I've begun to comment a dozen times since listening to this episode and the debate and just felt too angry and discouraged to put helpful words together. But I'll try...I find Wu's use/creation/embellishment of a developmentally unlikely suicidal narrative irresponsible as it will surely be used as more insistence that we transition children. Wu's eye rolls and condescending communication of "Oh, you just couldn't know how we all feel (with a wink wink to the "non binary" and wrong sex hormone riddled, ideologically captured audience) at Sapir's oh so patient and spot on attempt to expose gender ideology as homophobic and regressive are beyond ironic as the only fodder for his imperative to transition that he can offer are "Homophobic Hometown!" "I wanted to play with Barbies!" "I was mercilessly bullied for being effeminate!" The sadness I would feel for his past is just eclipsed by how his words and inconsistencies will be used to continue to justify sex modification attempts as opposed to how his childhood wounds could be used to help highlight the need to keep changing societal dynamics and acceptance of sex stereotype non conformity.
That is such an accurate description of Wu's constant playing games and jumping around in what they say about what they believe and what they're advocating for.
Some things that really bother me about people like Wu claiming they've always felt this way and the girls can maybe wait but we must transition the boys early that I want them to give good faith answers to.
1) puberty blockers + early estrogen on boys do usually equal better passing. But that combo also results in much higher longterm health complications including sexual dysfunction, urinary tract dysfunction, bone health problems, and risk of sepsis and death with surgeries trying to compensate for the puberty blocked results. Jazz Jennings is a very public example of this. Is Wu & company willing to consider whether the longterm mental and quality of life effects of these chronic conditions may be worse than the mental health effects of not passing?
2) Wu's story of their first memory being attempting suicide at age 4 and the stories parents tell of 3-year-olds trying to cut off their genitals - certainly we have to consider that this NOT a "normal" expression of gender dysphoria but potentially very serious signs of abuse, trauma, or broader psychological dysfunction that must be considered outside of only a "typical trans child" narrative. Whenever I receive mandated reporter training, all of these would be co spidered massive red flags and they should not be swept away just because a parent or adult looking back puts a trans child narrative on it.
3) How can we trust the stories of "I've always felt this way?" when they are so frequently open about rewriting their histories to get what they want? (See link below for an example)
And Jamie, I am with you about the young women. I think Cori is right, the answer is to go after the people enabling and pouring fuel on their dysregulation
I listened to an interview with Brianna Wu on Spectator TV, a podcast published by the conservative-leaning British magazine The Spectator. She seemed to be taking a much more hostile attitude to child transitioning than the one she expressed at this college debate.
Question number 1 on point number 1 is, when in the FUCK did "passing better" become any part of of medicine?
I'm being rhetorical: the answer is, it happened when "passing better" was declared a "health benefit" through the magic of psychology.
The same magic will be used to declare "being more attractive" to be a health benefit before long. When they can prescribe "medically necessary" nose jobs -- and charge insurances & medicaid -- they'll rake it in like you never dreamed. They, on the other hand, are not merely dreaming of it, but planning how to do it, and salivating over it.
Psychology is unscientific fraud. Uproot the poisoned tree. Until we do, each crop of poisonous fruit will be heavier than the last. This, in comparison, is nothing.
A few years ago I read a story online and I can’t find it anywhere now; I’m wondering if anyone knows it? It was written by a trans person who had been asked to read a list of names at a Trans Day Of Remembrance. They thought the numbers must be wrong - if this many people were being killed for being trans, things actually were really bad. So they started doing their own research on the names they’d been given, and found that the causes of death were pretty random; carjacking, shot outside a club at 3 AM (when 2 other non trans people were also sho).) Sadly, most of them were domestic violence, which maybe you can make a case for that having something to do with their trans-ness, but it’s not roving gangs of trans bashers.
I remember it being a well written article about not catastrophizing violence against trans people. Anyone remember it?
I just listened to the debate between Wu and Sapir. Wow. The trumpet, the harmonica, the questions from the audience. Wow!
