The Supreme Court drives a stake in the transgender controversy, and neither party says much. Is this chapter in American politics headed for the dustbin of history?
Does anyone know who paid for all the "gender affirming" care (and who pays for medical issues experienced as a result)? Matt said he doesn't care if adults undergo sex reassignment, but if they expect taxpayers to pick up the tab for it, I care.
There is probably (although I speculate) something built into Obamacare that mandates insurance companies cover such surgeries, so yes, we end up paying, in the same way Obamacare mandated that nuns be forced to go along with abortion policies. It was one of those Nancy Pelosi "we have to pass the bill in order to find out what's in it" revelations. Those sneaky democrats. Another word for sneaky: evil.
You have phenomenal instincts; are you a Boomer who remembers 'Follow the money'? I KNOW I read something that alluded to it, and asked Grok the following question:
And here's the reply. (TL;dr: yeah, pretty much; but there was a L O T of other factors influencing it)
The claim that transgender surgeries "exploded" due to a specific word or phrase in Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) or Medicare laws oversimplifies a complex issue. Let’s unpack it based on available evidence.
The ACA, enacted in 2010, includes Section 1557, which prohibits discrimination in healthcare based on sex, among other factors. 𝕀𝕟 𝟚𝟘𝟙𝟞, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔻𝕖𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕠𝕗 ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕒𝕟𝕕 ℍ𝕦𝕞𝕒𝕟 𝕊𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕤 (ℍℍ𝕊) 𝕚𝕤𝕤𝕦𝕖𝕕 𝕒 𝕣𝕦𝕝𝕖 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 "𝕤𝕖𝕩" 𝕥𝕠 𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕝𝕦𝕕𝕖 𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕥𝕪, meaning that health insurance plans receiving federal funds (like those on the ACA marketplace or Medicaid) could not categorically exclude coverage for gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy or surgeries, if deemed medically necessary.
This rule didn’t mandate coverage but clarified that excluding such care could be considered discriminatory if it wasn’t applied equally to similar treatments for non-transgender individuals. For example, if a plan covers hormone therapy for menopause but not for gender dysphoria, that could be challenged as discrimination.
Medicare also shifted its policy in 2014, when HHS lifted a longstanding ban on covering gender-affirming surgeries, which had been deemed "experimental." This allowed coverage on a case-by-case basis for medically necessary procedures, though specific policies vary by local Medicare contractors or private Medicare Advantage plans.
There’s no single word or phrase in these laws explicitly causing an "explosion" of surgeries. Instead, these policy changes removed barriers to coverage, making gender-affirming care more accessible for some. Data from the Williams Institute (2022) estimates that about 1.3 million transgender adults live in the U.S., with roughly 276,000 on Medicaid, and coverage has expanded in some states (27 states and D.C. have protective Medicaid policies for gender-affirming care as of 2024). However, coverage remains uneven, with 10 states explicitly barring Medicaid coverage for such care and others lacking clear policies.
Claims of an "explosion" often come from sources like posts on X, which cite a 150% increase in gender-affirming surgeries post-2010 or a tripling after 2018. These figures are hard to verify independently, as comprehensive national data on transgender surgeries is limited. A 2023 study from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted a rise in procedures, but exact numbers and causes are murky. Increased insurance coverage likely played a role, alongside growing social acceptance and awareness of transgender healthcare needs. However, attributing this solely to one word or phrase is misleading—multiple factors, including medical standards (e.g., WPATH guidelines) and cultural shifts, contribute.
On the other hand, critics argue these policies incentivized providers by making surgeries more financially viable, potentially inflating demand. Some X posts claim Obamacare "mandated" coverage for minors, which is inaccurate—coverage decisions for minors vary by state and plan, and many states have since restricted such care for those under 18.
In short, no specific word or phrase in Obamacare or Medicare laws directly caused a surge in transgender surgeries. Policy changes expanded access to coverage, likely contributing to increased procedures, but the "explosion" narrative oversimplifies and lacks precise data. Always check your insurance plan’s specific terms, as coverage varies widely.
I vaguely remember a clinic in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center that openly bragged about how much money they were taking in from their position as a "leading" center for "gender-affirming care." It was horrifying.
The Cleveland Clinic communicates in disturbing WOKE-speak too. If they cannot even work out biological sex, I certainly wouldn't trust them for the more challenging medical issues.
I’m from Nashville and what Vanderbilt said was we make 40K off of top surgery alone so there will be no dissent on this issue. I’ve turned my back on them ever since, except for their baseball team (my father played many moons ago).
Alice, thanks. Vandy also gave its highest Gold Medal honor to Tony Fauci. I’m not certain, but I strongly suspect a substantial honorarium was attached. Fauci was making his “medal rounds” at the time, capitalizing on his fame and massive financial power and collecting many such honors. Any medical facility hoping for decent grant support needed to stay on his good side. The “Nick Zeppos Era” will ultimately be seen as an embarrassment to Vanderbilt. There were efforts to depose Nick, but the med school faculty were “encouraged” by the traditional incentives (financial “realignment”) and the effort failed. Vandy has sure turned out some outstanding pitchers!
Thank you for that answer. See what I mean? SNEAKY? Change the language, hide the language, sometimes even beat someone over the head with language. They who control the language win the debate.
It isn't gullibility. It is the planned and executed reduction of the private citizen from human being too thingdom. Uneducated. Drug addled. Propagandized. Purposefully emotionally crippled. Isolated and psyoped. History and culture -- (what is the term)--memory holed. Does anyone here believe that what is now voluntary euthanasia won't fall into the hands of the ascending decision making state commissariat? It's all a matter of paper work. And of course--the gold in your teeth.
The key phrase in your narrative is “medically necessary procedures. “ As a preliminary matter to answering the question of “who pays “ it is therefore necessary to answer the question “ who determines what is medically necessary?” In our society it is only doctors who are allowed to decide what is or is not medically necessary.
By now there are several medical specialties involved in the movement but historically speaking this all got started in the psychiatric profession, the one that is by far the least scientific of them all. What is now called gender dysphoria first appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the 3rd edition which was published in 1980. At that time it was called Gender Identity Disorder and since in psychiatric jargon disorder is synonymous with illness it was clearly considered a designated mental illness and did not get much traction because of the stigma associated with such. Psychiatry was aware of this so in 2017 the American Psychiatric Association sent out a note to practitioners renaming the diagnosis gender dysphoria in order to get rid of the stigma and and it was only then that the diagnosis did indeed mushroom. So as far as medicine is concerned psychiatry was the lynchpin. Psychiatry is part of the medical fraternity and was thus able to make the necessary referrals to get the job done and by changing the name to something obscure was able to transform an illness into something more socially acceptable, indeed something in the nature of things. All third party payments for psychiatric care are triggered by what’s defined as an illness in the DSM. Indeed, disability pensions are also triggered by what is popularly known as the psychiatrist’s bible.
Before all this happened the identity crisis which took many forms was just considered part of growing up and eventually resolved itself. Then the phenomenon got medicalized and after it had been medicalized it got politicized.
Parents were told that their gender dysphoric child was susceptible to suicide if not allowed to trans. Is there any report on how many trans people, who later regretted making permanent changes in their body, have committed suicide???
The statistics are sketchy and it’s still early days because if a suicide is going to happen the time after the transitioning that it happens is bound to vary from individual to individual. The first time this was done to children was by John Money at Johns Hopkins to a boy from Winnipeg named David Reimer to fix a badly botched circumcision by trying to turn him into a girl. He had a twin brother and after all the medical stuff was done to David Money forced the brothers to role play for years of “ therapy” until they finally couldn’t take it anymore and got their parents to remove them. David went back to being a boy but they both committed suicide in their thirties. It was considered to be a total travesty at the time but tragically with the help of psychiatry that travesty became a sort of template. Unfortunately many of today’s parents are easily panicked and impatient to immediately fix a perceived problem as soon as it arises. Watchful waiting which used to be considered best practice is now considered controversial at best by activists in the movement. It has been replaced by so-called affirmative care which is all about getting the job done quickly. We will be reaping the bitter fruits of this movement for a long time.
It’s all about government tax dollars and how hospitals can rake it in. Stop the tax subsidies and it will end overnight because it’s not a real medical issue.
I think that there’s much to what you say. Before the government and insurance companies got involved the procedures were exceedingly rare and done only to adults on their own dime. Christine Jorgensen is the fifties and Jan Morris in the seventies come to mind and there must have been a few others that never went public. The general public was very tolerant of this stuff until they got dragged into it by the activists and the government.
In many cases for girls and women the Doctors code healthy breast tissue removal it as medically necessary breast reduction surgery, it just that simple
By the way Chris, despite the clinical psychologist's disclaimers, the American Psychological Association does recognize gender dysphoria as a "thing" but not as a mental illness. Like the American Psychiatric Association it believes in "gender affirming care" and is against what is called "conversion therapy." So the two associations are not really that far apart in their clinical practice except for the fact that the psychologists, unlike the psychiatrists, are not themselves able to order medical interventions. But basically conceptually and philosophically they are in the same club.
Thanks for the link, Chris. I just read the article and agree with much of what she says although I have a different take on the chronology of the introduction by the APA of gender dysphoria than she does. But nevermind.
She's a clinical psychologist and I think that I understand where she's coming from but personally though I think that clinical psychologists try to be more scientific in their approach to psychological problems they are similar to psychiatrists in a fundamental way which is summarized in the adage, "To a hammer everything looks like a nail." The number of clinical psychologists and every other sort of therapist has grown exponentially in the last 50 years. We have become a society of therapy junkies and that itself has done more harm than good. We no longer rely on our own resilience to get us through our occasional bad patches and I think that that has made us overly dependent and weak. Life is not and never has been an equable flow. Much of what is treated now as pathological is only the human condition.
Many of the little bumps in the road will resolve themselves given time and love and support. Did you know that in the 60s that the WHO did a study comparing how schizophrenia played out in rich countries compared to poor countries and that patients in the poor countries did dramatically better than those in rich countries. In poor countries where they could not afford the meds the illness was episodic and might only occur once and then resolve itself after some months or a couple of years. Whereas in the rich countries it never resolved itself and patients were chronically ill and taking meds for their entire lives.
So prosperity itself can be a problem and a rather big one. Ideology feeds on that and so does government largesse. Prior to the politicization of medicine or any other form of therapy comes the medicalization/clinicalization of everyday life.
"On the other hand, critics argue these policies incentivized providers by making surgeries more financially viable, potentially inflating demand. "
This is unequivocally true. Working in the health care purchasing world, once something gets covered - and this was inserted due to political pressure and financial considerations, not medical need - it will be exploited. And the care in this instance is never ending, it is almost like a subscription model in that the initial procedures guarantee a lifetime of medical expense.
this is another technique My life long friend I'll call him Skippy, his daughter (24 years old) found a Harvard educated Doctor in Connecticut that will cut off health breast tissue and label it "breast reduction surgery" so his state of NJ employee health insurance had to pay for. He tried to get her off the insurance but can't because she is under 26. They won't take her off as they claim it illegal unless she has proof other insurance. He received a letter at his house with a notice of the surgery. She does not live with him, she lives 40 miles away in Freehold NJ.
Unless there a state law related to an insured plan he as the contracted life would have to agree to keep her on the policy. Now, you can probably only do that at open enrollment or with a qualifying event
That provision of Obamacare has been successfully challenged in court. I'm not sure where it is now, as it hopefully works its way up to the Supreme Court ... if necessary.
Excellent point. Moreover, some governments (British Columbia in Canada, for instance) have actively intervened to prohibit sale of low-priced hearing aid alternatives that replicate most of the functionality of devices costing several thousand dollars for a small fraction of the insanely inflated price.
Only in recent times have we in the US been able to buy high-quality hearing aids without going through an MD or other "licensed person." I know. Just did it. Even then, it's a racket.
I was trying to explain to a couple friends that there's a spectrum of trans issues and that simply not wanting for taxpayer dollars to be used to pay for gender transition for incarcerated people is a LONG way away from treating trans folks poorly simply because of who they are.
Those particular friends told me I was nitpicky and the implication was that you were either on the bus fully or a bad person.
To me that's why we get the ridiculousness in modern discourse. It's how it's perceived as an attack on trans people broadly to simply pump the brakes on gender surgeries for minors (no distinguishing that minor age might mean a difference from adults or not impact adult rights or treatment at all). These people are constantly triggered by social media combined with their more tribal nature. They are mental followers and they have their leaders established.
It is certainly not an attack on trans-identified people to want to get them appropriate help like that recommended by Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
That said, and Matt Walsh asked this question in What Is A Woman?, should people with body integrity dysphoria be allowed to have limbs removed? Is voluntary castration any different? If not, where does that leave sex reassignment?
That's such a great question. Surgeons who perform surgery for a "...philia" condition found in the DSM ought to have their medical licenses revoked.
If you're interested in the depraved symbiosis between doctor and patient, I can recommend the 1985 Peter Greenaway film "A Zed and Two Noughts" which remains, to this day, a useful meditation on the lengths that some will go to in order to satisfy their sexual urges.
It's a very....particular movie. Unforgettable, in the way of seeing something so utterly deranged can be! Also, score by Michael Nyman who I seem to recall did Cook, as well as other Greenaway films. An astonishing composer.
I do know that here in Idaho there is/was a battle over whether the State had to pay for prisoner transitions. As with all of those ridiculous battles, it takes a lot of lawsuits to figure out out. I'm not sure where we are in that right now. But I am firmly against the State paying for transitions.
In Oregon, our state government for the most part, by statute. And providers are protected for all time against malpractice claims (even though children should not have the ability to consent). How about that?!!!
The weird thing is that if I supported breast enhancement for my daughters in their 20s, I think most of my friends would treat me like I was some shallow, horrible mother who deserved to be ostracized--even if my daughters believed deeply that was the only thing standing between them and true happiness. But the level of surgery occurring around young trans people is really mind-boggling. In that case, I have friends who would think I was a monster for failing to endorse it.
I believe the normalization of non necessary plastic surgery led to where we are now. I spot it everywhere and no, it does not make them more attractive. Sometimes I think I am the only woman who likes her body the way it is.
States can legislate or order (governor) insurance carriers to cover or not cover GAC. Here in Oregon, laws have been passed that mandate coverage for GAC both through private insurance and through Oregon's version of Medicaid. Coverage is also provided through public funds for kids who come here without parental permission to access GAC at one of our hospitals, several of which are among the top listed in the country for amount of money brought in by trans surgeries.
One of the laws also said that detransitioners would not covered. They also tried to add protections of the doctors who follow WPATH guidelines from malpractice lawsuits. I haven't recently reviewed all the Oregon laws re: GAC, so can't confirm details.
Whoa, which law refuses coverage for detransitioning!? How is that legal? Not just equal protection and which should apply in this case, but, once they've transitioned, by their definition, they're the opposite sex, so how can you deny what is by definition gender affirming care!? (To a traumatized individual at increased risk of suicide!?)
I think that law was passed in 2015. I'll have to look it up to tell you more. The legislature can't rule out coverage, as far as I know, but if coverage isn't mandated the insurers know they can opt out, and generally will do so.
Maybe this (with reference to Oregon law, per Gemini)?
Mandated Coverage for Gender-Affirming Care: HB 2002, signed into law in 2023, prohibits health insurers from denying coverage for medically necessary gender-affirming treatments that are prescribed according to accepted standards of care. This includes services like hormone therapy, some surgeries, and other procedures, if deemed medically necessary.
Lack of Explicit Mandate for Detransition: While the law emphasizes ensuring access to gender-affirming care, it does not have a separate provision requiring insurance coverage for detransition treatments. This was a point of contention during the bill's passage, with a proposed amendment to mandate detransition coverage being rejected.
Yes, thanks for finding that reference, that is the text I was thinking of. Oregon passed a series of these trans laws that refer to ages of consent, requirement or not for parental consent, allocation of public funds for kids who can’t pay the bill, and something about blocking lawsuits against GAC docs. I couldn’t figure out how the state could protect doctors from malpractice suits. It is generally difficult to prove malpractice if the doctors were following a standard of care; maybe the impact of the law was to formalize the existing WPATH ideology as that standard.
yep I do. My life long friend I'll call him Skippy, his daughter (24 years old) found a Harvard educated Doctor in Connecticut that will cut off health breast tissue and label it "breast reduction surgery" so his state of NJ employee health insurance had to pay for. He tried to get her off the insurance but can't because she is under 26. They won't take her off as they claim it illegal unless she has proof other insurance. He received a letter at his house with a notice of the surgery. She does not live with him, she lives 40 miles away in Freehold NJ.
It is covered because of Obamacare. I am hoping that the "Big Beautiful Bill" gets rid of it. My daughter who was indoctrinated during high school and is now a young adult - gets her recent Rx for testosterone gel paid for on insurance. She's not irreversibly messed up yet so I could use some fast help - like the FDA could weigh in with the fact that "T" is a schedule 3 controlled substance which has never been approved for having a case of "gender". The kids are gaslight by teachers and administrators and the whole world against parents even when you learn about it ask them to stop. Then, the young as set up for the Frankenstein "Medicine".
As for "medical issues experienced as a result" you are s*it up a creek regarding those or if/when you have regret (as the mind matures around the mid twenties). The GAC quacks at her clinic tell her the warnings are like the warnings on an Advil bottle. And, these whack jobs with medical degrees will whack off healthy breasts if asked.
I thought it would all be over when Dr. Lisa Littman came out with her "ROGD" study and Abigail Shrier came out with her WSJ editorial and then a book, and Dr. Paul McHugh spoke Up (former chief psych at John's Hopkins).
Obama is the one who opened the door to Transmania:
"Obama made transgenderism a pet issue of his administration,"
It’s such a wicked and stupid thing, to disown friends over politics. Obama isn’t going to bring you chicken soup when you’re sick, and cutting someone absolutely loose over such bullshit REALLY pisses people off. Fucking Dems have been creating Trump’s fanbase one by one for a decade.
I'm 63. For nearly all of my life, friends could disagree about politics and (maybe even) religion. You just make a few jokes and move on. But for the last decade (or so) zero tolerance for anyone not on your team. I observe the intolerance is more prevalent with lefties than with righties, but no one is immune.
Progressives are ethical utilitarians: good is whatever promotes their goals; bad is whatever retards their goals.
They believe that intimidating their opponents into cooperation, or at least silence, promotes their goals. So does misrepresenting the scientific evidence.
It goes way beyond this. You can be completely certain that your worldview are the correct/moral/superior/awesome/on-the-right-side-of-history worldviews, but still not act like an asshole douchebag to anyone who says anything not allowed within your most bestest worldview. You can instead simply agree to disagree and move on.
Apparently just because you reviewed it! Not what you actually wrote? It makes sense because they want to silence anything that is not part of their script! And yes I agree with David, then they are not your real friends.
Friends who won't return calls because you reviewed "What is a Woman" are brainwashed and may be beyond help. It's a sad state of affairs that I can relate to as I lost friends over the COVID lockdowns, masking, and vaccines.
Matt, I too have lost friends - including 2 close friends - over these kinds of things. For me it was over not taking the covid jab.
As you mentioned in your podcast last week, you end up feeling more alone. I would love to find more like-minded people, I know they’re out there and reading your pieces and listening to your podcast.
The inability to make space and dialogue for different opinions is the sickness at the root of division. Curiosity about ~what drives people into their rabbit holes is as fascinating as the actual doctrines they surround themselves with.
