This is a backlash against progressive overreaching and narrowmindedness, including false, inflammatory claims about gender transitions and suicides that are routinely made by progressives. A transgender lawyer conceded to the Supreme Court that gender-affirming care DOESN'T reduce teen suicides. But when a polite friend of mine linked to a news article about that on Bluesky, he was blocked by left-wing writers for the Unpopulist and Liberal Currents, such as Adam Gurri and Ken White (Popehat), who were enraged that he had debunked the false claim that puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care cut suicides. Giving minors sex-changes or puberty blockers does not seem to reduce suicides. The transgender lawyer challenging Tennessee’s ban on certain transgender treatments for minors, Chase Strangio, admitted to the Supreme Court that “completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare” among transgender youth, even those not given gender-affirming treatment, and that “there is no evidence…that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”
Sex-change procedures come with serious side effects than can leave transgender people with lifelong pain and discomfort, as a transgender activist conceded in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.” That’s because of the physical pain and discomfort that result from a sex change, and the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery. As Andrea Long Chu wrote in that op-ed: "Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to."
A gender transition can result in a lifetime of pain, discomfort, and medications, such as hormone therapy. As Britain’s National Health Service explains, hormones “need to be taken for the rest of your life, even if you have gender surgery.” The FDA has publicly warned that puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and vision loss, and an FDA official who supported giving minors puberty blockers conceded that they actually increase suicidality. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” reported Just the News.
Jazz Jennings is the most famous kid to undergo a gender transition, with a long-running TV show celebrating Jazz’s gender transition. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they asked Jazz’s mother, peddling a false talking point that is often used on parents of transgender teens -- even though transgender lawyer Chase Strangio conceded to the Supreme Court that such care doesn't reduce suicides.
But by 2023, Jazz was miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Jazz became depressed, saying “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness.
> "...he was blocked by left-wing writers for the Unpopulist and Liberal Currents, such as Adam Gurri and Ken White (Popehat), who were enraged that he had debunked the false claim that puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care cut suicides."
Not terribly surprised ...
> "Giving minors sex-changes or puberty blockers does not seem to reduce suicides."
Absolutely no one changes sex. To a first approximation, to be male or female is to have testicles or ovaries. When Bruce Jenner replaces his testicles -- if he still has them -- with ovaries of his own is when I'll concede he's changed sex.
Crime and medical scandal of the century that so many so-called doctors are performing "sex-change" operations, a phrase that should be anathematized in no uncertain terms, at least bracketed in 24 pt. scare quotes.
Here's transwoman Andrea Long Chu peddling that lie, a bigger Big Lie is scarcely imaginable:
ALC: "What trans kids are saying is this: The right to change sex that has been enjoyed for decades ..."
Even when the article is calling out all the ways that trans people, who have done no wrong, are being singled out and persecuted by the US government there’s still so much transphobia in the comments section. I hope that some day trans people are able to live their lives free of persecution and fascists like Trump and Musk are the one living in fear, but I don’t know how to get from here to there.
Hate towards who? Elon Musk and Donald Trump? Two people who have committed numerous felonies, for which they have not been punished, and are tearing apart the USA to sell for scrap?
Am I being hateful for calling out transphobia? Are the other comments not insulting and belittling trans people while the US federal government is literally attacking them just for existing?
My comment is the only one sticking up for the little guy, yet naturally somehow I’m the asshole because I’m calling people out for being assholes.
I (for one) wrote: "Yes, 'trans' people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be. A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a deformity or disability."
Where's the hatred in that -- unless you mean to insult and belittle anyone with a birth defect or disability, or any other anomaly or condition that calls for medical intervention?
Or do you mean to "call out" anyone who recognizes "gender identity" as merely a stereotype or social fiction? If anyone takes that viewpoint as an insult (and can't take such disagreement in stride), any supposed "harm" (and any responsibility for silencing dissent) is on them.
Neither I, nor any of the other commentators you revile, have shown anyone ill-will, nor wished anyone harm. (If you believe otherwise, I defy you to cite the purported instance.)
Trump and Musk are indeed assholes (or worse). Stop emulating them. The answer to hate is not more hate.
