It really frustrates me that the McMaster studies are dismissed because they were funded by SEGM, the implication being that the McMaster researchers are corrupted by their money or unconsciously influenced by their funding source, but that concern never applies to the studies that are done by the doctors who are performing these treatments and whose paycheck, identity, and professional reputations rely on getting certain results. The source and motivations of the survey data Jack Turban uses in his papers don't get this critique. Having the company that makes puberty blockers pay for conferences promoting and educating doctors on the Dutch protocol gets to stand without this critique.
There has got to be someone at McMaster who's angry as hell that their skilled and earnest contributions to those publications have been slandered like this by their own University. Is there no pride in the departments who take on these requests for an independent systematic review. Do the administrators of this institution not realize how important clients like SEGM may become in the future? Surely some whistleblowers might come out of this? Sigh . . . hard to know where those committed to higher principles could find solid land in this swamp of system . . .
OK, so I listened to the entire episode (up until the recommendations), and even though you were ostensibly discussing a controversy over a statement published by McMasters University, in response to an Op-Ed, you never actually provided a clear, concise summary of what either the Op-Ed or the statement actually said. Other than to say, in the middle of the ensuing conversation, something, something about the study being discredited by having been funded by SEGM, which SPLC called a hate group. In other words, you spent the entire episode discussing a controversy — that you all were clearly familiar with — without ensuring that your listeners had a clear understanding of that controversy.
This is not the first time I have had this problem.
In the future, when you mention, say a law, or an article, or an Op-Ed, or a public statement, or anything else with content that is going to be relevant to the ensuing conversation, might I suggest that, as soon you mention it, you inform the listeners about its content? It would be really helpful to the listeners.
Thanks! I knew what this kerfuffle was about (because i spend way too much on this topic), but if the podcast is going to reach people who don't spend too much time on this topic but who want to be informed, we need the "lede paragraph" (who what when where, etc) to lay the groundwork before going into details or discussion. Perhaps assign one person per topic to lay out the "lede" first?
That requires listeners to stop the recording and do research before knowing what the discussion is about. I have often done that but it takes extra time and effort.
I think that the only people likely to do it are those who are motivated enough to jump into the deep end, but the simply curious are more likely to get bored and walk away if they don't know what the discussion is about.
I have no research connections so i am left only with this comment section here to say that the State bans on youth gender medicine provide an extraordinary opportunity for higher quality research. I don’t know if you are familiar with “The Turnaway Study” by Diana Greene Foster but it compared women (same demographics and same # of weeks pregnant) who recieved abortions vs. those who were turned away in States with stricter laws. She reported quantifiable and narrative follow up over ten years. Obviously no one here wants to wait ten years but certainly this would be a worthwhile research project to document the outcomes (short and long term) of, say, 15 yo girls who received double mastectomies vs 15 yo girls who had their surgery dates cancelled due to bans. Here is a link to a fresh air interview with diana greene foster on her abortion research: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878353930/the-lasting-effects-of-having-or-being-denied-an-abortion
I had my tonsils out when I was four or five - I'm not sure exactly when. I had suffered frequent bouts of tonsillitis, and the procedure did succeed in stopping the problem. This was in 1948-49 when elective tonsillectomy was common.
I hope doctors treat small children better nowadays. What i most remember is how terrified I was. No one explained to me what was going to be done. I knew my tonsils were somewhere in the back of my throat and that they would be cut out, but I had no idea how that was going to be done. What I theorized, the way small kids do, was that the surgeon was going to cut my throat open from ear to ear to remove them. My mother said that as I was being wheeled into the operating room, I was screaming "Mean ol' mommie, I hate you, I hate you!" Of course it left her praying "Please, God, please don't let him die on the operating table. That would be the last thing he said to me."
The costs that Amy is expected to pay are for the costs of the tribunal (witch hunt) that was deliberated drawn out. The punishment was in the process.