You're not kidding "the babies are in charge." Does not bode well for the future. Btw, this has been the most focused, interesting, intelligent episode yet. Good use of time.
What we don’t know is-how would Brianna have been if he’d gotten psychological help vs medical help.
Brianna can’t be the person to speak about this because he is inevitably going to support the idea that he did what was right for himself, because the collateral damage to his life and body is so extreme as to almost certainly keep him from ever being able to psychologically recover from it if he admitted the reality. And even if he’s truly happy (maybe?) and healthy (unlikely)…he is one rare circumstance, and it would be more sane to protect children from this mistake than to open the gates for them to harm themselves because it helped one single person.
Old joke is gay men are huge egos on no foundation, no joke is trans often have NO idea who they ARE, 1 reason we see so much misogyny from RTA. #terfisaslur
I think it is imperative to include and retain a correct sex-marker (NOT "gender-marker") on drivers' licenses and passports for reasons of safeguarding connected with the accurate detection, reporting, and punishment of crimes. All forms of false identity are impermissible for a reason.
Jamie, I am so with you on being glued to the ceiling in dismay with these young women. Their learned--nay, forged--helplessness and massive egocentricity is appalling. And if they cannot do jack squat for themselves, how on earth can they do anything for the world? But there is a familiar little word that should, I feel, be included in these discussions: entitlement. Entitlement, entitlement, entitlement.
Cory, [I vote for "-y," you can shoot me later], I deeply appreciate your point about the possibility of many potential detransitioners waiting in the wings, hesitant because of the utter lack of social support for detransition. So I'll voice a little hope that maybe someone who'd like to make peace with their sex might be watching, listening and reading--and I'll say to that person that there are millions of us across the country, of every political stripe, of every faith or none, of every color, who do and would support you in this.
Eventually, public opinion will be the mirror held up to the brainwashed non-believers. Not the Democrats coddling them, not the Republicans excluding them (though that is a push in the right direction). But the subtle and then tsunami like power of public opinion. And behind that public opinion are the invisible heroes: like each of you. Slow motion, incremental evidence, experience, politics, slowly building until the big enormous undeniable force of reality wins. But there will always be some percentage and an ongoing effort behind the scenes by trans activists because there is too much money, perversion and obsession to stop it completely.
Hah! It's in your mouse-over bio, so I didn't get much...if you do run, make sure your campaign has a tech-savvy young intern or two!
(and as for where one might find young tech-savvy interns who have their heads on straight on certain subjects -- in my experience, they're all hiding in one corner of tumblr or another. here's one - https://www.tumblr.com/a-bed-of-moss - she's not quite seen through all the lies of "psychology" yet, but once one sees through the gender thing, it's only a matter of time.)
Very, very few people are willing to acknowledge a plain reality: that everyone in any position of oversight anywhere - in academia, in medicine, in government, in media -- who condoned psychosexual genital mutilation under color of medicine must go, and must go forever. They have failed a most basic test of sense, intelligence, courage, and human decency. They are worth nothing. If that means 99 out of 100 humanities professors, university administrators, hospital administrators, etc -- so. be. it. There is no other answer.
To get specific, here,, most people with large internet followings are -- as you would expect -- very social people. This is a strength, in that they make a lot of friends, often important ones: but it is also a weakness, in that they have a hard time saying "no and go away" to other people of their general polite circle, even when those people are self-evidently nuts, or evil.
I am not as social as they -- as a result, I have rather fewer followers (although one very big one). I can assure you, however, that you will not see me trust-washing any condoner of child castration, or any condoner of the criminal-in-chief. I haven't posted much in a while, but I'm about to drop a whopper, and I have big plans for the summer.
Agree with all the criticisms of Brianna Wu mentioned in the episode. I've mentioned here before that my feelings about her are complicated (I use "her" for Brianna Wu, please grant that I am not confused about her sex).
