All aboard the gender train
This may be the creepiest one yet.
“working with gender-expansive individuals 3 to 25 and their families” – ah yes those gender-expansive 3-year-olds, aren’t they adorable.
This is Yale. Not BCH, Yale. Is it something about New England? Just Massachusetts and Connecticut? Just Boston and New Haven? Do they grow special creepy warm-voiced doctors in tubs of earth in a lab there?
‘
When I write this play or novel, I will dedicate it to you!
The images are quite amusing.
Wait, isn’t Yale where that goofball Jason Stanley is? Jeez…
Oh yes, so it is. I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t suppose they mingle much, but maybe the atmosphere at Yale in general pervades everything.
What is it with everyone suddenly deciding that the naturally diverse ways humans express “gendered” interests are suddenly not just interesting, but specifically, medically interesting? It’s weird enough that we’re all suddenly obsessed with everyone’s gender “nonconformity” when at most we should just casually acknowledge that gender expression is a thing that matters to some people more than others, that different people have different gendery tastes and that’s perfectly normal, then move on. But in this crazy time we’re in, people seem to think the only way to give “gender” the weighty aura of seriousness it supposedly deserves is to put it under a medical spotlight. How is it they’ve completely forgotten that medicine is a tool to cure illness, not to exalt identity.
Just a few hours ago I was swatting away someone who’s been pestering me with his pet theory that homosexuality is actually a symptom of total femininity in males/masculinity in females, which itself is a symptom of an intersex brain condition, which means all homosexuals are actually trans people who are “really” of the opposite sex, which means they should have all had their bodies medically modified to fix them. I noticed he put a Christian cross in his Twitter bio, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s got some relevance here: his kind of “you’re actually broken and should be fixed” wordage is exactly what anti-gay Evangelicals like “trans kid” Kai Shappley’s parents and televangelist Pat Robertson have been spouting lately.
But “you’re actually broken and should be fixed” is also a core belief of people like the looney tunes at Yale Medicine, who see themselves as crusaders for the so-called “queer community.”
One group says: “I’m so anti-gay I have to help you find your proper place in society by obsessing over your gender expression and helping you change your body to ‘match’ it.”
The other group says: “I’m so pro-queer I have to help you find your proper place in society by obsessing over your gender expression and helping you change your body to ‘match’ it.”
The end result is the same. Exalting one’s “queerness” with medicine sometimes just means curing one’s homosexuality. I guess the word “queer” never lost its original pejorative sense, because being anti-gay and being pro-queer lead to the same result, and it’s not good for gays.
I hate hate hate all the imprecision involved in all the gender-related vocabulary. Is Starbuck arguing that a female has a “girl gender” and shouldn’t be encouraged to change that gender to a “boy gender?” Describe the girl gender without using sex. It’s stereotypes or gibberish.
Some otherwise GC people seem to have fallen for the idea that gender is something we all have, and we all know what it means. Sex is binary, but oh yeah there are lots of genders. Can we figure out what “gender” means from looking at a list which goes beyond sex-based words? Sure: there’s gender-that’s-fluid, gender-that’s-multiple, gender-that’s-really-just-a-complicated-sexual-orientation, and of course, gender-that’s-a-snowflake.
Artymorty wrote:
Maybe it’s all those plastic surgery, body modification, & tattoo shows. They reached some sort of tipping point where people having their tongue snipped to look like a snake suddenly flipped into people having penis inverted to look like a vagina.
@Sastra
Yeah, I was thinking the same. But I doubt the people at Yale Medicine see the connection, that their gender department is more closely related to body piercing parlours and liposuction boutiques than the laboratories of Jonas Salk or Banting and Best.
[…] a comment by Artymorty on All aboard the gender […]
Whatever they’re growing them in, it ain’t earth.
For centuries, we were content with
In a natural language flush with homonyms, synonymity is how we specify which of several applicable senses applies. When things are ambiguous, we refer to the other, thereby indicating that we intend the shared meaning. For instance, “Sex, that is gender,” or, “Gender, that is sex.”
By erasing the synonymous sense of gender, Genderists break this mechanism. Every time someone says, “You’re confusing sex and gender,” a puppy dies trying to save a kitten.
Hahaha good punchline.
As if the cultlike warmth and labored earnestness weren’t bad enough, she used the word “journey.” “We help them with their gender journey.”
Excuse me. I must attend to my regurgitative journey.
I think the doc in What is a Woman also referred to the “gender journey”.
Such wonderful words ruined by quacks and Queer Theorists.
They have to use “journey” because those under “treatment” never reach their destination. They are being medicalized for life. They are being promised the impossible. If these clinicians were being honest about this “journey” they’d be telling their “patients” “No, you can’t get there from here.” Humans can’t change sex. Nobody is born in the “wrong body.” Nobody goes through the “wrong puberty.” Puberty is not a disease. To delay or prevent it will result in a stunted, underdeveloped human. It is an attempt to prevent adulthood. It is a gross interference in a biological process as natural as digestion or breathing. Pretending otherwise and performing surgeries and medical interventions in aid of that pretense is physical and psychological torture. That deceptively cozy sounding euphemism “gender affirming care,” hides the horrific realities of mutilation, sterility, and medical dependency. All in pursuit of a lie. But you can’t get there from here. Anyone who tells you that you can a) does not have your best interests at heart, and b) wants to sell you something. You would think that doctors would know better, what with that oath thing they take. But I guess it’s okay to gaslight others if you’ve already gaslit yourself.
YOUR GENDER JOURNEY: THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME! (In more ways than one….)
It was not only that ‘warm’ and ‘caring’ voice (‘We know everything and we’re here to help you’) that enraged me, but the constant, banal, tinkling accompaniment as well: ‘All’s safe and twee, safe and twee, nothing to worry about here, everything will be taken care of for you, and after being mutilated you will enter a lovely safe space where you will be able to listen incessantly to warm, caring voices and lovely, tinkling, comforting music for the rest of your (un)natural life.” What was it that John Bunyan saw in his dream? ‘Then I saw that there was a way to Hell even from the Gates of Heaven…’ The Pilgrim’s Regress.
Yes yes yes and yes.