I re-read your comment, I disagree with some of what you said but it’s actually decently compassionate. I apologize to you specifically. Still, I take issue with a lot of the other comments complaining about trans people “demanding too much” when they’re being constantly persecuted just for existing. Really I don’t like getting angry though, recent political events have me pretty high strung and I feel the need to stand up for beaten-down groups, and it bugs me to see, on an article detailing the ways that the Trump administration is terrorizing trans people, people ignoring all that and waxing about all the issues they have about trans folks and those who stick up for them. I hope you can understand where I’m coming from here.
In light of your other remarks, however, I wonder whether you truly understand where I'm coming from.
Trans folks aren't being "persecuted just for existing"; their would-be advocates are being criticized here for insisting that everyone must redefine "male" and "female" (to reflect the social fiction of "gender identity" rather than biological sex). That's what people mean by "demanding too much."
Recognizing a brain/body mismatch as an anomaly or disability (potentially requiring medical intervention) requires no such re-definition. Persecuting the disabled is abhorrent in its own right.
There's also a patronizing aspect to your "need to stand up for beaten-down groups." To an individual with self-esteem, there's nothing more insulting or demeaning than condescension or pity (or beng corralled by the proprietors of "The Groups").
(As a gay male, I've never been reduced to pleading, "I can't help it; I was born this way." I have a right to freely choose my romantic partners, or the objects of my affection -- full stop! And yes, I'll pull up the ladder behind me when someone [running a protection racket] is clutching at my heels, dragging me back down.)
I can certainly understand where you're coming from, given the current political climate. Perhaps a bit of anger management might be in order -- lest, when confronted by the machinations of a Donald Trump or an Elon Musk, you (and the entire discourse) become similarly debased. ;-)
The cultural pendulum had swung way too far in previous years. It went well beyond acceptance of transgender individuals as equals (which, of course, is valid and justifiable), and into the requirement that people recognize even non-passable transgender individuals, by force of law, as the gender they now prefer to be.
So instead of being seen as equals, transgender individuals began being seen as oppressors pushing their personal gender dysphoria onto those around them. Obviously many of these folks weren't themselves doing this, but enough of them (and their supporters) *did* bully those around them in this way.
And so, Trump being Trump, took political advantage of the situation and ended up swinging the pendulum way too far in the other direction.
One hopes we get a corrective that returns us to a reasonable middle ground, but that won't happen until those "of the left" learn how to pursue cultural change like this with more grace and patience.
I have had trans friends since the late 80s and never voted for a Republican in my life. There are millions of Americans like me, many of whom were supportive a decade ago of extending the PRIVILEGES that today’s trans activities claim as right. We are done.
The activists don’t care about the women children or even trans people! If they did care about regular trans people, they would be building new co-ed sports teams alongside male and female sports teams and lobbying hard for long term studies about the ways taking opposite sex hormones impacts health and treatments. Instead, trans women forces themselves into the communities lesbians made.
Trans people have the same legal rights as others to work, live and marry without discrimination. If they are threatened in those areas legally or in some other form, let me know (receipts will be needed since the good faith for activists is undeserved) and I will be there. Trans people deserve better than the crap hustlers claiming to represent them.
Yes, "trans" people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be.
This is a disability issue. It has nothing to do with "LGBTQIA+," let alone "Queer."
Ironically (and unintentionally), Chapman himself acknowledges this: "People born with spina bifida or cleft palates raise the possibility that divine errors really do occur. If it’s biblically permissible to perform surgery to correct other birth defects, why not for a grievous contradiction between minds, hearts, and sex organs?"
A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a deformity or disability. (As for "intersex"? Some people are born with eight toes.)
All the rest is cosplay.
At age 74, I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there's nothing “Queer" about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and (as my parents raised me) I’m proud simply to be myself. I never signed up to "smash cisheteropatriarchy" in the name of some Brave New World.
Yes, I experience some stereotypically "feminine" emotions. Recognizing that such feelings are perfectly consistent with my male body has been absolutely crucial to my self-acceptance as a gay male.
“Gender" (as distinct from biological sex) is a social fiction. Indeed, among gay males, drag is about repudiating and ridiculing the very concept of "gender" -- not "affirming" it. (But enough about drag [which is ultimately just a side-show]! What’s become of all the cute guys?)
