When is the NYT going to learn that both the democratic and republican electorate is skeptical about transing kids? We’ve all wised up about this issue, thanks to the Cass Review, the WPATH Files, and increasing anecdotal accounts of people detransitioning. A look at the comments section on the article shows that very few people are buying Polgreen’s snake oil. The only “war” happening here is pediatric gender medicine’s assault on healthy kids’ bodies. And I wish Polgreen and others would stop hooking the campaign to transition kids to the wagon of women’s abortion rights, already. Every piece of mail I get from Planned Parenthood asking me for money now advocates for “gender affirming care.”
I always send back the envelopes with messaging about how wrong it is to give teens wrong sex hormones after a 30 minute consult. And of course, no donation. Now they have a malpractice suit against PP from a NY stater, Cristine Hineman. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons just put out a statement that extreme caution is recommended before these teen mastectomies and genital surgeries. The house of cards still stands, but one of their edifices is falling.
I hear Planned Parenthood's gender affirming care pitch so often on podcasts that I long for the days when podcast ads were just pushing crypto as an "investment" toward retirement.
The moderated reader comments to that article were scathing. People are catching on to the vast fraud. And the Polgreen column itself was a pretty good index of how much NYTimes have sunk in quality.
The 2 most "liked" comment from the article:
Michael L.
New YorkAug. 13
Using language like "the war on Trans kids" really gives away the bias behind this piece. No one is warring on kids, they are trying to protect confused and vulnerable kids from making life-altering decisions that they are not mentally equipped to comprehend. And much of the medical guidelines in the states are the product of trans activists not scientific and medical research. Europe has come to its senses on this subject. The state bans may or may not be helpful in the US, but it will probably take a few high-profile malpractice lawsuits to shut it down nationwide.
Hazelmom commented August 13
H
Hazelmom
USAug. 13
Injecting potentially dangerous and life-altering medicines into children should only be done after serious medical research supporting the efficacy and where there is no safe and efficacious alternative. The rush to gender treatment in the US does not meet that standard.
Thanks for this. I once had a trending comment on a NYT article like this, when I explained I divorced a man who was diagnosed in his first appointment at age 35 with a "gender psychologist" and he committed financial fraud in court, while the COO of a tech company, to get out of paying child support. I was accused of being a wealthy divorcee who got alimony again and again when I replied that I had to work 3 jobs to support my 2 sons. I'm going to copy these replies and do a bit on my channel regarding this. I hoped they didn't close comments, another strategy they rely on to brainwash the public.
as much as doctors insist that all lives — smokers l and non-smokers — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life without tobacco as attractive as possible.
As much as doctors insist that all lives — premature babies and full term babies — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal of reducing, if not erasing, premature births.
I hope that all of our leading GC voices (not the best term) will submit guest Op-Eds and Leters to the Editor. And then publicly keep score on who gets published.
I recall seeing Lydia at the Genspect conference in Denver.
A few weeks later, her NYT piece came out--which was so bizarre that people thought it was a spoof. Her take: everyone has regrets in life, she compared minor disappointments to life-altering surgeries.
Needless to say, the editors at NYT and WaPo are the gatekeepers. Some of them identify as trans, are partnered with trans-identified people, or have children with trans identities.
From your piece: "She goes on to note that, “[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible."
Shouldn't the goal be to accept one's body, to make peace with it?
No, that isn't the goal in the body modification cult. This isn't about gender dysphoria. This is a lifestyle choice. Lydia is a lesbian in a peer group with many FTM individuals (so I have heard).
There is cognitive dissonance for progressives--I encounter it often in my friend group. I have had some sympathetic and understanding friends (regarding my daughter's disappearance into the trans cult). Yet, once they have another friend or two who now also have trans-identified children, and these parents embrace this new identity, easily switching up history and pronouns--well, then it becomes more of my problem, as in, why couldn't I go along?
Which brings us back to Lydia and the peer groups of progressives.
"Everyone has regrets in life" is reminiscent of the Christian justification for doing nothing about personal or societal problems, "We live in a fallen creation."
This is literally how she opened her column of 12-01-23:
"When I was in sixth grade, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. I decided not to try out for the middle school swim team."
She was stealth at the Genspect conference this past November--though a few people recognized her, struck up a conversation, pledged their liberal leanings to gain her ear.
