Meaning
Regarding Julia Mason and Leor Sapir’s op-ed “The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Dubious Transgender Science” (Aug. 18): In its recommendations for caring for transgender and gender-diverse young people, the AAP advises pediatricians to offer developmentally appropriate care that is oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience. This care is nonjudgmental, includes families and allows questions and concerns to be raised in a supportive environment. This is what it means to “affirm” a child or teen; it means destigmatizing gender variance and promoting a child’s self-worth. Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving. It doesn’t push medical treatments or surgery; for the vast majority of children, it recommends the opposite.
That’s what “gender-affirming care” means? It doesn’t mean cutting off breasts or penises, or constructing new “front holes” or penises from bits of colon or chunks of arm?
Huh. That’s not how Boston Children’s Hospital uses it. Someone should let them know.
Slow, cautious turnaround before walk-back and full reverse ferret? Maybe someone’s been paying attention to developments in the UK?
Even reading the description, it’s still bullshit. What is left of “gender identity” and “gender experience” once one has removed comparisons with external, stereotypical, sexist, patriarchal sex roles? Precious little to fuck all as far as I’ve ever been able to tell. Strip away the sex-role restrictions on men and women and there’s nothing left of “gender.” Without these cultural “standards” with which to compare feelings, attitudes, and behaviours, (Do I paint my nails??!!), there is nothing for them to be mismatched with. They’re just differences in personality, which are, apparently, insufficiently special for some people. Personality? Shit, everyone has one of those!
Um, no, to destigmatize is not the same as to affirm. The former is to remove a negative attitude toward something. The latter is to introduce a positive attitude toward something.
Of course, they know this. Confusing people on this sort of thing is a central pillar of their overall strategy. They use the common meaning, but when challenged they appeal to an alternative meaning that is more palatable. When you look away, they go right back to using the normal meaning. It’s bait & switch, motte & bailey gaslighting all the way down, just like the right does with “religious freedom”, only they do it with affirm, normalize, gender, etc.
And “inclusive.”
So, they carefully evaluate the kiddies and can tell who is “truly trans” and those kids get put on the medicalized path to misery. Funny how it seems that every kid they get hold of is judged to be twu twans, though. I mean, shouldn’t they have data now on how many children they turn away from medicalized treatment because those kids were found to be not “true trans” at all?
Not sure which thread to drop this link in, so have picked this one.
Australian woman transitions, regrets, detransitions. Now seeing her psychiatrist.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/300669330/absolutely-devastating-australian-woman-sues-psychiatrist-over-gender-transition
Nullius beat me in pointing out the Motte-and-bailey gambit.
Surely any responsible clinician would “destigmatiz[e] gender variance and promot[e] a child’s self-worth.”
It’s true that in theory GA therapy isn’t a matter of automatically suggesting medical treatment. What it does do though is treat gender (sex) dysphoria from the standpoint of gender identity theory, which means “affirming” any child who claims to be “transgender.” If the child, or the clinician, is convinced that little Johnny is “really” a girl, bring on the puberty blockers. From there cross-sex hormones are more-or-less a given.