Home » The New York Times notices that “sudden gender dysphoria” might be a fad-like thing and that the “affirmative” model of treatment might be hurting many young people

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<i>The New York Times</i> notices that “sudden gender dysphoria” might be a fad-like thing and that the “affirmative” model of treatment might be hurting many young people — 39 Comments

  1. Fanatical activists are like a new religious cult, fanaticism ( martyrdom) is considered good good good, you’re right they fight to the bitter end hoping for martyrdom.

  2. Related?
    A peek down the rabbit hole of higher (Orwellian) education…

    ‘ Oberlin Athletics Wins NCAA LGBTQ Award After Demoting Coach Who Spoke Out Against Men in Women’s Sports;
    ‘ “This award comes with a great sense of pride. It also comes with a great sense of responsibility. We cannot become complacent. We must constantly commit ourselves to maintaining and improving inclusivity on our campus.” ‘—
    https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/02/oberlin-athletics-wins-ncaa-lgbtq-award-after-demoting-coach-who-spoke-out-against-men-in-womens-sports/

  3. The New York Times notices that “sudden gender dysphoria” might be a fad-like thing
    A fad-like thing? Ya think? 🙂 Golly gee-whiz, even the NYT can, like a stopped clock, occasionally be right. What the NYT doesn’t admit is that the NYT and its friends in the MSM played a big role in generating the fad.

    Nearly 40% of students at Brown University identify as LGBTQ+ — doubling the share from 2010 One more example of a “fad-like-thing” helped along by hammering in the MSM and left-wing narrative club.

    That this happened at Brown indicates that very bright people are as susceptible to fad-like things as people a lot less bright than they. In some respects, the very bright are more susceptible to fad-like things, as many of the very bright are eager to latch onto political positions and beliefs that distinguish them from the dumb, uneducated rabble. In wanting to be on the cutting edge, they end up cutting themselves.

  4. I think the parents who helped their children “transition” will be among the most rabid defenders of the ideology as time goes on. The alternative would be to face the terrible damage they helped wreak on their kids, both emotionally and physically. And the further along the child transitioned, the more terrible that recognition would be. As a result, I think most of these parents will do anything to avoid acknowledging what they have done.

  5. The University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine did an unknown number of child mutilations until the Unicam and Governor stopped them last year.

    There is now pending a medical malpractice case filed by one of the victims.

    I called on the Nebraska Board of Regents to fire the CEO and General Counsel of UNMC. I’m renewing my call this coming Friday.

    There needs to be accountability for bad judgment that hurts kids.

  6. Levine Dreams of Herr Mengele. Obama dwells on “burdens”. Sanger savored eugenics. Cecile the abortionist was scalping in a clinic, and Gosnell came tumbling after. A wicked solution in progress executed with liberal license.

  7. Johns Hopkins reached the conclusion over four decades earlier that not all colors in the transgender spectrum disorder were equally (“=”) unstable. Treatment failed to mitigate progress in the great majority, and the minority that perceived any benefit could not be predicted. The rest were mutilated through surgical, medical, and psychiatric corruption. That said, at least wait until after puberty, and proceed with informed consent.

  8. The University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine did an unknown number of child mutilations until the Unicam and Governor stopped them last year.
    ==
    That they needed a law to stop them is an indictment of the medical profession and hospital administration. Say their names. Say the name of every doctor who did these things. Say the names of their department heads. Say the names of the deans to whom they report, the VPs to whom they report, the hospital directors to whom they report. All the names, home addresses, and license plates.

  9. I am a little surprised that no father of a child on whom these mutilations were performed has gone around the bend and shot a doctor or therapist.

  10. Mac, that sounds very sexist! You know full well that women are fully capable of pulling a trigger, too. 🙂 Perhaps you know, or were expecting, that the mother would be the more “willing to transition” parent?

    But if they are going to go around the bend, then maybe a little firearm surgery of their own is called for.

  11. Yes, R2L, it is certainly sexist. Or “sexist.” But I was thinking not of the mother being more likely to approve the “transition” but of the father being more likely to get violent.

    Has anyone ever heard a feminist say that it’s wrong to think men are more prone to violence than women? I’ve certainly heard a lot of them say the opposite, that it’s just a fact. Which of course it is. Come to think of it, I think they work around it by saying that men are more likely to be violent because The Patriarchy makes them that way.

  12. Andrea Widburg’s post today mentions the NYT article in passing.
    Her conclusion, after discussing her thesis (that the Left is redefining the meaning of “child abuse” to include refusing to allow one’s child to be mutilated) and some horrifying case details from recent news:

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/02/leftists_escalate_orwellian_assault_on_language_to_justify_transing_children.html

    Heck, even the New York Times just published an opinion piece about the physical and mental dangers to children from these procedures.

    Most recently, New York family court judges denied a father the right to prevent his wife from putting his 8-year-old son on hormones that will allegedly, and magically, change the boy into a girl.