Meanwhile, the implicitly adversarial notion of "Queer" jeopardizes the hard-won, widespread acceptance that gay people have otherwise already gained. (Are you there, Scott Bessent?) And the people promoting that frame of reference (thereby emboldening our adversaries) are running a protection racket, at our expense.
> "Yes, 'trans' people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be."
Exactly right. Too many transactivists are insisting, actually or in effect, that they can change sex and/or that they should be treated as if they had done so. See:
"Is it really true that 'no one's denying the reality of biological sex'?
There seems to be a lot of people doing that thing that "no one" is doing":
Barking mad. A few transwomen -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- in women's sports is only the tip of a Titanic-sinking iceberg. Helens Dale and Joyce have quite reasonably argued that transgenderism is a "civilization threatening/ending movement":
Gender dysphoria is serious mental disorder for which we have little understanding. It is an abnormal maladaptive trait that certainly causes great mental pains. Our society should be investing in research to determine the source, genetic, epigenetic, or some other imbalance so that hopefully the suffering can be minimized, and perhaps the condition can be eliminated in the future. In the meantime, we should be teaching children that there are males and females, and that there are others suffering with abnormality, and making certain that we offer those with gender dysphoria access to mental care, and in extreme cases physical care.
> Transgender individuals will no longer be allowed to choose how to designate their sex on passports, and non-binary Americans will no longer be allowed to choose “X” instead of “M” or “F.”
This is a backlash against progressive overreaching and narrowmindedness, including false, inflammatory claims about gender transitions and suicides that are routinely made by progressives. A transgender lawyer conceded to the Supreme Court that gender-affirming care DOESN'T reduce teen suicides. But when a polite friend of mine linked to a news article about that on Bluesky, he was blocked by left-wing writers for the Unpopulist and Liberal Currents, such as Adam Gurri and Ken White (Popehat), who were enraged that he had debunked the false claim that puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care cut suicides. Giving minors sex-changes or puberty blockers does not seem to reduce suicides. The transgender lawyer challenging Tennessee’s ban on certain transgender treatments for minors, Chase Strangio, admitted to the Supreme Court that “completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare” among transgender youth, even those not given gender-affirming treatment, and that “there is no evidence…that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”
Sex-change procedures come with serious side effects than can leave transgender people with lifelong pain and discomfort, as a transgender activist conceded in a New York Times op-ed, “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.” That’s because of the physical pain and discomfort that result from a sex change, and the artificial, subpar nature of the sex organ that doctors create in sex-change surgery. As Andrea Long Chu wrote in that op-ed: "Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to."
A gender transition can result in a lifetime of pain, discomfort, and medications, such as hormone therapy. As Britain’s National Health Service explains, hormones “need to be taken for the rest of your life, even if you have gender surgery.” The FDA has publicly warned that puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and vision loss, and an FDA official who supported giving minors puberty blockers conceded that they actually increase suicidality. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” reported Just the News.
Jazz Jennings is the most famous kid to undergo a gender transition, with a long-running TV show celebrating Jazz’s gender transition. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they asked Jazz’s mother, peddling a false talking point that is often used on parents of transgender teens -- even though transgender lawyer Chase Strangio conceded to the Supreme Court that such care doesn't reduce suicides.
But by 2023, Jazz was miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Jazz became depressed, saying “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness.
Yes, yhere is some backlash against questionnable practises of Democrats when they had power regarding Trans policy.
But it doesn't excuse the crimes currently committed by the Trump administration, far from it.
You can't go from some questionnable gender transition on people to "No Trans allowed in my country".
Or, if you do this in our everyday life, we are doomed to hateful revenge of the current ethnicity / tribe in charge against all others, forever.
> "...he was blocked by left-wing writers for the Unpopulist and Liberal Currents, such as Adam Gurri and Ken White (Popehat), who were enraged that he had debunked the false claim that puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care cut suicides."
Not terribly surprised ...
> "Giving minors sex-changes or puberty blockers does not seem to reduce suicides."