This insane chapter is far from over. Blue states are still protecting men who dominate women’s sports - the female Maine Governor is suing Trump over it. Most Dems can’t define what a woman is, including Justices Jackson/Sotomayor/Kagan who dissented from this ruling. Rep Sarah/Tim McBride (she/her) is the future of the party, not cis straight white men like Seth Moulton. Dr. Rachel/Dick Levine received an honorary degree from Smith College, an all-girls college.
They did the same thing to me. Told me I was just being vain, and I didn't need my breasts anymore anyways even though I was majorly lopsided. Dr. treated me like I was a pain and didn't matter at all after my surgery. Felt ashamed and humiliated.
I am very sorry about all the women who receive this treatment. If you were to say that you did not identify as a man or a woman there would be a "dysphoria" insurance code and the doctors would be paid for doing a "Nullo"
This can be said nationwide. It's literally the cities that are batshit. Pennsylvania is this in a nutshell. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are hard blue to the tune of like 80% (even though some of that is made up), but the rest of the state goes red (70%ish)... and not because hillbilly, or religious fanaticism, but largely due to common sense.
They end up blue because the 2 cities just have substantially more population. Same in California, Oregon, and Washington. The sad part... California and New York is spreading. They leave because the policies of those states drove out their jobs, or they themselves wanted policies better suited to their wealth, and then they arrive in Texas, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and do what? Vote for the same nonsense that got them driven from their backwards run state.... Talk about insanity.
It’s over in red states. What those malleable, confused apparatchiks do in the crumbling hellscapes of NY, MN & CA is their own business. Great, go wade through shin-deep excrement and needles to go get your dick cut off. Go crazy. Pun intended.
Remember back in the day that gay marriage was the paramount goal? Many said, if we give in on this, look out. Here we are. The next goal will be the acceptance of grooming children. Actually, the looney left has made strides in grooming children. Parades, story hour, etc… what’s next?
Idk, letting Muslims rape them like in Western Europe? The only good thing about what’s happening in Europe is that it gives us a clear cut end goal for the dystopian woke left. That means we have a clear idea of what the crazy ass milestones are so that we can hopefully avoid them. If word salad DEI wine mom had won the election, we’d have already crossed at least another milestone in that direction.
The Woke left are just tools. They are the highly educated, easily lead morons that carry out the plans of the true power players. Ultimately the masters of us want war, and they want us to cull ourselves a bit, so that they are in less danger when the actual real crises arrives, and that crises is just around the corner... As soon as Magnetic North crosses into Siberia (less than 5 years from now) all hell will go off!!
The ultimate goal honestly is "minor attracted persons." This is what all this is ultimately leading to. They are using LBGTQ+ as a means to an end. Ultimately our masters want the ability to normalize Epstein.
I disagree. No individual has the right to permanently mutilate, and disfigure minors with or without the consent of said minors, particularly parents.
Any child who is being forced consider permanent physical disfigurement to "solve" emotional/psychological needs to be presented with a broader set of options. Solutions for any psychological problem which include permanent physical disfigurement, especially for minors, are definitionally unhealthy and certain to cause short-term and long-term physical, and/or, mental harm.
Which is why there's very little discussion of the current legal changes. No sane person could object.
Dems have nothing else to run on, see Padilla, so we have Warren standing up for "gender-care" coz she's bent over for every other special interest already - specially big pharma.
You can disagree all you want. It’s up to the states and their legislatures individually. Look, I’m with you. I lost a daughter to this crazy shit. But technically speaking, in the states that allow it, they will have that LEGAL right.
It’s actually more important to look at it and clearly state it for exactly what it is. It is now and will be in at least 5 US states completely legal to mutilate and sterilize children. It’s happening somewhere in this country right now as I type this.
You have my complete support and I agree absolutely about clarity in terms of language.
I have friends and family who are going through the same loss and similar conflicts as you. My own approach on a personal level (with adults) is support their right to choose, in the hope I'll remain a credible reference should/when loved ones start rethinking their options. I am direct, however, about, long term consequences of our actions.
With respect, you strike me as someone who is 100 percent ready, willing, and able to love and support without judgment. That's about all we can do.
It’s up to the citizens of that state to accept or reject those policy prescriptions. Expecting brainwashed politicians to come to their senses is like expecting the sun not to rise.
True, but in this case, it was not presented to voters in Wisconsin. This was put into the governor's budget proposal. He claims that it refers to IVF, but only women have a uterus, so this change was not needed.
Perhaps you're correct. Just because a city or two saw damage from riots that amounted to 1500 properties severely damaged, with costs estimated upwards of half a billion dollars doesn't mean the whole state is fucked, amirite? Just where most of the people live. That is to say nothing of the crazy ass policies of the dipshit running the state. But I'm glad the people of the state are on board with all of this. I rescind my statement. This place looks awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNB4VLu6IaI&t=45s
Your observations are right on, but I wonder how the people we never hear from--those who live in the beautiful Minnesota hinterlands, like Bemidji, Moorhead, Bird Island, and elsewhere in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, feel about what's going on in Minneapolis. For that matter, I never hear of St. Paul in the news about the horrors of Blue Minnesota.
The last time I was in Fergus Falls and Vergas, I noticed a massive uptick in the Hispanic population who came to work at the Norbest plant carving up turkeys. I wonder if ICE has made it up there yet. Seems like an organization with that acronym would be right at home there.
P.S.
Looking at the video, I wonder what these tent dwellers do in the winter. A bit of dialog from the clip:
On November 9, 2016, once the crying huddle calmed down, a 20-something who checks all the boxes stood on her desk and gave a speech in which she repeatedly said “Double down!” This was in my workplace at the time.
“Double down!” Has been the Left’s only response to being checked by sanity, and that will continue to be the case so long as they live.
I hope they keep doubling down. It’s been working to get conservatives into office. Not that it is always a good thing, but I’ll take that over the blue haired crazies.
Colorado criminalized "deadnaming" and "misgendering" in certain circumstances. Can't even imagine how that's going to hold up in a constitutional fight.
Thanks for writing and sharing this article! Additionally, thank you for including the actual male first names when referring to both McBride and Levine in your response. I'm sure Matt believes he's being kind by referring to McBride as "she", but I agree with Kara Dansky and others that we need to stop doing that. It's an important way to end this nightmare.
I think if we refuse to refer to transgender people as Matt did with McBride, it's as bad as the extremes from the other end of the spectrum.
How about we agree to treat all people, including transgender people, with the same amount of respect.
That doesn't mean you have to support biological boys in girls' sports or surgeries for minors. People can point to definite harm from those perspectives. Can't really see how we're harmed by referring to McBride as she.
And please explain more on "end this nightmare." What is the nightmare, the boys in girls' sports or the mere fact that transgender people exist? Exactly how should this nightmare be ended?
Preferred pronouns are rohypnol: https://archive.ph/r9FwT They're also an attempt to rewire our evolutionary brains to accept men as women and women as men, which is something we should never do. We should NEVER, EVER press impressionable children to use them either. Human pair bonding, mating and child rearing is already crippled by assorted modern maladaptions. Willfully altering our evolutionary sex detection capabilities is nuts. Dangerous. Nihilistic.
I hope Lawyers Guns & Money reads the article you shared. I read it a while ago and reading it again just now, I find it mind-boggling that so many people have forgotten about the importance of natural protective instincts! Not only should we not force children to use preferred pronouns, but we shouldn't force women to use them for the same reason. As a female, paying attention to my gut instincts around males has saved me numerous times!
I have no idea what you're responding to, but gender ideology is not at all related to same sex attraction. Unfortunately, ever since all the letters after LGB were added to LGB, people have mistakenly believed that this is a new civil rights issue, like marriage equality was for lesbians and gay men, but it isn't. I've met lesbians who can't even get together with other lesbians or go on lesbian dating apps without being harassed by transwomen because they refuse to date them! I have a male heterosexual friend who has run into the same problem on heterosexual dating apps because he doesn't want to date transwomen! There are a lot of people within the gay community who are afraid to speak up, but they want to separate from the trans community altogether.
Thank you for responding to my comment. Here are a few reasons why I refer to gender ideology as a nightmare. In the 1990s, when the husband of a friend of mine "transitioned", I, like you, believed that society is not harmed by referring to men like McBride as "she". A lot has changed in laws and policies since then. Please see https://hecheated.org/Myths.html - you will see that to date, men have won over 8,914 "women's" athletic events. Do you think that's fair? How can you change the policies that have allowed this to happen if you use their preferred pronouns? After all they all insist "transwomen are women". By using their preferred pronouns, aren't you telling them you see them as the opposite sex than the sex they are? Organizations like the LGB Alliance, Women's Declaration International, and Sex Matters have been created in response to what they see as a homophobic and misogynistic ideology. Fact: 99.9% of violent crimes are committed by males. While not all males are violent or criminals, we created separate spaces to protect women and girls from the males who are. I hope you read the article nedweenie shared, Pronouns Are Rohypnol. It's very important to teach children, especially girls, how to listen to their natural protective instincts.
No one is denigrating trans identifying people. People are free to dress however they want to dress. What people should not be allowed to do is take away the rights of women and children, but that is what we're dealing with. What you don't seem to understand is that they don't want a separate sports category or any other separate category in any part of society. Whenever a separate category has been set up, they reject it. When gender neutral bathrooms are added in buildings with multi-stall men's and women's bathrooms, they boycott them and insist on using women's. They insist "transwomen are women". There is no negotiating with them.
Homeschool until it's possible to move your family away from looney-tune school systems. Many/most adolescents are troubled one way or another and some jackass school counselor pitching gender-change advice is less than helpful.
Indeed. Reminds me of a Democrat, either a particularly clueless one or one with a brave predilection for reductio ad absurdum, who demanded abortion rights for transwomen ... 🤯🙄
Transwoman India Willoughby: "The only difference between trans women and most cis women is having babies and periods. That’s it. In all other ways, we biologically and factually change sex."
I always wondered why, when this first started, the dads and grandpas and boyfriends of these girls/women whose locker rooms and athletic careers were invaded didn’t obliterate the movement with active protest. Instead it was let to grow like cancer and here we are. It’s going down, after lots and lots of damage.
But you know, this conclusion points to the fact that the Right needs to get better at organizing, informing and protesting lawfully. I realize the other side is astroturfing all the time, but we need to counter more effectively.
It is a cliche but most conservative/ classical liberals are too busy with jobs and life to match the protesting the ( paid) left do on a regular basis.
It's the former 60s rads now making grift on their own people. Seriously, these groups have all morphed into 501(c)s and are available to the right (er, left) group for a price.
These folks are part of the recent 'No Kings' bullshit.
It has never been the case that the entire country turned against men. The illusion of consensus on leftist beliefs and practices has been made possible by their absolute control of the media, the schools, their state governments, and their corporations. Also, most of the people who appear to agree with the leftists are just cowardly conformists who will say anything that gets them approval. That last part is the most disgusting to me; I didn't realize that so many people are so submissive and so lacking in honesty and integrity.
I realized this during the pandemic. So many people I knew admitted that they found most Covid regulations ridiculous, yet they never objected to them.
“Roll up your sleeve, we have a dose of Official Narrative you’ll need to take if you want a job. Or to fly on an airplane.” Some of us said “Oh HELL NO!” while others just rolled up...
Yes, thank you, you have a good point. I don't think that people should be expected to martyr themselves for the sake of taking a public stand. My comment pertained more to people who have little to lose other than a socially approved image, but you are right, many if not most employed people have a lot more to lose than that.
It wasn't the entire country. It was the HR departments. We reached the point where losing your job for things you said away from the office was a very real threat--not just for public figures, but for regular people too.
The jaw-jabbering professions--academics, journalists, political activists and so on--are very much against men, but that's nothing new.
The threat of losing your livelihood if you stepped out of line, with "stepping out of line" being defined by those same jaw-jabbering professions... that is what truly enabled the rapid spread of insanity.
Including at least one case where a father was upset because his daughter was RAPED by a trans "girl" in a public school bathroom. The school board swept it under the rug and with assistance from Biden's DOJ labeled the man a potential terrorist.
I can't get my head around it. I'm not a religious person, but the closest I can get to a rational explanation is the whole lot of them are possessed by demons.
Don't forget that same problematic student was shuffled to another school in the district and subsequently assaulted another student. Ultimately convicted but not placed on the registry. Good old Loudoun County Virginia.
I didn't and don't understand why the women competing didn't walk (or swim) away from the unfair contest. I'm happy that more and more are. What pathetic bullies people like Lia Thomas are.
It’s like those psychology experiments where people think they are in a room to take a test, but everyone else is in on the experiment, and when fire breaks out and no one gets up to leave, lots of people will try to finish their test even though the sensible thing to do is to stop and get out. I think the same thing goes on in sports: They have to finish the meet, all of their teammates are still competing, and their coaches and the school administration are completely onboard. Plus, they’ve had years of public education and media messaging about gender to soften them up.
Not to mention all the hard work they put into their passion. Tough to throw that all away to make a principled stand that you know won't do any good, and may actually do you harm.
Not true. She spoke out in the immediate aftermath. It was just that she was a senior and graduated soon after. But she could speak out because she was conservative attending U of Kentucky. The wokes had nothing on her. She didn't run in their circles.
I attended one of Riley Gaines's talk. She said the schools threatened the female students telling them they'd never get a job or be hired by any company if they dare to say anything. At the time, so many corporations were bowing to the trans cult, that might've been true too.
Language like "pathetic bullies" is no more productive than the nonsense with "Gender affirming." The athlete wants to compete. If you want to look for someone to blame (the American pastime), blame the governing bodies of the sports.
Whether or not the colleges or sports organizations bear any culpability (and I'd say they do), it doesn't change the fact that Thomas made the decision to pretend to be female to compete and win against women.
Speaking about hate– your responses are gratuitously vituperous.
Will Thomas could have changed into his swimsuit in a bathroom stall, but instead exposed his intact genitals to his female competitors who were all nude and unwarned about his locker room access. Yes, it is his fault he did that. He was ranked lower than 400th among male swimmers the prior year. It was his choice to compete against women. Don't pretend to think the NCAA forced those choices upon him. Trans athletes are activists who intentionally compete to influence policy of the governing bodies, and who threaten discrimination lawsuits if they're not appeased.
Same here. Nip it in the bud. I think the day my jaw dropped was when the NBA cancelled an All-Star game in NC because the state's citizens voted for biological restroom usage. I couldn't believe the NBA would have any stance, much less one to mollycoddle a group made fun of every 2.6 seconds in the league's locker rooms.
I’ll bet if you dig, the league or the owners are relying on financing by Blackrock and State Street. If so, they are required to incorporate ESG into their governance.
Just yesterday, the LA Dodgers proudly announced that they were blocking ICE agents from entering Dodger Stadium, and an LA Dodger player announced his “support” for the persecuted illegal aliens (oops, “friends and neighbours”).
B) Those who spoke out, especially at the beginning were threatened. Many people lost jobs and recieved threats for speaking out at the time.
A lot of people wonder where the women were at or where the men were at that opposed this stuff. Ask Gallus Mag, who lost a blog and whose life was threatened. Ask Graham Linehan who lost his career and still can't work normally, ask anybody who got kicked off twitter for saying 'men can't be women'. They removed all dissenting voices from media by 2017 or so. It's taken this long to catch back up.
Yep, below I talk a bit about how this whole thing came to my attention because of the free speech issues surrounding the Jonathan Yaniv/Jessica Simpson (yeah, that's his 'girlname') situation. Meghan Murphy was another who got blacklisted early on in the game. Mumsnet sandboxed discussion of gender into a special member's only ghetto on their site because of advertiser pressure, Reddit nuked the Radical Feminism board and all the links and source material posted there while elevating blatantly pedo trans supermods to power. Anything posted on Twitter and other social media questioning trans was removed and the offending authors kicked off the sites. There was a NO-TERF list that was circulated by trans activists to organize the removal of gender critical people from discussion boards and public life. To discuss this subject or hear anything about any of this pre-2020 or so, one had to be on specialty websites dedicated to the topic, which most people were not likely to find unless they searched for it.
This was a major censorship campaign that went down in plain sight.
Seriously. It's been a while since I've been in HS, but if some perv was trying to get into the locker room with my gf, he would not have had a good time.
I speak however I want to. In this case I am referring to a group of people who behave in a way that is offensive to me. So you go take your scolding elsewhere.
Right but would you have stopped him for OTHER women that weren't your gf? Probably not. I can't even tell you how many times in my life I've stood up against a dude clearly being an abusive shit to a woman IN PUBLIC surrounded by men that do nothing.
You should probably assume the opposite. I didn't. My dad loved us and provided for the us as best as he could but he had an extremely abusive childhood so his capacity or willingness to engage in violence was very really beat out of him as a child and I learned to defend myself. I don't have a pack of close older brothers, or uncles, or male cousins. My boyfriend NOW would try to protect me but frankly I have more experience fighting than him so I'd probably be better at it. I've stepped into more than one altercation where a man was being physically violent to a woman much smaller than him and I was the only one to do anything. I've had a gun pulled on me for interfering. I'm on a few police reports as a witness while many people just quietly went home because they don't want to get involved.
Another thing to consider is people want to talk about fatherlessness in households but it is mostly by men's choice, even keeping in mind who initiates divorce. In households with children the most frequent parent is the mother, 4:1. Almost no fathers fight for primary custody in divorces, less than half fight for even 50/50, and even judges who are mostly male think the kids should go with the mother so the most common arrangement becomes things like every other weekend dad with the mother doing all the school and activity related stuff. Child support is owed to the tune of billions despite the average payment being less than $300/mo but you see men all over be like "bitch won't let me see my kids." Men often remarry quickly after divorce and also often forget their first families. A lot of children are growing up without a meaningful adult male presence in their lives let alone their house.
Men don't stick up for strangers very often and men are more likely to be physically abusive in relationships than women. This is how the feminist movement evolved and was able to take hold. Women couldn't legally be protected from abusive relatives without another man willing to speak for her and there was always a shortage of those men. The church, the law, your family, they all told you to go back to your abuser to save face. If historically that's how abuse against women was handled for millennia, why should it be assumed that women now have more men willing to protect them? It's never been true, it was luck if you never came face to face with it.
Expecting "dads and grandpas" to intervene against the woke left at the cost of their jobs etc. is beyond silly at this point. The supposedly-equal women who needed to stand up and who might have survived the resulting lib shriek-fest failed...as usual.
I don't accept any labels that are invented by trans activists, "TERF" being one of them. The only thing I like about that label is that in coining and using it, activists are recognizing that feminists have for decades led the battle against men barging into women's spaces and trampling on women's rights.
Feminists opened the door. In the 1970s 2nd wave feminists were the ones gate crashing men's spaces right and left while crowing that sex didn't matter and that "gender" must be abolished for women's liberation. We've just come full circle on all that nonsense. Sauce goose/sauce gander.
During the 1960's most spaces that were considered "men's" were spaces that everyone should be able to enter. These included higher education generally, and specific schools in particular, as well as most careers, corporate boardrooms, recreational facilities and clubs that served as boardrooms, etc. Women in the generation above me did not have access to full participation in public life, with only a few exceptions. Women have just as much right as do men to choose from all available options in life, and to succeed or fail in their efforts, without being limited by discrimination. Without the feminist movement, we would not be able to exercise that right today.
All that could have been done with a scalpel instead of a machete. Or by simply being patient. Social, political and most importantly economic changes were already well under way. The separate gendered spheres of existence were losing their boundaries organically. But axe grinding and short sighted feminists wanted absolutely everything men had in the name of "equality" without considering the immutable and innate differences between the sexes and the eventual unintended consequences that would happen to their own sex class. (Primarily the loss of safeguards and privileges, ahem. And they were warned about those.) Those consequences took a while, but they're here now.
