This intense focus on immediate needs
Returning to Jesse Singal’s Atlantic piece on children who say they are trans…
The current era of gender-identity awareness has undoubtedly made life easier for many young people who feel constricted by the sometimes-oppressive nature of gender expectations. A rich new language has taken root, granting kids who might have felt alone or excluded the words they need to describe their experiences.
I’m not sure about that – I’m not sure the new language is genuinely rich. Is it rich or is it impoverished to decide that if you don’t like lipstick and high heels then you are a boy? Is it rich to substitute the trans vocabulary for the feminist vocabulary? Is it better to find your True Gender or to conclude that gender is bullshit?
Singal notes that professional science-based organizations advise caution and deliberation when it comes to physical alterations for children and teenagers.
The American Psychological Association’s guidelines sound a similar note, explaining the benefits of hormones but also noting that “adolescents can become intensely focused on their immediate desires.” It goes on: “This intense focus on immediate needs may create challenges in assuring that adolescents are cognitively and emotionally able to make life-altering decisions.”
The leading professional organizations offer this guidance. But some clinicians are moving toward a faster process. And other resources, including those produced by major LGBTQ organizations, place the emphasis on acceptance rather than inquiry.
Acceptance, affirmation, celebration, all very much instead of and in opposition to inquiry. That should have sent up warning flags long ago.
Ignoring the diversity of these experiences and focusing only on those who were effectively “born in the wrong body” could cause harm. That is the argument of a small but vocal group of men and women who have transitioned, only to return to their assigned sex. Many of these so-called detransitioners argue that their dysphoria was caused not by a deep-seated mismatch between their gender identity and their body but rather by mental-health problems, trauma, societal misogyny, or some combination of these and other factors. They say they were nudged toward the physical interventions of hormones or surgery by peer pressure or by clinicians who overlooked other potential explanations for their distress.
Singal of course has been piled on for saying that. No inquiry allowed.
Don’t forget the religious rite of Confirmation:
https://people.com/tv/jazz-jennings-on-track-gender-confirmation-surgery/
‘Acceptance’ in this example smacks of the demand to ‘believe the children’ in ‘Satanic Abuse’ cases. Back when children were ‘believed’ only after being coerced and threatened into delivering the desired reports.
John the Drunkard, re coercion and “believing the children,” this post from the blog 4th Wave Now shares a clip from a talk by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Medical Director of the country’s largest transgender youth clinic:
https://4thwavenow.com/2017/07/23/i-just-gave-him-the-language-top-gender-doc-uses-pop-tart-analogy-to-persuade-8-year-old-girl-shes-really-a-boy/
From 4th Wave’s transcript (I’ve removed the 4th Wave author’s commentary except for her descriptions of dramatic pauses and audience response, which I’ve bolded.)
A reader analyzed what happened there:
Geez, Jezebel is trying really really hard to make Jesse Singal a journalist non grata. This latest article breathlessly reports that they’ve uncovered things Singal wrote on a private journalism group regarding his work on trans issues, and boy, you’ll be…
… utterly unsurprised. I kept scrolling down, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was Singal really a horrible transphobe, as I’ve been assured? Did he utter some of the nasty things we’ve seen quoted from “famous TERF quotes”? Or did he say something intemperate that could at least be construed that way? Nope, nope, and nope. He comes across as utterly ordinary and decent, as a journalist who’s trying to be fair in an area that doesn’t get a lot of good reporting, who is perhaps a little befuddled at the sheer vitriol that gets directed his way but is taking it all in stride.
The entire article left me thinking more highly of Singal, and less of the Jezebel writer Harron Walker.
I started to wonder if this was some sort of performance art piece or trollery — the groupthink was coming from inside the house all along! — but Jezebel (and Walker specifically) have been on this crusade for a while.