Remove the T
Owen Jones talks of a “reversal on LGBTQ rights,” but of course what he means is mostly the T bit, which doesn’t belong with the LGB bit in the first place. As usual this ploy enables a lot of dishonest framing.
Even more terrifying is Texas’s banning of gender-affirming healthcare for young trans people, with their parents now legally defined as child abusers if they seek it.
But of course it’s not “healthcare.” Switch the frame and it’s mutilation and/or dangerous and damaging use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It’s not healthcare as commonly understood at all. “Gender-affirming” is not a medical term – it’s a political one. No one can change sex, and “affirming” gender is just feel-good drivel. “Young trans people” is a very squishy category, because so is “trans” itself. It’s basically just an thought-balloon. There’s an idea that there’s such a thing as “trans” and that self-reporting is 100% reliable, but both of those claims are highly debatable.
In January, the Council of Europe placed the UK in the same category as Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey for its position on LGBTQ rights, while for the third year running the UK has been relegated in the annual ranking of LGBTQ rights across Europe. The overriding reason is the anti-trans moral panic that grips British society, fostered by an overwhelmingly hostile media and a government that is using trans people as a prop in a “culture war” (just as Margaret Thatcher used gay people in the 1980s), and has refused to ban trans conversion practices.
Owen Jones is himself using trans people as a prop in a culture war, at the same time as he uses verbal nudges like “gender-affirming healthcare” and “trans conversion practices.” We’re supposed to think “trans conversion” is exactly comparable to gay conversion therapy, i.e. psychiatry coaxing or pushing lesbians and gays to go straight, but in fact they’re different. There’s no delusion involved in being same-sex attracted, while thinking you can become the other sex is a delusion full stop.
“Gender affirming care” is physical conversion therapy vs. Psychological conversion therapy.
The irony is all the people who support “gender affirming care” who still think there is some Psychological assessment/talk therapy done to make sure kids really are trans before they transition. They don’t understand that assessment/therapy is forbidden and considered attempted conversion therapy. Gender affirming care is like Schroedinger’s cat, it is both questioning and affirming at the same time, there is screening at the same time there is affirmation. People just can’t bring themselves to believe that major medical and psychological associations and the US government require doctors and therapists to transition children without question, regardless of their age or red flags.
I’m against criminalizing parents who decide to “affirm” their children who are convinced they’re trans. Given the massive support behind their doing so, it’s clearly still a debate and without other information (such as the child resisting) there’s no reason to assume they have anything but the child’s best interest at heart.
I’m also against legislators voting to forbid controversial medical therapies. That’s up to the medical community. Yes, I’m well aware of the harm these blockers, hormones, and surgeries inflict on children & teens, but it’s still up for legitimate discussion among professionals. I can’t then justify it on the grounds that I Know Better — especially since I’d condemn a similar move by conservatives under the same circumstances.
That seems like a red herring though. The issue isn’t punishing the parents but stopping the harm done to the children. Christian fanatics who watch their children die rather than calling a doctor also think they “have the child’s best interest at heart” but they’re wrong.
Also parents who practice FGM. And beating the children is considered to be in the child’s best interest. Technically, banning medical practices isn’t wrong if the medical practices are harmful (though the problem comes with what is considered harmful, and banning abortion and stem cell therapy are just plain wrong). Regulating the health industry can be a necessary thing, since the medical industry is far from perfect. And there are a lot of things we don’t allow to be done to children under a certain age without consent of their parents, at the very least. Like, I couldn’t have my wisdom teeth removed when I was eighteen, because for some reason that particular health care practice required parental consent until twenty-one. My mother had no problem with removing my impacted wisdom teeth, so that was no problem.
But medical practitioners have so bought into this that they are using puberty blockers for things they were not intended. That definitely needs some regulation, just like the coal industry needs to be regulated, the food industry needs to be regulated, and the auto industry needs to be regulated.
This always makes me laugh…well, not laugh maybe. Cry maybe. Shake my head in disbelief. The media has been anything but hostile to Trans dogma.
My major point was that the parents have enough mainstream/legitimate experts backing them up to exculpate them from being charged with child abuse. Abusive medical practices which are endorsed by these same experts in medicine shouldn’t be stopped with the law.
It’s a bizarre situation. Normal safeguarding is being ignored by some major organizations due to a variety of factors which lie outside of medicine. Establishing a precedent where the legislature steps in to shut down their ability to guide decisions is much more likely to be used in normal medical situations where the elected officials are biased.
But I’m not advocating charging them with abuse. I don’t really have an opinion on that, and at this point I don’t think it matters much. Maybe they should be given a blanket amnesty, I don’t know. But the abuse needs to stop.
I agree. But OJ’s first quote involved the Texas legislature going so far as to want parents who fall for the wealth of propaganda coming from respected medical organizations, therapists, and government to be legally charged with child abuse.
The wording is odd – he says “legally defined as child abusers” – which sounds more like a statistical label than a criminal prosecution.
Ultimately I suppose it’s fair to say parents are the victims of this “activism” too – it will have to be a nightmare for parents whole children detransition and can articulate what a horrible mistake it all was.
“refuse to ban trans conversion practices”
Well, hell, T is nothing but gay conversion practices.
What T advertises — you can change your sex — isn’t actually on offer. It’s not possible. It’s fraudulent advertising. The customers who fall victim to it can never be made whole. They will have ruined their bodies and their health irretrievably, to absolutely no purpose.
Doublethink has found a perfect, real world example in people who understand and recognize the irreconcilable difference between descriptive and normative, who nonetheless can’t see it in LGB vs. T.
Interesting point.