That said, whatever her motivated reasoning might be, I think it's very valuable that a person with her vaunted Lived Experience (TM) strongly defended the following to that audience:
- Leor Sapir is not a trans-phobe.
- The science behind youth gender medicine is weak.
- Girls should not medically transition.
- "Non-binary" as a political movement is damaging to the left.
- WPATH is discredited by scandal.
- Men are cynically taking advantage of self-ID to harm women.
- The current standards behind GAC in the US should be much more restrictive than they are.
Yes, my views are much more in alignment with Leor Sapir's and I think he is outstanding at articulating the current state of the science and policy (though I did think it was unfair of him to dominate so much of the first hour of the debate). But if I want to change the minds of moderate liberals - people like my friends and family whose soft support keep this thing going - I'll have them listen to that version of Brianna Wu first every time. A transgender person sharing the concerns she did during the debate will get their attention in a way a Leor Sapir Powerpoint can't. It's absolutely a good thing to have her out there saying these things. The more the better as far as I'm concerned.
Whether any minds were changed on the night of the debate, they did hear all of those concerns expressed by someone many of them are inclined to take seriously. I think there's a very good chance some seeds were planted. Who knows what will happen to some of those seeds in the coming months and years.
Also, a little relevant context about Middlebury College: This is the same place (maybe even the same auditorium) where a talk with Charles Murray was prevented from happening by student activists in 2017. People were even injured. So yes, it's absolutely a sign of improvement that this talk went on with the only disruptions being an untalented multi-instrumentalist and some grandstanding during the Q&A.
Like Sempronius in Addison's Cato, they sense the tide shifting, and they want to abandon a few salients to maintain the front for a future offensive. It's very, very obvious.
No quarter. None of these people are worth a grain of trust. They must all go.
Legit points about what Wu conceded. And I agree people who are brainwashed might listen to him if even accidentally while they will reject Sapir outright. BUT keep in mind, whatever Wu concedes is not in good faith. It’s-give an inch so we can take a mile -after we have lulled the skeptics of gender ideology into a place where we let our guard down.
Seconding your discussion--in mistakes were made, but not by me (Tavris & Aronson) they describe how memories actually are modified by what one believes (often not consciously!). So people might be telling you what they truly believe happened. I think this possibly happens to young "seekers" looking for an organizing principle/meaning/reason for their experiences, especially distress.
Aronson and Tavris have an amusing anecdote of one person's long held belief about a past event turning out to be false...and this person studied autobiographic memory or something himself! (might have misremembered :) ).
I watched the podcast on YouTube. I wanted to mention to Jamie that this week's Kansas City Week in Review on PBS had 2 reporters on. It's on YouTube, both talked about suicide among youth and such decisions. How do they still get this information and spread it?
Exulansic is doing great work to reveal that gender “care” does not prevent suicides in her series called “the dead names”. I wish someone would interview her!
I have the same question. From what I’ve been finding it comes from government funded nonprofit news agencies that have been set up to censor and promote certain agendas, including this one. Also funded by the billionaires that are pushing gender, ideology, queer theory and more. USAID is one of the culprits.
This was a fantastic episode. I am rereading “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukuaniff, which addresses/explains so many of the issues brought up in this episode (I.e., words as “violence” an unhealthy culture of “safetyism”, etc.).
I echo Jamie’s concerns about the girls in the audience and how angry, fragile and indoctrinated they seem….when I heard the non-binary students yelling at Leor, I got a pit in my stomach. I have a 15 year old daughter who says she’s “non-binary” and has reacted almost the same exact way to me when I try to discuss these issues with her. It’s very scary as a parent because I don’t know how to “deprogram” her out of this ideology.
I do not have the answers but does seem to me the Trans dogma creates victimhood. So, maybe emphasizing strength, critical thinking (not black/white cognitive distortion), emphasize asking questions is good, our youth must somehow understand that they are resilient, have strengths, can cope. I came out as soft butch in 1978-I had to be strong-I still get called sir, I do not care-I do not give my power away. Youth have been coddled seems to be an upper middle class white people problem. Working class people like myself know what strength is, we are not/were not coddled by our parents-we know our parents love us-yet the best thing we learned was responsibility, resourcefulness, and ability to deal with life.
