I think people need to understand that if you want the true "orgasm" you need to do that yourself don't rely on others. Unless you're Jazz and then your SOL
As someone tasked with teaching critical thinking and detailed analysis to undergrads, this is a marvel. I've shared Jesse's work with students before---but this is a serious piece that even earned earnest praise from Katie.
Most of all, I appreciate how Jesse and Kative have not allowed the vitriol they receive to cloud their judgment. Those most worried about the trans kids/gay kids/all kids should be at least curious. I hate the result the ban on the left will have on all LGBTQ+ people. It makes me think of David Frum's prescient warning in The Atlantic (paraphrase) that if liberals won't police borders, fascists will.
I think a couple of things J & K don't emphasize enough is
1. how illogical it is to mess with puberty, as the human phase of puberty is right up there with fetal development and the first six years of life in the importance and complexity of what is going on in the brain and the rest of the body, in how monumentally the body and brain are going through a growth spurt, how essential this is to future health, etc. and
2. how robust and obvious the research is that adolescents and teenagers are pretty much DESIGNED to make bad decisions, having markedly less inhibition and emotional regulation, increased need to rebel against voices of reason and increased need to fit in with their peers, etc.
It's all so obvious that it's easy to not think to mention it, but I think it's helpful to continually frame this issue with those facts.
The hot new meme argument I’ve been seeing lately is “the wrong puberty”, as in, by not giving puberty blockers to kids, we’re “torturing” them (yes, this is the language they use) by putting their body through some incorrect process.
I can’t imagine a more nonsensical pseudo-medical argument than that. Puberty is the process by which one’s body sexually matures and you sprout the secondary sex characteristics your genes dictate. In no sense can that be “wrong”. It’s pseudo-scientific bullshit that starts from a premise that most people don’t even accept, so I’m pretty confused as to where it came from and why all these people are spouting it all of a sudden.
Even if it was somehow "wrong," it's not like a million other things are not also going on during this time of development. Obviously lots of talk about bone and connective tissue development, and of course the brain and the billions-of-neurons-worth of insanely tangled connections that we can barely comprehend, all of it connected, all of this exploding during puberty. They talk as if puberty blockers can magically just "pause" one single complicated process while all else chugs along just fine. It's truly detached from all reality, and that scientists, journalists and The Jo[h]ns are talking this way and condemning anyone who questions it is through-the-looking-glass crazy, irresponsible, and nothing less than criminal. Let's get real about who is doing "violence." They have blood on their hands, in the form of the suffering that these kids-turned-adults have to endure for the rest of their now-tortured, fully medicalized, likely shortened lives.
There’s also the social developmental issues related with not going through puberty with your peers. All of this done for one reason; to more closely approximate the look of the opposite sex. I just understand how anyone ever thought this was a good idea.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. So many people comfortable asserting that minors MUST be certain... and we hear gender clinicians saying toddlers can “know” their gender identity.
How many of us are in professions now that we were CERTAIN we wanted to be when we grew up? Over time interests shift, people see that their aptitude doesn’t match the skill set a profession needs. Dreams smack right up against the wall of reality, & often times we’re better off for it bc we find we’re more fulfilled by something we couldn’t even conceive of as children.
Toddlers go for what they see is interesting, maybe a doll or a drum. Gender Ideologists claim this means something about the toddlers "gender identity." Based on stereotypes, the Ideologues then assert that the biological girl toddler, going for the noise-making drum, is signaling that she is "authentically" a boy. Boom, toddlers (not talking words and no control of bowel or bladder) know, however, their "gender identity." Utterly ludicrous!
Anybody who has parented a teenager or young adult, especially a girl, KNOWS that most of this IS a social-media driven trend, which has exploded into a social contagion—one with long lasting, possibly irreversible consequences. Teens and young adults are simply not emotionally mature enough or capable of comprehending or consenting to such drastic decisions! THIS IS INSANE!
I'm still listening...I just finished Jesse's interview with the Swedish doctor where she describes the documented harms of puberty blockers. It made me think of my dog. Her breeder said to be sure to let her complete at least one heat cycle to be sure she is hormonally mature enough for spay surgery. The breeder kept it simple saying something like, "we want her to have nice bones and smooth joints when she's an old lady". So this is something we know about mammals. Puberty is more than sex organs.
Having met a few dog breeders years ago when I worked in an animal hospital: if the people in your field make dog breeders sound reasonable, something is amiss.
Waiting until 2 or even later is becoming common in the Great Dane community. Something I think about often (twisted mind) is how little contact most Americans at least have with intact animals. Handle a young colt & you’ll never doubt the force of testosterone or what it takes to channel it.
Not my field, but I have two well-bred dogs (this is a whole thing for me) from breeders who are smart and reasonable people. But I get it! The dog show scene is bananas-cuckoo. I'm not part of that, I just purchase nice dogs.
This is exactly what I thought of as well. Our Bernese/Mastiff/Mutt is now 6 months old and we are having the same discussions with our vet. We are thinking when she's a year old we'll go ahead, but for a dog her size maybe now we're supposed to wait longer?
For large breeds, the current suggestion is to wait 2 years. Complete bone and joint development is very important for heavy breeds, so their growth plates should be finished developing before their hormones are affected.
Right, that makes sense to me and generally aligns with what our vet is saying. Guess I'll just stock up on doggy diapers to get through the heats until that two years is up!
I mostly know from cats, but as far as I have read there’s no evidence of different lifelong outcomes from post- vs pre-pubertal spay/neuter, despite the popular idea your breeder repeated.
Not much evidence of harm from waiting either, as long as they don’t get pregnant. But no particular reason to do so.
However, cats and dogs are not humans, and SO FAR we aren’t routinely recommending that human kids be spayed AFTER puberty either, although, give it a couple of years, who knows. Humans develop during puberty in specific, socially-linked ways.
These kids on PBs will also go on to lifelong cross-sex hormones which is, again, not what a spayed pet is going to do.
It is pretty interesting that neutered animals manage to develop properly and live successful lives (in pet or domestic animal terms). But humans are just really unusual animals in terms of cognitive and social development, so despite the intuitive appeal of the comparison to animals, they’re not all that much use as a guide.
Jesse, c’mon man, Oliver says “related”, not “righty”! Get yer facts straight! If I were even more of a stone-cold maniac than I already am, I might publicly drag you for this obvious anti-British bigotry.
But on a serious note, I’m from Alabama and both my parents are (or “was”, in my late mother’s case) conservatives—shocking, I know. I live in New York now, but whenever I visit my dad, we talk a lot about politics and culture and so on. He’s a thoughtful and sophisticated guy, was a lawyer for decades, but he’s from Alabama and has the accent to prove it. His big gripe about elite New York/Northeast media and cultural types is (and has been for as long as I can remember) that he has a sense that they’re always smugly condescending to him, on account of both his politics and where he lives.
I used to defend my fellow libs much more strenuously from this charge than I do now—though I will always insist that most regular New Yorkers, especially in Queens where I live (Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn are a different story), are not in the same category—but it’s because of precisely the sort of stuff Oliver and Stewart said, and especially the insufferable way they said it, that I’m no longer able to muster much enthusiasm for that kind of a defense anymore.
And to me, the real cherry on top is that Stewart brought on not just a conservative politician, but one with a thick Southern accent, knowing full well how a person who sounds like that will be received by his audience—and even if she was much more articulate and informed than she was on the show, she could always be dismissed (consciously or otherwise) as an ignorant, backward redneck. I personally don’t have a complex about my accent (which isn’t all that strong anyway) or where I’m from at all, but man, it’s impossible not to see what my dad is on about after witnessing a display like that.
Anyway, as usual this is much longer than I meant it to be, but hey, if you made it this far, thanks for indulging me.
My parents moved our family from the North to their native South when I was in middle school. As a grumpy teenager, I hated the new region and determined never to acquire a Southern accent, because I thought if I did I could never move North again without being stigmatized as a racist white Southerner.
And you know what? I was right. I did move back North, Yankee accent more or less intact, and my new friends would say all sorts of things to me about their assumptions about the racism and backwardness of "people" in the South, feeling free to do so because they couldn't hear my Southern accent. (They meant "white people" but forgot to say so. And they forgot or were unaware that much of the South is significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than much of the North, especially in the not particularly urban Northern states we were living in.)
To me, one of the more disgusting aspects of this prejudice is progressives' too-frequent mockery of poverty, low education rates, and low vaccination rates in the South. Those phenomena are real, and they disproportionately affect the very minorities and poor people progressives claim to care about. If you think people should have a strong social safety net or better access to medical care (either for trans issues or more basic diabetes and blood-pressure issues), you should want that for people who don't sound like you, don't look like you, don't have your hobbies, and don't go to your schools. If you only apply your principles to people you can personally relate to, sorry, I don't think much of your principles.