We have to repeatedly remind ourselves that the leftists have exerted (and still do) tight control over what is widely known and/or widely accepted. Many brilliant analysts and their analyses were reduced to the status of "sound in the desert that wasn't heard," and sometimes faced career destruction to boot.
The fight continues. The "mainstream" media are slowly giving way to the "fact checkers" and "misinformation analysts," people like Kate Starbird at the U of Washington ("former professional basketball player") who work tirelessly to (a) promote themselves via "networking" and (b) censor sensible opinions. They aren't surrendering, they're regrouping. We need to constantly expose them and ridicule them.
For the same reason that no one in England rose up in rage when they learned that thousands of their girls had been raped by foreigners while the authorities brushed it all under the rug.
You have to reverse cause and effect: these ideological impositions only occur AFTER a populace has been tenderized by guilt and shame and marketing campaigns based on moral blackmail (Do you want this child to achieve their True Self™ or are you an evil bigot who wants them dead!?!)
The West had already been neutered by generations of propaganda about the guilt and shame we should feel about our colonial ancestors and about what Good Person morality demands—approving of other people's lifestyle demands in the name of tolerance and progress and always putting the Marginalized first in all endeavors.
In other words, the high ground was already cleared and conquered before the ideological campaign marched in, sans opposition.
When someone (or a group of someones) states explicitly that they want to conduct a Long March through all your institutions to capture, control and reconfigure them to their precise ideological specifications, maybe you should listen.
The New Left conquered academia then used that as a beachhead to conquer the rest of our cultural and educational institutions—liberals couldn't fight back bc they're helpless against movements from the Left, and conservatives didn't fight back bc they scoffed at anything that couldnt be monetized or militarized.
When I asked my wife how she felt about this, she looked at me like I was a weird reactionary and said that she didn't think it was a big deal. I was asking her for permission to do a beat down on one of these pervs.
Instead, I was given a shoulder shrug. If most women are okay with dudes hanging out in the women's locker room, then who am I to argue? Some of the biggest advocates for this insanity are women.
You wife probably hasn't encountered one of them in the wild yet. She'll have a rude awakening if she ever run into one of those AGPs in the women's locker rooms.
I'll bet she'd think differently if her daughter was accosted in a restroom or locker room. Sometimes people need to be directly impacted before they'll take a stance on any given issue.
Sounds reasonable. But she still votes for the people who believe that mutilating kids with drugs and surgery is a net good for society. I also think that allowing men to invade women's spaces is a horror show. I would much rather bag and tag those guys. No need for police.
But it would be a worthless effort until the majority of women get on board. Somehow, we went from a society where girls could do anything to being one where girls should become boys if they don't like pink dresses and dolls. Sounds like regressive horseshit to me.
I still can't believe that transing kids and turning them into lifelong medical patients with a huge number of debilitating side effects including death has become central to the DNC platform and nearly every major institution in our nation. Most are autistic or gay. But here we are and the polling among women doesn't look good for the kiddos or for women's sex segregated spaces. Like holy shit. That is beyond sad.
No one needs to convince me or any other men I know. Nothing worse than a weak sex predator. Women can change that. They may be the only ones who can. I don't get it but most don't want to. They want more of it. I'll fight like hell for the kids but women are fully capable of changing course on the rest. They just don't want to for some reason. Not for me to judge. Just the facts.
Also worth noting that my daughter has been infected with this mania. She told us that she was non-binary because she didn't like her developing breasts during puberty. And now she thinks she is a trans man. Her mother and I were completely taken off guard about all of this. We have kept her off of the drugs and surgery. We don't know what to do about her. Assume she picked up most of it in school but we aren't sure.
Always told her she could be anything she wanted to. Just didn't expect her to decide that she was a man at the onset of puberty. I'm beyond pissed off about it. They have stolen years from her. Completely derailed her natural development. But in short, I don't even know which locker room she would want to be in. Probably the women's if she had to. Everything is so stupid and now we have to try to clean up this mess. It isn't easy.
I'm trying to save a girl from regressive stereotypes and a lifetime of regret. But in the meantime, women are totally okay with all this bullshit. My wife isn't okay with this but she still votes for the assholes that have enabled all of it. You fucking tell me how that works because I don't know. I won't even pretend to know. I want to burn down everything. It's malicious, evil and illiberal. I think about this every day. I'm broken. I just want women to wake up.
Because your wife can't consent for other women. I'm sure she'd change her mind as soon as she's actually faced with an erection in her gym locker room.
My wife raced bicycles and was always pissed whenever she had to race against a man. One of her teammates was indifferent to it until she had a man in her field. Then she understood.
She would think it is funny particularly if he has a little dick. That might be one way to handle this. Some men get off on women pointing out how little their dick is but most would be horrified. Little dick taunting could go a long way.
Did you know exhibitionism is strongly correlated with escalation to sexual assault and murder? Or that cross dressing in criminals also correlates with sex crimes against women and children? Either your wife has lived such a sheltered life that it's never even occurred to her that a man will hurt her or you're drastically misunderstanding how women react to perceived threats of men who cross sexual boundaries.
It's funny that people in this thread can't understand why more men don't do anything and here's a dude saying that his wife laughing at the unhinged naked man in her changing room is a solid, safe option. This here folks, this is why. Men largely think this is funny because Buffalo Bill is a joke to them but a threat to us.
I was going for levity but this is a perfect response. You're right. I am a terrible ally. But that is because I'm not an ally. I'm just wildly sympathetic. You could have used that to persuade me but you decided to go with a lecture. That is popular with most guys but I remain unconvinced because I don't give a fuck about your pieties.
lol dude you made a joke out of a crazy man flashing YOUR OWN WIFE in a confined area where she would be likely in a state of undress. Someone sexually harassing YOUR OWN WIFE is the butt of the joke YOU MADE. Who exactly are you sympathetic to if it's not even a woman you're definitely supposed to personally care about?
And damn, I can't even imagine spitefully saying you don't give a fuck about anyone else who might have to deal with this, apparently including your own wife, cuz you have one experience with one stranger on the internet. That's mental.
Maybe so, but ai wasn’t one of them. Here’s why: I was a mom who supported my girls’ sports. While neither was an olympic or title hopeful, it still was years of work and time to get them here and there to practice and games. Had they contended for and lost titles to males after all those years I would have been hopping mad because they were cheated after all their (and my) work. Then, there’s the safety aspect. One daughter played soccer in college her first year. The next year the coach didn’t put her on the team because she was a lot smaller than the other players and she was at risk of injury. That was smart on the part of that coach. I have seen U15 girls on the bigger taller side tackle, and it’s pretty rough.At a certain age they seem to, even as girls, relish that physical contact. So, when I think of boys/men throwing and tackling in certain sports against women/girls, it’s a bad idea.
I agree with you but the majority of women are largely okay with this. I sleep with one of them and we have a daughter!
These are women's spaces. What should men do? Seriously. Protest? I would vote against it but there are no men's advocacy groups. There is no organizing nexus for men.
Me going to the XX XY activist meeting when I should be cleaning out the gutters would be hilarious because it would be filled with women and my wife would figure that out really quickly. It would be funny though.
Many people blame feminism for the trans movement, definitely a lot of stupid women in the recent wave with suicidal empathy, but feminism also only exists because so many women lacked basic legal protections as humans precisely because good men with the legal rights wouldn't stand up for them. Women are also leading the fight against this and have been for decades, the old school feminists, actual lesbians with functioning brains, etc.
Men don't tend to fight for women who "belong" to other men. By that I mean good men tend to care about about THEIR sisters/daughters/mothers etc. but unless/until it affects the women they personally care about they don't do anything. There's a big "not my business" man code. If a woman doesn't have brothers or a father willing to stand up for her against another man she's in a very dangerous position even in the modern west. Very unfortunately a lot of men just don't care at all even if it does affect "their" women.
After being told "Don't patronize me, I can handle this myself!" for a few generations, protecting women isn't in the male playbook as much as it was in the past. Interference and replacement by the State and the Market has increased too.
What's the historical excuse for it before then? Again, men protect "their" women which was mostly exclusive to blood relations if you were in a good culture and not even then in bad cultures (sending widows to ashrams or burning them alive, intentionally selling women children as sex slaves to use and kill). It's not about "don't patronize me" from modern feminism it's far older than that.
There has to be a higher threshold for morality that extends to unrelated people. We're animals but we're not thoughtless. If you know something is wrong and an ADULT wants to SELF harm and tells you to fuck off, yes, there's a limit to help you can give because short of getting an adult committed against their will you can't do anything. Get them at least self harming in way that doesn't interfere with the rest of society. But we're talking kids here. If you see something wrong then it's every adult's responsibility to step in. The kids aren't saying "don't patronize me" they're just kids. And here it's fathers often not doing any advocacy for their own daughters. Would you spite your own daughter because she said something you don't like, or worse because some other women you don't know somewhere else said it?
Doing a good thing shouldn't require gratitude. People can be ungrateful shits but you do the right thing because it's the right thing not because someone else will thank you. There are so many people that can't even say they spoke out while all of this has been happening. Not on petitions, letters to reps, donations to orgs who can do legal fighting, none of it. It's not the excuse people think it is to be told off and decide that you do the wrong thing or let the wrong thing happen. Especially in this case where the wrong thing is happening to a lot of children.
There are a lot of women in my life who are concerned about this and a lot of men collectively in all our lives that still don't understand what the big deal is. Probably because a man in a dress isn't a physical threat to them, the men in dresses tend to go away when they see a man with a woman (like most predators), so the consideration that a woman or child alone is a different level of vulnerability doesn't cross their mind. Lack of imagination I guess.
Good on yer. The injustice of it, alone—bigger stronger males injuring females in the sports and taking away their records and titles!! before you get to the absurdity/pervertedness of insisting that a man/boy exposing his genitalia to women/girls is the new normal…but I guess when you favor allowing surgeons to mutilate children by building opposite sex genitals out of their colon, penis, arm anything goes!!! I pray we can vanquish this evil sickness.
How about just requiring that the biological male wanting to compete with females in sports (or be sent to a women's prison) get a full surgical sex change first, and make it easy for him/her to do so? If he's faking, that should put an end to it. If really transgendered, that, and female hormones, should reduce the advantage.
A division for transgender, with surgery and hormones, would make great sense, if there were enough of them. If they are without surgery and hormones, they might as well just play on the team of their own sex.
Well, the trouble is that the motive isn’t pure. It’s not about competition, it’s about usurping and disrupting for the sake of attention and division.
There are studies that show that unless the physical transition occurred PRIOR to puberty, trans girls/women still have a physical advantage over females, even after surgery and hormones.
Yes, definitely, though the advantage will be less. More importantly, requiring a surgical sex change before moving into that space would cut the nonsense of biological males pretending to be transgendered in order to gain an advantage.
Agreed, but I am against people making money off of those surgeries. Consenting adults can do what they want with their bodies. But making money (and a lot of it) performing this butchery that leads only to misery is an evil unto itself.
Most of the moms and grandmas also failed to protect children. Watching the perverted drag shows, it appears most of the adults towing along tiny children are moms and grandmas.
McBride is a man, not a “she.” Boys are still showering in girls’ locker rooms and cheating in girls’ sports. Males are still being placed in women’s prisons. Male and female are reproductive states. Nothing nuanced about it. Born with a penis, born with a Y, you’re a guy. Stay out of female-only spaces.
McBride was born a “privileged, very rich white male” until he became a “victim” in college.
How a doctor can mutilate a child’s body - a child who can not legally sign off on informed consent - is beyond my understanding. It’s child abuse and should go down history’s gutter the same way the lobotomy did.
McBride is a man. Referring to McBride as "she" is an inaccurate portrayal of reality. Otherwise known as a lie. I do not consent to the perversion of language in the effort to perpetuate a lie. It is that simple. Don't lie.
What I find very odd in this supposedly liberated age is the restrictive definition placed on masculinity. If you look at old movies from the 30s, the various types of men portrayed on screen was quite wide--everything from tough guys like Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart to sophisticates like Fred Astaire and Cary Grant to effeminate second bananas like Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton. If people were able to accept that men came in a broad range of types then, why not now? Why do non-macho boys who prefer artistic past times to sports feel compelled to label themselves non-binary?
Excellent point. An observation that I continue to marvel at is that no group embraces bigoted sexual stereotypes more fervently than transgender ideologues. In their eyes, what we'd previously call an effeminate man is a transwoman. What we'd previously call a tomboy is now a transboy.
Yes. That’s what this is. It’s a retrograde movement to reify behavioral expectations for each sex. If you don’t conform, you’re the other sex. Your behavior dictates what sex you are. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails.
As someone who lives on the west coast, I’ve met several nonbinary people. In my opinion, they are all narcissists. Even my son told me the joke, “Q: How can you tell if someone is nonbinary or asexual? A: Just wait a few seconds, and they’ll tell you.”
And crossdressing used to be a campy activity for adults, instead of a government certified and promoted (*cough* drag queen story hour *cough*) protected class.
Exactly. I've explained to my 14 year old son that there are masculine gay men and effeminate straight men, there is a broad range and it doesn't mean one is trans as a result. He was blown away when I shared how back in the 80's rock stars wore full face makeup and literally no one batted an eye.
It used to be than transsexuals were 1:30,000 to 1:10,000. Nowadays, they are pushing that it's 1:1000 to 1:100. Why the change. To give benefit to the doubt, environmental hormone disruptors might be the cause, but I think it is largely social. Democrats have made it cool to be a freak, whether dyed blue hair or pierced anything, to altering your birth gender through surgery, makeup, and attire. I don't think the majority of trans people truly are what they say they are, but just playing a social role.
I'm in your camp. Social media has eliminated the proverbial small ponds, so now insecure kids no longer have to find ways to stand out just in their school, or even their town, but all of western society.
The real force multiplier here is that trans comes with an almost superpower - you're able to not just create a unique identity, but belong to a protected class too.
I will just add that this need for so many (young and old) has always been about insecurity. It's an important element to understand, because within it, lies the root cause, and therefore the solution. Albeit, one that takes generations to remedy.
You are absolutely right. And I’m aware of the mental difficulties trans folks face; as soon as they are no longer deemed an asset their protected status will vanish like a fart in a skillet. Many will know just more abandonment and disillusion.
And it also occurs during adolescence, when hormones are surging and kids are (naturally) trying on different identities to figure out who they are. The institutions perpetuating this madness know this, and intentionally exploit it for financial gain.
Breast implants need to be replaced just about every 10 years and you can't build a penis once it's been removed. It's disgusting that people were sold this lie and doctors who try to cash in on putting pieces back when they were part of removing them should be jailed.
Social media has a lot to do with it. I know that's almost as cliche as blaming rock and roll, but it's true.
Before 2017 or so, the majority of male teenagers with gender confusion grew up to be gay men, with a smaller amount being straight men, and an even smaller number still being transsexual. This is pretty much what happens in a vacuum.
However, a rounding error sized minority of extremely online narcissistic transsexuals wielding outsized power over internet communities didn't like that. They decided that anyone going through an awkward puberty must be like them, and needs to be made even more like them.
People (often minors) experiencing gender confusion became referred to as "eggs", because they're yet to "hatch" as proper transsexuals, but they took it upon themselves to help along that process in various Discord servers and subreddits such as egg_irl. If this process sounds a bit similar to pedophilic grooming, well...
This is not a conspiracy theory. It was done entirely in the open. They simply banned/cancelled/deplatformed (even debanked in a few extreme cases) anyone who complained about it. That's how much control they had over online conversation.
The tide is finally starting to turn on that, but don't fall asleep at the wheel. A battle has been won, but the war isn't over.
I don't know that internet porn is really much more extreme or widely available than it used to be. My family were very early adopters of the web, and as a kid I saw some weird things in those wild west days. BUT, there are more kids (and people in general) online, and they're probably less monitored because parents stopped doing that for some reason. I saw naked ladies on the internet as as minor, and while I certainly don't think we should ENCOURAGE it, I also don't think it scarred me for life.
Rather, I think the primary issue is the blurring of fiction and real life. Somewhere along the line, we lost the ability to tell the difference. Kids are going to be exposed to the ugly side of the world sooner or later. They should be reasonably protected from it, of course, but they also need to know how to deal with it when they encounter it.
In other words, I think pornsickness is a symptom, not a cause. But it deserves consideration.
If only "naked ladies" were all there was to online degeneracy! (https://x.com/Greentexterr/status/1427492142138671107) But I do agree with your statement about blurring fiction and real life, and the loss of effective parenting and kids not developing emotional resiliency from that.
When you see the demographics of transitioners overlaid to a US map it makes you wonder...the Coasts (East and West) are drastically higher than flyover country. That would lead me to believe at least a significant factor is societal approval, or desire thereof.
IMO, it is a combination of factors. 1)There probably have always been more borderline "gender confused" people than recognized. 2)I don't think there is any doubt that environmental/pharmaceutical hormone disrupters play a role. 3) People, particularly children and young people will do the darndest things for attention. In today's world, being some sort of LGBTXYZABC type gets you attention. 4) Testosterone decrease in males. While I sort of assign this to "click bait", observationally it might make sense. At least you hear a lot more about males wanting to be females compared to the reverse. At 80+, it certainly appears that the general aggression level in young men today is pale compared to 55 years ago. That may be "good old days" thinking, but maybe true.
The easiest problems to solve are the ones with a single cause. I think this one has a multiplicity. The biggest "cause", IMO, is the attention it gets. We have always had people that were weird.
My belief is that almost any pubescent female would like to opt out of the bodily changes that occur. It has always been that way. Now they label it gender confusio n and lie to them that they can opt out of the normal changes without consequence
I am not a knee-jerk endorser of everything emanating from Europe. We broke away from them for good reason and that leopard hasn't wholly changed its spots.
OTOH, they DO have decent scientists--some world class. They banned atrazine 20 years ago. In my view, that doesn't mean we should automatically ban it here, but we ought to look at it very, very closely.
I think in Europe, you have to prove it is safe. Here, it is more someone has to prove it is harmful--and good luck getting a grant for THAT study.
I agree, and it is evidenced in the way the majority of trans individuals behave and speak. Someone with real dysmorphia and/or delusions in this regard would not refer to themselves as a trans male or female. It is in the trans majority's willingness - nay, eagerness - to actually publicize their transformation that belies this notion that their mental health necessitates acting as though they're genuinely their preferred gender.
Obamacare, the oxymoronically named "Affordable Care Act", opened the flood gates. The very term "gender affirming care" surfaced post Obamacare. Obamacare mandated insurance companies had to cover this putatively cosmetic and psychologically-driven witchcraft.
As I understand it, basic components were included when first passed and it was modified and appended subsequently.
I'm not a scientist but I would be highly skeptical of any claim that anything other than social contagion accounts for the sudden surge in people who identify as trans.
I'm largely with you on this, but I'd put extra emphasis on hormone disruptors. As for Democrats and the cool factor in freakishness, let's not forget something similar is happening over on the Right. There's a definite (and dangerous) ideological freakishness among the tech billionaires backing Trump and their guiding light, a detestable whiny crank named Curtis Yarvin who would like to dispense with democracy in favor of putting pinhead Mountainhead intellects like his in charge.
I think a lot of the trans kids would’ve been goth kids in the 90’s. A lot of them are clearly just gay — but I guess since that’s accepted now, they need to take it a step further. Like that trans one that nearly ruined Bud Light. That’s a theater gay kid.
The explosion of social-media transgenderism coincided with an explosion in the practice, as well is with females coming to do it much more relative to males.
In addition to everything already mentioned, the argument could be made that there is some evolutionary factors contributing as well. In the (very distant) past only alpha males would survive and have offspring with similar characteristics.