And she compares medicalizing youth to not pursuing the swim team!
It's such an exceptionally horrible equivalence to draw. That strand of liberalism that has elevated non judgementalism to the point where it's incapable of criticising even the most self destructive of behaviours has become a real danger to society.
"She goes on to note that, '[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible.' Ignore, for a moment, the pseudoscientific language — sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact."
Yes, sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact. Yet at the moment I am trying to convince my primary care physician's heath care organization of that biological fact. I recently made the shocking discovery that the personal information page of the organization's patient interface, "MyChart," displays the patient's "sex assigned at birth." Let that sink in. "Sex assigned at birth" is the heading that appears over the box that gives my sex. (It's male, by the way.) The list of possible responses gives no options that would satisfy a sex realist. To add insult to injury, the page also discloses the patient's "gender identity." At least there I was able to register my dissent, albeit inarticulately, by selecting "Choose not to disclose."
In a perfect world, gender identity would be banished from patients' personal information records and sex would be disclosed as, well, sex, period. In a world in which even health care organizations have been so thoroughly captured by gender ideology that the integrity of patient information has been compromised, I would settle for being able to select "Sex observed at birth: Male" and "None" in the "Gender Identity" box.
Several weeks ago I protested these inaccuracies in my medical records to the health care organization. My sex, I explained, was biologically determined at conception and observed, not assigned, at birth. I added that in only 0.02 percent of births do physical ambiguities require that the physician assign a sex to the newborn child. Gender ideology, I said, is rooted in philosophy and activism, not science, and has no place in medicine. I added that I do not "identify as" male; I am male. I requested that "MyChart" be modified in such a way as to correct the errors in question.
After an exchange of messages, where things stand is that the Help Team at my health care organization has taken the implausible position that the health care organization has no control over the wording of the patient information page or of the choices on the list of patients' possible responses in MyChart. They helpfully gave me the customer service number of the enterprise that developed MyChart and suggested that I direct my requests there.
Not only is the arrangement described by the help team contrary to normal business practices, the tremendous differences between this organization's use of the MyChart personal information page and another's suggests that the organization works closely with the developer of MyChart to customize the personal information page to meet its particular needs.
I have received the following reply to my complaint to the other health care organization that uses the patient interface "MyChart" to record and display my personal information. To summarize, I objected to the organization's use of the expression "sex assigned at birth" in its record of my sex and to the fact the "gender identity" field does not give patients the option of selecting "None." The controversy is described in greater detail above.
In simplest terms, the position the organization is taking is being driven by activism rooted in philosophy and not by medical science. Furthermore, though the organization justifies its stance on its desire to be inclusive of patients' identities, the fact is that it is excluding sex realists in its statistics on gender identity. If they let patients select "none" in the category of religion, they should do the same for gender identity.
I would be grateful for suggestions on how to reply to this message. The name of the sender and their organization have been omitted.
Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. The sex assigned at birth and gender identity fields are fixed fields in the medical record. Thus, the information cannot be removed. However, you are welcome to select the "Choose not to disclose" option if you do not wish to select an answer.
Sex assigned at birth is the recognized nomenclature in health care. This is also the nomenclature used by the CDC. As you mentioned, the sex that is assigned by a medical provider is based on the genitalia (and in certain cases other factors) observed at birth.
We appreciate your feedback regarding gender identity, but as an organization that is proud to serve a diverse population of patients, we believe that it is important to give all patients the opportunity to express their identity and have that identity acknowledged. Please feel free to select the "Choose not to disclose" option if you do not wish to provide an answer for the gender identity field.
Utterly ridiculous. That’s how insidious this ideology it is. It will take several more years, I’m afraid, to yank out all the roots and tentacles. I guess we need to start complaining to the CDC.
(Polgreen) goes on to note that, “[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible.” Ignore, for a moment, the pseudoscientific language — sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact — and focus on what is being criticised here: the desire for children to avoid unnecessary hormones and surgeries and strife through self-acceptance.