Really well said. Speaking as a lifelong Yankee, your observation on accent discrimination is true. Personally, I'd much rather listen to the Arkansas Attorney General than anyone with a vocal fry or uptalk, though.
I was born and raised in a red state, then moved to Manhattan in my early 20s to work in journalism. Since then I've lived all over America and in Europe and now I'm back where I started. One thing I've learned from my experience is that there are hicks EVERYWHERE.
I fought against my southern accent my entire life because of the negative connotations associated with it. I really hate that I did that now because I actually like southern accents and because I repressed my cultural identity due to shame. Now I just have a bland, neutral American accent.
I fought against mine, too, until I was in my thirties, and someone encouraged me to embrace it. Now I don't try to get rid of it, but I modulate it a bit depending on audience. It can endear you with Southerners or help you sound innocent in a conflict. :)
Family moved to the south when I was a tween. My parents didn’t believe me when I told them that we were being taught why the confederacy “needed our slaves”, until parent teacher conferences, where the same material was taught.
Even with that though, when we moved back to the Midwest, I had never experienced more open racism than I had in the first week in the Midwest. More than I ever had in the south.
Yeah, if I had a thesis about American racism and bigotry, it might be that there's lots of bad behavior that shows up differently in different regions and subcultures. One of my friends, whom I met in the Midwest, says she prefers to live in California because the racism there is the kind she's used to. I think that comment is both really sad and really insightful.
Totally, and I should’ve said “saw” rather than “experienced” racism because my family we’re all white-ish so the racism was never directed at us, they were just very free with it, thinking we would support their open racism as “one of them”.
This is a genuine question, so if it sounds at all snarky that's not my intention - but what do you think of the way Southerners (or at least the loudest ones online/politicians) talk about the North? I feel like I very often see language about the North and Northerners that maybe isn't as smug or condescending as the way Oliver and Stewart are sounding here, but is pretty hateful/vilifying.
I realize this is an almost comically late reply, but who cares? I very much agree with what you’re saying, and yet I have to say: I think the fact that you and I both have lived in both places—I went off to live in Mass. in middle school and then moved back to the South, and then back the other way yet again (this time to New York) as an adult—is very important in allowing us to see the people of both regions as frail, imperfect human beings.
Because yeah, a lot of people in the Northeast have a smug superiority complex about their fellow countrymen who live farther south, and that isn’t really that common in the South. What IS common, though, is a sort of belligerent, defiant attitude towards the big-city elites/Yankees/etc., a sort of “not only are you no better than us, but you’re a bunch of paternalistic jerks who are trying to run our lives, too, and there’s nothing we could learn from you”. And of course, in reality the average Masshole isn’t terribly preoccupied with Southerners most of the time, and the same is true of most Alabamians.
The trouble is, the South (or at least the part of it that I come from) really is economically stunted and underdeveloped vis-à-vis the Northeast, as you said; likewise, the Northeast really is richer and more advanced in a lot of ways—though this difference isn’t what it used to be, at least in states like TN, GA, NC, and VA, among others. So both sides of this historical and cultural grudge match have a bit of truth they can lay claim to. That said, there’s no excuse for contempt or mockery, especially when it’s the (relatively) strong striking out against the (relatively) weak.
What we do about all this is, well, I guess it’s kind of the main plot line of American history, lol, so I’m not expecting a quick or clean solution. But it does seem like the South has come a long way in my lifetime—and to judge by the steady stream of New Yorkers decamping to places like North Carolina, it seems like a lot of people have been noticing that. Mixing of different groups, such that their members live amongst and get to know the “other side”, has often been helpful in reducing mutual hatreds, at least in the US; here’s hoping that continues to be true.
100%. I've always found it interesting that progressives outside the South tend to freely make condescending and insulting generalizations about Southerners being racist, oblivious to how this framing erases non-white Southerners.
This is absolutely the crux of the matter for me. I grew up in or near blue cities and am usually taken for a member of the blue tribe but I am actually a deserter. The despicable and unwarranted condescension of the self styled elites makes me want to gag. I’d rather talk to a semi literate janitor than an educated type. I’d trust the janitor to have more accurate perceptions about the world.
I am an 'elite' in many, many ways, and as from a blue city. I fucking hate the way blue city elite types look down on anyone they see as not 'one of them.'
I love everything about this comment. I'm from a rural community in the midwest, but have been a big city liberal most of my adult life. And ... I've just (well, over the past 2 years) woken up to the smugness, the condescension that I was such a part of. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
"Stewart brought on not just a conservative politician, but one with a thick Southern accent, knowing full well how a person who sounds like that will be received by his audience"
I am still listening. But I wonder if you noticed this as well. Jon Stewart asks the endocrinologist what is the harm of waiting until a kid is 18 to do gender affirming care and the endocrinologist says that gender affirming care doesn't mean medical intervention, it just means treating the child with respect and without gender affirming care, there is a 40% chance of the kid trying to commit suicide.
I am 90% sure that is the most obfuscatory language possible. If gender affirming care did not mean medical intervention, there would not be this huge jump on medical transitions. And I am pretty sure the 40% was always connected to medical transitions.
And as for suicide. I do suicide assessments every day. People will say they have tried to kill themselves. When you ask follow ip questions, usually they just strongly strongly thought about it bit never did anything about it.
Also. Self harm and suicide attempts are two entirely different things.
Yeah I think you’d find that nearly 100 percent of adolescents have had thoughts about suicide. I’m not sure any stat that says some subset has thought about suicide has any meaning whatsoever
And the 40% stat gets twisted all kinds of ways. Someone on Twitter today: "Many of these kids, about 40%, if not given gender affirming care, won’t make it to adulthood."
Just like how nobody noticed that traumatic memories can be "repressed" until the 80s. Only the ones involving satanic ritual and sexual abuse that nobody else can verify actually happened, though. Or like how none of us noticed that abuse can result in multiple personalities in the same person until that movie Sybil came out.
Just incredible how ignorant people were for all of human history, because psychological disorders are absolutely never influenced by social factors or contagion, at all, never.
There us not more teen suicide. There are a lot more suicide attempts and a hell.of a lot more self harm. Which. Yes. Correlates to more gender affirming care
AFAIK the 40% isn't without "gender affirming care" but just only trans people. In that study the people who got surgery had higher rates in general (I don't think there is the broader "gender affirming care" breakdown in that study).
And isn't the 40% attempts rather than completed suicides? I've seen so many people state it the above way, as if there's no difference between taking 6 Benadryl and actually dying.
Pretty much any stat that stops conversation is there to do just that. See, I’ve proven I’m right! There’s this stat... kudos to Jesse for actually looking at how the sausage I mean how the stats are made
Sounds like classic goalpost moving and changing the definition of terms mid discussion. Garbage that wouldn't pass a second rate high school debate is marquis media from HBO et al.
I know I need to hear voices / opinions outside my own view so I don’t fall into the echo chamber trap, but it was almost impossible to listen to such smug bastardness without wanting to throw my phone against the wall. Stewart & Oliver were not trying to change minds or present fact, they were playing to the gallery and I for one can’t wait til a whole tsunami of mea culpas wipe the smug away! Rant over, as you were.
I used to love Jon Stewart & John Oliver... but I couldn’t help but cringe at how rude Stewart was in that interview, & Oliver’s tone overall.
Then I wonder whether they were always like that but I didn’t realize it, or if I’m so different now in my views, or if they’ve just gone off the deep end?
I can’t help but laugh when ppl make it out like only far-right people could be skeptical about irreversible gender medicine... I bought John Oliver’s book Marlon Bundo about Mike Prince’s family rabbit envisioned as gay, & I’ve read it to my kids many times. I’m not a Trump supporter, ffs.
Yeah, it boggles my mind how overbearing and smug Jon was to that Attorney General. Was he always this way? I think I remember him treating Bill O'Reilly decently...with a modicum of respect. But Jon was out to eviscerate that woman...wonder if some aspect of his personal life played a role? Perhaps he was instrumental in helping a trans-identifying child to get gender affirmation care, and if that care is based on all lies, AND that child has taken dangerous drugs/ hormones long term and/or undergone traumatic surgeries, that's a very hard mistake to accept...
It seems clear to me that social transition is problematic because how does a kid back out of it? With the incredible adulation and support that it is involved now in affirming a "trans child" how would a young person change their mind without feeling like they've let people down? Even more problematic is putting a small child in school stealth so that their peers never know that they've made a change. Can you imagine being a little kid and changing your mind and then having to explain to your entire peer group that you're actually the opposite sex of what you said you were? Then there is also just the basic concept of identity formation. It seems that social transition is the big change from the Dutch approach and probably the cause of the reversal of desistance numbers.
I'm so surprised I don't hear this discussed more often (though of course it's possible I've just missed it). Pressure to "remain trans" certainly won't help one's mental health.