I think the atrocity of child sexual mutiliation is a Trojan horse for what they really want... sexual access to children: "You allow them to be mutilated but you won't let them have a loving relationship (with me)?"
I hate that I’ve come to this conclusion too. The rebranding of pedophiles as MAPs as a legit sexual orientation in conjunction with arguing that children are completely capable of “knowing who they are on the inside and what to do about it” thus can consent to these drastic life changing measures lends itself to the argument that children obviously can make informed long term adult decisions so why are you illegally discriminating against my protected sexual orientation.
I HATE this. I never thought this way about gays ever, and I still don’t. But that the problem, this isn’t a homosexual issue, it is a completely different and concerning issue all together.
Yes this is absolutely the endgame. How better to completely destroy all tradition than to disrupt the formation of the family unit? It fits in with the pharma complex too. All these liberated people are gonna need meds.
My oldest identified as a hobbit when he was in elementary school, in a misguided attempt to get out of doing his math homework. "Hobbits don't need math," he would insist. Insensitive bitch that I am, I made him do his homework anyway.
Appreciate the recap! And just to re-state the obvious here: Any news outlet still referring to chemical castration and surgical mutilation of children as "therapy" or "care" or "gender affirming..." cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
I think it’s going to be a lot worse. The generation living through this now is the most obsessively self-documenting in history. By the time they grow to middle age or later they will have a lifetime of footage documenting disappointment, rage, heartbreak, self-loathing. For all but a few, it will be pain and resentment (toward us, for allowing it to happen). I did stories ten years ago about student loan holders who reached retirement age still owing and it was uncomfortable being in the same room with some of them. Imagine the stories these thousands of people will tell. It will not be pretty.
They will blame us for letting it happen. But some have been shouting from the rooftops. JK Rowling is a heroine for putting herself on the line for other women and girls.
We're already seeing the (very slow) emergence of "this isn't what I was promised" videos. I fully expect this to accelerate as the "trans madness" dies down a little and the "generation" of transitioners gets to the "this is my life now" point. (While remaining unhappy about their bodies.)
Excellent article. One thing you forgot to mention: states that force schools to hide gender transition from parents, or seek to remove children from homes where the parents do not affirm. This has chased many people away from the Democratic Party.
You’re right, and it was a big mistake to leave this out. I was absolutely flabbergasted that so many states and localities made this policy heading into 2024 (I think it was 1,040 districts that barred notification to parents about gender expression developments when I last wrote about this in 2023). The implied premise of these policies is that local bureaucrats are more qualified guardians than the parents who love these children and would sacrifice anything, even their lives, for their happiness. It’s a bad enough idea in a moral sense, but also politically crazy: you just can’t mess with someone’s kids and win elections. How did they not know that?
This is why Glen Youngkin won for governor in Virginia. The Democrat governor said that he doesn’t think parents have any right to have a say in what is being taught in schools. That really angered a lot of parents and it was enough to get a republican elected
It was a top reason for a lot of people. Also fresh in the news at time was the story about the transgender kid that had raped a couple of girls in the women’s restroom at a high school in northern Virginia and the school got caught lying to the parents and trying to cover it up. I think that was also a huge factor as well.
This stems at least partly from rising anti-natalism on the left, which bleeds naturally into gross anti-child/anti-humanist policies. There are economic angles (lack of single jobs that can support a family of 4), “intellectual” angles (literature on environmentalism, overconsumption, etc. going back to “The Population Bomb”), and cultural angles (rising social isolation in the internet era), but the basic fact is that a family with 3 or more kids like yours will raise way more eyebrows on the left than on the right.
Yeah, back when Leave it to Beaver was made, I guess.
I was always mystified at these references, though. I was born in 1958, my late husband was born in 1948 -- and all of our parents worked. My late father in law worked in a factory in Michigan, and each of his successive wives worked, too (3 in total). All of my friends' parents both worked, except for one, and her dad was a plumber. Nobody even noticed "latch key kids" until the 1980's, for some reason. Apparently, we were a distinct minority.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
It is objectively true that in the 1960s, the vast majority of households (incl. working class) were single income (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/voliii/pubdocs/1960/Population/Prelim/41934217no1-40ch2.pdf). The average fertility rate was around ~3.5 back then. The fraction of single income households and the fertility rate have declined monotonically since the 1960s. Correlation is not causation, but it sure knows how to point and waggle its eyebrows at us.
The pernicious thing about all of this was that it all sounded too crazy to be true and so people didn’t believe it. Or claimed it was a one off. It was only when you started digging and paying attention to the (mostly female) writers and journalists who were investigating this, AND looked at the UK where the resistance was louder, did the scope of the authoritarian insanity become clear.
Matt- I presume your final question is rhetorical because they absolutely knew what they were doing.
BTW, I’ve noticed that you have a ‘habit’ of closing with these kinds of rhetorical question-statements about the intentions of the Left. “How could they do X?” Or “How could they not know what people would think of X?!” (Where X = horrible anti-human policy).
Might I suggest that just like all of the other adults to whom we attribute agency that these people - yes, your former friends and colleagues on the ‘principled’ Left, Matt (LOL) - knew exactly what they were doing? And are just bad people?
Isn’t that the obvious and straightforward answer, Matt? They’re just NOT good, NOT moral, and they revel in that? And people like you who refuse to call Evil by its name are delaying the rectification that needs to happen by pretending that this is simply (yet another) “mistake” in judgment?
“Reasonable minds can differ” only applies to a certain narrow range of policy alternatives within a bandwidth of underlying agreed upon “reasonable” facts and assumptions.
Transing kids isn’t anywhere fucking close to that, Matt.
Transing kids in secret by bureaucrats should result in immediate marches to the school’s offices or the officials’ homes by square-jawed fathers en masse with torches, pitchforks, and other accoutrements for tarring and feathering.
THEN, and only then, will this shit stop. Tell yourself all the pretty lies you want otherwise.
We'll soon see if it works here in Washington. Our Democratic legislature passed a parental rights initiative to keep it off the ballot last year and this recent session dismantled it to bring back the bureaucrat-over-parent bias. Too many voters here are gullible to buy the left’s lies out of fear of Trump but I think even they won't be so stupid as to cede control of families to the state once the original initiative gets on the ballot.
You'd be surprised at how many parents are willing to let the State or the Market raise their kids. Or they vote D and then not pay attention to what their elected officials actually do until the laws are in place and happen to effect them personally.
"The implied premise of these policies is that local bureaucrats are more qualified guardians than the parents who love these children"
It's not just on this issue either. It arguably cost Democrats the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election over Terry McAuliffe's answer to a debate question on parental involvement in the school curriculum, which you covered extensively at the time.
Hey Matt, I am an outspoken critic of gender transition, particularly for minors. I have read quite a lot about the issue, and have stuck my neck out in my personal life to discuss my views with friends, family, and strangers alike. That being said, I haven't been able to find much about the “1040 districts that bar notification…”. I agree with you on the implied premise, and you are right, it is lunacy. However, from what I understand those 1000+ districts are mostly just California school districts.
As a native Californian, I will be the first to say our politics are coocoo for coacoa-puffs. Really, don't get me started there. We have statewide laws being challenged on this very issue.
But let's be real, California is going to California, and the more vague “1040 districts” figure makes this sound like a broader, national issue that is really just my state being populated by misinformed idiot.
Oh, there is New Hampshire too, but maybe we just call their 5 school districts a wash.
If I remember correctly the judge from the Ludlow case said something like it’s the parent’s responsibility to know what the kid is up to… it’s not the school’s responsibility to tell the parents. Which is insane!
The puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries were sold to the public as “life-saving“ because they were described as preventing suicides of gender confused kids.
We were also told that these kids have always existed, but we’re never comfortable coming out until just now
At some point, the part of the country that has never really thought about it will realize:
1: why didn’t we see mass suicides of these kids before when these “treatments” were only available for the last couple of decades or so.
2: what about all these kids and countries in Africa, many parts of Asia and the Middle East and other places where these treatments have never been available.
3: what about the kids whose families still live in the states that have banned these treatments for the last 2 to 4 years?
I don’t know if many parts of the public will be able to accept the fact that this was all just a lie. My guess is that many people will simply never own up to this mistake because it is so incredibly devastating.
Helen Joyce has pointed out that many of the parents that went along with this and medicalized their own children into being permanently disfigured, disabled, sterilized will never let it go. They can't because they'd have to face what they did.
No one in MSM has considered whether asking “Sarah” McBride about the rather problematic issues surrounding trans “rights” will only get an absolutely biased response. We learn nothing from him.
Just like the stupidity of allowing Chase Strangio argue the point before the Supreme Court.
The compulsion to ask trans people what their opinion is on this matter fueled this ridiculous assertion because MSM presented it as the definitive answer.
It’s like asking the chairman of a tobacco company what he thinks about lung cancer.
Strangio's real name is Kate. She is one weird lady & sounds like she inhaled Helium. She went to Grinnell College where I believe she threw her parents under the bus.
She's a radical on a number of issues. I think I read somewhere that she is against Constitutional Law and even the Supreme Court, although when you do searches on her it is difficult to find anything that isn't crazy and pro-Gender Ideology.
But here she is on “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”:
I remember talking to my adult son about this at the time it 'started' (somewhere around 2018/19). I'm a retired physician, and I was just mortified at how my fellow physicians were behaving. Shame on them. Shame on the profession for years to come.
The ICC considers conscripting children under 15 to be soldiers to be a war crime. Ask yourself why, and how that relates to conducting irreversible medical procedures on "consenting" children. Shame may be the least of their problems when the science of human development and the consequential morality are no longer ignored.
"I have friends who still won’t return calls because I reviewed What is a Woman?"
They are not your friends. They chose ideology over friendship.
Does anyone know who paid for all the "gender affirming" care (and who pays for medical issues experienced as a result)? Matt said he doesn't care if adults undergo sex reassignment, but if they expect taxpayers to pick up the tab for it, I care.
There is probably (although I speculate) something built into Obamacare that mandates insurance companies cover such surgeries, so yes, we end up paying, in the same way Obamacare mandated that nuns be forced to go along with abortion policies. It was one of those Nancy Pelosi "we have to pass the bill in order to find out what's in it" revelations. Those sneaky democrats. Another word for sneaky: evil.
You have phenomenal instincts; are you a Boomer who remembers 'Follow the money'? I KNOW I read something that alluded to it, and asked Grok the following question:
𝕀 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕤 𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕘𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕤 𝕖𝕩𝕡𝕝𝕠𝕕𝕖𝕕 𝕓𝕖𝕔𝕒𝕦𝕤𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕒 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕕 𝕠𝕣 𝕡𝕙𝕣𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕚𝕟𝕤𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕆𝕓𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕝𝕒𝕨𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕥. 𝕀𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕖?
And here's the reply. (TL;dr: yeah, pretty much; but there was a L O T of other factors influencing it)
The claim that transgender surgeries "exploded" due to a specific word or phrase in Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) or Medicare laws oversimplifies a complex issue. Let’s unpack it based on available evidence.
The ACA, enacted in 2010, includes Section 1557, which prohibits discrimination in healthcare based on sex, among other factors. 𝕀𝕟 𝟚𝟘𝟙𝟞, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔻𝕖𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕠𝕗 ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕒𝕟𝕕 ℍ𝕦𝕞𝕒𝕟 𝕊𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕤 (ℍℍ𝕊) 𝕚𝕤𝕤𝕦𝕖𝕕 𝕒 𝕣𝕦𝕝𝕖 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 "𝕤𝕖𝕩" 𝕥𝕠 𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕝𝕦𝕕𝕖 𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕥𝕪, meaning that health insurance plans receiving federal funds (like those on the ACA marketplace or Medicaid) could not categorically exclude coverage for gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy or surgeries, if deemed medically necessary.
This rule didn’t mandate coverage but clarified that excluding such care could be considered discriminatory if it wasn’t applied equally to similar treatments for non-transgender individuals. For example, if a plan covers hormone therapy for menopause but not for gender dysphoria, that could be challenged as discrimination.
Medicare also shifted its policy in 2014, when HHS lifted a longstanding ban on covering gender-affirming surgeries, which had been deemed "experimental." This allowed coverage on a case-by-case basis for medically necessary procedures, though specific policies vary by local Medicare contractors or private Medicare Advantage plans.
There’s no single word or phrase in these laws explicitly causing an "explosion" of surgeries. Instead, these policy changes removed barriers to coverage, making gender-affirming care more accessible for some. Data from the Williams Institute (2022) estimates that about 1.3 million transgender adults live in the U.S., with roughly 276,000 on Medicaid, and coverage has expanded in some states (27 states and D.C. have protective Medicaid policies for gender-affirming care as of 2024). However, coverage remains uneven, with 10 states explicitly barring Medicaid coverage for such care and others lacking clear policies.
Claims of an "explosion" often come from sources like posts on X, which cite a 150% increase in gender-affirming surgeries post-2010 or a tripling after 2018. These figures are hard to verify independently, as comprehensive national data on transgender surgeries is limited. A 2023 study from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted a rise in procedures, but exact numbers and causes are murky. Increased insurance coverage likely played a role, alongside growing social acceptance and awareness of transgender healthcare needs. However, attributing this solely to one word or phrase is misleading—multiple factors, including medical standards (e.g., WPATH guidelines) and cultural shifts, contribute.
On the other hand, critics argue these policies incentivized providers by making surgeries more financially viable, potentially inflating demand. Some X posts claim Obamacare "mandated" coverage for minors, which is inaccurate—coverage decisions for minors vary by state and plan, and many states have since restricted such care for those under 18.
In short, no specific word or phrase in Obamacare or Medicare laws directly caused a surge in transgender surgeries. Policy changes expanded access to coverage, likely contributing to increased procedures, but the "explosion" narrative oversimplifies and lacks precise data. Always check your insurance plan’s specific terms, as coverage varies widely.
I vaguely remember a clinic in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center that openly bragged about how much money they were taking in from their position as a "leading" center for "gender-affirming care." It was horrifying.
The Cleveland Clinic communicates in disturbing WOKE-speak too. If they cannot even work out biological sex, I certainly wouldn't trust them for the more challenging medical issues.
I’m from Nashville and what Vanderbilt said was we make 40K off of top surgery alone so there will be no dissent on this issue. I’ve turned my back on them ever since, except for their baseball team (my father played many moons ago).
Alice, thanks. Vandy also gave its highest Gold Medal honor to Tony Fauci. I’m not certain, but I strongly suspect a substantial honorarium was attached. Fauci was making his “medal rounds” at the time, capitalizing on his fame and massive financial power and collecting many such honors. Any medical facility hoping for decent grant support needed to stay on his good side. The “Nick Zeppos Era” will ultimately be seen as an embarrassment to Vanderbilt. There were efforts to depose Nick, but the med school faculty were “encouraged” by the traditional incentives (financial “realignment”) and the effort failed. Vandy has sure turned out some outstanding pitchers!
You remember correctly:
"‘Huge Money Maker’: Video Reveals Vanderbilt’s Shocking Gender ‘Care,’ Threats Against Dissenting Doctors"
https://www.dailywire.com/news/huge-money-maker-video-reveals-vanderbilts-shocking-gender-care-threats-against-dissenting-doctors
Thank you for that answer. See what I mean? SNEAKY? Change the language, hide the language, sometimes even beat someone over the head with language. They who control the language win the debate.
The state-euthanasia crowds use "Dignity in Dying" as their con-artist phrase. To lure in the gullible.
It isn't gullibility. It is the planned and executed reduction of the private citizen from human being too thingdom. Uneducated. Drug addled. Propagandized. Purposefully emotionally crippled. Isolated and psyoped. History and culture -- (what is the term)--memory holed. Does anyone here believe that what is now voluntary euthanasia won't fall into the hands of the ascending decision making state commissariat? It's all a matter of paper work. And of course--the gold in your teeth.
Good point. I feel the same way about the oxymoron "assisted suicide." I read this as "homicide."
Yup... it was big business. Had nothing to do with health care.
The key phrase in your narrative is “medically necessary procedures. “ As a preliminary matter to answering the question of “who pays “ it is therefore necessary to answer the question “ who determines what is medically necessary?” In our society it is only doctors who are allowed to decide what is or is not medically necessary.
By now there are several medical specialties involved in the movement but historically speaking this all got started in the psychiatric profession, the one that is by far the least scientific of them all. What is now called gender dysphoria first appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the 3rd edition which was published in 1980. At that time it was called Gender Identity Disorder and since in psychiatric jargon disorder is synonymous with illness it was clearly considered a designated mental illness and did not get much traction because of the stigma associated with such. Psychiatry was aware of this so in 2017 the American Psychiatric Association sent out a note to practitioners renaming the diagnosis gender dysphoria in order to get rid of the stigma and and it was only then that the diagnosis did indeed mushroom. So as far as medicine is concerned psychiatry was the lynchpin. Psychiatry is part of the medical fraternity and was thus able to make the necessary referrals to get the job done and by changing the name to something obscure was able to transform an illness into something more socially acceptable, indeed something in the nature of things. All third party payments for psychiatric care are triggered by what’s defined as an illness in the DSM. Indeed, disability pensions are also triggered by what is popularly known as the psychiatrist’s bible.
Before all this happened the identity crisis which took many forms was just considered part of growing up and eventually resolved itself. Then the phenomenon got medicalized and after it had been medicalized it got politicized.
Parents were told that their gender dysphoric child was susceptible to suicide if not allowed to trans. Is there any report on how many trans people, who later regretted making permanent changes in their body, have committed suicide???
The statistics are sketchy and it’s still early days because if a suicide is going to happen the time after the transitioning that it happens is bound to vary from individual to individual. The first time this was done to children was by John Money at Johns Hopkins to a boy from Winnipeg named David Reimer to fix a badly botched circumcision by trying to turn him into a girl. He had a twin brother and after all the medical stuff was done to David Money forced the brothers to role play for years of “ therapy” until they finally couldn’t take it anymore and got their parents to remove them. David went back to being a boy but they both committed suicide in their thirties. It was considered to be a total travesty at the time but tragically with the help of psychiatry that travesty became a sort of template. Unfortunately many of today’s parents are easily panicked and impatient to immediately fix a perceived problem as soon as it arises. Watchful waiting which used to be considered best practice is now considered controversial at best by activists in the movement. It has been replaced by so-called affirmative care which is all about getting the job done quickly. We will be reaping the bitter fruits of this movement for a long time.
It’s all about government tax dollars and how hospitals can rake it in. Stop the tax subsidies and it will end overnight because it’s not a real medical issue.
I think that there’s much to what you say. Before the government and insurance companies got involved the procedures were exceedingly rare and done only to adults on their own dime. Christine Jorgensen is the fifties and Jan Morris in the seventies come to mind and there must have been a few others that never went public. The general public was very tolerant of this stuff until they got dragged into it by the activists and the government.
In many cases for girls and women the Doctors code healthy breast tissue removal it as medically necessary breast reduction surgery, it just that simple
Thanks, Max. Yes, there was slight of hand with the DSM bible.
Good article:
“Why ‘Gender Dysphoria’ is a lie” by Clinical psychologist Pamala Williams”
https://web.archive.org/web/20250120044738/https://dionneinlondon.substack.com/p/why-gender-dysphoria-is-a-lie
By the way Chris, despite the clinical psychologist's disclaimers, the American Psychological Association does recognize gender dysphoria as a "thing" but not as a mental illness. Like the American Psychiatric Association it believes in "gender affirming care" and is against what is called "conversion therapy." So the two associations are not really that far apart in their clinical practice except for the fact that the psychologists, unlike the psychiatrists, are not themselves able to order medical interventions. But basically conceptually and philosophically they are in the same club.