I also believe that the victim hood they are taking on is a way for them to be accepted as real people worthy of empathy despite the color of their skin (light). Imo it’s inevitable that when we denigrate light skinned (“white”) people as inherently less than, the reasonable psychological response is for those young white people to take on these special victimhoods in order to escape the denigrated category (white, cis, normal)
You might be right. I do think upper income privileged white kids are prone to it. But because it is taught in schools, all kids are at risk of assuming a victim role. It angers me that the kids are being groomed.
I think this is absolutely true in some cases. I think my son has internalized the idea (from the Internet, not from me!) that to be a straight white man is to be the source of all the evil in the universe, and he doesn’t want to be that. So what can he do? He may be autistic, but he know that he can’t change white. And changing straight is hard. But changing man? Not only is that one allowed, it’s cheered and celebrated. I’m not saying this is a consciously reasoned decision in his part, but I think it’s definitely part of it.
Also, he’s terrified of sex, and I suspect he thinks to feel a strong attraction for a woman is akin to sexually harassing her, and he has to atone for it, instead of just accepting it’s part of being human. It’s fascinating, because it’s a mirror to the Christian idea of looking at a woman with lust in your heart being a sin. Different path, same unhealthy destination.
I've begun to comment a dozen times since listening to this episode and the debate and just felt too angry and discouraged to put helpful words together. But I'll try...I find Wu's use/creation/embellishment of a developmentally unlikely suicidal narrative irresponsible as it will surely be used as more insistence that we transition children. Wu's eye rolls and condescending communication of "Oh, you just couldn't know how we all feel (with a wink wink to the "non binary" and wrong sex hormone riddled, ideologically captured audience) at Sapir's oh so patient and spot on attempt to expose gender ideology as homophobic and regressive are beyond ironic as the only fodder for his imperative to transition that he can offer are "Homophobic Hometown!" "I wanted to play with Barbies!" "I was mercilessly bullied for being effeminate!" The sadness I would feel for his past is just eclipsed by how his words and inconsistencies will be used to continue to justify sex modification attempts as opposed to how his childhood wounds could be used to help highlight the need to keep changing societal dynamics and acceptance of sex stereotype non conformity.
"Brianna Wu is a politician first."
That is such an accurate description of Wu's constant playing games and jumping around in what they say about what they believe and what they're advocating for.
Some things that really bother me about people like Wu claiming they've always felt this way and the girls can maybe wait but we must transition the boys early that I want them to give good faith answers to.
1) puberty blockers + early estrogen on boys do usually equal better passing. But that combo also results in much higher longterm health complications including sexual dysfunction, urinary tract dysfunction, bone health problems, and risk of sepsis and death with surgeries trying to compensate for the puberty blocked results. Jazz Jennings is a very public example of this. Is Wu & company willing to consider whether the longterm mental and quality of life effects of these chronic conditions may be worse than the mental health effects of not passing?
2) Wu's story of their first memory being attempting suicide at age 4 and the stories parents tell of 3-year-olds trying to cut off their genitals - certainly we have to consider that this NOT a "normal" expression of gender dysphoria but potentially very serious signs of abuse, trauma, or broader psychological dysfunction that must be considered outside of only a "typical trans child" narrative. Whenever I receive mandated reporter training, all of these would be co spidered massive red flags and they should not be swept away just because a parent or adult looking back puts a trans child narrative on it.
3) How can we trust the stories of "I've always felt this way?" when they are so frequently open about rewriting their histories to get what they want? (See link below for an example)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9kC_a5Rppb/?igsh=MXh5eWcwd2dzdTkybQ==
And Jamie, I am with you about the young women. I think Cori is right, the answer is to go after the people enabling and pouring fuel on their dysregulation
I listened to an interview with Brianna Wu on Spectator TV, a podcast published by the conservative-leaning British magazine The Spectator. She seemed to be taking a much more hostile attitude to child transitioning than the one she expressed at this college debate.
