The Nation should be embarrassed that it published this.

Trans Medicine’s “Merchants of Doubt”

Before we read any further, what is “trans medicine”? Fake medicine? Real medicine that trans people take? Reckless experimental attempts to change people’s sex?

Someone called Joanna Wuest wrote the article. He/she looks male to my jaundiced eye, but not so unmistakably male that I can claim to be sure she/he is male. Google turned up a lot of content but not a single bit of information on what sex he/she is.

So, what does she/he tell us?

Gender-affirming care is based on dangerously uncertain science. So say lawmakers in the 26 states that have banned medical interventions for minors ranging from puberty-suppressing and hormonal replacement medications to surgical procedures.

First paragraph and we’re in the weeds. What if “gender-affirming care” is in fact not a “medical intervention” but a horrifying destructive interference with normal maturation? What if it is, however well meant, a hideous mistake? What if it’s actually not all that good an idea to tamper with puberty?

Today, the Supreme Court will hear a case, United States v. Skrmetti, deciding whether to uphold these regulations of what trans medicine’s critics have unduly called “experimental” healthcare.

What’s “unduly” about calling puberty-disrupting “experimental”? Of course it’s experimental. It’s a shockingly reckless experiment on children and teenagers, encouraged by a virulent social contagion which Wuest her/himself is helping to spread.

For the past several years, conservative political leaders and fringe medical voices have waged an often covert campaign against gender-affirming care. Borrowing from fossil fuel, tobacco, and Covid-19 science denial strategies, these agents of scientific uncertainty have cast doubt on trans medicine’s safety and efficacy. Just like those “merchants of doubt” who spread untruths about humanity’s impact on the climate and the dangers of secondhand smoke, extraordinarily well-funded groups have spread the idea that gender-affirming care’s evidence base is perilously uncertain.

No, not just like them, because there is enormous room for doubt that “gender dysphoria” is a medical illness that should be treated by trying to change the patient’s sex. Also not like them because there is little or no financial incentive to say trans ideology is bullshit. Saying men are not women is not profitable the way marketing oil is. It’s much more the other way around. The “yeet the teats” doctor makes a lot of money doing what she does; feminists who refuse to shut up, not so much.

Yep: the Nation should be embarrassed.

H/t Mostly Cloudy