Thanks for the link, Chris. I just read the article and agree with much of what she says although I have a different take on the chronology of the introduction by the APA of gender dysphoria than she does. But nevermind.
She's a clinical psychologist and I think that I understand where she's coming from but personally though I think that clinical psychologists try to be more scientific in their approach to psychological problems they are similar to psychiatrists in a fundamental way which is summarized in the adage, "To a hammer everything looks like a nail." The number of clinical psychologists and every other sort of therapist has grown exponentially in the last 50 years. We have become a society of therapy junkies and that itself has done more harm than good. We no longer rely on our own resilience to get us through our occasional bad patches and I think that that has made us overly dependent and weak. Life is not and never has been an equable flow. Much of what is treated now as pathological is only the human condition.
Many of the little bumps in the road will resolve themselves given time and love and support. Did you know that in the 60s that the WHO did a study comparing how schizophrenia played out in rich countries compared to poor countries and that patients in the poor countries did dramatically better than those in rich countries. In poor countries where they could not afford the meds the illness was episodic and might only occur once and then resolve itself after some months or a couple of years. Whereas in the rich countries it never resolved itself and patients were chronically ill and taking meds for their entire lives.
So prosperity itself can be a problem and a rather big one. Ideology feeds on that and so does government largesse. Prior to the politicization of medicine or any other form of therapy comes the medicalization/clinicalization of everyday life.
"On the other hand, critics argue these policies incentivized providers by making surgeries more financially viable, potentially inflating demand. "
This is unequivocally true. Working in the health care purchasing world, once something gets covered - and this was inserted due to political pressure and financial considerations, not medical need - it will be exploited. And the care in this instance is never ending, it is almost like a subscription model in that the initial procedures guarantee a lifetime of medical expense.
Yes, they are making life time medical patients out of healthy young people for profit.
this is another technique My life long friend I'll call him Skippy, his daughter (24 years old) found a Harvard educated Doctor in Connecticut that will cut off health breast tissue and label it "breast reduction surgery" so his state of NJ employee health insurance had to pay for. He tried to get her off the insurance but can't because she is under 26. They won't take her off as they claim it illegal unless she has proof other insurance. He received a letter at his house with a notice of the surgery. She does not live with him, she lives 40 miles away in Freehold NJ.
terrible
Unless there a state law related to an insured plan he as the contracted life would have to agree to keep her on the policy. Now, you can probably only do that at open enrollment or with a qualifying event
"...mandated that nuns be forced to go along with abortion policies."
I've read some awesome mangled attempts at criticism, but this is A#1 Prime.
I assumed one might infer my meaning. Reading is hard. Sorry.
Apparently not as hard as writing.
Dude, cute. Got me. Zap. Ouch. Way yeah.
Like that? Dude?
You are correct.
That provision of Obamacare has been successfully challenged in court. I'm not sure where it is now, as it hopefully works its way up to the Supreme Court ... if necessary.
But hearing aids for people of a certain age (like me) are definitely not covered. Priorities?
Wow, they'll pay for sex changes for mentally deluded (sorry, anguished) people, but not for deafness?!
People don't need to hear, silly. But don't EVER misgender someone!
Excellent point. Moreover, some governments (British Columbia in Canada, for instance) have actively intervened to prohibit sale of low-priced hearing aid alternatives that replicate most of the functionality of devices costing several thousand dollars for a small fraction of the insanely inflated price.
Only in recent times have we in the US been able to buy high-quality hearing aids without going through an MD or other "licensed person." I know. Just did it. Even then, it's a racket.
Costco
Mine didn't come from Costco, but they're made by the same company (GN/Jabra). $2K USD. But hey - - life-changing.
how about dental. dental and gum infections in seniors cause all sorts of health problems
I was trying to explain to a couple friends that there's a spectrum of trans issues and that simply not wanting for taxpayer dollars to be used to pay for gender transition for incarcerated people is a LONG way away from treating trans folks poorly simply because of who they are.
Those particular friends told me I was nitpicky and the implication was that you were either on the bus fully or a bad person.
To me that's why we get the ridiculousness in modern discourse. It's how it's perceived as an attack on trans people broadly to simply pump the brakes on gender surgeries for minors (no distinguishing that minor age might mean a difference from adults or not impact adult rights or treatment at all). These people are constantly triggered by social media combined with their more tribal nature. They are mental followers and they have their leaders established.
That there is a spectrum of issues is clear, here's a great breakdown with polling. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48685-where-americans-stand-on-20-transgender-policy-issues
It is certainly not an attack on trans-identified people to want to get them appropriate help like that recommended by Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf“The Myth of the ‘Trans’ Child”
See also:
“The Myth of the ‘Trans’ Child”
https://x.com/Psychgirl211/status/1830280563908894828
“Why ‘Gender Dysphoria’ is a lie” by Clinical psychologist Pamala Williams”
https://web.archive.org/web/20250120044738/https://dionneinlondon.substack.com/p/why-gender-dysphoria-is-a-lie
Husband just paid $6000 for his second set of hearing aids. He's not even 65 yet. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Just take a vacation out of country and get them elsewhere.
But when you need them adjusted who’s going to do that when they aren’t made in the US. This just should never ever happen!
Next vacation. I can go to Costa Rica for less than $400 round trip. I get my medical care there and love it. For $6k you can take lots of trips.
Seriously? Hearing aids cost the same as a good used car!!
What? I’m sorry , I can’t hear you….
I resemble that remark!
Hearing loss contributes to dementia.
Sex change isn’t possible and the attempt isn’t safe.
sex change starts with dementia
More like delusion.
That said, and Matt Walsh asked this question in What Is A Woman?, should people with body integrity dysphoria be allowed to have limbs removed? Is voluntary castration any different? If not, where does that leave sex reassignment?
That's such a great question. Surgeons who perform surgery for a "...philia" condition found in the DSM ought to have their medical licenses revoked.
If you're interested in the depraved symbiosis between doctor and patient, I can recommend the 1985 Peter Greenaway film "A Zed and Two Noughts" which remains, to this day, a useful meditation on the lengths that some will go to in order to satisfy their sexual urges.
Oof, that sounds like a tough watch. Though I think I watched The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, her Lover decades ago and got some enjoyment out of it.
It's a very....particular movie. Unforgettable, in the way of seeing something so utterly deranged can be! Also, score by Michael Nyman who I seem to recall did Cook, as well as other Greenaway films. An astonishing composer.
I had made that analogy before I watched WIAW because I had read this long ago: https://www.laweekly.com/why-did-he-cut-off-that-mans-leg/
I got half way through, incredible. Truly sick people.
The extent of others' mental illness can expand one's own mind.
it was a great pice of film making. ..I am stongly pro choice but that film was great..
Totally agree. I recommend reading Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf
I do know that here in Idaho there is/was a battle over whether the State had to pay for prisoner transitions. As with all of those ridiculous battles, it takes a lot of lawsuits to figure out out. I'm not sure where we are in that right now. But I am firmly against the State paying for transitions.
In Oregon, our state government for the most part, by statute. And providers are protected for all time against malpractice claims (even though children should not have the ability to consent). How about that?!!!
Would that pass the Supreme Court challenge?
And the next step of plastic surgery for 'feminizing' facial features, etc. Costly surgeries could go on forever.
The weird thing is that if I supported breast enhancement for my daughters in their 20s, I think most of my friends would treat me like I was some shallow, horrible mother who deserved to be ostracized--even if my daughters believed deeply that was the only thing standing between them and true happiness. But the level of surgery occurring around young trans people is really mind-boggling. In that case, I have friends who would think I was a monster for failing to endorse it.
Upside down world....
Great point!!
I believe the normalization of non necessary plastic surgery led to where we are now. I spot it everywhere and no, it does not make them more attractive. Sometimes I think I am the only woman who likes her body the way it is.
Should be paid like lip implants and boob jobs. By those receiving the drugs or surgery.
States can legislate or order (governor) insurance carriers to cover or not cover GAC. Here in Oregon, laws have been passed that mandate coverage for GAC both through private insurance and through Oregon's version of Medicaid. Coverage is also provided through public funds for kids who come here without parental permission to access GAC at one of our hospitals, several of which are among the top listed in the country for amount of money brought in by trans surgeries.
One of the laws also said that detransitioners would not covered. They also tried to add protections of the doctors who follow WPATH guidelines from malpractice lawsuits. I haven't recently reviewed all the Oregon laws re: GAC, so can't confirm details.
Whoa, which law refuses coverage for detransitioning!? How is that legal? Not just equal protection and which should apply in this case, but, once they've transitioned, by their definition, they're the opposite sex, so how can you deny what is by definition gender affirming care!? (To a traumatized individual at increased risk of suicide!?)
I think that law was passed in 2015. I'll have to look it up to tell you more. The legislature can't rule out coverage, as far as I know, but if coverage isn't mandated the insurers know they can opt out, and generally will do so.
Maybe this (with reference to Oregon law, per Gemini)?
Mandated Coverage for Gender-Affirming Care: HB 2002, signed into law in 2023, prohibits health insurers from denying coverage for medically necessary gender-affirming treatments that are prescribed according to accepted standards of care. This includes services like hormone therapy, some surgeries, and other procedures, if deemed medically necessary.
Lack of Explicit Mandate for Detransition: While the law emphasizes ensuring access to gender-affirming care, it does not have a separate provision requiring insurance coverage for detransition treatments. This was a point of contention during the bill's passage, with a proposed amendment to mandate detransition coverage being rejected.
Yes, thanks for finding that reference, that is the text I was thinking of. Oregon passed a series of these trans laws that refer to ages of consent, requirement or not for parental consent, allocation of public funds for kids who can’t pay the bill, and something about blocking lawsuits against GAC docs. I couldn’t figure out how the state could protect doctors from malpractice suits. It is generally difficult to prove malpractice if the doctors were following a standard of care; maybe the impact of the law was to formalize the existing WPATH ideology as that standard.
yep I do. My life long friend I'll call him Skippy, his daughter (24 years old) found a Harvard educated Doctor in Connecticut that will cut off health breast tissue and label it "breast reduction surgery" so his state of NJ employee health insurance had to pay for. He tried to get her off the insurance but can't because she is under 26. They won't take her off as they claim it illegal unless she has proof other insurance. He received a letter at his house with a notice of the surgery. She does not live with him, she lives 40 miles away in Freehold NJ.
It is covered because of Obamacare. I am hoping that the "Big Beautiful Bill" gets rid of it. My daughter who was indoctrinated during high school and is now a young adult - gets her recent Rx for testosterone gel paid for on insurance. She's not irreversibly messed up yet so I could use some fast help - like the FDA could weigh in with the fact that "T" is a schedule 3 controlled substance which has never been approved for having a case of "gender". The kids are gaslight by teachers and administrators and the whole world against parents even when you learn about it ask them to stop. Then, the young as set up for the Frankenstein "Medicine".
As for "medical issues experienced as a result" you are s*it up a creek regarding those or if/when you have regret (as the mind matures around the mid twenties). The GAC quacks at her clinic tell her the warnings are like the warnings on an Advil bottle. And, these whack jobs with medical degrees will whack off healthy breasts if asked.
I thought it would all be over when Dr. Lisa Littman came out with her "ROGD" study and Abigail Shrier came out with her WSJ editorial and then a book, and Dr. Paul McHugh spoke Up (former chief psych at John's Hopkins).
Obama is the one who opened the door to Transmania:
"Obama made transgenderism a pet issue of his administration,"
https://www.thestandardsc.org/jennifer-bilek/billionaires-funding-transgender-movement-for-profit/
Loads of good articles on the PITT substack which is free. Here's a couple:
Trans Ideology as an Infectious Disease Jun 05, 2025
https://www.pittparents.com/p/trans-ideology-as-an-infectious-disease
Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care Aug 30, 2022
https://www.pittparents.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors?utm_source=publication-search
There aren't too many medical issues to deal with. They usually kill themselves.
It’s such a wicked and stupid thing, to disown friends over politics. Obama isn’t going to bring you chicken soup when you’re sick, and cutting someone absolutely loose over such bullshit REALLY pisses people off. Fucking Dems have been creating Trump’s fanbase one by one for a decade.
I'm 63. For nearly all of my life, friends could disagree about politics and (maybe even) religion. You just make a few jokes and move on. But for the last decade (or so) zero tolerance for anyone not on your team. I observe the intolerance is more prevalent with lefties than with righties, but no one is immune.
Progressives are ethical utilitarians: good is whatever promotes their goals; bad is whatever retards their goals.
They believe that intimidating their opponents into cooperation, or at least silence, promotes their goals. So does misrepresenting the scientific evidence.
"Progressives are ethical utilitarians ..."
It goes way beyond this. You can be completely certain that your worldview are the correct/moral/superior/awesome/on-the-right-side-of-history worldviews, but still not act like an asshole douchebag to anyone who says anything not allowed within your most bestest worldview. You can instead simply agree to disagree and move on.
Are you kidding? The left is absolutely zealously and cultish.
Well said.
Apparently just because you reviewed it! Not what you actually wrote? It makes sense because they want to silence anything that is not part of their script! And yes I agree with David, then they are not your real friends.
Friends who won't return calls because you reviewed "What is a Woman" are brainwashed and may be beyond help. It's a sad state of affairs that I can relate to as I lost friends over the COVID lockdowns, masking, and vaccines.
Matt, I too have lost friends - including 2 close friends - over these kinds of things. For me it was over not taking the covid jab.
As you mentioned in your podcast last week, you end up feeling more alone. I would love to find more like-minded people, I know they’re out there and reading your pieces and listening to your podcast.
Any of you in Boston?
Btw, Matt, you are such a hero to me.
The inability to make space and dialogue for different opinions is the sickness at the root of division. Curiosity about ~what drives people into their rabbit holes is as fascinating as the actual doctrines they surround themselves with.
Amen to that. And a demented ideology to boot.
And Costa Rica is beautiful! I have heard a lot of people are doing the same!
This insane chapter is far from over. Blue states are still protecting men who dominate women’s sports - the female Maine Governor is suing Trump over it. Most Dems can’t define what a woman is, including Justices Jackson/Sotomayor/Kagan who dissented from this ruling. Rep Sarah/Tim McBride (she/her) is the future of the party, not cis straight white men like Seth Moulton. Dr. Rachel/Dick Levine received an honorary degree from Smith College, an all-girls college.
Here is a compilation of cases where people with penises destroyed birthing persons in athletic competitions: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-save-womens-sports-riley-gaines
🟢 What They Do for Teen Girls with No Disease:
•✅ Remove healthy breasts from 13-year-olds with no cancer
•✅ Call it “gender-affirming care”
•✅ Celebrate it on social media
•✅ Fast-track surgical approval with zero hesitation
•✅ Treat any refusal as a human rights violation
•✅ Fund it, praise it, protect it
•✅ Say “this saves lives” when no disease was present
🟣 What They Did to Me, a Grown Woman After Cancer:
•❌ Left me with lopsided breasts—one full, one deflated—after mastectomy
•❌ Told me “we don’t do nipples,” then admitted they do
•❌ Refused consultation without photos, without exam, without documentation
•❌ Passed me between 3 different surgeons who all refused to help
•❌ Dismissed my request for symmetry and dignity as if it were vanity
•❌ Tried to label me “difficult” instead of answering for medical neglect
•❌ Ignored federal law (WHCRA) that guarantees reconstruction—including symmetry and nipples
•❌ Suggested I go on antidepressants instead of offering surgical care
•❌ Punished me for objecting to gender politics in a cancer clinic
•❌ Made me feel like asking for wholeness after cancer was somehow shameful
🧨 The Truth:
They won’t rebuild my real, cancer-damaged body
But they’ll cheerfully mutilate healthy girls in the name of ideology.
They say I’m not the right candidate—
But if I said I was a boy, they’d rush to cut.
⸻
If this makes you furious, you’re not alone.
Cancer survivors deserve dignity too.
That's so awful!! What is wrong with these people?!!
Nearly everything?
Like this: https://queerdoc.com/nullectomy-nullification/
which would have an insurance code for "dysphoria".
They did the same thing to me. Told me I was just being vain, and I didn't need my breasts anymore anyways even though I was majorly lopsided. Dr. treated me like I was a pain and didn't matter at all after my surgery. Felt ashamed and humiliated.
I am very sorry about all the women who receive this treatment. If you were to say that you did not identify as a man or a woman there would be a "dysphoria" insurance code and the doctors would be paid for doing a "Nullo"
https://queerdoc.com/nullectomy-nullification/
I am so sorry. We must speak up. And if we could stand together, we could change this.
Oregon specifically came out and said they were doubling down on transanity.
The eastern half of WA and OR will secede one day 😂
It's funny because 30 years ago we made fun of Idaho, now we're all........"got any room for us?"
I only know these things second hand through friends. I’m in the east.
I'm in Portland and certainly things could not be more insane here on this front.
Same
My condolences!
They can grab up a large part of central and eastern California, too.
This can be said nationwide. It's literally the cities that are batshit. Pennsylvania is this in a nutshell. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are hard blue to the tune of like 80% (even though some of that is made up), but the rest of the state goes red (70%ish)... and not because hillbilly, or religious fanaticism, but largely due to common sense.
They end up blue because the 2 cities just have substantially more population. Same in California, Oregon, and Washington. The sad part... California and New York is spreading. They leave because the policies of those states drove out their jobs, or they themselves wanted policies better suited to their wealth, and then they arrive in Texas, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and do what? Vote for the same nonsense that got them driven from their backwards run state.... Talk about insanity.
Washington is right up there with them.
I know all too well. :(
Oregon seems to double down on insanity! The Eastern half of the state wants to secede and join Idaho!
It’s over in red states. What those malleable, confused apparatchiks do in the crumbling hellscapes of NY, MN & CA is their own business. Great, go wade through shin-deep excrement and needles to go get your dick cut off. Go crazy. Pun intended.
Remember back in the day that gay marriage was the paramount goal? Many said, if we give in on this, look out. Here we are. The next goal will be the acceptance of grooming children. Actually, the looney left has made strides in grooming children. Parades, story hour, etc… what’s next?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VEmaaFG5BHo
The slippery slope, normally a logical fallacy, can actually be a thing.
Idk, letting Muslims rape them like in Western Europe? The only good thing about what’s happening in Europe is that it gives us a clear cut end goal for the dystopian woke left. That means we have a clear idea of what the crazy ass milestones are so that we can hopefully avoid them. If word salad DEI wine mom had won the election, we’d have already crossed at least another milestone in that direction.
The Woke left are just tools. They are the highly educated, easily lead morons that carry out the plans of the true power players. Ultimately the masters of us want war, and they want us to cull ourselves a bit, so that they are in less danger when the actual real crises arrives, and that crises is just around the corner... As soon as Magnetic North crosses into Siberia (less than 5 years from now) all hell will go off!!
The ultimate goal honestly is "minor attracted persons." This is what all this is ultimately leading to. They are using LBGTQ+ as a means to an end. Ultimately our masters want the ability to normalize Epstein.
Spot on…
I disagree. No individual has the right to permanently mutilate, and disfigure minors with or without the consent of said minors, particularly parents.
Any child who is being forced consider permanent physical disfigurement to "solve" emotional/psychological needs to be presented with a broader set of options. Solutions for any psychological problem which include permanent physical disfigurement, especially for minors, are definitionally unhealthy and certain to cause short-term and long-term physical, and/or, mental harm.
Which is why there's very little discussion of the current legal changes. No sane person could object.