Modifies the argument for the audience. Like any good politician. Which means that no one can know when Brianna is actually telling the truth.
Question number 1 on point number 1 is, when in the FUCK did "passing better" become any part of of medicine?
I'm being rhetorical: the answer is, it happened when "passing better" was declared a "health benefit" through the magic of psychology.
The same magic will be used to declare "being more attractive" to be a health benefit before long. When they can prescribe "medically necessary" nose jobs -- and charge insurances & medicaid -- they'll rake it in like you never dreamed. They, on the other hand, are not merely dreaming of it, but planning how to do it, and salivating over it.
Psychology is unscientific fraud. Uproot the poisoned tree. Until we do, each crop of poisonous fruit will be heavier than the last. This, in comparison, is nothing.
A few years ago I read a story online and I can’t find it anywhere now; I’m wondering if anyone knows it? It was written by a trans person who had been asked to read a list of names at a Trans Day Of Remembrance. They thought the numbers must be wrong - if this many people were being killed for being trans, things actually were really bad. So they started doing their own research on the names they’d been given, and found that the causes of death were pretty random; carjacking, shot outside a club at 3 AM (when 2 other non trans people were also sho).) Sadly, most of them were domestic violence, which maybe you can make a case for that having something to do with their trans-ness, but it’s not roving gangs of trans bashers.
I remember it being a well written article about not catastrophizing violence against trans people. Anyone remember it?
https://www.queermajority.com/currents/tdor-trans-death-and-trans-life
Thanks so much!!
I just listened to the debate between Wu and Sapir. Wow. The trumpet, the harmonica, the questions from the audience. Wow!
You're not kidding "the babies are in charge." Does not bode well for the future. Btw, this has been the most focused, interesting, intelligent episode yet. Good use of time.
What we don’t know is-how would Brianna have been if he’d gotten psychological help vs medical help.
Brianna can’t be the person to speak about this because he is inevitably going to support the idea that he did what was right for himself, because the collateral damage to his life and body is so extreme as to almost certainly keep him from ever being able to psychologically recover from it if he admitted the reality. And even if he’s truly happy (maybe?) and healthy (unlikely)…he is one rare circumstance, and it would be more sane to protect children from this mistake than to open the gates for them to harm themselves because it helped one single person.
Old joke is gay men are huge egos on no foundation, no joke is trans often have NO idea who they ARE, 1 reason we see so much misogyny from RTA. #terfisaslur
I think it is imperative to include and retain a correct sex-marker (NOT "gender-marker") on drivers' licenses and passports for reasons of safeguarding connected with the accurate detection, reporting, and punishment of crimes. All forms of false identity are impermissible for a reason.
Jamie, I am so with you on being glued to the ceiling in dismay with these young women. Their learned--nay, forged--helplessness and massive egocentricity is appalling. And if they cannot do jack squat for themselves, how on earth can they do anything for the world? But there is a familiar little word that should, I feel, be included in these discussions: entitlement. Entitlement, entitlement, entitlement.
Cory, [I vote for "-y," you can shoot me later], I deeply appreciate your point about the possibility of many potential detransitioners waiting in the wings, hesitant because of the utter lack of social support for detransition. So I'll voice a little hope that maybe someone who'd like to make peace with their sex might be watching, listening and reading--and I'll say to that person that there are millions of us across the country, of every political stripe, of every faith or none, of every color, who do and would support you in this.
Eventually, public opinion will be the mirror held up to the brainwashed non-believers. Not the Democrats coddling them, not the Republicans excluding them (though that is a push in the right direction). But the subtle and then tsunami like power of public opinion. And behind that public opinion are the invisible heroes: like each of you. Slow motion, incremental evidence, experience, politics, slowly building until the big enormous undeniable force of reality wins. But there will always be some percentage and an ongoing effort behind the scenes by trans activists because there is too much money, perversion and obsession to stop it completely.