In reference to Jamie's analogy of tonsillectomy: yes, in my personal experience by 2002 that option was used only if certain benchmarks were met. My then 5 year old experienced repeated strep throat illness, but then she also had a case of scarlet fever, and then a tonsillar abscess (which threatened her ability to breathe). It was at that point that the doctors recommended the tonsillectomy, explaining that those two complications from strep put her in the category in which the tonsillectomy was indicated. (Afterward, she never had strep throat again.)
This was a good correction of what had been standard over treatment for strep. There are many such cases in medical history.
The question with gender affirming care, however, is that creating such benchmarks is not possible. There are no standards for diagnosis, no tests, and no standards for what counts as a cure--unlike strep.
I suppose it could be one way to start walking it back: we only do elective mastectomies on over 21 year olds, etc. But I fall into the camp that slow retreat allows the procedures to remain in the realm of medicine, when it is anything but, and so banning all of it is the only way forward.
The tonsillectomy is a good analogy. These days you have to have I think 9 strep infections in one year for them to remove tonsils based on strep infections. Your case, with the scary abscess, totally makes sense.
Generally the only kids that get tonsillectomies are the ones with giant tonsils that give them obstructive sleep apnea. For my patients on Medicaid, they've got to have a positive sleep study.
And yes, this was a change of practice based on evidence. I think it was driven by insurance companies wanting to save money, though.
"Studies show . . ." a phrase that's almost a trigger warning: be on alert for complete BS if the person reporting doesn't know how to read a scientific paper or spot methodological problems and logical fallacies, or hasn't taken the time to confirm those producing the paper truly have no conflicts of interest.
Gullible, lazy journalism supplies most of the average "well-educated" person's ignorant certainty. A lot of "cargo cult science"(term coined by the late great Richard Feynman) has been going on in most scientific areas of study for a long time.
Fortunately, the few who have started noticing how bad things are are able to speak up online, despite the scandalously censorious behavior by the leadership of institutions founded to communicate science information to the public.
The challenge for us is to distinguish those who have their heads on straight & their ethics in place from spinners of conspiracy tales and paranoia. (The Weinstein brothers are an excellent example of the complicated mixture of hero and loon that the really intelligent often are, BTW. Even uber-genius Einstein embraced a few goofy theories.)
Hopefully the majority of us can figure out sooner than later how to tell which sources of science news are trustworthy, staffed by reporters who are interested in "just the facts, ma'am," rather than rhetoric for unworkable utopian dreams. For us laypersons, it feels like a hall of mirrors situation.
Just read the Mastroianni piece at the link you supplied. It was really good, especially the section on psychological fictions.
Mastroianni: "Psychological fictions are, so far, mainly useful for producing papers." Just so. Papers, which are turned into degree tickets, which, when punched, might turn into (non-McDonald's) careers.
The reason I find this piece potentially enormously helpful with respect to dismantling gender programming is that it reminds us that so many things that we treat as real entities, aren't. And gender fans are committing real acts/atrocities in the very-much-real, physical world in the *name* of gender--precisely because they reify or want to reify psychological fictions.
Mastroianni's reminder that everything from "The Ford Motor Company" to "leadership" aren't real--that a lot of stuff we treat as real, even beloved stuff like "the self" and "stress," aren't real--points to opportunities to *de-reify* ALL the fictions we've had dropped on us in the meteor storm of gender.
>> Gullible, lazy journalism supplies most of the average "well-educated" person's ignorant certainty. <<
This. So much this. And the net effect of the "education" they've purchased is often to render them *less* skeptical of utter crap, not more. One might even conclude that that is the real purpose of selling so much "education" to so many...
I try to keep in mind, although not entirely successfully, not to assume evil intent when simple ignorance or stupidity is a sufficient explanation. Even "group think" may be a factor. It's insidious but powerful, especially for people who, for any number of reasons, have neither time or inclinations to look deeply into an issue. I can imagine busy doctors thinking, "Yeah, this trans business seems goofy as all get out to me, but who am I to disagree with the AMA, AAP, APA? It's what everybody else seems to think." The ones who deserve our contempt are the medical professionals and journalists who present themselves as seriously engaged with an issue but in fact are doing a half assed job of investigation and are really just mouthing their own assumptions, prejudices, and what they assume to be what all "right thinking people " believe.