Dems have nothing else to run on, see Padilla, so we have Warren standing up for "gender-care" coz she's bent over for every other special interest already - specially big pharma.
You can disagree all you want. It’s up to the states and their legislatures individually. Look, I’m with you. I lost a daughter to this crazy shit. But technically speaking, in the states that allow it, they will have that LEGAL right.
It’s actually more important to look at it and clearly state it for exactly what it is. It is now and will be in at least 5 US states completely legal to mutilate and sterilize children. It’s happening somewhere in this country right now as I type this.
You have my complete support and I agree absolutely about clarity in terms of language.
I have friends and family who are going through the same loss and similar conflicts as you. My own approach on a personal level (with adults) is support their right to choose, in the hope I'll remain a credible reference should/when loved ones start rethinking their options. I am direct, however, about, long term consequences of our actions.
With respect, you strike me as someone who is 100 percent ready, willing, and able to love and support without judgment. That's about all we can do.
And don't forget Wisconsin, where the governor did this: "Gov. Tony Evers is defending a decision to reintroduce an effort to add gender-neutral language in state law, including changing the word "mother" to "inseminated person." https://www.cbs58.com/news/evers-defends-budget-proposal-changing-mother-to-inseminated-person
It’s up to the citizens of that state to accept or reject those policy prescriptions. Expecting brainwashed politicians to come to their senses is like expecting the sun not to rise.
True, but in this case, it was not presented to voters in Wisconsin. This was put into the governor's budget proposal. He claims that it refers to IVF, but only women have a uterus, so this change was not needed.
Understood. How many voters do you think know that and will remember it and take it into account in the next election?
When did Minnesota become a crumbling hellscape? That will be news to the people who live there.
Polled them all, have you?
Assumed you had, in order to explain the “crumbling hellscape.”
Perhaps you're correct. Just because a city or two saw damage from riots that amounted to 1500 properties severely damaged, with costs estimated upwards of half a billion dollars doesn't mean the whole state is fucked, amirite? Just where most of the people live. That is to say nothing of the crazy ass policies of the dipshit running the state. But I'm glad the people of the state are on board with all of this. I rescind my statement. This place looks awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNB4VLu6IaI&t=45s
Your observations are right on, but I wonder how the people we never hear from--those who live in the beautiful Minnesota hinterlands, like Bemidji, Moorhead, Bird Island, and elsewhere in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, feel about what's going on in Minneapolis. For that matter, I never hear of St. Paul in the news about the horrors of Blue Minnesota.
The last time I was in Fergus Falls and Vergas, I noticed a massive uptick in the Hispanic population who came to work at the Norbest plant carving up turkeys. I wonder if ICE has made it up there yet. Seems like an organization with that acronym would be right at home there.
P.S.
Looking at the video, I wonder what these tent dwellers do in the winter. A bit of dialog from the clip:
"I don't do heroin, I don't do crack."
"What do you do?"
"Fentanyl and meth."
Oh my gosh!! They have homeless people in Minnesota? Well, it must be a shithole then. Lucky no other cities have homeless people.
JFC: Have you not watched what goes on in that state and who they elect (waltz, klobuchar, ilhan, e.g.)? JFC...
On November 9, 2016, once the crying huddle calmed down, a 20-something who checks all the boxes stood on her desk and gave a speech in which she repeatedly said “Double down!” This was in my workplace at the time.
“Double down!” Has been the Left’s only response to being checked by sanity, and that will continue to be the case so long as they live.
I hope they keep doubling down. It’s been working to get conservatives into office. Not that it is always a good thing, but I’ll take that over the blue haired crazies.
Exactly- they are insane!
Colorado criminalized "deadnaming" and "misgendering" in certain circumstances. Can't even imagine how that's going to hold up in a constitutional fight.
It’s not. The point is to fake it til they make it- or until these fucking kooks get told by SCOTUS to knock it the fuck off.
The phrase 'birthing persons' is exclusive and problematic. Front holes is the correct term, bigot.
I thought it was "bonus hole"?
Every hole is a bonus hole if you like it enough.
It's not a "hole"- it's a "space capacity". Learned that from my Health Teacher in high school, circa 1978. He was also my baseball coach.
LOL
Thanks for writing and sharing this article! Additionally, thank you for including the actual male first names when referring to both McBride and Levine in your response. I'm sure Matt believes he's being kind by referring to McBride as "she", but I agree with Kara Dansky and others that we need to stop doing that. It's an important way to end this nightmare.
I think if we refuse to refer to transgender people as Matt did with McBride, it's as bad as the extremes from the other end of the spectrum.
How about we agree to treat all people, including transgender people, with the same amount of respect.
That doesn't mean you have to support biological boys in girls' sports or surgeries for minors. People can point to definite harm from those perspectives. Can't really see how we're harmed by referring to McBride as she.
And please explain more on "end this nightmare." What is the nightmare, the boys in girls' sports or the mere fact that transgender people exist? Exactly how should this nightmare be ended?
Preferred pronouns are rohypnol: https://archive.ph/r9FwT They're also an attempt to rewire our evolutionary brains to accept men as women and women as men, which is something we should never do. We should NEVER, EVER press impressionable children to use them either. Human pair bonding, mating and child rearing is already crippled by assorted modern maladaptions. Willfully altering our evolutionary sex detection capabilities is nuts. Dangerous. Nihilistic.
I hope Lawyers Guns & Money reads the article you shared. I read it a while ago and reading it again just now, I find it mind-boggling that so many people have forgotten about the importance of natural protective instincts! Not only should we not force children to use preferred pronouns, but we shouldn't force women to use them for the same reason. As a female, paying attention to my gut instincts around males has saved me numerous times!
Great article.
Yeah, all those gay people adopting and all! What's next?
I have no idea what you're responding to, but gender ideology is not at all related to same sex attraction. Unfortunately, ever since all the letters after LGB were added to LGB, people have mistakenly believed that this is a new civil rights issue, like marriage equality was for lesbians and gay men, but it isn't. I've met lesbians who can't even get together with other lesbians or go on lesbian dating apps without being harassed by transwomen because they refuse to date them! I have a male heterosexual friend who has run into the same problem on heterosexual dating apps because he doesn't want to date transwomen! There are a lot of people within the gay community who are afraid to speak up, but they want to separate from the trans community altogether.
"Human pair bonding, mating and child rearing is already crippled by assorted modern maladaptions."
That's what I was responding to.
Thank you for responding to my comment. Here are a few reasons why I refer to gender ideology as a nightmare. In the 1990s, when the husband of a friend of mine "transitioned", I, like you, believed that society is not harmed by referring to men like McBride as "she". A lot has changed in laws and policies since then. Please see https://hecheated.org/Myths.html - you will see that to date, men have won over 8,914 "women's" athletic events. Do you think that's fair? How can you change the policies that have allowed this to happen if you use their preferred pronouns? After all they all insist "transwomen are women". By using their preferred pronouns, aren't you telling them you see them as the opposite sex than the sex they are? Organizations like the LGB Alliance, Women's Declaration International, and Sex Matters have been created in response to what they see as a homophobic and misogynistic ideology. Fact: 99.9% of violent crimes are committed by males. While not all males are violent or criminals, we created separate spaces to protect women and girls from the males who are. I hope you read the article nedweenie shared, Pronouns Are Rohypnol. It's very important to teach children, especially girls, how to listen to their natural protective instincts.
I don't think it's fair in girls' sports, as I've said for some time. Very easy to write the rules.
My point is that we can have all those discussions civilly, make decisions on policy, and still not go out of our way to denigrate people.
No one is denigrating trans identifying people. People are free to dress however they want to dress. What people should not be allowed to do is take away the rights of women and children, but that is what we're dealing with. What you don't seem to understand is that they don't want a separate sports category or any other separate category in any part of society. Whenever a separate category has been set up, they reject it. When gender neutral bathrooms are added in buildings with multi-stall men's and women's bathrooms, they boycott them and insist on using women's. They insist "transwomen are women". There is no negotiating with them.
I think a comment about Lia Thomas "swinging his shlong" around the locker room qualifies as denigrating.
Homeschool until it's possible to move your family away from looney-tune school systems. Many/most adolescents are troubled one way or another and some jackass school counselor pitching gender-change advice is less than helpful.
There are also private schools (both religious and secular) that don't allow this nonsense.
Catholic high school in Chicago fully on board
Yeah, not surprising since they view gender transition as a form of conversion therapy for homosexuality.
No. I'm not playing that game.
Me: How about we all respect each other?
You: No. I'm not playing that game.
I think I'd characterize that remark as telling.
What's telling is that you can reduce this to nothing more than respect. Lol. That's telling. That you are so incurious and naive.
Amazing isn’t it?
And none of them see a problem with men feeling entitled to womanhood.
Thank god.
Soon I will no longer will have to explain to my African and Asian friends that some progressives in the West think men can get pregnant.
Idiocracy 2025 be gone!
I force myself to watch "Idiocracy" every year or two. I hate the movie more and more as it becomes more and more prophetic.
Yes but it is Genius.
With electrolytes.
It's what plants crave...
Can't wait till Starbucks starts selling handys!
Indeed. Reminds me of a Democrat, either a particularly clueless one or one with a brave predilection for reductio ad absurdum, who demanded abortion rights for transwomen ... 🤯🙄
Tampons in boys bathrooms?????
🙂 "barking mad" doesn't begin to describe "the state of the union".
You might be "amused", more likely horrified, by similar tales "from the dark side":
"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
A noteworthy "usual suspect":
Transwoman India Willoughby: "The only difference between trans women and most cis women is having babies and periods. That’s it. In all other ways, we biologically and factually change sex."
https://x.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1558101840755056646
wait.....you mean they can't!!??!! Whoa now that the fog is lifting from my eyes I clearly have some catching up to do!
I always wondered why, when this first started, the dads and grandpas and boyfriends of these girls/women whose locker rooms and athletic careers were invaded didn’t obliterate the movement with active protest. Instead it was let to grow like cancer and here we are. It’s going down, after lots and lots of damage.
I think you missed the part where the entire country turned against men and said “you don’t get a voice”.
Agreed. In my defense, I can’t keep track of the order in which the various oppressions took place.
But you know, this conclusion points to the fact that the Right needs to get better at organizing, informing and protesting lawfully. I realize the other side is astroturfing all the time, but we need to counter more effectively.
It is a cliche but most conservative/ classical liberals are too busy with jobs and life to match the protesting the ( paid) left do on a regular basis.
Exactly. Who can we pay to do it for us?
Oh, first time? /s
Check out "Crowds on Demand"
It's the former 60s rads now making grift on their own people. Seriously, these groups have all morphed into 501(c)s and are available to the right (er, left) group for a price.
These folks are part of the recent 'No Kings' bullshit.
People experiencing houselessness
Maybe George Soro's son will switch sides!! ( jk, that is never happening).
It has never been the case that the entire country turned against men. The illusion of consensus on leftist beliefs and practices has been made possible by their absolute control of the media, the schools, their state governments, and their corporations. Also, most of the people who appear to agree with the leftists are just cowardly conformists who will say anything that gets them approval. That last part is the most disgusting to me; I didn't realize that so many people are so submissive and so lacking in honesty and integrity.
I realized this during the pandemic. So many people I knew admitted that they found most Covid regulations ridiculous, yet they never objected to them.
Yes, they were louder and had control of the punitive tools.
The cowardly conformists love to virtue signal, that’s their main goal.
“Roll up your sleeve, we have a dose of Official Narrative you’ll need to take if you want a job. Or to fly on an airplane.” Some of us said “Oh HELL NO!” while others just rolled up...
Yes, thank you, you have a good point. I don't think that people should be expected to martyr themselves for the sake of taking a public stand. My comment pertained more to people who have little to lose other than a socially approved image, but you are right, many if not most employed people have a lot more to lose than that.
That is exactly the case. Well said.
Yes, you have to bring down the men of any given society before you can go for the women and children. Well known tactic.
Right you are!
It wasn't the entire country. It was the HR departments. We reached the point where losing your job for things you said away from the office was a very real threat--not just for public figures, but for regular people too.
The jaw-jabbering professions--academics, journalists, political activists and so on--are very much against men, but that's nothing new.
The threat of losing your livelihood if you stepped out of line, with "stepping out of line" being defined by those same jaw-jabbering professions... that is what truly enabled the rapid spread of insanity.
In my younger days, girls and women were told to shut up but I didn't shut up and haven't in my 64 years. Grow some.
Shut up
Hopefully karmic justice will emerge.
Several fathers attended school board meetings, only to get kicked out and/or put on a Fed list.
Including at least one case where a father was upset because his daughter was RAPED by a trans "girl" in a public school bathroom. The school board swept it under the rug and with assistance from Biden's DOJ labeled the man a potential terrorist.
I can't get my head around it. I'm not a religious person, but the closest I can get to a rational explanation is the whole lot of them are possessed by demons.
Don't forget that same problematic student was shuffled to another school in the district and subsequently assaulted another student. Ultimately convicted but not placed on the registry. Good old Loudoun County Virginia.
Thank God all that is over now and Garland’s DOJ will be investigated.
Aaaaannnd...nothing will happen. ( I hope you are right and I am wrong).
Me too!!!
I didn't and don't understand why the women competing didn't walk (or swim) away from the unfair contest. I'm happy that more and more are. What pathetic bullies people like Lia Thomas are.
It’s like those psychology experiments where people think they are in a room to take a test, but everyone else is in on the experiment, and when fire breaks out and no one gets up to leave, lots of people will try to finish their test even though the sensible thing to do is to stop and get out. I think the same thing goes on in sports: They have to finish the meet, all of their teammates are still competing, and their coaches and the school administration are completely onboard. Plus, they’ve had years of public education and media messaging about gender to soften them up.
Also, if they are there on a scholarship for that sport, they might lose their school funding if they walk away.
Not to mention all the hard work they put into their passion. Tough to throw that all away to make a principled stand that you know won't do any good, and may actually do you harm.
Yeah, you're right. It wasn't until she FINISHED SCHOOL that Riley Gaines started to speak out.
Not true. She spoke out in the immediate aftermath. It was just that she was a senior and graduated soon after. But she could speak out because she was conservative attending U of Kentucky. The wokes had nothing on her. She didn't run in their circles.
I attended one of Riley Gaines's talk. She said the schools threatened the female students telling them they'd never get a job or be hired by any company if they dare to say anything. At the time, so many corporations were bowing to the trans cult, that might've been true too.
Yeah. Lea Thomas swinging his schlong around the locker room.
Yeah, this is not helpful either.
Language like "pathetic bullies" is no more productive than the nonsense with "Gender affirming." The athlete wants to compete. If you want to look for someone to blame (the American pastime), blame the governing bodies of the sports.
Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
I stand by what I wrote.
Totally Lia’s fault? No sports organization has any responsibility?
Yeah, just keep on channeling that hate in the wrong directions. Maybe it’ll keep you warm at night.
Whether or not the colleges or sports organizations bear any culpability (and I'd say they do), it doesn't change the fact that Thomas made the decision to pretend to be female to compete and win against women.
Speaking about hate– your responses are gratuitously vituperous.
Will Thomas could have changed into his swimsuit in a bathroom stall, but instead exposed his intact genitals to his female competitors who were all nude and unwarned about his locker room access. Yes, it is his fault he did that. He was ranked lower than 400th among male swimmers the prior year. It was his choice to compete against women. Don't pretend to think the NCAA forced those choices upon him. Trans athletes are activists who intentionally compete to influence policy of the governing bodies, and who threaten discrimination lawsuits if they're not appeased.
Same here. Nip it in the bud. I think the day my jaw dropped was when the NBA cancelled an All-Star game in NC because the state's citizens voted for biological restroom usage. I couldn't believe the NBA would have any stance, much less one to mollycoddle a group made fun of every 2.6 seconds in the league's locker rooms.
I’ll bet if you dig, the league or the owners are relying on financing by Blackrock and State Street. If so, they are required to incorporate ESG into their governance.
Just yesterday, the LA Dodgers proudly announced that they were blocking ICE agents from entering Dodger Stadium, and an LA Dodger player announced his “support” for the persecuted illegal aliens (oops, “friends and neighbours”).
And ICE announced they weren’t even there. It was a few DHS cars. I guess Dodgers don’t know the difference
...or, if they do, they consider the "social credit" gain to outweigh any damage to their (ahem) "reputation" for intellectual integrity.
The dodgers organization can go piss up a rope.
Because
A) A lot of people didn't know what was going on.
B) Those who spoke out, especially at the beginning were threatened. Many people lost jobs and recieved threats for speaking out at the time.
A lot of people wonder where the women were at or where the men were at that opposed this stuff. Ask Gallus Mag, who lost a blog and whose life was threatened. Ask Graham Linehan who lost his career and still can't work normally, ask anybody who got kicked off twitter for saying 'men can't be women'. They removed all dissenting voices from media by 2017 or so. It's taken this long to catch back up.
True. Meghan Murphy was another one burnt at stake for "misgendering" an maniac demanding immigrant women working at nail salons to wax his balls
Yep, below I talk a bit about how this whole thing came to my attention because of the free speech issues surrounding the Jonathan Yaniv/Jessica Simpson (yeah, that's his 'girlname') situation. Meghan Murphy was another who got blacklisted early on in the game. Mumsnet sandboxed discussion of gender into a special member's only ghetto on their site because of advertiser pressure, Reddit nuked the Radical Feminism board and all the links and source material posted there while elevating blatantly pedo trans supermods to power. Anything posted on Twitter and other social media questioning trans was removed and the offending authors kicked off the sites. There was a NO-TERF list that was circulated by trans activists to organize the removal of gender critical people from discussion boards and public life. To discuss this subject or hear anything about any of this pre-2020 or so, one had to be on specialty websites dedicated to the topic, which most people were not likely to find unless they searched for it.
This was a major censorship campaign that went down in plain sight.
They froze one of her bank accounts as well.
Seriously. It's been a while since I've been in HS, but if some perv was trying to get into the locker room with my gf, he would not have had a good time.
Exactly, and that’s what these people are.
"these people" Really? Do you speak that way about a group of black people?
I speak however I want to. In this case I am referring to a group of people who behave in a way that is offensive to me. So you go take your scolding elsewhere.
I'm not scolding. I'm just pointing out that you're a hateful fucking bigot.
And you are a foul-mouthed ignoramus. Have a nice day, lefty loser.
Right but would you have stopped him for OTHER women that weren't your gf? Probably not. I can't even tell you how many times in my life I've stood up against a dude clearly being an abusive shit to a woman IN PUBLIC surrounded by men that do nothing.
Daniel Penny has entered the chat.
Dude, that is laugh-out-loud. Awesome.
There are a few really good friends that I'd also cross that line for but your point is well taken.
But don't these girls have such men in their lives?
You should probably assume the opposite. I didn't. My dad loved us and provided for the us as best as he could but he had an extremely abusive childhood so his capacity or willingness to engage in violence was very really beat out of him as a child and I learned to defend myself. I don't have a pack of close older brothers, or uncles, or male cousins. My boyfriend NOW would try to protect me but frankly I have more experience fighting than him so I'd probably be better at it. I've stepped into more than one altercation where a man was being physically violent to a woman much smaller than him and I was the only one to do anything. I've had a gun pulled on me for interfering. I'm on a few police reports as a witness while many people just quietly went home because they don't want to get involved.
Another thing to consider is people want to talk about fatherlessness in households but it is mostly by men's choice, even keeping in mind who initiates divorce. In households with children the most frequent parent is the mother, 4:1. Almost no fathers fight for primary custody in divorces, less than half fight for even 50/50, and even judges who are mostly male think the kids should go with the mother so the most common arrangement becomes things like every other weekend dad with the mother doing all the school and activity related stuff. Child support is owed to the tune of billions despite the average payment being less than $300/mo but you see men all over be like "bitch won't let me see my kids." Men often remarry quickly after divorce and also often forget their first families. A lot of children are growing up without a meaningful adult male presence in their lives let alone their house.