Sharp! Sometimes it seems like retired lawyers are the only people left who can write. Or speak.
You ought to run for office. (My mom should too. I'm working on it.)
Thank you. You got me!!
Hah! It's in your mouse-over bio, so I didn't get much...if you do run, make sure your campaign has a tech-savvy young intern or two!
(and as for where one might find young tech-savvy interns who have their heads on straight on certain subjects -- in my experience, they're all hiding in one corner of tumblr or another. here's one - https://www.tumblr.com/a-bed-of-moss - she's not quite seen through all the lies of "psychology" yet, but once one sees through the gender thing, it's only a matter of time.)
Ben, you or anyone else can send in a correction to the WP?
Just did!
California has a law regarding which name appears on a death certificate for trans people.
https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/18328/new-bill-would-give-transgender-people-more-control-over-death-certificates
From 2015
Brianna is a bad actor and people need to stop trust washing him (Leor, Ben Ryan, Bari Weiss). Don't assist his platform.
Very, very few people are willing to acknowledge a plain reality: that everyone in any position of oversight anywhere - in academia, in medicine, in government, in media -- who condoned psychosexual genital mutilation under color of medicine must go, and must go forever. They have failed a most basic test of sense, intelligence, courage, and human decency. They are worth nothing. If that means 99 out of 100 humanities professors, university administrators, hospital administrators, etc -- so. be. it. There is no other answer.
To get specific, here,, most people with large internet followings are -- as you would expect -- very social people. This is a strength, in that they make a lot of friends, often important ones: but it is also a weakness, in that they have a hard time saying "no and go away" to other people of their general polite circle, even when those people are self-evidently nuts, or evil.
I am not as social as they -- as a result, I have rather fewer followers (although one very big one). I can assure you, however, that you will not see me trust-washing any condoner of child castration, or any condoner of the criminal-in-chief. I haven't posted much in a while, but I'm about to drop a whopper, and I have big plans for the summer.
Agree with all the criticisms of Brianna Wu mentioned in the episode. I've mentioned here before that my feelings about her are complicated (I use "her" for Brianna Wu, please grant that I am not confused about her sex).
That said, whatever her motivated reasoning might be, I think it's very valuable that a person with her vaunted Lived Experience (TM) strongly defended the following to that audience:
- Leor Sapir is not a trans-phobe.
- The science behind youth gender medicine is weak.
- Girls should not medically transition.
- "Non-binary" as a political movement is damaging to the left.
- WPATH is discredited by scandal.
- Men are cynically taking advantage of self-ID to harm women.
- The current standards behind GAC in the US should be much more restrictive than they are.
Yes, my views are much more in alignment with Leor Sapir's and I think he is outstanding at articulating the current state of the science and policy (though I did think it was unfair of him to dominate so much of the first hour of the debate). But if I want to change the minds of moderate liberals - people like my friends and family whose soft support keep this thing going - I'll have them listen to that version of Brianna Wu first every time. A transgender person sharing the concerns she did during the debate will get their attention in a way a Leor Sapir Powerpoint can't. It's absolutely a good thing to have her out there saying these things. The more the better as far as I'm concerned.
Whether any minds were changed on the night of the debate, they did hear all of those concerns expressed by someone many of them are inclined to take seriously. I think there's a very good chance some seeds were planted. Who knows what will happen to some of those seeds in the coming months and years.
Also, a little relevant context about Middlebury College: This is the same place (maybe even the same auditorium) where a talk with Charles Murray was prevented from happening by student activists in 2017. People were even injured. So yes, it's absolutely a sign of improvement that this talk went on with the only disruptions being an untalented multi-instrumentalist and some grandstanding during the Q&A.
Like Sempronius in Addison's Cato, they sense the tide shifting, and they want to abandon a few salients to maintain the front for a future offensive. It's very, very obvious.
