Alive and lawyering
Primum non nocere.
There’s so much wrong with this one tweet from an ACLU lawyer.
One thing wrong with it is that trying to change people’s sex isn’t “medical care.” Even if it treats something (misery, anxiety, self-hatred) it isn’t medical – it doesn’t cure any illness or mend any bone. I don’t know exactly what it should be called, but I think “medical care” is way too misleading, not to say dishonest. It’s a kind of tinkering. “You’re unhappy in your sex, so we’ll tinker with it to help you think you’re the other sex, in the hope that that will make you more happy.” It’s groping in the dark.
Another thing wrong with it, and a much bigger thing, is the threat. The implied threat is that if this form of “medical care” is banned then people will die as a result. The implied claim is that Chase Strangio would have died if trans “medical care” had been banned. That’s using the threat of suicide as a lever to make people stop trying to protect children and adolescents from the craze for tampering with puberty and amputating healthy body parts. It’s a pretty awful thing to do, even for Chase Strangio.
Ethos, logos, pathos – lawyers often use pathos to make their case. Strangio abandoned logos a long time ago.
…and that the world is better off with fewer dead.
To clarify: Do I wish people to suffer? No. Am I somehow about to become a serial killer? No. BUT no, no one is actually “owed” a life, let alone a painless one, nevermind the coddled free-of-so-much-as-a-twinge-of-discomfort one some demand.
It is irritating that these interventions are framed as if the patient will die from medical causes if the interventions are not performed. As if it is like treating cancer or an infection or other diseases. But no, it’s that the patient is strongly expected to commit suicide without the interventions.
Imagine if the threat of killing were coming from another person. “Cut off his finger or I will kill him”; “Remove her left kidney or I will kill her”. Are those operations considered “lifesaving”? I don’t think so. I doubt many people would talk about “saving a life” without also at least mentioning that this was extortion.
I doubt, too, that many other instances of acquiescence to suicide threat would be treated in the same manner. “Buy me a Porsche or I will kill myself; thank you for that lifesaving car purchase.” “Cut off my hand or I will kill myself; thank you for that lifesaving operation.” But the suicide threat is so ingrained in gender identity ideology that people don’t question it at all.
Well… Most people in the U.S. don’t seem to have any problem with the idea of God “saving” his followers from his own wrath* (only on the condition that they’re prepared to believe spectacularly implausible things for infinitely shitty reasons, of course…) so… Another way in which Gender Ideology resembles religion I guess.
* I.e. “saving” them by not taking his insatiable blood thirst out on them (for now…).
There is already a term for it: Cosmetic surgery. They are procedures to make someone feel better about their body, akin to a boob job or a tummy tuck.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons defines cosmetic surgery as: “surgical and nonsurgical procedures that enhance and reshape structures of the body to improve appearance and confidence”.
Hence, “gender-affirming health care” would be better called “gender-related cosmetic surgery”.
Strangio is the long term heavy smoker telling others smoking is risk free, on the basis that she did not suffer any of the stated ill effects.
She’s been validated by Jon Stewart, so we should probably all just shut up about it.
In the immortal words of Patrick Henrietta, “Give me boob job or give me death!”
Meanwhile, this is heartbreaking.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/beyond-belief
A woman needed actual lifesaving surgery. She went to a hospital that specializes in medicine for women. She insisted beforehand that she wanted a room and a bathroom that were not shared by men, and that she wanted only female nursing staff. One of the nurses was a man in a blond wig and lipstick. She went home. The hospital has now refused to do the surgery because she didn’t “share their values”. Her condition has deteriorated, and she may no longer be stable enough to get the surgery.
That is what denial of lifesaving surgery, over gender ideology, really looks like.
What the HELL??!!