Absolutely no one changes sex. To a first approximation, to be male or female is to have testicles or ovaries. When Bruce Jenner replaces his testicles -- if he still has them -- with ovaries of his own is when I'll concede he's changed sex.
Crime and medical scandal of the century that so many so-called doctors are performing "sex-change" operations, a phrase that should be anathematized in no uncertain terms, at least bracketed in 24 pt. scare quotes.
Here's transwoman Andrea Long Chu peddling that lie, a bigger Big Lie is scarcely imaginable:
ALC: "What trans kids are saying is this: The right to change sex that has been enjoyed for decades ..."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trans-rights-biological-sex-gender-judith-butler.html
Even when the article is calling out all the ways that trans people, who have done no wrong, are being singled out and persecuted by the US government there’s still so much transphobia in the comments section. I hope that some day trans people are able to live their lives free of persecution and fascists like Trump and Musk are the one living in fear, but I don’t know how to get from here to there.
Cut the "transphobia" crap! Yours is the only comment here that expresses ill-will or actual hate!
Hate towards who? Elon Musk and Donald Trump? Two people who have committed numerous felonies, for which they have not been punished, and are tearing apart the USA to sell for scrap?
Am I being hateful for calling out transphobia? Are the other comments not insulting and belittling trans people while the US federal government is literally attacking them just for existing?
My comment is the only one sticking up for the little guy, yet naturally somehow I’m the asshole because I’m calling people out for being assholes.
I (for one) wrote: "Yes, 'trans' people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be. A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a deformity or disability."
Where's the hatred in that -- unless you mean to insult and belittle anyone with a birth defect or disability, or any other anomaly or condition that calls for medical intervention?
Or do you mean to "call out" anyone who recognizes "gender identity" as merely a stereotype or social fiction? If anyone takes that viewpoint as an insult (and can't take such disagreement in stride), any supposed "harm" (and any responsibility for silencing dissent) is on them.
Neither I, nor any of the other commentators you revile, have shown anyone ill-will, nor wished anyone harm. (If you believe otherwise, I defy you to cite the purported instance.)
Trump and Musk are indeed assholes (or worse). Stop emulating them. The answer to hate is not more hate.
I re-read your comment, I disagree with some of what you said but it’s actually decently compassionate. I apologize to you specifically. Still, I take issue with a lot of the other comments complaining about trans people “demanding too much” when they’re being constantly persecuted just for existing. Really I don’t like getting angry though, recent political events have me pretty high strung and I feel the need to stand up for beaten-down groups, and it bugs me to see, on an article detailing the ways that the Trump administration is terrorizing trans people, people ignoring all that and waxing about all the issues they have about trans folks and those who stick up for them. I hope you can understand where I’m coming from here.
Thanks for the acknowledgment!
In light of your other remarks, however, I wonder whether you truly understand where I'm coming from.
Trans folks aren't being "persecuted just for existing"; their would-be advocates are being criticized here for insisting that everyone must redefine "male" and "female" (to reflect the social fiction of "gender identity" rather than biological sex). That's what people mean by "demanding too much."
Recognizing a brain/body mismatch as an anomaly or disability (potentially requiring medical intervention) requires no such re-definition. Persecuting the disabled is abhorrent in its own right.
There's also a patronizing aspect to your "need to stand up for beaten-down groups." To an individual with self-esteem, there's nothing more insulting or demeaning than condescension or pity (or beng corralled by the proprietors of "The Groups").
(As a gay male, I've never been reduced to pleading, "I can't help it; I was born this way." I have a right to freely choose my romantic partners, or the objects of my affection -- full stop! And yes, I'll pull up the ladder behind me when someone [running a protection racket] is clutching at my heels, dragging me back down.)
I can certainly understand where you're coming from, given the current political climate. Perhaps a bit of anger management might be in order -- lest, when confronted by the machinations of a Donald Trump or an Elon Musk, you (and the entire discourse) become similarly debased. ;-)
The cultural pendulum had swung way too far in previous years. It went well beyond acceptance of transgender individuals as equals (which, of course, is valid and justifiable), and into the requirement that people recognize even non-passable transgender individuals, by force of law, as the gender they now prefer to be.