No quarter. None of these people are worth a grain of trust. They must all go.
Legit points about what Wu conceded. And I agree people who are brainwashed might listen to him if even accidentally while they will reject Sapir outright. BUT keep in mind, whatever Wu concedes is not in good faith. It’s-give an inch so we can take a mile -after we have lulled the skeptics of gender ideology into a place where we let our guard down.
Seconding your discussion--in mistakes were made, but not by me (Tavris & Aronson) they describe how memories actually are modified by what one believes (often not consciously!). So people might be telling you what they truly believe happened. I think this possibly happens to young "seekers" looking for an organizing principle/meaning/reason for their experiences, especially distress.
Aronson and Tavris have an amusing anecdote of one person's long held belief about a past event turning out to be false...and this person studied autobiographic memory or something himself! (might have misremembered :) ).
Brianna will say whatever he needs to. I do not trust Brianna, but I do have a lot of confidence in his self-interest.
I watched the podcast on YouTube. I wanted to mention to Jamie that this week's Kansas City Week in Review on PBS had 2 reporters on. It's on YouTube, both talked about suicide among youth and such decisions. How do they still get this information and spread it?
Exulansic is doing great work to reveal that gender “care” does not prevent suicides in her series called “the dead names”. I wish someone would interview her!
I have the same question. From what I’ve been finding it comes from government funded nonprofit news agencies that have been set up to censor and promote certain agendas, including this one. Also funded by the billionaires that are pushing gender, ideology, queer theory and more. USAID is one of the culprits.
This was a fantastic episode. I am rereading “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukuaniff, which addresses/explains so many of the issues brought up in this episode (I.e., words as “violence” an unhealthy culture of “safetyism”, etc.).
I echo Jamie’s concerns about the girls in the audience and how angry, fragile and indoctrinated they seem….when I heard the non-binary students yelling at Leor, I got a pit in my stomach. I have a 15 year old daughter who says she’s “non-binary” and has reacted almost the same exact way to me when I try to discuss these issues with her. It’s very scary as a parent because I don’t know how to “deprogram” her out of this ideology.
I do not have the answers but does seem to me the Trans dogma creates victimhood. So, maybe emphasizing strength, critical thinking (not black/white cognitive distortion), emphasize asking questions is good, our youth must somehow understand that they are resilient, have strengths, can cope. I came out as soft butch in 1978-I had to be strong-I still get called sir, I do not care-I do not give my power away. Youth have been coddled seems to be an upper middle class white people problem. Working class people like myself know what strength is, we are not/were not coddled by our parents-we know our parents love us-yet the best thing we learned was responsibility, resourcefulness, and ability to deal with life.
I also believe that the victim hood they are taking on is a way for them to be accepted as real people worthy of empathy despite the color of their skin (light). Imo it’s inevitable that when we denigrate light skinned (“white”) people as inherently less than, the reasonable psychological response is for those young white people to take on these special victimhoods in order to escape the denigrated category (white, cis, normal)
You might be right. I do think upper income privileged white kids are prone to it. But because it is taught in schools, all kids are at risk of assuming a victim role. It angers me that the kids are being groomed.
I think this is absolutely true in some cases. I think my son has internalized the idea (from the Internet, not from me!) that to be a straight white man is to be the source of all the evil in the universe, and he doesn’t want to be that. So what can he do? He may be autistic, but he know that he can’t change white. And changing straight is hard. But changing man? Not only is that one allowed, it’s cheered and celebrated. I’m not saying this is a consciously reasoned decision in his part, but I think it’s definitely part of it.
Also, he’s terrified of sex, and I suspect he thinks to feel a strong attraction for a woman is akin to sexually harassing her, and he has to atone for it, instead of just accepting it’s part of being human. It’s fascinating, because it’s a mirror to the Christian idea of looking at a woman with lust in your heart being a sin. Different path, same unhealthy destination.
The bureaucratic mess seems to be created by Trans Activists, intentionally "queering" the system, to create chaos.