What follows is a somewhat rhetorical question, not an indictment of you specifically at all. Here goes: do you know how *little* the average Western adult would have to know about *everything under the sun* in order to give "gender medicine" even the tiniest bit of credence? I propose to you that it is not low scorers on intelligence tests who are powering this abominable engine. In fact, quite the opposite: nearly zero members of the non-rocket-science crowd have any time for, or truck with, this affront to their humanity.
Nope--a person would have to be utterly insensible, or in a coma; and trans advocates and their believers are most assuredly not that. My observation has been that it is not ignorance but *attachment to a sense of one's own intelligence* that can do the most damage in situations like these. Here are three ways this can happen, usually unconsciously:
1. "My friends and colleagues are in the know [I am in the know for choosing them] and so if they say "gender med" is legit I'll support it [and reinforce my own clued-in standing];"
2. "My political confreres are enlightened and liberated [and sexy, as I am sexy] and their opponents are square and uptight and retro and maybe even fundie [whereas I am enlightened] and so if The Cool Party says it's legit I'll support it [and reinforce my own hipness on matters sounding vaguely sexual];"
3. "I don't get this stuff but I don't want to be grouped with The Uncool Kids and the non-Middle-Class-Professionals [because my work and self-image are built on the difference between Us and The Philistines] so I'll just avoid looking at anything that threatens my [Educated] identity..."
It's not lack of cerebral wherewithal. It's lack of humility.
I've been using my Spotify audiobook allowance to listern to non-fiction (like Abigail Shrier's Bad Therapy, also Blind Spots by Marty Makary MD and right now the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt) but maybe I should branch over into murder mystery. . .
Every trans activist meltdown directed at scientists or journalists amounts to “People might USE this INFORMATION to inform their OPINIONS and DECISION-MAKING!!!” Unconscionable! So much of it isn’t even contesting the information itself, but rather its dissemination. “If parents learn that removing their daughter’s breasts will not cure her depression, then they might not do it!” As though that not only isn’t a good thing, but a self-evidently terrible thing.
Also, studies were never going to get us out of this because the underlying premise was always impervious to reason. You can’t reason anyone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. No one is born in the wrong body. Period. Humans cannot change sex. Period. Any studies of interventions meant to treat “being born in the wrong body” or to change a person’s sex are fundamentally useless, regardless of what they find, because the underlying premise IS INCORRECT. We don’t need studies about the risks and benefits of crucifying schizophrenics who think they’re Jesus Christ, what material should the cross be made of, etc etc. The schizophrenic is not Jesus Christ, he’s delusional, just like distressed people who come to believe they’re the opposite sex are not actually the opposite sex, they are also delusional. Any interventions that assume the truth of the delusion are unjustified and any studies of them are missing the point.
I get that we feel the need to counter various institutions like medical guilds, the Democratic Party, etc., who run around claiming that this is an evidenced-based treatment, but particularly at this point, it’s clear that there is nothing that will make them change their stance, and the more we argue about this with them the more we contribute to the idea in the mind of the general public that this is a real, discrete condition and the contention is just about how to treat it.
Yes. I keep thinking, if someone suffering from lycanthropy* or had a persistent and insistent desire to be a wolf presented to any sort of medical professional, no one would propose "Wolf affirming treatments (WAT)" - perhaps hormones to promote facial hair or a referral to an oral surgeon for fang implants. At least I hope not.