Polgreen is so frustrating in her arguments, but she does us a favor by saying out loud the quiet part that I think is core to this issue but rarely gets directly addressed: There are people who think having a kid's (or adult's) gender distress resolved in a way that makes them comfortable living as their biological sex in their "one and only body" - whether that is through allowing them to naturally outgrow distress through neutral watchful waiting or actively engaging in helping them develop acceptance and self-confidence in who they are - for some reason is not a good outcome for people like Jack Turban, Erin Reed, or Polgreen. Why is that? It reminds me of the 80s and 90s when cochlear implants first became available for children and some activists saw this as a genocide against the Deaf community. There seems to be an almost parallel here, where any child who has the potential of living as trans must live as trans or else it is an attack, a genocide against the trans community.
All the Reader Picks comments are critical of the article. NY Times readers are surely one of the largest liberal audiences in the US, it's heartening that there is so little support for her arguments.
It reminds me of the ways gay conversion therapists dodged questions about the effectiveness of their treatments back in the 00s. Success rates were obfuscated, relapses were blamed on failures of the patient or society promoting the homosexual "lifestyle" as valid. Every excuse was considered except for the idea that maybe, just maybe, homosexuality wasn't a choice.
Thank you so much for this. The article made me so infuriated that I was unable to formulate words and instead of responding I gasped and exclaimed to myself. I hope you will send this to the NYT as a retort to the article. NYT should be ashamed of themselves. I hate the politicization of this issue so much, because I am a die-hard lefty but I don't find many cohorts except in places like this.
Good news is the American Society of Plastic Surgeons put out a statement for caution, admitting low quality foundation for sex trait modification surgeries on minors. As I state here in an update on MrBeast, XY Boxers and this, finally someone in the medical profession is admitting maybe they were wrong. The surgeons are the logical first group to hesitate; they don't do the psychological screening and they are the ones who will be sued by detransitioners.
When is the NYT going to learn that both the democratic and republican electorate is skeptical about transing kids? We’ve all wised up about this issue, thanks to the Cass Review, the WPATH Files, and increasing anecdotal accounts of people detransitioning. A look at the comments section on the article shows that very few people are buying Polgreen’s snake oil. The only “war” happening here is pediatric gender medicine’s assault on healthy kids’ bodies. And I wish Polgreen and others would stop hooking the campaign to transition kids to the wagon of women’s abortion rights, already. Every piece of mail I get from Planned Parenthood asking me for money now advocates for “gender affirming care.”
I always send back the envelopes with messaging about how wrong it is to give teens wrong sex hormones after a 30 minute consult. And of course, no donation. Now they have a malpractice suit against PP from a NY stater, Cristine Hineman. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons just put out a statement that extreme caution is recommended before these teen mastectomies and genital surgeries. The house of cards still stands, but one of their edifices is falling.
@ Ute Heggen - I also send back the envelopes with the same messaging as yours, without a donation. I hope many more are doing this too.
I hear Planned Parenthood's gender affirming care pitch so often on podcasts that I long for the days when podcast ads were just pushing crypto as an "investment" toward retirement.
thank you thank you thank you thank you for your work.
The moderated reader comments to that article were scathing. People are catching on to the vast fraud. And the Polgreen column itself was a pretty good index of how much NYTimes have sunk in quality.
The 2 most "liked" comment from the article:
Michael L.
New YorkAug. 13
Using language like "the war on Trans kids" really gives away the bias behind this piece. No one is warring on kids, they are trying to protect confused and vulnerable kids from making life-altering decisions that they are not mentally equipped to comprehend. And much of the medical guidelines in the states are the product of trans activists not scientific and medical research. Europe has come to its senses on this subject. The state bans may or may not be helpful in the US, but it will probably take a few high-profile malpractice lawsuits to shut it down nationwide.
Hazelmom commented August 13
H
Hazelmom
USAug. 13
Injecting potentially dangerous and life-altering medicines into children should only be done after serious medical research supporting the efficacy and where there is no safe and efficacious alternative. The rush to gender treatment in the US does not meet that standard.
Thanks for this. I once had a trending comment on a NYT article like this, when I explained I divorced a man who was diagnosed in his first appointment at age 35 with a "gender psychologist" and he committed financial fraud in court, while the COO of a tech company, to get out of paying child support. I was accused of being a wealthy divorcee who got alimony again and again when I replied that I had to work 3 jobs to support my 2 sons. I'm going to copy these replies and do a bit on my channel regarding this. I hoped they didn't close comments, another strategy they rely on to brainwash the public.
as much as doctors insist that all lives — smokers l and non-smokers — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life without tobacco as attractive as possible.
