, for Western people. Propping it up with unfettered immigration of third-world illegal immigrants is no substitute - unless you also want to replace the culture (which we can see unfolding in quite a few European countries, at present).

And a society that encourages its children to pursue popularity through sexual perversion is itself, perverted. A society with a birthrate below replacement that (a) glorifies abortion policies up to the point of birth and (b) glamorizes the sterilization of its children, well - that's not just perversion; that's a Death Cult.

Joe Smith said...

'Would it all be different if the preferred surgical treatment were frontal lobotomies?'

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy...

Rusty said...

RMc said...
"a 'gender-affirming' therapist may prescribe puberty blockers

I don't understand how such things can even be legal."
Neither do I, but my money is on the parents. There are a lot of leftist wackjobs out there who will force their preferences on their children.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Tina848,

Amen, sistah! Seriously. I was also a tomboy -- not the athletic sort, but the female-nerd sort. I was intensely interested in aeronautics (paper gliders, balsa gliders, R/C gliders, rocketry -- though the last didn't really pan out). I was on the Math Team. (DUSO, in the year we came in second to NYC Team A!). I was into D&D and also Nomic. Also, played the violin, went to Juilliard Pre-College for eight years . . .

At the time I graduated HS, the most anyone might have said about me was that maybe I was gay. (I'm not; have been married close to 20 years to a fine man.) But now -- well, now I would be a prime trans candidate. If I liked all these mannish things, obviously I was "really" an actual man.

I don't think many people quite realize how frickin' retro this all is. People are literally wishing themselves back into the much-dreaded 50s, where men were men and women were women, by God! And if some recalcitrant females insist on preferring "men's stuff,", well, then we'll tell them they're really men. And if some men prefer "women's stuff," it follows that they are actually women.

"Gay" and "Lesbian" are thereby obsolete. So are the old places into which we put men and women who were heterosexual but with nonstandard tastes. So far from expanding the gender spectrum, these people insist that there are only two categories, male and female. And they make this work by making all the "mannish" females into the male category, and all the "feminine" males into the female category. And put an indelible seal on it all, by throwing irreversible surgery into the mix.

Bleh.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Wright is right.

walter said...

But..Scott Adams says "slippery slope" thingy is nonsense!

Richard Aubrey said...

For older folks, like me, there's a new development.
That is, girls' athletics. I recall when girls threw like...girls. And ran like...girls.
I have a ten-year old granddaughter whose softball pitching has been gunned at 52mph. She's like lightning on the base paths.
When her favorite catcher drops down behind the plate, glove out, right hand behind, my knees hurt. And when somebody threatens to steal second, she's out there with a serious attitude and the ball next to her ear.
Her older sister made jv volleyball while in the ninth grade and moves like a cat.
Their teammates are equally talented. But, sixty years ago, we'd have only seen something like this in the Olympics, presuming there were sports which required such talents.

Both are feminine when off the court/field.

So those watching, with a propensity for woke, such as teachers, might "encourage" them to rethink their gender identity. Besides, Vandy could use the money.

Tina Trent said...

Every doctor I have seen in the last two years has forced me to identify my gender identity in addition to sex. I can't afford to make waves. I find it amusing that HIPPA still must be signed and re-signed as well.

Seems contradictory.

pdug said...

isn't the "problem" that you will be constantly misgendered if you look like a dude or a lady while feeling the opposite and this will harm you emotionally?

There is a trope of "i'm not going to call you "she" if you don't even try to look like a woman" (and the only way to do that if you don't alter the body is makeup and dresses?