___
* A real but rare condition, according to Wikipedia
There was that guy who wanted to be a lizard so he got scales tattooed all over his body and got his tongue split and had little bump things implanted in his scalp. Absolutely nobody thinks, “oh how tragic that this guy is really a lizard but was somehow born in a human body. I’m glad he was able to get treatment for his medical problem.” Everybody thinks “that guy’s a fuckin weirdo, but hey, it’s a free country.” But the gender thing is juuuust plausible enough to not immediately set off people’s horseshit detectors, I guess because everybody is familiar with people whose personalities and interests are very sex-atypical and on some level they find such people pitiable.
Don't have the source at hand, but I'm afraid there are cases of people wanting to be Ken dolls or anime characters or animals that are being taken seriously by the gender woo doctors.
Just watched this 5-min video describing "Wardley Mapping," Cori! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfq3ocmadZo VERY interesting! I hope maybe you're able to help this David of a movement end this Goliath of a problem destroying so many lives.
I have been spreading the FTC's request for misleading post, research and data on gendering affirming care for minors. I wonder if the AMA and APA' s book on trans care that used "evidence informed care" instead of "evidence based" could be submitted?
United States FTC solicits public comments on pediatric gender transition. Read more below
public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about “gender-affirming care”, especially as it relates to minors, and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing. In a Request for Information, the FTC encourages members of the public to comment on any issues or concerns that are relevant to the FTC’s consideration of this topic, including by submitting any written data, advertisements, social media posts, disclosures, or empirical research.
"Evidence informed" - LOL. Reminds me of when people were using "science based" instead of "evidence based" during the pandemic when talking about NPIs. Follow The Science (TM)!
Perhaps Universities and Medical Schools might refuse research funding from Big Pharma, the medical industrial complex, billionaires (e.g., Pritzker, Stryker) who are clearly politically biased in favor of genderism and are heavily invested in Big Pharma Bio-Tech, medical supplies, Big Finance etc.
It appears the McMaster statement has been taken down since this was posted. Here’s an archive link from August 20 for anyone who didn’t see it: https://archive.is/cJAsS. Any idea why it was taken down?
Cori, I hope you don’t mind me commenting here because Stella has her commenting behind the paywall. Your interview over there was so incredibly lovely and open. Thank you for always being you and willing to share the truth and your experience. But most of all thank you for the well informed and difficult work you put in. The slaying dragons thing was so apt. You have such a pragmatic and realistic approach. (Also- everyone here on this podcast is genuinely thoughtful and humane and putting in the real work too).
Sometimes I see Jamie tie herself in knots over the fine points of clinical and research procedures, determined to get the language *just right*, the ethical considerations duly fleshed out, the arguments meticulously presented so that opponents will finally *get it*...
And so while I appreciate her precision and care, I think it might be worth reminding everyone that opponents *hope* for caring people to be tied up in knots: they have no interest in logical reasoning or due consideration; it's one big blast of emotion all the way.
They have no cogent argument at all. Bullying, shaming, screeching and intimidation are their only tools--and to our shock and horror, those tools are successful sometimes.
For anyone that is the slightest bit open to reason, only three words are necessary to convey cause for the immediate abortion of all clinical activity in the furtherance of "trans." Hundreds, thousands of words are possible in delineating its harms, but only three are necessary.
Inorgasmic for life.
There is absolutely nothing opponents can put on the other side of a harms/benefits scale.
Our confidence in the effect estimate is limited: The true effect may be substantially different from the estimate of the effect
very low quality means:
We have very little confidence in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect
(e.g. these are described at the bottom of the evidence tables in the McMaster report).
There are a lot of ways to improve the quality, but I believe if you don't have controls, you can only talk about what is likely to happen with the drugs/surgeries, not also what might happen without them, which of course is an important comparison!
It really frustrates me that the McMaster studies are dismissed because they were funded by SEGM, the implication being that the McMaster researchers are corrupted by their money or unconsciously influenced by their funding source, but that concern never applies to the studies that are done by the doctors who are performing these treatments and whose paycheck, identity, and professional reputations rely on getting certain results. The source and motivations of the survey data Jack Turban uses in his papers don't get this critique. Having the company that makes puberty blockers pay for conferences promoting and educating doctors on the Dutch protocol gets to stand without this critique.