As much as doctors insist that all lives — premature babies and full term babies — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal of reducing, if not erasing, premature births.
The ableist jerks.
The Polgreen op-ed was disgraceful. There were lots of comments from readers, though, and many were critical of what she wrote.
Can you submit this to the NYT as a response? Given reader comments and Pamela Pauls recent articles - they may at least consider?
Awesome idea!
I hope that all of our leading GC voices (not the best term) will submit guest Op-Eds and Leters to the Editor. And then publicly keep score on who gets published.
Thank you, Eliza--excellent as always!
I recall seeing Lydia at the Genspect conference in Denver.
A few weeks later, her NYT piece came out--which was so bizarre that people thought it was a spoof. Her take: everyone has regrets in life, she compared minor disappointments to life-altering surgeries.
Needless to say, the editors at NYT and WaPo are the gatekeepers. Some of them identify as trans, are partnered with trans-identified people, or have children with trans identities.
From your piece: "She goes on to note that, “[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible."
Shouldn't the goal be to accept one's body, to make peace with it?
No, that isn't the goal in the body modification cult. This isn't about gender dysphoria. This is a lifestyle choice. Lydia is a lesbian in a peer group with many FTM individuals (so I have heard).
There is cognitive dissonance for progressives--I encounter it often in my friend group. I have had some sympathetic and understanding friends (regarding my daughter's disappearance into the trans cult). Yet, once they have another friend or two who now also have trans-identified children, and these parents embrace this new identity, easily switching up history and pronouns--well, then it becomes more of my problem, as in, why couldn't I go along?
Which brings us back to Lydia and the peer groups of progressives.
"Everyone has regrets in life" is reminiscent of the Christian justification for doing nothing about personal or societal problems, "We live in a fallen creation."
Agreed.
This is literally how she opened her column of 12-01-23:
"When I was in sixth grade, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. I decided not to try out for the middle school swim team."
She was stealth at the Genspect conference this past November--though a few people recognized her, struck up a conversation, pledged their liberal leanings to gain her ear.
And she compares medicalizing youth to not pursuing the swim team!
It's such an exceptionally horrible equivalence to draw. That strand of liberalism that has elevated non judgementalism to the point where it's incapable of criticising even the most self destructive of behaviours has become a real danger to society.
"She goes on to note that, '[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible.' Ignore, for a moment, the pseudoscientific language — sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact."
Yes, sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact. Yet at the moment I am trying to convince my primary care physician's heath care organization of that biological fact. I recently made the shocking discovery that the personal information page of the organization's patient interface, "MyChart," displays the patient's "sex assigned at birth." Let that sink in. "Sex assigned at birth" is the heading that appears over the box that gives my sex. (It's male, by the way.) The list of possible responses gives no options that would satisfy a sex realist. To add insult to injury, the page also discloses the patient's "gender identity." At least there I was able to register my dissent, albeit inarticulately, by selecting "Choose not to disclose."
In a perfect world, gender identity would be banished from patients' personal information records and sex would be disclosed as, well, sex, period. In a world in which even health care organizations have been so thoroughly captured by gender ideology that the integrity of patient information has been compromised, I would settle for being able to select "Sex observed at birth: Male" and "None" in the "Gender Identity" box.
Several weeks ago I protested these inaccuracies in my medical records to the health care organization. My sex, I explained, was biologically determined at conception and observed, not assigned, at birth. I added that in only 0.02 percent of births do physical ambiguities require that the physician assign a sex to the newborn child. Gender ideology, I said, is rooted in philosophy and activism, not science, and has no place in medicine. I added that I do not "identify as" male; I am male. I requested that "MyChart" be modified in such a way as to correct the errors in question.
After an exchange of messages, where things stand is that the Help Team at my health care organization has taken the implausible position that the health care organization has no control over the wording of the patient information page or of the choices on the list of patients' possible responses in MyChart. They helpfully gave me the customer service number of the enterprise that developed MyChart and suggested that I direct my requests there.
Not only is the arrangement described by the help team contrary to normal business practices, the tremendous differences between this organization's use of the MyChart personal information page and another's suggests that the organization works closely with the developer of MyChart to customize the personal information page to meet its particular needs.