    As you may have noticed, there are three constants in these cases. Each case involves a divorce scenario with an ugly custody battle. In addition, one will almost invariably find either girls who have long histories of mental illness or mothers who insist that their sons are, in fact, daughters.

    Regarding the latter, back in 1991, when such studies were still allowed in academia, the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry discovered that when they looked at the mothers of boys with what was still properly called “gender identity disorder,” 53% of these mothers had Borderline Personality Disorder. Fifty-three percent! (Disclaimer: I have no way of knowing whether the mothers involved in the cases I’ve cited above have any psychological problems and am not saying that they do.)

    Once child abuse meant that a sane society protected children from insane people—that is, people who thought it was okay to destroy a child’s body and spirit. Now, the insane people are defining what constitutes child abuse and, when legislatures cannot make it happen, relatively unaccountable organizations, such as the courts, hospitals, or alleged child protective agencies, are doing the redefinitions themselves.

  13. Thanks for the YouTube video, Shadow – excellent, nuanced, sane. I’m almost at the end of it and there’s one thing they’ve only barely touched on that I think needs to be brought to the fore: how much of parental “support” for very young transition is affected by parents’ not wanting to hear what this parent did hear from her son: “Mama, this is your fault”?

    This parent heard it after socially transitioning her son for over three years, and fortunately she was strong enough to know it was coming and to hear it without making excuses. But how many, when they have a gender-nonconforming child (or think they do), go forward with suggestions of social transition because they’re afraid their child will blame them for NOT doing it someday?

  14. Merely another Leftist effort to destroy society by “helping out the downtrodden and misunderstood, the helpless and the hopeless”(TM).

    Yes, they are really trying to HELP OUT! (At least that’s what they—and, especially, “BIDEN”—are all claiming…in their UBER-twisted, -warped, -perverted, -bent -what-a-wonderful-world-it-could-be ideology….)

    Well, we “been there, done that”…from BOTH ends of the spectrum…and the result has been sheer misery, death and destruction.
    So, heh, let’s try it all again!

    (There’s a reason why the Leftist jackboot must “stamp” on “the Pursuit of Happiness” forever….)

  15. Not all of us are nuts. The “activists” make us all look abnormally f’d up, but the majority in my circle (and myself) just want to live our lives as we choose without imposing on anyone else.

  16. Gringo
    Right. And I wonder if a kid who learned to spell “dysphoria” on social media and thought he wanted to be one would get very far down that path if she didn’t have socially aware parents–the bad kind of socially aware where being ahead of other parents is the goal–to “encourage” her.

    As to the Brown students, it’s possible that the zeitgeist is such that perfectly rational students see a profit in claiming one of the “in” things, as opposed to being straight and a potential oppressor.

  17. Mac, I suspect that a few dads with shotguns is the nice end of the reaction.

    I think we will see clinics burned, with the staff inside, and doors barricaded.

  18. “Elon Musk Says He Knows Why the Biden Border Crisis Exists” – Barry Meislin at 3:48 pm

    I agree with Elon. But his numbers are too low. There were at least 20 million illegals in the country before Biden opened the border. At least 10 to 12 million have arrived since 2021. Give them a path to citizenship and they will all be able to bring their relations here – parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Let’s say each of the 30 million brings2 – 3 relatives in. Now we’re talking 60 – 90 million new potential voters.

    156 million people (83 million Ds & 73 million Rs) voted in the 2021 election. (Assuming the count was correct) A record number of voters.
    Think what 30 to 90 million new voters would mean. It’s a plan that the Democrat activists believe will work. And that’s why they are pushing it so hard.

  19. This is one of the most troubling ‘fads’, and I use that word deliberately, that has engulfed society during my 88 years.

    It has the potential to ruin countless young lives; and the the “Cultists” (again the word is chosen deliberately) who have the power of the government at their disposal are ripping families asunder in pursuit of their fantasies.

    I know there are rare individuals with gender issues. As I have previously noted, the daughter of Dear Friends went through it. After an extended period, she transitioned; and from all accounts it went well. (No latter day reports, as her parents died relatively young. No correlation implied.)

    The emphasis on my little story, should be ‘after an extended period’. I trust that during that period there was counseling, along with any other precautions that are warranted prior to a life changing choice.

    Our society is Mad. Ironically, we scoff at earlier episodes of societal derangement, the “Salem Witch Trials” for instance, with a smirk as though we are more enlightened. We are no better; and I would aver worse, because with the help of modern technology, the madness easily becomes epidemic. What next?

  20. Well stated Oldflyer. Technology, it turns out, is a double-edged sword with the power to do much good and much evil.

    As you say this isn’t new. In his 1841 book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” Charles Mackay examined “alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair,” and more. It’s a part of human nature.