I honestly believe most of the support trans people (of all ages) receive is done out of a genuine desire to help them through a difficult process, but going too far in this support--to the point of celebrating and excessively uplifting someone--just makes it harder to change one's mind. Like you said, they don't want to let those people down, but they also probably don't want to lose the sense of community (which is extremely important to anyone's sense of self, identity and well-being) that comes with it.
The higher you raise someone, the scarier the idea of falling becomes.
That's kind of how I wound up in this whole rabbit hole. A couple years ago my brother told me that my 6-year old niece had identified as nonbinary. I was like "ok, good for her" but didn't really say much else. Apparently when she said it, it was in front of a bunch of people (mostly adults I think) at school and she got all this applause and praise. Some lady came up to her and said "that's so amazing! I have a friend who is nonbinary!" Yadda yadda yadda. As though this scene would have played out the same way had she said she was a girl.
Anyway, this...situation has made my brother (through pressure from his wife I'm certain) buy into literally every TRA talking point in existence. On top of his completely uncritical swallowing of activist rhetoric, he and his wife insist that we refer to my niece as "they/them". My sister-in-law went so far as to announce it on Facebook on "international pronouns day" and said "it may not seem like a big deal but this is life for death stuff for these kiddos." They bought her a water bottle (from Amazon of course) that says "They! Them!" in cute script over wild colors. It is beyond ridiculous.
Meanwhile, my niece is barely gender nonconforming (I'd say almost completely girly) and doesn't really seem to care if you let a "she" slip here or there. It seems that the whole thing is being done to appease/please her parents. My brother and I have gotten into more than one fight about the entire gender culture war situation, and he has written me a series of extra-long emails, citing Jon Stewart among other trash sources in his quest to get me to see things his way. His emails have also been kind of nasty. But I haven't responded yet. I had a massive response written up (similar to the show notes) that I was going to send him but I think I'm probably just going to hold off. Debating whether or not to send him this episode. It almost certainly wouldn't go well. I'd undoubtedly hear something like "I'm not going to listen to a couple TRANSPHOBES try and ruin kids lives!" or some such. What a mess!
Does anybody else find it disturbing how quickly Americans have gone from “sex change surgeries for kids aren’t happening, nobody would do that!!” to “that’s an intensely personal medical decision, how dare you politicize this”?
American left wing media just completely skipped over the “we can’t believe this is happening, surely the biggest medical scandal of the 21st century” part.
Hmmm? Sounds a bit like, "We don't teach CRT in these K-12 schools. It's a law school theory." Now, CRT must be imbedded in every content area to remedy the injustices of a country founded on White Supremacy. Okay, white students into this affinity group and all others in that affinity group. Go!"
What happened to Stewart and Oliver is indicative of a wider phenomenon, I think: Nobody is allowed to just be goofy and make fun of shit anymore. That’s what they used to do and they’d even say, in effect, Don’t listen to us on important things.
It’s like everybody has to be on the “right side of history” (whatever that means) on every issue. I’ve heard Jesse lament about the end of the “old days” of the internet, when people were just fuckoffs for fun.
We’re all familiar with how this works on the left but it’s true on right too. I remember hearing about the Proud Boys some time ago and they were mostly just a group of harmless dipshits who wanted to drink beer and act bro-y. Fast forward two years and they’re in my home city marching through the streets in paramilitary gear looking like American Isis scaring residents and vandalizing property.
It’s like fuck man why are the stakes so high on everything now? We did we all decide to get so serious?
I think it is more that when Stewart started, Conservatives had a lot of political power and a lot more cultural power, especially after 9/11. Stewart does not realize that overall progressives have won the culture war. He is not pushing against anything
I realized several years ago that progressives won the culture war but never got the memo. Part of the cultural identity/mythology is that we are the ones on the margins fighting the bad forces, and now apparently forever embattled.
I think seeing other famous people’s bad tweets drudged up for public shaming broke a lot of people’s brains.
I mean, think about it. You see that happening to someone else, and you’re an entertainer--someone whose self-worth hinges on the approval of others-- you will do basically anything to avoid the hammer.
My theory is that it has to do with advertising. I know this sounds like a non sequitur but hear me out.
Early 2010s, Facebook and Google were stealing everyone's ad revenue. Publishers responded with clickbait/ragebait to recapture attention and ad revenue. Ragebait is effective, but you need something to rage against to make it work. Having the Other Team on the opposite side of the political spectrum as your foil makes ragebait effective. But then you get the rage treadmill where we're in an existential fight for survival against those people who want to destroy democracy and ruin your children. Such a super serious culture war demands super serious people. No room for joking when everything is an existential fight for life or death.
That link to Carole Hoover’s thread was brilliant. I don’t understand why these people are so obsessed with breaking down the “sex binary.” Even if you accept that “sex is a spectrum”, that doesn’t mean that lopping off healthy organs and “socially transitioning” adolescents is a good idea.
I fully support gender non conformists. Hey I was one back in the day when girls weren’t supposed to wear pants to school. Tomboy etc., male friends. Would I have been pressured into becoming a boy had I grown up now? I wonder.
Great point. In fact sex is a spectrum is almost an anti intervention argument--if you were born some third sex then what do you have to transition to?
It’s kinda like being “assigned” a sex at birth. If you were merely assigned that sex then just assign yourself to the correct sex and you’re done! No medical intervention needed!
I think for the same reason as people believe in blank-slatism, the idea that we're all equally capable of everything. If that is true that we should expect equality and in cases where it doesn't occur something nefarious has happened which needs correction.
It's partly a psycho-social motivation to have the world be less complicated, and gives ammo to their desired compassionate ends. In the sex binary case, the people seeking to confound it are nearly all of the belief that trans people need to be protected, and saying things like sex doesn't exist allows them to claim that anyone can claim to be anything, and people only oppose that for nefarious reasons.
I agree, I think this exactly the position of the genderists. The thing that drives me mad is that for them, freedom requires drugs, surgery, and endless external validation. I just can’t see freedom in that - it’s dependency on dependency. They could be free by not trying to be opposite sex, or no binary, but just being a non-mainstream expression of their sex. The social/tribal aspect seems to be the real motivation.
Good points. I don’t understand why the ppl pushing this as being good for GNC kids don’t see how incredibly fragile they’re teaching them to be. Saying that ppl who don’t use their preferred pronouns are denying their “existence.” It’s like, no, they exist whether or not I am compelled to repeat those words. No one owes anyone else validation.
I know this seems like groomer discourse or whatever but I have deep suspicions about the ulterior motives of anyone who argues to give kids really broad powers of choice.
As a former teacher, my interest in giving kids really broad powers of choice are focused on education, but I think there are other areas in which we can safely give them more autonomy. But one way we grow and learn is to make mistakes, so we have to be sure that the autonomy we give kids is less or unlikely to result in the kinds of mistakes that are either harmful or irreversible.
(Also, let's remember that the vast majority of cases of kids being sexually or physically abused occur in environments where they have little to no autonomy. We want kids to be able to say "Fuck no!" to adults who want to use and abuse them, while we place them in an education system where the only way to succeed is to comply with the wishes of adults.)
I meant more along the lines of people who are super eager to say things like “you know in civil war times people got married…” or even people who think kids should just not pursue education at all. I agree kids should have choice… just within limits to make sure they don’t push themselves out of the game of life before they’re grown.
Absolutely. This is as important a process as it is difficult and delicate and the way it's best approached varies dramatically as humans are so consistently different and unpredictable.
Like I intend to let my son basically have free unfettered reign in the back yard and never tell him we bought this house because my office window allows me to monitor everything he’s doing back there and that I’m going to get a rappelling rope so I can respond to any emergency at a moment’s notice.
Yes, that's a common response. We say, "Maybe kids should be able to take responsibility for their own learning and have some say over how they spend the time that belongs to them (as if it could belong to anyone else)," and the reflexive response is often, "Oh, so why not let them play in traffic and drink bleach if they want to?"
It's not what we're talking about, but it represents a kind of universal concern for their well being.
In the same vein, 18 year olds are adult enough to decide to get surgery, but not to have a relationship with someone more than a few years older to them.
Nov 5, 2022·edited Nov 5, 2022Liked by Jesse Singal
Always odd to hear you guys sometimes mention Dr Edwards-Leeper. She was the psychologist responsible for helping me get on puberty blockers as an adolescent (approved at 14, actually received a supprelin implant [NOT lupron ]shortly after my 15th bday, then HRT at about 16 and a quarter), and although you guys disagree with this stuff I maintain that she saved my life, or at least ability to live a happy fulfilling QOL. When she did my outtake at like... 17 or 18? She said I was one of the most dramatic changes she had seen in a patient because by the start when I wasn't on blockers or Hormones I was extremely agoraphobic, unable to make eye contact and suicidal, when she did my out take she said I was one of the most dramatic changes in a patient she had ever witnessed because by adulthood I was , in the midst of transition, able to do public speaking and able to speak to strangers or basically minimal to no issues, as well as mitigating most of the issues that at least I believe were caused by GD. I know this community is mostly made of people extremely skeptical to outright anti transitioning so I thought it might be a decent analogy. This article, unsure if you guys have seen it goes over how Edward Leeper has been miscontrued by most of the media although I thought the article by Jesse which I was shocked to see her as a controversial figure, as she was quite a fairly progressive person in my experience in 2016. https://www.pacificu.edu/about/media/psychology-professor-laura-edwards-leeper-tapped-expert-youth-gender-dysphoria-and-related-issues
Also, please unblock me on twitter jesse @theofficialgami lol
Okay I unblocked you -- I tend to agree to such requests on principle, especially when I can't even remember why I blocked the person (I have done a lot of blocking over the years).
I didn't mean to imply I don't think there are cases like yours, and I'm sorry if it came across that way. I've written about some of them! I do think some people's QOL improves dramatically from transitioning. What I disagree with is the idea that if you delay access to blockers/hormones, that and that alone is likely to make a huge suicidality difference. I also disagree with the idea that the data we have, or even stories like yours, suggests that we can expect the same benefits from folks who proceed swiftly to blockers/hormones without much assessment or exploration.
Based on LEL's work I'd imagine you went through quite a process with her that included a lot of talk-y stuff. BUT I don't really know! Shoot me an email if there's more you'd share about it, and also let me know if you're cool with us potentially reading/reacting to your comment on our next episode. Won't do so without your permission.
(Agreed that it's crazy that she's now seen as problematic given how many trans people she has helped, and the evident care and thoroughness she brings to her work.)
Thank you! my understanding of E-L is she's more quick to give blockers/hormone through a psuedo Tavistock esque informed consent model, where a 13 yr old would be much more screened than like, a 17 year old who arrives at her office. This is just what I've found from a youtube video and some articles about her I've found, it's a shame she isn't quoted more. I looked on Reddit her name once and found some huge thread on a trans sub calling her basically a fascist for acknowledging social contagion. When I was transitioning as an adolescent I went to a peer group for Trans / "non binary" youth and it was almost exclusively natal females, with what appeared to be social influenced GD. They all had friend groups of mostly natal F nb/FtM/"transmasc" peers who would suddenly come out shortly after each other.
WRT E-L, It's been over half a decade so it isn't as fresh in my mind as it was then, (I met with her months before Trump won the 2016 presidency, I believe in June or so...) She does this adolescent and parent interview with grad students where she interviews the patient and parent together and then seperately and had at least me, unsure of mom fill out a ton of paperwork. I remember being like 14 and having to fill out like 6/7 sheets of paper and bubble in dots lol.. Through looking on youtube I found this video of her speaking from ~ 50 minutes onward that goes briefly into her program she oversees just because I've been delving into the science of all this stuff recently, it is fascinating. https://youtu.be/qL0J8wciNoc?t=2971
You're more than free to include my story! I don't know your email if you are interested in discussion but you're free to DM me on substack if thats possible or twitter. I also agree that gender exploration therapy or stuff similar is needed, I'm especially scared of the uptick in natal females with what appears to be ROGD, many of the girls I mentioned before had been raped or molested as kids/recently, it's a frightening trend where you have to balance how much gatekeeping is needed to get those who would benefit things that will help versus preventing ROGD or people unsuitable from potentially self harming thru this stuff.
Traveling this week and the rest of my month is a mess but shoot me an email at jesse.r.singal@gmail.com when you can and we'll discuss further if that's cool
I know she’s controversial but did help slow the gender-train roll of at least one parent I referred to her, and warned another very obviously ROGD parent to stay away from clinics and puberty blockers. I think she’s discerning and skeptical in the right way?
Everyone hates her, it seems, so I don’t know, it usually means you’re doing something right.
the radical trans rights people hate her because she doesnt unquestioningly affirm, and the radical gender criticals against all of this stuff hate her because she doesn't just deny treatments can help. It's a good sign both extreme hate her
Thanks for commenting here! Really enjoyed the respectful exchange between you and Jesse on this highly charged issue. Appreciate your story and perspective.
Just wanted to add a welcome and say I’m glad life is going well and hope it continues to do so. Any objections I have with youth transition are very particular and want everyone to live their happiest life.
Agree that this is a mea culpa for Stewart, but I think it has less to do with 20 year old jokes than very recent public appearances with, and defenses of, one Dave Chappelle. My guess is there are people on his show or in his life upset with him about that who then took the time to "educate" him on how serious this all is, and this is his penance. Just my own theory. I have no idea if it's true. But was just surprised that, in the aftermath and criticism of him and this episode, it wasn't brought up
Thanks for doing this one guys. This is a great episode to point someone to who has watched the Stewart or Oliver segments. Demoralizing is right. It’s so hard to push back against this level of Gish Galloping, and these types of shows have perfected the art of sounding “scientific” and legitimate to an audience that is only tangentially familiar with the topic being discussed. When you are familiar enough with a topic to see past the facade, it really makes you question every belief you hold. What else have I been lied to about? It’s really destabilizing.
Unrelated but similar. I just saw Stacy Abrams claim care for ectopic pregnancy might become illegal under Kemp, so I looked it up and Georgia's strict abortion law explicitly states ectopic pregnancy is not abortion and medical care (to remove the featus/fertilized egg) is allowed. (true for Texas as well.)
I'm pro choice and it drives me crazy when I hear politicians say stuff like that. (And there are serious problems with hospitals and doctors telling women with ectopic pregnancies that the entire Fallopian tube has to be removed when methotrexate or removing the second of the Fallopian tube where the embryo has attached will work just as well, so it's really important for politicians and activists to not make stuff up.) I'm at the point where I feel like I need to double check the source of everything I'm told.
Am definitely at the point where I double check everything if I feel I can find a neutral source. This all began with gender stuff that wasn't making sense to me, so I started digging in.
Side note, my mom had a fallopian tube removed in emergency surgery due to rupture from ectopic pregnancy. In 1966. Before Roe. I know crazy/extreme repubs can be bonkers, but seemed crazy that we would somehow go back even further than pre-Roe. So my spidey sense was up on that one. (She did go on to have 3 more kids, the other fallopian tube was intact.)
For me, it was racial issues that led me to start questioning the mainstream narrative of events. I fully supported BLM until a high profile incident of a cop shooting a black man occurred near where I live (2015’ish). The media got the story wrong and protesters swamped the downtown area. I started looking into other high profile shootings, and it turns out that nearly all of them were misrepresented by the media. By the time the gender craze started, I was already primed to question the narrative.
The bad thing about the gender issue is that it involves corruption from academic, scientific, and medical institutions in addition to journalism & government. It shows that the entire system that our liberal society is predicated on can be corrupted. Who are you left to turn to for truth at that point?
Yes - the coverage from BARpod has really opened my eyes on the racial narrative as well.
You are right on about the bad (even scary) situation with gender and the complete capture of the various institutions. Sometimes I think I've gone a little crazy. Like I can't believe it maybe I'm totally wrong. But - I think I'm not. The institutions have gone crazy. Destabilizing is right.
Don't understand this obsession with people being able to orgasm later in life, my wife has never once had one, and it doesn't seem to bother her
Update
Just got divorced
Literally LOL'd! Thanks I needed that. 🤣
lmao i thought this was unironic at first
I just KNEW youth transition advocates were sex negative!
10
I think people need to understand that if you want the true "orgasm" you need to do that yourself don't rely on others. Unless you're Jazz and then your SOL
Lol - thank you for your service.
This is the best $5 I spend each month.
Can any of you even imagine someone from NYT doing a step by step analysis like this?
As someone tasked with teaching critical thinking and detailed analysis to undergrads, this is a marvel. I've shared Jesse's work with students before---but this is a serious piece that even earned earnest praise from Katie.
Most of all, I appreciate how Jesse and Kative have not allowed the vitriol they receive to cloud their judgment. Those most worried about the trans kids/gay kids/all kids should be at least curious. I hate the result the ban on the left will have on all LGBTQ+ people. It makes me think of David Frum's prescient warning in The Atlantic (paraphrase) that if liberals won't police borders, fascists will.
I jokingly call it top shelf autism.
I think a couple of things J & K don't emphasize enough is
1. how illogical it is to mess with puberty, as the human phase of puberty is right up there with fetal development and the first six years of life in the importance and complexity of what is going on in the brain and the rest of the body, in how monumentally the body and brain are going through a growth spurt, how essential this is to future health, etc. and
2. how robust and obvious the research is that adolescents and teenagers are pretty much DESIGNED to make bad decisions, having markedly less inhibition and emotional regulation, increased need to rebel against voices of reason and increased need to fit in with their peers, etc.
It's all so obvious that it's easy to not think to mention it, but I think it's helpful to continually frame this issue with those facts.
The hot new meme argument I’ve been seeing lately is “the wrong puberty”, as in, by not giving puberty blockers to kids, we’re “torturing” them (yes, this is the language they use) by putting their body through some incorrect process.
I can’t imagine a more nonsensical pseudo-medical argument than that. Puberty is the process by which one’s body sexually matures and you sprout the secondary sex characteristics your genes dictate. In no sense can that be “wrong”. It’s pseudo-scientific bullshit that starts from a premise that most people don’t even accept, so I’m pretty confused as to where it came from and why all these people are spouting it all of a sudden.
Even if it was somehow "wrong," it's not like a million other things are not also going on during this time of development. Obviously lots of talk about bone and connective tissue development, and of course the brain and the billions-of-neurons-worth of insanely tangled connections that we can barely comprehend, all of it connected, all of this exploding during puberty. They talk as if puberty blockers can magically just "pause" one single complicated process while all else chugs along just fine. It's truly detached from all reality, and that scientists, journalists and The Jo[h]ns are talking this way and condemning anyone who questions it is through-the-looking-glass crazy, irresponsible, and nothing less than criminal. Let's get real about who is doing "violence." They have blood on their hands, in the form of the suffering that these kids-turned-adults have to endure for the rest of their now-tortured, fully medicalized, likely shortened lives.
There’s also the social developmental issues related with not going through puberty with your peers. All of this done for one reason; to more closely approximate the look of the opposite sex. I just understand how anyone ever thought this was a good idea.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. So many people comfortable asserting that minors MUST be certain... and we hear gender clinicians saying toddlers can “know” their gender identity.
How many of us are in professions now that we were CERTAIN we wanted to be when we grew up? Over time interests shift, people see that their aptitude doesn’t match the skill set a profession needs. Dreams smack right up against the wall of reality, & often times we’re better off for it bc we find we’re more fulfilled by something we couldn’t even conceive of as children.
Toddlers go for what they see is interesting, maybe a doll or a drum. Gender Ideologists claim this means something about the toddlers "gender identity." Based on stereotypes, the Ideologues then assert that the biological girl toddler, going for the noise-making drum, is signaling that she is "authentically" a boy. Boom, toddlers (not talking words and no control of bowel or bladder) know, however, their "gender identity." Utterly ludicrous!
Anybody who has parented a teenager or young adult, especially a girl, KNOWS that most of this IS a social-media driven trend, which has exploded into a social contagion—one with long lasting, possibly irreversible consequences. Teens and young adults are simply not emotionally mature enough or capable of comprehending or consenting to such drastic decisions! THIS IS INSANE!
I'm still listening...I just finished Jesse's interview with the Swedish doctor where she describes the documented harms of puberty blockers. It made me think of my dog. Her breeder said to be sure to let her complete at least one heat cycle to be sure she is hormonally mature enough for spay surgery. The breeder kept it simple saying something like, "we want her to have nice bones and smooth joints when she's an old lady". So this is something we know about mammals. Puberty is more than sex organs.
Having met a few dog breeders years ago when I worked in an animal hospital: if the people in your field make dog breeders sound reasonable, something is amiss.
(j/k, maybe)
Waiting until 2 or even later is becoming common in the Great Dane community. Something I think about often (twisted mind) is how little contact most Americans at least have with intact animals. Handle a young colt & you’ll never doubt the force of testosterone or what it takes to channel it.
Not my field, but I have two well-bred dogs (this is a whole thing for me) from breeders who are smart and reasonable people. But I get it! The dog show scene is bananas-cuckoo. I'm not part of that, I just purchase nice dogs.
This is exactly what I thought of as well. Our Bernese/Mastiff/Mutt is now 6 months old and we are having the same discussions with our vet. We are thinking when she's a year old we'll go ahead, but for a dog her size maybe now we're supposed to wait longer?
For large breeds, the current suggestion is to wait 2 years. Complete bone and joint development is very important for heavy breeds, so their growth plates should be finished developing before their hormones are affected.
Right, that makes sense to me and generally aligns with what our vet is saying. Guess I'll just stock up on doggy diapers to get through the heats until that two years is up!
I mostly know from cats, but as far as I have read there’s no evidence of different lifelong outcomes from post- vs pre-pubertal spay/neuter, despite the popular idea your breeder repeated.
Not much evidence of harm from waiting either, as long as they don’t get pregnant. But no particular reason to do so.
However, cats and dogs are not humans, and SO FAR we aren’t routinely recommending that human kids be spayed AFTER puberty either, although, give it a couple of years, who knows. Humans develop during puberty in specific, socially-linked ways.
These kids on PBs will also go on to lifelong cross-sex hormones which is, again, not what a spayed pet is going to do.
It is pretty interesting that neutered animals manage to develop properly and live successful lives (in pet or domestic animal terms). But humans are just really unusual animals in terms of cognitive and social development, so despite the intuitive appeal of the comparison to animals, they’re not all that much use as a guide.
Jesse, c’mon man, Oliver says “related”, not “righty”! Get yer facts straight! If I were even more of a stone-cold maniac than I already am, I might publicly drag you for this obvious anti-British bigotry.
But on a serious note, I’m from Alabama and both my parents are (or “was”, in my late mother’s case) conservatives—shocking, I know. I live in New York now, but whenever I visit my dad, we talk a lot about politics and culture and so on. He’s a thoughtful and sophisticated guy, was a lawyer for decades, but he’s from Alabama and has the accent to prove it. His big gripe about elite New York/Northeast media and cultural types is (and has been for as long as I can remember) that he has a sense that they’re always smugly condescending to him, on account of both his politics and where he lives.
I used to defend my fellow libs much more strenuously from this charge than I do now—though I will always insist that most regular New Yorkers, especially in Queens where I live (Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn are a different story), are not in the same category—but it’s because of precisely the sort of stuff Oliver and Stewart said, and especially the insufferable way they said it, that I’m no longer able to muster much enthusiasm for that kind of a defense anymore.
And to me, the real cherry on top is that Stewart brought on not just a conservative politician, but one with a thick Southern accent, knowing full well how a person who sounds like that will be received by his audience—and even if she was much more articulate and informed than she was on the show, she could always be dismissed (consciously or otherwise) as an ignorant, backward redneck. I personally don’t have a complex about my accent (which isn’t all that strong anyway) or where I’m from at all, but man, it’s impossible not to see what my dad is on about after witnessing a display like that.
Anyway, as usual this is much longer than I meant it to be, but hey, if you made it this far, thanks for indulging me.
My parents moved our family from the North to their native South when I was in middle school. As a grumpy teenager, I hated the new region and determined never to acquire a Southern accent, because I thought if I did I could never move North again without being stigmatized as a racist white Southerner.
And you know what? I was right. I did move back North, Yankee accent more or less intact, and my new friends would say all sorts of things to me about their assumptions about the racism and backwardness of "people" in the South, feeling free to do so because they couldn't hear my Southern accent. (They meant "white people" but forgot to say so. And they forgot or were unaware that much of the South is significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than much of the North, especially in the not particularly urban Northern states we were living in.)
To me, one of the more disgusting aspects of this prejudice is progressives' too-frequent mockery of poverty, low education rates, and low vaccination rates in the South. Those phenomena are real, and they disproportionately affect the very minorities and poor people progressives claim to care about. If you think people should have a strong social safety net or better access to medical care (either for trans issues or more basic diabetes and blood-pressure issues), you should want that for people who don't sound like you, don't look like you, don't have your hobbies, and don't go to your schools. If you only apply your principles to people you can personally relate to, sorry, I don't think much of your principles.
Really well said. Speaking as a lifelong Yankee, your observation on accent discrimination is true. Personally, I'd much rather listen to the Arkansas Attorney General than anyone with a vocal fry or uptalk, though.
I was born and raised in a red state, then moved to Manhattan in my early 20s to work in journalism. Since then I've lived all over America and in Europe and now I'm back where I started. One thing I've learned from my experience is that there are hicks EVERYWHERE.
I fought against my southern accent my entire life because of the negative connotations associated with it. I really hate that I did that now because I actually like southern accents and because I repressed my cultural identity due to shame. Now I just have a bland, neutral American accent.
I fought against mine, too, until I was in my thirties, and someone encouraged me to embrace it. Now I don't try to get rid of it, but I modulate it a bit depending on audience. It can endear you with Southerners or help you sound innocent in a conflict. :)
Family moved to the south when I was a tween. My parents didn’t believe me when I told them that we were being taught why the confederacy “needed our slaves”, until parent teacher conferences, where the same material was taught.
Even with that though, when we moved back to the Midwest, I had never experienced more open racism than I had in the first week in the Midwest. More than I ever had in the south.
Yeah, if I had a thesis about American racism and bigotry, it might be that there's lots of bad behavior that shows up differently in different regions and subcultures. One of my friends, whom I met in the Midwest, says she prefers to live in California because the racism there is the kind she's used to. I think that comment is both really sad and really insightful.