There has got to be someone at McMaster who's angry as hell that their skilled and earnest contributions to those publications have been slandered like this by their own University. Is there no pride in the departments who take on these requests for an independent systematic review. Do the administrators of this institution not realize how important clients like SEGM may become in the future? Surely some whistleblowers might come out of this? Sigh . . . hard to know where those committed to higher principles could find solid land in this swamp of system . . .
OK, so I listened to the entire episode (up until the recommendations), and even though you were ostensibly discussing a controversy over a statement published by McMasters University, in response to an Op-Ed, you never actually provided a clear, concise summary of what either the Op-Ed or the statement actually said. Other than to say, in the middle of the ensuing conversation, something, something about the study being discredited by having been funded by SEGM, which SPLC called a hate group. In other words, you spent the entire episode discussing a controversy — that you all were clearly familiar with — without ensuring that your listeners had a clear understanding of that controversy.
This is not the first time I have had this problem.
In the future, when you mention, say a law, or an article, or an Op-Ed, or a public statement, or anything else with content that is going to be relevant to the ensuing conversation, might I suggest that, as soon you mention it, you inform the listeners about its content? It would be really helpful to the listeners.
I agree, and I’ll repeat your feedback in our group chat. More structure is needed, even if it’s a paragraph. I’ll work to help meet this expectation.
Ditto
Thanks! I knew what this kerfuffle was about (because i spend way too much on this topic), but if the podcast is going to reach people who don't spend too much time on this topic but who want to be informed, we need the "lede paragraph" (who what when where, etc) to lay the groundwork before going into details or discussion. Perhaps assign one person per topic to lay out the "lede" first?
y e s
I think the op Ed is in the notes "no pride in pseudoscience"?
That requires listeners to stop the recording and do research before knowing what the discussion is about. I have often done that but it takes extra time and effort.
I think that the only people likely to do it are those who are motivated enough to jump into the deep end, but the simply curious are more likely to get bored and walk away if they don't know what the discussion is about.
I have no research connections so i am left only with this comment section here to say that the State bans on youth gender medicine provide an extraordinary opportunity for higher quality research. I don’t know if you are familiar with “The Turnaway Study” by Diana Greene Foster but it compared women (same demographics and same # of weeks pregnant) who recieved abortions vs. those who were turned away in States with stricter laws. She reported quantifiable and narrative follow up over ten years. Obviously no one here wants to wait ten years but certainly this would be a worthwhile research project to document the outcomes (short and long term) of, say, 15 yo girls who received double mastectomies vs 15 yo girls who had their surgery dates cancelled due to bans. Here is a link to a fresh air interview with diana greene foster on her abortion research: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878353930/the-lasting-effects-of-having-or-being-denied-an-abortion
I had my tonsils out when I was four or five - I'm not sure exactly when. I had suffered frequent bouts of tonsillitis, and the procedure did succeed in stopping the problem. This was in 1948-49 when elective tonsillectomy was common.
I hope doctors treat small children better nowadays. What i most remember is how terrified I was. No one explained to me what was going to be done. I knew my tonsils were somewhere in the back of my throat and that they would be cut out, but I had no idea how that was going to be done. What I theorized, the way small kids do, was that the surgeon was going to cut my throat open from ear to ear to remove them. My mother said that as I was being wheeled into the operating room, I was screaming "Mean ol' mommie, I hate you, I hate you!" Of course it left her praying "Please, God, please don't let him die on the operating table. That would be the last thing he said to me."
The costs that Amy is expected to pay are for the costs of the tribunal (witch hunt) that was deliberated drawn out. The punishment was in the process.
It's the vindictive move of a petty bureaucrat, the financial equivalent of an executioner first forcing his victim to dig her own grave!