I am working on a response.
UPDATE
I have received the following reply to my complaint to the other health care organization that uses the patient interface "MyChart" to record and display my personal information. To summarize, I objected to the organization's use of the expression "sex assigned at birth" in its record of my sex and to the fact the "gender identity" field does not give patients the option of selecting "None." The controversy is described in greater detail above.
In simplest terms, the position the organization is taking is being driven by activism rooted in philosophy and not by medical science. Furthermore, though the organization justifies its stance on its desire to be inclusive of patients' identities, the fact is that it is excluding sex realists in its statistics on gender identity. If they let patients select "none" in the category of religion, they should do the same for gender identity.
I would be grateful for suggestions on how to reply to this message. The name of the sender and their organization have been omitted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. The sex assigned at birth and gender identity fields are fixed fields in the medical record. Thus, the information cannot be removed. However, you are welcome to select the "Choose not to disclose" option if you do not wish to select an answer.
Sex assigned at birth is the recognized nomenclature in health care. This is also the nomenclature used by the CDC. As you mentioned, the sex that is assigned by a medical provider is based on the genitalia (and in certain cases other factors) observed at birth.
We appreciate your feedback regarding gender identity, but as an organization that is proud to serve a diverse population of patients, we believe that it is important to give all patients the opportunity to express their identity and have that identity acknowledged. Please feel free to select the "Choose not to disclose" option if you do not wish to provide an answer for the gender identity field.
Thank you,
Compliance, Quality and Risk Manager
Utterly ridiculous. That’s how insidious this ideology it is. It will take several more years, I’m afraid, to yank out all the roots and tentacles. I guess we need to start complaining to the CDC.
(Polgreen) goes on to note that, “[a]s much as Cass’s report insists that all lives — trans lives, cis lives, non-binary lives — have equal value, taken in full it seems to have a clear, paramount goal: making living life in the sex you are assigned at birth as attractive and likely as possible.” Ignore, for a moment, the pseudoscientific language — sex is not an arbitrary assignment but a biological fact — and focus on what is being criticised here: the desire for children to avoid unnecessary hormones and surgeries and strife through self-acceptance.
Polgreen is so frustrating in her arguments, but she does us a favor by saying out loud the quiet part that I think is core to this issue but rarely gets directly addressed: There are people who think having a kid's (or adult's) gender distress resolved in a way that makes them comfortable living as their biological sex in their "one and only body" - whether that is through allowing them to naturally outgrow distress through neutral watchful waiting or actively engaging in helping them develop acceptance and self-confidence in who they are - for some reason is not a good outcome for people like Jack Turban, Erin Reed, or Polgreen. Why is that? It reminds me of the 80s and 90s when cochlear implants first became available for children and some activists saw this as a genocide against the Deaf community. There seems to be an almost parallel here, where any child who has the potential of living as trans must live as trans or else it is an attack, a genocide against the trans community.
All the Reader Picks comments are critical of the article. NY Times readers are surely one of the largest liberal audiences in the US, it's heartening that there is so little support for her arguments.
I always appreciate your analysis on these arguments. You are clear-eyed and concise. Thank you for your work.
I've started calling her Gender Judith Miller.
It reminds me of the ways gay conversion therapists dodged questions about the effectiveness of their treatments back in the 00s. Success rates were obfuscated, relapses were blamed on failures of the patient or society promoting the homosexual "lifestyle" as valid. Every excuse was considered except for the idea that maybe, just maybe, homosexuality wasn't a choice.
Thank you so much for this. The article made me so infuriated that I was unable to formulate words and instead of responding I gasped and exclaimed to myself. I hope you will send this to the NYT as a retort to the article. NYT should be ashamed of themselves. I hate the politicization of this issue so much, because I am a die-hard lefty but I don't find many cohorts except in places like this.
Good news is the American Society of Plastic Surgeons put out a statement for caution, admitting low quality foundation for sex trait modification surgeries on minors. As I state here in an update on MrBeast, XY Boxers and this, finally someone in the medical profession is admitting maybe they were wrong. The surgeons are the logical first group to hesitate; they don't do the psychological screening and they are the ones who will be sued by detransitioners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6eee7BhqlQ&t=6s