Totally, and I should’ve said “saw” rather than “experienced” racism because my family we’re all white-ish so the racism was never directed at us, they were just very free with it, thinking we would support their open racism as “one of them”.
This is a genuine question, so if it sounds at all snarky that's not my intention - but what do you think of the way Southerners (or at least the loudest ones online/politicians) talk about the North? I feel like I very often see language about the North and Northerners that maybe isn't as smug or condescending as the way Oliver and Stewart are sounding here, but is pretty hateful/vilifying.
I haven't seen this either, though I've seen them mock vegetarians, preppies, educated elites and such things.
Huh, I haven't encountered that among my family or friends in the South, so I can't really speak to it.
I realize this is an almost comically late reply, but who cares? I very much agree with what you’re saying, and yet I have to say: I think the fact that you and I both have lived in both places—I went off to live in Mass. in middle school and then moved back to the South, and then back the other way yet again (this time to New York) as an adult—is very important in allowing us to see the people of both regions as frail, imperfect human beings.
Because yeah, a lot of people in the Northeast have a smug superiority complex about their fellow countrymen who live farther south, and that isn’t really that common in the South. What IS common, though, is a sort of belligerent, defiant attitude towards the big-city elites/Yankees/etc., a sort of “not only are you no better than us, but you’re a bunch of paternalistic jerks who are trying to run our lives, too, and there’s nothing we could learn from you”. And of course, in reality the average Masshole isn’t terribly preoccupied with Southerners most of the time, and the same is true of most Alabamians.
The trouble is, the South (or at least the part of it that I come from) really is economically stunted and underdeveloped vis-à-vis the Northeast, as you said; likewise, the Northeast really is richer and more advanced in a lot of ways—though this difference isn’t what it used to be, at least in states like TN, GA, NC, and VA, among others. So both sides of this historical and cultural grudge match have a bit of truth they can lay claim to. That said, there’s no excuse for contempt or mockery, especially when it’s the (relatively) strong striking out against the (relatively) weak.
What we do about all this is, well, I guess it’s kind of the main plot line of American history, lol, so I’m not expecting a quick or clean solution. But it does seem like the South has come a long way in my lifetime—and to judge by the steady stream of New Yorkers decamping to places like North Carolina, it seems like a lot of people have been noticing that. Mixing of different groups, such that their members live amongst and get to know the “other side”, has often been helpful in reducing mutual hatreds, at least in the US; here’s hoping that continues to be true.
100%. I've always found it interesting that progressives outside the South tend to freely make condescending and insulting generalizations about Southerners being racist, oblivious to how this framing erases non-white Southerners.
Such a great comment
This is absolutely the crux of the matter for me. I grew up in or near blue cities and am usually taken for a member of the blue tribe but I am actually a deserter. The despicable and unwarranted condescension of the self styled elites makes me want to gag. I’d rather talk to a semi literate janitor than an educated type. I’d trust the janitor to have more accurate perceptions about the world.
I am an 'elite' in many, many ways, and as from a blue city. I fucking hate the way blue city elite types look down on anyone they see as not 'one of them.'
To be fair to the Arkansas lady I don’t trust Stewart’s team to have edited her interview fairly at all.
I hadn't considered that, but you make a good point.
Yes! As a native of Charleston, South Carolina I hate that condescending attitude!
I love everything about this comment. I'm from a rural community in the midwest, but have been a big city liberal most of my adult life. And ... I've just (well, over the past 2 years) woken up to the smugness, the condescension that I was such a part of. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
"Stewart brought on not just a conservative politician, but one with a thick Southern accent, knowing full well how a person who sounds like that will be received by his audience"
I thought of this too, immediately.
I am still listening. But I wonder if you noticed this as well. Jon Stewart asks the endocrinologist what is the harm of waiting until a kid is 18 to do gender affirming care and the endocrinologist says that gender affirming care doesn't mean medical intervention, it just means treating the child with respect and without gender affirming care, there is a 40% chance of the kid trying to commit suicide.
I am 90% sure that is the most obfuscatory language possible. If gender affirming care did not mean medical intervention, there would not be this huge jump on medical transitions. And I am pretty sure the 40% was always connected to medical transitions.
And as for suicide. I do suicide assessments every day. People will say they have tried to kill themselves. When you ask follow ip questions, usually they just strongly strongly thought about it bit never did anything about it.
Also. Self harm and suicide attempts are two entirely different things.
Yeah I think you’d find that nearly 100 percent of adolescents have had thoughts about suicide. I’m not sure any stat that says some subset has thought about suicide has any meaning whatsoever
That's what I thought until I met my husband. Apparently, some people have solid mental health even as teenagers. But what percentage?
And the 40% stat gets twisted all kinds of ways. Someone on Twitter today: "Many of these kids, about 40%, if not given gender affirming care, won’t make it to adulthood."
Wow that’s amazing nobody noticed all those adolescent mass suicides until recently
This is what I always come back to! Where were all these suicides a mere 10 years ago (and beyond)?
Just like how nobody noticed that traumatic memories can be "repressed" until the 80s. Only the ones involving satanic ritual and sexual abuse that nobody else can verify actually happened, though. Or like how none of us noticed that abuse can result in multiple personalities in the same person until that movie Sybil came out.
Just incredible how ignorant people were for all of human history, because psychological disorders are absolutely never influenced by social factors or contagion, at all, never.
In fact, isn't there now more teen suicide _and_ more trans medicine?
There us not more teen suicide. There are a lot more suicide attempts and a hell.of a lot more self harm. Which. Yes. Correlates to more gender affirming care
"Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10-24 and has been increasing every year since 2007"
https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/even-before-covid-19-pandemic-youth-suicide-already-at-record-high/2021/04
"Suicide Rate Is Spiking Upwards in Preadolescent Children"
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-03-15/suicide-rate-is-spiking-upwards-in-preadolescent-children
I suppose this could point to a trend only in pre-teens and 20-25 year-olds (I don't have time to dissect), but that seems unlikely.
Also still points to the fact that increased trans medicine hasn't translated to decreased suicidality.
AFAIK the 40% isn't without "gender affirming care" but just only trans people. In that study the people who got surgery had higher rates in general (I don't think there is the broader "gender affirming care" breakdown in that study).
And isn't the 40% attempts rather than completed suicides? I've seen so many people state it the above way, as if there's no difference between taking 6 Benadryl and actually dying.
Yeah, & if they’re completing the survey to begin with I’m pretty sure they didn’t expire.
Pretty much any stat that stops conversation is there to do just that. See, I’ve proven I’m right! There’s this stat... kudos to Jesse for actually looking at how the sausage I mean how the stats are made
Sounds like classic goalpost moving and changing the definition of terms mid discussion. Garbage that wouldn't pass a second rate high school debate is marquis media from HBO et al.
I know I need to hear voices / opinions outside my own view so I don’t fall into the echo chamber trap, but it was almost impossible to listen to such smug bastardness without wanting to throw my phone against the wall. Stewart & Oliver were not trying to change minds or present fact, they were playing to the gallery and I for one can’t wait til a whole tsunami of mea culpas wipe the smug away! Rant over, as you were.
He was rude, with a side of you must be stupid b/c you have a southern accent.
I used to love Jon Stewart & John Oliver... but I couldn’t help but cringe at how rude Stewart was in that interview, & Oliver’s tone overall.
Then I wonder whether they were always like that but I didn’t realize it, or if I’m so different now in my views, or if they’ve just gone off the deep end?
I can’t help but laugh when ppl make it out like only far-right people could be skeptical about irreversible gender medicine... I bought John Oliver’s book Marlon Bundo about Mike Prince’s family rabbit envisioned as gay, & I’ve read it to my kids many times. I’m not a Trump supporter, ffs.
Yeah, it boggles my mind how overbearing and smug Jon was to that Attorney General. Was he always this way? I think I remember him treating Bill O'Reilly decently...with a modicum of respect. But Jon was out to eviscerate that woman...wonder if some aspect of his personal life played a role? Perhaps he was instrumental in helping a trans-identifying child to get gender affirmation care, and if that care is based on all lies, AND that child has taken dangerous drugs/ hormones long term and/or undergone traumatic surgeries, that's a very hard mistake to accept...
" I think I remember him treating Bill O'Reilly decently...with a modicum of respect."
I remember that, too.
SAME!
Nice profile pic choice.
SAME!
It seems clear to me that social transition is problematic because how does a kid back out of it? With the incredible adulation and support that it is involved now in affirming a "trans child" how would a young person change their mind without feeling like they've let people down? Even more problematic is putting a small child in school stealth so that their peers never know that they've made a change. Can you imagine being a little kid and changing your mind and then having to explain to your entire peer group that you're actually the opposite sex of what you said you were? Then there is also just the basic concept of identity formation. It seems that social transition is the big change from the Dutch approach and probably the cause of the reversal of desistance numbers.