So instead of being seen as equals, transgender individuals began being seen as oppressors pushing their personal gender dysphoria onto those around them. Obviously many of these folks weren't themselves doing this, but enough of them (and their supporters) *did* bully those around them in this way.
And so, Trump being Trump, took political advantage of the situation and ended up swinging the pendulum way too far in the other direction.
One hopes we get a corrective that returns us to a reasonable middle ground, but that won't happen until those "of the left" learn how to pursue cultural change like this with more grace and patience.
I have had trans friends since the late 80s and never voted for a Republican in my life. There are millions of Americans like me, many of whom were supportive a decade ago of extending the PRIVILEGES that today’s trans activities claim as right. We are done.
The activists don’t care about the women children or even trans people! If they did care about regular trans people, they would be building new co-ed sports teams alongside male and female sports teams and lobbying hard for long term studies about the ways taking opposite sex hormones impacts health and treatments. Instead, trans women forces themselves into the communities lesbians made.
Trans people have the same legal rights as others to work, live and marry without discrimination. If they are threatened in those areas legally or in some other form, let me know (receipts will be needed since the good faith for activists is undeserved) and I will be there. Trans people deserve better than the crap hustlers claiming to represent them.
Yes, "trans" people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be.
This is a disability issue. It has nothing to do with "LGBTQIA+," let alone "Queer."
Ironically (and unintentionally), Chapman himself acknowledges this: "People born with spina bifida or cleft palates raise the possibility that divine errors really do occur. If it’s biblically permissible to perform surgery to correct other birth defects, why not for a grievous contradiction between minds, hearts, and sex organs?"
A person genuinely suffering from a brain-body mismatch (due to a neurological or hormonal anomaly) deserves the same decency, compassion and access to medical treatment (if need be) as anyone with a deformity or disability. (As for "intersex"? Some people are born with eight toes.)
All the rest is cosplay.
At age 74, I’ve fought all my adult life to advance a recognition that there's nothing “Queer" about same-sex attraction. I’m attracted to guys; I’ve never hidden that fact, and (as my parents raised me) I’m proud simply to be myself. I never signed up to "smash cisheteropatriarchy" in the name of some Brave New World.
Yes, I experience some stereotypically "feminine" emotions. Recognizing that such feelings are perfectly consistent with my male body has been absolutely crucial to my self-acceptance as a gay male.
“Gender" (as distinct from biological sex) is a social fiction. Indeed, among gay males, drag is about repudiating and ridiculing the very concept of "gender" -- not "affirming" it. (But enough about drag [which is ultimately just a side-show]! What’s become of all the cute guys?)
Meanwhile, the implicitly adversarial notion of "Queer" jeopardizes the hard-won, widespread acceptance that gay people have otherwise already gained. (Are you there, Scott Bessent?) And the people promoting that frame of reference (thereby emboldening our adversaries) are running a protection racket, at our expense.
> "Yes, 'trans' people exist. They're just not what they crack themselves up to be."
Exactly right. Too many transactivists are insisting, actually or in effect, that they can change sex and/or that they should be treated as if they had done so. See:
"Is it really true that 'no one's denying the reality of biological sex'?
There seems to be a lot of people doing that thing that "no one" is doing":
https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying?triedRedirect=true
Barking mad. A few transwomen -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- in women's sports is only the tip of a Titanic-sinking iceberg. Helens Dale and Joyce have quite reasonably argued that transgenderism is a "civilization threatening/ending movement":
https://lawliberty.org/podcast/when-does-sex-matter/
Not sure if that is hyperbole or understatement, although more than a few tend to the latter.
Gender dysphoria is serious mental disorder for which we have little understanding. It is an abnormal maladaptive trait that certainly causes great mental pains. Our society should be investing in research to determine the source, genetic, epigenetic, or some other imbalance so that hopefully the suffering can be minimized, and perhaps the condition can be eliminated in the future. In the meantime, we should be teaching children that there are males and females, and that there are others suffering with abnormality, and making certain that we offer those with gender dysphoria access to mental care, and in extreme cases physical care.
> Transgender individuals will no longer be allowed to choose how to designate their sex on passports, and non-binary Americans will no longer be allowed to choose “X” instead of “M” or “F.”
Yes, official documents should reflect reality.
"Transform Freedom"