Men don't stick up for strangers very often and men are more likely to be physically abusive in relationships than women. This is how the feminist movement evolved and was able to take hold. Women couldn't legally be protected from abusive relatives without another man willing to speak for her and there was always a shortage of those men. The church, the law, your family, they all told you to go back to your abuser to save face. If historically that's how abuse against women was handled for millennia, why should it be assumed that women now have more men willing to protect them? It's never been true, it was luck if you never came face to face with it.
The generation that got indoctrinated into this can't understand your mindset. They've been brainwashed into believing that dude is a "girl".
Expecting "dads and grandpas" to intervene against the woke left at the cost of their jobs etc. is beyond silly at this point. The supposedly-equal women who needed to stand up and who might have survived the resulting lib shriek-fest failed...as usual.
I think the sea change in attitudes is directly attributed to women athletes (and JK Rowling and allies) stood up and refuse to back down.
God be praised for that. The support from the silent majority was always there but needed to be articulated by at least a few.
Those women who did stand up have now been labeled "TERFS". You can't win for losing
When Lia Thomas happened, I came out public as a TERF. At that point, I decided I gave no fuck anymore.
I don't accept any labels that are invented by trans activists, "TERF" being one of them. The only thing I like about that label is that in coining and using it, activists are recognizing that feminists have for decades led the battle against men barging into women's spaces and trampling on women's rights.
The people who were first to oppose men in women's spaces were and are feminists.
Feminists opened the door. In the 1970s 2nd wave feminists were the ones gate crashing men's spaces right and left while crowing that sex didn't matter and that "gender" must be abolished for women's liberation. We've just come full circle on all that nonsense. Sauce goose/sauce gander.
During the 1960's most spaces that were considered "men's" were spaces that everyone should be able to enter. These included higher education generally, and specific schools in particular, as well as most careers, corporate boardrooms, recreational facilities and clubs that served as boardrooms, etc. Women in the generation above me did not have access to full participation in public life, with only a few exceptions. Women have just as much right as do men to choose from all available options in life, and to succeed or fail in their efforts, without being limited by discrimination. Without the feminist movement, we would not be able to exercise that right today.
All that could have been done with a scalpel instead of a machete. Or by simply being patient. Social, political and most importantly economic changes were already well under way. The separate gendered spheres of existence were losing their boundaries organically. But axe grinding and short sighted feminists wanted absolutely everything men had in the name of "equality" without considering the immutable and innate differences between the sexes and the eventual unintended consequences that would happen to their own sex class. (Primarily the loss of safeguards and privileges, ahem. And they were warned about those.) Those consequences took a while, but they're here now.
The women who stood against this were silenced a decade ago. See: Gallus Mag, etc.
Maybe so, but they could have done SOMETHING (along with the athletes). The silence was deafening. At least now the fear of reprisal is gone.
They did something. Many TERF/women’s organizations have been fighting this battle for a long time. They wrote briefs in Skirmetti, for example.
We have to repeatedly remind ourselves that the leftists have exerted (and still do) tight control over what is widely known and/or widely accepted. Many brilliant analysts and their analyses were reduced to the status of "sound in the desert that wasn't heard," and sometimes faced career destruction to boot.
The fight continues. The "mainstream" media are slowly giving way to the "fact checkers" and "misinformation analysts," people like Kate Starbird at the U of Washington ("former professional basketball player") who work tirelessly to (a) promote themselves via "networking" and (b) censor sensible opinions. They aren't surrendering, they're regrouping. We need to constantly expose them and ridicule them.
For the same reason that no one in England rose up in rage when they learned that thousands of their girls had been raped by foreigners while the authorities brushed it all under the rug.
You have to reverse cause and effect: these ideological impositions only occur AFTER a populace has been tenderized by guilt and shame and marketing campaigns based on moral blackmail (Do you want this child to achieve their True Self™ or are you an evil bigot who wants them dead!?!)
The West had already been neutered by generations of propaganda about the guilt and shame we should feel about our colonial ancestors and about what Good Person morality demands—approving of other people's lifestyle demands in the name of tolerance and progress and always putting the Marginalized first in all endeavors.
In other words, the high ground was already cleared and conquered before the ideological campaign marched in, sans opposition.
Sigh. You’re right, of course. The psy-op worked.
When someone (or a group of someones) states explicitly that they want to conduct a Long March through all your institutions to capture, control and reconfigure them to their precise ideological specifications, maybe you should listen.
The New Left conquered academia then used that as a beachhead to conquer the rest of our cultural and educational institutions—liberals couldn't fight back bc they're helpless against movements from the Left, and conservatives didn't fight back bc they scoffed at anything that couldnt be monetized or militarized.
Too late now....Sigh!
When I asked my wife how she felt about this, she looked at me like I was a weird reactionary and said that she didn't think it was a big deal. I was asking her for permission to do a beat down on one of these pervs.
Instead, I was given a shoulder shrug. If most women are okay with dudes hanging out in the women's locker room, then who am I to argue? Some of the biggest advocates for this insanity are women.
You wife probably hasn't encountered one of them in the wild yet. She'll have a rude awakening if she ever run into one of those AGPs in the women's locker rooms.
Maybe so. If she ever does, she'll tell me about it. She's a good democrat though. Think she just doesn't want to rock the boat.
I'll bet she'd think differently if her daughter was accosted in a restroom or locker room. Sometimes people need to be directly impacted before they'll take a stance on any given issue.
Sounds reasonable. But she still votes for the people who believe that mutilating kids with drugs and surgery is a net good for society. I also think that allowing men to invade women's spaces is a horror show. I would much rather bag and tag those guys. No need for police.
But it would be a worthless effort until the majority of women get on board. Somehow, we went from a society where girls could do anything to being one where girls should become boys if they don't like pink dresses and dolls. Sounds like regressive horseshit to me.
I still can't believe that transing kids and turning them into lifelong medical patients with a huge number of debilitating side effects including death has become central to the DNC platform and nearly every major institution in our nation. Most are autistic or gay. But here we are and the polling among women doesn't look good for the kiddos or for women's sex segregated spaces. Like holy shit. That is beyond sad.
No one needs to convince me or any other men I know. Nothing worse than a weak sex predator. Women can change that. They may be the only ones who can. I don't get it but most don't want to. They want more of it. I'll fight like hell for the kids but women are fully capable of changing course on the rest. They just don't want to for some reason. Not for me to judge. Just the facts.
Also worth noting that my daughter has been infected with this mania. She told us that she was non-binary because she didn't like her developing breasts during puberty. And now she thinks she is a trans man. Her mother and I were completely taken off guard about all of this. We have kept her off of the drugs and surgery. We don't know what to do about her. Assume she picked up most of it in school but we aren't sure.
Always told her she could be anything she wanted to. Just didn't expect her to decide that she was a man at the onset of puberty. I'm beyond pissed off about it. They have stolen years from her. Completely derailed her natural development. But in short, I don't even know which locker room she would want to be in. Probably the women's if she had to. Everything is so stupid and now we have to try to clean up this mess. It isn't easy.
I'm trying to save a girl from regressive stereotypes and a lifetime of regret. But in the meantime, women are totally okay with all this bullshit. My wife isn't okay with this but she still votes for the assholes that have enabled all of it. You fucking tell me how that works because I don't know. I won't even pretend to know. I want to burn down everything. It's malicious, evil and illiberal. I think about this every day. I'm broken. I just want women to wake up.
Because your wife can't consent for other women. I'm sure she'd change her mind as soon as she's actually faced with an erection in her gym locker room.
My wife raced bicycles and was always pissed whenever she had to race against a man. One of her teammates was indifferent to it until she had a man in her field. Then she understood.
She would think it is funny particularly if he has a little dick. That might be one way to handle this. Some men get off on women pointing out how little their dick is but most would be horrified. Little dick taunting could go a long way.
...A long way to getting her punched in the face?
Did you know exhibitionism is strongly correlated with escalation to sexual assault and murder? Or that cross dressing in criminals also correlates with sex crimes against women and children? Either your wife has lived such a sheltered life that it's never even occurred to her that a man will hurt her or you're drastically misunderstanding how women react to perceived threats of men who cross sexual boundaries.
It's funny that people in this thread can't understand why more men don't do anything and here's a dude saying that his wife laughing at the unhinged naked man in her changing room is a solid, safe option. This here folks, this is why. Men largely think this is funny because Buffalo Bill is a joke to them but a threat to us.
I was going for levity but this is a perfect response. You're right. I am a terrible ally. But that is because I'm not an ally. I'm just wildly sympathetic. You could have used that to persuade me but you decided to go with a lecture. That is popular with most guys but I remain unconvinced because I don't give a fuck about your pieties.
"Ally"
lol dude you made a joke out of a crazy man flashing YOUR OWN WIFE in a confined area where she would be likely in a state of undress. Someone sexually harassing YOUR OWN WIFE is the butt of the joke YOU MADE. Who exactly are you sympathetic to if it's not even a woman you're definitely supposed to personally care about?
And damn, I can't even imagine spitefully saying you don't give a fuck about anyone else who might have to deal with this, apparently including your own wife, cuz you have one experience with one stranger on the internet. That's mental.
"Pieties" - cool story bro.
Maybe so, but ai wasn’t one of them. Here’s why: I was a mom who supported my girls’ sports. While neither was an olympic or title hopeful, it still was years of work and time to get them here and there to practice and games. Had they contended for and lost titles to males after all those years I would have been hopping mad because they were cheated after all their (and my) work. Then, there’s the safety aspect. One daughter played soccer in college her first year. The next year the coach didn’t put her on the team because she was a lot smaller than the other players and she was at risk of injury. That was smart on the part of that coach. I have seen U15 girls on the bigger taller side tackle, and it’s pretty rough.At a certain age they seem to, even as girls, relish that physical contact. So, when I think of boys/men throwing and tackling in certain sports against women/girls, it’s a bad idea.
I agree with you but the majority of women are largely okay with this. I sleep with one of them and we have a daughter!
These are women's spaces. What should men do? Seriously. Protest? I would vote against it but there are no men's advocacy groups. There is no organizing nexus for men.
Me going to the XX XY activist meeting when I should be cleaning out the gutters would be hilarious because it would be filled with women and my wife would figure that out really quickly. It would be funny though.
Many people blame feminism for the trans movement, definitely a lot of stupid women in the recent wave with suicidal empathy, but feminism also only exists because so many women lacked basic legal protections as humans precisely because good men with the legal rights wouldn't stand up for them. Women are also leading the fight against this and have been for decades, the old school feminists, actual lesbians with functioning brains, etc.
Men don't tend to fight for women who "belong" to other men. By that I mean good men tend to care about about THEIR sisters/daughters/mothers etc. but unless/until it affects the women they personally care about they don't do anything. There's a big "not my business" man code. If a woman doesn't have brothers or a father willing to stand up for her against another man she's in a very dangerous position even in the modern west. Very unfortunately a lot of men just don't care at all even if it does affect "their" women.
After being told "Don't patronize me, I can handle this myself!" for a few generations, protecting women isn't in the male playbook as much as it was in the past. Interference and replacement by the State and the Market has increased too.
What's the historical excuse for it before then? Again, men protect "their" women which was mostly exclusive to blood relations if you were in a good culture and not even then in bad cultures (sending widows to ashrams or burning them alive, intentionally selling women children as sex slaves to use and kill). It's not about "don't patronize me" from modern feminism it's far older than that.
There has to be a higher threshold for morality that extends to unrelated people. We're animals but we're not thoughtless. If you know something is wrong and an ADULT wants to SELF harm and tells you to fuck off, yes, there's a limit to help you can give because short of getting an adult committed against their will you can't do anything. Get them at least self harming in way that doesn't interfere with the rest of society. But we're talking kids here. If you see something wrong then it's every adult's responsibility to step in. The kids aren't saying "don't patronize me" they're just kids. And here it's fathers often not doing any advocacy for their own daughters. Would you spite your own daughter because she said something you don't like, or worse because some other women you don't know somewhere else said it?
Doing a good thing shouldn't require gratitude. People can be ungrateful shits but you do the right thing because it's the right thing not because someone else will thank you. There are so many people that can't even say they spoke out while all of this has been happening. Not on petitions, letters to reps, donations to orgs who can do legal fighting, none of it. It's not the excuse people think it is to be told off and decide that you do the wrong thing or let the wrong thing happen. Especially in this case where the wrong thing is happening to a lot of children.
Yes. My hope was that the men “belonging” to these women would advocate.
There are a lot of women in my life who are concerned about this and a lot of men collectively in all our lives that still don't understand what the big deal is. Probably because a man in a dress isn't a physical threat to them, the men in dresses tend to go away when they see a man with a woman (like most predators), so the consideration that a woman or child alone is a different level of vulnerability doesn't cross their mind. Lack of imagination I guess.
exactly. come near my grardchildren and lets work it out
Good on yer. The injustice of it, alone—bigger stronger males injuring females in the sports and taking away their records and titles!! before you get to the absurdity/pervertedness of insisting that a man/boy exposing his genitalia to women/girls is the new normal…but I guess when you favor allowing surgeons to mutilate children by building opposite sex genitals out of their colon, penis, arm anything goes!!! I pray we can vanquish this evil sickness.
How about just requiring that the biological male wanting to compete with females in sports (or be sent to a women's prison) get a full surgical sex change first, and make it easy for him/her to do so? If he's faking, that should put an end to it. If really transgendered, that, and female hormones, should reduce the advantage.
Or they could just have a division for transgender, without surgery.
A division for transgender, with surgery and hormones, would make great sense, if there were enough of them. If they are without surgery and hormones, they might as well just play on the team of their own sex.
Well, the trouble is that the motive isn’t pure. It’s not about competition, it’s about usurping and disrupting for the sake of attention and division.
There are studies that show that unless the physical transition occurred PRIOR to puberty, trans girls/women still have a physical advantage over females, even after surgery and hormones.
Yes, definitely, though the advantage will be less. More importantly, requiring a surgical sex change before moving into that space would cut the nonsense of biological males pretending to be transgendered in order to gain an advantage.
Agreed, but I am against people making money off of those surgeries. Consenting adults can do what they want with their bodies. But making money (and a lot of it) performing this butchery that leads only to misery is an evil unto itself.
It would. However, it would also mean mutilating minors who are unable to give actual informed consent.
Yes, manifestly, men have greater strength and more fast-twitch muscle.
I'm not trans but I might still be interested in a new penis fashioned from an arm!
It’s an unspeakable thing to joke about.
that's the best kind of thing to joke about
Oh, all right. I’ll play along. An extra penis just for show? Because it wouldn’t be functional.
Most of the moms and grandmas also failed to protect children. Watching the perverted drag shows, it appears most of the adults towing along tiny children are moms and grandmas.
McBride is a man, not a “she.” Boys are still showering in girls’ locker rooms and cheating in girls’ sports. Males are still being placed in women’s prisons. Male and female are reproductive states. Nothing nuanced about it. Born with a penis, born with a Y, you’re a guy. Stay out of female-only spaces.
McBride was born a “privileged, very rich white male” until he became a “victim” in college.
How a doctor can mutilate a child’s body - a child who can not legally sign off on informed consent - is beyond my understanding. It’s child abuse and should go down history’s gutter the same way the lobotomy did.
100%. And electro shock therapy.
Thank you! Matt should drop the pronoun ritual. It's offensive to make the world play along with someone else's delusions and fantasies.
McBride is a man. Referring to McBride as "she" is an inaccurate portrayal of reality. Otherwise known as a lie. I do not consent to the perversion of language in the effort to perpetuate a lie. It is that simple. Don't lie.
Curious what you think about this:
"Pronouns Are Rohypnol"
https://archive.ph/r9FwT
Yes!!! Thank you!
What I find very odd in this supposedly liberated age is the restrictive definition placed on masculinity. If you look at old movies from the 30s, the various types of men portrayed on screen was quite wide--everything from tough guys like Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart to sophisticates like Fred Astaire and Cary Grant to effeminate second bananas like Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton. If people were able to accept that men came in a broad range of types then, why not now? Why do non-macho boys who prefer artistic past times to sports feel compelled to label themselves non-binary?
Excellent point. An observation that I continue to marvel at is that no group embraces bigoted sexual stereotypes more fervently than transgender ideologues. In their eyes, what we'd previously call an effeminate man is a transwoman. What we'd previously call a tomboy is now a transboy.
Yes. That’s what this is. It’s a retrograde movement to reify behavioral expectations for each sex. If you don’t conform, you’re the other sex. Your behavior dictates what sex you are. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails.
Or that gay is actually trans
Precisely!
It all feeds their narrative and ultimate goals
As someone who lives on the west coast, I’ve met several nonbinary people. In my opinion, they are all narcissists. Even my son told me the joke, “Q: How can you tell if someone is nonbinary or asexual? A: Just wait a few seconds, and they’ll tell you.”
I agree that most of these people are narcissists. Autogynephilia is the ultimate in narcissistic love.
Sadly, most people don't understand that it's simply the 'scientific' (i.e. a $10,000 word) for CROSSDRESSER.
And crossdressing used to be a campy activity for adults, instead of a government certified and promoted (*cough* drag queen story hour *cough*) protected class.
( running to the dictionary)
Let us know what it says. Probably a different definition now than was there 20 years ago (if it was even listed then).
What does that even mean, meeting a non-binary person?
Keeping that joke - please forward my thanks to your son! Spot-freakin'-on!
Exactly. I've explained to my 14 year old son that there are masculine gay men and effeminate straight men, there is a broad range and it doesn't mean one is trans as a result. He was blown away when I shared how back in the 80's rock stars wore full face makeup and literally no one batted an eye.
I knew a lot of those guys, and they were generally not gay, although a few were probably bi.
"pastimes" (Had me scratching my head)
It used to be than transsexuals were 1:30,000 to 1:10,000. Nowadays, they are pushing that it's 1:1000 to 1:100. Why the change. To give benefit to the doubt, environmental hormone disruptors might be the cause, but I think it is largely social. Democrats have made it cool to be a freak, whether dyed blue hair or pierced anything, to altering your birth gender through surgery, makeup, and attire. I don't think the majority of trans people truly are what they say they are, but just playing a social role.
Social and fad in my opinion. It seems like the longer a society goes on the more “outrageous” the new generations must be to carve their niche.
I'm in your camp. Social media has eliminated the proverbial small ponds, so now insecure kids no longer have to find ways to stand out just in their school, or even their town, but all of western society.
The real force multiplier here is that trans comes with an almost superpower - you're able to not just create a unique identity, but belong to a protected class too.
I will just add that this need for so many (young and old) has always been about insecurity. It's an important element to understand, because within it, lies the root cause, and therefore the solution. Albeit, one that takes generations to remedy.
They remind me of the yippies/hippies of the 60s and how everyone copied them for a while - because of Hollywood glamourizing most (IMO).
Then we grew up. Haven't worn bell bottoms or had long hair since 1978.
You are absolutely right. And I’m aware of the mental difficulties trans folks face; as soon as they are no longer deemed an asset their protected status will vanish like a fart in a skillet. Many will know just more abandonment and disillusion.
And it also occurs during adolescence, when hormones are surging and kids are (naturally) trying on different identities to figure out who they are. The institutions perpetuating this madness know this, and intentionally exploit it for financial gain.
