Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Which twin has the propaganda coup?

From the article

But Alito, true to form, did not confine his opining to the notion that discrimination against trans people does not count as sex-based discrimination: he went on to suggest that trans people are not quite real, peppering Strangio, in a scene that seemed intended to humiliate the trans attorney, with questions about whether trans identity was truly an “immutable” characteristic.

Well, is it? The Supreme Court could have called upon Sally Hines as a hostile witness. She has authoritatively* written

‘Gender identity refers to each person’s internal sense of being male, female, a combination of the two, or neither; it is a core part of who people know themselves to be.’

‘Genderfluid people experience their gender identity as changing over time or between different situations.’

‘Agender people identify as having no gender, or feel that their gender is absent or neutral.’

Doesn’t sound very immutable to me. And, given Donegan’s dishonest framing (see OP above), I wouldn’t trust her characterization of any of these proceedings. From the context, I’m guessing that Alito was doubtful if transness is “real” or “immutable” not that people claiming to be trans aren’t “real” . There is a big difference, and one which transactivists (and captured journalists) have a history of confusing and substituting. It’s the familiar trans cry wolf tactic of accusing critics of gender ideology of denying trans people’s “right to exist.” But refusing to accept a given putative explanation or hypothesis for some human behaviour or characteristic does not negate the existence of anyone. If it did, rejection of astrology would entail the denial of the right of all human beings to exist, as nobody is really a “Scorpio,” or a “Leo,” or anything else in astrological terms, because astrology is crap. That doesn’t mean that people born in the time periods ascribed to those “star signs,” or any other, somehow don’t exist, just that astrology’s explanatory scheme is invalid. Nobody makes that kind of “genocidal” accusation in regards to the defence of the validity of astrology, but trans activists mischaracterize any pushback against gender ideology in exactly this way all the time, having successfully used this excuse to float their “NO DEBATE” strategy for years. Here, it looks like Donegan is doing more of the same.

And as for “politicizing” and “weaponizing” trans “kids”, trans activists have been doing this for years, using them as human shields to deflect attention from the white male fetishists and unethical “clinicians” leading the trans “movement.” Even calling these disphoric children “trans kids” is political, because it’s jumping immediately from whatever type or degree of sexual or “identity” discomfort they might have, to a diagnosis of “born in the wrong body” that is supposedly only treatable through drastic pharmeceutical interventions and extreme body modification. This leap of terminology, and its accompanying rush to irreversible “treatments,” allows activists to ignore the existence of desistance, which would reduce the numbers of supposedly “trans” youth by approximately 75%, robbing the movement of future, committed activists, and the clinicians life-long customers. What was that about “innateness” and “immutability” again? One gets the distinct impression that the haste involved in pushing these children into the gender abbatoir is in order to prevent desistance. They don’t want these children to get away. Why else outlaw the “talk therapy” that would aid children’s personal growth and acceptance of their bodies just as they are as “conversion therapy”? Why else enforce “affirmation only” as the sole path of therapy? Why condemn so many children to a lifelong debilitation that they could have avoided by just growing up? If that’s not politicization and weaponization of children, I don’t know what is.

So there’s actually a whole lot of truth behind the (supposedly) “right wing” accusation of “They’re coming for your kids!” It turns out that they are. If not their actual bodies, then at least their minds. On the flag pole of the public school just a few blocks from where I live, more often thanot, “Pride Day/Week?Month or not, the “Pride Progress” flag flies right beneath the Canadian one. (And this is the “Intersex Inclusive” version with the yellow triangle and purple circle at the left hnd edge. Even though “intersex” is considered to be an inaccurate and offensive term for DSD conditions. That doesn’t matter if the old, inaccurate term is usefull to trans activism.) The teaching of important civic virtues such as tolerance and respect is being used as cover for teaching bullshit.)

And in the end there’s always this:

That’s so distorted it borders on lying. It’s not “organized animus” to try to stop people mutilating children at the behest of an ideology that claims sex is switchable. The rage is not, of course, directed at the children, but at the adults messing up the children’s bodies. Donegan can’t really be unaware of that.

What’s in it for her? What’s in it for the Guardian? What can trans activism give them in return for their souls? How can they not see the destructive, misogynistic, regressive, and fundamentally dishonest movement. In the normal course of events, you’d have expected crusading, investigative reporters and their courageous, supporting editors to sink their teeth into this kind story of a broad, multi-institutional, mutually-reinforcing, corruption rather than become cheerleaders and apologists for it. But what’s in the trough for them?

*Or at least as “authoritative” as anyone can get in the fields of Unicorn Husbandry, or the biogeography of Snarks