    Also, Douglas Murray has written a recent book, “The Madness of Crowds,” in which he posits the following:
    “In The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray argues that Western society is consumed by an ideology that’s obsessed with social justice and identity politics. This ideology insists that certain groups (notably women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ individuals) endure widespread prejudice and oppression, and that they should therefore receive sensitivity, accommodations, and apologetic behavior from the social majority.”

    I think he’s got it right. These popular delusions are often hard to break. This one will be, and part of the reason is that social media encourages it. I’m hopeful that eventual suits for massive damages may stem the tide. We can hope.

  21. As a clinician that works with suicidal young people I have frequently worked with trans youth. My work has always begun with the statement “ it’s seems like you hate a lot of things about yourself including your gender, let’s work on getting you to like yourself a lot more and then see where your gender is at”

  22. Oldflyer

    Our society is Mad. Ironically, we scoff at earlier episodes of societal derangement, the “Salem Witch Trials” for instance, with a smirk as though we are more enlightened. We are no better; and I would aver worse, because with the help of modern technology, the madness easily becomes epidemic. What next?

    “We are no better.” True enough, human nature being what it is. But the woke are convinced that they are so much more enlightened than those of the past- while knowing very little about the past.
    Worse yet, this madness is perpetuated by people who KNOW they are improving things. Hubris, hubris…..

  23. @ Sandra > “ it’s seems like you hate a lot of things about yourself including your gender, let’s work on getting you to like yourself a lot more and then see where your gender is at”

    A monumentally sane approach, and thank you for sharing it.

    Here is a post showing some of the responses to the recent NYT articles about both illegal immigration and transitioning, and they are remarkable coming from that particular subscriber base. Of course, they may not be representative of the sample, but the post’s writer thinks they were at least approved by some of the other commenters. (h/t PowerLine)
    They are screen-captures, so I can’t copypasta them.

    https://natpop.substack.com/p/new-york-times-readers-blast-liberal
    “New York Times Readers Blast Liberal Ideology
    Even The Times Readers Know There’s a Problem”
    by
    RYAN JAMES GIRDUSKY

  24. I think Topo Gigio gets it right. Most parents who allowed this to be done to their children will go down with the ideological ship. The alternative is too horrible for them to contemplate, let alone accept. And I believe that Richard Aubrey is also correct. Most of the parents who allowed this to be done to their children were pretty far down the woke virtue signaling path to begin with. That’s been my experience. I think that’s why we haven’t seen irate parents going after doctors. That and the worm hasn’t really turned yet. It might be starting to turn (hopefully), but that’s it. But these parents and other family members are going to put up a whale of a fight.

    This episode really drove home for me the corruption of elite scientific institutions. Ten years ago, the best scientific thinking on gender dysphoria advocated for a “watchful waiting” approach, acknowledging the reality that some 80% of children who exhibit symptoms ultimately desist. Then, activists canceled (at least) one of the leading scientists on gender dysphoria, accusing him of “hate” for cautioning against immediate “affirmation.” After that, resistance aganst “affirmation” collapsed. The science didn’t change, but the “Science” did. I have actually seen very few methodological objections to the Johns Hopkins/Paul McHugh research and conclusions from 40 years ago. The main objection was that McHugh was a Catholic so his research could be ignored because it was obviously motivated by “hate.” A lot of “Science” was going on, but not much actual science.

    A related point – I think a lot of our social problems today are the result of an inability or unwillingness to distinguish between hard and soft science. Psychology is not the same type of science as physics or chemistry. For example, objects in a vacuum will be accelerated by the earth’s gravity at 9.8 m/s2. Anyone who denies that, at a basic level, is a fool who, more or less, rejects science. You could say the same about the earth revolving around the sun. Psychology, on the other hand, is more of a meta-science. We understand some of the physiological processes, but don’t necessarily understand what they mean and have to make a lot of educated guesses. You simply cannot treat the conclusions of psychologists and psychiatrists the same as you do the conclusions of a physicist or chemist. Yet people do.

  25. “As to the Brown students, it’s possible that the zeitgeist is such that perfectly rational students see a profit in claiming one of the “in” things, as opposed to being straight and a potential oppressor.”

    Exactly, you need a distinct “victim story” to tell in order to get into a top school. Intelligent students, especially those who are straight, white, and male, figure they have to reinvent themselves as one or more of the alphabet on their applications in order to even be considered for admission. Meanwhile, the college could care less what the student does once they are enrolled, so long as they get to check a diversity box. Sure, many likely continue the charade in order to virtue signal, but the ultimate result is 40% of the student body reportedly identifying as LBGTQetc. Within a decade, I would guess over 90% of student body at any given ivy will identify as LBGTQetc.

  26. Most degrees from the Ivies used to be worth “Would that be a Grande with soymilk or ….?” but AI has killed those career options. What will they do with their lives, besides performative protesting?

  27. I still claim that gender is imaginary. I still can’t find anyone who can tell me the physical basis of gender.

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