In reference to Jamie's analogy of tonsillectomy: yes, in my personal experience by 2002 that option was used only if certain benchmarks were met. My then 5 year old experienced repeated strep throat illness, but then she also had a case of scarlet fever, and then a tonsillar abscess (which threatened her ability to breathe). It was at that point that the doctors recommended the tonsillectomy, explaining that those two complications from strep put her in the category in which the tonsillectomy was indicated. (Afterward, she never had strep throat again.)
This was a good correction of what had been standard over treatment for strep. There are many such cases in medical history.
The question with gender affirming care, however, is that creating such benchmarks is not possible. There are no standards for diagnosis, no tests, and no standards for what counts as a cure--unlike strep.
I suppose it could be one way to start walking it back: we only do elective mastectomies on over 21 year olds, etc. But I fall into the camp that slow retreat allows the procedures to remain in the realm of medicine, when it is anything but, and so banning all of it is the only way forward.
The tonsillectomy is a good analogy. These days you have to have I think 9 strep infections in one year for them to remove tonsils based on strep infections. Your case, with the scary abscess, totally makes sense.
Generally the only kids that get tonsillectomies are the ones with giant tonsils that give them obstructive sleep apnea. For my patients on Medicaid, they've got to have a positive sleep study.
And yes, this was a change of practice based on evidence. I think it was driven by insurance companies wanting to save money, though.
"Studies show . . ." a phrase that's almost a trigger warning: be on alert for complete BS if the person reporting doesn't know how to read a scientific paper or spot methodological problems and logical fallacies, or hasn't taken the time to confirm those producing the paper truly have no conflicts of interest.
Gullible, lazy journalism supplies most of the average "well-educated" person's ignorant certainty. A lot of "cargo cult science"(term coined by the late great Richard Feynman) has been going on in most scientific areas of study for a long time.
Fortunately, the few who have started noticing how bad things are are able to speak up online, despite the scandalously censorious behavior by the leadership of institutions founded to communicate science information to the public.
The challenge for us is to distinguish those who have their heads on straight & their ethics in place from spinners of conspiracy tales and paranoia. (The Weinstein brothers are an excellent example of the complicated mixture of hero and loon that the really intelligent often are, BTW. Even uber-genius Einstein embraced a few goofy theories.)
Hopefully the majority of us can figure out sooner than later how to tell which sources of science news are trustworthy, staffed by reporters who are interested in "just the facts, ma'am," rather than rhetoric for unworkable utopian dreams. For us laypersons, it feels like a hall of mirrors situation.
( see Scientific research has big problems, and it's getting worse by Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPy3DeMUyI)
( See "I’m so sorry for psychology’s loss, whatever it is" by Adam Mastroianni: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-loss)
Just read the Mastroianni piece at the link you supplied. It was really good, especially the section on psychological fictions.
Mastroianni: "Psychological fictions are, so far, mainly useful for producing papers." Just so. Papers, which are turned into degree tickets, which, when punched, might turn into (non-McDonald's) careers.
The reason I find this piece potentially enormously helpful with respect to dismantling gender programming is that it reminds us that so many things that we treat as real entities, aren't. And gender fans are committing real acts/atrocities in the very-much-real, physical world in the *name* of gender--precisely because they reify or want to reify psychological fictions.
Mastroianni's reminder that everything from "The Ford Motor Company" to "leadership" aren't real--that a lot of stuff we treat as real, even beloved stuff like "the self" and "stress," aren't real--points to opportunities to *de-reify* ALL the fictions we've had dropped on us in the meteor storm of gender.
>> Gullible, lazy journalism supplies most of the average "well-educated" person's ignorant certainty. <<
This. So much this. And the net effect of the "education" they've purchased is often to render them *less* skeptical of utter crap, not more. One might even conclude that that is the real purpose of selling so much "education" to so many...