I'm so surprised I don't hear this discussed more often (though of course it's possible I've just missed it). Pressure to "remain trans" certainly won't help one's mental health.
I honestly believe most of the support trans people (of all ages) receive is done out of a genuine desire to help them through a difficult process, but going too far in this support--to the point of celebrating and excessively uplifting someone--just makes it harder to change one's mind. Like you said, they don't want to let those people down, but they also probably don't want to lose the sense of community (which is extremely important to anyone's sense of self, identity and well-being) that comes with it.
The higher you raise someone, the scarier the idea of falling becomes.
That's kind of how I wound up in this whole rabbit hole. A couple years ago my brother told me that my 6-year old niece had identified as nonbinary. I was like "ok, good for her" but didn't really say much else. Apparently when she said it, it was in front of a bunch of people (mostly adults I think) at school and she got all this applause and praise. Some lady came up to her and said "that's so amazing! I have a friend who is nonbinary!" Yadda yadda yadda. As though this scene would have played out the same way had she said she was a girl.
Anyway, this...situation has made my brother (through pressure from his wife I'm certain) buy into literally every TRA talking point in existence. On top of his completely uncritical swallowing of activist rhetoric, he and his wife insist that we refer to my niece as "they/them". My sister-in-law went so far as to announce it on Facebook on "international pronouns day" and said "it may not seem like a big deal but this is life for death stuff for these kiddos." They bought her a water bottle (from Amazon of course) that says "They! Them!" in cute script over wild colors. It is beyond ridiculous.
Meanwhile, my niece is barely gender nonconforming (I'd say almost completely girly) and doesn't really seem to care if you let a "she" slip here or there. It seems that the whole thing is being done to appease/please her parents. My brother and I have gotten into more than one fight about the entire gender culture war situation, and he has written me a series of extra-long emails, citing Jon Stewart among other trash sources in his quest to get me to see things his way. His emails have also been kind of nasty. But I haven't responded yet. I had a massive response written up (similar to the show notes) that I was going to send him but I think I'm probably just going to hold off. Debating whether or not to send him this episode. It almost certainly wouldn't go well. I'd undoubtedly hear something like "I'm not going to listen to a couple TRANSPHOBES try and ruin kids lives!" or some such. What a mess!
It seems so obvious, but everyone acts like it's harmless.
Does anybody else find it disturbing how quickly Americans have gone from “sex change surgeries for kids aren’t happening, nobody would do that!!” to “that’s an intensely personal medical decision, how dare you politicize this”?
American left wing media just completely skipped over the “we can’t believe this is happening, surely the biggest medical scandal of the 21st century” part.
Is this what shifting the “Overton window” means?
Hmmm? Sounds a bit like, "We don't teach CRT in these K-12 schools. It's a law school theory." Now, CRT must be imbedded in every content area to remedy the injustices of a country founded on White Supremacy. Okay, white students into this affinity group and all others in that affinity group. Go!"
What happened to Stewart and Oliver is indicative of a wider phenomenon, I think: Nobody is allowed to just be goofy and make fun of shit anymore. That’s what they used to do and they’d even say, in effect, Don’t listen to us on important things.
It’s like everybody has to be on the “right side of history” (whatever that means) on every issue. I’ve heard Jesse lament about the end of the “old days” of the internet, when people were just fuckoffs for fun.
We’re all familiar with how this works on the left but it’s true on right too. I remember hearing about the Proud Boys some time ago and they were mostly just a group of harmless dipshits who wanted to drink beer and act bro-y. Fast forward two years and they’re in my home city marching through the streets in paramilitary gear looking like American Isis scaring residents and vandalizing property.
It’s like fuck man why are the stakes so high on everything now? We did we all decide to get so serious?
I think it is more that when Stewart started, Conservatives had a lot of political power and a lot more cultural power, especially after 9/11. Stewart does not realize that overall progressives have won the culture war. He is not pushing against anything
I realized several years ago that progressives won the culture war but never got the memo. Part of the cultural identity/mythology is that we are the ones on the margins fighting the bad forces, and now apparently forever embattled.
I think seeing other famous people’s bad tweets drudged up for public shaming broke a lot of people’s brains.
I mean, think about it. You see that happening to someone else, and you’re an entertainer--someone whose self-worth hinges on the approval of others-- you will do basically anything to avoid the hammer.
Nothing really matters. I call this Bohemian Rhapsody Activism.
My theory is that it has to do with advertising. I know this sounds like a non sequitur but hear me out.
Early 2010s, Facebook and Google were stealing everyone's ad revenue. Publishers responded with clickbait/ragebait to recapture attention and ad revenue. Ragebait is effective, but you need something to rage against to make it work. Having the Other Team on the opposite side of the political spectrum as your foil makes ragebait effective. But then you get the rage treadmill where we're in an existential fight for survival against those people who want to destroy democracy and ruin your children. Such a super serious culture war demands super serious people. No room for joking when everything is an existential fight for life or death.
Edit: Sorry, hit post too soon.
That link to Carole Hoover’s thread was brilliant. I don’t understand why these people are so obsessed with breaking down the “sex binary.” Even if you accept that “sex is a spectrum”, that doesn’t mean that lopping off healthy organs and “socially transitioning” adolescents is a good idea.
I fully support gender non conformists. Hey I was one back in the day when girls weren’t supposed to wear pants to school. Tomboy etc., male friends. Would I have been pressured into becoming a boy had I grown up now? I wonder.
Great point. In fact sex is a spectrum is almost an anti intervention argument--if you were born some third sex then what do you have to transition to?
It’s kinda like being “assigned” a sex at birth. If you were merely assigned that sex then just assign yourself to the correct sex and you’re done! No medical intervention needed!
There's no narcissistic fun in that.
I think for the same reason as people believe in blank-slatism, the idea that we're all equally capable of everything. If that is true that we should expect equality and in cases where it doesn't occur something nefarious has happened which needs correction.
It's partly a psycho-social motivation to have the world be less complicated, and gives ammo to their desired compassionate ends. In the sex binary case, the people seeking to confound it are nearly all of the belief that trans people need to be protected, and saying things like sex doesn't exist allows them to claim that anyone can claim to be anything, and people only oppose that for nefarious reasons.
I agree, I think this exactly the position of the genderists. The thing that drives me mad is that for them, freedom requires drugs, surgery, and endless external validation. I just can’t see freedom in that - it’s dependency on dependency. They could be free by not trying to be opposite sex, or no binary, but just being a non-mainstream expression of their sex. The social/tribal aspect seems to be the real motivation.
Good points. I don’t understand why the ppl pushing this as being good for GNC kids don’t see how incredibly fragile they’re teaching them to be. Saying that ppl who don’t use their preferred pronouns are denying their “existence.” It’s like, no, they exist whether or not I am compelled to repeat those words. No one owes anyone else validation.
The extremists may very well be the same sort that insist on feeding their cats nothing but peas and carrots!
If the human body is a social construct though...one can always reconstruct.
If 13 year olds aren't children, there should be no problem with trying them as adults, right?
And let's sell cigarettes and offer tattoos in middle schools.
I know this seems like groomer discourse or whatever but I have deep suspicions about the ulterior motives of anyone who argues to give kids really broad powers of choice.
As a former teacher, my interest in giving kids really broad powers of choice are focused on education, but I think there are other areas in which we can safely give them more autonomy. But one way we grow and learn is to make mistakes, so we have to be sure that the autonomy we give kids is less or unlikely to result in the kinds of mistakes that are either harmful or irreversible.
(Also, let's remember that the vast majority of cases of kids being sexually or physically abused occur in environments where they have little to no autonomy. We want kids to be able to say "Fuck no!" to adults who want to use and abuse them, while we place them in an education system where the only way to succeed is to comply with the wishes of adults.)
I meant more along the lines of people who are super eager to say things like “you know in civil war times people got married…” or even people who think kids should just not pursue education at all. I agree kids should have choice… just within limits to make sure they don’t push themselves out of the game of life before they’re grown.
Absolutely. This is as important a process as it is difficult and delicate and the way it's best approached varies dramatically as humans are so consistently different and unpredictable.
Like I intend to let my son basically have free unfettered reign in the back yard and never tell him we bought this house because my office window allows me to monitor everything he’s doing back there and that I’m going to get a rappelling rope so I can respond to any emergency at a moment’s notice.
Childhood is the best invention of the modern age in my opinion. Now to kick all the 30 year olds who don’t want to grow up out of it.
Reread this and just wanted to say didn’t intend any hostility as I seemed kind of cold here upon a reread.
Get 'em behind the wheel of cars and buses, too!
Yes, that's a common response. We say, "Maybe kids should be able to take responsibility for their own learning and have some say over how they spend the time that belongs to them (as if it could belong to anyone else)," and the reflexive response is often, "Oh, so why not let them play in traffic and drink bleach if they want to?"
It's not what we're talking about, but it represents a kind of universal concern for their well being.