Exactly. Tattoo removal is the hot growth industry
Penis and Breast Replacement is going to be an even more lucrative industry. Doctors will make bank on both ends, pardon the pun.
Breast implants need to be replaced just about every 10 years and you can't build a penis once it's been removed. It's disgusting that people were sold this lie and doctors who try to cash in on putting pieces back when they were part of removing them should be jailed.
Almost makes one wonder if it was all by design.
Why am I not surprised?
Social media has a lot to do with it. I know that's almost as cliche as blaming rock and roll, but it's true.
Before 2017 or so, the majority of male teenagers with gender confusion grew up to be gay men, with a smaller amount being straight men, and an even smaller number still being transsexual. This is pretty much what happens in a vacuum.
However, a rounding error sized minority of extremely online narcissistic transsexuals wielding outsized power over internet communities didn't like that. They decided that anyone going through an awkward puberty must be like them, and needs to be made even more like them.
People (often minors) experiencing gender confusion became referred to as "eggs", because they're yet to "hatch" as proper transsexuals, but they took it upon themselves to help along that process in various Discord servers and subreddits such as egg_irl. If this process sounds a bit similar to pedophilic grooming, well...
This is not a conspiracy theory. It was done entirely in the open. They simply banned/cancelled/deplatformed (even debanked in a few extreme cases) anyone who complained about it. That's how much control they had over online conversation.
The tide is finally starting to turn on that, but don't fall asleep at the wheel. A battle has been won, but the war isn't over.
If you have kids, monitor their internet usage.
Yaoi, Futanari and other pornographic anime cartoons are warping young minds too.
It's funny you should say that.
I don't know that internet porn is really much more extreme or widely available than it used to be. My family were very early adopters of the web, and as a kid I saw some weird things in those wild west days. BUT, there are more kids (and people in general) online, and they're probably less monitored because parents stopped doing that for some reason. I saw naked ladies on the internet as as minor, and while I certainly don't think we should ENCOURAGE it, I also don't think it scarred me for life.
Rather, I think the primary issue is the blurring of fiction and real life. Somewhere along the line, we lost the ability to tell the difference. Kids are going to be exposed to the ugly side of the world sooner or later. They should be reasonably protected from it, of course, but they also need to know how to deal with it when they encounter it.
In other words, I think pornsickness is a symptom, not a cause. But it deserves consideration.
If only "naked ladies" were all there was to online degeneracy! (https://x.com/Greentexterr/status/1427492142138671107) But I do agree with your statement about blurring fiction and real life, and the loss of effective parenting and kids not developing emotional resiliency from that.
When you see the demographics of transitioners overlaid to a US map it makes you wonder...the Coasts (East and West) are drastically higher than flyover country. That would lead me to believe at least a significant factor is societal approval, or desire thereof.
IMO, it is a combination of factors. 1)There probably have always been more borderline "gender confused" people than recognized. 2)I don't think there is any doubt that environmental/pharmaceutical hormone disrupters play a role. 3) People, particularly children and young people will do the darndest things for attention. In today's world, being some sort of LGBTXYZABC type gets you attention. 4) Testosterone decrease in males. While I sort of assign this to "click bait", observationally it might make sense. At least you hear a lot more about males wanting to be females compared to the reverse. At 80+, it certainly appears that the general aggression level in young men today is pale compared to 55 years ago. That may be "good old days" thinking, but maybe true.
The easiest problems to solve are the ones with a single cause. I think this one has a multiplicity. The biggest "cause", IMO, is the attention it gets. We have always had people that were weird.
My belief is that almost any pubescent female would like to opt out of the bodily changes that occur. It has always been that way. Now they label it gender confusio n and lie to them that they can opt out of the normal changes without consequence
High doses of atrazine in one's diet may also be a factor.
I am not a knee-jerk endorser of everything emanating from Europe. We broke away from them for good reason and that leopard hasn't wholly changed its spots.
OTOH, they DO have decent scientists--some world class. They banned atrazine 20 years ago. In my view, that doesn't mean we should automatically ban it here, but we ought to look at it very, very closely.
I think in Europe, you have to prove it is safe. Here, it is more someone has to prove it is harmful--and good luck getting a grant for THAT study.
Go, RFK, go.
It's a social contagion.
And I believe that the 'real' transsexuals are people who are mentally ill with a form of body dysmorphia. It's not a healthy response.
I agree, and it is evidenced in the way the majority of trans individuals behave and speak. Someone with real dysmorphia and/or delusions in this regard would not refer to themselves as a trans male or female. It is in the trans majority's willingness - nay, eagerness - to actually publicize their transformation that belies this notion that their mental health necessitates acting as though they're genuinely their preferred gender.
Obamacare, the oxymoronically named "Affordable Care Act", opened the flood gates. The very term "gender affirming care" surfaced post Obamacare. Obamacare mandated insurance companies had to cover this putatively cosmetic and psychologically-driven witchcraft.
As I understand it, basic components were included when first passed and it was modified and appended subsequently.
https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/how-section-1557-of-the-affordable-care-act-protects-lgbtqi-individuals/
https://www.hhs.gov/civil-rights/for-individuals/section-1557/fs-sex-discrimination/index.html
Obamacare was a disaster across the board. Solved zero problems but created a host of new problems.
My health care premium more than tripled while the deductible doubled.
That people continue to try to force this on children is the (or at least "an") essence of evil.
They also made health insurance mandatory, fining you if you didn't have any. Thankfully this illegal tax was later repealed.
Interesting. Sounds right.
I'm not a scientist but I would be highly skeptical of any claim that anything other than social contagion accounts for the sudden surge in people who identify as trans.
I'm largely with you on this, but I'd put extra emphasis on hormone disruptors. As for Democrats and the cool factor in freakishness, let's not forget something similar is happening over on the Right. There's a definite (and dangerous) ideological freakishness among the tech billionaires backing Trump and their guiding light, a detestable whiny crank named Curtis Yarvin who would like to dispense with democracy in favor of putting pinhead Mountainhead intellects like his in charge.
I think a lot of the trans kids would’ve been goth kids in the 90’s. A lot of them are clearly just gay — but I guess since that’s accepted now, they need to take it a step further. Like that trans one that nearly ruined Bud Light. That’s a theater gay kid.
It’s always been cool to be a freak. Tattoos, piercing. But someone should stop you when you are cutting off bits
The explosion of social-media transgenderism coincided with an explosion in the practice, as well is with females coming to do it much more relative to males.
In addition to everything already mentioned, the argument could be made that there is some evolutionary factors contributing as well. In the (very distant) past only alpha males would survive and have offspring with similar characteristics.
"If they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire
All the code-talking is to advance the absurdity; the atrocity is the sexual mutilation of children.
I think the atrocity of child sexual mutiliation is a Trojan horse for what they really want... sexual access to children: "You allow them to be mutilated but you won't let them have a loving relationship (with me)?"
Exactly. And as long as this article is about language "Minor Attracted Persons" is the new term for pedophiles! It's all over that movement.
I hate that I’ve come to this conclusion too. The rebranding of pedophiles as MAPs as a legit sexual orientation in conjunction with arguing that children are completely capable of “knowing who they are on the inside and what to do about it” thus can consent to these drastic life changing measures lends itself to the argument that children obviously can make informed long term adult decisions so why are you illegally discriminating against my protected sexual orientation.
I HATE this. I never thought this way about gays ever, and I still don’t. But that the problem, this isn’t a homosexual issue, it is a completely different and concerning issue all together.
It might not have been a gay issue before, but by embracing the fringe as part of the LGBTQIALMNOPXYZ+ movement, they have made it their issue.
If Republicans have to own the skinheads, then LGB has to own the pederasts that come with the "+".
There is a cohort fighting against- the LGB Courage Coalition among others.
Yes this is absolutely the endgame. How better to completely destroy all tradition than to disrupt the formation of the family unit? It fits in with the pharma complex too. All these liberated people are gonna need meds.
I didn't think it could get any darker....
Oh, you're absolutely right.
May be the ultimate target…. But what’s after that?
My oldest identified as a hobbit when he was in elementary school, in a misguided attempt to get out of doing his math homework. "Hobbits don't need math," he would insist. Insensitive bitch that I am, I made him do his homework anyway.
He's a boring cisgender college student now.
I identify as an Ent. That's why I do everything so slowly.
Lmao 🤣
Had to look that one up. Good one.
Thanks.
Good thing he didn’t insist on treatment to get hairy toes
Nor did he start smoking "pipe weed" and eating six meals a day.
lol!
Appreciate the recap! And just to re-state the obvious here: Any news outlet still referring to chemical castration and surgical mutilation of children as "therapy" or "care" or "gender affirming..." cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
The world will begin to be set right when these mutilation docs get sentenced to hard time.
btw, just published my take in case you're looking for more! https://aynsrants.substack.com/p/ode-to-the-asch-conformity-experiment
We're gonna look back at this like we look back at lobotomies.
But this is much worse.
I think it’s going to be a lot worse. The generation living through this now is the most obsessively self-documenting in history. By the time they grow to middle age or later they will have a lifetime of footage documenting disappointment, rage, heartbreak, self-loathing. For all but a few, it will be pain and resentment (toward us, for allowing it to happen). I did stories ten years ago about student loan holders who reached retirement age still owing and it was uncomfortable being in the same room with some of them. Imagine the stories these thousands of people will tell. It will not be pretty.
They will blame us for letting it happen. But some have been shouting from the rooftops. JK Rowling is a heroine for putting herself on the line for other women and girls.
I've been shouting for years to anyone who might listen - but I have a very small audience lol
We're already seeing the (very slow) emergence of "this isn't what I was promised" videos. I fully expect this to accelerate as the "trans madness" dies down a little and the "generation" of transitioners gets to the "this is my life now" point. (While remaining unhappy about their bodies.)
I hope the people you are referring to;
"By the time they grow to middle age or later they will have a lifetime of footage documenting disappointment, rage, heartbreak, self-loathing."
... are lucky enough to live that long and have the attention span to reflect on their past. For many it is already too late.
It really is worse. Detransitioners have trouble getting the compassion that the butchers once pretended to have for them.
Let alone health insurance coverage.
Excellent article. One thing you forgot to mention: states that force schools to hide gender transition from parents, or seek to remove children from homes where the parents do not affirm. This has chased many people away from the Democratic Party.
You’re right, and it was a big mistake to leave this out. I was absolutely flabbergasted that so many states and localities made this policy heading into 2024 (I think it was 1,040 districts that barred notification to parents about gender expression developments when I last wrote about this in 2023). The implied premise of these policies is that local bureaucrats are more qualified guardians than the parents who love these children and would sacrifice anything, even their lives, for their happiness. It’s a bad enough idea in a moral sense, but also politically crazy: you just can’t mess with someone’s kids and win elections. How did they not know that?
The ugliness around all of that opened a lot of eyes and pushed thousands of parents out of the public school system.
"You want to teach my kids what? Behind my back? Over and against my wishes? ...We are now enemies in the truest sense of the word."
And I only see one political party pushing that ideology.
This is why Glen Youngkin won for governor in Virginia. The Democrat governor said that he doesn’t think parents have any right to have a say in what is being taught in schools. That really angered a lot of parents and it was enough to get a republican elected
As an Independent in Virginia, it was one of the top reasons I voted for Youngkin.
It was a top reason for a lot of people. Also fresh in the news at time was the story about the transgender kid that had raped a couple of girls in the women’s restroom at a high school in northern Virginia and the school got caught lying to the parents and trying to cover it up. I think that was also a huge factor as well.
You would be surprised how many support it, and I get the sense punishing parents is equal to or outweighs concern for the child.
This stems at least partly from rising anti-natalism on the left, which bleeds naturally into gross anti-child/anti-humanist policies. There are economic angles (lack of single jobs that can support a family of 4), “intellectual” angles (literature on environmentalism, overconsumption, etc. going back to “The Population Bomb”), and cultural angles (rising social isolation in the internet era), but the basic fact is that a family with 3 or more kids like yours will raise way more eyebrows on the left than on the right.
I never knew a time when a single job could support a family of 4 — at least not in my neighborhood, and I’m 66.
Working class families are used to having both parents work, in order to keep food on the table.
When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, it could. I'm sure the advent of The Pill had at least something to do with it.
Yeah, back when Leave it to Beaver was made, I guess.
I was always mystified at these references, though. I was born in 1958, my late husband was born in 1948 -- and all of our parents worked. My late father in law worked in a factory in Michigan, and each of his successive wives worked, too (3 in total). All of my friends' parents both worked, except for one, and her dad was a plumber. Nobody even noticed "latch key kids" until the 1980's, for some reason. Apparently, we were a distinct minority.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
My dad was a nonunion foreman/machines and my mom was a medical technician who choose to stay home. They raised 7 kids mostly on one salary from 1960-1990.
Do you know what "anecdotal evidence" means?
It is objectively true that in the 1960s, the vast majority of households (incl. working class) were single income (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/voliii/pubdocs/1960/Population/Prelim/41934217no1-40ch2.pdf). The average fertility rate was around ~3.5 back then. The fraction of single income households and the fertility rate have declined monotonically since the 1960s. Correlation is not causation, but it sure knows how to point and waggle its eyebrows at us.
The pernicious thing about all of this was that it all sounded too crazy to be true and so people didn’t believe it. Or claimed it was a one off. It was only when you started digging and paying attention to the (mostly female) writers and journalists who were investigating this, AND looked at the UK where the resistance was louder, did the scope of the authoritarian insanity become clear.
Matt- I presume your final question is rhetorical because they absolutely knew what they were doing.
BTW, I’ve noticed that you have a ‘habit’ of closing with these kinds of rhetorical question-statements about the intentions of the Left. “How could they do X?” Or “How could they not know what people would think of X?!” (Where X = horrible anti-human policy).
Might I suggest that just like all of the other adults to whom we attribute agency that these people - yes, your former friends and colleagues on the ‘principled’ Left, Matt (LOL) - knew exactly what they were doing? And are just bad people?
Isn’t that the obvious and straightforward answer, Matt? They’re just NOT good, NOT moral, and they revel in that? And people like you who refuse to call Evil by its name are delaying the rectification that needs to happen by pretending that this is simply (yet another) “mistake” in judgment?
“Reasonable minds can differ” only applies to a certain narrow range of policy alternatives within a bandwidth of underlying agreed upon “reasonable” facts and assumptions.
Transing kids isn’t anywhere fucking close to that, Matt.
Transing kids in secret by bureaucrats should result in immediate marches to the school’s offices or the officials’ homes by square-jawed fathers en masse with torches, pitchforks, and other accoutrements for tarring and feathering.
THEN, and only then, will this shit stop. Tell yourself all the pretty lies you want otherwise.
They’re Socialists. In socialism you can do exactly that.
We'll soon see if it works here in Washington. Our Democratic legislature passed a parental rights initiative to keep it off the ballot last year and this recent session dismantled it to bring back the bureaucrat-over-parent bias. Too many voters here are gullible to buy the left’s lies out of fear of Trump but I think even they won't be so stupid as to cede control of families to the state once the original initiative gets on the ballot.
You'd be surprised at how many parents are willing to let the State or the Market raise their kids. Or they vote D and then not pay attention to what their elected officials actually do until the laws are in place and happen to effect them personally.
"The implied premise of these policies is that local bureaucrats are more qualified guardians than the parents who love these children"
It's not just on this issue either. It arguably cost Democrats the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election over Terry McAuliffe's answer to a debate question on parental involvement in the school curriculum, which you covered extensively at the time.
Hey Matt, I am an outspoken critic of gender transition, particularly for minors. I have read quite a lot about the issue, and have stuck my neck out in my personal life to discuss my views with friends, family, and strangers alike. That being said, I haven't been able to find much about the “1040 districts that bar notification…”. I agree with you on the implied premise, and you are right, it is lunacy. However, from what I understand those 1000+ districts are mostly just California school districts.
As a native Californian, I will be the first to say our politics are coocoo for coacoa-puffs. Really, don't get me started there. We have statewide laws being challenged on this very issue.
But let's be real, California is going to California, and the more vague “1040 districts” figure makes this sound like a broader, national issue that is really just my state being populated by misinformed idiot.
Oh, there is New Hampshire too, but maybe we just call their 5 school districts a wash.
They think they should control and own everything. Remember Killary “it takes a village”?
They probably don’t know that because most of them don’t have children of their own.
Yesssss! Your transformation into a 90’s Republican is nearly complete!
@Matt Taibbi Ludlow, MA
The Globe is such garbage on how they covered it. Someone needs to put the Spotlight on their trash
If I remember correctly the judge from the Ludlow case said something like it’s the parent’s responsibility to know what the kid is up to… it’s not the school’s responsibility to tell the parents. Which is insane!
There’s one in Rhode Island too… probably everywhere.
https://www.boston.com/news/education/2025/02/24/appeals-court-upholds-decision-against-parents-who-sued-mass-school-for-not-disclosing-childs-gender-identity/
I think they printed it in the funny papers
@Matt Taibbi https://www.masslive.com/westernmass/2024/11/judge-weighs-dismissal-in-case-filed-by-ex-ludlow-teacher-fired-for-outing-student-to-parents.html
You'd think they would have learned from the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race you wrote about a couple of years ago.
The puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries were sold to the public as “life-saving“ because they were described as preventing suicides of gender confused kids.
We were also told that these kids have always existed, but we’re never comfortable coming out until just now
At some point, the part of the country that has never really thought about it will realize:
1: why didn’t we see mass suicides of these kids before when these “treatments” were only available for the last couple of decades or so.
2: what about all these kids and countries in Africa, many parts of Asia and the Middle East and other places where these treatments have never been available.
3: what about the kids whose families still live in the states that have banned these treatments for the last 2 to 4 years?
I don’t know if many parts of the public will be able to accept the fact that this was all just a lie. My guess is that many people will simply never own up to this mistake because it is so incredibly devastating.
Helen Joyce has pointed out that many of the parents that went along with this and medicalized their own children into being permanently disfigured, disabled, sterilized will never let it go. They can't because they'd have to face what they did.
The suicide wave is coming.
Same for the doctors. They’ll never eat their shame.
The last misogyny perpetrated on women everywhere was not from any man, but the three women justices who voted "nyet."
Good point.
No one in MSM has considered whether asking “Sarah” McBride about the rather problematic issues surrounding trans “rights” will only get an absolutely biased response. We learn nothing from him.
Just like the stupidity of allowing Chase Strangio argue the point before the Supreme Court.
The compulsion to ask trans people what their opinion is on this matter fueled this ridiculous assertion because MSM presented it as the definitive answer.
It’s like asking the chairman of a tobacco company what he thinks about lung cancer.
Well put, John. Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is an actual expert on the issue. Here's a 2 pager by him:
https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf
Strangio's real name is Kate. She is one weird lady & sounds like she inhaled Helium. She went to Grinnell College where I believe she threw her parents under the bus.
She's a radical on a number of issues. I think I read somewhere that she is against Constitutional Law and even the Supreme Court, although when you do searches on her it is difficult to find anything that isn't crazy and pro-Gender Ideology.
But here she is on “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”:
https://dailycaller.com/2020/11/16/aclu-chase-strangio-abigail-shrier-transgenderism-book-target-amazon/
I remember talking to my adult son about this at the time it 'started' (somewhere around 2018/19). I'm a retired physician, and I was just mortified at how my fellow physicians were behaving. Shame on them. Shame on the profession for years to come.
The ICC considers conscripting children under 15 to be soldiers to be a war crime. Ask yourself why, and how that relates to conducting irreversible medical procedures on "consenting" children. Shame may be the least of their problems when the science of human development and the consequential morality are no longer ignored.