I try to keep in mind, although not entirely successfully, not to assume evil intent when simple ignorance or stupidity is a sufficient explanation. Even "group think" may be a factor. It's insidious but powerful, especially for people who, for any number of reasons, have neither time or inclinations to look deeply into an issue. I can imagine busy doctors thinking, "Yeah, this trans business seems goofy as all get out to me, but who am I to disagree with the AMA, AAP, APA? It's what everybody else seems to think." The ones who deserve our contempt are the medical professionals and journalists who present themselves as seriously engaged with an issue but in fact are doing a half assed job of investigation and are really just mouthing their own assumptions, prejudices, and what they assume to be what all "right thinking people " believe.
Hi John,
What follows is a somewhat rhetorical question, not an indictment of you specifically at all. Here goes: do you know how *little* the average Western adult would have to know about *everything under the sun* in order to give "gender medicine" even the tiniest bit of credence? I propose to you that it is not low scorers on intelligence tests who are powering this abominable engine. In fact, quite the opposite: nearly zero members of the non-rocket-science crowd have any time for, or truck with, this affront to their humanity.
Nope--a person would have to be utterly insensible, or in a coma; and trans advocates and their believers are most assuredly not that. My observation has been that it is not ignorance but *attachment to a sense of one's own intelligence* that can do the most damage in situations like these. Here are three ways this can happen, usually unconsciously:
1. "My friends and colleagues are in the know [I am in the know for choosing them] and so if they say "gender med" is legit I'll support it [and reinforce my own clued-in standing];"
2. "My political confreres are enlightened and liberated [and sexy, as I am sexy] and their opponents are square and uptight and retro and maybe even fundie [whereas I am enlightened] and so if The Cool Party says it's legit I'll support it [and reinforce my own hipness on matters sounding vaguely sexual];"
3. "I don't get this stuff but I don't want to be grouped with The Uncool Kids and the non-Middle-Class-Professionals [because my work and self-image are built on the difference between Us and The Philistines] so I'll just avoid looking at anything that threatens my [Educated] identity..."
It's not lack of cerebral wherewithal. It's lack of humility.
I've been using my Spotify audiobook allowance to listern to non-fiction (like Abigail Shrier's Bad Therapy, also Blind Spots by Marty Makary MD and right now the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt) but maybe I should branch over into murder mystery. . .
Every trans activist meltdown directed at scientists or journalists amounts to “People might USE this INFORMATION to inform their OPINIONS and DECISION-MAKING!!!” Unconscionable! So much of it isn’t even contesting the information itself, but rather its dissemination. “If parents learn that removing their daughter’s breasts will not cure her depression, then they might not do it!” As though that not only isn’t a good thing, but a self-evidently terrible thing.
Also, studies were never going to get us out of this because the underlying premise was always impervious to reason. You can’t reason anyone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. No one is born in the wrong body. Period. Humans cannot change sex. Period. Any studies of interventions meant to treat “being born in the wrong body” or to change a person’s sex are fundamentally useless, regardless of what they find, because the underlying premise IS INCORRECT. We don’t need studies about the risks and benefits of crucifying schizophrenics who think they’re Jesus Christ, what material should the cross be made of, etc etc. The schizophrenic is not Jesus Christ, he’s delusional, just like distressed people who come to believe they’re the opposite sex are not actually the opposite sex, they are also delusional. Any interventions that assume the truth of the delusion are unjustified and any studies of them are missing the point.
I get that we feel the need to counter various institutions like medical guilds, the Democratic Party, etc., who run around claiming that this is an evidenced-based treatment, but particularly at this point, it’s clear that there is nothing that will make them change their stance, and the more we argue about this with them the more we contribute to the idea in the mind of the general public that this is a real, discrete condition and the contention is just about how to treat it.
Yes. I keep thinking, if someone suffering from lycanthropy* or had a persistent and insistent desire to be a wolf presented to any sort of medical professional, no one would propose "Wolf affirming treatments (WAT)" - perhaps hormones to promote facial hair or a referral to an oral surgeon for fang implants. At least I hope not.
