"'Following my therapist’s advice, I’m taking a day off tomorrow to recharge my energies to continue giving the best in my sessions. Can we reschedule?'"

"So messaged my 26-year-old spin instructor. When I expressed mild frustration to a twentysomething colleague that our class had been cancelled, she seemed surprised. 'Have you been therapised?' she asked. No, I haven’t, but Gen Z increasingly have. They know how to gatekeep their time, creating boundaries and promoting self-care and are triggered when their feelings have been invalidated or they aren’t given time to heal from toxic relationships...."

Writes Alice Thompson, in "Gen Z need life lessons more than therapy/A sense of purpose and decent careers advice would help youngsters stressed out by global uncertainty and war" (London Times).

She's reading "Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up," a new book by Abigail Shrier (commission earned).

Yesterday, I blogged an excerpt from that book, and I also listened to the Bari Weiss podcast interview with Shrier and am in the middle of Joe Rogan's new episode with Shrier. Here's a excerpt of that:

Shrier is on the move this week, not exactly trashing therapy, but trying awfully hard to cut it down to size. What is the right size though? How much of a role is appropriate? It's not just a matter of the quality of the therapists, for Shrier. She favors working out your own problems, the old-fashioned way, and only resorting to therapy for substantial mental illness.

"An unusual thing happened in the conversation about transgender identity in America this week."

"The New York Times conceded that there is, indeed, a debate among medical professionals, transgender people, gays and lesbians and others about medical intervention for pre-pubescent minors who have gender dysphoria. The story pulled some factual punches, but any mildly-fair airing of this debate in the US MSM is a breakthrough of a kind. Here’s the truth that the NYT was finally forced to acknowledge: 'Clinicians are divided' over the role of mental health counseling before making irreversible changes to a child’s body. Among those who are urging more counseling and caution for kids are ground-breaking transgender surgeons. This very public divide was first aired by Abigail Shrier a few months ago on Bari’s Substack, of course, where a trans pioneer in sex-change surgery opined: 'It is my considered opinion that due to some of the … I’ll call it just 'sloppy,' sloppy healthcare work, that we’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process.' Oof."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in "The Trans Movement Is Not About Rights Anymore/It's about a cultural revolution and the abolition of biological sex."

Also: "What the trans movement is now doing, after this comprehensive victory, is not about rights at all. It is about cultural revolution. It’s a much broader movement to dismantle the sex binary, to see biology as a function of power and not science, and thereby to deconstruct the family and even a fixed category such as homosexuality. You can support trans rights and oppose all of this. But they want you to believe you can’t. That’s the bait-and-switch. Don’t take it."

ADDED: I just want to print out the top 3 highest-rated comments at the NYT article (linked in Sullivan's piece):

"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...."

Writes Abigail Shrier in "What I told the students of Princeton/Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom" (Substack).

"Opponents of trans girls’ participation in sports frame their fight in terms of the rights and opportunities of cis girls..."

"... they claim that trans girls, with their unfair advantage, will snag the medals and the college scholarships that rightfully belong to athletes who were assigned female at birth. But, as I listened to the Judiciary Committee hearing, it struck me that the opposition set up in the arguments was between cis-girl athletes on the one hand and a vast liberal conspiracy on the other. (The term 'gender ideology,' a favorite bugaboo of the global far-right movement, made an appearance, too—gender ideology is also apparently out to destroy girls’ sports.) Trans girls were not a part of this imaginary equation, and this was perhaps the most telling part of the hearing. Nor are trans boys ever mentioned in this conversation, perhaps because forcing trans boys to compete against girls, as has happened in Texas, where a trans-boy wrestler who had begun testosterone therapy handily beat female competitors, would expose the inconsistency of the argument from defenders of sex purity in sports. The goal of this campaign is not to protect cis-girl athletes as much as it is to make trans athletes disappear. This is a movement to exclude trans girls from community and opportunity. It is a movement driven by panic over the safety of women and children that reproduces earlier panics, like those over the presence of lesbians on women’s sports teams. And, just like earlier panics, this one is based on what passes for common sense but is in fact ignorance and hate."

From "The Movement to Exclude Trans Girls from Sports/The opposition is cast as one between cis-girl athletes on the one hand and a vast liberal conspiracy on the other" by Masha Gessen (The New Yorker).

1. The rhetorical move here is to characterize one's antagonists as bundles of emotion — hate and panic. Then, the idea is that we don't need to take their stated arguments seriously, because we know what they are really about and we certainly don't want to associate with such awful people. 

2. We're expected not to care about the field of women's sports, which has been specially cultivated over the years in the interest of equality in education. We're expected to feel bad about ourselves if we think that the medals and scholarships of women's sports "rightfully belong" to those who were "assigned female at birth."

3. "It is a movement driven by panic over the safety of women and children that reproduces earlier panics, like...." Like the Me Too movement? The safety of women and children is overwhelmingly important... except when they tell you that it is not.

4. I looked up the committee hearing because I wanted to see how the term "gender ideology" was used. Gessen tells us it's "a favorite bugaboo of the global far-right movement." There's this, from Abigail Shrier (author of "Irreversible Damage"): 

How far will the anti-Trump forces go in crushing their opposition?

‘You’re not entitled your book contract,’ can quickly become ‘United doesn’t have to let you onto its planes’ ‘Marriott doesn’t have to let you stay at its hotels,’ or ‘Visa doesn’t have to let you use its cards.’

And maybe that’s the point.

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) January 8, 2021

That tweet is a response to the news: "Simon & Schuster Cancels Plans for Senator Hawley’s Book/The publisher faced calls to drop the Missouri Republican’s upcoming book, 'The Tyranny of Big Tech,' following criticism of his efforts to overturn the presidential election" (NYT). 

“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement. “As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat.”... 

“This could not be more Orwellian,” he said. “Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition... We’ll see you in court."... 

The subject of Mr. Hawley’s book... is not about the election or Mr. Trump, but about technology corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Its cancellation was remarkably swift and raised questions about how publishers will approach future books by conservatives who have supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate the election....

ADDED: Here's Hawley's full statement:

My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021

I'm not sure what his "First Amendment" theory is, but I'd love to see his explanation. There's a folk meaning of "First Amendment" that simply means "freedom of speech," but Hawley is a Yale Law School graduate who had a clerkship with Chief Justice John Roberts, so we must attribute the highest level of constitutional law understanding to him. I await the explication!

ALSO: Hawley's book about the "tyranny" of Google, Facebook, and Amazon ought to discuss the problem of the repression of freedom of speech, and for all I know, he's got some sophisticated First Amendment theory in there. Send me a PDF of your book, Josh — or just the pages with the First Amendment material. I will give it a sympathetic read!

"Joe Rogan and guest Abigail Shrier equate being trans to having anorexia, joining a cult, and 'demonic possession.'"

"Rogan's podcast is available on YouTube, which has removed other content for equating being trans to having a mental disorder." That's the headline at Media Matters, and it's woefully inaccurate. I can say that because I've listened to the entire Rogan/Shrier discussion, and they are clearly supportive of transgender people but are focusing on a set of young girls who say they are transgender (and who can quickly get drugs and surgery) when there is reason to think they are mistaken.

Once you get beyond the headline, the Media Matters article gets into the details with lots of quotes and clips, and yet it ends by characterizing the interview as hate speech and arguing that it should be removed from YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Please understand what is being talked about here before commenting. This should be a new discussion.