13 year olds aren’t children but somehow 29 year old grad students can LITERALLY be groomed by professors that are 31?
In the same vein, 18 year olds are adult enough to decide to get surgery, but not to have a relationship with someone more than a few years older to them.
Always odd to hear you guys sometimes mention Dr Edwards-Leeper. She was the psychologist responsible for helping me get on puberty blockers as an adolescent (approved at 14, actually received a supprelin implant [NOT lupron ]shortly after my 15th bday, then HRT at about 16 and a quarter), and although you guys disagree with this stuff I maintain that she saved my life, or at least ability to live a happy fulfilling QOL. When she did my outtake at like... 17 or 18? She said I was one of the most dramatic changes she had seen in a patient because by the start when I wasn't on blockers or Hormones I was extremely agoraphobic, unable to make eye contact and suicidal, when she did my out take she said I was one of the most dramatic changes in a patient she had ever witnessed because by adulthood I was , in the midst of transition, able to do public speaking and able to speak to strangers or basically minimal to no issues, as well as mitigating most of the issues that at least I believe were caused by GD. I know this community is mostly made of people extremely skeptical to outright anti transitioning so I thought it might be a decent analogy. This article, unsure if you guys have seen it goes over how Edward Leeper has been miscontrued by most of the media although I thought the article by Jesse which I was shocked to see her as a controversial figure, as she was quite a fairly progressive person in my experience in 2016. https://www.pacificu.edu/about/media/psychology-professor-laura-edwards-leeper-tapped-expert-youth-gender-dysphoria-and-related-issues
Also, please unblock me on twitter jesse @theofficialgami lol
Okay I unblocked you -- I tend to agree to such requests on principle, especially when I can't even remember why I blocked the person (I have done a lot of blocking over the years).
I didn't mean to imply I don't think there are cases like yours, and I'm sorry if it came across that way. I've written about some of them! I do think some people's QOL improves dramatically from transitioning. What I disagree with is the idea that if you delay access to blockers/hormones, that and that alone is likely to make a huge suicidality difference. I also disagree with the idea that the data we have, or even stories like yours, suggests that we can expect the same benefits from folks who proceed swiftly to blockers/hormones without much assessment or exploration.
Based on LEL's work I'd imagine you went through quite a process with her that included a lot of talk-y stuff. BUT I don't really know! Shoot me an email if there's more you'd share about it, and also let me know if you're cool with us potentially reading/reacting to your comment on our next episode. Won't do so without your permission.
(Agreed that it's crazy that she's now seen as problematic given how many trans people she has helped, and the evident care and thoroughness she brings to her work.)
Thank you! my understanding of E-L is she's more quick to give blockers/hormone through a psuedo Tavistock esque informed consent model, where a 13 yr old would be much more screened than like, a 17 year old who arrives at her office. This is just what I've found from a youtube video and some articles about her I've found, it's a shame she isn't quoted more. I looked on Reddit her name once and found some huge thread on a trans sub calling her basically a fascist for acknowledging social contagion. When I was transitioning as an adolescent I went to a peer group for Trans / "non binary" youth and it was almost exclusively natal females, with what appeared to be social influenced GD. They all had friend groups of mostly natal F nb/FtM/"transmasc" peers who would suddenly come out shortly after each other.
WRT E-L, It's been over half a decade so it isn't as fresh in my mind as it was then, (I met with her months before Trump won the 2016 presidency, I believe in June or so...) She does this adolescent and parent interview with grad students where she interviews the patient and parent together and then seperately and had at least me, unsure of mom fill out a ton of paperwork. I remember being like 14 and having to fill out like 6/7 sheets of paper and bubble in dots lol.. Through looking on youtube I found this video of her speaking from ~ 50 minutes onward that goes briefly into her program she oversees just because I've been delving into the science of all this stuff recently, it is fascinating. https://youtu.be/qL0J8wciNoc?t=2971
You're more than free to include my story! I don't know your email if you are interested in discussion but you're free to DM me on substack if thats possible or twitter. I also agree that gender exploration therapy or stuff similar is needed, I'm especially scared of the uptick in natal females with what appears to be ROGD, many of the girls I mentioned before had been raped or molested as kids/recently, it's a frightening trend where you have to balance how much gatekeeping is needed to get those who would benefit things that will help versus preventing ROGD or people unsuitable from potentially self harming thru this stuff.
Traveling this week and the rest of my month is a mess but shoot me an email at jesse.r.singal@gmail.com when you can and we'll discuss further if that's cool
sure thing!
I know she’s controversial but did help slow the gender-train roll of at least one parent I referred to her, and warned another very obviously ROGD parent to stay away from clinics and puberty blockers. I think she’s discerning and skeptical in the right way?
Everyone hates her, it seems, so I don’t know, it usually means you’re doing something right.
the radical trans rights people hate her because she doesnt unquestioningly affirm, and the radical gender criticals against all of this stuff hate her because she doesn't just deny treatments can help. It's a good sign both extreme hate her
Just wanted to say I love not only hearing your perspective but seeing it here. I'd love to see you interviewed on the podcast
thanks!
Thanks for commenting here! Really enjoyed the respectful exchange between you and Jesse on this highly charged issue. Appreciate your story and perspective.
Just wanted to add a welcome and say I’m glad life is going well and hope it continues to do so. Any objections I have with youth transition are very particular and want everyone to live their happiest life.
Agree that this is a mea culpa for Stewart, but I think it has less to do with 20 year old jokes than very recent public appearances with, and defenses of, one Dave Chappelle. My guess is there are people on his show or in his life upset with him about that who then took the time to "educate" him on how serious this all is, and this is his penance. Just my own theory. I have no idea if it's true. But was just surprised that, in the aftermath and criticism of him and this episode, it wasn't brought up
That and his lab leak rant, I thought "my God, Stewart's swallowed the red pills!!" But then he immediately ferreted back to this.
The lizard people replaced him after that rant with an NPC clone. I cannot be unconvinced of this.
Forgot about that!
Thanks for doing this one guys. This is a great episode to point someone to who has watched the Stewart or Oliver segments. Demoralizing is right. It’s so hard to push back against this level of Gish Galloping, and these types of shows have perfected the art of sounding “scientific” and legitimate to an audience that is only tangentially familiar with the topic being discussed. When you are familiar enough with a topic to see past the facade, it really makes you question every belief you hold. What else have I been lied to about? It’s really destabilizing.
Yes. So true.
Unrelated but similar. I just saw Stacy Abrams claim care for ectopic pregnancy might become illegal under Kemp, so I looked it up and Georgia's strict abortion law explicitly states ectopic pregnancy is not abortion and medical care (to remove the featus/fertilized egg) is allowed. (true for Texas as well.)
I feel I can't believe anything anymore.
I'm pro choice and it drives me crazy when I hear politicians say stuff like that. (And there are serious problems with hospitals and doctors telling women with ectopic pregnancies that the entire Fallopian tube has to be removed when methotrexate or removing the second of the Fallopian tube where the embryo has attached will work just as well, so it's really important for politicians and activists to not make stuff up.) I'm at the point where I feel like I need to double check the source of everything I'm told.
Yes! I'm pro choice too.
Am definitely at the point where I double check everything if I feel I can find a neutral source. This all began with gender stuff that wasn't making sense to me, so I started digging in.
Side note, my mom had a fallopian tube removed in emergency surgery due to rupture from ectopic pregnancy. In 1966. Before Roe. I know crazy/extreme repubs can be bonkers, but seemed crazy that we would somehow go back even further than pre-Roe. So my spidey sense was up on that one. (She did go on to have 3 more kids, the other fallopian tube was intact.)
For me, it was racial issues that led me to start questioning the mainstream narrative of events. I fully supported BLM until a high profile incident of a cop shooting a black man occurred near where I live (2015’ish). The media got the story wrong and protesters swamped the downtown area. I started looking into other high profile shootings, and it turns out that nearly all of them were misrepresented by the media. By the time the gender craze started, I was already primed to question the narrative.
The bad thing about the gender issue is that it involves corruption from academic, scientific, and medical institutions in addition to journalism & government. It shows that the entire system that our liberal society is predicated on can be corrupted. Who are you left to turn to for truth at that point?
Yes - the coverage from BARpod has really opened my eyes on the racial narrative as well.
You are right on about the bad (even scary) situation with gender and the complete capture of the various institutions. Sometimes I think I've gone a little crazy. Like I can't believe it maybe I'm totally wrong. But - I think I'm not. The institutions have gone crazy. Destabilizing is right.
And I recently made this argument to my friend about Stacy. Why lie? Why fear monger? Why scare your own potential constituents? Bad all around.
Stuff like that is why Kemp is running away with the election.
I haven't seen "Gish Galloping" typed out in a number of years. Well done, Stefan. I mean that sincerely.
Haha thanks. I decided to dust off an oldie that I first heard during the “New Atheism” days.
Well said.