It’s not just a Republican movement
Depends on how you look at it.
State laws restricting transition care for minors have surged over the past few months, as part of a Republican movement to regulate the lives of transgender youth.
But is there even such a thing as “transition care”? Trans ideology wants us to think so, of course, but trans ideology isn’t the same thing as medical knowledge. In other words “transition” isn’t really “care” – it’s a drastic intervention that may or may not help the patient psychologically. It should be a last resort, not a swiftly and eagerly performed tampering with a patient’s sex.
And it’s tendentious to call regulation of these interventions “regulating the lives of transgender youth.” Restricting drastic (and still experimental) attempts to make people resemble the sex they’re not is not the same as regulating lives. If all this does turn out to be a social contagion and a big mistake, the people who didn’t try to change their sex will be the very very lucky ones.
In a little over two years, Republican-led state legislatures have enacted restrictions on a host of L.G.B.T.Q.-related issues, including gender-affirming medical care, bathroom access, and sports participation for transgender children and teenagers.
None of that has anything to do with LGB. It’s all T.
This year alone, 16 states have enacted bans or significant new restrictions on some or all gender-affirming care for minors, most ending the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.
Shock horror, but what if it turns out that cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers are bad for people and should not be offered as “care”? What if there’s no such thing as gender-affirming care but only mutilation and hormone-experimentation? What if for once the Republicans have it right and the Democrats are horribly destructively wrong?
Legislators who support the restrictions have said they are seeking to protect children from irreversible decisions.
And that’s not automatically or obviously evil.
Lawmakers this year have also passed a series of laws prohibiting transgender students from using the restroom that matches their gender identity.
In other words a series of laws keeping boys out of girls’ restrooms. It’s not just obvious that the freedom of boys to go into girls’ toilets is something to cheer on.
The Times moves on to the sports issue, and continues to shrug off the obvious harms to female people.
Republicans have called this issue “a battle for the very survival of women’s sports,” pointing to a debate at the most elite level of sports as well as at high schools and colleges. Critics say that these rules affect very small numbers of students and that the bills keep transgender children and adolescents from joining social activities.
That’s a lie though. Children and adolescents can join social activities according to their sex instead of their Magic Gender. Brushing off the unfairness to girls as “very small numbers” is beneath contempt.
I really hope that the people who gleefully jumped on this particular bandwagon will seriously regret tying the mutilation of children to the Democrats.
The LGB fought long and hard to keep child abusers out of the movement for decriminalisation and equality, and only let the T append themselves because they felt sorry for the tiny numbers of effeminate gay male transsexuals. Who – apart from lesbian women, and no-one listens to them, right? – could have foreseen the T being a Trojan horse for straight male fetishistic narcissists and their pædophile friends? These had to invent the idea of the ‘trans child’ in order to be able to bully everyone into letting them indulge their fetishes in public.
I wonder if the Democrats will survive the deluge when the dam breaks?
‘it’s a drastic intervention that may or may not help the patient psychologically’
Looks like ‘not’.
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/09/71296/
Good article at 4W about how trans ideology has impeded or reversed progress toward gay and lesbian acceptance within the Republican Party.
https://4w.pub/regression-in-the-republican-party/
@tigger –
I think that it will do some harm to the Democrats, but then we only have 2 viable parties in the US, so the interesting question is whether the Republicans will shoot themselves in the foot with a higher-caliber rifle (Trumpism.)
I think that in Minnesota the Democrats have overshot with the current session in trans laws, and will lose seats in the next legislative election, but their opponents are perceived as whackaloon conspiracy theorists so they don’t necessarily stand to win the state back in the executive branch.
There will be Hell to pay, sure, but I don’t know who is going to pay it.
How does this story sound?
So very progressive.
Of course so-called “progressives” smear any opposition to “gender-affirming care” with the dreaded “conservative/Republican” label, which gets back to my point yesterday about framing (and a belated thanks for promoting my comment). It is possible to stumble on the same conclusion in different frames even if the frames themselves are different, even incompatible. I mean, both vegans and Orthodox Jews agree that eating pork is wrong, but that doesn’t mean that all vegans are Orthodox Jews (or vice versa).
Golly. Thanks for the link, guest @ 3. Rather damning…
I think they’re overthinking it…
The trans shit is a useful wedge for refighting the war on gays, not primarily the cause of it. The détente is over and it’s back to the trenches.
*Sighs, exhumes equine corpse and pulls out truncheon.*
Ophelia, once again: the Republicans are not “right” this time. The fact that some of these bills contain provisions that correlate with those that might be passed by lawmakers who have actually adopted a GC point of view does not make them right, merely more dangerous.
1: They are wrong on substance. Most of these bills either contain other provisions that target guys and lesbians with vastly more overall effect than the trans provisions do.
2: They are wrong on particulars. Many of the bills are, frankly, draconian and cruel in their implementation of the provisions you do agree with. Prison time and families being dragged into court to have their kids removed from the home are not suitable remedies for this fad. And suggesting, even tangentially, that this overreach might be justified is going to empower their efforts to increase their abuses of power.
3: They are wrong on the underlying philosophy. What a Maroon’s post @5 illustrates this with the point about pork-eating. Vegans have several good reasons for eschewing pork–animal cruelty, environmental impact, health. Orthodox Jews, OTOH, believe that an invisible Sky-daddy says it is bad. Would you say that Judaism is “right’ about not eating pork?
It sucks that we have to hold to the more precise standard. But if we don’t, neither of the other two factions can be relied upon to do so. And in that situation, it won’t matter who wins–women and homosexuals will lose.
Once again what?
I didn’t say Republicans “are right” in some broad general sense, I said “What if for once the Republicans have it right” about cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.
And what I’m saying is that they do not have even that aspect right. These laws are usually not just simple bans on puberty blockers. They are threatening parents with loss of parental rights and even prison time. This is not the right approach, and if allowed to continue absolutely will embolden their efforts to use similar tactics against gay kids (and adults). And no, I don’t believe for one second that they are motivated by a concern for the kids or for the science–if they were, it would be child’s play to push for long term research into the effects of blockers.
Sources?
Ok I looked for and found some sources. The Intercept in October last year: