Here’s a good cause if you’re in a donating frame of mind:

Help Kato Mukasa help Humanists in Uganda

My name is Kato Mukasa . I am the founding Chairperson of the Humanist Association for Leadership Equity and Accountability ( HALEA) in 2007 and its current Legal Director. I am the chair of Uganda Humanist Association ( UHASSO) the oldest Humanist organization in Africa, registered in 1996. 

I am also the Executive Director of Legal Relief Frontiers LTD, a non governmental organization that was recently registered to provide Legal Relief services to the poor in Uganda.

And a lawyer working with Mukasa Lugalambi Advocates and Solicitors.

Along side all the incredible work I have been being doing I am keen on the education of the most vulnerable poor hence I am the founding director of Pearl Vocational Training College and Pearl Mukasa Memorial High School , schools which provides education to the marginalized urban and rural poor, young mothers and needy students.

Over the years I have handled human rights oriented cases that involves supporting LGBTQ rights, defiled children, rape victims and victims of land evictions among others. For the last 15 years, I have featured on radio stations and TV talk shows educating the public on matters concerning human rights including the right for non believers. I have written several works on Poetry, Religion, Culture, Gay Rights and Entrepreneurship. However, my book: “Unlearning the Myths about Homosexuality” is one of the most important work written at a time when Uganda’s Parliament has passed the popularly know” Kill the Gay Bill” and the book was meant to challenge homophobia.  Its coming out created for me enemies and attacks on my person, home and offices and the climax was the burning of my car in 2014.

It’s never easy standing up to challenge dogma in a country full of religious zealots. Speaking for the rights of the marginalized people even becomes harder.

I have been an ally of the LGBTQ community since 2008 and this has greatly affected my career and safety.

My home was attacked on the 30th Day of October 2014 and when the assailants failed to break into the main house, they set my Noah car ablaze.

At the moment, my field car is down and my mobility curtailed. I need to move around the country supporting non believers in trouble, defending the vulnerable poor and doing charity work amongst others.

I call upon you my dearest friends, Associates, Comrades, brothers and sisters to support my work by making a contribution. It will help boost my mobility and resources and I will be in position to serve even better as a Human Rights Defender, an educationist and Humanist Leader in Uganda.

McConnell is breaking the knees of the proposed commission to look into that little insurrection the other month.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he will oppose legislation to create a commission tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — a signal that the legislation will not have the votes to get through the Senate.

“After careful consideration, I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January the 6th,” he said on the Senate floor.

The bipartisan commission would have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, five on each side.

Right, so that’s slanted and unbalanced. It should be nine Republicans and one Democrat.

The glorious cause – refusing to wear masks during a pandemic. Our ancestors died for the cause! Salute the flag! Allons enfants de la patrie! Etc.

A group of House Republicans revolted over their chamber’s mask rules on Tuesday, the latest sign of tensions boiling over as Congress wrestles with how and when to return to pre-pandemic routines.

Around a dozen Republicans refused to wear masks during the evening vote series and strategically stood at the well of the chamber, which appears on the C-SPAN cameras, and seemed to encourage other members to join in.

…

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) snapped a selfie with a few other maskless members and posted it to social media. Taking pictures on the House floor is against longstanding rules due to security concerns.

Well that’s MJT for ya – rules are for other people, mostly Democrats.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who was standing nearby, could also be heard shouting to another member in jest: I can’t “hear” you with your mask on. Massie was one of the lawmakers who helped organize the protest, sources said.

He composed ever such a witty tweet about it.

Very grown-up and professional and sensible.

The CDC says it’s ok to do without masks indoors if everyone is vaccinated, so why is Pelosi being such a poopy-head about it? Because not everyone is vaccinated, or at least known to be vaccinated. The Rs are being cute.

Pelosi and Democrats have said lawmakers could resume normal life more quickly if more of their Republican colleagues got vaccinated.Democrats say they feel uncomfortable being in closed-door settings without facial coverings until they know more GOP lawmakers have gotten the shot.

Roughly 75 percent of the House has been vaccinated, according to estimates from the Capitol physician that McCarthy has cited. All 219 Democrats reported to CNN that they’re vaccinated, but only 95 out of 212 Republicans reported being vaccinated, while 112 did not respond to the survey.

There’s nothing particularly “left” about getting vaccinated or “right” about refusing to get vaccinated. This nonsense is just Conflict Theater, aka the Republicans being childish tools like their hero the Queens Bloviator.

A friend on Facebook posted an image that prompted me to look up the painter to learn more.

In Shame and Prejudice, Kent Monkman paints missing Indigenous images into history

As UBC’s Museum of Anthropology gets used to welcoming visitors again, it’s opening a major new show—one that shakes up the very foundations of Canada.

On the final stop of a cross-country tour that kicked off in 2017, Cree artist Kent Monkman’s provocative Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience finally arrives in Vancouver.

The painting in question:

“This was an opportunity to ask Canadians to think about what 150 years have meant to Indigenous people, and reframe it through my own lens,” the artist says, speaking to the Straight from his studio in Prince Edward County, on Ontario’s picturesque Bay of Quinte, where the largely Toronto-based Monkman has been holed up for most of the quarantine. “Colonial history really intended to remove Indigenous people from view, but also strip us of our culture and our languages.”

Hence stealing Indigenous children to put them in residential schools, to strip them of their culture and languages.

His paintings are presented in the style of the old masters, but capture a history never told by 19th-century paintings: one of killing, starvation, and abduction. The Scream is a deeply distressing tableau of nuns, priests, and red-coated Mounties yanking crying children away to residential school, holding back their distraught mothers—in one case, by grabbing her hair. 

It is distressing, as well as all too familiar. Nuns and priests locked up children in industrial “schools” in Ireland, too, along with locking up women in Magdalen laundries to do slave labour for years for the crime of getting pregnant without being married. Nothing ever happened to the men who got them pregnant of course.

“Over many years, I’ve been looking at that art history, examining it for those gaps in what has been represented and what has been omitted,” he continues. “So, with this project, what I wanted was to depict events, sometimes traumatic, that were erased from history, erased from the education curriculums of most Canadians, who had no idea that residential schools were this experience that Indigenous people had to survive. So many Canadians graduated from university without having any knowledge of residential schools, so it was an opportunity to insert some of these images into this shared art history, which ended up being quite powerful and troubling to many people. But I felt they were necessary to shock and also engage and educate many Canadians, who still remain largely ignorant of many Indigenous experiences. That’s the beauty and power of art.”

It is.

Headlines – another person comes out as self-obsessed and expecting us to be interested in xir self-obsession.

Demi Lovato has announced they have a non-binary gender identity.

This is of no interest. There is no need for people to make “announcements” about themselves this way. It doesn’t matter. It’s not significant. People’s custom-built Selves are of no interest.

Says it all, doesn’t it – “I’m so happy to share more of my life with you all.” No, don’t be happy to do that – recoil from it with scorn and loathing. Don’t look ever more into the self, look away from the self, at everything there is out there to explore and think about. Also don’t be “proud” to identify as something meaningless. Say you’re gender-nonconforming if you must say something, but say it briskly and then step away from the microphone and do something useful.

The pop singer will use the pronouns they and them to describe themselves, to “best represent the fluidity I feel in my gender expression”.

Or rather to draw extra attention and flattery and exclamations of stunning and brave.

The Guardian goes on to knock itself out using “they” and “their” for paragraph after paragraph, and then everybody takes 47 curtain calls in an empty theater.

Oh no, not mocking his faith. The horror.

THE BBC has been accused of “taking the mickey” out of the newly elected leader of the DUP over his religious beliefs.

Ian Paisley, the party’s MP for North Antrim, said the broadcaster had “lambasted” Edwin Poots because he is “a man of faith”.

The BBC says no we didn’t.

During the introduction to the programme, Mr Poots was described as “a creationist from the party’s Free Presbyterian roots, who once banned donations of blood from gay men”.

Just the facts ma’am.

“I would say absolute cobblers to your programme so far,” Mr Paisley told presenter Faisal Islam. “I’m reminded of the Frank Skinner line, you can be anything in Britain today except a Christian.”

“The BBC want to lambast the man because he happens to be a man of faith and they want to take the mickey out of his religion, you wouldn’t do that if he was a Muslim…”

If he WERE a Muslim. Counter-factual subjunctive.

“He’s entitled to be the leader and he’s entitled to have his faith.”

A spokesperson from the BBC said: “At no point did anyone on the programme mock religious beliefs.”

Jesus and Mo are on the Poots-Paisley side.

Not just civil.

The New York attorney general’s office said Tuesday that it is pursuing a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization, in addition to the ongoing civil probe.

“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA. We have no additional comment at this time,” Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the office, said in a statement.

Closing in.

No they don’t.

Hospitalization for cramps is not a thing, and if it were, it would not be a thing that happens to men. Men don’t get cramps.

There are many basic biology lessons in the replies.

Eric Trump is confused.

Trump compared Biden and Harris unfavorably to his father and criticized them for not giving more press conferences.

“I think they’re lazy,” Trump said. “I think they lack motivation. I think they lack the charisma to do what my father did.

See he thinks being president means talking constantly and being on camera a lot and performing non-stop, like a clown on cocaine. He thinks that because his imbecile daddy thought that.

“My father was on a plane every single day. He was literally going somewhere every single day and where are these two? Why don’t you ever hear from them?

“They’re not giving press conferences. They’re not going out in the Rose Garden like my father was. They aren’t doing press conferences as they’re getting on Air Force One. They’re not traveling anywhere. I mean, there just seems like there’s a vacuum in Washington. There’s no energy. There’s no speed. There’s no desire to actually fix these problems, and that’s depressing.”

Why was he on a plane so often? Because he kept throwing rallies instead of doing his damn job, that’s why. Remember that? That first year? I kept asking why he was going to yet another god damn rally a month after taking office. It wasn’t because he was “working hard” or accomplishing something to benefit the country and its people, it was because he loves attention. Period end of story. He’s a stupid childish needy fool who got bored whenever he wasn’t the center of attention.

Giving press conferences as you’re getting on Air Force One isn’t the job.

Republicans have gone all identity politics on us.

At this point, the best — and probably only — way to stop Trumpism would be for a significant share of Republicans to align with the Democratic Party, at least temporarily. But here’s the problem: For many Trump-skeptical Republicans, both elite and rank-and-file, being a Republican, and definitely not a Democrat, is a part of their personal identity. And so far, too few have been willing to prioritize the health of the country over this attachment.

That’s odd though, because what has Republican identity now become? It’s deeply entangled with Trump and trumpism and Trump’s revolting character and temperament and smashed moral compass. If you’re Trump-skeptical why would you cling to an identity that’s soaked in trumpism?

I’m pretty sure that people such as Bush, Cheney and Romney know that the pre-Trump Republican Party isn’t coming back. They can see that the GOP of 2021 is less about keeping the government small than, say, making it harder for Democratic-leaning Americans to vote and stopping Americans from learning about the lingering effects of slavery.

Not to mention cheering on Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and Mitch McConnell and stop I can’t take any more.

The term “identity politics” has become a pejorative, deployed to suggest that Democrats are too focused on people of color and women.

You know, if you combine women and people of color that turns out to be a lot of people. Why not be focused on such a massive demographic? When it’s the demographic that has less of a head start than white men? Just a thought; sorry to interrupt.

But political scientists say that one of the strongest identities in America today is which of the two parties a person supports and, perhaps even more so, which one they don’t.

That’s odd. I on the other hand am always sharply aware that though I vote for Democrats I’m not a Democrat. The Dems are generally too “moderate” for me, aka too conservative; I’m on the left as opposed to being a Dem. That’s part of my idenniny I guess.

Cancellations rebuked:

The University of Essex has today published Akua Reindorf’s Review of two events involving external speakers, concerning the controversy surrounding events at which Professor Jo Phoenix (Open University) and Professor Rosa Freedman (University of Reading) had been invited to speak.

The report concludes that the University breached the Professors’ rights to freedom of expression because of preconceptions about their views on trans rights and gender identity.

It was in breach of statutory duties and its own policies.

In Professor Phoenix’s case, a seminar which she was due to give in December 2019 was cancelled at the last minute because of threats of disruption. A flyer was circulated in the University bearing an image of a cartoon character pointing a gun and the words “SHUT THE F*** UP, TERF”. The report concluded that proper use of the University’s external speaker notification procedure would have averted the last minute panic which resulted in the cancellation. Thereafter, a decision was taken to not invite Professor Phoenix to give another seminar because of concerns that she would engage in “hate speech” against trans people. The report concluded that this amounted to blacklisting and was unlawful, and that there was no reasonable basis for thinking that Professor Phoenix might use unlawful speech of any kind.

That’s the thing about the category of “hate speech” against trans people – it’s defined so very broadly by the people who accuse that when an adult looks into it, it turns out to be a great big zero. Children squawk “But she will hate-speak!!!” and for some unfathomable reason institutions jump to disinvite and shun the invited speaker while the children celebrate another victory.

Professor Freedman was invited to take part in a roundtable discussion in January 2020 on the subject of The State of Antisemitism Today, as part of the University’s Holocaust Memorial Week event. After concerns were raised about her views on sex and gender the invitation was effectively rescinded. A member of the University posted a tweet comparing her views to Holocaust denial. The report concluded that the withdrawal of the invitation to Professor Freedman was particularly egregious because she had been invited to speak on a matter which was entirely unconnected to sex and gender and which was of particular personal significance to her.

But the children wanted her punished, and what the children want, the children get. Why is that? When the quality of their thought is so crude and empty, why is that?

he University’s apologies to the Professors and the actions which it intends to take in response to the report’s recommendations have been published on its website. The University intends to implement all of the recommendations save for the recommendation that it give consideration to the relative benefits and disbenefits of its relationship with Stonewall in light of the drawbacks and potential illegalities identified in the report as having arisen from that relationship.

That’s unfortunate. Stonewall is terrible. Universities should walk away from it – they should “disinvite” it, as it were.

Another letter.

The letter contains no surprises.

As leaders of trans and LGBTQ+ organisations we are writing to express our frustration and disappointment at the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) recent record on LGBTQ+ people’s rights and trans people’s rights specifically.

The emphasis is always on trans people. Why?

Probably because people are so easily bored. Lesbian, gay, that’s so last week – let’s have something fresher!

We are disappointed that, despite the realms of possibility to improve LGBTQ+ people’s lives and our access to our human rights, the EHRC has driven forward very little for our communities in recent years. Against that backdrop of a lack of support for LGBTQ+ people, we are frustrated that you then chose to intervene in a case to say that so-called ‘gender critical’ beliefs should be a protected philosophical belief.

In other words they’re frustrated that the Equality and Human Rights Commission says that women have a right to say that men are not women. If women don’t have a right to say that men are not women then we don’t have any rights at all, because a man can always bounce up and take them away from us while claiming to be a woman.

It was a kick in the teeth to trans people to see the EHRC appear to put their organisational weight behind a movement that has only contributed to rising hate for trans people in communities, creating a policy environment where it is harder for trans people to access their rights.

What about women and their ability to access their rights?

Brilliant: another mosque in India demolished in defiance of the law. That will turn out well.

A local administration in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has defied a state high court order and bulldozed a mosque, in one of the most inflammatory actions taken against a Muslim place of worship since the demolition of the Babri Mosque by a mob of Hindu nationalist rioters in 1992.

That did not go well.

On Monday, police and security services moved into the area and cleared it of people, then brought in bulldozers and demolished the mosque buildings. Debris was then thrown into a river, according to images and local accounts. Security services have been deployed to prevent anyone coming within a mile of where the mosque stood.

The state government of Uttar Pradesh is controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which also governs at national level.

The BJP is horrible. Hindu nationalists are theocrats just as Islamists are theocrats. Theocracy is bad, because gods cannot be held accountable or voted out of office.

The University of Melbourne.

The student union.

The women’s department of the student union of the University of Melbourne PRESENTS

Menstruation Beyond the Binary.

Oh goody I cannot wait. I am so sick of those selfish bitches – women – keeping menstruation all for themselves. There’s no privilege like cramps privilege! Feeling that uterus contract to expel the sludge is just the best damn thing, second only to the sheer fun of catching the sludge and then disposing of it without attracting attention or flies or anything else untoward.

You think I’m joking. No such luck. It’s two days from now.

The gendering of menstruation needs to stop, periodt.

I don’t know if “periodt” is a typo or some new bit of gender-special jargon, like the asterisk.

Anyway yeah, the gendering of menstruation needs to stop, and so does the gendering of testicles, and the gendering of lactation, and the gendering of who gets pregnant and who impregnates, and the gendering of who does the work of pushing the baby out of a small opening in the body.

Are your experiences being sidelined due to the language around menstruation? Or do you want to learn more about this issue? Organised by UMSU Women, Menstruation Beyond the Binary is a workshop to share and learn, with snacks provided!

Well, are they??? Are your experiences of menstruation being sidelined by people who have the colossal fucking nerve to talk about it as something that female people, and female people only, do? Well come on ahead to our meeting where we explain that men can totally menstruate, and have some tortilla chips and Tang!

Oh, one of those. Jeff gave Bill advice on how to get away from That Woman.

Bachelor sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein gave Bill Gates advice on ending his marriage with Melinda after the Microsoft co-founder complained about her during a series of meetings at the money manager’s mansion, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Gates used the gatherings at Epstein’s $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a “toxic” marriage, a topic both men found humorous, a person who attended the meetings told The Daily Beast.

Bros before hos.

The people familiar with the matter said Gates found freedom in Epstein’s lair, where he met a rotating cast of bold-faced names and discussed worldly issues in between rounds of jokes and gossip—a “men’s club” atmosphere that irritated Melinda.

“[It’s] not an overstatement. Going to Jeffrey’s was a respite from his marriage. It was a way of getting away from Melinda,” one of the people who was at several of the meetings said, adding that Epstein and Gates “were very close.”

How sweet.

Matt Gaetz’s buddy pleaded guilty.

Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector and close confidant of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, formally pleaded guilty on Monday morning to six federal charges in a court hearing, admitting to a federal judge that he had knowingly solicited and paid a minor for sex.

…

The guilty plea from Greenberg, a former Seminole County, Florida, tax commissioner, comes after he struck a deal with federal prosecutors to avoid some of the other 33 federal charges he had faced that ranged from identity theft to fraud and bribery allegations.

He sounds nice.

As part of the plea, Greenberg has agreed to give “substantial assistance” to prosecutors as part of their sprawling investigation, including by testifying at trials or in federal grand juries if needed and in turning over all documents he might have that could help the federal inquiry.

Federal investigators are still examining whether Gaetz broke federal sex trafficking, prostitution and public corruption laws and whether he had sex with a minor. Gaetz has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

Previously, CNN reported that Greenberg had been providing information to investigators about how he and Gaetz had encounters with women who were given cash or gifts in exchange for sex.

Tick tick tick.

Foxkiller giving us our orders again.

Employers should protect staff from bigotry, yes, but what are we defining as “bigotry”? Foxie of course is defining not believing that men are women as “bigotry,” which is just silly. He doesn’t expect us to believe he’s a woman, so why does he expect us to believe other men are women simply because they say they are? He’s a lawyer ffs: surely lawyers are sharply aware that people often say things that are not true.

And no, replacing “trans” with “gay” or “disabled” in the phrase “staff who question trans rights” doesn’t help. Why not? Because we’re talking about different things. Gay rights and disabled rights are the familiar kind – no persecution or bullying, no refusal to hire or serve in a shop or rent accomodation to, no exploitation or oppression. Trans “rights” are a different kind of thing altogether: they’re about forcing us to agree that they are what they say they are even though we know they’re not; they’re about “including” them as the sex they say they are even though we know they’re not; they’re about taking women’s prizes and jobs and facilities even thought they’re men. They’re not actually “rights” at all, they’re more like a con game.

Maya’s views are not “a problem.” Maugham’s on the other hand…

Deborah Cameron has an interesting post about “a longstanding feminist bone of contention: the use of the terms ‘Miss’ and ‘Sir’ to address teachers in UK schools.”

You can see where the contention comes in: “Sir” ain’t comparable to “Miss.”

In other contexts the female address term analogous to ‘Sir’ is not ‘Miss’ but ‘Madam’ or ‘Ma’am’: though ‘madam’ has undergone some semantic derogation (it has acquired the specialised meaning ‘woman in charge of a brothel’), as an address term it retains a higher degree of formality and gravitas than ‘Miss’. That’s presumably why the related form ‘Ma’am’ has become the standard address term for senior female officers in the armed forces and the police. ‘Miss’ does not suggest deference to someone senior…

Even if you don’t find it belittling, it’s less deferential than ‘Sir’. As the feminist linguist Jennifer Coates commented in 2014, ‘Sir is a knight, but Miss is ridiculous–it doesn’t match Sir at all’.  She added:

It’s a depressing example of how women are given low status and men, no matter how young or new in the job they are, are given high status.

But it’s complicated. Do we level up, or do we level down?

One complicating factor is our old friend the sociolinguistics of status and solidarity. The non-reciprocal use of any title marks the existence of a status hierarchy (if you call me ‘Professor’ and I call you ‘Susie’ it’s a safe bet that I outrank you), and feminists tend to be ambivalent about that, caught between resenting the way respect-titles are often withheld from women when men get them automatically, and feeling we shouldn’t care, because after all, we believe in equality. In that egalitarian spirit, some of the people who answered my question on Twitter said they’d prefer to be called by their first names. Though these commenters were critical of ‘Miss’, their objection was more to status-marking in general than to the sexism of ‘Miss’ in particular. This brought them into conflict with other people who were more interested in levelling up (ensuring that women teachers got the same respect as men) than levelling down (flattening the hierarchy by eliminating titles).

Speaking of “Miss” and “Madam” and their connotations…

The connotations of “Mind your place” are all too chillingly obvious.

Bad.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a major rollback of abortion rights, saying it will decide whether states can ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb.

The court’s order sets up a showdown over abortion, probably in the fall, with a more conservative court seemingly ready to dramatically alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights.

The court first announced a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and reaffirmed it 19 years later.

The case involves a Mississippi law that would prohibit abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. The state’s ban had been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus can survive outside her womb.

If she identifies as a man will she get an exemption?

Brenda Brooks at Feminist Current on the Oprah interview with Ellen “Elliott” Page:

I watched the Oprah interview with interest, hoping that Page might be encouraged to discuss the nature of the compelling urge that led to such a seminal modification in herself. I wondered: what were the specifics that define a woman or a man so clearly that altering one’s body to eliminate one set of discrepancies, and confirm others, made sense? A clear definition between the two would be required, wouldn’t it, in order to choose to go forward in life as one sex, rather than the other? Was transition a mostly psychological event, or primarily physical? I wondered what changes would occur in future relationships. Would the previous role of “woman” be rescinded in some way? Was there something we might call a male essence that now existed within? If so, could it be described?

Those are interesting questions. Why is it not enough to reject the stereotypes that limit both sexes and just try to be whatever kind of human feels the most like you? What is the feeling that requires more? Tell us about it, explain it to us.

At a 2014 conference in support of LGBT youth, Page commented on the criticism she sometimes received for refusing to dress according to feminine standards, “There are pervasive stereotypes about masculine and feminine that define how we’re all supposed to act, dress, and speak, and they serve no one.” I hoped that Oprah might probe this observation. If Page truly saw gender stereotypes for what they are (superficial, damaging assumptions about what it is to be male or female) on what basis was the decision made to “change sex,” even going so far as to undergo the removal of her breasts? I hoped that Winfrey wouldn’t miss the opportunity to have the nuanced, complex discussion such decisions would seem to warrant, and, in a broader societal sense, require.

Winfrey didn’t ask the questions I would have liked to hear, but in this case I could hardly blame her. Page seemed too vulnerable, even fragile, to warrant a probing inquiry of any depth. In addition, Winfrey may have felt uncomfortable questioning the topic of “trans” too deeply for fear of blowback. Her mandate, as is true for media generally, was to affirm Page’s decisions and beliefs, not inquire into them in order to gain a deeper understanding.

And why is that the mandate? I can only assume it’s because that “blowback” is so ferocious and so damaging.

She tells Winfrey “I feel like I haven’t gotten to be myself since I was 10 years old.” In that moment it occurred to me that Page’s physical appearance was closer to an androgynous adolescent than a 34-year-old man (or woman, for that matter) — as if, after winding things up with Oprah, she might head off to get the school picture taken. I found myself wondering if what was truly being longed for were the lost years of childhood, those days when, for a magical, blessed time, we are neither boys or girls — we simply are.

That seems all too likely, and sad. Leaving childhood behind is difficult, but dang, surely being stuck in it forever is worse. It’s difficult for adolescents because they still are partly children, but that doesn’t go on being true forever. That ol’ prefrontal cortex does its slow developing and eventually the child is just gone, and the adult may like to remember her childhood but she doesn’t want to literally revert to it.

Like Page, I too want children to have the opportunity to be themselves at 10 and beyond — to be able to observe themselves in a mirror and see their true selves, to persevere in this crazy world long enough to understand a simple truth: it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. It is only a matter of being born in the wrong time — a time when damaging and dangerous stereotypes have risen once again in conjunction with society’s ability and willingness to perform invasive and irreversible medical procedures.

And make a lot of money doing it.

Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Elliot Page is a disturbing reminder that, under the guise of inclusivity, kindness, and affirmation, children are being led by a Pied Piper blend of media, medicine, politics, and celebrity, into a world of catastrophic self-loathing instead.

Catastrophic self-loathing and self-mutilation.