___
* A real but rare condition, according to Wikipedia
There was that guy who wanted to be a lizard so he got scales tattooed all over his body and got his tongue split and had little bump things implanted in his scalp. Absolutely nobody thinks, “oh how tragic that this guy is really a lizard but was somehow born in a human body. I’m glad he was able to get treatment for his medical problem.” Everybody thinks “that guy’s a fuckin weirdo, but hey, it’s a free country.” But the gender thing is juuuust plausible enough to not immediately set off people’s horseshit detectors, I guess because everybody is familiar with people whose personalities and interests are very sex-atypical and on some level they find such people pitiable.
Don't have the source at hand, but I'm afraid there are cases of people wanting to be Ken dolls or anime characters or animals that are being taken seriously by the gender woo doctors.
Just watched this 5-min video describing "Wardley Mapping," Cori! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfq3ocmadZo VERY interesting! I hope maybe you're able to help this David of a movement end this Goliath of a problem destroying so many lives.
I have been spreading the FTC's request for misleading post, research and data on gendering affirming care for minors. I wonder if the AMA and APA' s book on trans care that used "evidence informed care" instead of "evidence based" could be submitted?
United States FTC solicits public comments on pediatric gender transition. Read more below
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/07/ftc-requests-public-comment-regarding-gender-affirming-care-minors
https://www.regulations.gov/docket/FTC-2025-0264
They are interested in consumer harm, I think, so you have to make that jump.
public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about “gender-affirming care”, especially as it relates to minors, and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing. In a Request for Information, the FTC encourages members of the public to comment on any issues or concerns that are relevant to the FTC’s consideration of this topic, including by submitting any written data, advertisements, social media posts, disclosures, or empirical research.
To me any site that said "Do you want a live son or a dead daughter" may fit the bill of misleading
"Evidence informed" - LOL. Reminds me of when people were using "science based" instead of "evidence based" during the pandemic when talking about NPIs. Follow The Science (TM)!
Perhaps Universities and Medical Schools might refuse research funding from Big Pharma, the medical industrial complex, billionaires (e.g., Pritzker, Stryker) who are clearly politically biased in favor of genderism and are heavily invested in Big Pharma Bio-Tech, medical supplies, Big Finance etc.
It appears the McMaster statement has been taken down since this was posted. Here’s an archive link from August 20 for anyone who didn’t see it: https://archive.is/cJAsS. Any idea why it was taken down?
Cori, I hope you don’t mind me commenting here because Stella has her commenting behind the paywall. Your interview over there was so incredibly lovely and open. Thank you for always being you and willing to share the truth and your experience. But most of all thank you for the well informed and difficult work you put in. The slaying dragons thing was so apt. You have such a pragmatic and realistic approach. (Also- everyone here on this podcast is genuinely thoughtful and humane and putting in the real work too).
Sometimes I see Jamie tie herself in knots over the fine points of clinical and research procedures, determined to get the language *just right*, the ethical considerations duly fleshed out, the arguments meticulously presented so that opponents will finally *get it*...
And so while I appreciate her precision and care, I think it might be worth reminding everyone that opponents *hope* for caring people to be tied up in knots: they have no interest in logical reasoning or due consideration; it's one big blast of emotion all the way.
They have no cogent argument at all. Bullying, shaming, screeching and intimidation are their only tools--and to our shock and horror, those tools are successful sometimes.
For anyone that is the slightest bit open to reason, only three words are necessary to convey cause for the immediate abortion of all clinical activity in the furtherance of "trans." Hundreds, thousands of words are possible in delineating its harms, but only three are necessary.
Inorgasmic for life.
There is absolutely nothing opponents can put on the other side of a harms/benefits scale.
low quality means:
Our confidence in the effect estimate is limited: The true effect may be substantially different from the estimate of the effect
very low quality means:
We have very little confidence in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect
(e.g. these are described at the bottom of the evidence tables in the McMaster report).
There are a lot of ways to improve the quality, but I believe if you don't have controls, you can only talk about what is likely to happen with the drugs/surgeries, not also what might happen without them, which of course is an important comparison!