Don’t let that stop you
Remember Dr Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who buried evidence that puberty blockers don’t reduce gender dysphoria?
She may end up regretting it.
The finding that the PUBERTY BLOCKERS don’t make children with gender distress less distressed “might be weaponized” – i.e. might prompt medical people to stop blocking children’s puberties on account of how it doesn’t make them any less unhappy. It seems Olsen-Kennedy wants the children to keep on not having a normal puberty even though she now knows it won’t make them less unhappy. “Oh, it doesn’t work? Well, we have to keep doing it anyway, or the bad people will win.”
You’d have thought the whole point was to make the kids less unhappy, right? But oh no. The point was…uh…the point was to normalize blocking puberty, so that more and more kids will do it, even though it won’t make them any less miserable.
The point of research is to be a weapon against falsehoods and ignorance.
The results won’t be weaponized. They are a weapon to begin with.
I’m really confused as to what Olsen-Kennedy thought she was doing here. Not publishing the research, and then telling the NY Times she wasn’t doing it because the results were bad, ended up giving this far more attention than if she’d just written them up in some not-highly-prestigious journal with a lot of caveats about how maybe the methodology was flawed, further research is warranted, etc. etc. Serious Streisand Effect going on here.
Obviously she’s been bribed by the Trump camp to ensure this breaks on the eve of the election because it might make all the difference – </sarc> No, let’s just stick with Hanlon’s Razor!
It’s a pity the letter above is signed by a Trump-supporting homophobe, of course, but I guess we can’t have everything.
Indeed we can’t. We’ve known that ever since we lost a lot of good friends because they believe in magic gender and don’t believe it sabotages women’s rights.
Olsen-Kennedy doesn’t know that puberty blockers don’t make children less unhappy. The likelihood is that she “knows” what she experiences for herself: patient after patient telling her and her colleagues that they are happy and staying happy, forever and ever. The combination of both trusting that your own experience is indicative of the whole and uninfluenced by any personal bias is especially popular when shared in enthusiastic insular communities.